Soul Circus (2 page)

Strange skipped the article, jumping inside Metro to page 3. His eyes went to a daily crime column unofficially known by longtime Washingtonians as “the Roundup,” or the “Violent Negro Deaths.” The first small headline read, “Teen Dies of Gunshot Wounds,” and beneath it were two sentences: “An 18-year-old man found with multiple gunshot wounds in Southeast Washington died early yesterday at Prince George’s County Hospital Center, police said. The unidentified man was found just after midnight in the courtyard area behind the Stoneridge apartments in the 300 block of Anacostia Road, and was pronounced dead at 1:03 A.M.”

Two sentences, thought Strange. That’s all a certain kind of kid in this town’s gonna get to sum up his life. There would be more deaths, most likely retribution kills, related to this one. Later, the murder gun might turn up somewhere down the food chain. Later, the crime might get “solved,” pinned on the shooter by a snitch in a plea-out. Whatever happened, this would be the last the general public would hear about this young man, a passing mention to be filed away in a newspaper morgue, one brief paragraph without even a name attached to prove that he had existed. Another unidentified YBM, dead on the other side of the Anacostia River.

River, hell, thought Strange. The way it separates this city for real, might as well go ahead and call it a canyon.

Strange dropped the newspaper back on the bench seat. He turned the key in the ignition and pushed a Spinners tape into his deck. He pulled out of his spot and drove west. Just a few sips of coffee, and already he had to pee. Anyway, he couldn’t sit here all day. It was time to go to work.

TWO house wrens, a brownish male and female, were building a nest on the sill outside Strange’s office window. Strange could hear them talking to each other as they worked.

When Strange was a child, his mother, Alethea, had held him up to their kitchen window on mornings just like this one to show him the daily progress of the nest the birds made there each year. “They’re working to make a house for their children. The same way your father goes to work each day to make this a home for you and your brother.” His mother had been gone two years now, but Derek Strange could recall her words, and he could hear the music in her voice. She still spoke to Strange in his dreams.

Late-spring light shot through the glass, the heat of it warming the back of Strange’s neck and hands as he sat at his desk. The wedge-shaped speaker beside his phone buzzed. Janine’s voice, transmitted from the office reception area up front, came from the box.

“Derek, Terry just came in.”

“I’ll be right out.”

Strange glanced down beside his chair, where Greco, his tan boxer, lay. Greco looked up without moving his head as Strange rubbed his skull. Greco’s nub of a tail twitched and he closed his eyes.

“I won’t be gone long. Janine’ll take care of you, boy.”

In the reception area, Strange nodded at Terry Quinn, sitting at his desk, a work station he rarely used. While Quinn tore open a pack of sugarless gum, Strange stopped by Janine’s desk.

She wore some kind of pants-and-shirt hookup, flowing and bright. Her lipstick matched the half-moons of red slashing through the outfit. It would be like her to pay attention to that kind of detail. Strange stared at her now. She always looked good.
Always
. But you couldn’t get the full weight of it if you saw her seated behind her desk. Janine was the kind of tall, strong woman, you needed to see her walking to get the full appreciation, to feel that stirring up in your thighs. Like one of those proud horses they marched around at the track. He knew it wasn’t proper to talk about a woman, especially a woman you loved, like she was some kind of fine animal. But that’s what came to mind when he looked at her. He guessed it was still okay, until the thought police came and raided his head, to imagine her like that in his mind.

“You okay?” said Janine, looking up at him with those big browns of hers. “You look drunk.”

“Thinking of you,” said Strange.

Strange heard Lamar, seated at Ron Lattimer’s old desk, snicker behind him. For this he turned and stared benignly at the young man.

“I ain’t say nothin’,” said Lamar. “Just over here, minding my own.”

Strange had been grooming Lamar Williams to be an investigator as soon as he got his diploma from Roosevelt High and took up some technical courses, computer training or something like it, at night. In the meantime, Strange had Lamar doing what he’d been doing the past couple of years: cleaning the office, running errands, and keeping himself away from the street-side boys over in the Section 8s, the nearby Park Morton complex where Lamar lived with his mom and little sister.

Strange looked back at Janine, then down to the blotter-style calendar on her desk. “What’s my two o’clock about?”

“Man says he’s looking for a love.”

“Him and Bobby Womack,” said Strange.

“His
lost
love.”

“Okay. We know him?”

“Says he’s been seeing our sign these last few years, since he’s been ‘frequenting an establishment’ over on Georgia Avenue.”

“Must be talkin’ about that titty bar across the street. Our claim to the neighborhood.”

“Georgetown’s got Dunbarton Oaks,” said Janine with a shrug. “We’ve got the Foxy Playground.”

Strange leaned over the desk and kissed Janine fully on the lips. Their mouths fit together right. He held the kiss, then stood straight.

“Dag, y’all actin’ like you’re twenty years old,” said Lamar.

Strange straightened the new name plaque on the desk. For many years it had read “Janine Baker.” Now it read “Janine Strange.”

“I didn’t have it so good when I was twenty,” said Strange, talking to Lamar, still looking at Janine. “And anyway, where’s it say that a man’s not allowed to kiss his wife?”

Janine reached into her desk drawer and pulled free a PayDay bar. “In case you miss lunch,” she said, handing it to Strange.

“Thank you, baby.”

Terry Quinn stood, a manila folder under his arm. He had the sun-sensitive skin of an Irishman, with a square jaw and deep laugh ridges framing his mouth. A scar ran down one cheek where he had been cut by a pimp’s pearl-handled knife. He kept his hair short and it was free of gray. The burst of lines that had formed around his green eyes was the sole indication of his thirty-three years. He was medium height, but the width of his shoulders and the heft of his chest made him appear shorter.

“Can I get some of that Extra, Terry?” said Lamar.

Quinn tossed a stick of gum to Lamar as he stepped out from behind his desk.

“You ready?” said Strange.

“Thought you two were gonna renew your vows or something,” said Quinn.

Strange head-motioned to the front door. “We’ll take my short.”

Janine watched them leave the office. Strange filled out that shirt she’d bought him, mostly cotton but with a touch of rayon in it for the stretch, with his broad shoulders and back. Her man, almost fifty-four, had twenty years on Terry, and still he looked fine.

Coming out of the storefront, they passed under the sign hanging above the door. The magnifying-glass logo covered and blew up half the script: “Strange Investigations” against a yellow back. At night the light-box was the beacon on this part of the strip, 9th between Kansas and Upshur, a sidearm-throw off Georgia. It was this sign, Janine’s kidding aside, that was the landmark in Petworth and down into Park View. Strange had opened this business after his stint with the MPD, and he had kept it open now for over twenty-five years. He could just as well have made his living out of his row house on Buchanan Street, especially now that he was staying full-time with Janine and her son, Lionel, in their house on Quintana. But he knew what his visibility meant out here; the young people in the neighborhood had come to expect his presence on this street.

Strange and Quinn passed Hawk’s barbershop, where a cutter named Rodel stood outside, dragging on a Newport.

“When you gonna get that mess straightened up, Derek?” said Rodel.

“Tell Bennett I’ll be in later on today,” said Strange, not breaking his stride.

“They got the new
Penthouse
in,” said Quinn.

“You didn’t soil it or nothin’, did you?”

“You can still make out a picture or two.”

Strange patted his close-cut, lightly salted natural. “Another reason to get myself correct.”

They passed the butcher place that sold lunches, and Marshall’s funeral parlor, where the white Caprice was parked along the curb behind a black limo-style Lincoln. Strange turned the ignition, and they rolled toward Southeast.

ULYSSES Foreman was just about down to seeds, so when little Mario Durham got him on his cell, looking to rent a gun, he told Durham to meet him on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, up a ways from the Big Chair. Foreman set the meeting out for a while, which would give him time to wake up his girl, Ashley Swann, and show her who her daddy was before he left up the house.

An hour and a half later, Foreman looked across the leather bench at a skinny man with a wide, misshapen nose and big rat teeth, leaning against the Caddy’s passenger-side door. On Durham’s feet were last year’s Jordans; the
J
on the left one, Foreman noticed, was missing. Durham wore a Redskins jersey and a matching knit cap, his arms coming out the jersey like willow branches. The back of the jersey had the name “Sanders” printed across it. It would be just like Durham, thought Foreman, to look up to a pretty-boy hustler, all flash and no heart, like Deion.

“You brought me somethin’?” said Foreman.

Durham, having hiked up the volume on the Cadillac’s system, didn’t hear. He was moving his head to that single, “Danger,” had been in heavy rotation since the wintertime. Foreman reached over and turned the music down.

“Hey,” said Durham.

“We got business.”

“That joint is tight, though.”

“Mystikal? He ain’t doin’ nothin’ J. B. didn’t do twenty years back.”

“It’s still a good jam.”

“Uh-huh. And PGC done played that shit to death.” Foreman upped his chin in the direction of Mario. “C’mon, Twigs, show me what you got.”

Mario Durham hated the nickname that had followed him for years. It brought to mind Twiggy, that itty-bitty model who was popular from back before he was born. It was a bitch name, he knew. There wasn’t but a few men he allowed to call him that. Okay, there was more than a few. But Ulysses Foreman, built like a nose tackle, he sure was one of those men. Durham reached down into his jeans, deep inside his boxers, and pulled free a rolled plastic sandwich bag containing a thick line of chronic. He handed it across the bench to Foreman.

Foreman’s pearl red 1997 El Dorado Touring Coupe was parked on MLK between W and V in Southeast. Its Northstar engine was quiet, and no smoke was visible from the pipes. Foreman didn’t like to tax the battery, so he was letting the motor run. He sat low on the bench, his stacked shoulders and knotted biceps filling out the ribbed white cotton T-shirt he’d bought out that catalogue he liked, International Male.

Across the street, a twenty-foot-tall mahogany chair sat in the grassy section off the lot of the Anacostia Medical / Dental Center, formerly the sight of the Curtis Brothers Furniture Company. The Big Chair was the landmark in Far Southeast.

“This gonna get me up?” said Foreman, inspecting the contents of the bag.

“You know me,” said Durham. “You know how I do.”

Foreman nodded, glancing in the rearview. A Sixth District cruiser approached, coming slowly from the direction of St. Elizabeth’s, the laughing house atop the hill. Foreman never worried. If he didn’t know the beat police in this part of town, then he could name-check some of their older fellow officers, many of whom he had come up with back in the late eighties, when he had worn the uniform himself in 6D. Being a former cop, still knowing existing cops, it was usually worth a free pass. Leastways it stopped them from searching the car. The cruiser went by and was soon gone from sight.

Foreman reached under the seat and produced a Taurus 85, a five-shot .38 Special with a black rubber boot-shaped grip and a ported barrel. He handed it to Durham butt out, keeping it below the window line. Durham admired it in the morning sunlight streaming in from the east.

“It’s blue.”

“For real. Pretty, right?”

“Damn sure is.”

Durham turned it in the light, the barrel now pointed at Foreman. Foreman reached out and with the back of his hand moved the barrel so that it pointed down at the floor of the car.

“It’s loaded?” said Durham.

“You got to treat every gun like it’s live, boy.”

“I hear you. But is it?”

“Yeah, you’re ready.”

Durham nodded. “When you want it back?”

Forman weighed the plastic bag in his hand. “I say you rented about five days of strap right here.”

“That’s a hundred worth of hydro in that bag. I coulda
bought
a brand-new three eighty for, like, ninety dollas.”

“You talkin’ about a Davis? Go ahead and buy one, then. But give me back my
real
gun before you do.”

“That’s all right.”

“There you go then, little man. You want to ride in style, you got to pay.” Foreman pushed his hips forward to slip the bag into the pocket of his jeans. “What you need the gun for, anyway?”

“Need to make an impression on someone, is all it is. Why?”

“I can’t be fuckin’ with no murder gun, hear? You plan to blow someone up behind this shit, I got to know. ’Cause I can’t use no gun got a body attached to it. We straight?”

Durham nodded quickly. “Sure. Do me a favor, though. Don’t be tellin’ my brother about you rentin’ me this gun.”

“Why not?”

“He might say somethin’ to our mother. I don’t want her stressin’ over me.”

“I can understand that. We don’t need to be worryin’ your all’s moms.”

Foreman had already decided that he would tell Dewayne Durham that he had rented a gun to his half brother, Mario. Dewayne might not like that, but it would be better if he knew up front. Foreman figured, what harm would it do? This miniature man right here wouldn’t have the courage to use the gun anyway. Foreman would have it back in five days, and he had some free hydro to smoke in the bargain. Didn’t seem to be any kind of problem to it that he could see.