'Nigel?'
'I got it.'
'A home address?'
'Car's not registered to Lee or Miller. Man by the name of Calvin Duke owns it. He stays down around Thirty-fifth, in Northeast. Black's mother say he owns a whole rack of vehicles, according to the computer.'
'What, he got a used-car lot, somethin' like that?'
'Or he rentin' cars out,' said Nigel.
'How you know that?'
'Lawrence Graham keeps his ear to the street on that kind of thing. Says Duke's got a rep in Northeast. Maybe we ought to talk to him. If that BMW is a hack, Duke's got to know the place where he can collect the rent.'
'Right.'
'I'd like to find out where those two are at before I parley with Deacon.'
'Pick me up at my place,' said Lorenzo.
'Now?'
'I need time to change into some street clothes.'
'I'll see you in fifteen minutes.'
'Gimme an hour,' said Lorenzo. 'I gotta walk my dog.'
Lorenzo left without speaking to Irena Tovar. Typically, at the end of his shift, he'd go to her office, sit before her desk, and discuss his cases and how he was coming along on the job. He knew he would not be able to look her in the eye today.
Lorenzo went to his Ventura, parked on Floral Place. He cooked the ignition and headed for Park View.
Nigel Johnson picked up the count from Ricky Young on Morton Street. This was normally DeEric Green's duty, and Nigel had not done it himself for some time. He was mindful of any 4D cruisers or unmarkeds as he drove down the street, past his people and Deacon's, who were standing on hot corners, dealing with the drive-through customers and the walk-up fiends trying to buy on the short. He received the cash from Young in a shoe box through the window of his Lexus. Then he navigated the circle back by the apartments, returned to Georgia, hung a right and another right on Newton, and took it to 6th, where his mother stayed. He was certain he had not been followed.
He took the shoe box, and some Breyers mint chocolate chip he had picked up on his way downtown, and went inside the house.
It smelled like her cooking. This was what he waited for, something he could never get from the phone calls he made to her three, four times a day. That smell. That and her music, which was playing now on the stereo he'd bought for her. It was the Claudine sound track, Gladys interpreting Curtis, singing about 'the makings of you.' The stereo was part of the elaborate entertainment center in the living room, which also included a plasma television set and a DVD player she could never seem to operate, also high-end.
Deborah Johnson came from the kitchen, walking down the high-shag carpet to take him in her arms. She smelled like perfume, the sweet kind she favored.
'Hello, son.'
'Mama.'
Deborah was a big woman, five-foot-ten and up around 260 pounds. She was pretty, with nice skin, looked like deeply burnished wood, and neatly styled hair. She always wore makeup, red lipstick and blue eye shadow, despite the fact that, except for Sundays when she went to church, she rarely left the house. She was fifty-four years old.
'Here you go,' said Nigel. He handed her the shoe box first, then the ice cream.
'Thank you, baby. You got my flavor.'
Nigel nodded. He worried about her heart, but he wasn't going to deny her the treats she loved.
'Let me put this stuff away,' said Deborah.
'All right.'
'You gonna have a plate of somethin'? I've got a nice ham and sweet potatoes to go with it.'
'Little bit, Mama.'
'Ham's cold.'
'How it should be in the summertime.'
'I'll be right back.'
Nigel watched her go, pushing her weight forward, using the side-to-side movement of the heavy. While she was preparing his food in the kitchen, she'd run the cash through the electronic counting machine she kept back there in one of the cabinets. She liked to do that soon as he made the delivery.
'Sit yourself down,' she said over her shoulder.
He had a seat in the living room. The couch and chairs had plastic slipcovers on them even though Deborah could afford to let the furniture wear down natural and change it out any time she wanted to. He couldn't convince her, entirely, that she didn't have to worry about pennies anymore. Once poor, always poor, that's what folks said.
He bought her jewelry and picked out her dresses from the oversize department at places like Nordstrom and Lord and Taylor. She never asked for these things but was thankful for them and wore them proudly. She bragged to her friends at church about her son the businessman, 'my entrepreneur,' who had the NJ Enterprises shop up on Georgia, and they went along with the charade, which she knew to be a ruse herself. She rarely spoke of it with Nigel and never with anyone else.
He had set up several accounts at different banks around town, the deposits never exceeding ten thousand dollars. The bulk of the remaining cash was kept here in her house. He wanted to make sure that she was taken care of in the event of his death or incarceration.
There was no one else in his life. He had fathered a couple of children when he was young but had paid the mothers off in lump sums and did not have much contact with them. He had one older brother, a successful Realtor in Raleigh, North Carolina, who had clean-breaked from the family long ago and had not seen D.C. since he'd left town. Nigel had never known his father. He'd gone looking for him, based on some cryptic information his mother had given him on a rare night when she'd had a second glass of wine, and discovered that the man had been dead for twenty years. It was said by the man's son, a crackhead who technically was Nigel's half brother, that the father was buried in a pauper's grave. Nigel had felt nothing upon hearing the news.
Nigel lived in a modest apartment near his storefront, up in Manor Park. After the expense of his rent, his mother's mortgage, her clothing and jewelry, his clothing and jewelry, his vehicles, the vehicles he bought for his men, his payroll, the rent on his storefront, and all the extras a man in his position had to have, there was little cash left. This was the secret that many drug dealers on Nigel's level kept. They could not save and were not rich.
It wasn't money that kept Nigel in the game. It was the power, of course, and the fear that he would lose what he had and, once out, be qualified to do nothing else. But it was also the responsibility he felt he had for those under him. From the beginning, he had told himself that he was providing opportunity and a sense of family for those who otherwise had no chance of attaining either. He knew now, and had known for some time, that this was bullshit drug dealers repeated to themselves and one another to rationalize their lifestyles. More than just bullshit — it was a dirty lie.
He had told this lie to his best friend. He had told it to many other young men. The last young man he'd told it to had been Michael Butler. Michael Butler, who at seventeen years of age would soon be in the ground, covered in maggots. Nigel had spoken to him early on about the opportunity that was waiting for him up the road. Instead, Nigel had shown him a horrifying death and an early grave.
'You wrong,' said Nigel under his breath.
His mother touched his shoulder. He had not heard her reenter the room.
'What's that, baby?'
'Talkin' to myself, is all. Must be getting old.'
'I'm heating the potatoes up. Won't be but another minute.'
'Okay.'
Deborah Johnson came around the sofa and had a seat beside her son. The Gladys Knight CD played beautifully in the room. Gladys singing joyously about 'a happy home.' Nigel remembered his mother wearing the grooves out on her vinyl copy, back in time.
'Lorenzo called me today,' said Deborah.
'He told me he spoke to you.'
'You two gonna hook up?'
'Yes.'
'Lorenzo's good,' said Deborah, touching her son's hand. 'You watch out for him, hear?'