IVAN LEWIS HAD BEEN called Fishhead most of his life because of his long face and the way his big eyes could see things without his having to turn his neck. It wasn’t that he looked like a real fish, but more that he looked liked a cartoon version of one. Even his mother, up to the day she passed, had called him Fish.
He was coming from his sister’s place, walking down Quincy Street in Park View, looking at what the new people were doing to the houses he had been knowing his whole life. He never thought Park View would gentrify, but the evidence of it was on every block. Young black and Spanish buyers with down-payment money were fixing up these old row homes, and some pioneer white folks were, too. Shoot, a couple of white boys had opened up a pizza parlor on Georgia earlier in the year. Whites starting up businesses again in the View, that was something Fishhead thought he’d never see.
Not that the gamers had gone away. There was plenty of dirt being done on this side of Georgia, especially down around the Section Eights on Morton. And the Spanish had gripped up much of the avenue’s west side, into Columbia Heights. But property owners were making improvements around here, house by house.
Fishhead Lewis wondered how a man like him was gonna fit in this town much longer. Once people put money into their homes, they didn’t want to see low-down types walking out front their properties, not even on the public sidewalks. These folks voted, so they could make things happen. Now you had politicians, like that ambitious light-skinned dude, councilman for that area up top of Georgia, trying to make laws about loitering and stopping cats from buying single cans of beer. Shoot, not everyone wanted a six-pack or could afford one. Friends of Fishhead said, “How they gonna discriminate?” Fishhead had to tell them, with money and power behind you, you damn sure could. The light-skinned dude, he didn’t really care about folks hanging out, and he didn’t care if a man wanted to enjoy himself one beer on a summer night. But he was running for mayor, so there it was.
He turned into an alley behind Quincy, up by Warder Place. There, idling down at the end of the alley, was a black Impala SS. They were waiting on him where they liked to do.
Fishhead did not have a payroll job. He made money by selling information. Heroin users were perfect for such work. They went places other people couldn’t go. They heard dope and murder gossip that went deeper than the ghetto telegraph of the stoop and the barbershop. They seemed harmless and pitiful, but they had ears, a brain, and a mouth that could speak. Addicts, testers, cutters, and prostitutes were inside to the extreme, and the best informants on the street.
Fishhead had got something that morning. He had heard about it from a boy he knew, worked at a cut house in lower LeDroit. Boy said some pure white was coming in tomorrow from New York, to be distributed by a man looking to become a player but not yet there. A man not plugged into a network, what they called a consortium, with other dealers. An independent with no one to watch his back but an underling who was hoping to go along for the ride.
Fishhead was looking to get out of his sister’s basement. It had been their mother’s house, but the sister had managed to claim it, and the inheritance, with the help of a lawyer. Because she did have a conscience, she allowed him a room downstairs, rent-free but with no kitchen privileges and a lock on the door leading up to the first floor. It was not much more than a mattress, a hot plate for cooking, a cooler, and a toilet with a stand-up shower, had roaches crawling on the floor. He didn’t blame her for treating him like a dog you didn’t let upstairs. All the shit he’d done to disappoint his family, he could understand it. But no man, not even a low-ass doper like him, should have to live like that.
This information he had today was his way out. He had been getting low that morning with his cut man friend when the dude started talking. Matter of fact, Fishhead had just pushed down on the plunger when the news came his way. He hoped he had heard it right.
Fishhead slipped into the backseat of the SS and settled down on the bench.
“Charlie the motherfuckin tuna,” said Brock, under the wheel. He did not turn his head but communicated with his eyes via the rearview. “What you got for us, slim?”
“Somethin,” said Fishhead. He liked the drama of giving it up slow. Also, he didn’t care for Romeo Brock. Slick boy, always looking down from his high horse. The quiet one, his older cousin, he was all right. And tougher than the boy with the mouth.
“Give it up,” said Brock. “I’m tired of these bullshit plays. Tired of shakin change out the pockets of kids.”
“That’s what you do,” said Fishhead. “Ya’ll rob independents got no protection. Most times, they be kids. If they was men, shit, they’d be connected, and it would come back on you.”
“Said I’m ready to move up from that.”
“Well, I got somethin.”
“Talk about it,” said Brock.
“Dude name of Tommy Broadus. Tryin to act like he big-time, but he just startin out. Came to the cut house where my friend works, inquiring about fees, all that. Said he got some white comin in. I’m talking about keys, and I’m hearin it’s tomorrow. My friend say this man can be got.”
“So? I ain’t want no fuckin dope. Do I look like a goddamn her-won salesman to you?”
“He gonna need to pay for the package, right? If he sending a mule to NYC, he gonna send the cash up with him. Seein as how he green with the New York connect, he surely don’t have no credit.”
“What about guns?” said Gaskins.
“Huh?”
“Even an amateur gonna have something behind him.”
“That’s on y’all,” said Fishhead. “I stay out the mechanics. I’m sayin, some big money gonna come out this man’s house this evening and some dope gonna come back in. I’m just passin this along.”
“When?” said Brock.
“After dark, but not too late. Mules don’t like to make that Ninety-five run when the traffic too thin. Look for a trap car, I’d expect. The Taurus is popular, or the Mercury sister car.”
“Where this man stay at?” said Brock.
Fishhead Lewis passed a slip of paper over the bench. Brock took it, read it, and slipped it into the breast pocket of his rayon shirt.
“How you get the address?” said Gaskins.
“Our man ran his name through the database, somethin. Parked on the street, watched him go in and out his house. He stayin in a detached in a residential area. Real quiet around there, too.”
“Not too smart, let yourself get seen so easy.”
“What I’m sayin. Man that sloppy can get took.”
“Where he get the money?” said Gaskins, thinking it through.
“By turning his inventory,” said Fishhead, now improvising but trying to sound as if he knew. “This here can’t be the first buy the man done made.”
“I’m askin, how we know this Tommy Broad-ass fella ain’t bein bankrolled by someone with power?”
“’Cause my man at the cut house said he was braggin on the fact that he all alone.”
Gaskins looked at Brock. He could see from his eager look that Brock had already decided to go. He was looking at the money, feeling it between his fingers, spending it on women and clothing, a suit in red. What he wasn’t doing was thinking it through.
“What’s he look like?” said Gaskins.
“Say what?”
“Wouldn’t want to take the wrong man.”
“My friend say he fat. Too old for the game, but I guess he startin late. Came to the cut house with a woman, had it all in the right places. Had a mouth on her, too. They was arguing over shit the whole time they was in there.”
“Anyone else?”
“Not that my man said.”
“You gonna earn somethin serious, this plays out,” said Brock. “Buy yourself a mermaid or sumshit.”
Fishhead forced a smile. His teeth were rotted, and there were scabs on his face.
“I been wonderin,” said Brock. “Do it smell like fish to a fish?”
“All day,” said Fishhead, who hadn’t had a clean woman in years.
“Get the fuck out. We’ll take it from here.”
Fishhead got out of the car, hiking his pants up as he moved along. Brock and Gaskins watched him walk down the alley, a pit bull barking at him furiously from behind chain-link as he passed.
Brock turned to Gaskins. “What you think?”
“I think we don’t know shit.”
“We know enough to park ourselves outside this man’s house and see what we can see.”
“I ain’t stayin out late. I gotta be at the shape-up spot at dawn.”
Brock punched a number into his cell.