“We haven’t even finished canvassing the neighbors yet. These investigations take time.”

“They take too much time, they get cold.”

“I can understand you being anxious,” said Dolittle, scratching at a thick nose spiderwebbed with red veins. “But you need to let me do my job. I been at this a long time.”

Too long, thought Strange.

“Don’t worry,” said Dolittle, touching Strange’s arm gingerly. “We’ll get this guy.”

You’ll get him if you get lucky, thought Strange.

“That it?” said Strange.

“I’ll see myself out.”

Strange listened to Dolittle talking to his parents out in the living room. He heard the phone ring and he heard his father tell his mother not to pick it up. As word had spread in the neighborhood, the calls had begun to increase. Soon folks would be dropping by with food and drink, and the apartment would be crowded with visitors. He hoped his mother could handle it. She was doing all right so far.

Strange went to the window over the sink, where his mother’s square of cardboard had come free in two corners and was arcing back. Strange reaffixed the corners to the glass.

He heard the front door open and shut. He heard his mother sobbing. He heard his father say, “Come here, Alethea,” and the rustle of their clothing as they embraced.

Strange wanted to be with them and hold on to them, too. But this was their moment, and he was no longer a boy. He sat down on the kitchen floor beside the sink, where he’d sat at his mother’s feet many times as a child, leaned his head back against the cabinet, and, very quietly, allowed himself to let go.

BUZZ STEWART FLICKED ash off his Marlboro. “There it is, right there.”

“It doesn’t look like much,” said Dominic Martini.

“That’s right. It ain’t no big deal.”

They were parked in Stewart’s Belvedere, the nose of the Plymouth pointed south, on the west side of Georgia Avenue, not too far over the District line in Shepherd Park. “Once Upon a Time” came from the radio, Buzz Stewart nodding his head to the busy Motown arrangement as he kept his eyes fixed on the strip of businesses clustered on the east side of the street.

Nearby was Morris Miller’s liquor store, a landmark whose rear parking lot was a meeting spot for D.C. and Montgomery County teenagers, a starting place to buy beer and make plans on Friday and Saturday nights. Years earlier, owner Morris Miller could not live in the neighborhood where he owned his business, as Shepherd Park had covenants restricting the sale of its houses to Jewish buyers. Since then, the neighborhood had become progressive. In ’58, white and black homeowners, angered by the practices of blockbuster real estate agents, had formed Neighbors Inc. to support integrated streets. Now the area was heavy with Jewish residents, as well as blacks, with pioneering interracial couples in the mix. Its high school, Coolidge, was still called “Jewlidge” by Stewart and Hess, but its student body was now primarily black.

Across the street, an A amp;P grocery was the largest store of the bunch. Also on the strip sat a drugstore, a dry cleaner, and a speed shop, and, on the corner, a bank. Stewart and Martini were looking at the bank.

“What they call a savings and loan,” said Stewart.

“You been inside?”

“Once. Shorty’s been in there, too. We seen everything we needed to see. A single armed guard, guy’s older than dirt. We ain’t gonna fuck with no safe. Gotta be thousands behind that counter alone. It’s a cakewalk, Dom. I shit you not.”

Martini stared at the bank, openmouthed. “What now?”

“We’re meetin’ Shorty for lunch up at the Shepherd. We’ll talk about it then.”

Stewart put the Belvedere in gear, pulled off the curb, and swung a U in the middle of Georgia. He turned up the Mary and Marvin; he’d seen Wells and Gaye sing this one together onstage at the Howard, back in ’64, and the song made him smile, remembering how happy he’d felt that night. He goosed the gas. It wasn’t but a short hop to the Shepherd Park Restaurant, but Stewart liked to hear his Plymouth run. They parked in the side lot, next to Hess’s mother’s car, a three-on-the-tree pea green ’64 Rambler Ambassador, which Walter Hess had been driving the past two days.

The familiarity of the Shepherd hit Martini as they came through the front doors. He’d come here with his family in the ’50s, when Angelo was his shadow and his old man was still occasionally sober. Back then, the place was owned and run by brothers George and John Glekas. Its signature was its burgers and steaks, and a waitress with a shrieking laugh. Prominent Maryland politicians shared the dining room with families and local eccentrics. Mrs. Glekas, George’s wife, could often be seen at one of the tables, typing menus with one finger while she gave emotional orders to her daughter Angie. The restaurant had since been sold to three other Greeks, but the pleasant smell of grilled beef and the sound of that waitress, laughing at something back in the kitchen, told Martini that little here had changed.

The tables and wall booths were half full. A bar separated by a load-bearing post ran along the back wall, its stools occupied by workingmen. It was a no-tablecloth, no-linen eat house, with basic service and good food, common in Greek ownership. Soon it would become one of the most notorious, raucous strip bars in the area. But for now it was frozen in time.

Hess was seated at one of the dining-room tables, wearing his blue uniform shirt with “Shorty” stitched to a patch.

“That your hot rod out front?” said Stewart, pulling a wooden chair out from under the table and resting his huge frame upon it.

“Knock it off,” said Hess.

“Rambler makes a real quality vehicle. Fast, too. That the Am-bass-a-dor or the A-mer-ican? I never can tell them race cars apart.”

“I said knock it off. I’m gonna be drivin’ my Ford any day now.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” said Stewart. “And we got another problem, too.”

Stewart told them about his phone call from Pat Millikin, which he had taken at the Esso station just before he and Martini had gone on break. The Galaxie was going to be in the shop a few more days. Also, Millikin claimed that he had not been able to find them a rental. Stewart had pressed him on it, but Millikin had assured him there was nothing to be had.

“What’s goin’ on with him?” said Hess.

“I don’t know. He says the market’s dried up.”

“Dried up, huh? He needs to remember that back in the joint, I shanked some coon who was white-eyein’ his brother. Man owes me big. You tell him that?”

“I did. And I got the same answer he gave me the first time.” Stewart looked at Martini. “We’re gonna have to use your car.”

“What?”

“Well, we can’t use mine. Way it looks, bright red, with the wedge and all, everyone around this part of town recognizes that car. Hell, you hardly even drive that Nova anymore.”

“What about my plates?”

“Shorty’s gonna provide us with some new ones.”

“A car’ll come up soon,” said Martini. “Why can’t we wait a few days?”

“’Cause we can’t,” said Stewart. “That little accident we had the other night kinda changed everything. Me and Shorty been talkin’. We ain’t stickin’ around to find out if that comes back on us, see? We’re leaving town, soon as we score that money. Myrtle Beach. Daytona, maybe. Someplace down South.”

“I’m out,” said Martini with a small wave of his hands, as if he were trying to push them away.

“Pretty Boy don’t get it, Buzz. Boy is thick.”

“Shut up, Shorty.”

“Nah, see, he just don’t get it.” Hess pushed his face close to Martini’s. “You’re in, Dominic. You were with us the other night when we pegged that coon, and you are in now. You better pray we do this job right and make enough jack to get out of this situation clean. You gonna help us do that. We ain’t askin’ you, dad.”