“Saw your woman,” said Durham, after enjoying a long sip of beer. “She looked good.”

“Thank you, man,” said Foreman.

It made Durham kinda sick just to think about her. Why it was, he wondered, that black men who went for white women always went for the most fugly ones. When a white boy had a black woman she always seemed to be fine. You could bet money on that shit damn near every time.

Foreman’s woman, she had come to the door in some JCPenney’s-lookin’ outfit, no makeup on her face and wine breath coming out her big mouth. Looked like she just dragged her elephant ass out of bed; must have remembered that it was feeding time, sumshit like that. Talkin’ about, “How you two be doin’?” A big-ass, ugly-ass white girl trying to talk black, her idea of it, anyway, from ten years ago.

“Yeah,” said Durham, “she looked good.”

“She’s gettin’ her rest,” said Foreman.

Foreman took a Cuban out of a wooden box on the glass table before him, clipped it with a silver tool set beside the box, and lit the cigar. He got a nice draw going and sat back.

“Saw your brother, Mario, today,” said Foreman casually, as if it had just come into his mind.

“So did I,” said Durham. “Just a little while ago.”

“This was in the morning,” said Foreman. “I had a little transaction with him.”

“Yeah?”

“No big thing. Rented him a gun. Traded him five days’ worth for a little bit of hydro he was holding.”

Walker glanced over at Durham. No one said anything for a while, as Foreman had expected. But he wanted his business with Twigs to be up front, on the outside chance that some kind of problem came up later on.

Durham’s eyes went a little dark. “Now why you want to do that? I’d get you some smoke, you needed it.”

“Well, for some reason, Mario’s always got the best chronic.” Foreman chuckled. “The older I get, seems I need the potent shit to get me high.”

“What, mine don’t get you up?”

“The truth? It hasn’t lately. When Mario lays some on me, I trip behind it.”

’Cause what I give to Mario, I give to him out of my private stash, thought Durham. And you know this.

Durham exhaled slowly, trying to ignore the ache in his stomach. “What he needs a gun for, anyway?”

“Said he was lookin’ to make an impression on someone. I didn’t get the feeling he was gonna use it.”

“He ain’t say nothin’ to me.”

“Boy’s harmless, though, right?”

Durham cut his eyes away from Foreman. “He ain’t gonna do nothin’, most likely.” He did believe this in his heart.

“What I thought, too. Now look, he didn’t want me to tell you. Didn’t want to worry you or y’all’s moms. But I just thought it might be better if you knew.”

“Okay, then.”

“We all right, dawg?”

Durham nodded. “Yeah, we’re good.”

“We better be gone,” said Walker, placing his empty pilsner on the table.

“Gotta see the troops get out for the night,” said Durham.

“I’ll get you a bag for your guns,” said Foreman.

Durham pulled a roll of cash from out of his jeans. “Fourteen, right?”

“Fifteen,” said Foreman, standing from his chair.

“Why you want to do me like that?” said Durham, but Foreman was ignoring him, already walking toward a side room where he kept his supplies.

FOREMAN stood on the stoop of his house, watching the Benz go down the drive. He was under a pink awning that Ashley loved but he hated. It was a little thing, though, one of them concessions you make to a woman, so he told her that he liked the awning, too.

He had played it right, telling Dewayne about Mario and the gun. Now there wouldn’t be no misunderstanding later on. If Dewayne didn’t like it, well, next time he’d give him some of that good smoke he kept in the family. Everything was negotiation in this business, nothing but a game.

“It go okay?” said Ashley, coming up behind him with a fresh glass of wine in her hand.

“Went good.” Foreman put his arm around her waist, looked her over, then kissed her neck. “Those boys were noticing you.”

“You jealous?”

“I don’t think you’re goin’ anywhere.”

“You got that right, boyfriend.”

“I better keep an eye on you, though. Fine as you look, someone might try to steal you out from under me.”

“That’s where they’d have to steal me from, too.”

Foreman kissed Ashley on the mouth. She bit his lower lip, and they both laughed as he pulled away.

Chapter 9

YOU ever been back in there?” said Strange, looking through the windshield to the brick wall bordering St. Elizabeth’s.

“Once,” said Devra Stokes. “This girl and me jumped the wall when we was like, twelve.”

“I interviewed a witness there, a couple of years back.”

“Hinckley?”

“Naw, not Hinckley.”

“I was just playin’ with you.”

“I know it.”

They sat in the Caprice, across from the institution, eating soft ice cream from cups that they had purchased at the drive-through of McDonald’s. Juwan, Devra’s son, sat in the backseat, licking the drippings off a cone.

“It was this dude, though,” said Strange, “had pleaded insanity on a manslaughter charge, we thought he might have some information on another case. He seemed plenty sane to me. Anyway, we sat on a bench they have on the grounds, faces west, gives you a nice look at the whole city. This is the high ground up here. Those people they got in there, they got the best view of D.C.”

“I wouldn’t mind getting taken care of like they take care of those folks in there. You ever think like that?”

“It’s crossed my mind, in the same way that it would be easy to be old. Walk around wearing the same raggedy sweater every day, don’t even have to shave or mind your hair. But I don’t want to be an old man. And I wouldn’t want to be locked up anywhere, would you?”

“Sometimes I think, you know, not to have all this pressure all the time… not to have to think about how I’m gonna make it for me and Juwan, just for a while, I mean. That would be nice.”

“I know it’s got to be rough, raising him as a single parent,” said Strange.

“I got bills,” said Devra.

“Phil Wood’s not taking care of you and your little boy?”

“Juwan’s not his. Juwan’s father -”

“Mama!”

Devra turned her head. The boy’s ice cream had dripped and some of it had found its way onto the vinyl seat. Devra used the napkin in her hand to clean the boy’s face, then wipe the seat.

“Mama,” said Juwan, “I spilt the ice cream.”

“Yes, baby,” said Devra, “I know.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Strange. “You see that red cushion back there? My dog sleeps on that, and he has his run of the car. So I ain’t gonna worry about no ice cream. This here is my work vehicle, anyway.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Ain’t no thing,” said Strange. “Look here, what about Juwan’s father, then?”

Devra shrugged. “He’s in Ohio now. They had him incarcerated out at Lorton, but they moved him a few months ago. Once a week, me and Juwan used to take the Metrobus, the one they ran special from the city, out there to see him. But now, with him so far and all, I don’t think Juwan’s even going to remember who his father is.”

Strange nodded at the familiar story. A young man fathered a child, then went off to do his jail time, his “rite of passage.” Lorton, the local prison in northern Virginia, was slowly being closed down, its inhabitants moved to institutions much farther away. Lorton’s proximity to the District had allowed prisoners and their families to remain in constant contact, but that last tie between many fathers and their children was ending now, too. Juwan’s future, like the futures of many of the children who had been born into these circumstances, did not look promising.

“Can’t Phil help you out with some money?”

“Phil’s got no reason to give me money. He had a whole rack of girls. I was just one.”