Gina Marie returned, smiling proudly, and hopped back up to her seat. “He gonna be home around seven.”
Martina Lewis got up abruptly, walked by them, and headed out the door.
“Martina a man,” said Gina Marie, apropos of nothing.
“Clarence Carter can see that shit,” said Bowman, and he, too, rose up off his stool. He crushed out his cigarette, removed a ten from his wallet, and slid it in front of Gina Marie.
“Thanks, sugar,” she said.
Bowman, not one to waste words, was already gone.
Dayna Rosen had declined to give Strange any information over the phone. He told her that he happened to be in the neighborhood and politely asked if he could stop by her place and speak with her face-to-face. After a short silence on her end of the line, she agreed. But when she got a look at him, a strong young black man walking up her sidewalk, she took him around the side of her house, one of the many center-hall brick colonials of Barnaby Woods, and had him sit on its screened back porch. She was being cautious because of his color, something she’d never admit to him or herself. But he knew.
Dayna Rosen was a dark-haired, brown-eyed woman in her late twenties, wearing bell-bottom jeans, a leather vest, rope sandals, and a Hanoi Jane shag straight out of Klute. She and Strange sat on the back porch in comfortable chairs, part of an outdoor furniture set that looked like it had cost good money. She had served him iced tea. African masks hung on the porch’s posts, and a Coltrane poster had been framed and mounted on the paneled outside wall. The Rosens were making a statement, and Strange took it in.
Dayna gave him a shorthand summation of their lives. Her husband, Seth, was an attorney for a labor union and he was at work. Their son, Zach, was in first grade at Lafayette Elementary. He was having a little trouble keeping up in math. They thought they’d “nip it in the bud” early and get him a tutor. Dayna had seen a flyer posted on the bulletin board at the Chevy Chase Library and she’d called the number given for Maybelline Walker, who was offering her expertise and services.
“How’d that work out?” said Strange.
“Fine,” said Dayna. “What she did was helpful.”
“First grade is kinda young to have a tutor isn’t it?”
“Zach needed assistance.” She looked him over. “How old is your daughter?”
“She’s ten,” said Strange recklessly. He hadn’t thought the age thing through.
Dayna’s eyes flickered. She glanced at his hands, which carried no wedding ring. “You and your wife must have had her at a vhad27"ery early age.”
“I plucked my bride straight out the cradle,” said Strange with a clumsy smile. “So, Maybelline Walker. You used her for how long?”
“A month, I guess. Maybe four sessions.”
“Only a month?”
“Something…” She stopped, moved her eyes away from his, and finished her thought. “Something happened.”
“Was there some kind of problem with her work?”
Distracted and out of sorts, Dayna got up out of her chair and used her palms to smooth out the wrinkles in her jeans. She picked up her glass, which she had barely drunk from, and said, too hurriedly, “I’m going to get some more tea. Would you like a refill?”
“I’m good,” said Strange.
She was gone for a while. When she returned, she stood by the table and made no move to sit. Her jawline had hardened and there was steel in her voice. “You should go. I called the police.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I don’t believe you have a daughter, for one, or that you’re married. You’re not telling me the truth.”
Strange nodded. “Sometimes, in my line of work, it’s just easier to lie.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m doing a background check on Maybelline Walker for a client,” said Strange, telling another lie. “I’m an investigator on the private side.”
“Let me see some identification.”
Strange pulled his ticket from his wallet and handed it to her. “You didn’t call the police, did you?”
“No, but I should have.” She dropped the license in front of him on the glass table. “Please go.”
“Want me to use the servants’ exit?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m sayin, Maybelline did better than I did. Least she got through the front door.”
Strange pictured Dayna on some college campus, not too long ago, an enthusiastic participant in the revolution. And now, living this good life in Chevy Chase, D.C., seeing that this capitalism thing was not all that bad, but still trying to hold on to her ideals. That white guilt thing had to be heavy on her shoulders.
Strange’s implied accusation cut but didn’t soften Dayna. Color came to her face.
“Bullshit,” she said. “Don’t lay that crap on me.”
“I apologize for coming here on false pretenses,” said Strange.
Dayna, exasperated, sat back down in her chair. “What do you want, really? What’s this about?”
Strange leaned forward. “You said something happened.”
FIFTEEN
Vaughn drove over the Anacostia River, went north on Minnesota Avenue, and turned right on one of the single-syllable streets running alphabetically across the grid of central Northeast. The block ended in a circle, with a stand of thin woods split by a ribbon of creek. Boxy brick apartment buildings, housing residents on government assistance, were visible on the other side of the woods.
Vaughn parked his Monaco in front of one of several wood-framed, dilapidated single-family homes, took his hat off the seat beside him, and placed it on his head. He walked up a buckled, weeded sidewalk to the house whose address he had written in his notebook. A woman was on the porch in a folding chair, a sweated can of Schlitz in her hand. He could see, even in her seated position, that she was tall and long of leg. Her hair hung straight. She wore a shift with open buttons up top, and her bust was full and sat high and natural. Her feet were bare. A country girl gone hard in the city.
Vaughn stopped just shy of the porch steps. “Ma’am. I’m looking for a Monique Lattimer.”
Her eyes went from his head to his feet, slowly. “What kind of police are you?”
“Homicide. The name’s Frank Vaughn.”
“I ain’t see no badge.”
Vaughn showed her his shield and slipped the case back into his jacket. He could tell from her manner that courtesy would be a waste of time. Like the lawyers said, he’d have to just go ahead and treat her as hostile.
“Are you Monique?”
“Monique is me,” she said, and took a swig of beer. “You got a cigarette?”
Vaughn produced his deck, shook two out of it, and made a chin motion to her porch. “I can’t light you from down here.”
“Come on up, then.”
He took the steps to her porch. Used his lighter to fire up her cigarette, then his own, and snapped the Zippo shut. He carefully leaned his weight against a wood post that seemed to be rotting at its base.
Monique took a drag off the L amp;M and as she exhaled looked at the cigarette with distaste. Making it obvious that it wasn’t her brand.
“According to the DMV,” said Vaughn, “you’re the registered owner of a sixty-eight Buick Electra.”
“Yeah, it’s mine.”
“Gold deuce-and-a-quarter. Drop-top, right?”
“Hard.”
“I don’t see it.”
“That’s ’cause it’s not here.”
“Where is it, Miss Lattimer?”
She stared at the cigarette burning between her long fingers. “My brother took it this morning for a brake job.”
“Took it where? A garage, something?”
“I wouldn’t know. Said he had a friend was gonna work on it.”
“What’s your brother’s name?”
“Orlando.”
“Lattimer?”
“Roosevelt. Like the high school.”
“Where can I find him?”
“Huh?”
“Does your brother have an address?”
“He stays with a girl over in Seat Pleasant, but I don’t know where she live at, exactly.”