The Second Girl(64)

I allow another car to pull out of a parking space and get in front of me, then hope he travels at a decent speed so Playboy doesn’t get too far ahead.

He makes a left on 23rd, crosses Massachusetts Avenue, bearing right onto Florida, headed toward Adams Morgan. Hits a signal at 18th Street and puts on his left-turn blinker, but once the signal turns, instead of heading north on 18th, he crosses it and bears left to stay on Florida. He hangs another and I can see the Third District station on the right. A couple of marked units are parked half a block up.

At this point I’m fairly confident where he might be headed. If it were the area of 16th and Park, where José and his boys used to hang, then he probably would have continued east on Florida to 16th and made that right. Traveling this direction, I’m guessing he’ll be headed in the vicinity of 17th and Euclid.

I’m almost a block behind him when he hits Kalorama. The boy’s good about obeying the traffic laws. He makes a full stop. By the time I get across Kalorama he’s got his right-turn signal on for Euclid Street. I speed up a bit so I can catch up, but hang back when I notice he’s moving slower, like he’s checking out his ’hood. I double-park on Euclid at the intersection with Ontario and watch him make a left on 17th. I continue slowly and notice him park along the curb on the east side just a few feet from the intersection. Halfway down the block I double-park again. A couple of cars pass me on the left, having to merge into the other lane.

I notice some players hanging on the northwest and northeast corners. Very likely slingin’. A couple of them look like lookouts, so I drive slowly like I’m looking for a parking spot. I got good tint on my car, other than the front windshield, but still I’m not worried so much about being seen once I park.

Playboy steps out of the driver’s side, turns to acknowledge one of the players on the northwest corner. He walks between another parked car and the front of his vehicle to the sidewalk. One of the boys, who I make for one of the lookouts, and another boy, walk toward him and they do some handshake shit and start talking.

I make my move and find a space between two cars on the south side of the street, in front of a row house connected to other row homes on the west and a newer three-story condo building where there used to be a mom-and-pop market, on the east. Most of these homes on the south side are good homes. The market used to be run by a Korean family when I last worked the area. I know this area well. It’s controlled by Cordell Holm. We used to hit it on a regular basis when I worked narcotics, but despite the arrests and all the drugs and guns we managed to seize, we had little to no impact. It’s cleaned up a little, but there’s still deals that go down on the streets or the cuts between the school on 17th, and sometimes the lobby area or halls of an apartment complex on Euclid called the Ritz. A lot of the homes in this area are dirty, but nothing I’d want to hit nowadays. And yes, I have thought about it on more than one occasion. Problem is it’d be rare for any of them to be unoccupied for the amount of time I’d need to get in and out. It’s nothing like the boys on Kenyon. They didn’t do their business on their own block.

Cordell’s got family members in several of these homes, cousins and probably grandparents, so it’s not anything I’d take a chance on. Doesn’t matter how much shit I think I might get out of hitting the right one.

I back in tight and tilt my seat back, but not so much that I don’t have a good view ahead of me. I’ve got a good distance, here.

Playboy meets up with another male subject on the sidewalk in front of a three-story row house with an English basement near the corner. Kid looks like he’s twelve years old. After a short chat, Playboy walks the few stairs to the stoop of one of the redbrick row homes and enters. I don’t know that home. There used to be a lot of Latino worker-types that rolled in and out of a couple of the houses there a few years back, so I always figured it was either an illegal rooming house or gambling or both.

I grab bottled water from the floor behind the passenger seat and then my flask and palm-size binos outta my backpack. I take a swig from the flask and sit back. I might have to sit for a bit.





Fifty-seven



Crackheads walking up to the corner like clockwork. The boys taking them down to a cut behind the row home on the corner across from me to do the deal. Every hour or so a marked unit rolls through, making its rounds. It’s a unit working the evening shift, occupied by two young officers who look like they’re fresh outta the academy. The drug boys don’t even disperse when they see them. Couple of them simply spit on the ground before the unit passes, showing the cops they ain’t nothin’. I look at them and think about all the ways I can hurt them—physically. These two officers think they’re hurting these boys by stepping out once or twice, writing up parking tickets on a couple of cars (including Playboy’s), or squarin’ up with a couple of them, probably advising them to move on, but all the kids do is walk a few feet, spit on the ground, and find a stoop to sit on. Never did like that spitting-on-the-ground shit. It’s disrespectful; but then that’s why they do it.

Eighteen hundred hours. I can see northbound and southbound gridlocked traffic on 16th from this distance. Steady traffic making its way up 17th too. Probably commuters thinking they can trim a few minutes off their commute. They cross Euclid, heading toward Columbia Road. Every so often a couple of cars will pull to the corner curb along the crosswalk behind Playboy’s car. They make their deals and roll. Not even that obvious. It looks something like a brief conversation between two unlikely friends, followed by a handshake. These boys know a lot of people. A lot of them with Virginia and Maryland tags. I use my binos and note the tags with Virginia plates. A large majority of them are regular-looking people, like they’re just getting off work. After all, it is Friday.