Soul Circus (18 page)

“Must have been that quality detective work you’re always going on about.”

“Not really. Old man I never even met just went and volunteered all sorts of shit.”

“Good day at Black Rock,” said Quinn.

“It happens once in a while,” said Strange. “I didn’t even have to ask.”

Devra Stokes lived off Good Hope Road in an apartment complex where “Drug-Free Zone” signs were posted on a black wrought-iron fence. Strange pulled into the lot and cut the engine.

“You coming?” said Strange.

“I’m not really into the Free Granville Oliver movement,” said Quinn. “So I think I’ll hang, you don’t mind.”

“I’ll leave the keys,” said Strange, “case you want to listen to some of my music.”

“You got that one about lame men walkin’?”

“It’s in the glove box. Help yourself.”

Quinn watched Strange cross the lot and disappear into a dark stairwell.

JUWAN Stokes sat on the floor of Devra Stokes’s apartment, playing with some action figures, while Strange and Stokes sat at the dining-room table. The apartment, filled with old furniture and new electronics, was in disarray and smelled of marijuana resin and nicotine. Devra apologized, explaining that her roommate, a young woman who worked in another salon, had recently brought an inconsiderate, no-account man into the place against Devra’s wishes. This man was unemployed, liked to burn smoke and drink at all hours, and was responsible for the mess.

“Not too good for the boy, I expect,” said Strange.

“We’re looking to get out.” As she said it, she looked out the apartment’s large window.

“I can help you, short-term.”

“How you gonna do that?”

“Defense has witness relocation capabilities, same as the prosecution.”

“Like Witness Protection?”

“Not really. You don’t change your name, and you don’t have anybody looking after you. Basically, they have funds set aside that can get you into a place, an apartment like this one, in another part of town.”

“The Section Eights, right?”

“Sometimes.”

“I’m not movin’ Juwan into no Section Eights.”

“Maybe we can do better than that. We can try.” Strange leaned forward. “Look, I think you know things that would help out our case. You were with Phil Wood back when the murder of Granville’s uncle went down. Phil must have talked to you about it then.”

“He talked about a lot of things,” said Devra. “But listen, Phil and Granville and their kind, all of ’em been into some serious shit. None of them’s innocent. This is the Lord, now, giving them their due. I don’t want to get in the way of that. I don’t want to be involved.”

“I can subpoena you, Devra.”

“Nah, hold up.” Devra Stokes raised one hand and her lovely eyes lost their light. “I don’t like to be threatened. That’s something you’re gonna find out, you get to know me better. When Phil started taking a hand to me, that’s when we broke up. But it wasn’t the physical thing so much as it was what was coming from his mouth. ‘Bitch, I will do this’ and ‘Bitch, I will do that.’ I was like, Do it, then, motherfucker, but don’t be threatenin’ me. That’s when I filed charges against him. I just got tired of all those threats.”

“But you dropped the charges.”

“He paid me to. And I had no reason to hurt him that bad. It was over for us anyway by then.” Devra looked down at her son. “That life is behind me, forever and for real. I got no reason to go back there. None.”

“Mama,” said Juwan, “look!” He was flying an action figure, some hillbilly wrestler, through the air.

“I see, baby,” said Devra.

“This isn’t personal,” said Strange. “But you need to understand: I am going to do my job.”

“Ain’t personal with me, either. But I’m not lookin’ to get involved, and I’ve told you why. Now, I need to get back to work.”

“Thought Inez gave you the day off.”

“Not the whole day. She told me that it was slow and to take a couple of hours of break and then come back.”

“I see,” said Strange. “Inez doesn’t own that place, does she?”

“No.”

“Do you know who does?”

Devra nodded, cutting her eyes away from Strange’s. “Horace McKinley.”

“McKinley. Wears one of those four-finger rings, got silver on his teeth?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s a drug dealer, right?”

“That ain’t no secret. Plenty of these salons down here got drug money behind them. Same way with the massage parlors all over this city, too.” Devra stood, picked up Juwan, and held him in her arms. “Look, I gotta clean him up and get back to work.”

“There’s plenty you haven’t been telling me, isn’t there?”

“Seems like you’re doing all right without my help.”

“Go ahead and take care of your son,” said Strange. “I’ll walk you out.”

Strange went over to the large window that gave to a view of the lot. A beige Nissan with a spoiler mounted on its rear was driving very slowly behind the Caprice, where Quinn waited in the passenger seat. The bass booming from the vehicle vibrated the apartment window. Strange studied the Nissan, sun gleaming off its roof, as it passed. He knew that car.

IT took Devra a while to get herself and the boy ready. Strange waited for her to do whatever a woman felt she had to do and saw Devra and Juwan to her Taurus. As he walked back to his Caprice, he noticed that the car seemed to be in the general area where he had left it, but there was something off about how it was parked. Strange guessed it was the way it was slanted in its space; he didn’t remember putting it in that way.

Quinn was impassive, leaning against the passenger door as Strange got behind the wheel.

“You see that Nissan,” said Strange, “was cruising slow behind you, little while back?”

“Saw it and heard it,” said Quinn. “They passed by twice. I could see them smiling at me in my side mirror. My pale arm was leaning on the window frame the second time they went by. They must not have liked the look of it or something. That’s when they split.”

“You make the car?”

“Early nineties, Nissan Two Forty SX. The four-banger, if I had to guess.”

“You could hear the engine over the music?”

“The valves were working overtime.”

“Okay. How those boys look to you? Wrong?”

“All the way. But that could just be me, profiling again.”

“Once a cop,” said Strange.

“Tell me you know ’em,” said Quinn.

“I do. Those two rolled up on me at a light yesterday. Both of them had those bugged-out eyes.”

“Like Rodney Dangerfield and Marty Feldman got together and made a couple of babies.”

“They could be brothers. One of ’em made the slash sign across his throat. Another car, a Benz, was trying to hem me in from behind.”

“Sounds like it was planned.”

“A classic trap,” said Strange. “And you know that gangs hunt in packs. Anyway, I thought I was imagining this shit at the time, but I don’t think so anymore. They’re trying to warn me off of talking to Stokes.”

“You want me to, I can show you where they went.”

“You followed them, didn’t you?”

The lines around Quinn’s eyes deepened, star-bursting out from behind his aviators. “I figured, loud as they were listening to that music of theirs, they wouldn’t make me, that is if I played it right. And if they did make me, so what? I stayed behind other vehicles, five or six car lengths back, the whole way. Just like you taught me, Dad.”

“Thought there was something different about my car from where I’d left it.”

“I parked it one space over.”

“Knew it was something.”

“Was wondering if you were gonna catch it. They stopped at another apartment complex, not far from here.”

“Nice work,” said Strange, pulling his seat belt across his chest. “Let’s run by the parking lot of those apartments.”

“I need to eat something,” said Quinn. “And I could use a beer.”

“I could, too,” said Strange.

MARIO Durham took a shower at Donut’s apartment, then dressed again in the clothes he’d been wearing the past two days. He had some fresh clothes over at his mother’s house, but he didn’t want to go there just yet. The Sanders jersey and his Tommys, they were a little ripe but not awful. He had put his nose to them and they didn’t smell all that bad.

Mario needed to talk to Dewayne when the time was right, kind of ease him into the events of the night before, then wait for Dewayne’s instructions. But not yet; he’d just hang back for today. He was looking forward to seeing that shine in Dewayne’s eyes, though. He was thinking Dewayne was gonna be proud to have a big brother who finally went and stepped up.

Mario Durham’s whole outlook had changed since he’d killed Olivia. He had taken a life, done what he’d only heard others talk about. Sure, Mario was scared of getting caught, but he was high on the fact that he now belonged in the same club as his brother and Zulu and all the others who bragged about killing around the way. The gun in his hand had changed everything he’d been before. It had made him a man. He was happy to be rid of that gun, but it would be good to get another. He’d do that in time, too.

Mario hadn’t told Donut why he needed to lay up with him for a few days, and Donut hadn’t asked. But he was itchin’ to tell somebody, and he needed some advice. Donut, who got that name ’cause he loved those sugar-coated Hostess ones so much when he was a kid, was his boy from way back.

Donut was on the couch, holding a controller, playing NBA Street. Over the television was a rack, plywood on brackets, holding Donut’s blaxploitation and exploitation video collection. He favored Fred Williamson’s and Jim Brown’s body of work, and also the low-budget, high-grossing B films from the seventies:
Macon County Line, Jackson County Jail, Billy Jack
, and the like. He had his pet actors from that period, too. He liked Carol Speed and Thalmus Rasulala, and especially Felton Perry, played in the second Dirty Harry movie and the first one in that series about the redneck sheriff. There was a time when Donut had fantasized about being an actor his own self, but every mirror he looked into told him different, and eventually reality had beaten down those dreams.

The remains of a fatty sat in an ashtray on the table before him, as did a can of beer. Donut was small like Mario and close to ugly, and he hadn’t ever held any kind of payroll job. But he did all right. He sold marijuana to his network of friends and dummies to the suckers drivin’ by out on the street.

Donut’s window air conditioner rattled in the room.

“You feel better?” said Donut.

“Shower did me right,” said Durham.

“I’m goin’ out in a little bit, need to pick up some shit.”

“I’ll just rest here, you don’t mind. Kinda hot to be walkin’ around.”

Donut looked over at his skinny friend, standing by the couch looking at him like a dog waitin’ on a treat, one hand in his pocket, jingling change. Long as Donut had known him, that was the way Mario stood: slouched, his hand in his pocket, needy eyed, always wanting something.

“What’s up?” said Donut.

“Need to talk to you, Dough.”

Donut’s eyes went to the couch, then back to Durham. “Then sit your ass down and talk.”

Durham sat down beside Donut as Donut put some fire back to the joint. They passed the marijuana back and forth.

Slowly, building it up with drama, Durham told Donut what he’d done. As he related the murder of Olivia Elliot, he began to embellish the story, making her an all-out bitch, making himself stronger, more heroic, and more justified than he had been. His head had gotten up quick from the chronic, and the tale sounded good to his ears.

“Damn, boy,” said Donut, “you did it for real.”

“She took me off, and my brother, too. What was I supposed to do, let it ride?”

“They gonna find that girl. You know this, right?”

“I put her deep in the woods. But yeah, eventually they will. After that, shit, I get by a few days without no one pickin’ me up, maybe I’ll be all right. Seems like the whole police force is out there lookin’ for that white girl was fuckin’ that congressman, so maybe they’ll just forget. Cases get cold quick down here anyway; you know that. If the police
are
lookin’ for me, well, everyone knows who my brother is. Ain’t nobody gonna point me out. But maybe they won’t come lookin’ for me. I done fixed all the evidence, I think.”

“What about that gun?”

“It was a hack. I rented it from that dealer does business with Dewayne. Ulysses Foreman, lives over in PG? I already gave it back.”

“You tell him it was a murder gun?”

“Sure,” said Mario, still embellishing, still bragging. “I mean, he took one look at me, he knew what I’d done. You can’t hide something like that.”

“What you gonna do now, then, just wait?”

“I guess.”

Donut nodded his head, his eyes pink from the chronic. Durham could tell that Donut was just trying to think things out.

“You can lay up here for a little while, I guess. But not forever, hear? You my boy, but I can’t be no accessory to no homicide. With my priors, I’m looking at long time.”

“I won’t stay long. The thing of it is, I could use some money to stake me, so I can move on out of Southeast for a while.”

“I’m light right now.”

“Oh, I wasn’t askin’ for you to give me no cash. I got some in my pocket, my brother gave me. What I was thinkin’, I could double it, maybe triple it, with your help. I’ll give you what I got for some dummies I can sell out there on the strip. I can make a quick rack of money like that. The quicker I do, the quicker I’m gone.”

“Yeah, but you need to be careful behind that shit.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, Dough,” said Durham, shaking his friend’s hand. “I’m harder than you think I am. I’ll be all right.”

Donut looked down at Durham’s feet. “You get some money, first thing you need to do is buy you some new sneaks.”

“I do need to get myself into the new style.”

“Looks like some of that bitch’s blood got on ’em, too.”

“I guess it did.” Durham looked stupidly at the PlayStation 2 controllers lying on the floor. “You wanna play some Street before you tip out?”