What It Was (15 page)

“Shouldn’t have kept talkin,” said Jones. “A man with
spots,
tryin to tell me what to do.”

Red Jones and Alfonzo Jefferson left the house. They cut the cash up in the car.

M
AYBELLINE WALKER
lived in one
of the apartment houses that lined 15th Street along the green of Meridian Hill, which many in the city now called Malcolm X Park. Drugged-out-looking whites, brothers and sisters with big naturals, and Spanish of indeterminate origin, some of the dudes wearing Carlos Santana–inspired headbands, streamed in and out of the park’s entrances. A person could kick a soccer ball around, pay for a hand job or get one free, or score something for his head at Malcolm X, depending on the time of day. Its makeup had changed these past few years, but it remained one of the most beautiful open-to-the-public spots in the city. It wasn’t but a short walk from Strange’s crib; he often came over here when the sun was out to look at the talent and clear his mind.

Maybelline’s Warwick-blue Firebird was parked on 15th. Strange had been in his Monte Carlo for a couple of hours now, since his breakfast with Vaughn, parked on the same street a block south. He was watching the folks come in and
out the park, watching Maybelline’s building, and listening to WOOK, the Isley Brothers covering “Love the One You’re With,” a hit for them on the soul charts, with cousin Chris Jasper’s organ, the band’s secret weapon, in the mix. Strange thinking, T-Neck, number 930. Just then, Maybelline emerged from the glass-front doors of her building and walked to her car.

“Damn,”
said Strange, an involuntary reaction, his mouth going dry at the sight of her, swinging her hips in a short strapless dress, the breeze blowing her hair away from her fine bare shoulders.

She dropped the ragtop of her Pontiac, ignitioned it, and drove north. Strange waited for a moment, then followed.

THERE WERE
three owners whose cars fitted the description of a gold ’68 Buick Electra registered in the District of Columbia. The first on the list, written neatly in his notebook, was a Dewight Mitchell. Mitchell’s given address was on Adams Street in Bloomingdale, tucked in south of the McMillan Reservoir, just behind Howard U. Vaughn put his hat on, stepped out of his Monaco, and went up the steps to a brick house that held a steel-framed rocker sofa on its porch. There was no Electra on the street, but Vaughn knocked on the door anyway and did not get a response. From inside the house, a calico cat looked at him with boredom through a rectangular pane of glass.

Vaughn walked down to 2nd Street and cut into the alley that ran behind Adams. It was not a hunch but rather good procedure for D.C. investigators and uniformed police to
check the alleyways when seeking interview subjects. For many Washingtonians, the alley served as the front yard.

He found a black woman, sturdy, with kind eyes, wearing slacks and a work shirt, resting on the shaft of a shovel by a plot of overturned dirt in the back of her property. He had counted the houses and knew that this was the Mitchell residence.

“Ma’am.” Vaughn tipped his head and introduced himself over her chain-link fence. He flipped open his badge case and let her glance at his shield. “Are you Miss Mitchell?”

“Mrs.,” said the woman. “I’m Henrietta, Dewight’s wife.” Several cats were in the yard, walking about but staying close to Henrietta. One with brown stripes on a gray coat was stretched out glamorously under her back steps. “What can I do for you?”

“Does your husband own a nineteen sixty-eight Buick Electra, gold with black interior?”

“That’s our car,” she said brightly. “My name’s not on it, but it’s mine, too. When he lets me drive it.”

She was in her fifties, with graying, straightened hair that had a nice shine to it. From the way her bottom half filled out her slacks, he could see that she was young where it counted. Vaughn liked her manner and her looks.

“I didn’t see the Buick out front.”

“Dewight takes it to work.”

“Where’s his place of employment?”

She told him and asked, “What’s this about?”

“I’m hoping to question the owner of a car like yours. But I’m pretty sure your husband isn’t the man I’m looking for.
Does he ever loan out his vehicle? Let a friend drive it, something like that?”

“Not that I’m aware of. But you should ask him that yourself.”

Henrietta looked down at the soil she had just turned over with the shovel. “I’m going to put in some tomato plants. Do you think I waited too long? It’s awful late in the season, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Vaughn.

Vaughn hadn’t pushed a lawnmower in twenty years and he’d never planted a garden in his life. He paid neighborhood kids to take care of his yard. He had no hobbies or outside interests. He didn’t own a pair of shorts. He played no golf. Police work sprung him out of bed every morning. There wasn’t anything else.

“I’m going to plant them anyway,” said Henrietta Mitchell. “Even if they don’t last, what could it hurt?”

“That’s the spirit,’ said Vaughn.

Walking back to his car, Vaughn thought of Olga. What she was doing at that moment, where she was. Olga was probably shopping up at Wheaton Plaza, or visiting with her friends, who were Jewish gals, mostly. Sitting in one of their kitchens, smoking Silva Thins or Vantages, had the hole in the filter, drinking coffee, gossiping, or playing with those mah-jongg tiles. The Vaughns were Catholics and worshipped at St. John’s near their house. Well, Olga worshipped, and Vaughn went along. As Catholic as she was, and Olga was devout, she mainly gravitated toward Jewish ladies when she wanted to socialize. Vaughn scratched his
forehead. A female Jew was a Jewess, right? Olga had told him that term was old and only cavemen still used it.

Okay, Olga, whatever you say.

Picturing her lecturing him, her hand on the hip of her pedal pushers, her red, red lipstick shouting out against her pancake-white face, Vaughn smiled.

Olga was on his mind often while he worked. Much as she annoyed him when he was home, and as little romance as they had between them, she never left his head for too long. As for Linda Allen, he only thought of her when he felt a stirring in his trousers. Funny how that was.

I guess I love my wife, thought Vaughn.

Done reflecting, he got into his Dodge.

MAYBELLINE WALKER
had taken Military Road off 16th and cut down Oregon Avenue. Crossing Nebraska Avenue and hanging a left on Tennyson Street, just past the Army Distaff Hall, she came to stop in front of a center-hall brick colonial in a neighborhood called Barnaby Woods.

Keeping far back, Strange pulled over to the curb near the corner of Oregon and let his Chevy idle.

Maybelline got out of her Pontiac, went to the colonial, knocked on its front door, and was soon greeted by a middle-aged white woman, who let her inside. As the door closed, Strange pulled the horseshoe shifter back into drive and drove past the house. Making note of the address, he continued on to Connecticut Avenue, where he found a pay phone on the retail strip running south of Chevy Chase Circle.

Strange phoned Lydell Blue at the Fourth District station. Lydell was pulling desk duty. It was a break for Strange.

“What’s goin on, Sarge?” said Strange.

“Don’t Sarge
me
.”

“Got a favor to ask, blood.”

“And don’t blood me, either,” said Blue. “Not when you looking for favors.”

“Do I ask for many?”

“Matter of fact, you do. Would be nice if you called me once in a while and said, I don’t know, ‘Let’s meet for a beer.’ ”

“What you want, a box of chocolates, too? You sound like a female.”

“Come over here right now and this female will put a foot up your ass.”

“When I do try to get you out, you say you can’t.”

“I got responsibilities now.”

“Wasn’t me who told you to get married.”

“What do you know about marriage? Even if you were married, Derek, you wouldn’t be.”

“True.” Strange wasn’t proud of it. His friend Lydell knew him well. “About that favor…”

“What is it?”

Strange gave him the address he had memorized. “I need a phone number and names.”

“Where can I reach you?”

“I’ll hold. I
know
you got the crisscross right there.”

“Gimme a minute,” said Blue. Shortly thereafter, he got back on the line with the information. Strange wedged the receiver between his chin and chest as he wrote it down.

“Thanks, brother.”

“That all?”

“What kind of flowers you like? I wanna send you a bouquet.”

“
Fuck
you, man.”

“You my boy,” said Strange, and hung up the phone.

Strange had time, and he was hungry. He drove down to the Hot Shoppes on Connecticut, below Albemarle Street, sat at the counter, and ate a Teen Twist with fries and a Coke. The waitress mentioned that Mr. Isaac Hayes was across the street at the WMAL studios, doing an interview in advance of a local performance. When Strange was finished with his meal, he settled up, went outside, and stood on Connecticut Avenue. Wasn’t long before Isaac Hayes came out of the building across the street and walked toward a waiting limousine. Hayes was shirtless, his big chest and shoulders draped in the multiple, thick-link gold chains he’d worn at Wattstax and on the cover of
Hot Buttered Soul
.

“Black Moses,” said Strange with wonder.

He checked his watch. Reckoning that Maybelline would be in that house tutoring for another hour or so, Strange walked a half block north to the Nutty Nathan’s stereo and appliance store and had a look around. A mustached salesman, pink eyed and smelling of weed, malt liquor, and breath mints, got a hold of him and promptly led him to the sound room in the back of the store, where he put an album on a BSA platter and demoed a high-amp sound system played through the much-touted Bose 901 speakers. A stinging guitar intro came forward.

Strange’s eyes widened involuntarily. It was not the kind
of music he normally listened to, but the sound quality of the system was outrageous and the song was blowing back his head.

“Steely Dan,” said the salesman. “New group out of California.”

“Nice,” said Strange.

“ ‘Your everlasting summer, you can feel it fading fast,’ ” said the salesman, reciting the lyrics dramatically. He hand-brushed a Hitleresque shock of black hair that had fallen across his forehead, then did some fretwork with his fingers. “They can
play,
Jim.”

“The name’s Derek.”

“Johnny McGiness,” said the salesman, extending his hand.

Strange shook it. “Maybe I’ll be back.”

McGinnes smiled stupidly. “If I don’t see you here, I’ll see you…
hear?
”

Before he left, Strange purchased a four-pack of blank Memorex tapes. A skinny young white dude, probably around sixteen, his white-boy Afro touching his shoulders, in Levi 501s rolled up cigarette-style and a Nutty Nathan’s T-shirt, stood by the register counter, eyeing Strange. Had to be a stock boy, ’cause he held a dustrag in his hand. Looked like an Italian or a Greek, what with the large Mediterranean nose that dominated his face. He, too, had stoned eyes.

A female clerk with dilated pupils handed Strange the bagged-up tapes, the package no bigger than a sandwich.

The young man said, “Would you like me to take that out to your car for you, sir?”

“I think I can handle it,” said Strange.

The young man smiled. “Just doin my j-o-b.”

Smartass, thought Strange. And heading out the door, he thought: Is it just me, or is everyone in this motherfucker high?

VAUGHN HAD
a brief conversation with Dewight Mitchell, a D.C. Transit bus mechanic who troubleshot at the depot up by 14th and Decatur. Mitchell was about Vaughn’s age, solidly built, with short gray hair and veins thick as worms on the backs of his workingman hands. Once Mitchell had shown him his Electra, a convertible, Vaughn knew for certain he was speaking to the wrong man. He had known, in fact, since he’d met Henrietta, Mitchell’s wife.