The Martini Shot (3 page)

He meant my knit cap, with the Bullets logo, had the two hands for the double
l 
's, going up for the rebound. I had been wearing it all winter long. I had been wearing it the day we talked to Flora in the alley.

“Anyone tell them who I was?”

Robert nodded sadly. “I can't lie. Some Bama did say your name.”

“Shit.”

“I ain't say
nothin
to those boys, Verdon.”

“C'mon, man. Let's get outta here.”

We went up the counter. I used the damp twenty Barnes had handed me to pay for the two bottles of wine and a fresh pack of cigarettes. While the squarehead behind the Plexiglas was bagging my shit and making my change, I picked up a scratched-out lottery ticket and pencil off the scarred counter, turned the ticket over, and wrote around the blank edges. What I wrote was:
Marquise Roberts killed Rico Jennings.
And:
Flora Lewis was there.

I slipped the ticket into the pocket of my jeans and got my change. Me and Robert Taylor walked out the shop.

Out on the snow-covered sidewalk I handed Robert his bottle of fortified. I knew he'd be heading west into Columbia Heights, where he stays with an ugly-looking woman and her kids.

“Thank you, Verdon.”

“Ain't no thing.”

“What you think? Skins gonna do it next year?”

“They got Coach Gibbs. They get a couple receivers with hands, they gonna be all right.”

“No doubt.” Robert lifted his chin. “You be safe, hear?”

He went on his way. I crossed Georgia Avenue, quickstepping out the way of a Ford that was fishtailing in the street. I thought about getting rid of my Bullets cap, in case Marquise and them came up on me, but I was fond of it, and I could not let it go.

I unscrewed the top off the Night Train as I went along, taking a deep pull and feeling it warm my chest. Heading up Otis, I saw ragged silver dollars drifting down through the light of the streetlamps. The snow capped the roofs of parked cars and it had gathered on the branches of the trees. No one was out. I stopped to light the rest of my joint. I got it going and hit it as I walked up the hill.

I planned to go home in a while, through the alley door, when I thought it was safe. But for now, I needed to work on my head. Let my high come like a friend and tell me what to do.

I stood on the east side of Park Place, my hand on the fence bordering the Soldiers' Home, staring into the dark. I had smoked all my reefer and drunk my wine. It was quiet, nothing but the hiss of snow. And “Get Up Everybody,” that old Salt-N-Pepa joint, playing in my head. Sondra liked that one. She'd dance to it, with my headphones on, over by that lake they got. With the geese running around it, in the summertime.

“Sondra,” I whispered. And then I chuckled some, and said, “I am high.”

I turned and walked back to the road, tripping a little as I stepped off the curb. As I got onto Quebec, I saw a car coming down Park Place, sliding a little, rolling too fast. It was a dark color, and it had them Chevy headlights with the rectangle fog lamps on the sides. I patted my pockets, knowing all the while that I didn't have my cell.

I ducked into the alley off Quebec. I looked up at that rear porch with the bicycle tire leaning up on it, where that boy stayed. I saw a light behind the porch door's window. I scooped up snow, packed a ball of it tight, and threw it up at that window. I waited. The boy parted the curtains and put his face up on the glass, his hands cupped around his eyes so he could see.

“Little man!” I yelled, standing by the porch. “Help me out!”

He cold-eyed me and stepped back. I knew he recognized me. But I guess he had seen me go toward the police unmarked, and he had made me for a snitch. In his young mind, it was the worst thing a man could be. Behind the window all went dark. As it did, headlights swept the alley, and a car came in with the light. The car was black, and it was a Caprice.

I turned and bucked.

I ran my ass off down that alley, my old Timbs struggling for purchase in the snow. As I ran, I pulled on trashcans, knocking them over so they would block the path of the Caprice. I didn't look back. I heard the boys in the car, yelling at me and shit, and I heard them curse as they had to slow down. Soon I was out of the alley, on Princeton Place, running free.

I went down Princeton, cut right on Warder, hung another right on Otis. There was an alley down there, back behind the ball field, shaped like a T. It would be hard for them to navigate back in there. They couldn't surprise me or nothing like that.

I walked into the alley. Straight off, a couple of dogs began to bark. Folks kept 'em, shepherd mixes and rottweilers with heads big as cattle, for security. Most of them was inside, on account of the weather, but not all. There were some who stayed out all the time, and they were loud. Once they got going, they would bark themselves crazy. They were letting Marquise know where I was.

I saw the Caprice drive real slow down Otis, its headlights off, and I felt my ears grow hot. I got down in a crouch, pressed myself against a chain-link fence behind someone's row house. My stomach flipped all the way, and I had one of them throw-up burps. Stuff came up, and I swallowed it down.

I didn't care if it was safe or not; I needed to get my ass home. Couldn't nobody hurt me there. In my bed, the same bed where I always slept, near my brother, James. With my mother and father down the hall.

I listened to a boy calling out my name. Then another boy, from somewhere else, did the same. I could hear the laughter in their voices. I shivered some and bit down on my lip.

Use the alphabet, you get lost. That's what my father told me when I was a kid. Otis, Princeton, Quebec…I was three streets away.

I turned at the T of the alley and walked down the slope. The dogs were out of their minds, growling and barking, and I went past them and kept my eyes straight ahead. At the bottom of the alley, I saw a boy in a thick coat, hoodie up. He was waiting on me.

I turned around and ran back from where I came. Even with the sounds of the dogs, I could hear myself panting, trying to get my breath. I rounded the T and made it back to Otis, where I cut and headed for the baseball field. I could cross that and be on Princeton. When I got there, I'd be one block closer to my home.

I stepped up onto the field. I walked regular, tryin to calm myself down. I didn't hear a car or anything else. Just the snow crunching beneath my feet.

And then a young man stepped up onto the edge of the field. He wore a bulky coat without a cap or a hood. His hand was inside the coat, and his smile was not the smile of a friend. There were silver caps on his front teeth.

I turned my back on him. Pee ran hot down my thigh. My knees were trembling, but I made my legs move.

The night flashed. I felt a sting, like a bee sting, high on my back.

I stumbled but kept my feet. I looked down at my blood, dotted in the snow. I walked a couple of steps and closed my eyes.

When I opened them, the field was green. It was covered in gold, like it gets around here in summer, round early evening. A Gamble and Huff thing was coming from the open windows of a car. My father stood before me, his natural full, his chest filling the fabric of his shirt. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. His arms were outstretched.

I wasn't afraid or sorry. I'd done right. I had the lottery ticket in my pocket. Detective Barnes, or someone like him, would find it in the morning. When they found
me.

But first I had to speak to my father. I walked to where he stood, waiting. And I knew exactly what I was going to say: I ain't the low-ass bum you think I am. I been workin with the police for a long, long time. Matter of fact, I just solved a homicide.

I'm a confidential informant, Pop. Look at me.

Evangelos “Van” Lucas
was behind the wheel of a Land Cruiser, his wife, Eleni, beside him. They were driving home from a Sunday barbecue in Upper Northwest hosted by a business associate of Van's. Most of the guests were people Van and Eleni had not met before. There had been polite conversation, food eaten off paper plates, and a bit of afternoon drinking.

“You know that lady I was speaking with by the food table for a long time?” said Van. “With the sweatshirt falling off her shoulder?”

“The
Flashdance
woman. She was nice.”

“She was all right. But why'd you have to go and tell her about our kids?”

“She asked to see photographs,” said Eleni. “Once I pull those out, there are questions. It's easier just to tell people.”

“But see, then I had to continue the conversation with her.”

“You didn't look like you minded.”

“Please. She wasn't my type. That lady was all angles and bones. It would be like doing a skeleton.”

“How would you know what that's like?”

“My point is, I'm into a woman who
looks
like a woman. A woman with curves. Like you.”

“I think there's a compliment in there.”

“And you're smart.”

“Thanks loads.”

“Not, like, mousy smart. Don't get me wrong; I like a smart woman. But I also like a nice round ass and a beautiful rack. Which, thank you, Jesus, you happen to have. Matter of fact, you've got the whole female package.”

“You're about to make me blush.”

“But that woman, she just bothered me.”

“I noticed.”

“Not like that. She wanted to talk about our kids, how wonderful it must be to have a rainbow family, how I was doing God's work, all that bullshit. What a
good man
I am. Like, just because I adopted a bunch of kids, that makes me good.”

“As you were trying to look down her sweatshirt.”

“Exactly.” Van looked over at Eleni. “You saw me?”

“From across the room.”

“She's too skinny for me.”

“You like a nice round ass and a beautiful rack.”

“Don't forget smart,” said Van.

“I know,” said Eleni. “The whole female package.”

They were coming out of the city, going up Alaska Avenue near the District line. Soon they would cross into Maryland and arrive at the close-in neighborhood where the Lucas family made their home. Van and Eleni were in their early thirties. They had four children, ages seven, six, two, and one. All but the oldest had been adopted. It seemed to have happened very fast.

Van Lucas was a big man of Greek descent with the kind of open, honest facial expressions that could be read with ease. The Reagan generation baffled him, and he did not feel he was a part of it. His black curly hair was unfashionably long at a time when the hard-chargers kept theirs short and spiked. He wore a heavy black beard when most went clean shaven and some reached for androgynous. He had the beginnings of a gut inching over the belt line of his Levi's. His appearance suggested casual good nature and a lack of vanity. He was as advertised.

Eleni reached across the buckets and squeezed Van's right hand, which rested on the console between them.

“You
are
good,” she said.

“Ah,” said Van, “knock it off, Eleni.”

He felt electricity when she touched him like that. They'd been together many years and it had never subsided. For a moment he thought he might get lucky that night. But it was false optimism. There was little spontaneous lovemaking between them these days, what with all the commotion around their house. What with all those kids.

When he was single, he had never looked forward to a family. He had no daydreams of watching his children play sports, reading to them at night, helping them with their homework, or kissing the tops of their heads before they left the house. Van Lucas didn't have a great need for fatherhood, and he didn't think he would be particularly good at it. But when it happened, he took to it. It was chaotic at times, but it was manageable. He liked being a father, and he loved his kids. Later, he would look back on that time of his life and think: It was easy when they were young.

Within a year of their wedding, Eleni gave birth to a girl they named Irene. “It means ‘peace,'” said Van, selling the name to Eleni. The baby was born after a very difficult pregnancy during which Eleni was required to lie in bed for most of her third trimester. Even with this precaution, Irene arrived prematurely and her survival was in doubt for the first week of her life. But she did fine and progressed without complications. Eleni's doctor suggested that a subsequent pregnancy would be just as problematic, if not worse, and that Irene should be looked upon as a single blessing and not the first of many blessings to come. Or something like that. Eleni got the convoluted message: Do not tempt fate and try to have another child.

Van was fine with having only one child, but Eleni was not. When Irene got to walking a year later, Eleni decided that a child was not “whole” without a companion. Van said, “We could get a dog,” and Eleni said, “I was thinking along the lines of something on two legs,” to which Van replied, “A monkey, then.” She didn't smile, so he knew she was serious. He also knew where this was going. Eleni wanted to adopt.

On the subject of adoption, Van suspected he was in the camp of many other men who were not quite sure. Will I truly love a child who did not come from me? Would I be as good a father to an adopted child? Do I want a kid who doesn't at least look a little like me? He kept these questions to himself for the most part. But they were there.

The one objection a man could legitimately raise was the cost, but Van couldn't belch about money with a straight face or a clear conscience. He had the dough. A high school friend, Ted Leibovitz, an ambitious renovation man turned builder, had invited Van into his venture when both were right out of college, and they had bought properties in the U Street corridor at fire-sale prices while the Metro was being built, the street was torn up, building windows were boarded, and businesses were failing. The sale of these properties at a profit a few years later had funded bigger projects, commercial and residential, in soon-to-be-hot Shaw, Logan, and Columbia Heights. Ted had an eye for seeing the possibilities in run-down areas, while Van's talent was in sensing when to sell at the top. Van, despite no visible signs of type-A drive, was making a small fortune as a relatively young man. He was liquid and he had real estate. He couldn't cry poor to Eleni.

“What are you going to do with all of our money?” she said. “Buy things? You're not about that.”

She was right. He was not a clotheshorse or into labels. His work truck, a two-toned Chevy Silverado, was his only vehicle.

Eleni was similarly uninterested in material things. She had inherited a deep reserve of compassion from her parents, who had preached and practiced Christian charity throughout her childhood. Hell, Van had met her at one of those Christmas Day dinner–soup kitchen things, to which he had been dragged by a community activist he had been courting for zoning favors. The moment he saw Eleni, her hair under a scarf, an apron not even close to concealing her figure, he fell in love with her. Looks aside, it was the fact that she was there in that church basement on a cold Christmas morning, trying to reach out to people who had next to nothing, when she could have been sitting comfortably by a fire, sipping tea and opening gifts. Her obvious kindness was what closed the deal for him.

“You could do some good,” she said. “Think about the difference you'd make in some kid's life.”

“While he's stealing my silverware.”

“Van, come on.”

He threw up his meaty hands in a gesture she recognized as near-surrender. “I don't know.”

They were seated at the kitchen table of their bungalow. Irene was in her high chair, aiming Cheerios in the general direction of her mouth. Eleni reached across the table and took one of his hands. He felt the current pass through him.

“You know what your name means?” said Eleni.

“Evangelos? It means ‘big stud.'”

“No, but nice try.”

“So tell me.”

“It means ‘evangelist.' Someone who spreads the gospel. Or, if you want to take it a little further, someone who does good.”

“So you're sayin
what? 
”

“Somewhere in your past your ancestors probably adopted kids, too, I bet.”

“When men were men and sheep were nervous.”

“Huh?”

“You're talking about ancient times. When guys wore metal skirts. The meaning of my name is supposed to make me go out and adopt a kid?”

“Honey, let's do this,” said Eleni. “We have the money and the opportunity. To, you know, have a reason for being here. Don't you ever think about why we're here?”

“Not really,” said Van. “I'm not that deep.”

She came around the table and sat on his lap and kissed him on the lips. His sudden erection was like a crowbar underneath her bottom.

“You're right,” she said. “You're not that deep.”

“I'm not doing any of the legwork,” he said. “I got a business to run.”

“I'll take care of the details.”

“I want a son,” he said, rather petulantly.

Eleni said, “Me, too.”

Through the recommendation of friends in their neighborhood, Eleni made an appointment with an attorney, Bill O'Leary, who specialized in adoptions. Van and Eleni met O'Leary and his assistant, a junior attorney named Donna Monroe, at O'Leary's downscale office in Silver Spring. O'Leary seemed both distracted and intent on securing them as clients, while Monroe appeared to be more interested in exploring their motivations and needs. Eleni sensed that the lively eyed Monroe was the conscience of the outfit.

After O'Leary had explained the financial aspects of the adoption, in which he pushed for a flat fee rather than itemized billing, they got into the logistics of paperwork, home visits, and matters of timing.

“I've heard this process can take years,” said Eleni.

“If you want a baby that looks like you,” said Monroe.

“You mean a white baby,” said Van.

“There is typically a long waiting period for white adoptees,” said O'Leary. “Russia, Eastern Europe. In general you're talking about children from orphanages who are three, four years old.”

Van didn't need to be bait-and-switched by O'Leary. He had heard some stories about those kids. He didn't have the fortitude or the altruism of the people who were willing to take on those kinds of problems. He wanted a family, not a project. He felt that you could mold a baby easier than you could a child who had been socialized, or unsocialized, in his or her formative years.

“No,” said Van. “I'm not interested in that scenario. I wouldn't want a, you know, handicapped kid, either.”

Van shrugged off Eleni's reproachful look and shifted his weight in his chair. There was a brief silence as the lawyers digested his remark.

“Would you adopt an African American infant?” said Monroe, looking into Van's eyes.

Van hesitated. He felt that he was now a customer in the Baby Store, a situation he'd hoped to avoid. And what did you say to the black woman sitting across the table from you? “I'd rather not adopt a black child”?

“You mean, what
color
baby do I want?” he said. “Is that what you're asking?”

“This will be easier if we speak freely,” said Monroe.

“We want whoever needs to be adopted,” said Eleni.

Van looked at Eleni. In that moment he knew he would love her forever.

“Right,” said Van.

“Then let's get started,” said Monroe.

“I'll have my assistant run the contracts,” said O'Leary, standing excitedly, displaying his tall, birdlike frame. “You do want the flat fee, don't you?”

Van nodded absently.

That is how it began.

They'd been warned that the adoption process was complicated, but for them it was not. The home visits were perfunctory and quick, and they soon “identified” a baby boy after looking at an array of photographs spread like playing cards on a table. Van said to Eleni, “This is kinda weird. When you choose one, you're rejecting the others, in a way. You know what I mean? What happens to
them? 
” Eleni agreed that it was mildly troubling but was steadfast in her belief that they should concentrate on the positive impact they would have on one person's life rather than bemoaning the fact that they couldn't help them all. As she was telling him this, her eyes were on the table, and she touched her index finger to the photograph of a black baby who, consciously or not, was staring into the camera, right
at
them, it seemed, with a startled expression.

“Him,” said Eleni.

Van said, “Okay.”

Van suggested they name the baby Dimitrius, in keeping with his intention of giving their children traditional Greek names. Van was third generation and about as Greek as a Turkish bath, but Eleni did not resist, much.

“Dimitrius is not a traditional African American name.”

“Okay, we'll call him
Le
Dimitrius.”

“Stop it. I just think we ought to consider what it will mean for him to carry a name like that.”

“It'll toughen him up. Y'know, the bullies used to call me Chevy Van.” Van balled his fists and held them up. “Until I introduced them to Thunder and Lightning.”

“You were never a fighter.”

“I know it. But that's the story I'm gonna tell Dimitrius.”

Soon after this conversation, Dimitrius came to them. He was a quiet, pleasant baby, and his sister, Irene, took to him right away. She insisted on pushing his stroller and always sat beside him on the family room couch, where his parents frequently propped him up with pillows. He was her breathing doll. He was loved.