When he came out of the funeral home, Lydell Blue was waiting for him, standing on the sidewalk, in his uniform. They hugged roughly and patted each other’s backs.
“Your father told me you’d be here,” said Blue.
“Glad you got up with me, man.”
“Us,” said Blue, rapping his fist to his chest.
“Us,” said Strange.
His parents’ house was crowded with sympathizers upon his return. As it tended to do in the city, word had spread of Dennis’s death. Relatives, neighbors, friends of Derek and his parents, and some of Dennis’s friends from Park View Elementary, Bertie Backus Junior High, and Roosevelt High had gathered in the apartment. Dennis had lost touch with many of them since going off to the navy, but they had not forgotten him. Alvin Jones and Kenneth Willis had not dropped by or phoned.
Someone, maybe his father, had put an old Soul Stirrers record on the box, Sam Cooke singing pretty and rough, and it was playing low under the conversation in the room. People were having cigarettes and cigars, and the smoke lay thick in the air. A little bit of beer and wine drinking had commenced. Mike and Billy Georgelakos were standing in a corner together, still wearing their work clothes from the diner. Derek went to them, shook Mike’s hand, hugged Billy, and thanked them for coming, knowing they were uncomfortable being here, knowing it was an effort, appreciating the effort, making a point of telling them that they were family. Derek had a conversation with Troy Peters, who had arrived in his uniform, his hat literally in his hand. He told Troy how much it meant to him that he had stopped by. He spoke to James Hayes and said he would get up with him later. He spoke to the German, now an old man, now contrite, who had once thrown hot water at him and Dennis when they were kids. He spoke to Mr. Meyer from the corner market. He took a condolence call from Darla Harris, who asked him to stop by that night. He told her that he might, and ended the call. And he went to Carmen Hill as soon as he saw her come through the door. As he brought her into his arms, it seemed they were alone in the room.
“I love you, Derek,” she said, her mouth close to his ear.
“I love you.”
When she had gone, he looked around the apartment and noticed that his parents were not among the crowd.
He asked the woman who lived downstairs if he could use her phone. In her apartment, he phoned Detective Dolittle at the station. Five minutes later, his call was returned. There was little to report on the case. No usable fingerprints had been turned up at the scene. No witnesses had come forward. Kenneth Willis had been picked up on a gun charge the Monday afternoon before the murder. Dolittle said he would interview Willis in his holding cell soon as he “got over that way,” and when Strange suggested he do it now, Dolittle said, “Don’t worry, Willis isn’t going anywhere.” Lula Bacon had been located, but Alvin Jones was not at her apartment. He had left her place, she said, in the middle of the night, and had not revealed his destination.
“You talked to Bacon?” said Strange.
“On the phone.”
“Why don’t you go over and see if he’s there instead of taking that woman at her word?”
“That’s an idea,” said Dolittle, his voice slow and heavy with sarcasm. Strange wondered what bar Dolittle had come from last.
He asked for the location of the Bacon apartment, and Dolittle gave him the address. He asked for the make of Jones’s car, and Dolittle told him that a green Buick Special was registered in his name.
“Find him,” said Strange. “Focus on him.”
“I’m workin’ on it,” said Dolittle.
Strange hung up the phone, his eyes fixed on nothing across the room.
He returned to the impromptu wake, made his way through the crowd, and found his parents back in Dennis’s room. He closed the door behind him, muffling the rumble of conversation coming from the main area of the apartment. His father stood with his back against the wall, a beer in his hand, his sleeves rolled up. His mother sat on Dennis’s bed, her hands folded neatly in her lap.
Alethea looked up. “Who would do this, Derek?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”
Alethea glanced at her husband, then stared at Derek in a way that made him feel ten years old. “You’ve got to let the Lord settle this in his own way. Do you understand me, son?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Derek.
CHARLIE BYRD HAD that sound. You could close your eyes and listen to his guitar and know that it couldn’t be anyone playing it but him. Frank Vaughn found himself smiling, hearing it now.
He sat at the bar of the Villa Rosa, on Ellsworth Drive in Silver Spring. The place was done in dark wood and paneling, and it was a pleasant place to drink. Married couples, adulterous couples, and singles sat around him, talking low, as Charlie and his quartet played that jazzy samba sound from back in the Byrd’s Nest, the show area of the restaurant and club.
“How’s it goin’, Frank?” said a smooth voice as a man in a turtleneck and a bright sharkskin sport jacket passed behind him.
“I can’t complain,” said Vaughn to Pete Lambros, the owner of the club. Lambros had owned the Showboat, down on 18th and Columbia, for years and had recently opened the Villa Rosa out in the suburbs. Crime and a lack of Adams Morgan parking had driven him north, over the D.C. line.
“Another?” said the bartender, long sideburns, longish hair, had that Johnny Reb-Civil War look going on. He had just come on shift. Vaughn didn’t need another. He was on his fourth.
“Beam,” said Vaughn.
“Rocks, right?”
“Make it neat.”
The tender free-poured bourbon into a heavy glass and set it on a cocktail napkin. Vaughn drew an L amp;M from the deck and used his Zippo to give it fire. With the fetishism common in bar lovers, he placed his lighter squarely atop his pack of smokes and pulled a tray to within ashing distance of his hand, leaning his forearm just so on the lip of the stick. Cigarettes, whiskey, and walking-around money. What more, thought Vaughn, did a man need?
Well, there was work. And women. He had two of those. One for companionship and memories, and one for sex. He’d been with Linda that afternoon, and it had been good. He’d fucked her strong, and she had given that strength back in equal measure. Her thighs were in spasm when they were done. Their lovemaking had been so physical that when it was over, the bed was halfway across the room from where it had started.
“You know those little round rubber things,” said Vaughn, “you put ’em under the rollers of the bed frame? You need to get a set of those.”