The next day, Lucas phoned and texted Tavon Lynch and Edwin Davis but got no response.
There was nothing on his plate for the morning, so he got on his bike and hit Beach Drive north and took it out into Maryland all the way to Veirs Mill Park. The ride back was flat to a subtle downgrade. There was little road traffic and he found his zone, where it was just the motion, his feet tight in the toe clips, the chain quietly running over the teeth, a perfect, simple machine at work.
He carried his bike up the stairs when he returned and put it on the back porch. As he often did after a good ride, he wanted a woman. Instead he did several sets of push-ups, normal and wide stance, and then did chin-ups and pull-ups on a bar mounted inside the door frame of his bedroom.
Lucas took a shower and tried phoning Tavon and Edwin. Nothing.
Lucas learned of the murders that evening while reading the news on the Washington Post’s website. He felt an inner chest-bump at first, seeing Tavon’s and Edwin’s names as fatal victims of a shooting. That soon passed, and he had no lasting feeling of grief beyond the too-familiar feeling of lament for young lives that had been prematurely terminated. He had willed himself to be unemotional about such events. He had witnessed too much death, and if he got stuck on it he felt he would be frozen and done.
He phoned Tom Petersen at home to tell him that Anwan Hawkins’s two top associates had been murdered. He thought that it might have implications for Anwan’s trial and that Petersen should know. Certainly the prosecution would try to bring the murders into evidence, if only to tell the jury that Anwan Hawkins moved through a world of extreme violence connected, in some way, to his drug enterprise.
“You are working for Anwan,” said Petersen.
“He hired me to find something he lost.”
“Are these murders related to that job?”
“I don’t know for sure,” said Lucas. He suspected they were, but the qualifier took it out of the realm of lie.
“Okay,” said Petersen dubiously.
There was a silence that was a standoff.
Lucas said, “If you hear anything…”
“I’ll check in with my sources,” said Petersen. “If you come across anything that might impact my client…”
“Right,” said Lucas.
They ended the call.
Lucas got up early the next morning and read the newspaper’s print version of the Lynch and Davis murders, which held no further details. The story made it inside Metro and had a few more inches than the usual “roundup,” due to what was described as the “execution-style” method of the crime, a coded message telling readers that the victims had probably been in the game.
A notable decrease in violent crime in the District had made the murders of young black men and women more newsworthy than they had been in the past. Certain high-profile murders, like the recent shoot-into-the-crowd drive-by that had claimed several victims, and the killing of a DCPS principal in Montgomery County, might have left the impression that little had changed since the dark days of late-eighties Washington. The reality was that homicides were down to a forty-five-year low in the city. The implementation of community policing and more foot patrols under Chief Lanier, the closing and relocation of troubled public-housing units under former mayor Tony Williams, and a genuine shift in the culture caused in part by activist groups within the community had all contributed to the positive developments in the atmosphere and the stats. The Post continued to routinely bury the violent deaths of D.C.’s young black citizens inside the paper, telling its readership implicitly that black life was worth less than that of whites, and that policy, apparently, was never going to change. Had Tavon Lynch and Edwin Davis been raised in Bethesda or Cleveland Park, their demise would have been reported on A1. As it was, they made B2, which felt something like progress to Lucas.
When the subject came up at the Lucas family dinner table, as it surely would, Eleni Lucas would say, “Those young men deserve the same memorial in the newspaper that anyone does,” and Spero Lucas would respond, “You’re right, Ma.” He did agree with her, but he was not a crusader, leaving those kinds of conversations to his mother and others who were more conscientious than he was.
Lucas took a shower and dressed in Carhartt. He had work to do.
Lucas drove down to the holding facility, signed the logbook, and gave the DOC woman his driver’s license. He was still on an official visitors list per Petersen’s letter. The woman handed him a pass that would allow him entrance to the next step of security. Lucas looked her over in her uniform, a tall woman, broad shouldered and full in the back, like many females who worked security at the jail. They were union, and he assumed their income and benefits package had been well negotiated, but still, for the atmosphere they endured, for the risk, they had to be underpaid. The woman’s badge plate read Cecelia Edwards. She had buttery skin, large eyes, and a lot of muscle coupled with femininity. Lucas wondered.
“Have a good one,” he said, looking at her the way a man does.
“You have a blessed day,” she said, holding the look for the one extra moment that spoke many words. He would remember her name and write it down after he left the jail.
Lucas met Anwan Hawkins in the visiting room. The glass between them was filmy and smudged, their chairs low and hard. Hawkins wore an orange jumpsuit with slip-on sneaks. His braided hair was pulled back, exposing neck tats, Japanese characters in a vertical formation. His facial expression was serious, his posture all business.
“Talk about it,” said Hawkins, speaking into the phone, his voice gravelly and distant. Their connection was as weak as it had been the last time they’d met. “Tell me what happened.”
“It was straight murder,” said Lucas.
“By who?”
“I know what you know. Less than you, if you’re holding out on me.”
“Why would I?”
“It’s safe to say that their killing was related to your business. Maybe it was a power grab by someone beneath them.”
“Wasn’t anyone below ’em who knew shit.”
“Were you aware that they lost a third package?”
Hawkins did not speak right away. Lucas studied his reaction.
“When was that?” said Hawkins.
“I don’t know when, exactly. Tavon told me about it the night he and Edwin were murdered. But I’m guessing it was stolen the day before. I was surveilling the street of the second theft, and they left me to do some business.”
“Where was it stole at?”
“East of the Hill. Tavon didn’t give me the address. Maybe you can tell me.”
“I don’t know it. Those boys were on their own.”
“So I’ll just keep working the theft on Twelfth.”
“But I don’t want you workin it, Spero. What I want is for you to drop this.”
“Why?”
“This shit’s got to stop,” said Hawkins. “I don’t care about the cash no more. If I get off, then I walk out of here and start new. If I do more time, so be it. Either way, I’m done. I wanna be with my son again, like a regular father. I want to live a long life. ”
“That’s a lot of money to leave on the table.”
“It’s mine to leave.”
“We had a deal.”
“Not the kind you take to court.”
Lucas and Hawkins stared at each other without malice.
“You speak to the police?” said Hawkins.
“No,” said Lucas.
“You were in contact with the boys by phone, weren’t you?”
“I was.”
“If the police got hold of their cells, there’d be a record of that.”
“Which tells me their cells weren’t found,” said Lucas. “Otherwise the homicide detectives would have contacted me by now.”
“Did the boys, you know, leave you any kind of clue as to what was about to go down?”
Lucas thought of the last text message he received from Tavon Lynch. “No.”
“What do you think happened?”
“No idea. The police are conducting an investigation. If an arrest is made, I’ll hear about it, same as you.”
“What about their funerals?”
“They haven’t been announced. There’ve been no obits yet in the Post.”
“You gonna pay your respects?”
“No. The police will be there. Could be they’ll be shooting video footage from vans, taking still shots like they do. I’m not trying to put myself in the mix. Anyway, I barely knew those guys.”
“You don’t seem too interested.”
“And you don’t seem all that shook.”
“I’m sorry for what happened to them.”
“So am I,” said Lucas. “But I’m not getting involved in those murders. You hired me to retrieve your property or your cash. That’s it.”
“You’re not even curious?” said Hawkins.
“Homicide police close murder cases. Private investigators never do. I took this on to make money. With this third theft, the pot just grew. I still intend to honor our agreement.”
“I guess I can’t stop you.”
“What do I do if I’m successful?”
“Take your cut,” said Hawkins. “What’s left, get it to my son’s mother.”
“Right.”
“Watch yourself out there,” said Hawkins, looking hard into Lucas’s eyes.
“I will.” Lucas cradled the phone.
Lucas was not far from Capitol Hill and Lincoln Park. He left the jail and drove west on Massachusetts Avenue, turning to explore the neighborhoods and the streets, doing the same past Lincoln Park proper, the dividing line of sorts that brought him into the eastern portion of the Hill, where the homes were noticeably nicer and the income levels rose. He was looking for a 4044 address. He assumed the text from Tavon was meant to indicate the number on the house where the second drop had been made and lost. He found nothing to match the number, and if he had, he wouldn’t have known what to do. He felt lost.
Continuing west, toward his home, he suddenly said, “Yeah,” and pulled over to the side of the road, near the St. James Episcopal Church. Something had come to him. He remembered from the newspaper accounts that Tavon and Edwin had been found shot to death in their car, parked on Hayes Street, Northeast. More accurately, upper central Northeast, where the cross-numbered streets were in the forties. Tavon must have been trying to give him the location of the house. That’s where the drop was: the 4000 block of Hayes.
He drove in that direction, crossing the Anacostia, and ten minutes later was on Hayes. But the address did not appear to be a good one for the scheme that Tavon and Edwin had cooked up. There was a house there, but it was not the kind of place that you would ship a package to and expect it to go unnoticed. There were folks around, standing by their vehicles, going in and out of their homes, sitting on their porches. It did not look like they were typically away or at work during the day. Tavon wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t have chosen this spot to drop the weed.
Lucas continued up the block to the dead-end court that stopped at a thin tributary of creek and woods that was a part of Watts Branch. The Impala was gone. Except for a piece of yellow tape lying in the street there was no sign that a crime of extreme violence had occurred here. The mobile crime technicians had completed their investigation of the scene, and the next task was in the hands of the chief medical examiner’s office, where the autopsies of the young men would be performed.
Lucas knew that this area had been murder notorious at one time, but it was quiet now. Serene almost, with the water cutting through the trees. Had to be dark at night back here, but still. It did look cleaned up and relatively safe. Tavon and Edwin could not have known what was coming to them. And then the fear and panic, when they did know. Lucas only hoped it had been quick for them. Pain and confusion for sure, but not prolonged.
Darkness, he thought, seeing his father in a box. Lucas closed his eyes.
He had a fish sandwich with hot sauce from a carryout on Benning Road and headed into Northwest, where he found himself once again parked on 12th Street. He was facing north, looking in his side-view at the students walking from the school, the uniformed police ushering them along. Soon the Lindsay boy appeared, wearing a purple polo, his braids touching his shoulders, talking to himself, walking home.
“Hey, Lindsay,” said Lucas, from behind the wheel of his Jeep.
The young man recognized him but kept walking without reply.
“Lindsay!”
“It’s Ernest,” he said, without breaking stride, going up the concrete steps and disappearing behind the front door of his house.
At least I know your name, thought Lucas. Progress.
A few minutes later, he phoned his brother, who was no doubt still inside the school.
“Leo.”
“It is me.”
“Got a question for you, man.”
“Where you at?”
“On Twelfth. You could throw a rock and hit me if you had an arm.”
“You wearin your decoder ring?”
“Doing surveillance.”
“That’s awesome! Do you have that piss jug in the car?”
“And my porta-potty.”
“Thought you had a question.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have a student by the name of Ernest, would you? I been trying to get up with him.”
“I believe I got a couple of boys named Ernest. One goes by Ernie.”
“He called himself Ernest. Lindsay’s his last name.”
“He’s in my all-male class, in the morning.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“He’s all right. Sensitive, on the intelligent side. You’re not gonna get him in any kind of trouble, are you?”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Well, why don’t you come meet him?”
“Huh?”
“I been asking you to talk to my class.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Come past tomorrow.”
“For real?”
“Why not?”
“I need time to prepare.”
“No, you don’t. Just come in and be yourself. They don’t want to hear about, You can be anything you want to be, or any of that jive. Say what you been doing these last ten years. Be honest and real. That’s what the boys appreciate.”
“Okay.”
“Ten o’clock, Spero.”
“I’ll be there.”
He went home, showered and changed into street clothes, dropped some paperbacks off at Walter Reed for the soldiers and marines, and drove back toward Cardozo. At 13th and Clifton, where he was stopped at the red light, he saw people walking up the long hill, coming from the U Street Metro station in business attire, a mix of Hispanics, blacks, and many whites, all coming home from work. From a local’s perspective, it was startling to witness this neighborhood’s transformation.
He parked in shadow on 12th, on the east side of the street.
A half hour later, a woman walked down the sidewalk. She appeared to be in her early thirties, with long chestnut-colored hair, a prominent nose, high cheekbones, and dark eyes. She wore a gray business suit, a shirt-jacket-and-slacks arrangement that did not conceal her long-legged, thoroughbred build. She carried a briefcase and walked with good posture and confidence.
Lucas got out of his Jeep as she hit the steps leading to the house with the lime green trim. He jogged across the street and said, “Lisa Weitzman?”
She stopped and turned, cool and unafraid. “Yes?”
“Spero Lucas,” he said. “I’m an investigator.”