“Prove it.”
“Mavros, malaka, and moonee.”
“The three M’s. You’re just about fluent.”
“It’ll come in handy, I happen to get over to Athens for the Olympics.”
Out on Kennedy, Stefanos put fire to a smoke. He took the first drag in and held it deep. Strange stood beside him, watching.
“Tastes good, huh?”
“After a spicy meal like that? Damn right.” Stefanos gave Strange the once-over and smiled. “Strange Investigations. I drive by your place all the time.”
“You know my sign?”
“Magnifying glass over half the letters. How’d you ever come up with that?”
“That logo with the guy smoking the pipe, wearing that hat’s got two bills on it? It was taken.”
“Maybe I’ll stop by sometime.”
“If the light in the sign’s turned on, I’m in. You’re welcome anytime.”
“How about your partner? Think he wants me around?”
“I think he liked you, to tell you the truth. Terry’s carrying some baggage with him, is what it is.”
“Aren’t we all.” Stefanos dragged on his cigarette, looked at it, and hit it again.
“Just so you know, you and me got some similar opinions about guns. I figure, we sat down in a bar together, we might have a lot to talk about.”
“I’m trying to stay out of bars. But I wouldn’t mind hooking up with you sometime.”
“You know, I’m working this death penalty case for a reason.”
“Another thing we agree on. It’s why I’m on the Corey Graves thing. The federal prosecutors were looking to make it a capital case and they just got the go-ahead from the attorney general.”
“I heard.”
“There’s been too much death in this city already, Derek. I’ve had enough of it.”
“I have, too.”
“The neighborhoods you guys work, your partner’s gotta be careful, with that personality of his. He shows some smarts and less emotion, he’s gonna live longer.”
“I tell him all the time.”
“I remember what that guy went through, with the newspapers and television and all, after he shot that other cop. He’s got some shit flying around in his head; it’s understandable. For what it’s worth, I liked him, too.”
“Don’t forget to stop by. Ninth and Upshur.”
“I’ll be around.”
“Thanks for your help, Nick.”
Stefanos shook Strange’s outstretched hand and said, “Right.”
Strange watched him walk toward a Mopar muscle car, a white-over-red Dodge with aftermarket Magnum 500 wheels. He listened to the cook of the Detroit engine and went back into the diner. Quinn was dropping money on the table, a toothpick rolling in his mouth.
“You ready?” said Quinn. “I need to pick up my car.”
Strange nodded. “Let’s go to work.”
chapter 25
BERNARD Walker waited in the idling Benz as Dewayne Durham walked out of the Sixth District substation on Pennsylvania Avenue in Southeast. He could see that screwed-up look on Dewayne’s face, which meant confusion. Trouble, something to do with his family. Often it was his mother, always needin’ something. Money, jewelry, clothes, a ride to church. But today it was that brother of his, who’d fucked up big with that girl. When the police had called him into the station that morning—“You wanna come in, Dewayne, or should we send a car to pick you up?”—they said it had to do with Mario. Somethin’ about an “interesting” new development they had in the case.
“Everything all right?” said Walker, so tall in the driver’s seat that his hair was touching the headliner of the car.
“Mario,” said Durham, as if that were explanation enough. He reached to the radio and turned down the sound.
“Well?”
“The gun he used to kill that bitch? It was the same gun Jerome used on that Coates cousin.”
“Same model?”
“Same exact gun.”
“Foreman’s woman said that gun was clean.”
“I know it. Foreman told her it was. He took a gun had a body on it, a murder gun attached to my own brother, and sold it to Long. Why you think he’d want to put me in that kind of situation?”
“Maybe he didn’t know.”
“Could be he didn’t. Or maybe someone wanted to see me get jammed up.”
“You think Foreman would set you up like that? Why?”
“That’s what I need to find out.”
“We better go talk to your brother,” said Walker.
“Nah, uh-uh. I don’t trust what he’ll tell me, scared as he is. And I don’t trust myself to be around him right now. I’m tellin’ you, Zu, I’m about to kill a motherfucker today. I see him and he starts to lie, I might just go ahead and dead my own brother. I don’t want to do that to my moms.”