Soul Circus (19 page)

“I will, if you’re ready to lose.”

“I’m done with losin’,” said Durham. “Do I look like I could lose to you?”

HORACE McKinley snapped the lid down on his cell as he crossed the parking lot with Mike Montgomery, walking toward the hair shop. He was moving slow, and his stomach hurt some. He had eaten too much barbecue at lunch, but it had tasted too good for him to stop.

“That was James,” said McKinley. “Him and Jeremy circled around that Strange’s car a couple of times, then went back to their place.”

“They make an impression?”

“Some white boy was in the car. But they say they got their point across. I told them to stay where they’re at for a while. Sun ain’t down yet, and James sounds like he’s all fucked up on somethin’ already.”

“He usually is.”

“Yeah, but those two earned it. They done enough for today.” McKinley tipped his large head in the direction of Devra Stokes’s Taurus. “She’s in there. There go her car.”

They went into the shop. Devra was painting the nails of a woman her age, a goosenecked lamp throwing light on the table between them. Juwan sat at Devra’s feet, his plastic wrestlers in his lap and on the linoleum floor. Inez Brown was seated behind a desk, reading a magazine. She stood and smoothed out her skirt as McKinley lumbered through the door.

Devra and the young woman had been talking, but they stopped at the sight of the fat man and his long-armed companion. The new Eve was coming from the store stereo, and it had become the only sound in the room.

McKinley took a half-smoked cigar and a silver lighter from the pocket of his warm-up suit and flamed the cigar’s end. When he was satisfied with the draw he replaced the lighter in his pocket. He looked at the cigar lovingly as he exhaled, then gazed at the young customer as if he were noticing her for the first time.

“Sorry to interrupt your session, baby,” said McKinley, “but you’re gonna have to leave for a while, come back later on. Me and my employee need to discuss some business up in here.”

“She ain’t even done with my nails,” said the young woman.

McKinley lodged the cigar in the side of his mouth, reached for his wallet, withdrew a ten, and dropped it on the table. “Go on, get yourself some Mac-Donald’s, sumshit like that.”

“I ain’t hungry.”

“You look hungry to me.”

Her eyes went up and down his rotund body. “How would
you
know what hungry looks like?”

McKinley leaned down and put his face close to hers. “Go on, now,” he said. “Before I lose my composure.”

She looked away from him and stood quickly. She gathered her possessions and left the shop.

“All right, girl,” McKinley said to Devra, smiling pleasantly, showing her his fronts. “Let’s have a talk in the back.”

“I need to look after my son,” said Devra.

“Mike’ll look after the boy,” said McKinley. “He’s good with kids.” To Inez Brown he said, “Lock that front door.”

Devra got up from her chair and Juwan stood up with her. She danced her fingers through his short, tight hair. “Mama’s just going in the other room. I’ll be out in a while. Stay out here and play.”

The boy sat back down but kept his eyes on his mother as she walked through a doorway behind the register desk. He watched the fat man with all the jewelry follow her. He watched his mother’s boss, that little lady who wasn’t never nice to him, put her key to the lock of the front door.

“What you got there, little man?” said Montgomery, who had crouched down beside the boy, his forearms resting on his thighs. “Who’s that, the Rock?”

“That’s Afro Thunder!” said Juwan, pointing to one of the action figures. He didn’t mind talking to this man. His eyes told Juwan that this man was all right.

“My mistake,” said Montgomery, gently tapping the boy’s shoulder. “Tell me the names of the other ones you got, too.”

The back room, cluttered with supplies and lit with a forty-watt naked bulb, was little more than a narrow hall leading to a dirty bathroom. A door near the bathroom had a small window, barred on both sides, that gave to a view of an alley.

“Stand over there,” said McKinley, pointing to the door. Devra went to the door, crossed her arms, and leaned her back against the bars.

McKinley drew hard on his cigar and walked toward her. Smoke swirled off of him as he approached. It settled in the dim glow of the naked bulb. He stood three feet from her and smiled.

“You lookin’ fine, baby.”

“Thank you.”

“You makin’ some money here, right?”

“I’m doin’ okay.”

“That’s good,” said McKinley. “Good to remember why you doin’ okay, too.”

“I do,” said Devra.

“I know you do. I know you remember when you lost your other job, how that felt. I know you remember that it was Phil Wood who asked me to put you on. How it was him who was lookin’ out for you.”

“I remember.”

“Sure you do. So my question is, why you want to go and do him dirt now?”

Devra’s palms had begun to get sticky. She dropped her hands to her sides.

“You been talkin’ to the police, haven’t you?” said McKinley. “That man they call Strange.”

“He’s not police,” said Devra. “He’s private. Gathering evidence for Granville’s defense. They be trying to talk to everyone knew Phil and Granville.”

“They tryin’. Except for some dry snitches they got inside, though, they ain’t had too much success. What we got some concern about is you.”

“You don’t need to worry.”

“Strange took you out somewhere yesterday, ain’t that right?”

“He bought some ice cream for my boy and me, is all.”

“What about over at your apartment, a little while back? He buy you some ice cream there, too?”

“We talked,” said Devra, hating the sound of the catch in her voice. “But I didn’t talk to him about the case. He asked me to, but I didn’t. Everything he knows he already knew, or he found out his own self. We just talked. Wasn’t anything more than that.”

McKinley nodded slowly. He dragged on his cigar. The smoke reached her and it was foul. He looked at the cigar and then put it behind his back. Smoke coiled up over his broad, round shoulders.

“I’m sorry, baby. This bothering you?”

“It’s all right.”

“You know,” said McKinley, “I’m glad we’re straight on this. Seems like you got your priorities together, I mean, with your little boy and all. Seems like a good kid.”

“He is.”

“I know you want to be a good mother. Seein’ as how you had some problems with your own mother and all that. See, Phil told me about her. Granville and him knew her some around the way, when you wasn’t but a slip of nothin’. She goes by the name of Mattie, right?”

“She don’t have those problems anymore,” said Devra. “She’s good now.”

“But she did have some problems while you was growin’ up. Phil says she was one of those rock stars, from back when they had that, what do they call it,
epidemic
here in the city.”

“She’s good now,” repeated Devra.

“But she wasn’t back then. Heard she was a real chicken-picker. Would give up her face for ten dollars.”

Devra said nothing.

“Was she pretty like you?” said McKinley. “Probably not when she was geekin’ behind that shit. They lose their ass at that point. But I wonder, at one time, if she was as fine as you. If she had the ass on her that you got on you now.”

McKinley stepped in and put his free hand, thick as a mitt, on Devra’s hip. Then, suddenly, he moved it to the crotch of her slacks. He rubbed her clumsily through the fabric. She pushed herself against the door and felt the bars of the windows press into her back. She wanted to cry out. She wanted to look away, but she kept her eyes on his.

“You are fine,” said McKinley, his voice soft and raspy.

“Don’t,” said Devra.

He pressed harder at her objection, and she said, “Uh.”

“That hurt you? I didn’t mean to.” McKinley inspected her body. “Let’s see what else we got here.”

His hand slid up and over her shirt and went to her right breast. He kneaded it and found her nipple. His forefinger made small circles there. Her nipple grew hard. He pinched it between his thumb and forefinger and it grew harder still.

“There you go,” said McKinley, smiling silver. “Your body is betrayin’ you now.”

He pinched her nipple harder and heard her breath catch. Devra’s eyes filled with tears and one broke free and rolled down her cheek. He tightened his fingers more, pinching her there until she closed her eyes completely. He got very close to her face.

“I know you’ll stand tall,” said McKinley. “You gonna do this for your son. Make sure he has the kind of childhood you never had. Boy needs his mother, right?”

Devra’s lip trembled. She couldn’t bring herself to speak. She nodded instead.

McKinley released her and stepped back. He brought the cigar around and put it to his mouth. He drew on it and backed up toward the doorway. At the open frame he stopped and looked at her.

“We understand each other, right?”

Devra said, “Yes.”

But in her mind she said, You have made a mistake.

THAT afternoon, a boy was cutting through the woods of Oxon Run and came upon a body lying on its back in a small clearing beside an oak. The body was bloated and ripe from the heat. If not for the smell and the sound of the flies, the boy might have missed it.

He picked up a stick. He approached the body cautiously and touched the stick to its side. It was a woman. She was dead, and he was frightened, but he had the curiosity of a boy, and even as he trembled he knew that this would be a story to tell his friends later on.

Flies buzzed all around him, some scattering momentarily as he bent down to inspect the body. There were three bullet holes he could count, two in her stomach and another in one of her breasts. The blood around the holes was close to black and looked thick, like syrup. The thing that made him run was her face: The bottom part of her jaw was set off from the top part, and her lips were drawn back over her teeth so it looked like she had died trying to smile. Also, one of her eyes had come out some and was lying on her fat purple cheek. In the empty socket, maggots clustered and writhed where the flies had laid their eggs.

The boy, who was named Barry Waters, bolted from the woods, saying things like “Go, boy” and “Go now” under his breath as he ran. He realized that the woman was beyond the need of help, but he went directly to Greater Southeast Community Hospital, which he knew to be close by. He tried to tell the woman behind the desk of the ER what had happened, and as he did she tried to calm him down. Barry Waters would be a celebrity of sorts in his neighborhood for the next few days. For years he would dream about the maggots, and in those nightmares he would see that anguished thing that looked something like a smile.

Sixth District police officers and homicide detectives were dispatched to the scene. For the next couple of hours a forensics team and photographers worked over the body before it was moved by ambulance to the D.C. morgue. Neighborhood people watched as “the white shirts” — lieutenants and the like —arrived in their unmarked vehicles. Obvious gang-related killings and hits on young men did not usually draw this kind of official attention; murders of women and children brought out both suit and uniform heat.

It wasn’t long before the investigation became focused on a Toyota Tercel, one of two cars parked on the street closest to the entrance to the woods. Blood was visibly smudged on its driver’s door handle. In a nearby sewer police found a shower curtain stained with blood along with the keys to the car.

The Tercel was dusted for prints. The car had been wiped down but not thoroughly. Its glove box yielded a registration in the name of Olivia Elliot, with an Anacostia address. Prints on the car would be matched to the prints of the corpse, and a photo ID of Elliot, in the system, would be matched to her body as well. When this was done, a homicide detective would notify family and next of kin. The notification would also serve as the initial investigation into the case.

This would fall to homicide cop Nathan Grady, formerly of the Fourth District. His territory now, in the aftermath of the recent duty realignment, was citywide. Grady, like most of the men and women who shared his kind of shield, hated this part of the job. It would be a while, but not too long, before the final identification was made, but his gut told him that the woman found in the woods was the owner of that Tercel. Once he knew for sure, he’d go tell the husband, or the kid, or whomever, that their loved one was forever gone.

ULYSSES Foreman had scored Ashley Swann a real nice gun for Christmas, a piece she had been wanting for a long time. The revolver had come from that retail gun store down in Virginia, his most frequent source. As was his usual practice, he had paid a commission to a clean Virginia resident to make the buy.

Ashley sat on the edge of their bed in her pajamas, having changed back into them after Long and Jones, Dewayne Durham’s boys, had come, bought that pretty blue Taurus .38, and gone. She had taken her gun out of the drawer of her nightstand, which is where she kept it all the time. Ulysses had instructed her that this would be its most useful spot; he kept his, the 9mm Colt, the one with the custom bonded ivory grips, in his own nightstand on his side of the bed.

She was giving the gun a good inspection. She liked the weight of it in her hand.

It was the Smith & Wesson 60LS, the LadySmith, a .357 stainless-steel revolver with a speed-loader cutout and smooth rosewood grips, specially contoured to fit a woman’s hand. The grips were smooth and carried the S&W monogram; Ashley oiled them often, and she used her Hoppes kit to clean the chambers and barrel at least twice a month. It was a beautiful gun. She had her eye on a similar model, the 9mm auto, manufactured in frosted stainless with matching gray grips.

“Ulee?”

“Huh.” He was lying on his back on the bed, his head propped up on pillows, his eyes on their flat-screen Sony.

“You know that LadySmith nine, the pretty one I seen in the magazine, all gray?”