Right as Rain (25 page)

“That Caprice you got looks exactly like a police vehicle. We got less chance of gettin’ burned in mine than in yours.”

“Maybe you’re right. Anyway, we’ll take both of ’em, see how things shake out.”

RICKY
Kane’s mother owned a small house, brick based with siding, off Viers Mill Road on a street of houses just like it. The builder who’d done the community in the 1960s had showed little ambition and less imagination. From the activity he’d observed in the last hour or so, Strange could see that the residents here were what was left of the original middle—class whites and America’s new working—class immigrants: Spanish, Ethiopian, Pakistani, and Korean.

Strange phoned Quinn, who was parked down the street at the next corner.

“You still awake?”

“I got coffee in a thermos,” said Quinn.

“Bet you gotta pee, too.”

“Now that you mention it.”

“You see our boy when he came out?”

“I saw him.”

“Another little punk with a big dog.”

Kane had walked his tan pit bull halfway down the block an hour earlier while Strange took photographs with his long—lensed AE—1. Kane, medium height, blond, and thin, was wearing a thermal vest under a parka, a knit watch cap, and oversized jeans worn low on his hips. He had a hint of a modified goatee on his bony face.

“Tryin’ to be an honorary black man,” said Strange.

“He looks like every other white kid I see in the suburbs these days.”

“Yeah, till they figure out what it means to be a black man in America for real.”

“But this guy’s got to be close to my age.”

“Uh—huh. He sure doesn’t look like the same guy was on the TV interviews, does he?”

“Check out that car of his, too. Kane got rid of that shit—wagon Toyota.” There was a new red Prelude with shiny rims and a high spoiler sitting in the driveway of Kane’s house.

“I see it. He did get a settlement.”

“Yeah. That could be it.”

Quinn took a sip of coffee from the thermos. “I tell you how much we enjoyed meeting Janine the other night?”

“She’s cool. Hell of an office manager, too. You got yourself a fine young lady there as well.”

“I know it,” said Quinn.

“All right, here comes our boy.”

Kane was coming out of the house with a gym bag in his hand. He opened the trunk of the Prelude and dropped the gym bag in, closing the lid and locking it.

“Goin’ to work out,” said Quinn. “You think?”

“Maybe.”

“I’ll go first,” said Quinn.

“Yeah,” said Strange. “Wouldn’t want him to burn me or nothin’ like that.”

STRANGE
and Quinn circled the block while Kane went into a 7—Eleven for coffee and smokes, then picked him up again as he headed south into D.C. They hung back several car lengths, as Kane’s red car was easy to track. He took 13th Street all the way downtown, cutting over to 14th and pulling into a Carr Park garage down past F.

“Should I follow him into the garage?” asked Quinn.

“Park on the street,” said Strange into the phone. “Park illegal if you have to; I’ll pay the ticket.”

Quinn curbed the Chevelle. Strange did the same to the Caprice, a half block south.

“What now?” said Quinn.

“Elevators in that garage go up into that building to the left of it. Unless he’s got business in that building — and I don’t think he does — he’ll be coming out those double glass doors right there in about three or four minutes.”

“Why don’t you think he’s going up into the building?”

“’Cause he’s goin’ to that restaurant, the Purple Cactus, across the street.”

“Want me to follow him?”

“He knows what you look like, but not since you grew that lion’s head of hair you got. So go ahead. You got shades?”

“Sure.”

“Wear ’em. Only kind of disguise you’ll ever need without over—doin’ it. And when you’re following a man, use the city, Terry.”

“Explain.”

“Keep the subject’s image in your mind all the time, but indirectly. Watch where he’s goin’ in the reflection of the plate glass windows, in the car windows, in the metal of the cars themselves. Lose yourself in the crowd.”

“There he is.”

“Go on.”

Quinn got out of the car and loitered near the building. Kane emerged from the building’s glass doors. Strange watched Quinn follow, staying back in the moderate, late—morning throng moving along the sidewalk. With his shades and the hair, Quinn looked more like a rocker with shoulders than he did a cop. Kane crossed the street and entered the Purple Cactus.

Strange phoned Quinn. “Go on in. They’ll be settin’ up for lunch; just tell ’em you’re thinking of bringing a date there or somethin’ and you’re checking the place out. Try and see what he’s doin’ in there.”

“Don’t let Kane recognize me, right?”

“Funny.”

Quinn came out of the Purple Cactus five minutes later and crossed the street. He got into the Chevelle and phoned Strange.

“He was talking to a couple of the waiters and a bartender downstairs. Old home week, I guess. He’s coming out now.”

When Kane pulled the Prelude out of the garage and onto 14th Street, Strange said, “Let’s roll.”

KANE
parked four blocks north in another garage. Strange followed him on foot this time, making a bet to himself that he knew where Kane was headed.

Kane walked into Sea D.C., the fancy seafood dining room and bar at the corner of 14th and K. The restaurant was fronted in glass, so Strange didn’t need to risk going inside. Kane was talking to a man behind the bar, which was elevated on a kind of platform above the rest of the dining room.

Back in the car, Strange said into the phone, “He’s making the rounds.”

“What is he, a food broker?”

“He sellin’
something;
that’s a bet. Usually, you see a guy hangin’ around with restaurant employees like that, it means he’s making book.”

“Or taking orders for something else.”

“I heard
that.
Here he comes, man. Get ready to move.” Strange pushed the “end” button on the cell phone. He didn’t tell Quinn that Sea D.C. was the last place Sondra Wilson had worked before she disappeared.

KANE
drove to a velvet—rope, exclusive club over at 18th and Jefferson, where people were often refused entry for having the wrong haircut or the wrong label on their trousers. He next hit a Eurodisco on 9th, across from the old 9:30, a notorious nightspot for beret wearers and Middle Eastern trust—fund kids with coke habits. He drove to U Street and parked in front of a buppie nightclub. The pattern was the same: five minutes, in and out.

Kane drove east on Florida Avenue. Quinn and Strange followed.

CHEROKEE
Coleman took the gold pen off his desk and tapped it on the blotter before him. “You lookin’ large, Adonis.”

Adonis Delgado, seated in front of the desk, glanced down at his crossed arms, defined beneath the blue of his uniform. He flexed a little, and the folds and wrinkles in his sleeves disappeared. “I been workin’ on it.”

“Looks like you have been. Think he looks bigger, Angie?”

Big—Ass Angelo stood behind Coleman, who was in his leather chair. Angelo shrugged, his face impassive behind his designer shades.

“You ain’t been using them steroids, have you?” asked Coleman with mock concern.

“You know I don’t use that shit,” said Adonis. He had shot himself up that very morning, after a two—hour session at the gym.

“’Cause you know those drugs fuck up your privates. Make you tiny as a Chinaman and shit.”

“My privates are fine,” said Adonis with a scary smile, his mouth a riot of widely spaced, crooked teeth.

Adonis Delgado was an ugly, light—skinned man. His forehead was high and very wide, and he had a stove—in nose with nostrils that flared upward in a porcine manner. His eyes were dead black and Asian in shape. Big—Ass Angelo said that Delgado looked like one of those mongoloid retards, like the one on that television show he used to watch on Sunday nights when he wasn’t much more than a kid. Angelo called Delgado “Corky,” but never when he was in the room.

“So what do we owe this honor to today, Adonis?” said Coleman. “Ain’t many times you like to face—to—face it with us. Mostly you just drive around the perimeter, makin’ the streets safe for our citizens. Me and Angie, we were getting the idea you didn’t like associatin’ with us types anymore.”

“I came in to make sure we’re clear on that Boone thing. Time comes, I want to make the last run out there myself.”

“You and Bucky, you mean.”

“Sure.”

“He gonna be down with it?”

“He does what I tell him to do.”

“Okay.” Coleman cocked an eyebrow. “You seem kind of tense. You’re not mad at me, are you, Adonis? Wouldn’t be because I let Earl Boone take away your girlfriend, is it?”

“Shit. You talkin’ about that skeeze over in the Yard?”

“So you’re not
mad.
”

Coleman and Delgado stared each other down for a moment.

Delgado sniffed and rubbed his nose. “Like I said, she’s just a fiend attached to a set of lips. I let her suck my dick once or twice is all it was. I’m through with Ray and Earl, I’ll just go ahead and add her to the pile.”

“You want my advice, you’re gonna kick it with her one last time, I’d wear two or three safes, man.”

“I always double up,” said Delgado. “Four—X Magnums, too.”

“No doubt,” said Coleman.

The cell phone rang on Coleman’s desk. Coleman answered it, said, “Okay,” and killed the connection.

“What is it, Cherokee?” said Angelo.

“Our little Caucasian brother is on his way in.”

“I’ll wait right here,” said Adonis, “you don’t mind.”

“You got personal business with him?”

“He owes me money.”

“Hittin’ him up, too. Nice to see you expandin’ your client base,
Officer
Delgado.”

“I did plenty for that white boy. And I don’t do a got—damn thing for free.” Delgado pulled a cigar from his blue jacket hung on the back of his chair.

“Prefer you didn’t smoke that in here,” said Coleman. “Me and Angie, we can’t take the smell.”

QUINN
and Strange followed Kane to a side street just east of Florida and North Capitol. As Strange saw the drug setup and the boys on the street, he said into the phone, “Hold up, Terry; I’m gonna take off and go up ahead. Tail me until I pull over and pick me up.”

“Right.”

Kane pulled up to an open garage door and drove through it into a bay. Strange watched him, then made a right turn. Quinn followed. Strange got back on Florida and went east to the Korean food market complex, parking his car in the lot. He grabbed his AE—1, jumped out of his car, and got into Quinn’s Chevelle.

“Punch it,” said Strange.

Quinn drove quickly back to the street off Florida where all of the drug activity was in plain sight. He parked far away, three blocks back from the action, and let the engine idle. Up ahead, young men stood lazy as cats against brick walls, on corners, and around a decaying warehouselike structure encircled with broken yellow police tape. Along with Japanese and German sedans, and several SUVs, an MPD cruiser was curbed on the street in front of a short strip of row houses, many of their windows boarded.

“You see that Crown Vic?” said Quinn.

“I see it,” said Strange, his voice little more than a whisper.

“You need me to get closer?”

Strange leaned out his open window and snapped off several photographs. “I’m all right. Five—hundred—millimeter lens, it’s like having a nice set of binos.”

“There’s our boy.”

They watched Ricky Kane come out of the garage and cross the street like he owned it. He met a couple of the young men on the corner of the strip of houses and was escorted into the row house nearest the cop car parked beside the curb.

“What
the fuck
we got goin’ on here?” said Strange.

“You tell me,” said Quinn.

“Ever hear of Cherokee Coleman?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of him. Like every cop and most of the citizens in D.C. What do you know about him?”

“Coleman played guard for the Green Wave over at Spingarn. He came out in eighty—nine. He could go to the hole, but he didn’t have the height and his game wasn’t complete, so college wasn’t in the picture. Rose up in the ranks down here real quick after committing a couple of brazen murders they couldn’t manage to pin on him. So the high school that gave the world Elgin Baylor and Dave Bing also gave us one of the most murderous drug dealers this town’s ever seen.”

“I read this interview the
Post
did with some of the kids over in LeDroit Park. They talk about Coleman like he’s some kind of hero.”

“He employs more of their older brothers and cousins than McDonald’s does in this city, man.”

“Cherokee,” said Quinn, side—glancing Strange. “Why do so many light—skinned black guys claim they got Indian blood in ’em, Derek? I always wondered that.”

“’Cause they don’t want to admit they’re carrying white blood, I expect.” Strange lowered the camera. “Coleman works out of this area right here.”

“Everybody knows it, and it keeps goin’ on.”

“Because he’s smart. Drugs don’t ever touch his hands, so how they gonna bust him, man? You see those boys out there on that street? All of ’em got a separate function. You got the steerers leading the customers to the pitchers, making the hand—to—hand transactions. And then there’s the lookouts, and the moneymen, who handle the cash. The ones just gettin’ into the business, always the youngest, they’re the ones who touch the heroin and the rock and the cocaine. And even they don’t carry it on ’em. You look real close, you see they’re always nearby a place where you can hide a crack vial or a dime in a magnetic key case or in a space cut in a wall. And they’re always close to an escape route where they can get out quick on foot: an alley or a hole in a fence.

“Once in a while the MPD will come through here and run a big bust. And it doesn’t do a
goddamn
thing. You can bust these kids, see, and you can bust the users, but so what? The kids serve no time on the first couple of arrests, especially if there’s no quantity to speak of. The users get a night in jail, if that much, and do community service. And the kingpins go untouched.”