“Same one I was telling you about the other day,” said Strange. “We saw him arguing with that big man, right there by the pumps.”

“Report said they’re wanted on a hit-and-run homicide. Think he’s right for that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about him anymore. I didn’t really know him then.”

“I’m gonna cruise up to the District line,” said Peters. “We’ll turn around up there and do the north-south run.”

Peters kicked it coming out of the turn at Tuckerman. They went along past the Polar Bears ice cream and the Hubbard House. Strange could almost taste the sugar in the layered chocolate pie, see his father carrying that white box across the street, late on Saturdays, when they’d bring it home together to share with his mother and Dennis.

“You okay?” said Peters.

“Just thinking on something is all.”

“I mean your hand.”

Strange looked at his right hand, resting on his thigh. His knuckles, pink against his dark brown skin, were still showing a little blood. He’d cleaned the scrape but not covered it, not wanting to bring attention to the injury, not wanting anyone to tell him he couldn’t work. He needed to go to work.

“I punched a wall,” said Strange.

Peters looked him over. “It’s gonna be rough for a while.”

“Feels like it’s always gonna be.”

“Anything on the investigation?”

“No.”

Up past Aspen Street, they went by the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and then a mix of low-rise commercial and residential structures. Peters accelerated as the squad car hit a long grade.

“I talked to your mother yesterday,” said Peters, side-glancing Strange. “Nice woman.”

“None better.”

“I mentioned her job in the dentist’s office.”

“That right.”

“She didn’t know what I was talking about. Told me she’d been working as a domestic most of her adult life.”

“You got me, Troy,” said Strange unemotionally. “You caught me in a lie.”

“Question is, why’d you feel like you had to tell me that story?”

“I wasn’t ashamed of my mother, if that’s what you think. I’m proud of her, understand?”

“What, then?”

“It was all about me. Me, with nothin’ in my background but a high school degree, riding with a Peace Corps and Princeton man. By elevating her, I was trying to elevate myself. Once I told it that way, it was too late to tell it true.”

“I ever try and make you feel small?”

“You never did.”

“Where you think I come from, Derek?”

“Money, I expect.”

“You mean you assumed.”

“That’s right.”

“I come from dirt. That’s all I’m gonna say, because you don’t want to hear it. But to have a family like yours… Look, I was envious of you. Didn’t matter to me what your parents did for a living. Point is, they were there for you. Not like mine.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You never asked me,” said Peters. “You weren’t interested.”

Strange didn’t offer any kind of rebuttal, because Troy was right. When he looked at Peters, he saw a white man first and a man second. As far as getting underneath the surface of his partner and looking at his heart, Strange had not been interested. Knowing all the while it was the same way many white men looked at him.

“I apologize,” said Strange.

“Forget it,” said Peters.

Strange and Peters relaxed their shoulders and said nothing further. The silence was not uncomfortable.

A quarter mile ahead, on the left, stood the Morris Miller’s liquor store. On the right sat a shopping center, bookended by an A amp;P supermarket on one end and, on the other, the Capitol Savings and Loan.

TWENTY-EIGHT

WAIT FOR A spot out front,” said Stewart. “There,” said Hess from the backseat. “Money says the old lady’s gonna get in that Buick.”

“That ain’t no surprise,” said Stewart. “She pulls away, back this race car in, Dom.”

“Right,” said Martini, his lifeless eyes tracking the elderly woman emerging from the bank and walking to her Skylark, parked in a space out front.

They were in the idling Nova, fitted in a slot at the far corner of the A amp;P portion of the lot. The center was only half filled with cars, as this was the time of day during which mothers were typically home awaiting the arrival of their children from school. A woman got out of her station wagon with her toddler, found a shopping cart that had been abandoned, and pushed it with one hand toward the supermarket, her left hand pulling on her child’s sweater. A man with a flattop haircut carried paper bags from the market to his Olds, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips.

Buzz Stewart and Walter Hess wore their raincoats over blue jeans, Dickie work shirts, and black bomber-style boots. Their stocking masks and gloves sat in their laps. Both had loaded and holstered their weapons. Additonal loose shotgun shells and revolver rounds sat in the side pockets of their raincoats. Martini’s.45 rested on the bucket between his legs, steel grip out, the barrel pressing against his genitals.

Hess found a Black Beauty among the bullets in his pocket and pulled it free. Hunched in the backseat, he drew one of his.38s and ground its butt into the pill, which he held in the palm of his callused hand. The pill broke into bits and dust. Hess reholstered his gun, leaned forward, put his face into his palm, and snorted the amphetamine.

“Fuck, yeah,” said Hess, throwing back his head, feeling the burn in his nasal passages and a bright burst behind his eyes.

“Go on, Dom,” said Stewart. “Take the space.”

As the Buick Skylark pulled out of the lot, Martini put the Hurst in gear and motored slowly past the space, getting reverse and backing in cleanly between a Satellite and a Bel Air. Looking over his shoulder to navigate, Martini saw Hess, amped on speed, his jittery, piggish eyes pinballing in their sockets. Behind the Nova was the sidewalk, and then the plate-glass window of the bank atop a three-foot marble base.

“You ready, Shorty?” said Stewart, his face colored by a head rush of blood.

“Born ready, dad. We gon’ get it all.”

“Look at me, Dom,” said Stewart. “Look at me.”

Martini turned his head and stared into Stewart’s eyes.

“You’re gonna wait for us,” said Stewart. “You keep it runnin’ and wait. We won’t be but five. When we come back, you make it scream. Head south and work the side streets back to your alley. This ain’t nothin’ but a cakewalk, I shit you not.”

“I’ll be here,” said Martini.

I’ve been headed here all my life.

Stewart and Hess fitted the stocking masks on their heads and pulled them down over their faces. They put on their gloves. Stewart, his features mutilated by the mask, his lips fishlike against it, made eye contact with Hess and nodded one time. He got out of the car first, then waited for Hess to push the front seat forward and climb out. Stewart shut the door. Martini looked in the sideview and watched them cross the asphalt and white concrete. Stewart opened the door to the bank and let Hess pass. Stewart drew the cut-down from the harness beneath his raincoat as he followed Hess inside. The door closed quietly behind them. Then there was only the sputtering of the Nova’s 350 rumbling beneath the hood.

Martini’s eyes stayed on the mirror, not looking ahead, not seeing MPD squad car number 63 as it slowly passed on Georgia Avenue.

VAUGHN FLIPPED OPEN his Zippo, lit a cigarette, and snapped the lid shut. He rested his elbow on the lip of the driver’s window as he smoked, one meaty hand atop the wheel. He went down Georgia to the business district around Sheridan, checking out the sidewalk in front of Victor Liquors, Vince’s Agnes Flower Shop, John’s Lunch, the Chinese laundry, and, on the corner, the 6200 tavern. He kept going and cruised slowly by Lou’s, where men who looked liked Martini, Stewart, and Hess drank, smoked, and shot pool. He saw no trace of a black Nova curbed along the Avenue or on the immediate side streets. He continued down Georgia, knowing in his gut as he saw the dark faces of the residents here that he was getting cold. These were men who had run down a man who had done them no wrong, and that made them cowards. They would never try to pull a job in the colored part of town.