George Pelecanos (2 page)

My
father was moaning when I took a seat beside him. Goddamn this and goddamn
that, saying it under his breath. We'd been out here for a few hours. A girl
with a high ass moving inside purple drawstring pants took our information when
we came in, and later a Korean nurse got my father's vitals in what she called
the triage room, asking questions about his history and was there blood in his
stool and stuff like that. But we had not seen a doctor yet.

Most
of the men in the waiting room were in their fifties and above. A couple had
walkers and many had canes; one dude had an oxygen tank beside him with a clear
hose running up under his nose. Every single one of them was wearing some kinda
lid. It was cold out, but it was a style thing, too.

Everyone
looked uncomfortable and no one working in the hospital seemed to be in a hurry
to do something about it. The security guards gave you a good eye-fuck when you
came through the doors, which kinda told you straight off what the experience
was going to be like inside. I tried to go down to the cafeteria to get
something to eat, but nothing they had was appealing, and some of it looked
damn near dirty. I been in white people's hospitals, like Sibley, on the high
side of town, and I know they don't treat those people the way they was
treating these veterans. I'm saying
,
this shit here
was a damn disgrace.

But
they did take my father eventually.

In
the emergency room, a white nurse named Matthew, redheaded dude with Popeye
forearms, hooked him up to one of those heart machines, then found a vein in my
father's and took three vials of blood. Pops had complained about being "woozy"
that morning. He gets fearful since his stroke, which paralyzed him on one
side. His mind is okay, but he can't go nowhere without his walker, not even to
the bathroom.

I
looked at him lying there in the bed, his wide shoulders and the hardness of
his hands. Even at sixty, even after his stroke, he is stronger than me. I know
I will never feel like his equal. What with him being a Vietnam veteran, and a
dude who had a reputation for taking no man's shit in the street. And
me...
well, me being me.

"The
doctor's going to have a look at your blood, Leon," said Matthew. I guess he
didn't know that in our neighborhood my father would be called "Mr. Leon" or
"Mr. Coates" by someone younger than him. As Matthew walked away, he began to
sing a church hymn.

My
father rolled his eyes.

"Bet
you'd rather have that Korean girl taking care of you, Pops," I said, with a
conspiring smile.

"That
gal's from the Philippines," said my father, sourly.
Always
correcting me and shit.

"Whateva."

My
father complained about everything for the next hour. I listened to him, and
the junkie veteran in the next stall over who was begging for something to take
away his pain, and the gags of another dude who was getting a stomach tube
forced down his throat. Then an Indian doctor, name of Singh, pulled the
curtain back and walked into our stall. He told my father that there was
nothing in his blood or on the EKG to indicate that there was cause for alarm.

"So
all this bullshit was for nothin'?" said my father, like he was disappointed he
wasn't sick.

"Go
home and get some rest," said Dr. Singh, in a cheerful way. He smelled like one
them restaurants they got, but he was all right.

Matthew
returned, got my father dressed back into his streetclothes, and filled out the
discharge forms.

"The
Lord loves you, Leon," said Matthew, before he went off to attend to someone
else.

"Get
me out this motherfucker," said my father. I fetched a wheelchair from where
they had them by the front desk.

I
drove my father's Buick to his house, on the 700 block of Quebec Street, not
too far from the hospital, in Park View. It took awhile to get him up the steps
of his row house. By the time he stepped onto the brick-and-concrete porch, he
was gasping for breath. He didn't go out much anymore, and this was why.

Inside,
my mother, Martina Coates, got him situated in his own wheelchair, positioned
in front of his television set, where he sits most of his waking hours. She
waits on him all day and sleeps lightly at night in case he falls out of his
bed. She gives him showers and even washes his ass. My mother is a church woman
who believes that her reward will come in heaven. It's 'cause of her that I'm
still allowed to live in my father's house.

The
television was real loud, the way he likes to play it since his stroke. He
watches them old games on that replay show on ESPN.

"Franco
Harris!" I shouted, pointing at the screen. "Boy beast."

My
father didn't even turn his head. I would have watched some of that old
Steelers game with him if he had asked me to, but he didn't, so I went upstairs
to my room.

It
is my older brother's room as well. James's bed is on the opposite wall and his
basketball and football trophies, from when he was a kid all the way through
high school, are still on his dresser. He made good after Howard Law, real
good, matter of fact. He lives over there in Crestwood, west of 16th, with his
pretty redbone wife and their two light-skinned kids. He doesn't come around
this neighborhood all that much, though it ain't but fifteen minutes away. He
wouldn't have drove my father over to the VA Hospital, either, or waited around
in that place all day. He would have said he was too busy, that he couldn't get
out "the firm" that day. Still, my father brags on James to all his friends. He
got no cause to brag on me.

I
changed into some warm shit, and put my smokes and matches into my coat. I left
my cell in my bedroom, as it needed to be charged. When I got downstairs, my
mother asked me where I was going.

"I
got a little side thing I'm workin' on," I said, loud enough for my father to
hear.

My
father kinda snorted and chuckled under his breath. He might as well had gone
ahead and said, Bullshit, but he didn't need to. I wanted to tell him more, but
that would be wrong. If my thing was to be uncovered, I wouldn't want
nobody
coming back on my parents.

I
zipped my coat and left out the house.

It
had begun to snow some. Flurries swirled in the cones of light coming down from
the streetlamps. I walked down to Giant Liquors on Georgia and bought a pint of
Popov, and hit the vodka as I walked back up Quebec. I crossed Warder Street,
and kept on toward Park Lane. The houses got a little nicer here as the view
improved. Across Park were the grounds of the Soldier's Home, bordered by a
black iron, spear-topped fence. It was dark out, and the clouds were blocking
any kinda moonlight, but I knew what was over there by heart. I had cane-pole
fished that lake many times as a kid, and chased them geese they had in there,
too. Now they had three rows of barbed wire strung out over them spear-tops, to
keep out the kids and the young men who liked to lay their girlfriends out
straight on that soft grass.

Me
and Sondra used to hop that fence some
evenings, the summer before I dropped out of Roosevelt High. I'd bring some
weed, a bottle of screw-top wine, and my Walkman and we'd go down to the other
side of that lake and chill. I'd let her listen to the headphones while I hit
my smoke. I had made mix-tapes off my records, stuff she was into, like Bobby
Brown and Tone-Loc. I'd tell her about the cars I was gonna be driving, and the
custom suits I'd be wearing, soon as I got a good job. How I didn't need no
high school diploma to get those things or to prove how smart I was. She looked
at me like she believed it. Sondra had some pretty brown eyes.

She
married a personal injury lawyer with a storefront office up in Shepherd Park.
They live in a house in P.G. County, in one of those communities got gates. I
seen her once, when she came back to the neighborhood to visit her moms, who
still stays down on Luray. She was bum-rushing her kids into the house, like
they might get sick if they breathed this Park View air. She saw me walking
down the street and turned her head away, trying to act like she didn't
recognize me. It didn't cut me. She can rewrite history in her mind if she
wants to, but her fancy husband ain't never gonna have what I did, 'cause I had
that pussy when it was

I
stepped into the alley that runs north-south between Princeton and Quebec. My
watch, a looks-like-a-Rolex I bought on the street for ten dollars, read 9:05.
Detective Barnes was late. I unscrewed the top of the Popov and had a pull. It
burned nice. I tapped it again and lit myself a smoke.

"Psst. Hey, yo."

I
looked up over my shoulder, where the sound was. A boy leaned on the lip of one
of those second-floor, wood back porches that ran out to the alley. Behind him
was a door with curtains on its window. A bicycle tire was showing beside the
boy. Kids
be
putting their bikes up on porches around
here so they don't get stole.

"What
you want?" I said.

"Nothin'
you got," said the boy. He looked to be about twelve, tall and skinny, with
braided hair under a black skully.

"Then
get your narrow ass back inside your house."

"You the one loiterin'."

"I'm
mindin' my own, is what I'm doin'. Ain't you got no homework or nothin'?"

"I
did it at study hall."

"Where
you go, MacFarland Middle?"

"Yeah."

"I
went there, too."

"So?"

I
almost smiled. He had a smart mouth on him, but he had heart.

"What
you doin' out here?" said the kid.

"Waitin'
on someone," I said.

Just
then Detective Barnes's unmarked drove by slow. He saw me but kept on rolling.
I knew he'd stop, up aways on the street.

"Awright,
little man," I said, pitching my cigarette aside and slipping my pint into my
jacket pocket. I could feel the kid's eyes on me as I walked out the alley.

I
slid into the backseat of Barnes's unmarked, a midnight-blue Crown Vic. I kinda
laid
down on the bench, my head against the door,
below the window line so no one on the outside could see me. It's how I do when
I'm rolling with Barnes.

He
turned right on Park Place and headed south. I didn't need to look out the
window to know where he was going. He drives down to Michigan Avenue, heads
east past the Children's Hospital, then continues on past North Capitol and
then Catholic U, into Brookland and beyond. Eventually he turns around and comes
back the same way.

"Stayin' warm, Verdon?"

"Tryin' to."

Barnes,
a broad-shouldered dude with a handsome face, had a deep voice. He favored Hugo
Boss suits and cashmere overcoats. Like many police, he wore a thick mustache.

"So,"
I said. "Rico Jennings."

"Nothin'
on my end," said Barnes, with a shrug.
"You?"

I
didn't answer him. It was a dance we did. His eyes went to the rearview and met
mine. He held out a twenty over the seat, and I took it.

"I
think y'all are headed down the wrong road," I said.

"How so?"

"Heard you been roustin' corner boys on Morton and canvasing down there
in the Eights."

"I'd
say that's a pretty good start, given Rico's history." "Wasn't
no
drug thing, though."

"Kid
was in it. He had juvenile priors for possession and distribution."

"Why
they call 'em priors. That was before the boy got on the straight. Look, I went
to grade school with his mother.
I been
knowin' Rico
since he was a kid."

"What
do you know?"

"Rico
was playin' hard for a while, but he grew out of it. He got into some big
brother thing at my mother's church, and he turned his back on his past. I
mean, that boy was in the AP program up at Roosevelt. Advanced Placement, you
know,
where they got adults, teachers and shit, walkin' with
you every step of the way. He was on the way to college."

"So
why'd someone
put three in his chest?"

"What
I heard was
,
it was over a girl."

I
was giving him a little bit of the truth. When the whole truth came out, later
on, he wouldn't suspect that I had known more.

Barnes
swung a U-turn, which rocked me some. We were on the way back to Park View.

"Keep
going," said Barnes.

"Tryin'
to tell you, Rico had a weakness for the ladies."

"Who
doesn't.
"

"It
was worse than that. Girl's privates made Rico stumble. Word is, he'd been
steady-tossin' this young thing, turned out to be the property of some other
boy. Rico knew it, but he couldn't stay away. That's why he got dropped."

"By who?"

"Huh?"