Long tried to get to his feet, but he couldn’t move at all. He could feel the puke chunks on his lips and it felt warm on his behind where he’d shit hisself.
The cousin was standing over him now. His eyes were mad-bulged as he pointed the gun at Long’s face.
“Aaah,” said Long.
Long saw the cousin’s gun hand shake. He saw the cousin’s finger pull back on the trigger. He tried to scream but never got it out.
JAMES Coates fired three rapid shots—face, neck, chest—into the jumping body of Jerome Long. He heard the cry of tires on asphalt and turned.
A Maxima was fishtailing around the corner. He could hear the engine roar as the driver pinned the gas. The car was coming right at him.
Coates fired into the windshield. He stayed where he was and he kept firing and he felt himself lifted off the street and a shower of beer and pork rinds around him. The world spun crazily, and he heard himself gurgle and felt nothing but confusion. His back had been broken and so had his neck. His eyes saw nothing forever.
The Maxima sideswiped two parked cars down the block and came to a stop near the next corner when it crashed into a telephone pole. Behind the wheel, Allante Jones sat low, his jaw slack, his eyes fixed. Had he been able to see, he would have seen a spidered windshield and upon it his own blood. A bullet had entered his forehead, tumbled through his brain, and ended his life.
Outside the market, the street was quiet, except for a Missy Elliot song coming from the open windows of a Nissan 240SX.
Inside the market, a woman named Sung locked the front door, extinguished the lights, and sat down on the floor with her little boy. His name was Tommy. She held him tightly and told him not to cry.
chapter 21
WHILE Quinn went into a market on Georgia for a six, Strange idled the Chevy along the curb and made a couple of calls on his cell. He talked to Janine, found out what she had learned from his requests earlier in the day, and told her he’d be home after picking up Greco at the row house on Buchanan. Then he found attorney Elaine Clay’s card in his wallet and punched in the number to her pager. He talked about the private investigator she used and learned how to reach him.
“He straight?” said Strange.
“He’s got his ghosts, if that’s what you mean,” said Elaine. “He’s trying to beat drinking, and I think it’s a long fight. But on the work side of things, there’s no one more straight.”
“Stefanos,” said Strange, reading aloud what he’d written.
“Stefanos,” said Elaine, putting the accent on the correct syllable. “These Greeks get touchy about their names.”
“I heard that,” said Strange, knowing then where he would try to meet this Stefanos face-to-face. “Thanks, Elaine. Say hello to Marcus for me, hear?”
Ten minutes later, Strange and Quinn stood beside Quinn’s Chevelle on Buchanan Street.
“Can you get out tomorrow?” said Strange.
“Every day, you want me to. Lewis is cutting me back.”
“Phil Wood’s taking the stand tomorrow, so my time is getting short. I could use the company and the help.”
“And you can help me on the Welles runaway thing.”
“Right. I’m gonna try and get us a meeting with this PI, knows all the players down in Southeast.”
“Okay. Call me in the morning.”
“Bring your eyeglasses, man. Maybe I’ll let you drive some.”
Quinn nodded toward the row house, where they could both hear Greco alternately barking and crying from behind Strange’s door. “You better see to your dog.”
Strange watched Quinn’s car turn left onto Georgia as he walked up the steps to his house. Nearing the door, he noticed that a section of its window had been shattered and the jamb was splintered. The door was closed, but Strange knew he’d been burgled. The door opened without a key.
Stepping into the foyer, he found Greco lying on his belly, rubbing his eyes with his front paws. His tail was twitching at the sound and smell of Strange’s entrance, but he was crying.
“All right, boy,” said Strange softly, “let me get a look at you.”
Strange lifted the paws away from Greco’s face. His eyes were pink and nearly red at the rims. The intruders had used something, pepper spray most likely, to immobilize him.
Strange went to his second-floor bathroom and got some Murine eyedrops out of the medicine cabinet. As he passed the doorway to his office, he noticed that the room had been completely tossed. It was the only room he had seen so far that had been misarranged. He did not stop but went directly down the stairs to Greco.
Strange put drops in Greco’s eyes and then got spring water from the refrigerator and flushed his eyes further, splashing the water from a juice glass. Greco stood after a while and shook himself, then touched his nose to Strange’s calf. Strange patted the top of his head.