Soul Circus(22)
“You got that right, boyfriend.”
“I better keep an eye on you, though. Fine as you look, someone might try to steal you out from under me.”
“That’s where they’d have to steal me from, too.”
Foreman kissed Ashley on the mouth. She bit his lower lip, and they both laughed as he pulled away.
chapter 9
YOU ever been back in there?” said Strange, looking through the windshield to the brick wall bordering St. Elizabeth’s.
“Once,” said Devra Stokes. “This girl and me jumped the wall when we was like, twelve.”
“I interviewed a witness there, a couple of years back.”
“Hinckley?”
“Naw, not Hinckley.”
“I was just playin’ with you.”
“I know it.”
They sat in the Caprice, across from the institution, eating soft ice cream from cups that they had purchased at the drive-through of McDonald’s. Juwan, Devra’s son, sat in the backseat, licking the drippings off a cone.
“It was this dude, though,” said Strange, “had pleaded insanity on a manslaughter charge, we thought he might have some information on another case. He seemed plenty sane to me. Anyway, we sat on a bench they have on the grounds, faces west, gives you a nice look at the whole city. This is the high ground up here. Those people they got in there, they got the best view of D.C.”
“I wouldn’t mind getting taken care of like they take care of those folks in there. You ever think like that?”
“It’s crossed my mind, in the same way that it would be easy to be old. Walk around wearing the same raggedy sweater every day, don’t even have to shave or mind your hair. But I don’t want to be an old man. And I wouldn’t want to be locked up anywhere, would you?”
“Sometimes I think, you know, not to have all this pressure all the time… not to have to think about how I’m gonna make it for me and Juwan, just for a while, I mean. That would be nice.”
“I know it’s got to be rough, raising him as a single parent,” said Strange.
“I got bills,” said Devra.
“Phil Wood’s not taking care of you and your little boy?”
“Juwan’s not his. Juwan’s father—”
“Mama!”
Devra turned her head. The boy’s ice cream had dripped and some of it had found its way onto the vinyl seat. Devra used the napkin in her hand to clean the boy’s face, then wipe the seat.
“Mama,” said Juwan, “I spilt the ice cream.”
“Yes, baby,” said Devra, “I know.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Strange. “You see that red cushion back there? My dog sleeps on that, and he has his run of the car. So I ain’t gonna worry about no ice cream. This here is my work vehicle, anyway.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Ain’t no thing,” said Strange. “Look here, what about Juwan’s father, then?”
Devra shrugged. “He’s in Ohio now. They had him incarcerated out at Lorton, but they moved him a few months ago. Once a week, me and Juwan used to take the Metrobus, the one they ran special from the city, out there to see him. But now, with him so far and all, I don’t think Juwan’s even going to remember who his father is.”
Strange nodded at the familiar story. A young man fathered a child, then went off to do his jail time, his “rite of passage.” Lorton, the local prison in northern Virginia, was slowly being closed down, its inhabitants moved to institutions much farther away. Lorton’s proximity to the District had allowed prisoners and their families to remain in constant contact, but that last tie between many fathers and their children was ending now, too. Juwan’s future, like the futures of many of the children who had been born into these circumstances, did not look promising.
“Can’t Phil help you out with some money?”
“Phil’s got no reason to give me money. He had a whole rack of girls. I was just one.”
“But he paid you to stay away from court on that brutality rap.”
“That was a one-time thing.”
“I’m gonna need you to talk about it with me, you don’t mind.”
“Talk about what?”
“Well, the fact that he was beatin’ up on you, for one. Plus, the time you filed the original charges was about the same time some of the murders went down that they got Granville up on. Including the murder of his own uncle. So I need to know, did Phil ever discuss any of those murders with you? Or did you hear anything else about those murders from anyone close to Phil or Granville around that time?”
“I got no reason to hurt Phil.”