Authors: DC Noir
George Pelecanos (33 page)
He
had to get out of the apartment, so he slogged down 14th toward Franklin
Square. On the way, he dropped into a small liquor store for a forty-ounce
beer. With his back to K Street, he sat down on a bench in the square, staring
at the towering statue of John Barry in his cape and commodore's hat. After
five months of near sobriety, the beer tasted incredible.
While
Gibson drank from the bottle, which was still wrapped in brown paper, he looked
up at the office buildings surrounding the square, and then at the new luxury
apartment building on 14th. He thought about the home where he had grown up in
Arlington, right across Key Bridge. His old man, an honest, hard-working guy,
had lost that place--and killed his wife's spirit in the process--by running up
around $15,000 in debt. Twenty years later, even a small bungalow there went
for more than half a million. Where's the fairness in that, Gibson
wondered.
He
watched a skeletal man with a scraggly beard rifle through a trashcan, and
thought for the fiftieth time that day about the money he had to come up with
by the end of the month. Gibson finally admitted to himself that there was no
way he would be able to raise enough scratch in time.
He
was restless, so he walked a block along K, stopped in at A-1 Wines and Liquors
for another forty, and grabbed a bench at McPherson Square. Across the park he
saw a man huddled inside a dirty hooded sweatshirt next to a mis-matched set of
Samsonite luggage and a stuffed black trash bag. Over his shoulder, straight
down Vermont, the top half of the Washington Monument was visible above a clump
of rees The streetlights cast an eerie hue over the park. Gibson leaned back,
stretched out his tired legs, and sipped slowly from the bottle. Late-night
businessmen and tourists from the nearby hotels avoided him as they crossed
through the circle, on their way to the subway stop on the corner.
A little past 10:30,
he polished off his
third forty. He had been doing numbers in his head again, thinking about how
many hours he had worked over the past year at the Shelbourne. At forty hours a
week for roughly fifty weeks, he calculated that he'd put in around 2,000 hours
over the past year. He multiplied that by the two bucks an hour that he figured
Barry had cheated him out of, and arrived at the tidy sum of $4,000.
Money that he could have easily saved.
Money that would have
enabled him to reach his down
pay
ment.
He
twisted the open end of the damp brown bag tight around the thin neck of the
empty bottle. He reckoned that $4,000 might be in the range of what the
Shelbourne was going to do that day, since they rang nearly a grand on a decent
lunch and at least two or three times that on a Friday night.
He
crossed K Street and walked slowly back toward the restaurant, still grasping
the heavy, empty bottle by the neck through the bag. Across the street from the
Shelbourne, he found a spot, half submerged in shadow and half lit by a
streetlamp, which gave him a good view of the front door. A few minutes after
11:00, the restaurant's interior lights went out. Barry emerged and pulled the
heavy wooden door shut tight behind him.
Gibson
knew that Barry's backpack contained the zippered bag that the owner slipped
into the bank's night deposit slot each evening. Barry double-checked the lock
on the front door,
then
crossed the quiet street to
walk the half-block to the bank. Gibson stepped back fully into the darkness.
Barry's
footsteps grew louder as he approached, the heels of his boots clapping on the
sidewalk. Soon he was inches from Gibson, his eyes focused straight ahead. As
Barry passed, Gibson moved out behind him and swung the bottle violently,
connecting with the back of Barry's head. To Gibson, things seemed to be moving
in soothing slow motion. Blood jumped into the light of the streetlamp, and
Barry's body thudded to the ground.
Gibson's
heart beat rubbery in his chest, but he was otherwise calm as he reached for
the backpack lying beside Barry's still form. The colors on the street were
vibrant and clear. The night breeze was pleasant on his face.
For
the first time that day, Gibson felt at peace. His headache, and the weight
upon his shoulders, had lifted.
Connie
D'Ambrosio rose from her slumber and slowly rubbed her tingly right ass cheek.
Normally she would have smiled remembering the sensation from the powerful
slaps her posterior had welcomed the night before; she would have looked at
herself in the full-length mirror and marveled at the reddish splotches on her
rump. Connie had told her new lover, Douglas, that this was the only thing that
carried over in her blood from Sicily, it having been invaded by the Moors,
George S. Patton, and others over the centuries.
She
was proud of her Mediterranean heritage, especially with people like Fellini,
Sophia Loren, and Marcello Mastroianni on the world scene. Her olive
complexion, a hint of melanin, meant she could pass for anything from the old,
Old World: Arab, Jew, Spaniard, Greek, a southern-coast French woman, or even a
Gypsy. With a head full of deep curls and raven-black hair, she knew that she
was one generation away from not being considered white. When she had explained
to Douglas the previous night the numerous ways in which Italian-Americans had
been discriminated against (before becoming officially designated as "white"
like Jews and Slavs), he merely smiled and gave her some serious tongue,
working her in a way that only a saxophone player could.
But
this morning there was a new sensation. It wasn't the morning afterglow from
their lovemaking, or even the receding skin-burn of a wondrous butt-slapping.
No. This was an extremely localized sensation pinpointed just below the curve
of her luscious right ass cheek.
She
instinctively reached for the bed's linen, only to discover that no sheets or
blankets were covering her. Then she felt something else over her: burlap. She
was wearing a burlap gown? The texture of the cloth almost made her ill. The
thought of such a vulgar fabric touching her skin, covering her body, was
beyond the pale. The finest linen, fabrics of the highest order, had graced her
since birth. Constance D'Ambrosio was to the manor born: one built on the
numerous misfortunes of former associates of her father, Carmine D'Ambrosio, a
businessman of indeterminate affairs.
Sensing
something was wrong, she rolled over to reach for the night lamp on the evening
table. The cold concrete smacked her hard as she hit the floor.
"I
don't like this fucking dream," she moaned in her Jersey-girl accent that only
revealed itself under the most extreme circumstances. Slowly, she sat up and
began collecting her wits, adjusting her eyesight to the darkness. She noticed
a shaft of dim light slashing through the room, but what truly caught her
attention was a shiny reflection off some polished surface. Two polished
surfaces. Within seconds her mind began filling in the blanks and she realized
that those surfaces were her shoes.
Connie
tried to rise, but her foot slipped, landing her on her rump, shooting pain to
the tingly spot. "Damn it."
"Are
you all right?" inquired a man's voice from over by the shoes.
Connie
scrambled backward upon the bed and drew her legs in. "Who are you? What's
going on?"
"Don't
be alarmed," said the man. "No one is going to hurt you."
"Where
am I?" She lowered her volume. "Where's Douglas? Do you know who I am?"
"Yes,"
said the figure sitting quietly in the darkness. "That's why you were brought
here."
"Then
you know who my father is and what he'll do to anyone who lays a hand on me!
He'll--"
"Does
that include Douglas?"
Connie
said nothing.
"I'm
sure he doesn't know about Douglas, nor would he approve of your taste for...what
do your people call us, mouliani?"
The
stains of Connie's lust were conveyed in a series of photos that the man slid
to her across the concrete floor. Though it was dark in the room, she could
make out enough of the images to recognize herself in a series of explicit
contortions with her black lover. She fleetingly recalled those moments of
pleasure, but the wondrous feelings turned to shame and self-recrimination as
she imagined her father seeing the photos. Don D'Ambrosio was a man of respect.
"Miss
D'Ambrosio," continued the man from the shadows, "we have a situation that
requires your assistance."
"My
assistance?!" she shot back. "You kidnapped me! That's what this is about,
isn't it? How much do you want? Do you think that you'll live long enough to
get it from my father? He'll--"
"Not
if he sees the photos," interrupted the voice. It was cool and cunning. Connie
had become familiar with the timbre of black men's voices, and he sounded like
one, only educated.
The
photos meant blackmail. He was right: Her father would have a genuinely violent
reaction if he saw them. Whatever situation she was in, she would have to get
herself
out of it.
"What
is it that you want?"
"This
is a delicate situation, Miss D'Ambrosio. We want you to call your father."
"What?"
She shook her head in bewilderment. "No." The fear had set in. She knew the
consequences of breaching her family's honor.
"Your
father has taken something that belongs to anoth man, and he wants it returned."
"I
don't understand."
"You're
a hostage, Miss D'Ambrosio. Your father and his associates have taken something
that doesn't belong to them, and the rightful owners want it back. At the right
time, all you have to do is make a phone call to your father and ask him to
return it. Nothing else will be required of you; you'll get the photos and
negatives."
"Return
what?" replied the woman. "I wake up in a sack and you hold me responsible for
something I didn't take?!"
The
man stood and stepped back into the deeper shadows of the room. She heard him
knock three times on a door, then a dead bolt sliding.
"Sophia
Devereaux."
"What?
Who the hell is tha--
Hey
!"
The
light that entered the room was quickly extinguished, but it silhouetted the
man's lean body in a dark suit as he left.
"Wait!"
She rushed to the door, almost tripping over the burlap gown. "Look, I'll do
it!" She pounded with her small fists. "Just get me some clothes! Get me some
real clothes!
GET
ME SOME REAL CLOTHES!"
* *
*
Dr.
Minister Mallory Rex's footsteps echoed through the cavernous basement as he
made his way past the warren of rooms to the stairs leading him away from the
devil's bitch that the Messenger had instructed him to cage. When he got to the
ground floor of Washington, D.C.'s Temple of Ife No. 1, he told the chief
sister, Maaloulou, to get the captive something better than burlap.
"After
all, she is our guest, and we Afrikans always attend to our guests' needs.
As is our custom."
"As
is our custom," replied the dark woman dressed in white from head to toe,
then
she bowed her head.
The
doctor minister continued through the temple, nodding to the other brothers and
sisters he passed as he thought about the situation that had been handed him.
And he thought the situation was beneath him.
Dr.
Minister Mallory Rex made them feel proud. He was a former officer in the
United States Marine Corps, a war hero cashiered for sleeping with a fellow
officer's wife--a yacoub's bitch. He had fallen within the white man's military,
but had risen and moved forward with a new mission after reading Dr. Isaiah
Afrika's words in Rise Ye Mighty Race: A Message to the New Blackman Dr. Isaiah
Afrika had laid the foundation for the Original Kingdom of Afrika based on a
conflation of Yoruba and Islam: Izlam. Now it was the relentless recruiting,
mesmerizing telegenic appearances, and stylistic zeal of Dr. Rex that
captivated the faithful and put fear into the hearts of yacoubs, the nation of
white devils. And who knew their trickery and deceitfulness better than one who
had served faithfully during his years as a "lost Negro" nigorant but loyal, as
the Messenger of Izlam once said of the sleeping blacks he called the "walking
dead."
Thus
far the operation had gone according to plan. The she-devil, while taking her
lusts, was unaware that her new lover, Douglas, a follower of the Original
Kingdom of Afrika, was under orders to bring her in. Inebriated, she didn't
feel a thing, thinking she was being pinched and stroked, when he inserted a
small needle into her rumptious tush, putting her soundly to sleep. Hiding her
inside his double-bass case, Douglas wheeled her from his apartment on 16th
Street onto U Street, in the direction of the temple near the corner of 14th.
No one would have thought anything was untoward, certainly not a colored
musician rolling his instrument down a street of clubs, southern fried joints,
and gut-bucket gospel storefronts. These establishments stretched west from the
Howard Theater area to the social axis of U and 14th streets, the heart of
Soulsville. It was the center of "third places," the loci between work and home
for the city's colored population, the best place for the Temple of Ife to
recruit the walking dead.