“Yes?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Strange softened his eyes. “I’m trying to get up with Mark Elliot, little boy lives here, down on the floor below you. Trouble I’m having, the phone number I had on his mother, when I dial it I get a recording, says it’s been disconnected.”

“Well, that’s because they moved out.”

“I was afraid it might be that.”

The woman looked him over and crossed her arms beneath her sagging breasts. “And you are?”

“Excuse me. My name is Will, uh, William Sonnett. I’ve got a football team I coach every fall over in Turkey Thicket, run it through the, uh, church group. We do this camp in the summertime, kind of ease the kids into their conditioning, if you know what I mean. I was hoping to recruit Mark into the Pee Wee division. I heard from some of the neighborhood boys that he could play.”

The woman’s features untightened and she let her arms fall at her sides. “Mark would have liked to have played, if he still lived here. He’s a good little athlete. He played with my grandson all the time when he was living here.”

“That so.”

“Yes, they rode their bikes together day and night.”

Damn, thought Strange, I am good. His blood ticked the way it always did when he was getting close. He’d like to see Terry’s face when he told him that, just as he had predicted, he had found the woman in one afternoon.

“You don’t know how I can get in touch with Mark or his mother, do you?”

“No, I’m sorry. They left without a word.”

“And she hasn’t called you or nothin’ like that.”

“No. She hasn’t.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, Mark has called. He calls my grandson ’bout once a week or so. I think he must be lonely, wherever they’re stayin’ at.”

“So your grandson, he must call him back.”

“I don’t allow Daniel to call out on our phone.”

“Oh.”

“But I think Mark called here a couple of days ago. Maybe I still have the number on the caller ID.”

Strange smiled. “I sure would appreciate it if you’d check.”

In the small kitchen the woman handed Strange a cordless phone. He pressed the directory button and thumb-wheeled through the record of calls printed out, one by one, on a lit yellow screen. There were thirty old calls listed in the directory.

“I never think to erase them,” said the woman.

“Neither do I,” said Strange.

Strange found a number with the name Olivia B. Elliot printed above it. He copied the number onto his pad.

“Thank you,” said Strange.

The woman, ugly by anyone’s standards but with a peculiar bright-eyed energy to her, looked up at Strange with admiration. “You’re doing the Lord’s work helping these kids like you do, Mr. Sonnett. Praise God!”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Strange, unable to meet her eyes. “I better be on my way.”

IN the car Strange phoned Janine.

“Derek, I didn’t have any luck with the management company. Apparently she moved out without giving them any notice and she left no forwarding address.”

“That’s okay. I got a phone number on her. You ready?”

Strange gave her the number. Over the years, Janine had cultivated contacts all over town. But her contact at the phone company was the most valuable. Strange sent Christmas cards out to all the people he did business with. A few of these cards contained gift certificates. At Christmastime, Strange sent Janine’s contact at the phone company a Tower Records certificate along with a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill.

“I’m going to meet Devra Stokes,” said Strange. “Call me on my cell when you get an address.”

Strange’s cell rang as he parked in the lot of the strip center on Good Hope Road. Janine was on the line with Olivia Elliot’s address. Strange wrote it down, thanked her, and cut the connection. Then he phoned Quinn.

“Terry, can you get out for a while?”

“I think Lewis can handle the shop.”

“Yeah, what else is a cat like Lewis gonna be doin’ with his time? All right, write this down. Just need you to verify that she’s at the address.”

Quinn took down the information. “That’s up around Lincoln Heights. Northeast, right?”

“Yeah, it’s on the north side of East Capitol.”

“Took you, what, two hours to find her?”

“Some of it was lunch. And most of the rest was drive time.”

“You are one macho motherfucker.”

“And I drink the bad dude’s brew.”

“Gonna make beaver boy happy.”

“He’s gonna get some change back, too.”

“Why can’t you take care of this yourself?”

“I got some more work down here in Anacostia. The character wit I called on today, on the Oliver thing.”

“I’ll take care of it,” said Quinn.

Strange hit “end” on his cell.

He looked through the window of the hair salon. Devra Stokes’s little boy was holding on to her pants leg as she gathered up her things. Even his timing was on today. Sometimes, Strange thought, everything just goes right.

Chapter 7

DEWAYNE Durham checked himself in a full-length mirror hung crookedly on a nail pushed into a bullet hole in a plaster wall. He wore a new pair of jeans his mother had pressed for him and a Nautica shirt with a black-and-beige Hawaiian print. He wore a pair of black Jordans, the Penny style, on his feet, which picked up the black of the shirt real nice. He looked good and he looked strong. A little on the thin side, but that was his fun-house reflection in the cheap mirror, which one of his boys musta bought from Target or someplace like that. He’d have to talk to that boy. Wasn’t no such thing as a bargain; you had to spend money to get nice things.

Trick mirror or no, he’d have to watch his weight, make sure he didn’t go in the direction of one of those sad-sack motherfuckers, had no ass and got no respect. Like his half brother, Mario, had to be the saddest, most okeydoke-lookin’ motherfucker in Ward 8. Mario’d be dead by now, picked off just for sport, if it wasn’t known that he was kin to Dewayne.

“Your brother’s out by your car,” said Bernard Walker, a.k.a. Zulu, Dewayne’s next in command.

“Aiight, then,” said Dewayne, patting his hair, shaved nearly down to the scalp, one last time in the mirror before walking from the room. There was a mattress in the room, the mirror, and nothing else. Walker followed him down a narrow hall.

The house, a duplex on Atlantic Avenue in Washington Highlands, near 6th, was unfurnished except for some folding chairs and a couple of card tables where Dewayne’s boys bagged up and bottled up their shit. Plywood filled the window frames. The house had radiators but no gas, and the electricity and water had been shut off long ago. The 600 Crew, Dewayne’s outfit, used the house during the day to conduct their business, and also used it as a place to cut up, roll dice, play cards, and hang.

They passed an open door to the bathroom, where excrement, urine, and paper clogged the toilet and filled half the tub. Dewayne’s crew peed in the bathtub and sometimes they shit in it, and on occasion they hid their airtight, weighted bundles of marijuana and cocaine underneath the mess. Dewayne had figured that no police would stick his hand down in there, and he was right; the last time they’d been raided, the uniform had stood there for only a couple of seconds, hardly looking into the bathtub, gagging while he was shaking his head, and then walked out. Later, Dewayne would let some young boy with ambition fish out the product. The stench in the house didn’t bother him or any of the fellas. Got so now they didn’t even notice it.

Four boys were bagging up some chronic at a table in what used to be the dining room as Dewayne and Walker came down the stairs. Dewayne’s New York connect had made a delivery the night before.

Walker had to bow his head at the foot of the stairway, since the ceiling there was kind of low. He had gotten the name Zulu partly because of his skin color, which was close to black, but mainly because of his height and build. He was six and a half feet tall and could throw a scare into Charles Oakley on a dark street. Walker was a feared enforcer down here in Anacostia. He was an unhesitant triggerman, but it was known that he could also go with his hands. It was said by Dewayne’s rivals that Zulu Walker was the long hair on Samson’s head. You cut it, and Dewayne Durham wouldn’t be shit.