Right as Rain (17 page)

QUINN
was shaking the shoulder of a guy called himself Moon—man, sleeping by the space heater in the room at the back of the shop. Moonman’s clothes were courtesy of Shepherd’s Table, and he showered and ate in the new Progress Place, a shelter off Georgia, behind the pool hall and pawnshops, back along the Metro tracks. Daytime he spent out on the street. Today was a cold one, and when it got bitter like this Quinn let Moonman sleep in the science fiction room in the back.

“Hey, Moon. Wake up, buddy, you gotta get going. Syreeta’s coming in, and you know she doesn’t like you sleeping back here.”

“All right.”

Moon got himself to his feet. He hadn’t been using the showers at Progress Place all that often. That bad smell of street person that was body odor and cigarettes and alcohol and rot came off him, and Quinn backed up a step as Moon got his bearings. There were crumbs of some kind and egg yolk crusted in his beard. Quinn had given him the coat he was wearing, an old charcoal REI winter number with a blue lining. It was the warmest coat Quinn had ever owned.

“Take this,” said Quinn, handing him a dollar bill, enough for a cup of coffee, not enough for a drink.

“A ducat,” said Moon, examining the one. “Do you know, the term refers to an actual gold coin, a type of currency formerly used in Europe? The word was appropriated as slang by twentieth—century African Americans. Over the years it’s become a standard term in the Ebonic vocabulary… .”

“That’s nice,” said Quinn, gently steering Moonman out of the room toward the front door.

“I’ll spend it well.”

As he walked behind him, Quinn saw the paperback wedged in a back pocket of Moonman’s sorry trousers. “And bring that book back when you’re done.”

“
The Stars My Destination,
by Bester. It’s not just a book, Terry. It is a mind—blowing journey, a literary achievement of Olympian proportions… .”

“Bring it back when you’re done.”

Quinn watched Moonman walk out the front door. People in the neighborhood liked to treat Moon as their pet intellectual, speculating on how such a “mentally gifted guy” could slip through society’s cracks, but Quinn didn’t have any interest in listening to Moonman’s ramblings. He let Moonman sleep in the back because it was cold outside, and he gave him his coat because he didn’t care to see him die.

Quinn stopped by the arts and entertainment room and looked inside the open door. A middle—aged guy with dyed hair and liver lips studied a photography book called
Kids Around the World.
He faced the wall and held the book close to his chest. He had the same look as the wet—eyed fat guy who hung back in the hobbies and sports room, and the young white man with the very short haircut, his face pale and acned, who lingered in the military history room and stared half smiling at the photos in the Nazi—atrocity books shelved there. Quinn recognized them all: the ineffectual losers and the creeps and the pedophiles, all the friendless fucks who didn’t really want to hurt anyone but who always did. Syreeta said to leave them alone, that the books were a healthy kind of outlet for their unhealthy desires, the alternative was that they would be out there on the street.

Quinn knew that they
were
out there on the street. Syreeta was all right, a good woman with good intentions, but Quinn had seen things for real and she had not. Sick motherfuckers, all of them. He’d like to get them all in one room and —

“Hey, Terry.” It was Lewis, standing before him, a box of hardbacks in his arms. Lewis’s eyeglasses had slipped down to the tip of his nose. “I finished racking the new vinyl. Now I’ve got to get these fictions shelved. You want to watch the register for me?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Quinn went up to the front of the shop. He phoned Juana to confirm their date for that evening. He’d had a long phone conversation with her the previous night. He’d gotten an erection just talking to her, listening to the sound of her voice. It was driving him crazy, thinking of her eyes, her hair, those dark nipples, that warm pussy, her fine hands. It had been that way with other girls who’d turned him on, but this was
different,
yeah, he wanted to hit it, but he wanted to just
be
with her, too. He left a message on her machine.

Quinn went behind the register counter and read some of
Desperadoes,
a western by Ron Hansen. It was one of his favorites, a classic, and he was reading it for the second time, but he found it hard to concentrate, and he set the book down. He stood and flipped through the used albums in the bins beside the register area. Another Natalie Cole had come in, along with a Brothers Johnson, a Spooky Tooth, and a Haircut 100. He picked up a record that had a bunch of seventies—looking black guys on its cover, three different pictures of them jumping around out on a landing strip. He read the title on the album and smiled.

The bell over the door chimed as Syreeta Janes walked into the shop. Syreeta was at the tail end of her forties, on the heavy side, with a nice brown freckled face, high cheekbones, and deep chestnut eyes. Half of her time was spent in the shop, the other half at book conventions or in her home office, working on her Web site, where she bought and sold rare paperbacks. She wore her usual, a vest and shirt arrangement worn out over a flowing long skirt and clogs, with a brightly colored kufi atop dreads. Lewis, in one of his less serious moments, had described her look as “Harlem by way of Takoma Park.”

“Terry.”

“Syreeta.”

“Taking off?”

“Soon as my ride comes. I might be asking for more time off, too.”

“Long as Lewis covers, I don’t mind.” Syreeta put her canvas bag down on the glass counter. “Don’t you need the money, though?”

“My pension’s keeping me flush.”

Quinn looked out the window as a white Caprice pulled to the curb. He rang the register, put money in the drawer, and cradled the record he had found in the bin as he grabbed his leather off the tree.

“That your ride?”

“Yeah.”

“Looks like a cop car.”

“It is.”

“Terry?”

“Huh.”

“Smells funky in here.”

“Moonman. He borrowed a paperback, too.
The Stars My Destination,
you want to knock it off the inventory.”

“That’s a good one.”

“Olympian,” said Quinn.

“You’re gonna let him sleep here,” said Syreeta, “spray a little Lysol through the place before I get in.”

Quinn didn’t hear her. He was already out the door.

Chapter
16

A
FTER
I went through all that trouble,” said Strange, “now you’re gonna tell me you can’t go?”

“I apologize,” said Lattimer. “I know you went and got the tickets and all that, but Cheri said she doesn’t want to go to some dark auditorium and watch two men beat the fuck out of each other all night.”

“That girl of yours must be special, you gonna pass up tickets to a title bout. This is a Don King production, too, ain’t no thing someone’s puttin’ on in their basement. You should have told me she was gonna act like that before I bought the tickets, man.”

“I didn’t know.”

Strange watched Quinn cross the street, a record under his arm. “There he is.”

“What’s with white boys and flannel shirts?” said Lattimer. “A chain saw come with that outfit when he bought it?”

“Everybody’s got their own thing.”

“He don’t look all that violent to me. And he doesn’t look like a cop.”

“He is on the short side,” said Strange. “But, trust me, he can rise up.”

Quinn opened the passenger—side door and got into the backseat.

“Terry. Meet Ron Lattimer, an investigator on my staff.”

“Ron, how you doin’?”

“I’m makin’ out.”

Quinn reached his hand over the front bench, and Lattimer shook it.

“What you got there, Terry?” said Strange.

“It’s for you.”

Quinn passed the Blackbyrds’
Flying Start
up to Strange. Strange smiled as he examined the cover. He opened it and studied the inner sleeve, a photo of the group in an airplane hangar.

“Damn, boy. On the Fantasy label, too. I never thought I’d see one of these again.”

“It just came in today.”

Strange scanned the liner notes. “Just like I remember it. These boys were students at Howard when they cut this record. They were studying under Donald Byrd, see —”

“Derek,” said Lattimer, “I got things to do this afternoon.”

“Yeah, okay, right.” Strange put the record on the seat beside him. “Y’all hungry?”

“There’s a Vietnamese around the corner,” said Quinn. “The soup there rocks.”

“I’m into that,” said Strange.

Strange engaged the trans and pulled off the curb. He went up to Georgia, turned left at Quinn’s direction, and drove south. At the stoplight he opened the record again, chuckled to himself as he checked out the period threads and oversized lids on the members of the group.

“That was real nice of you, Terry.”

“I know you’re not looking for any friends,” said Quinn, catching Strange’s eyes in the rearview. “I just thought you’d like it, that’s all.”

STRANGE
, Lattimer, and Quinn got a window table at My—Le, a former beer garden, now a
pho
house on Selim. Their view gave to the traffic on Georgia Avenue and the railroad tracks beyond.

“They’re doing something over there,” said Quinn, nodding to the station by the tracks. A blue tarp covered the roof, and plywood boards had replaced the windows.

“Looks like they’re restoring it,” said Lattimer.

“Either that or tearing it down. They’re always tearing down things here now.”

“Get rid of all these pawnshops —”

“Yeah, and the nail and braid parlors, and the barbershops, and the cobbler and the key maker, the speed shops and auto parts stores … the kinds of places working people use every day. So the yuppie homeowners can brag that they’ve got the music—and—book superstore, and the boutique grocery store, and the Starbucks, just like their counterparts across town.”

“I take it,” said Strange, “you’re not all the way into the revital—ization of Silver Spring.”

“They’re erasing all of my memories,” said Quinn. “And to tell you the truth, I kind of like the decay.”

The lone waiter, a genial guy named Daniel who painted houses on the side, served them their soup and fresh lemonade.

Lattimer stared into his bowl and frowned. “There’s none of that bible tripe or tendon or nothin’ like that in there, is it?”

“Number fifteen,” said Quinn. “Nothing but eye round.”

The soup was a rich mixture of rice noodles, meat, and broth, with bean sprouts, hot green pepper, lime, and fresh mint served on the side. Strange and Quinn prepared theirs and added hot garlic sauce from a squeeze bottle. Lattimer slung his tie back over his shoulder, watched them, and followed suit.

“Were you a cop, too?” asked Quinn, the fragrant steam from the soup warming his face.

“Me?” said Lattimer. “Nah.”

“He didn’t like the way the uniforms were cut,” said Strange.

“Go ahead, Derek. I always wanted to do the kind of investigative work I’m doing right now. Never wanted to do anything else. Besides, you don’t mind my sayin’ so, all the problems they got on the force, I feel lucky I
didn’t
join up.”

“There’s a helluva lot more good cops on the force than there are mediocre ones,” said Quinn. “And there’s not many who are plain bad. The ones who weren’t ready to be out on the street, that wasn’t their fault. The situation you had back then, the fish stank from the head down.”

“That explain all those shootings?” said Strange.

“Firing on unarmed suspects, firing at moving vehicles …” said Lattimer, picking up the ball from Strange.

“Who’s gonna decide whether they’re armed or unarmed in the heat of the moment, when some guy’s reaching into his jacket, huh?” said Quinn. “In this climate we got now, out there on the street? With all the criminals having access to guns, the attitudes, the cold—blooded murder of cops … it’s not much of a leap to make the assumption that if you’re wearing a uniform, you’re in harm’s way. Look, man, what I’m trying to tell you is, a lot of us out there, we were scared. Can you understand that?”

Lattimer didn’t answer, but he held Quinn’s gaze.

Strange broke apart his chopsticks and used them to find some eye round in the bottom of his bowl. “Like I said, that doesn’t explain everything.”

“It’s complicated,” said Quinn. “
You
know that. You were out there, Derek. You
know.
”

“All right, then,” said Strange. “You had a couple of brutality complaints in your file, right?” He swallowed meat and noodles and wiped a napkin across his mouth.

“That’s right,” said Quinn. “So did Chris Wilson. So do a lot of cops. Legitimate or no, once a complaint gets made, it stays in your file.”

“What were yours about?”

“Mine were about bullshit,” said Quinn. “Guy hits his head on the lip of the cruiser’s back door when you’re putting him in, guy claims you slapped the cuffs on him too tight… like that. It never goes into the report what was said to you, how many times
you’re
disrespected in the course of a night.”

Strange nodded. He remembered all of that very well. He remembered, too, how cops got hardened after a while, until what they saw in certain parts of town were not the citizens they had sworn to protect but potential criminals, men and women and children alike. A white cop looking at a black face, that was something further still.

“Listen,” said Quinn. “You guys remember a few years back, this black cop pulled over a drunken white woman, coming out of Georgetown or somewhere like it, late one night?”

“That’s the girl that cop handcuffed to a stop sign,” said Lat—timer, “made her sit her ass down in the cold street. Some photographer happened to be there, caught a picture of the whole thing.”

“Right,” said Quinn. “Now, Derek, tell me what you thought about that incident, the first time you read it.”

“I know what you’re gettin’ at,” said Strange. “That the police officer, he didn’t just do that to that girl for no reason. That she must have said something to him —”