“Lawrence wasn’t answering his cell,” said Ali. “I went over to where he stays and talked to his sister. He’s been out the apartment all night. She hasn’t seen or heard from him.”
“Can you get away for a while?” said Flynn. “I want to look for him. Two sets of eyes and all that.”
“I can meet you,” said Ali. He told Flynn where, a halfway point on Riggs Road, near South Dakota Avenue.
“Twenty minutes,” said Flynn.
They drove the streets for hours, but they didn’t find Chris.
He had checked into a motel high on Georgia Avenue, in south Silver Spring, just over the line into Maryland. Though it was near the niceties of the new downtown, it had a Plexiglas reception area and the requisite male hooker, dressed and made up as a female, lounging in the lobby. It was not a plastic-sheet flophouse, but it was close.
What it did have was a covered garage. Chris had tucked the van far back inside, well out of view from the street, before he checked in.
He had a duffel bag with some clothes in it, and his shaving kit. He had not bought any alcohol or weed to smoke. He wanted his mind sharp and clear. His thoughts were grim and clouded, and he needed to see through them to some kind of light.
He had turned on his cell, and its ring tone sounded frequently. The calls were from his father, Ali, his mother, and Katherine. He let them go to message. Eventually the calls stopped.
He lay on the double bed of the stark room, watching television but not watching it, thinking. He had used the remote to get ESPN, and now there were highlights of a bicycle race, many men wearing tight shorts and colorful jerseys, navigating a twisting downhill road, and some sort of accident where several bicycles went down. He did not follow the sport, could not identify this particular race, and was uninterested. He had never been a fan of biking. As he reached his teens, he had thought it was nerdy and lame.
His father used to strap him into a seat on the back of his bike and ride him all the way down to the Potomac on the paved trails of Rock Creek Park. He had been very young and his memory was sketchy, and he had not thought of it at all in a long while. What he remembered, mostly, were flashes and sensations. Sun streaming down through the trees. The wind on his face and in his hair. The feel of his own smile. On those rides, when he got up a good amount of speed, his father would sometimes reach behind him and squeeze Chris’s hand, reassure him, tell him that everything was going to be all right.
I am not someone who could kill a man. There is nothing in my past and nothing inside me that would allow me to do that. Ben couldn’t, and neither can I.
Ben had tried to help Lawrence. Ben had seen something in him that others couldn’t see. If Ben were alive, he’d stop Lawrence from what he had planned. Chris knew this. It was on him now to act for Ben.
He relaxed and fell asleep.
His ring tone woke him up. He looked at the caller ID on his cell and saw that it was Lawrence.
“Yeah,” said Chris.
“It’s me,” said Lawrence, his voice gravelly. “We about to do this, son.”
“All right.”
“I set it up. Got us some iron, too.” Lawrence listened to silence and said, “You still with me?”
“Where we supposed to meet ’em?”
“I’ll tell you face-to-face. You and me need to hook up and lay it out.”
Lawrence gave him the time and the spot. Chris said he’d meet him there and ended the call.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Lawrence Newhouse stood in the heat of the bedroom he shared with Dorita’s younger kids and slipped a lightweight burnt-orange North Face jacket over his white T. The gym bag, filled with money, and his daypack, containing the guns and Ben’s carpet knife, sat on the bed.
He had been up, unable to sleep, for most of the night. He had stayed on his back, on the bed, his forearm draped over his eyes, thinking of what he was about to do. Pondering his strategy, and Chris.
Lawrence lifted the daypack and slipped one strap over his shoulder.
His smart little nephew, Terrence, came into the room. He grabbed his sneaks off the floor and looked up at his old uncle, overdressed for this summer day.
“Where you goin, Uncle L?”
“I got business.”
“You a businessman?”
“You know I am.”
“I’m gonna be a scientist,” said Terrence, his face hopeful and bright. “Look at the solar system through one of them telescopes and stuff.”
“You can do it, Terrence. Just keep your head in those books.”
Lawrence reached out and touched Terrence’s warm scalp. The boy could do it. He had the brains. But he needed to get out of this place and away from his mother, who was too busy putting on weight and talking on her cell to get the boy in a position where he could succeed. Lawrence had heard of those charter schools the kids slept at, away from their homes. That was the type of hookup Terrence needed. But Lawrence didn’t know how to make that kind of thing happen. It got him confused and angry to think on it, so he reached for the gym bag and gripped its stiff handles in his hand.
“I’ll check you later, little man.”
Lawrence walked from the room. He passed through the big area off the kitchen, where Dorita was sprawled out on the couch. Her little girl, Loquatia, was seated on the carpet in front of the TV, her hand in a bag of Cheetos.
“Where you headed?” said Dorita.
“Out,” said Lawrence.
“Bring me back a soda.”
“That’s one thing you don’t need.”
“I ain’t ask for your opinion.”
“Okay, corn chip.”
Lawrence kept moving out the door. He cared about his sister, he supposed, but damn, Dorita wasn’t much more than two hundred fifty pounds of waste. He had considered giving her some of the money, but only for a minute. She’d blow it on stupid shit that would come to no good for the kids. Instead, Lawrence was gonna do something with it. One thing right.
Out on the street, he went to his Cavalier. Marquis Gilman, his teenage nephew, called out to him. Marquis was standing around talking to some boys he shouldn’t have been talking to. Lawrence walked to his car, popped the rear lid, and dropped the gym bag and the daypack into the trunk. Marquis was now beside him, looking at the trunk’s contents. Lawrence closed the lid.
“You leavin out?” said Marquis, his gangly arms hanging loosely at his side.
“Nah, man. Goin for a ride.”
“Looks like you takin off for real.”
“I’m straight hood, son. Where would I go?” Lawrence put his hand on his nephew’s shoulder. “Look, Marquis…”
“What?”
“I’m gonna go talk to Mr. Carter one more time. See if he can’t hook you up with some worthwhile employment. But whatever happens, I want you to listen to that man and do what he says. He’s lookin out for you. Ali is cool people.” Lawrence made a sweeping motion with his hand. “You don’t belong on this street. Time for you to make your move or you ain’t never gonna get out.”
“ You stayed.”
“Does it look like it was good to me?”
Marquis did not answer. Lawrence clasped one of Marquis’s hands and put his free arm around Marquis and patted his back.
“See you up the road,” said Lawrence. “Hear?”
Lawrence got into his car without looking back and sped away. A couple of blocks from the apartment, he stopped and threw his cell phone down a storm drain. He was done with it and didn’t want to be called or traced. He was shedding his skin. He then drove over the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge and tossed something over its rail. On the other side of the Anacostia, he turned around, recrossed the river, and rolled back into his neighborhood.