Brock took a seat.
'Put your hands on the arms of that chair,' said Henderson.
As Brock gripped the armchair, Henderson flipped the switch of a lamp several times. Soon a tall, handsome man entered the house. He held a Desert Eagle.44 Magnum at his side. He frowned at Brock.
'You Romeo?'
Brock nodded.
'Where my money at?'
'It's here,' said Brock.
'I said where?'
'In the bedroom at the back. There's two suitcases-'
'Anyone else in this house?'
'The fat man's woman is in the bedroom.'
'What about your partner?'
'He's gone.'
'Go on, Nesto,' said Benjamin, raising his gun casually and pointing it at Brock. 'Check all the rooms while you're back there. Make sure this fake motherfucker ain't scheming.'
Henderson went down the hall. Benjamin stared at Brock. Brock cut his eyes away. Both of them listened as Henderson checked the kitchen and the room where Conrad Gaskins had slept.
'Bedroom door's locked,' said Henderson, his voice raised.
'Kick it in,' said Benjamin.
Brock heard the young man try it several times, grunting with each effort. Then he heard the door crack open at the jamb. The young man returned with a Gucci suitcase in hand.
'Ain't but one,' said Henderson. 'Wasn't no girl back there, either. The window was up. If she was there, she gone now.'
'Open that case,' said Benjamin, speaking to Brock. 'Turn it so we can see, and open it up.'
Henderson placed the suitcase at Brock's feet and stepped back. Brock leaned forward and unzipped the lid. He opened the suitcase, and all of them looked at the women's clothing that had been packed inside it. For a moment, no one said a thing.
Mikey got the money, thought Benjamin. He got it and the girl and he's waiting down by the cars. He wouldn't think of robbing me. Not after what I did for Dink and their moms.
'Chantel,' said Brock. He wasn't saying her name in anger. He was proud of her for what she'd done. She had fire. And here he was acting the punk. He looked up at Benjamin, a hint of defiance in his eyes.
'Yeah, Chantel,' said Benjamin. To Henderson he said, 'Cover his dumb ass.'
Benjamin pulled his cell from his pocket and hit and held the number three, which was the speed dial code for Michael Tate.
He heard footsteps, thinking, Here comes Mikey now. But when he turned, there was a white man coming from the darkness of the porch and walking quickly through the front door. A gun was in his hand, and his gun arm was straight.
'Police!' said Grady Dunne. He shouted the word again. His face was fierce and pink, and he moved the gun back and forth from Benjamin to Henderson. 'I'm MPD! Drop your weapons to the deck, now!'
Benjamin didn't move. He didn't drop his gun. He held it at his side and looked at the H &K in Dunne's hand. It wasn't a police gun.
'I said drop those fuckin guns, now!'
Ernest Henderson kept his Beretta on Brock. He turned his head to look at the man who said he was police. He was blond, and a vein was standing out on his neck. Henderson waited to hear something, anything, from Benjamin. But Ray Benjamin did not tell him what to do.
'Drop your guns!'
Brock looked at the back of Henderson's neck. He studied the point where his neck met his shoulders. And he thought, That is where I will bury my pick. Directly into that boy's spine. They'll talk about me forever and say my name and what I did. How I went up against two guns with a tool made to cut ice. Me, Romeo Brock.
Brock pulled the ice pick where it was taped at his calf. As he expected, the action pulled the cork off the tip as it came free. He stood with the ice pick in hand, raised it, and stepped toward Henderson.
'Behind you, Nesto,' said Benjamin in an even way.
Henderson turned and shot Romeo Brock in the center of his chest. The gun jumped in Henderson's hand as he shot him again. Brock went back over the chair. His arms pinwheeled through crimson mist as he fell.
Dunne squeezed off two rounds in the direction of Benjamin. The first slug went through Benjamin's shoulder and blew a fist-sized hole out of his back. The second, high from the recoil, nicked his carotid artery as it tunneled through his neck.
Benjamin fired his.44 through a cloud of smoke and arterial spray at the outline of the man who'd claimed he was police. He dropped, shooting again as he fell and hit the floor. He saw the man stumble against the wall as if thrown. Benjamin closed his eyes.
Grady Dunne staggered toward the door. He looked back at the Number One Male with the baseball cap, standing in the center of the room, still armed. The young man was shaking his head as if he could shake away what had happened.
Dunne tried to raise his weapon. His hand cramped open, and he dropped the.45. He said 'God' and held his hand to his stomach, which was wet with blood now pulsing through his fingers. The pain was extreme, and he went through the door and tripped off the porch. There was air beneath him. He touched ground and spun as if he were dancing or drunk and lost his feet and landed on his back in the gravel road.
He looked up at the branches of a tulip poplar and beyond them the stars. He said, 'Officer down.' It was a whisper so faint that he could not hear the words himself. He tasted blood in his mouth. He swallowed the blood and breathed rapidly, and his eyes widened in fright. Into his field of vision came the Number One Male. He stood over Dunne and pointed his gun at his chest. There were tears streaming down the young man's face.
'Nine-one-one,' said Dunne. He felt hot blood spill out of his mouth and pour down his chin.
The young man lowered his gun. He slipped it barrel-down behind the belt line of his jeans and pulled his shirt over the butt.
Dunne heard the boy's footsteps on the gravel. And then the sound of him running down the road.
Dunne listened to the crickets and stared up at the branches and the stars. I cannot die, he thought. But soon the sensations of sound and sight faded to nothing, and Grady Dunne joined Raymond Benjamin and Romeo Brock in death.
CHAPTER 37
Dan Holiday drove back to the lot across from the gas market on Central Avenue, only to find that T.C. Cook had disappeared. He tried to reach Cook on the Motorola and then on his cell but could not get him either way. He noted that Reginald Wilson's Buick was still parked beside the market. Holiday assumed that Cook had tired of the surveillance or was simply fatigued by the workday and had headed home. He thought he'd go to his house and check up on him, just to be safe.
Cook's Marquis was not in the driveway when Holiday arrived at his yellow-sided house on Dolphin Road. Holiday sat in his Town Car and dialed the home number for Cook but got the answering machine. A porch light was on, but Holiday guessed it had been activated by a timer or darkness. There were no lights on in the house.
He dialed the number to Ramone's cell.
'Yeah.'
'It's Holiday.'
'Hello, Doc.'
'Where you at? It sounds like a party.'
'Leo's, having a beer. What do you want?'
'Me and Sergeant Cook caught up with our police officer friend. Car four sixty-one? It turned out to be nothing.'
'Big surprise.'
'But I lost Cook somewhere. I had to leave him for a bit, and when I came back, he was gone. I tried his house, and he's not there, either. I'm thinking he got confused or something. I don't even know if he can read street signs.'
'He had a stroke, not Alzheimer's. He'll turn up.'
'I'm worried about him,' said Holiday. He waited for a response but heard only bar sounds on the other end of the line. 'Gus?'
'Keep me posted. I'll be here for a while.'
Holiday hit 'end.' He sat in the Lincoln and thought about the old man and where he could have gone. There was only one place that came to mind.
T.C. Cook sat behind the wheel of his Marquis, parked on a side street in Good Luck Estates, a community off Good Luck Road in New Carrollton. He was looking at the ranch-style home of Reginald Wilson. There were no lights on in the house and few lights in the neighboring homes. The street was quiet and dimly lit.