James Thomas lived in a pale green two-story house with pine green shutters, on a gently graded piece of Hamlin Street between Thirteenth and Fourteenth in Northeast. The lots were large in this part of town, with wide yards whose once-grand homes were set far back from the curb.
My grandfather had still owned some Brookland property in the midsixties, when we would drive across town in his black Buick Wildcat once a month on Sunday to collect the rent. Papou’s property was a brick warehouse on Ninth Street that faced railroad tracks that later were to parallel those of the Metro. The dark-skinned man we met each month was elderly and bald, except for two neatly trimmed patches of gray above each ear, and he paid my grandfather with a roll of twenties that he had ready as we pulled up to the lot. His name was Jonas Brown, and he ran a clean little auto body shop out of the space, and he called my grandfather “Mister Nick” and me “Young Nick.”
After the riots, Papou sold the warehouse to Jonas Brown, and I had since rarely returned to Brookland. I remembered it as being as peaceful as any section of D.C., with its stately Victorians surrounded by huge clusters of azaleas in the spring. In my gauzy childhood visions, middle-class black families walked slowly down city streets, the men wearing striped suits and brown felt hats, the women in brightly colored dresses cinched with white ribbons, and Brookland was always Sunday morning.
So the drive that day down Twelfth Street, the neighborhood’s main avenue, saddened me. A painfully thin, coatless wo N›Soman stood at the corner of Twelfth and Monroe in what looked to be a chiffon Easter dress, her head bowed as she fought to remain upright against the strong, cold wind. At Michigan Liquors a young man in a thick red down coat stood talking into a pay phone, gesturing broadly with his free hand, his beeper clipped to the waistband of his sweatpants, the door open to his window-tinted Chevy Blazer that sat idling near his side. I noticed several other drug cars, Jags and Mercedes with gold wheels and spoilers and gold-framed licence plates, parked in the lot of the Pentecostal Church of Christ. The movie theater was gone, replaced by a chain drugstore. There were hair salons and dry cleaners and delis; outside their doors teenage boys heavily paced the sidewalks. At Lucky’s Cocktail Lounge a warping sign depicted a logo of a forked-tongue Satan. Under the Satan a slogan was printed with red bravado: WHERE THE DEVILS PLAY, AND THE LADIES MAY.
I had parked my Dart two doors up from the Thomas residence, in front of a leaning Victorian that was fronted with stone steps leading up to a rotting porch. Two young men sat on those steps and watched me as I walked by. Ice T’s “Drama” was coming out of their box. One of the boys smiled malignantly in my direction as the words “Fuck the damn police” rapped out of the speakers. All of the house windows were barred on this street, and the deep barks of large-breed dogs were alternately close and distant in the air. I walked on.
On the porch of the Thomas residence I knocked on a heavy oak door. After my second knock there were muted footsteps and the darkening of the peephole centered in the door. Then the release of deadbolts and the metallic slide of a chain. The door opened, and a tiny dark woman in a print housedress stood before me, looking up with quizzical, kindly brown eyes. Her hair was thin and white; her deeply lined features nearly aboriginal.
“Yes?” she said in a manner that wedded curiosity to trepidation.
“Is James Thomas in, ma’am?” I gave her my card along with my least threatening smile. She handed back the card after a brief inspection.
“That would depend on your business with him, Mr…?”
“Stefanos.”
“What is your business with him, Mr. Stefanos?” she repeated, with the greatest degree of forced unpleasantness that a woman of her frailty could muster.
“It concerns a case I’m working on,” I said, adding, “I’m not with the police, ma’am.”
She considered that as the December chill continued to intrude upon her house through the open doorway, along with the rap from the boom box on the porch of the house to her right. Her shoulders finally slumped in visible submission as she motioned me in. I thanked her and followed as she led me into a den furnished with throw rugs and faded overstuffed furniture.
Mrs. Thomas had a seat on the couch; I took mine in a cushiony chair. She folded a slim pair of hands in her lap after pulling the hem of her housedress down to her knees, then looked into my eyes. I don’t know what she was looking for, or if the look was meant to intimidate me. It did. There were seventy years of hard life in those eyes, seventy years of churchgoing faith and hope in answer to deterioration and disappoi S anentntment and death. The wooden clock on the fireplace mantelpiece ticked loudly in the otherwise silent room.
“I’d like to see your son,” I said. “If he has a few minutes.”
“Does this concern the young man’s death at the Piedmont?”
“Yes, it does.”
Mrs. Thomas sighed slightly but retained her posture. “The District police have gone over the case with us very thoroughly, Mr. Stefanos. I believe they were satisfied that my son had nothing to do with that boy’s death.”
“I’m not working with the police,” I said. “So I’m not privy to what was said between them and your son. But I do have an interest in seeing that the murderer is found. William Henry was my friend, Mrs. Thomas.”
Her hands moved together in a washing motion in her lap, as if it were her hands that were doing the deliberating. She looked away briefly and up the stairs, where I assumed James Thomas was residing. Then she looked back at me, her features softened but unresigned.
“When one person dies, his suffering is over, Mr. Stefanos. Those left behind often bear the weight of the hardship. I didn’t know that Henry boy. The papers and the police said he was an innocent young man. Anyway, he’s in the hands of the Lord now-neither you nor I can help him. But my son has been hurt enough. He’s lost his job and he’s lost all his self-respect. He sits in that room upstairs all day, and he doesn’t come out, except for dinner and to walk down to the liquor store.” Mrs. Thomas looked down at her lap. “I couldn’t help that young man. It wasn’t my job to help that young man. But it is my job to protect my son. And I don’t want him hurting anymore.”
“I didn’t come here to hurt your son. I came here for a few simple answers. You believe in justice in heaven. I respect that belief, if a person can be satisfied with it. I can’t. So I have to believe in justice on earth.” I rose slowly, walked in her direction, and stood over her. “Let me have a couple of minutes with your son, and I’ll be on my way.”
“I’ll ask if he’d like to see you,” she said.
I stepped aside to let her pass and watched her ascend the stairs. She held the wooden banister as she did it. Soon after that was the opening of a door and her voice, then a voice intermingled with hers that was low but gentle. In a few minutes she moved back down the stairs and stood before me.
“James will see you,” she said. “Please don’t stay too long.” It was less a command than it was a solicitous request. I nodded and moved away.
At the top of the stairs was a half-shut beveled door stained dark cherry. Above the door a transom window was cracked open just a bit; a barely visible fall of smoke flowed out from the crack. I knocked on the door and pushed as I did it. Then I stepped into the room.
It was a bedroom, probably the same bedroom James Thomas had been raised in. The oak furniture was scratched; its copper hardware pulls had long ago tarnished. An ashtray spilling over with butts was on the dresser and another ash Sd aont›
He stared out the window, took a long drag off his smoke, and said, “Come on in.”
“Thanks.” I removed my overcoat and folded it over my forearm.
“You don’t need to be doin’ that,” Thomas said. “You won’t be stayin’ long. I said I’d see you because my mom asked me to. But now that I have, I want it short.”
“That’s the way I want it too, James.” I had a seat on the edge of his bed. Closer to him now, I caught the stale stench of yesterday’s cheap liquor seeping through his pores.
James Thomas turned his head in my direction. He was wearing a brown-and-orange-plaid flannel shirt that gapped at the buttons, stretched as it was from his barrel chest. His head was round, dark, and cubbish. He had not shaved in days, though his facial hair was faint and spotty. His eyes were watery and rimmed red, the full-blown badge of a burned-down drunk.
“Let’s get to it,” he said.
“All right.” I handed him my card. He stubbed the butt in the aluminum ashtray that rested on his thigh, then blew smoke at the card while he looked it over. Thomas folded the card and slipped it into his breast pocket.
“So?” he said.
“I’m working on the William Henry case,” I said.
“Workin’ for who?”
“William Henry.”
“Guess you don’t plan on bein’ paid,” he said.
“ Somebody got paid,” I said.
Thomas shook a Kool from the deck on the windowsill and put the filtered end to his mouth. I produced a matchbook from my trouser pocket and tore one off the pack. He watched my eyes as I fired him up.
“Say what you got to say,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll keep it simple. I’ve looked over the file on the William Henry case. I’ve talked to some people in the neighborhood, and I’ve been to the Piedmont. Nobody gets into that building unless they live there or unless they’ve been invited. I even tried to buy my way in. It didn’t happen. Not with the guy they’ve got on duty now.”
Thomas’s jaw tightened. “I told you to say what the fuck you got to say. Now, do it.”
I stood and walked to the window. Out on the street was an old Bonneville, a white BMW with dark tinted glass, and a new maroon Buick Regal. I pointed to the Regal, looked at Thomas, and said, “That you?”
“Yeah. S="3 at Thoma”
“Not a tough call. I don’t make you for a dealer-that eliminates the drug car. And that shit-wagon Pontiac isn’t your style. No, a guy from your generation-what are you, early forties? — a guy your age who just came into some money would probably head right down to the car dealership, first thing, and pick out a brand new Buick. Cash on the line. Am I right?”
“Got me all figured out,” Thomas said. “Nigger with some cash money, burnin’ a hole in his motherfuckin’ pocket. ‘Nigger rich.’ That what you and your boys say when you’re sittin’ around drinkin’ brew, tryin’ to feel all superior about yourselves?”
“That is your car, isn’t it, James?”
“It’s mine.” Thomas hung his head and glanced down at the floor. His anger was there, but it was weak, with only the residual strength of a cut nerve. He sighed. “Company gave me what they call a ‘golden handshake.’ They let me go after the Henry case made the TV news. Gave me a bunch of money to go real quiet. So that’s what I did. And now I got a new ride, all paid up.” He looked at it through the window and lowered his eyes once again.
“How much did they give you, James? Twelve thousand? Fifteen? Because that’s about what that car costs.”
“Ain’t none of your damn business what they gave me.” “It’s easy enough to find out.”
“Then go on and do it,” he said angrily. I put on my overcoat and shifted my shoulders beneath it to let it fall. When I walked to the door I turned to face him.
“I am going to do it, James. But it won’t change what we both know, right now. You didn’t kill that boy. You didn’t even have an idea that he was going to be hurt, or what it was all about. But you let somebody in the Piedmont that night for money, and because of it my friend got greased.” I fastened the buttons of my overcoat. “You see the body, James? He was stabbed with a serrated knife. Stabbed in the chest and in the stomach and in the legs. Through the hand when he was holding it up, to protect his face. And in the mouth, James. Twenty times.” I shoved a hand in my pocket. “You know the details-you’ve been swimming in a bottle of Early Times ever since. When you’re ready to crawl out, you reach for my card and you call me, hear?”
Thomas cocked his head and squinted. “What do you want?” he said slowly.
“Same thing as you,” I said. “To sleep at night. And no bad dreams.”
We looked each other over for a while. Then I closed the door behind me and descended the stairs. Mrs. Thomas was standing at the bottom, her hand resting on the scrolled end of the banister.
“I’ll see myself out,” I said with a nod. “I’m sorry for disturbing your day.”
“Did you get the information you wanted?”
“Yes.”
“My son didn’t kill that boy,” she offered with commitment. “I don’t think he had one thing to do with it. ing to d?h it. i
“I don’t think so either. But he can point me in the direction of the ones who did.” She walked me to the door, and once more we stood together. I asked her before leaving, “Do you know a Jonas Brown? He had an auto body shop down by the tracks.”
Mrs. Thomas’s facial features converged into an amalgamation of smile lines and rounded cheeks. “Yes, I know Mr. Brown quite well. He was in the congregation. He’s been gone ten years. Now he’s resting with the Lord.”
“Good-bye, Mrs. Thomas.”
“Good-bye.”
Out on Hamlin, I put the key to the lock of my sedan. The boys on the steps next door were gone, though somewhere close a drum machine ticked out from a boom box. I loocked up and caught a glimpse of James Thomas.
It was the last I saw of him. He was framed behind the window of his bedroom in the second story of the house, expressionless as he watched me climb into the driver’s side of my Dart. I lit a cigarette and stared at the growing end of ash, thinking of how things burn and fade, before I drove away.