Soul Circus (9 page)

“You wanna come in?” said Tosha.

“Robert in there with you?”

“He’s out playin’ with his friends.” Tosha noticed something cross Strange’s face and she grinned lopsidedly, showing him grayish teeth. “Don’t worry, I always know where he’s at. We don’t allow him to go more than a block or two away from here.”

“We?”

Tosha jerked her head over her shoulder. “I got Randolph stayin’ here with me now. Boy needs a man around, don’t you think?”

“If it’s right.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. Randolph keeps him in line, tells Robert to mind his mouth when he gets the way young boys get. Randolph’ll go ahead and smack the black out him, his tongue gets too bright.”

Strange could hear a baby crying from back in the apartment. He shifted his feet. “You say Robert’s in the vicinity?”

“You’ll find him out there somewheres close, ridin’ his bike. Tell him to get in here before dark comes, hear?”

Why don’t you drag your junkie ass on out here and tell him yourself? thought Strange. But he only nodded and went back down the stairs.

“I’ll be lookin’ for my money this month,” said Tosha to his back.

Strange kept going, finding relief in the crisp spring air as he made his way outside. The sun had begun to drop behind the neighboring buildings, and shadows had spread upon the apartment grounds.

Strange circled the block in his car, then widened his search to the adjacent streets. He spotted Robert Gray standing around with a group of boys, most of them older, on the corner of another apartment complex. The boys, some wearing wife-beaters with the band of their boxer shorts showing high above the belt line of their jeans, studied Strange as he got out of his curbed Chevy. Gray said something to one of the boys, got on his bike, and rode it over to Strange, now leaning against the front quarter panel of his car out in the street.

“How you doin’, Robert?”

Gray’s eyes went past Strange to somewhere down the street. “I’m all right.”

“Look at me when I talk to you, son.”

Gray fixed his gaze on Strange. He had intelligent eyes, and he was polite enough. But Strange could not recall ever seeing him smile.

“How’s school going?”

Gray shrugged. “We nearly out. Ain’t all that much left to do.”

“Your aunt and them treating you okay?”

“I get along with ’em.”

“The boyfriend, too? He’s not eatin’ up your share of the food, is he?”

“Him and my aunt don’t eat all that much, you want the truth.” Gray cocked an eyebrow. He was a handsome boy, one of those who already had the features of a man. “You see Granville?”

“Saw him today. He was asking after you.”

“They gonna kill him?”

“I don’t know. Whatever happens, it doesn’t look like he’s ever gonna come out of jail. It’s important you know this. All that bling-bling you and your friends always talking about and lookin’ up to, the whips and the platinum and the Cristal, you get in the life, it always goes away. Forever, you understand?”

Gray half nodded and quickly looked off to the group of boys standing on the corner. Strange felt impotent then. To Gray he wasn’t much more than a fool, and an old man in the bargain. This much he knew.

“Look here,” said Strange. “You still up for my football camp?”

“Yeah, I’ll play.”

“I hear you
can
play.”

“You
know
I can.”

“We’re gonna start the camp in August. Now, all the boys who play for me, they need to show me their last report card from the school year. So I want you to finish up strong.”

“I’ll do all right. But how I’m gonna get over there to where y’all practice?”

“I’ll work that out,” said Strange, realizing that he hadn’t figured it out yet. But he would. “All right then, why don’t you get on home before it gets dark.”

“I will, in a little while.”

“Take care of yourself, young man.”

Gray wheeled off on his bike and joined his friends. Strange got back in his car.

Strange phoned Quinn from his cell as he drove across Anacostia. Quinn told him that he was outside the address given on Olivia Elliot, and he was getting ready to confirm. He asked Strange for the son’s name. Strange gave it to him and told Quinn that if he needed him he could reach him at Janine’s house, which he had not yet gotten used to calling home.

Strange was looking forward to holding his woman and talking to his stepson, sitting at the dinner table, just being with the ones he loved. Seeing the things he saw out here every day, he figured he deserved a couple of hours of that kind of peace.

He turned the radio on and moved the dial to PGC. The Super Funk Regulator was on the air, talking to a woman who had called in from her car.

“Where you at right now?” asked the DJ.

“I’m on Benning Road, headed home from work.”

“Who you goin’ to see?”

“My son Darius,” said the woman giggling, obviously hyped to be on the radio and live. “He’s ten years old.”

“You have a good one,” said the DJ. “Thanks for rollin’ with a brother.”

“Thanks for lettin’ a sister roll.”

Strange smiled. He did love D.C.

IT was Terry Quinn’s habit to keep a paperback western on the car seat beside him when he was on a job, since there were often long stretches during surveillance when he found himself with little to do. Today he had brought along
They Came to Cordura,
an out-of-print novel by Glendon Swarthout, from the used-book store where he worked in downtown Silver Spring. Sitting in his vintage hopped-up Chevelle, looking at the group of boys playing outside the building where Olivia Elliot had apparently settled, he didn’t think he’d have that extra reading time to kill.

He was on a street numbered in the high fifties, in the neighborhood of Lincoln Heights, a residential mix of single-family homes and apartments at the forty-five-degree angle of border close to the Maryland line. This portion of the city, on the east side of the Anacostia River, was called Far Northeast, just as Anacostia was known as Far Southeast by many who lived in that part of town.

Nearby was the W. Bruce Evans Middle School. Administrators there had recently sent a group of “problem students” to the D.C. Jail to be strip-searched in front of prisoners, one of whom had masturbated in plain sight as he watched the kids disrobe. Some District school official had apparently decided to reenact an unauthorized version of Scared Straight. Quinn wondered how that “strategy” would have settled with the parents of problem kids out in well-off Montgomery County or in D.C.’s mostly white, mostly rich Ward 3. But this controversy would fade, as this was a part of the city rarely seen by commuters and generally ignored by the press, out of sight and easily forgotten.

Lincoln Heights was not all that far from Anacostia, a couple of bus rides away. If Olivia Elliot was trying to put some distance between herself and Mario Durham, she had made only a half-hearted effort. But Quinn wasn’t surprised. Washingtonians were parochial like that; even those who were running from something didn’t like to run too far.

He grabbed a blank envelope from the glove box and neatly wrote “Olivia Elliot” across its face. He folded a sheet of blank notebook paper, slipped it inside the envelope, and sealed it. Then he got out of his car, locked it down, and crossed the street.

There were plenty of kids, girls as well as boys, out of doors, though the sun had dropped and dusk had arrived. School was nearly done for the year, and if there was any parental supervision to begin with, it was even more lax this time of year. As Quinn went down the sidewalk toward the kids he saw rows of buzzers in the foyers of the attached homes, indicating that these houses had been subdivided into apartments. An alley split the block halfway, leading to a larger alley that ran behind the row of houses. Not unusual, as nearly every residential street in town had an alley running behind it, another layout quirk unique to D.C.

Quinn stopped close to the address Strange had given him, where four boys had built a ramp from a piece of wood propped up on some bricks in the street. A kid on a silver Huffy with pegs coming out of the rear axle circled the group.

“Hey,” said Quinn. “Any of you guys know where I can find Mark Elliot?”

A couple of the boys snickered and looked Quinn’s way, but none of them replied. The kid on the bike pulled a wheelie and breezed by.

“He might be new in the neighborhood,” added Quinn.

They continued to ignore him, so he walked on. He saw some girls on the next corner, one of them sitting atop a mailbox, and he decided to see if he would fare better with them.

He heard, “Hey, you guys!” in a straight, white voice, and then, “He might be new in the neighborhood!” in the same kind of voice, and then he heard the boys’ laughter behind him. Quinn felt his blood rise immediately; it was hard for him to handle any kind of disrespect. He wondered, as he always did, if he would have been cracked on down here, like these kids were cracking on him now, if he were black.

“Mister,” said a voice behind him, and he turned. It was the kid on the bike, who had followed him down the street.

“Yeah.”

“You lookin’ for Mark?”

Quinn stopped walking. “Are you Mark?”

The kid pulled up alongside him and stopped the bike. He was young, lean, with an inquisitive face. “Your face is all pink. You all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“You
mad
, huh?”

“No, I’m all right.”

“Shoot, they’re only messin’ with you because you’re white.”

“Y’all think there’s something wrong with that?”

“I don’t know. It’s just, we don’t see too many white dudes around here, is all it is. And when we do see ’em, they act like they scared.”

“I’m not scared,” said Quinn. “Do I look scared to you?”

“Yeah, okay. But why you lookin’ to get up with me?”

“You’re Mark Elliot, then.”

“Yeah, I’m Mark.”

“I was looking for your mother.” Quinn held up the envelope. “I gotta give her this.”

“You a police?”

“No.”

“A bill collector, right? ’Cause, listen, she left out of here a while ago and I don’t know where she’s at.”

“She’s gonna be back soon?”

“I prob’ly won’t see her. I’m gonna be watchin’ the Lakers game tonight over at my uncle’s. He’s fixin’ to pick me up right about now.”

“Listen, Mark. I’m not looking to hurt her; I’m trying to give her something. She entered a contest. A raffle, you know what that is?”

“Like they do at church.”

Quinn nodded. “She won a prize.”

“What kind of prize?”

“I’m not allowed to say what it is to anyone but her. And I need to put this in her hand.”

“She’s out gettin’ a pack of cigarettes.”

“Thought you didn’t know where she was.”

“Just give it here,” said Mark, reaching out his hand. “I’ll make sure she gets it.”

“I can’t. It’s against the rules. I’ll drop it by later.” Quinn eye-motioned toward a redbrick structure, two houses back. “I know where you live. You’re up on the third floor, right?”

“We in two-B,” said Mark, and his features dropped then. He knew he had made a mistake. He kicked ineffectually at some gravel in the street. “Dag,” he said under his breath.

“I’ll come back,” said Quinn. “Thanks, Mark.”

Quinn began to walk quickly back toward his car. The kid followed on his bike.

“What’s your name?” said Mark, cruising alongside Quinn.

“Can’t tell you that,” said Quinn, who kept up his pace. “It’s against the rules.”

“I told you mines.”

Quinn didn’t answer. He went by the group of boys in the street, who appeared not to notice him at all this time, and he put his key to the driver’s lock of his car.

“Is it fast?” said Mark, who had stopped his bike and was standing behind Quinn.

“Yeah, it’s fast,” said Quinn, opening the door.

“You live out in Maryland, huh?”

Quinn figured the boy had made his plates. Quinn kept his mouth shut and started to get into his car.

“You don’t want to talk to me no more, huh?”

Quinn turned and faced the boy. “Look, you’re a good kid. I’d like to talk to you some more and all that, but I gotta go.”

“If I’m good, then why’d you want to go and do me like you did?”

“Like how?”

“You tricked me, mister.”

“Listen, I gotta get goin’.”

Quinn settled in the driver’s seat and closed the door. He looked once more at the kid, who was staring at him with disappointment, something worse than anger or hate.

Quinn cranked the engine and rolled down the block. He found East Capitol and took it west.

Just before Benning Road, Quinn pulled over beside St. Luke’s Church and let the Chevelle idle. He found Mario Durham’s cell number in his notebook and punched the number into the grid of his own cell. Mario Durham answered on the third ring.

“Mario,” said Quinn. “It’s Terry Quinn, Strange’s partner. I got an address for you.”

“Damn, boy, that was fast.”

“I know it,” said Quinn, his jaw tight. “Write this down.”

Minutes later, driving across Benning Bridge over the Anacostia River, he noticed that his fingers were white and bloodless on the wheel.

Quinn knew, as every seasoned investigator knew, that to find a parent you always went first to the kid. Relatives and neighbors rarely gave up another adult to an investigator or anyone who looked like a cop. But kids did, often without thought. Kids were more trusting, and you used that trust. If you were in this game, and it was a game of sorts, this was one of the first things you learned.

So Quinn was doing his job. But he couldn’t get Mark Elliot’s face, his look of disappointment, out of his head. Quinn should have been up with the buzz of success. Instead he was ashamed.

MARIO Durham noticed that the letter
J
had fallen off the word
Jordan
, printed real big across one of his sneakers, while he was riding the bus down Minnesota Avenue. He had those red, black, and white ones from last year he had bought off this dude said he didn’t want the old style in his closet anymore. They had looked good to Durham, but now he realized maybe he had got beat for twenty-five dollars. If he was here now, his brother, Dewayne, would say, That’s what you get for buying used shoes. But he had smelled the insides before he bought them, and they were clean, like they still sitting on the shelf at Foot Locker. They had looked all right to him.