Strange kept his voice even and his shoulders straight. He hoped his anger, and his fear, did not show on his face. Strange knew that even from in here, Oliver could have most anyone killed out on the street.

Oliver smiled, his face turning from hard to handsome. Like many who had attained his position, he was intelligent, despite his limited education, and could be a charming young man at will. When he relaxed his features, he favored his deceased father, a man Strange had known in the 1960s. Oliver had never known his father at all.

“I was just askin’ a question, big man. I don’t have many friends left, and I want to make sure that the ones I do have stay friends. We square, right?”

“We’re square.”

“Good. But, look here, don’t come up in here empty-handed next time. I could use some smokes or somethin’.”

“You know I can’t be bringin’ any contraband in here. They bar me from these meetings, it’s gonna be a setback for what we’re trying to accomplish.”

“I hear you. How about some porno mags, though?”

“I’ll see you next time.”

Strange stood.

“One more thing,” said Oliver.

“What is it?” said Strange.

“I was wonderin’ how Robert Gray was doin’?”

“He’s staying with his aunt.”

“She ain’t right.”

“I know it. But it’s the best I could do. I got him all pumped up about playing football for us this year. We’re gonna start him in the camp this summer, comin’ up.”

“That’s my little man right there. You’re gonna see, that boy can jook. Check up on him, will you?”

“I get the time, I’ll go by there today.”

“Thank you.”

“Stay strong, Granville.”

Strange signaled the fat man in the booth and walked from the room.

OUT in the air, on the 1900 block of D Street in Southeast, Derek Strange walked to his car. He dropped under the wheel of his work vehicle, a white-over-black ’89 Caprice with a 350 square block under the hood, and rolled down the window. He had a while to kill before meeting Quinn back at the office, and he didn’t want to face the ringing phone and the message slips spread out on his desk. He decided he would sit in his car and enjoy the quiet and the promise of a new day.

Strange poured a cup of coffee from the thermos he kept in his car. Coffee was okay for times like this, but he kept water in the thermos when he was doing a surveillance, because coffee went through him too quick. He only sipped the water when he knew he’d be in the car for a long stretch, and on those occasions he kept a cup in the car with a plastic lid on it, in which he could urinate as needed.

Strange tasted the coffee. Janine had brewed it for him that morning before he left the house. The woman could cook, and she could make some coffee, too.

Strange picked up the newspaper beside him on the bench, which he had snatched off the lawn outside Janine’s house earlier that morning on his way to the car. He pulled the Metro section free and scanned the front page. The Washington Post was running yet another story today in a series documenting the ongoing progress of the Granville Oliver trial.

Oliver had allegedly been involved in a dozen murders, including the murder of his own uncle, while running the Oliver Mob, a large-scale, longtime drug business operating in the Southeast quadrant of the city. The Feds were seeking death for Oliver under the RICO act, despite the fact that the District’s residents had overwhelmingly rejected the death penalty in a local referendum. The combination of racketeering and certain violent crimes allowed the government to exercise this option. The last execution in D.C. had been carried out in 1957.

The jury selection process had taken several months, as it had been difficult to find twelve local residents unopposed to capital punishment. During this time, Oliver’s attorneys, from the firm of Ives and Colby, had employed Strange to gather evidence, data, and countertestimony for the defense.

Strange skipped the article, jumping inside Metro to page 3. His eyes went to a daily crime column unofficially known by longtime Washingtonians as “the Roundup,” or the “Violent Negro Deaths.” The first small headline read, “Teen Dies of Gunshot Wounds,” and beneath it were two sentences: “An 18-year-old man found with multiple gunshot wounds in Southeast Washington died early yesterday at Prince George’s County Hospital Center, police said. The unidentified man was found just after midnight in the courtyard area behind the Stoneridge apartments in the 300 block of Anacostia Road, and was pronounced dead at 1:03 A.M.”

Two sentences, thought Strange. That’s all a certain kind of kid in this town’s gonna get to sum up his life. There would be more deaths, most likely retribution kills, related to this one. Later, the murder gun might turn up somewhere down the food chain. Later, the crime might get “solved,” pinned on the shooter by a snitch in a plea-out. Whatever happened, this would be the last the general public would hear about this young man, a passing mention to be filed away in a newspaper morgue, one brief paragraph without even a name attached to prove that he had existed. Another unidentified YBM, dead on the other side of the Anacostia River.

River, hell, thought Strange. The way it separates this city for real, might as well go ahead and call it a canyon.

Strange dropped the newspaper back on the bench seat. He turned the key in the ignition and pushed a Spinners tape into his deck. He pulled out of his spot and drove west. Just a few sips of coffee, and already he had to pee. Anyway, he couldn’t sit here all day. It was time to go to work.

Chapter 2

TWO house wrens, a brownish male and female, were building a nest on the sill outside Strange’s office window. Strange could hear them talking to each other as they worked.

When Strange was a child, his mother, Alethea, had held him up to their kitchen window on mornings just like this one to show him the daily progress of the nest the birds made there each year. “They’re working to make a house for their children. The same way your father goes to work each day to make this a home for you and your brother.” His mother had been gone two years now, but Derek Strange could recall her words, and he could hear the music in her voice. She still spoke to Strange in his dreams.

Late-spring light shot through the glass, the heat of it warming the back of Strange’s neck and hands as he sat at his desk. The wedge-shaped speaker beside his phone buzzed. Janine’s voice, transmitted from the office reception area up front, came from the box.

“Derek, Terry just came in.”

“I’ll be right out.”

Strange glanced down beside his chair, where Greco, his tan boxer, lay. Greco looked up without moving his head as Strange rubbed his skull. Greco’s nub of a tail twitched and he closed his eyes.

“I won’t be gone long. Janine’ll take care of you, boy.”

In the reception area, Strange nodded at Terry Quinn, sitting at his desk, a work station he rarely used. While Quinn tore open a pack of sugarless gum, Strange stopped by Janine’s desk.

She wore some kind of pants-and-shirt hookup, flowing and bright. Her lipstick matched the half-moons of red slashing through the outfit. It would be like her to pay attention to that kind of detail. Strange stared at her now. She always looked good. Always. But you couldn’t get the full weight of it if you saw her seated behind her desk. Janine was the kind of tall, strong woman, you needed to see her walking to get the full appreciation, to feel that stirring up in your thighs. Like one of those proud horses they marched around at the track. He knew it wasn’t proper to talk about a woman, especially a woman you loved, like she was some kind of fine animal. But that’s what came to mind when he looked at her. He guessed it was still okay, until the thought police came and raided his head, to imagine her like that in his mind.