Hannibal took a deep breath as he stepped out of his motel, for no other reason than that he loved the salty fresh smell of the ocean. He had booked a room in the Best Western Oceanfront. True to the name, his room did have a pleasant oceanfront view, despite the fact that the motel faced the even less impressive Budget Lodge and stood practically in the shadow of an Econolodge. But the view didn’t move him, in either direction. It was the smell of the seashore that made him smile.
It was clear that location meant nothing to Monte. He was hopping around like the dancing hamsters on the internet as they stepped out into the flashbulb-bright early morning sunshine. Hannibal wondered if he would be bouncing off the ceiling in the car.
“You know where you’re going, right?” Monte asked as they got underway.
“I have the address and the streets are numbered sequentially. I think I can find it.”
From 11th to 21st street was not far, but it would take them a while. Traffic wasn’t the only reason for their slow progress, although the streets were packed with both cars and foot traffic. Hannibal reflected that, geography aside, Washington D.C. was at heart a northern town, at least from a cultural perspective. The vast variety of restaurants, museums, and theater options hinted at that fact, but the true giveaway was the pace. People in The District had someplace to go and wanted to get there.
Virginia Beach, on the other hand, was a true Southern city. It was the biggest city in the state, but it still behaved and thought like a small town. That made the traffic very similar to driving conditions in Miami. Drivers were too busy looking at the people and shops they passed, and of course watching the ocean when they could spot it between the towering hotels, to be concerned with speed. It was as if there were no local residents, and everyone in town was on vacation.
As he headed up 21st it occurred to Hannibal that every seaside city must have been designed by a New Englander. The style of the buildings never changed. Then he passed Peabody’s, which had “the biggest dance floor in Virginia Beach” if their sign was to be believed. This was a bit more modern than the rest of its surroundings, but still had an air of that quaint small town feeling.
A few blocks later he pulled into a small parking lot behind a squat, unassuming building that could have been a residence that was just a little bigger than its neighbors. When they left the car Monte raced to the door, back to Hannibal and back to the door. Hannibal tried to remember what it was like to be a pre-teen boy. His memory failed him.
A tap at the door brought a very large, well-tattooed fellow to the door. He was perhaps twenty years old, with a huge forehead, dreadlocks and a questioning expression on his face.
“Hannibal Jones to see Huge Wilson. He’s expecting me.”
The doorman’s head moved backward on his neck. “You the nigger laid out Hard Dog?” Hannibal nodded. “Dayum!” He offered Hannibal a handshake that jumped into a series of movements, a more complex process than Hannibal could follow. It ended with the doorman pressing a fist forward. That part Hannibal recognized. He punched into the man’s fist and they all went inside.
Dim lights, dark carpet and plentiful mirrors promoted the illusion that the building was bigger inside than it was outside. The doorman led them through a narrow hall to a wider control room area. Hannibal recognized the large mixing boards that lined one side of the room and wondered how anyone could master the vast array of switches, knobs and slider pots. The board faced a glass wall, beyond which a solitary Black woman in a jogging suit and headphones stood speaking into a hanging microphone, reading from a sheaf of paper.
Monte saw none of this. He saw only one of the two men behind the board, a slight man with close cut hair and two armfuls of tattoos showing below the sleeves of his vintage tee shirt.
“Huge!” Monte said leaping forward. When the man turned toward him he switched to, “Mister Wilson. Holy shit it’s really you! Oh my God.”
“Chill out, man,” Huge said in his natural falsetto. “We’re working on something here. Give me just a minute.”
Huge was also wearing headphones and Hannibal realized he was hearing the woman’s words while the rest of the room was in silence. They stood watching the silent performance for another two minutes, until Huge raised a hand to signal the woman to stop.
“That was off the hook, Delicia,” he said into a microphone. “Now take five while I chat to a couple of visitors for a minute.” The woman smiled and left the recording room by a second entrance. Monte’s eyes were riveted on her impressive rear end.
“So this is your little friend you wanted me to meet,” Huge said to Hannibal. “He’s got a good eye for talent. Monte, right?”
“Ohmygodican’tbelieveit.”
Huge sat back in his rolling black leather chair. “Hannibal told me you were a hustler. Said you got your name from running a three card monte game and that the day he met you, you took him for a bundle. That true?”
“Well, yeah,” Monte said.
“Well you sure don’t look like a hustler to me. Why don’t you sit here for a bit and let T.L. here give you a quick rundown on what we’re doing here today. Delicia is going to be the next Missy Elliot. While you do that, Hannibal and me got some business.”
Huge stood, took Hannibal’s arm, and led him out of the room. They moved down the darkened hall to a small conference room. There was barely enough space for the simple cherry wood table and the eight chairs around it. As they entered Hannibal was struck by two conflicting sensations: the sight of a half-full coffee pot, and the smell of leftover marijuana smoke. Huge started pouring coffee before he noticed Hannibal’s reaction.
“Oh, you don’t blow the chronic, do you?”
Hannibal did a quick mental translation. “No, it’s not for me. Or Monte.”
Huge’s head bobbled like a sports figure doll as he handed Hannibal a Styrofoam cup. Huge was physically slight, but there was no denying the energy the man generated, the subtle sense of power, and his total comfort with the power he had.
“You told me your friend had no interest in school, right? Let me talk to him. I ain’t a gangster, you know. Never pretended to be, but I’ll tell you, the G’s don’t fuck with me cause I can give them the beats that get asses on the floor, and that lets them clock the dollars.”
Hannibal nodded, but didn’t sit because Huge was still standing. Huge wasn’t a gangster, or a “G” as he and his friends would say, but he commanded respect. On reflection, Hannibal realized that his relationship with Huge was in many ways similar to the one he had with Ronzini.
“So, you haven’t asked me about your Rod Mantooth problem,” Huge said, starting to walk around the table. “I love that name.”
“You’ll tell me when you have something.”
“This is my city, brother man,” Huge said, spinning to point a skinny finger at Hannibal. “You think it’s hard to find one funky white dude? Shee-it. But of course, your call last night made it too easy. We got one for you.”
“Got one? Who?”
“Lime,” Huge said, pulling a note pad from the hip pocket of his baggy shorts. “We got Lime.” From the pad he pulled a photo and two pieces of paper, which he dramatically slid across the table’s glossy surface. Hannibal scooped them up and examined them one at a time. The photo was a candid shot of a beautiful young woman with a cream complexion that could have made her part Asian, or Hawaiian, or Middle Eastern, or half a dozen other possibilities. Her hair was long, thick and naturally wavy, the color of balsa wood with blonde streaks. Bright green, slightly slanted eyes stared out above a tiny pert nose and full, challenging lips. This was the girl in the lime colored bathing suit. The other papers bore an address and details of the time and location of the sighting.
“One in the morning?” Hannibal asked. “And she wasn’t with Mantooth?”
“My man said she was patrolling the beach, still in that bikini. Not sure if she was dropping off or picking up, but it sure looked like a drug run to my partner. That was taken on the boardwalk just before shit started shutting down. He clicked a lot. I kept the rest. Man, I’d put her in a video in a heartbeat. And check it, she don’t look like a woman who’s been abused, do she?”
Hannibal saw as much strength in her face as in her long striding legs. “Maybe she likes it. Or, maybe she’s a partner. Or maybe she likes girls.”
“Only one way to know, bro,” Huge said. He had come full circle and stood facing Hannibal now. “One thing’s for sure, she’ll lead you to the man you want to meet. You go check it out, and come back to pick up Monte tonight sometime.”
“What do you have in mind for him?”
Huge’s grin was so broad it was infectious. “Gonna show him how it all works, dig? Introduce him to some people who wish they’d stayed in school. Some people who had a lot of money go through their hands and got nothing cause they didn’t know how to handle it. You just leave this one to me, brother. Now, you going down the beach to meet this bitch? Tell her to introduce you to this player so you can straighten his ass out?”
“Something like that,” Hannibal said.
Huge leaned back, scanning Hannibal up and down. “You don’t do undercover, do you? I mean, a black suit on the beach in summer is going to stand out a bit. You need to loosen up some if you’re going to get within half a mile of this ho.”
When did a lazy pronunciation of the word “whore” come to be a synonym for woman, Hannibal wondered. “I’ll keep my distance. Besides, if I take my jacket and shirt off I’ll stand out even more. I don’t have any tattoos.”
But back at his car, Hannibal started the engine, cranked the air conditioner to maximum and got back out. He folded his jacket and laid it on the back seat. He laid his tie atop that and opened the top button of his white shirt. Then he rolled his sleeves up to just below his elbows and returned to the driver’s seat. For now, that was as incognito as he was prepared to be.
A little known CD by The Georgia Satellites pumped his speakers while he drove southward down Atlantic Avenue, almost to Rudee Inlet. He cut right on Fifth Street, almost the end of the resort area beach, and eased a short way down Salem Avenue. Just like Atlantic City, he thought. As soon as you get a few blocks from the Boardwalk it stops being a resort town and starts showing its less impressive side.
Hannibal had always heard that Monopoly was based on Atlantic City, because that was the Boardwalk he knew about. He reconsidered that assumption as he drove past Baltic Avenue and turned up Mediterranean. The modest houses he was passing were surely the least expensive properties on this particular board. He cruised slowly up the narrow street until he spotted the address Huge had written down. He parked between an aging aqua Fairlane and a drab green Chevette. Walking toward the wooden cottage Hannibal was praying that the drivers of the two cars were careful. If paint from either one got scraped onto his white tornado, he might just have to have the car put down.
The mystery girl lived in a second floor flat she apparently rented from the building’s owners. She had a separate entrance at the top of a long flight of white wooden stairs. Hannibal wanted to meet the woman face-to-face. He was building a cover story concerning confusing her address with someone else’s on his way up the stairs. It wasn’t necessary. His knock drew no response.
The view between the curtains on the inside of the door offered little. A white gas stove, Formica kitchen table and metal tube chairs implied a place that hadn’t changed much in decades. Drab wallpaper and chipped linoleum might mean a place that the model-shaped occupant didn’t spend much time in, but the dog’s water bowl meant regular return visits home.
From the landing he had a good view of what appeared to be a typical, middle class neighborhood, leaning toward the low end. He saw bicycles in driveways, chain link fences were more popular than the white picket variety, and a woman in shorts and a tank top sat in front of the neighborhood grocery store on the other side of the street. Ah, the all-knowing, all seeing neighborhood observer, Hannibal thought. Where would private detectives be without them?
Hannibal smiled his way over to the stringy-haired blonde whose freckled skin had seen too much sun and not enough sunscreen. She raised expectant eyes toward him but offered no greeting.
“Well, hi,” Hannibal said. “You look like maybe you can help me.”
“Yeah, but why would I want to?” she replied.
“Because you’re a nice person,” Hannibal said, offering his hand. “My name’s Hannibal and you are…?”
She took his hand, amusement lighting her eyes. “Fay. How do you do? You looking for somebody?”
“I was hoping to catch up to this young lady.” Hannibal showed her the five-by-seven Huge had given him. “A friend gave me her address. Does she work during the day?”
Fay flashed uneven, tobacco-stained teeth. “Mariah? Naw, she’s the wind, like in the old song, you know? Real party girl.”
Hannibal nodded, making a show of taking Fay’s words seriously. “Party girl, eh? Well, any idea how long she’ll be away? Maybe I should come back next week.”
“If you was smart you wouldn’t come back at all,” Fay said, pulling a cigarette out of a pack of Kools. “She’s hooked up with some guy she met on the beach. But I happen to know she’ll be home in the morning.”
Hannibal let his eyebrows rise in wonder. “Really? Now how would you know that?”
“Cause she asked me to feed and walk her dog.” Fay lit up and took a deep drag. Hannibal waited. “I told her I’d help her out for one day and no more.”
Hannibal pushed his hands into his pockets, pursed his lips and nodded as if lost in thought. “So she met a guy on the beach. Wonder if we’re talking real competition here. Fancy car, big money?”
“Oh yeah,” Fay said. “A player for sure. He flashed, and she went for the cash.”
“Tourist you think?” Hannibal asked, and looked at Fay as if only she could tell. “Not a local fellow?”
“Local boys don’t wear those flashy Hawaiian shirts,” Fay said, blowing smoke into the sky, “and they don’t rent beach houses right on Lake Holly. She told me he’s up there someplace.”
Lake Holly turned out to really be two small lakes, a few blocks apart from each other in the middle of the city. The water lay just inside Pacific Avenue, which was just inside Atlantic, and stretched from about 16th Street down past 6th. Hannibal knew because he had meandered up and down the streets in the area, getting a feel for the locale. He drove with his window down and his shirt completely unbuttoned. Through his sunglasses he saw that condominiums, apartment buildings and single-family homes co-existed peacefully on the shores of the lakes, two blocks from the boardwalk. No one looked like a year-round resident, although most of them had to be.
He turned off his CD player because several variations of beach music seeped into the car from hidden sources, changing each time he turned a corner. Sometimes it seemed as if everyone he saw was dancing to the prevailing beat. Women wore Capri pants or bathing suits, regardless of their age or size. Men dragged their feet when they walked. The sun baked him through his undershirt. On almost every corner the smell of burgers, tacos and chicken reminded him that he had missed lunch. Then he would cross the intersection and forget again.
One house standing proudly behind a white picket fence drew his attention as he drove very slowly past. It was traditional brick with white painted wood, the glassed-in porch presenting a solid, conservative front. A young man was carrying a pony keg toward the door. Three women stood in his way, laughing as they drifted left and right to clear a path. Their two-piece bathing suits were the color of cherry, lemon, and lime.
And there he sat. There on the front steps of that impressive vacation home in a quiet section of the resort area, within easy walking distance of the beach. It was him. It had to be.
Hannibal didn’t turn his head toward the house, but he had a full ten seconds to appraise Rod Mantooth as he rolled past. Hannibal judged him to be about five foot ten, with great broad shoulders and thick, swarthy arms. His short-sleeved shirt hung open. A tangled mass of curly hair burst out from the uncovered space. Thick hairy legs grew from the bottoms of his shorts and ended in broad, spatulate feet.
Stretching his peripheral vision to its limit Hannibal took a mental photograph. The wavy black hair was not quite long enough to touch Rod’s shoulders, but it was striking out in all directions atop a large, square head. Olive skin carried a deep tan. Black marbles were sunk into his craggy face where eyes should have been, but the marbles were flat, dull and lifeless.
Women would say this face had character lines, but Hannibal saw no hint of character in the man’s careless grin. Charles Bronson’s face was creased this way, but Bronson never grinned like that. This was more the old Rod Steiger, or perhaps early Broderick Crawford. Did Broderick ever go by Rod?
And then Hannibal was past the house and he dared not look back for fear of attracting attention. The target had been sighted. Now Hannibal made the subtle shift from being on the hunt to actually stalking his prey. Now the game was changed.
Now the monster had a face.
When Marquita answered the door her eyes pierced Hannibal’s dark lenses and somehow she knew. He could feel it. She nodded hello, opened the door wide and walked back inside. Sarge sat behind a tall glass, on a stool at the breakfast nook that separated the kitchen area from the living room. The glass’ contents were topped with small green leaves.
“Markie was just showing me how to make a proper mint julep,” Sarge said. “Of course you’re supposed to have a silver cup. No idea why. So, how’d things go today? I see you relaxed a little bit.” Hannibal had buttoned his shirt and pulled his coat back on, but left his tie in the car.
Marquita kept her eyes on her own glass, crushing leaves at the bottom with a spoon, releasing the fresh scent of mint into the air. “You saw him, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Him and his whole party family. She’s still part of the gang.” He slid the photograph across the counter. Marquita’s breath caught in her throat.
“Damn you’re good,” Sarge said with the robust energy of a fisherman who feels the big one hit his line. “So now we’re in business right? We waltz over there, rearrange his face a little, find out what he did with whatever he’s got, then make sure he’s in no condition to do this to any more women.”
Marquita grabbed Sarge’s forearm and whispered, “No.”
“Baby,” Sarge began.
“No, Marquita needs you,” Hannibal rushed to say. “And your plan wouldn’t work anyway, if I read the situation right. It looks to me like this guy’s a lifelong player. I think this formula he stole from Anita’s house is his one-time big score. No beating is going to make him give it up.”
“It’d be fun,” Sarge said.
“Hannibal shook his head, but he was smiling. “Yeah, it would, but we can’t do this one for fun old friend. I’m going to have to get close to this guy, find out if he still has the prize and if so how he plans to cash in on it. If it’s already gone, maybe I can track it down and recover it. Even if I can’t I’d need to track down the money he got and get that to Anita as compensation.”
“Well, he won’t like that idea,” Sarge said with a wink.
“No. In that instance, you might get your chance to be persuasive with the boy.”
A whirring blender stopped conversation for a moment. After ice cubes became crushed ice Marquita poured the result into her glass. Sarge took a big drink from his own glass, slurping through the crushed ice.
“So, I take it you’ve got a plan?” he asked.
“Sort of,” Hannibal said. “I’ll start with the girl in the morning, and see if I can get invited to join the party.”
“Will you stay for a while, then?” Marquita said. “I would be happy to cook, and Archie said he would rent a movie for us to watch.”
“She still doesn’t want to go out,” Sarge said in conspiratorial tones, as if Hannibal might not understand.
“We can make it an evening,” Hannibal said, “on a couple of conditions. First I have to get across town and recoup a certain little G before he gets adopted by the hip-hop nation. And we’ll both be back for dinner and a movie or two, if we can order in. You don’t need to always be doing for us.”
“Amen to that,” Sarge said.
A danceable beat rolled in a continuous loop inside Huge Wilson’s studio at a volume Hannibal could barely detect. It seemed to move up through his feet rather than seeping into his ears. The mood was the same cheerful intensity he had left hours before. Sometime during the day Monte had changed entirely, except for the look of joy on his face. The youngster was showing one way hip-hop may have gotten its name. He couldn’t hold still, and Huge seemed to be getting a kick out of seeing the boy so happy.
“Hannibal you would not believe it,” Monte was saying. “We recorded an entire track, from beginning to end. Man it’s like science, only its music. Did you know you have to use a lot of math to lay down the beat? You got to know the number of beats per minute, and the notes, I mean, all music is made up of math.”
“You don’t say,” Hannibal said.
“Seriously. And did you know that Huge went to Old Dominion University?”
“As a matter of fact I did,” Hannibal said, with a nod toward Huge. “I do like to know a little about my clients. And it seems you’ve become a young producer yourself. He’s even got you looking the part.”
“Couldn’t have my man hanging around here looking like he wasn’t down with the flow,” Huge said. In fact, the changes were small but the look was different. In place of the generic tee shirt he had arrived in, Monte had on a thermal undershirt with the sleeves pushed up. White painter’s pants replaced his denim shorts and a new Wizards cap sat on his head, backwards of course. The big difference to Hannibal’s eye was a pair of suede boots where K-mart sneakers had been. Red laces reached only to his ankles, leaving the top half of each boot hanging open. Behind his smile, Hannibal thought, “You look like a bum. Is that the style?”
“Hey, what you see ain’t all we got when we went out,” Monte said, dropping into the far corner, pulling forward a real surprise, a stack of paperbacks. “Look at all these. Huge says if I want to be a serious G, I need to get through these. I think I can get them all read before school starts.”
Now Hannibal was impressed. Among the music oriented volumes he saw The Beat: Go-Go’s Fusion of Funk and Hip-Hop, a book that details the origins of Washington D.C.’s original music form. He also saw Yes I Can by Sammy Davis Jr. and The Autobiography of Malcolm X, both pretty hefty volumes he had read in his youth.
“You think you can get through all these during the summer?”
Monte brushed invisible dirt off his shoulder. “Man, Huge says I’m a young Black man on the move, and I can do anything. Don’t you think I can?”
Hannibal glanced at Huge, feeling that he had misstepped. “Well, of course I do. Huge is right, a man can do anything he puts his mind to. Huge here could be a teacher if he decided that was what he wanted to be.”
Huge stood up, his arms wide. “Hey thank you man. I take that as a big compliment. And you know, you could be a rapper.”
Monte burst into high-pitched laughter. “Oh, yeah, I’d like to see that shit.”
“Language,” Hannibal said.
“What you saying, Little G?” Huge said. “The man got faith in you. You ain’t got no faith in him?”
“Well, I get that stuff about doing whatever you put your mind to, but this is different. I mean,” Monte flipped a thumb toward Hannibal, “I mean look at him.”
“Hey, fellows,” Hannibal started, but Huge cut him off.
“That’s cold, little G. My man here’s pure street. I can see he’s a soldier. Bet he’s got soul he ain’t showed yet.”
Hannibal shook his head in frustration. “Huge, you don’t have to…”
“No way,” Monte said. “He couldn’t even find the beat. You ever hear that crap he listens to?”
Hannibal had somehow been pushed out of this conversation about him. Trapped between reversing his position on self-determination, disappointing Monte and embarrassing himself, he could only stare with his mouth open when Huge clapped his hands in front of himself, aimed both index fingers at Monte and said, “Double or nothing,” in a challenging tone.
“Double what?” Monte asked.
“Hannibal raps, you finish a book every week through the summer, with a report.”
Hannibal stared down at Monte’s hat, avoiding eye contact, praying that he would not accept the dare. Monte stared back at him, lower jaw jutted out.
“You’re on, Huge. Sorry Hannibal, but not everybody can do everything.”
Fifteen minutes later, Hannibal was fighting to breathe deeply. He stood alone in the studio. A microphone, smelling of sweat, hung from the ceiling directly in front of him and large headphones pressed into the sides of his head. Half a dozen young men stood on the other side of the glass wall, including Monte who was clearly having the time of his life. He had taken small cash bets from the others about Hannibal’s hip-hop debut. Hannibal closed his eyes and tried to remember a single rap song, thinking he could simple imitate someone else. Not one came to mind. There was that Will Smith bit from when he was a teenager. Was it Parents Just Don’t Understand? It was hopeless. Raised on American Forces Network in Germany, Hannibal was a rock and roll fan, and in terms of music he was stuck in the seventies. Accepting the embarrassment he reached up to slide off his glasses.
“No, no, leave them on.” Huge’s voice came from the headphones. “Those shades are part of who you are, and we want to capture that.”
“Capture what?” Hannibal asked. “Hey, can you hear me?”
“The mike’s open, brother. Now face the mike but turn to the side. Don’t look over here. Just listen to me.”
“Huge, I don’t know how to do this,” Hannibal said, but he turned to his right. Music came into his head. Not music exactly, just a beat. It seemed awfully fast.
“Take off your shirt,” Huge said. As Hannibal pulled his coat off, Huge asked, “Do you listen to any kind of music at all?”
“Sure. All the time.”
“Okay, name three or four bands you like,” Huge said. “And put your jacket back on. There you go.”
Hannibal had never worn a suit coat without a shirt before. It was comfortable. “You don’t know the bands I like.”
“Don’t bet on it, bro,” Huge said. “I sample from every body. Just run some names.”
Hannibal thought as the beat slowed a bit. “Let’s see. Aerosmith. ZZ Top. AC/DC. Whitesnake.”
“Judas Priest?” Huge asked. “Foreigner? REO? Journey?”
“Yeah,” Hannibal said, a smile stretching his lips. The beat seemed to spread out more, a pre-disco drum line dropped in and the base line strengthened and simplified.
“Now pick out a driving song,” Huge said. “Something that gets you over the Beltway.” Hannibal’s head began to move back and forth a little, and with his eyes closed he mentally thumbed through his CD collection.
“So many good tunes,” he said, almost too low to hear.
“One with a sexy undercurrent. Lots of innuendo. Aerosmith is always good. Or…”
All of a sudden, Hannibal was mentally singing along to an AC/DC anthem that seemed to sit quite comfortably on top of the beat.
“Alright, you’re in the car,” Huge’s seductive voice murmured in the headphones. “You’re all alone.” The beat got louder, stronger. “You’re imagining how this song would sound if you just said the words instead of singing them.” Hannibal’s whole body was moving now, and he was aware of being watched but somehow feeling isolated from the audience, invisible.
“Go ahead. I want to hear what’s in your head.”
The beat was booming in his head, blasting, the words mixing smoothly with it, and Hannibal just wanted to join in. Not wondering how silly he must sound, he faced the ocean of sound and jumped in.
“She was a fast machine, she kept her motor clean,
She was the best damn woman I’d ever seen,
She had me sanctified, telling me no lies.
Cause she was knocking me out with those American thighs.
She took a lover’s share,
She had me fighting for air,
She told me to come but I was already there,
Cause the walls was shakin’,
The earth was quakin’
My mind was achin’
We weren’t faking, cause…”
At that point, Huge’s falsetto joined his in the headphones:
“You shook me all night long, shake it baby, shake it baby, shake it baby.”
And in the distant background, he could hear Monte say, “Oh my God,” in a pained, plaintive voice.