T. C. COOK SAT AT his kitchen table, drinking a cup of coffee. From back in the office, he could hear the squawk, dispatcher’s voice, and patrolman’s response coming from the Internet site on his computer. It was often the sole sound in his otherwise quiet house. The woman the VA sent, the El Salvador lady, she made some noise around here, livened things up. He looked forward to her visits, but she only came once a week.
Mostly, his days were long on boredom. He got up early, made out what he could of the newspaper, then spent time in his office or the workshop in his basement, looking for something to do. He waited for his mail around noon and took longer than necessary to prepare his lunch. He fought off but often succumbed to an afternoon nap. He tried not to watch too much television, though that was something he could do without frustration. But it was a passive activity, all take and no give. Cook was someone who had always lived for goals, and now he had none.
He wasn’t mentally weak. He had more reason than most to be unhappy, but he would not allow himself the out of depression. There was little upside for him to getting out of bed in the morning, but he did so and dressed before breakfast, as a man would who was headed off to work.
Getting involved with the church was an option, but he wasn’t much of a Jesus type. His wife had been a devout Baptist, a woman of strong faith. Some police clung to God, but the job and what he had seen produced the opposite effect on Cook. Now that he was closer to death, it would have been easy and understandable for him to fall back into churchgoing, but also, he felt, hypocritical. He had not been an attentive or particularly model husband, but he had loved his wife and been faithful to her, and if there was a God, and if indeed He was good, Cook believed that He would see fit to put him and Willa together again, whether Cook attended Sunday services or not.
Cook stared into his empty coffee mug.
His doctor had said to have only one cup a day, if he had any at all. That caffeine made his heart race, and Cook didn’t need that. Thing of it was, the doctor had also told him that the likelihood of his having another stroke was high, and when it came, it could be worse than the last. Wasn’t like not having a second cup of coffee was going to prevent that.
His circulatory system was fragile, the doctor said. No, I cannot tell you how long it will be before “the next event.” Could be weeks and it could be years. All those decades of smoking and poor diet. We wish we could do more for you, Mr. Cook. Another operation would be too risky. Unfortunately. Continue to lead an active but careful life. Take your medication. Bullshit piled on top of bullshit, on and on.
Cook looked over at the kitchen counter. He had one of those organizers, two pills in each compartment, separated by days of the week. So he wouldn’t forget a day, or forget he had taken the pills already and swallow double the dose. This is what it had come to for him. If he lived past the next stroke, he would probably be one of those dudes, had dead arms and legs. Then the VA would have someone dropping by to bathe him. Put one of those bibs on him while he ate. Send some poor immigrant lady to wipe his old man’s ass.
He’d sooner eat his gun. But that was a thought for another day.
Holiday had called. Cook had then phoned an old friend in the 4th District whom he had mentored in the early ’80s, now a commanding officer. Cook told the lieutenant that an officer in 4D had done his niece a kindness and she wanted to write a letter commending him, but she could only remember the number she’d seen on his car. Cook had no niece, and the lieutenant’s hesitation told him that he sensed the lie, but he gave the information out to Cook just the same. When Cook asked about the officer’s schedule, the lieutenant told him, after a long pause, that he was on an eight-to-four that day.
Holiday would come, and they could get to work. The young man carried heavy baggage, but he had energy and fire. Maybe the two of them would turn over the right rock.
Cook went out to his car, a light gold Mercury Marquis with a blue-star FOP sticker on the rear window, and opened the trunk. He suspected that he and Holiday would be working a tail late in the day and that they would take two cars. He knew what was in the trunk, knew he had not moved its contents, but he was a little bit excited and wanted to have a look at his things.
He kept the car maintenance items here, including oil, antifreeze, jumper cables, brake and power steering fluid, shop rags, a tire patch kit, and a pneumatic jack. There was one Craftsman box holding standard tools and another holding a 100-foot retractable tape measure, duct tape, 10 ￥ 50 binoculars, night vision goggles he’d never used, a box of latex gloves, a friction-lock expandable baton, a set of Smith and Wesson blued handcuffs, a variety of batteries, a digital camera that Cook did not know how to operate, and a Streamlight Stinger rechargeable steel-cased flashlight, which could double as a weapon. Also in the trunk was a steel jimmy bar.
All was in place. Holiday would not be by for a while. Cook decided to go back in the house and pull his Hoppe’s kit and .38. He had time to clean his gun.
MICHAEL “MIKEY” TATE AND Ernest “Nesto” Henderson sat in a pretty black Maxima, the new style with the four pipes coming out the back, in the lot of a strip mall on Riggs Road in Northeast D.C., not far from the Maryland line. There was a dollar store, pawnbroker, liquor store, Chinese-and-sub shop, check-cashing joint, papusa place, and two hairstyling shops. One specialized in nails and the other, called Hair Raisers, was known for braids and hair extensions. Chantel Richards was employed at Hair Raisers. Henderson could see her through the front window, standing behind a woman in a chair, both of them running their mouths as Richards did her job. It was Henderson who was doing most of the surveillance. Tate was leafing through the latest Vogue.
“Damn, she fine, though,” said Henderson.
“That is a lot of woman,” said Tate, looking up. He was wearing big jeans, a long-sleeved Lacoste shirt, and matching shoes with the little alligators stitched on the sides.
“She tall, too,” said Henderson, who wore a blue Nationals cap, the away game version, not because he followed baseball but because the color matched his shirt. The cap was tilted slightly on his head.
“Her hair makes her look taller than she is,” said Tate. “Plus, she might be wearing high heels. These fashion girls like to get that height thing goin. Makes ’em look more slim.”
“She fat where it counts.”
“She dresses right for the type of body she got.”
“Where you read that, in that girl magazine?”
“I’m just sayin. She got that effect she was going for.” Tate noticed women’s clothing, their shoes and jewelry, how they carried themselves, all that. He was interested, was all it was. But he didn’t talk about it much around Nesto, who thought that reading magazines about such things, and indeed reading of any kind, was gay.
“I worry about you, son.”
“I’m just admiring her effort, is all.”
“Yeah, well, we been admiring her long enough.”
“I ain’t happy about it, either. My ass hurts from sittin out here, too.”
“Sure it don’t hurt from something else?”
“Huh?”
“Has someone been puttin their pork inside you?”
“Fuck you, dawg.”
“You read them fashion magazines all the time; I worry.”
“Least I can read.”
“While you gettin pounded from behind.”
“Go on, Nesto.”
They were coworkers, but they had little in common. Michael Tate had arrived at where he was as a transfer point to someplace else. He was like all those waiters in New York he’d read about, who weren’t waiters for real but actors who were on the way to being movie and television stars. That’s how Tate thought of himself. He wasn’t about working a minimum-wage thing, though, until he blew up. No way was he going to leave out his house without a nice outfit on or money in his pocket, because he was like that. So here he was.
His older brother, William, now incarcerated, had been in the trade with Raymond Benjamin when both of them were young, and when Benjamin had come uptown from prison, he had put Michael on. But Michael Tate was smart enough to know that the money, as good as it was, was just walking-around money compared to what those clothing designers made. If soft-ass rappers could do it, shit, why couldn’t Michael Tate?
Question was, how did you go from here to there? He guessed the way to start was to work on getting his GED. But that was a conversation he would have with himself another time.
For now he was stuck with Nesto Henderson, in a shit-on-your-shoe parking lot, keeping an eye on a young woman who probably had hurt no one. Being called a faggy by this Bama who got no * himself but who felt the need to call him names because he read magazines. To top it off, his stomach was growling, too.
“I’m hungry,” said Tate.
“Go over there to that slope house and get a steak and cheese, then. Matter of fact, get me one while you’re at it.”
“How you so stupid? You don’t never buy a sub from a place got Chinese food, too. And you don’t never eat no Chinese from a place sells subs.”
“I’m not having no Pedro food,” said Henderson, speaking of the papusa place.
“Look, she ain’t goin nowhere for a while. She got her client to take care of, and anyway, it’s too early in the day for her to get off. Let’s find someplace and eat some real food, come on back later.”
Henderson looked at Chantel Richards, admiring the movement of her hips as she listened to the music they were playing in the shop. “Shame if we had to kill her. Ain’t too many champions walkin around like that.”
“We just supposed to follow her to where she layin up with that Romeo.”
“I’m just sayin, we might have to.” Henderson nodded at the ignition. “Come on, let’s go.”
Tate started the Nissan and pulled out of their space. He stopped at the yellow up on Riggs and was careful to use his turn signal at the intersection beyond. There were live guns under the seats, and he did not want to risk being pulled over by the law.
Nesto Henderson had put work in. Least, he claimed he had. Michael Tate could take care of himself and physically protect Raymond Benjamin if he had to, but he hadn’t signed up for the doom squad. After all, Benjamin had told him that he was done with that part of the game himself.
I ain’t about to kill no woman, thought Michael Tate. That ain’t me.