“I heard you moved.”
“You did?” said Carmen in a slightly mocking way.
“Saw your sister one day, on the street.”
“You sure it was like that? ’Cause she said you called her up and asked her where I’d gone to.”
“I don’t remember the particulars. Point is, your sister told me.”
“Okay,” said Carmen with a little laugh. She squeezed his hand.
“So, seein’ as how you ain’t but a few steps away…”
“What?”
“Aren’t you gonna ask me over?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“I been talkin’ to people, too. You still seeing that little hairdresser from Northeast, right?”
“That ain’t nothin’ serious.”
“It never is with you.”
“She’s just a girl, is all I’m sayin’.”
“But she’s not the only girl, is she, Derek?”
“I ain’t married to her, if that’s what you mean.”
“And now you’re lookin’ to get with me tonight, too.”
“What’s your point?”
“You got the same problem you always had. And that will not work with me, Derek; not again.”
“If I could be with you, it would be only you.”
Carmen leaned in, kissed him on the side of his mouth, and stood.
“I always knew, Carmen,” said Strange. “Even when we were kids… you standing down by the corner market in that Easter dress of yours and those patent leather shoes. I knew.”
“So did I. We try it again, though, this time it’s gonna be on my terms. You need to think on that, Derek. You come to a decision, well, you know where to find me. Now that you know where I live.”
“You remember where I live, don’t you?”
“Yes. I still have your key.”
Strange watched her go down the steps and across the street to her row house. He wondered if he would ever be capable of committing to one woman or if it was just that he was young and would change in time. He wanted to change. ’Cause there wasn’t any question about it: Carmen was the one.
He got up and went down to Barry Place, then onto Florida Avenue. He walked east through a quiet city. He stopped to tell a boy of nine or ten, dribbling a basketball alone on the sidewalk, to get inside his house. The boy asked him why it was any business of his.
“I’m a police officer,” said Strange.
He waited for the boy to do as he was told, and then he walked on.
TWENTY
ON TUESDAY, IN Memphis, Negro leaders announced plans for a massive march at the end of the week, with trade union members and civil rights spokesmen from across the country due to attend. A settlement of the garbage workers’ strike would postpone the march, but no one expected that to happen. Dr. King had been scheduled to arrive in Tennessee that day to prepare for the demonstration, but he had been held up in Atlanta. His people promised that he would begin to head the operations in Memphis on Wednesday instead.
On Tuesday, in Milwaukee, Senator Eugene McCarthy celebrated his victory in the Wisconsin primary, having soundly beaten noncandidate Lyndon Johnson as well as write-in candidates Robert Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey the night before. In the Republican primary, Richard M. Nixon had won 80 percent of the vote to Ronald Reagan’s 10 and seemed well on the way to his party’s nomination.
On Tuesday, in D.C., the Cherry Blossom Festival of 1968 officially commenced. Over the Potomac River in Virginia, U.S. Park Police removed a Vietcong flag found flying over the Iwo Jima monument near Arlington Cemetery. Later that afternoon, two brothers were busted in the parking lot of a Northwest drive-in restaurant on Wisconsin Avenue, netting the largest seizure of hashish ever made in the Washington area.
At the same time, Buzz Stewart and Dominic Martini worked uneasily together at the Esso station on Georgia Avenue while Walter Hess, without remorse or anything else clouding his head, did his duties at the machine shop on Brookeville Road. Darius Strange flipped eggs and burgers on the grill of the Three-Star Diner on Kennedy Street while his wife, Alethea, cleaned a house in the Four Corners area of Silver Spring, Maryland. Their older son, Dennis, slept late, watched television, and read the want ads in the Post. Their younger, Derek, had a slow morning, reading and listening to records, then dressing to meet Troy Peters for their evening patrol.
Frank Vaughn heard the hash bust story on all-news WAVA as he drove his Polara south on a downtown Silver Spring street. It made him think of Ricky, and the small pipe he’d found in his son’s car the week before.
“I was driving around with a bunch of guys the other night,” explained Ricky. “One of them must have dropped it under the seat or somethin’. I swear, Dad, I don’t even know what it’s for.”
Bullshit, thought Vaughn. But to his son he said, “Just get rid of it, okay?”
Vaughn turned onto Sligo Avenue, then made a quick right onto Selim. He parked in front of a beer garden called Fay and Andy’s, where drinkers stared at Georgia Avenue and the B amp;O railroad tracks when they weren’t staring into their glasses or the ashtrays in front of them. There were several garages, engine repair businesses and body shops alike, on this strip. Vaughn was out of his jurisdiction, but that meant jack to him, and anyway he was off the clock.
Vaughn had gotten his lab man, a guy named Phil Leibovitz, on the phone that morning. Leibovitz had studied the grillwork, glass, and logo left at the hit-and-run scene and discerned that the car involved was a ’63 or ’64 midsize Ford.
“It’s not a Falcon or a pony car,” said Leibovitz. “I’m sure of that. Different kind of gridwork. You need to be looking for a Fairlane or a Galaxie Five Hundred.”
“What the hell, Phil?” said Vaughn. “Which one?”
“The Galaxie.”
“How come?”
“I’m assuming the impact knocked the emblem off the front of the car. The Fairlane doesn’t carry the Ford logo on the grille.”
“You’re a genius.”
“Compliments don’t pay my bills.”
“The next beer’s on me.”
“Beers don’t pay my bills, either, Frank.”
“I’ll get you when I see you,” said Vaughn.