Durham’s second thought: Mario would be hidin’ out with that boy Donut. And the police would be talking to their moms straightaway. But she wouldn’t give Mario up. No one would. They knew who his brother was, after all.
More squad cruisers converged on the scene. Officer Beard yanked up on Durham’s arms, which she held behind his back, and pulled him away from the hood of the Benz.
“Little rough, ain’t you?”
“Gotta make it look good,” said Beard, a small degree of pleasure in her voice.
“I ain’t payin’ you to make it look that good,” said Durham.
Beard pushed him along. Pocket-cops, thought Durham. They hate everyone. Most of all, they hate themselves.
chapter 22
THE police gonna want to talk to us,” said Mike Montgomery.
“I ain’t hidin’,” said Horace McKinley.
And I ain’t worried, neither. The police can’t touch me.
“Too bad about the cousins, though.”
“Find that boy we see down by the liquor store. The one makes them T-shirts?”
“I know his sister.”
“Find him. Get some T-shirts made up for the cousins. ‘RIP, We Will Not Forget,’ sumshit like that. You know what to do.”
“They ain’t had no family or friends.”
“It ain’t for them. We need to show the street, the Yuma honors their own.”
“I’ll get it done.”
They sat in the abandoned house at a card table, beer and malt bottles strewn about the scarred hardwood floor and the stairs leading to the second floor. The lights were on in the house. McKinley smoked a cigar.
“Gonna be a war for a while,” said McKinley, admiring the Cuban in his hand. “We gonna need some guns.”
“We’ll go see Ulysses, then.”
“Six Hundred gonna want to have some go. You know this.”
“They ain’t but across the alley.”
“Then that alley’s gonna be one of those DMZs you hear about.”
“Right,” said Montgomery. He didn’t know what McKinley was talking about. He didn’t know if McKinley knew.
“Phil Wood’s takin’ the stand tomorrow,” said McKinley.
“You told me.”
Montgomery reached into his pocket. He had walked out of the hair salon with one of those little wrestling figures by mistake. He’d been using the figure to play one of those hide-and-go-seek games with that boy Juwan. It had been fun hangin’ out with him. Relaxing. He was tired of this life he was leading, and that boy had reminded him, in a pure kinda way, that not everyone out here was involved in this drama that always ended in death. That boy had been friendly, and not because he was afraid of Mike or knew who McKinley was or nothin’ like that. That boy was nice.
“Phil’s gonna be up there for a couple of days.” McKinley drew on his cigar and exhaled a cloud of smoke that further fogged the room. “So we need to watch the Stokes bitch for a little while longer.”
“Okay.”
“I think she got the message today, but you never know. Girl had some fire in her eyes, I’ll give her that. She don’t respond to the way I put it to her, next thing is, we gonna have to squeeze her little boy.”
Montgomery fingered the plastic wrestler in his pocket.
“Mike?” said McKinley.
“What.”
“You heard me, right?”
“I heard you,” said Montgomery.
But I ain’t gonna do nothin’ to hurt that kid.
STRANGE drove uptown in his Cadillac, Greco beside him on his red cushion, War’s “Lotus Blossom” coming from the box. War was one of those groups Strange always went back to when he wanted to think and breathe. They were known as a jam band, but it was their ballads that really cooled him out.
Kids were out on Georgia’s sidewalks, like they always were. There wasn’t any curfew anymore, like there had been for a while in D.C. The curfew hadn’t worked because the responsibility for the children had been put in the wrong hands. It never should have been up to the police to raise other people’s kids.
Strange thought of Mark Elliot, now an orphan. And he thought of Robert Gray, living with that junkie aunt of his and her equally damaging boyfriend.
Strange drove by a church set back on Georgia. He saw a banner outside of it, read, “Member: One Kid, One Congregation.” He knew of the program and had once met the man who ran it. He made a mental note to give that man a call.
Lionel was out on Quintana, standing under a street lamp, the hood up on his car, as Strange parked the Brougham. Lionel had a rag in his hand and he was using it to wipe oil off a dip stick.
Strange got out of the Caddy. He waited for Greco to jump out before he closed the door. Greco stayed with him every step of the way as Strange came up on Lionel.