The Martini Shot (5 page)

“Did you talk to him?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what did he say?”

“He said that he was fine. He doesn't want detox and he doesn't want to come home. Most of 'em think the same way: They're fine. I told him that his father had hired me to find him.”

“And?”

“Mr. Lucas—”

“Tell me.”

Garner cleared his throat. “He said he didn't have a father.”

“God,” said Van uselessly.

“Sorry. I really am. Y'know, after I divorced his mother, my son cut off contact with me, too. If it's any consolation…”

Van felt as if he had been punched in the face. He heard little of the rest of Garner's story, but he got the address of the warehouse before bringing the conversation to a close. He then phoned Irene, who promised to look in on her kid brother and see to it that he had food and, if needed, a place to stay. Van had the nagging feeling from Irene's cool tone that she was relatively unconcerned about Dimitrius's degeneration, or at best felt that Van's worries were overblown.

“He'll be all right, Dad. You've got to let him come through this himself.”

In bed that night, Van and Eleni held each other and talked quietly, though Leonidas and Spero were long asleep in their room. Eleni had cried a little earlier in the evening, but in ways of logic she was stronger than Van, and also an optimist. She felt it was on her to reassure her husband that the family would be whole again someday.

“Dimitrius will come home,” said Eleni.

“When?” said Van.

“Soon.”

Dimitrius did not come home. During the next several years they spoke to him a few times over the phone, only when he needed cash. After a lecture, and against his better judgment, Van would wire the money. And then nothing, no further contact until the next similar call. They no longer knew where Dimitrius was. As for Irene, she entered law school and stopped coming home, even for holidays. They rarely spoke to her, either. That left them with their two younger sons. Van vowed to get it right with them.

Leonidas's and Spero's high school years went smoothly. After witnessing the stress their older siblings had inflicted on their parents, they had no desire to rebel in any significant way. Irene's and Dimitrius's absence actually allowed them to flourish.

Neither of them was academically gifted, but both were strong and athletic. They were liked and respected by their classmates for the most part, and were rarely kidded about being salt-and-pepper brothers. For their peers it was not much of an issue. That kind of baggage was carried, mostly, by the generations that came before them.

Leonidas was a handsome man-child, fast on his feet, tall, dark skinned, broad shouldered, and soft-spoken, with an electrifying smile. He had a social conscience like his mother. Spero had black hair, pale skin, and hazel eyes, and at a glance could easily be mistaken for the biological product of Van and Eleni. He was quiet, and a bit brooding and intense, which served him well with girls. Leonidas played wide receiver and point guard for their Montgomery County high school. Spero, quick and wiry, wrestled varsity at one nineteen as a freshman and one forty in his senior year, when he was honorable mention All-Met, winning Mount Madness in his weight class and placing at the seriously loaded Beast of the East tournament in Delaware. There were partial scholarship offers, but Spero had other plans.

Leonidas entered the University of Maryland after his graduation from high school with the intention of becoming a teacher and coach. When Spero graduated, a year after Leonidas, he enrolled at Montgomery College, attended two semesters, then stated his intention to enlist in the Marine Corps. Because there was a new war in Iraq, this did not please his parents. Van, whose father was a WWII veteran, was not a pacifist, and in fact believed that there were necessary wars, but he was strongly against this one and argued passionately with his son about the wisdom of entering the service. Eleni tried quiet persuasion, but neither she nor her husband could change Spero's mind. Van blamed Spero's wrestling coach, a thick-browed ex-marine with a Cro-Magnon build who had a combination father/Rasputin-type relationship with his athletes, for influencing his son's decision.

“He jacked up Spero with that bullshit for four years,” said Van.

Eleni, who rarely spoke ill of anyone, agreed.

While Leonidas neared completion of his degree and prepared to apply for teaching positions, Spero, now a marine with the Second Battalion, First Regiment and having served in Iraq for a year, was moving toward the Anbar province, where he would be participating in an offensive on insurgent forces in a place called Fallujah. In his letters and e-mails, Spero did not tell his parents of the fierce nature of the battle or the casualties incurred on both sides.

That year, only Leonidas would be around for the Lucas family Christmas. Irene could not make it as usual, and Dimitrius was in the wind. It was a troubling time on many fronts. Van's business was beginning to falter due in part to the economy but mainly because of the acute alcoholism of his partner, now on his third marriage. The Lucas money was safe, as Van had always been conservative with his investments, but he faced the prospect of an unwelcome career adjustment in his middle age. More disturbing, he considered his track record as a parent to be spotty at best. He still wondered on what had gone wrong with Dimitrius, remained puzzled by Irene's cold nature, and worried considerably about Spero's safety. He began to complain of headaches and memory loss. He sometimes vomited without the usual warning sign of nausea. In sleep, his dreams were filled with snakes.

Over the holidays, Van said to Eleni, “Funny, this time of year I usually gain weight. I got on the scale today and I've lost ten pounds. But I've been eatin like an animal.”

“It's stress,” said Eleni.

A week later, having experienced periods of low-level fever, he went to the family physician, Dr. Nassarian, for some blood work. Nassarian called the next day and told Van that he had seen something he didn't like, that it was probably nothing to be too concerned about but that he should have it checked. Nassarian was sending him to a specialist to do another workup and some tests.

“What kind of specialist?” said Van.

“An oncologist up in Wheaton,” said the doctor, and Van's heart naturally dropped.

There was more blood taken, and an MRI, which led to a follow-up visit with the oncologist, Dr. Veronica Sorenson, in her office overlooking the Westfield Shopping Center, which Van still called Wheaton Plaza. He had played there as a boy, flirted with girls, acted tough around greasers, taunted security guards, and been nailed in the old Monkey Wards for shoplifting, back when the center was an open-air mall.

“You have an intracranial tumor, Mr. Lucas,” said Dr. Sorenson.

“A brain tumor.”

“Yes.”

“Cancer,” he said, almost stuttering on the word.

She tented her hands before her and looked directly into his eyes. She was an attractive brunette in her late thirties with a direct, professional manner that was not cold in the least. Dr. Sorenson had photographs of her children set up on her desk. He idly wondered if she believed in God.

“Let me show you,” she said.

Dr. Sorenson turned off the lights in the office and allowed him to examine his scans displayed on her light board.

“It's called a GBM,” she said, pointing to the image of the growth. “There. It appears in the form of a lesion.”

“What's a GBM?”

“Glioblastoma multiforme. We'll need to do a stereotactic biopsy to confirm, of course.”

“You wouldn't be telling me this today if you didn't know.”

“Unfortunately, I'm almost completely certain that this is what we're looking at.”

“Certain of what, Doctor? What's my prognosis?”

“I wish I could be more positive. This is a most aggressive cancer. The survival rate is very low.”

He looked down at his hand and saw that he was twisting his wedding band around on his ring finger. “How long would a guy with this thing…how long? Ballpark.”

“I recommend that you opt for treatment. We'll perform cranial surgery to remove the bulk of the tumor, then radiotherapy and chemotherapy.”

“How long, Doctor?”

“Months,” said Dr. Sorenson.

Van, always known as an easygoing, take-it-as-it-comes guy, played his role well. He refused treatment and decided to live his life as lucidly and with as much dignity as possible until its conclusion. Even in his private moments with Eleni, when they weren't putting business matters in order, he spoke positively about the time they'd shared together and their good fortune at having found each other, and he didn't break down when he told Irene and Spero by phone and, most challenging, Leonidas face-to-face. His mind was filled with bitterness, confusion, and anger at his Christ, in whom he had never lost faith, but he was determined to keep up a solid front for his wife and kids. Mostly, like any rational human being, he was frightened of death.

He lasted just over two months. His final days were spent in his bed at home, as he wished. He had lost his parents long ago, but he had many friends, and they came to call. Donna Monroe, now a middle-aged divorcée with kids in college, stopped by, and when Van saw her he told Eleni to hide his wallet, and Donna scolded him and laughed. Irene flew in at one point and he was surprised at her appearance. She had gained weight, and her hair was completely gray. In his presence she checked her BlackBerry often. Though he loved her, he felt little affection for her, but he had no guilt in that regard. She flew back to San Francisco and her law firm after a day. Leonidas visited daily. Spero called often and stayed in e-mail contact with Eleni. His tour was almost up but not quite, and he was trying with futility to get leave and come home.

An in-home hospice nurse was on duty, but Eleni kept her out of the room except to administer and regulate the morphine. Eleni talked to Van as he slept. She slipped Popsicles into his mouth and wet his lips with a washcloth when he could no longer drink. On the last night of his life he looked up at her, sitting beside him.

“I'm a failure,” he said hoarsely.

“What do you mean?”

“Where are my children?”

“Leonidas is on his way.” She squeezed his hand. “You're no failure. Don't ever think that. You did nothing but good. You're a good man.”

He drifted in and out of morphine dreams. Leonidas came into the room. He hugged his mother roughly and went to the bedside, where he knelt on the hardwood floor and kissed his father's hand.

“The best day of my life was the day that lawyer put you in my arms,” said Van, and Leonidas lowered his head as hot tears ran down his face.

“I love you, Pop.”

Van's cracked lips twitched up into a smile. “Cool Breeze,” he whispered.

Those were the last words he spoke. He died the next morning, just before dawn.

Years passed. Eleni adopted a second dog, called him Yuma, and walked him and Cheyenne twice a day. The outings took a long time, as she stopped to talk to many neighbors on her route and sometimes sat up on their porches and shared tea and, in the evenings, glasses of wine. Deep into her forties she had gotten looks on the street, but now in her sixties she seemed invisible to men. She was still a handsome woman, but she was old.

Eleni no longer had a need for sex, but she was often lonely and would not have minded the companionship of a man. Her attitude was, if it happened, fine. She had her neighborhood friends, her church, her garden, her dogs. And her children.

Her two younger sons called her almost daily. They visited a couple of times a week, mostly at dinnertime, because they liked her cooking and because they knew she loved to feed them.

Leo was a high school teacher in the D.C. public system. Spero did investigative work for a defense attorney down by the courts. When she looked at her sons, she saw Van, and she thought: We did well.

Ours was a life well spent.

Down around my way,
when I'm not in school or lookin out for my moms and little sister, I like to run ball. Pickup games mostly. That's not the only kind of basketball I do. I been playin organized all my life, the Jelleff league and Urban Coalition, too. Matter of fact, I'm playin for my school team right now, in what used to be called the Interhigh. It's no boast to say that I can hold my own in most any kind of game. But pickup is where I really get amped.

In organized ball, they expect you to pass a whole bunch, take the percentage shot. Not too much showboatin, nothin like that. In pickup, we ref our own games, and most of the hackin and pushin and stuff, except for the flagrant, it gets allowed. I can deal with that. But in pickup, see, you can pretty much freestyle, try everything out you been practicing on your own. Like those Kobe and Vince moves. What I'm sayin is, out here on the asphalt, you can really show your shit.

Where I come from, you've got to understand, most of the time it's rough. I don't have to describe it if you know the area of D.C. I'm talkin about: the Fourth District, down around Park View, in Northwest. I got problems at home, I got problems at school, I got problems walkin down the street. I prob'ly got problems with my future, you want the plain truth. When I'm runnin ball, though, I don't think on those problems at all. It's like all the chains are off, you understand what I'm sayin? Maybe you grew up somewheres else, and if you did, it'd be hard for you to see. But I'm just tryin to describe it, is all.

Here's an example: earlier today I got into this beef with this boy James Wallace. We was runnin ball over on the playground where I go to school, Roosevelt High, on 13th Street, just a little bit north of my neighborhood. There's never any chains left on those outdoor buckets, but the rims up at Roosevelt are straight, and the backboards are forgiving. That's like my home court. Those buckets they got, I been playin them since I was kid, and I can shoot the eyes out of those motherfuckers most any day of the week.

We had a four-on-four thing goin on, a pretty good one, too. It was the second game we had played. Wallace and his boys, after we beat 'em the first game, they went over to Wallace's car, a black Maxima with a spoiler and pretty rims, and fired up a blunt. They were gettin their heads up and listenin to the new Nas comin out the speakers from the open doors of the car. I don't like Nas's new shit much as I did
Illmatic,
but it sounded pretty good.

Wallace and them, they with a dealer in my neighborhood, so they always got good herb, too. I got no problem with that. I might even have hit some of that hydro with 'em if they'd asked. But they didn't ask.

Anyway, they came back pink-eyed, lookin all cooked and shit, debatin over which was better, Phillies or White Owls. We started the second game. Me and mines went up by three or four buckets pretty quick. Right about then I knew we was gonna win this one like we won the first, 'cause I had just caught a little fire.

Wallace decided to cover me. He had switched off with this other dude, Antuane, but Antuane couldn't run with me, not one bit. So Wallace switched, and right away he was all chest-out, talkin shit about how “now we gonna see” and all that. Whateva. I was on my inside game that day and I knew it. I mean, I was crossin motherfuckers
out,
just driving the paint at will. And Wallace, he was slow on me by like, half a step. I had stopped passin to the other fellas at that point, 'cause it was just too easy to take it in on him. I mean, he was givin it to me, so why not?

Bout the third time I drove the lane and kissed one in, Wallace bumped me while I was walkin back up to the foul line to take the check. Then he said somethin about my sneaks, somethin that made his boys laugh. He was crackin on me, is all, tryin to shake me up. I got a nice pair of Jordans, the Penny style, and I keep 'em clean with Fantastik and shit, but they're from, like, last year. And James Wallace is always wearin whatever's new, the Seventeens or whatever it is they got sittin up front at the Foot Locker, just came in. Plus Wallace didn't like me all that much. He had money from his druggin, I mean to tell you that boy had
everything,
but he had dropped out of school back in the tenth grade, and I had stayed put. My moms always says that guys like Wallace resent guys like me who have hung in. Add that to the fact that he never did have my game. I think he was a little jealous of me, you want the truth.

I do know he was frustrated that day. I knew it, and I guess I shouldn't have done what I did. I should've passed off to one of my boys, but you know how it is. When you're proud about somethin you got to show it, 'specially down here. And I was on. I took the check from him and drove to the bucket, just blew right past him as easy as I'd been doin all afternoon. That's when Wallace called me a bitch right in front of everybody there.

There's a way to deal with this kinda shit. You learn it over time. I go six-two and I got some shoulders on me, so it wasn't like I feared Wallace physically or nothin like that. I can go with my hands, too. But in this world we got out here, you don't want to be getting in any kinda beefs, not if you can help it. At the same time, you can't show no fear; you get a rep for weakness like that, it's like bein a bird with a busted wing, sumshit like that. The other thing you can't do, though, you can't let that kind of comment pass. Someone tries to take you for bad like that, you got to respond. It's complicated, I know, but there it is.

“I ain't heard what you said,” I said, all ice cool and shit, seein if he would go ahead and repeat it, lookin to measure just how far he wanted to push it. Also, I was tryin to buy a little time.

“Said you's a bitch,” said Wallace, lickin his lips and smilin like he was a bitch his
own
self. He'd made a couple steps toward me and now he wasn't all that far away from my face.

I smiled back, halfway friendly. “You know I ain't no faggot,” I said. “Shit, James, it hurts me to fart.”

A couple of the fellas started laughin then and pretty soon all of 'em was laughin, I'd heard that line on one of my uncle's old-time comedy albums once, that old Signifyin Monkey shit or maybe Pryor. But I guess these fellas hadn't heard it, and they laughed like a motherfucker when I said it. Wallace laughed, too. Maybe it was the hydro they'd smoked. Whatever it was, I had broken that shit down, turned it right back on him, you see what I'm sayin? While they was still laughin, I said, “C'mon, check it up top, James, let's play.”

I didn't play so proud after that. I passed off and only took a coupla shots myself the rest of the game. I think I even missed one on purpose toward the end. I ain't stupid. We still won, but not by much; I saw to it that it wasn't so one-sided, like it had been before.

When it was over, Wallace wanted to play another game, but the sun was dropping and I said I had to get on home. I needed to pick up my sister at aftercare, and my moms likes both of us to be inside our apartment when she gets home from work. Course, I didn't tell any of the fellas that. It wasn't somethin they needed to know.

Wallace was goin back my way, I knew, but he didn't offer to give me a ride. He just looked at me dead-eyed and smiled a little before him and his boys walked back to the Maxima, parked along the curb. My stomach flipped some, I got to admit, seein that flatline thing in his peeps. I knew from that empty look that it wasn't over between us, but what could I do?

I picked up my ball and headed over to Georgia Avenue. Walked south toward my mother's place as the first shadows of night were crawling onto the streets.

It's five a.m. I'm sitting in my cruiser up near the station house, sipping a coffee. My first one of the night. Rolling my head around on these tired shoulders of mine. You get these aches when you're behind the wheel of a car, six hours at a stretch. I oughta buy one of those things the African cabbies all sit on, looks like a rack of wooden balls. You know, for your back. I been doin this for twenty-two years now, so I guess whatever damage I've done to my spine and all, it's too late.

I work midnights in the Fourth District. Four-D starts at the Maryland line and runs south to Harvard Street and Georgia. The western border is Rock Creek Park and the eastern line is North Capitol Street. It's what the news people call a “high-crime district.” For a year or two I tried working the Third, keeping the streets safe for rich white people basically, but I got bored. I guess I'm one of those adrenaline junkies they're always talking about on those cop shows on TV, the shows got female cops who look more beautiful than any female cop I've ever seen. I guess that's what it is. It's not like I've ever examined myself or anything like that. My wife and I don't talk about it, that's for damn sure. A ton of cop marriages don't make it; I suppose mine has survived 'cause I never bring any of this shit home with me. Not that she knows about, anyway.

My shift runs from the stroke of twelve till dawn, though I usually get into the station early so I can nab the cruiser I like. I prefer the Crown Victoria. It's roomier, and once you flood the gas into the cylinders, it really moves. Also, I like to ride alone.

Last night, Friday, wasn't much different than any other. It's summer; more people are outside, trying to stay out of their un-air-conditioned places as long as possible, so this time of year we put extra cars out on the streets. Also, like I reminded some of the younger guys at the station last night, this was the week welfare checks got mailed out, something they needed to know. Welfare checks mean more drunks, more domestic disturbances, more violence. One of the young cops I said it to, he said, “Thank you, Sergeant Dad,” but he didn't do it in a bad way. I know those young guys appreciate it when I mention shit like that.

Soon as I drove south I saw that the Avenue, Georgia Avenue that is, was hot with activity. All those Jap tech bikes the young kids like to ride, curbed outside the all-night Wing n' Things. People spilling out of bars, hanging outside the Korean beer markets, scratching game cards, talking trash, ignoring the crackheads hitting them up for spare change. Drunks lying in the doorways of the closed-down shops, their heads resting against the riot gates. Kids, a lot of kids, standing on corners, grouped around tricked-out cars, rap music and that go-go crap coming from the open windows. The farther south you go, the worse all of this gets.

The bottom of the barrel is that area between Quebec Street and Irving. The newspapers lump it all in with a section of town called Petworth, but I'm talking about Park View. Poverty, drug activity, crime. They got that Section 8 housing back in there, the Park Morton complex. What we used to call “the projects” back when you could say it. Government assisted hellholes. Gangs like the Park Morton Crew. Open-air drug markets, I'm talking about blatant transactions right out there on Georgia Avenue. Drugs are Park View's industry; the dealers are the biggest employers in this part of town.

The dealers get the whole neighborhood involved. They recruit kids to be lookouts for 'em. Give these kids beepers and cells to warn them off when the five-O comes around. Entry-level positions. Some of the parents, when there
are
parents, participate, too. Let these drug dealers duck into their apartments when there's heat. Teach their kids not to talk to The Man. So you got kids being raised in a culture that says the drug dealers are the good guys and the cops are bad. I'm not lying. It's exactly how it is.

The trend now is to sell marijuana. Coke, crack, and heroin, you can still get it, but the new thing is to deal pot. Here's why: up until recently, in the District, possession or distribution of marijuana up to ten pounds—
ten pounds
—was a misdemeanor. They've changed that law, but still, kid gets popped for selling grass, he knows he's gonna do no time. Even on a distribution beef, black juries won't send a black kid into the prison system for a marijuana charge, that's a proven fact. Prosecutors know this, so they usually no-paper the case. That means most of the time they don't even go to court with it. I'm not bullshitting. Makes you wonder why they even bother having drug laws to begin with. They legalize the stuff, they're gonna take the bottom right out the market, and the violent crimes in this city would go down to, like, nothing. Don't get me started. I know it sounds strange, a cop saying this. But you'd be surprised how many of us feel that way.

Okay, I got off the subject. I was talking about my night.

Early on I got a domestic call, over on Otis Place. When I got there, two cruisers were on the scene, four young guys, two of them with flashlights. A rookie named Buzzy talked to a woman at the front door of her row house, then came back and told me that the object of the complaint was behind the place, in the alley. I walked around back alone and into the alley, and right off I recognized the man standing inside the fence of his tiny, brown-grass yard. Harry Lang, sixty-some years old. I'd been to this address a few times in the past ten years.

I said, “Hello, Harry,” Harry said, “Officer,” and I said, “Wait right here, okay?” Then I went through the open gate. Harry's wife was on her back porch, flanked by her two sons, big strapping guys, all of them standing under a triangle of harsh white light coming from a naked bulb. Mrs. Lang's face and body language told me that the situation had resolved itself. Generally, once we arrive, domestic conflicts tend to calm down on their own.

Mrs. Lang said that Harry had been verbally abusive that night, demanding money from her, even though he'd just got paid. I asked her if Harry had struck her, and her response was negative. But she had a job, too, she worked just as hard as him, why should she support his lifestyle and let him speak to her like that…I was listening and not listening, if you know what I mean. I made my sincere face and nodded every few seconds or so.