Rico Miller dropped Melvin Lee at his place on Sherman Avenue. They had barely spoken since the incident on Otis. For Lee, the silence had been excruciating.
Lee no longer communicated with his blood relatives. When he’d come out of prison, his siblings, who had never written or visited once during his stay, refused to speak to him. His mother had died long ago. He didn’t know his children or where their mothers stayed. As for the friends he’d come up with, they were in the cut or dead. Only thing he had now was his work with Deacon Taylor. Closest thing to a son he’d ever have was Rico. And now he’d been punked right in front of him. He wondered if Rico Miller could ever look at him the same way again.
Lee walked down the sidewalk, his shoulders slumped. Miller drove away.
Miller went down Georgia. Past Howard University, at Florida Avenue, he drove east. Farther along, he crossed the Benning Bridge over the Anacostia River and took Minnesota Avenue to the Deanwood area of Northeast. He parked in front of a bungalow at 46th and Hayes.
His house was set on a fairly large plot of land. The block he lived on had many decent homes, but others were run-down, blighted by plywood doors, sagging roofs, and hanging gutters. Some had cardboard stuck in their window frames. A few had been recently abandoned or had stood unoccupied for years. Raccoons nested in their chimneys and rats moved freely beneath their porches. The shades were always drawn so that inspectors could not look inside. Long as the owners cut the grass on a fairly regular basis, these houses could not be condemned.
Miller had found this house, in fact, when he saw the owner outside it, mowing its weedy lawn. One wall of the house had been spray-painted with tags: a “46” and an “RIP Mike.” This meant there was gang activity on the street. In areas such as this, neighbors were typically frightened or plain tired of calling police and so they minded their own. Miller had been driving slowly on this particular street because it looked like the kind of place where he needed to be. Didn’t look like anybody gave a good fuck about it, and it wasn’t near a major road crossing. It seemed like a smart spot to hide.
He offered the man a thousand dollars a month, cash up front, three months in advance, as is, to rent it. The money would cover utilities as well. For phone service, Miller would use his cell. Rico told the owner to leave the lawn mower and gas can, and he’d take care of the grass. The man took the deal.
Miller had another month, prepaid, on the house. He’d move on to someplace else, like he always did, after that.
He left no records. Even his car, the BMW, was a rental. He’d got it from this man, Calvin Duke, lived by the railroad tracks at 35th and Ames. It was known in certain circles that a young man like Rico could get damn near anything from Duke. The man had the rental business cornered in Northeast. Called his self Dukey Stick; Miller did not know why.
Except for the landlord and Calvin Duke, no one knew where Rico Miller lived. Not Melvin Lee and not Deacon Taylor. They wanted him, they could get him on his cell. Since he’d left Oak Hill, that juvenile facility they’d put him in, he’d been on his own. If anyone was looking for him, they hadn’t caught up with him yet. He aimed to stay free.
Rico went into his house. It was a shithole to begin with, and he’d done nothing to improve it. Bare light bulbs dangled from damaged plaster ceilings. The walls, unadorned with pictures, were chipped and water stained. Wasn’t any furniture to speak of, a sofa and some old broke chairs and a folding table, stuff he’d found around Dumpsters and the like. He’d bought a mattress and some sheets at the Goodwill store. The kitchen was of little use to him. Rico didn’t eat all that much; it was KFC and Wendy’s when he did.
Miller went back into the room where he slept. He turned on the light. He took his knife, secured in his personalized sheath, from his pocket and tossed it on his bed.
On the floor next to the mattress sat a lamp, a portable stereo, some CDs, and a couple of ass magazines he used for masturbation. In the other corner of the room was a nineteen-inch television set on which he sometimes watched videos but which he mostly used for PlayStation 2. In the closet, behind where he hung his shirts, was a false wall, a piece of particleboard that came away with a tug. He went to the closet, parted his shirts, and pulled the board free.
Behind the wall was a rack. The rack held a cut-down pump-action Winchester shotgun with a pistol grip, an S amp;W. 38 revolver, and a 9 mm Glock 17. He had bought the 17, as did many young gun owners in the area, because it was the official sidearm of the MPD. Also on the rack were various holsters and a leather shoulder harness, popular with men who robbed drug dealers, designed to hold the Winchester steady under a raincoat.
Miller pulled the shotgun and the Glock off the rack. He found a brick of PMC ammo on the floor. He loaded the Winchester with low-recoil buckshot. He checked the Glock to see if it was ready, saw that it was, and palmed its magazine back into the grip.
Melvin was the only friend he had in this life. Melvin was his father.
Rico Miller heard the sound of his own teeth grinding.
The bar was in a boutique hotel on Massachusetts Avenue, down around 10th, in Northwest. It was away from the cluster of upscale chain hotels that were located downtown and in Georgetown and the West End. The amenities were not comparable in any way to those at the Ritz and the Four Seasons, but a certain kind of guest preferred the quiet charm of this hotel and its relative isolation. It was a particular favorite of closet drinkers, full-on drunks, couples engaged in extramarital affairs, and serial adulterers looking to score.
Rachel sat at the bar, located through a hallway past the circular lobby, drinking a scotch rocks. She had ordered a Johnnie Walker Red from the ’tender, a young man with long Jheri-curled hair that he wore pulled back and banded. The JW was in her price range, a step up from the rail, and fine. She sat erect and smoked a cigarette.
Rachel drank exclusively in hotel bars. In hotels, she was unlikely to run into police, private investigators, attorneys, coworkers, or anyone else she knew in her daytime life. These people drank at the FOP or in their favorite locals. Similarly, though some of her offenders worked in privately owned restaurants, most had trouble securing kitchen employment with the hotel chains, which tended to do exhaustive background checks. Also, she simply liked the drinking atmosphere of hotels better than she did freestanding watering holes. The crowds were past their twenties, behaved more maturely behind their alcohol, and contained fewer boisterous regulars. The customers were often in town for only a couple of days. Many would never return to D.C.
Here, the single guests ranged from midlevel managers, conventioneers, filmmakers in town for festivals, and route salesmen to men who had temporarily left their families for two-day benders. The staff played jazz on the sound system, and on weekends a live combo appeared on the small house stage, performing mostly standards. Rachel was not a jazz or pop fan, but she was not here to listen to music.
The room was large and oddly configured, with many tables and booths hidden behind thick posts and in dimly lit semiprivate alcoves. The bar itself was half full. Two couples occupied stools along with a group of three businessmen, techies by the looks of their dress, ready-wear pants and cotton-poly-mix shirts. All wore marriage bands. The discussion, what Rachel could hear of it, centered on mortgage rates and Honda Accords. To the right of them sat a single middle-aged man, staring at a glass that was holding something amber, content with his solitude and his drink. His gut drooped over his belt line. Another single man, midthirties by the looks of him, also sat alone at the end of the bar. He had entered earlier, and Rachel had watched him walk in and take his seat. He was short to medium height, had a chest and an ass, and stretched his cotton shirt across the shoulders and back. She stared at him, and he held her gaze and smiled. By default, he was the one.
She waited. He picked up his drink and walked down along the bar and stood next to Rachel.
“Hey,” he said, showing her his teeth.
“Hey,” said Rachel, her mouth turning up on one side, half a smile, an opening.
“Mind if I join you?”
“Why?”
“Might as well close the gap. You haven’t taken your eyes off me all night.”
He chuckled in a self-deprecating way, a smart tactic. If he was off base, he was just kidding. If not, he was in. He was kind of good-looking in a nonpretty way, with dark eyebrows and dark, curly, tightly cut hair. Laugh lines framed his eyes and parenthesized his large mouth. He had a large nose as well. This was a turnoff to some women, but in Rachel’s experience, it was a plus.
“Have a seat,” said Rachel, nodding at the empty stool beside her. “So I don’t strain my eyes.”
His name was Aris O’Leary, and when Rachel said, “Harris?” he said, “No, Aris. It’s short for Aristotle.” He was the son of a Greek American woman, second generation, and an Irish American father, third. “It means I like good food and this.” Aris held up his glass of Jameson neat. She wondered how many times he had said that to women in bars.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Don’t be so bold,” she said, and he laughed.
Aris was a sales rep for a major appliance manufacturer out of “Saint Joe’s.” Aris was in D.C., his first time, for the Home Improvement Expo at the new convention center. Aris had wrestled at Michigan State, but “that was twenty pounds ago.” Aris had hoped to check out some of the museums and the monuments while he was in town, but he would have to do it on another visit, as he was leaving in the morning. Aris was thirty-four years old.
Rachel nodded, her eyes on his, seemingly attentive but barely seeing him or registering his words. She was thinking of Eddie, her offender who cut hair and was about to get off paper. She was sorry she had not had time for him today and was looking forward to seeing him in the morning. Eddie was a good one, a genuine success.
“I guess I picked Michigan State ’cause they were the Spartans,” said Aris. “You know, with my mom and all. Plus the in-state tuition. You can’t beat the price, you know what I mean?”
Rachel crossed one leg over the other, deliberately flexing her thigh, making sure he saw the cut. She leaned forward a little to give Aris a look at her lacy bra, her breasts loose inside it, the aureole of one brown nipple edging above the lace. It was humid in the bar, and the warmth was around her and on her chest.
“You okay?” said Aris, his eyes bright.
“A little hot, is all. You?”
“Yes.”
They ordered two more drinks. Aris signaled the bartender for the check as Rachel lit another cigarette. The room doubled for a moment as she looked around it, trails coming off the men and women at the bar. Not surprising, with the red wine and now the scotch.
“Don’t mix the grain and the grape, little girl.”
“Who has time, Popi? You know I work too hard.”
“You play too hard too. I see it on your face.”
Aris wrote his room number on the check. She noticed the sun line on his ring finger as he scratched out his signature. At his age, he probably had a child as well. She guessed he had been married for seven years or so. “Seven Year Ache.” She loved that song.
“Something funny?” said Aris.
“Was I smiling? I guess I’m happy, is what it is.”
“So,” said Aris, “you gonna make me beg you for your name?”
“Rachel Lopez,” she said. “I’m a mutt, just like you.”
“Rachel, like in the Old Testament.”
“My mother was Jewish.”
“But Lopez isn’t Jewish. Your father was what?”
“Latino, born in west Texas.”
“Your folks still around?”
“Deceased.”
“Sorry.”
Both had passed within months of each other. If there was a blessing, it was that her father had gone first. He could not have handled seeing her mother, a husk of bones and loose gray flesh, in her last days.
“So you’re half Jewish and half Spanish,” said Aris.
“Latina.”
Aris smiled rakishly. “Which half is Latina?”
Rachel dragged on her cigarette. “You stop acting so fresh, you’ll find out.”
“Okay,” said Aris, squaring his shoulders, cocky, knowing he was in. “But listen, I need to use the head.”
“Pass the front desk and go down the stairs.”
“Don’t go anywhere,” said Aris, pointing at her before getting off his stool.
Don’t tell me what to do. I’m in charge, not you.
Rachel killed her drink and crushed out her cigarette in the ashtray. She walked through the bar and out into the circular lobby, nodding and smiling at the two Middle Easterners behind the reception desk, and went down a stairway to the carpeted lower level. It was empty of people and, as in all the times she’d been here, virtually soundless. She passed by the women’s bathroom, pushed on the door of the men’s bathroom, and stepped inside.
Aris was facing the urinal, shaking himself off. He glanced over his shoulder as he heard her heels slapping on the tiled floor. His face pinkened with embarrassment. Also, he looked scared.
“What, you lost?”
“Ladies’ bathroom’s too crowded,” she said, walking quickly toward him.
“No it isn’t.” He chuckled nervously. “It’s quiet as a church down here.”
Rachel came to him and pressed her breasts against his back and kissed him behind his ear. She reached around him, pushed his arm away, and wrapped her hand around his meat. It was warm and thick and already hard. She ran her thumb and forefinger down his shaft like she was squeezing toothpaste from a tube, and it grew harder still.
“Holy… shit. ”
“Shut up,” she said very softly.
She stroked him and talked to him. His breath got short. Her touch was expert, and he came with a shudder and voluminously against the porcelain.
“Now you’re ready,” she said.
Docile and relaxed.
Up in his room, he offered her a drink from the minibar. She refused. She found the local country station on the clock radio while Aris took off his shoes as she had instructed him to do. The station was playing George Strait. She went to Aris, standing motionless as a statue in his socks, still off-balance from her bold act in the restroom, and further undressed him. She took off his button-down and pulled his T-shirt over his head as a mother would her little boy’s, then unzipped his pants and eased him back onto the edge of the bed so that she could pull the pants free. He was there on his elbows, watching her as she unhooked her skirt and unbuttoned her blouse and let both drop to the floor. She came to him in her bra and thong, and she pulled his boxers off and leaned in and kissed him deep.
As her tongue slid over his, she took his hand and guided it inside the cup of her bra. He found her nipple, and as it began to swell she put her hand over his fingers and squeezed.
“Like that, Aris, ” she said.
He moved back to the pillows, in a heap at the headboard, and she followed him on all fours. She let him remove her panties and she let him stroke her. He tried to turn her over, but she would not allow it. She took his bull cock and rubbed its helmet on her thighs and clit and then between her breasts and full on her breasts until she was wet. She straddled him, impaled herself upon him, and fucked him, her hips jacked and moving fluidly. She listened to the music from the radio, thinking of the raw sensation, remembering her father and how he sang Tejano and Texas country in their house when she was a child, and her mother in her blue print dress and how she hummed along. The blood welled up inside her and rushed forward. It felt like childhood, uncluttered, when they were all under one roof, alive. She could bring them back like this, only like this, when she was in control.
Rachel’s body stiffened; she came furiously, saliva dripping from her open mouth.
She washed herself in the bathroom. When she returned, the man from Saint Joseph, Michigan, was asleep on his stomach and snoring into the sheets. Rachel got dressed.