The Cut (Spero Lucas) (30 page)

Petersen didn’t answer right away. He was trying to read Lucas.

“I defend murderers often, Spero. You know that. It’s what I do.”

“You don’t take on everyone who offers you money.”

“True,” said Petersen. “I’ve refused clients before simply because I didn’t like them. Because there was no conscience or humanity in their eyes. On occasion I’ve quoted outrageous fees to clients, knowing they couldn’t afford them or wouldn’t pay that kind of highway robbery on principle. It’s the easiest way to say no.”

“You’re missing my point.”

“I’m
not
,” said Petersen.

“Have you ever deliberately tanked a case?”

Petersen smiled and shook his head. “I’ve
lost
cases. I’ve lost them because I was insufficiently prepared, or I underestimated the prosecuting attorneys, or a witness underperformed on the stand. I’ve lost cases because…”

“What?”

“Because I wasn’t feeling well. Because my rhythm was off in court. I’ve lost cases, Spero, because I simply had a bad day.”

They sat there in the office, looking at each other, saying nothing. Neither of them cut his eyes away.

Lucas got up out of his chair. “Thanks for listening.”

“Do me a favor: when you’re working for me, make sure you shave. You’ll make a better impression out on the street.”

“I will, if you comb your hair and put on a tie.”

“I do, when I’m in court.”

“Were you mad when Mick and Keith kicked you out of the band?”

“Brian Jones. Very funny, but I’ve heard that before. Are you a Stones fan?”

“My dad was. He used to play
Exile on Main St
. front to back when we were riding around in his pickup truck.”

“Good record.”

“Listen, is Constance around?”

“No. She’s waitressing this summer. Said she needed to make some money for a change. I think she was trying to convey some sort of point.”

“Which restaurant?”

“You want the truth? She asked me not to tell you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know for sure. She said something about treating people right. She said you needed to learn.”

“I’m young,” said Lucas.

“ ‘Drink in your summer, gather your corn.’ ”

“Inspector Clouseau?”

“Jagger/Richards,” said Petersen. He reached his hand across the desk. “Glad you’re back.”

“Call me,” said Lucas. “I’m ready to work.”

OVER THE
summer, Lucas did a couple of small, simple jobs for Petersen and one that involved murder and conspiracy charges that was much more intricate. Between his work and his physical routine, the daily bike rides and afternoons with his kayak on the river, he stayed busy. He bought a second vehicle, had it registered under a false name with the assistance of one of Nick Simmons’s friends, and kept it in a garage he rented with cash in one of the old alley dwellings east of the Hill. He bought a GPS Internet tracking device that he could access from his laptop or phone. He bought a carton of disposable cells. He was getting smarter about the way he worked.

There was a day trip to New York, organized by Leo, in which the brothers accompanied Ernest Lindsay on his first major excursion out of D.C. Their intent was to take him on an informal tour of the film school at NYU, where they hoped he would apply the following year. He had enrolled at UDC, but they felt that he needed to ultimately get out of Washington and broaden his world. He was smart enough, he had the grades, and he qualified for various minority
grants and scholarships. Spero told Leo in private that he might be able to help out if there was a shortfall in the tuition; he felt he owed the young man at least that much. On the Acela ride back, Ernest could not stop talking about the city and the school.

Lucas had not been contacted by Larry Holley since the night they’d worked together to rescue Ernest Lindsay. A query e-mail to Tim McCarthy in IAB prompted a terse response sent from McCarthy’s personal account: “Larry Holley resigned from the MPD a month ago.” Lucas never learned where he’d gone.

In August he received an envelope in the mail with no return address. Inside was a faded trading card of Foghorn Leghorn, the oversize rooster from the Warner Brothers cartoons, with a slash of red Magic Marker through the character’s throat. On the back of the card, a note was written in block letters:
Heard he got scratched. Nice work
. The postmark told Lucas that the card had been sent from Frederick, Maryland, the hometown of Pete Gibson.

One humid night toward the end of the season, Lucas was riding his bike uptown, cycling past Wonderland, the bar at the corner of 11th and Kenyon, when he saw Constance Kelly seated at one of the outdoor tables, drinking beer with two other young women. Lucas turned around, cruised back to the patio, and came to a stop alongside her table.

“Hey, Constance.”

“Hi.”

She smiled. She didn’t seem mad at him, nor did her demeanor give him hope. She was simply being polite.

“Can I talk to you a second?” he said.

“Sure.”

He walked his bike along Tubman Elementary and she walked beside him.

“Where you been?” said Lucas.

“Working. I made a couple of trips down to the ocean. But mostly work.”

“Me, too.” Lucas caught her eye. “I called you a couple of times.”

“I know.”

“My phone takes calls, too.”

“Must be a real fancy one.”

Lucas stopped. “So what did I do wrong?”

Constance shrugged. “It wasn’t a long-term thing. We both knew that.”

“Something must have made you get off the bus.”

“I saw you one night, Spero, at the downstairs bar at Saint-Ex. You were with a woman. You were looking at her the exact same way that you looked at me when we were out and having a good time. And it came to me that I was nothing special to you. I was just one of many.”

“That’s not how I feel, though,” said Lucas. “You’re exactly the kind of person—”

“Please. Don’t do that.”

“I’m trying to figure things out, Constance. I missed out on the good part of my twenties. When everyone else was in college, going to parties and whatever,
being young
, I was in the desert. Now I’m here, catching up. I told you once before, I’m not ready to make plans.”

“I wasn’t looking for a commitment,” said Constance. “Just some courtesy.”

She went back to join her friends. Lucas swung onto the saddle of his bike and pedaled uptown, not yet understanding what he’d lost.

THE ANWAN
Hawkins trial began late in August. Lucas did not speak to Tom Petersen during the proceedings, but he read about them daily in the
Washington Post
. Because the marijuana legalization movement was making inroads in D.C., the chronicle of this high-profile, high-volume weed dealer and his possible conviction made timely copy. The day after the jury reached its unanimously guilty verdict, the
Post
reporter assigned to the story quoted an unnamed courtroom witness: “It seemed to me that the defense’s closing arguments were oddly dispassionate and, at times, clumsily delivered.” Tom Petersen, normally light on his feet, had forgotten how to dance. He’d had a bad day.

ONE SUNDAY
early in October, Lucas went to church. He took his seat beside the white-haired former teacher, noticing many of his friends and their families in attendance, and Leo and his mother front and center, in place. He recited the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, followed along with the liturgy in the book, and when it was time he kneeled and gave his usual thanks, and added a prayer for the dead.

After the service he bought a dozen red roses and drove over to Glenwood, passing under the arched gate. He negotiated the twisting lanes and went along the stretch of mausoleums, where a blanket of scarlet leaves had fallen on black asphalt, and continued on to the section of headstones at the
west edge of the cemetery, which gave to a view of the Bryant Place row homes and North Capitol Street.

Standing before his father’s grave, he made the sign of the Holy Trinity with three fingers of his right hand and did his
stavro
. He stood there, feeling the energy around him, listening to the call of sparrows, watching a gray squirrel scamper up the trunk of a tree, breathing the crisp fall air. He looked at the flowers he held by his side.

Lucas returned to his Jeep. He drove north, crossing over the District line at Georgia Avenue and into the neighborhood where he’d come up. He saw one of the barbers standing outside of Afrikuts, and the man shouted out a greeting as Lucas went by in his vehicle, and Lucas waved. He passed a couple of Guatemalan housepainters standing by an old 4Runner, a ladder lashed to the crossbars of its roof.

Driving down his street, Lucas punched in a number on his cell. When the call was answered he said, “Just wanted to make sure you were home.”

“I’m here, honey.”

His mother was standing outside the front door, waiting for him. He met her there and put the roses in her hands.

IN THE
evening, in the stillness of his apartment, Lucas grew restless. He decided to go up to the bar on Georgia that had the quiet patrons and the eclectic juke. He left his place, went out to his Jeep, and looked up at the hunter’s moon and clear sky. He’d walk.

He took Piney Branch to Colorado, east to 14th Street and its small commercial strip, and followed it to 13th, where
he turned left. Down at Quackenbos he cut into the weedy field alongside Fort Stevens, and he traversed it, going up the gravelly road to the parking lot of the Emery Methodist Church, where he’d fought Earl Nance.

He’d killed many men. Some, like Ricardo Holley and Bernard White, had been murderers themselves, and others, like Beano Mobley, had been dirty, in the wrong place, and had simply caught his fire. And then there were the men who were fathers, sons, and brothers, fighting in their homeland. Men he’d ended because they’d tried to kill him.

He stood on the edge of the lot and stared into its shadows. Close to the church’s north wall, where the light from the moon was obstructed, the night was very dark. He walked through it and took the steps down to Georgia Avenue. He crossed the street and headed for his bar.

Lucas was thirsty. He wanted a beer.

I’d like to thank Larry Nathans, Jon Norris, James Grady, Quintin Peterson, and Nick Pelecanos for their help with this novel; the sources on both sides of the law who spoke to me with candor and wish to remain anonymous; Sloan Harris and Alicia Gordon for their friendship and guidance; Michael Pietsch, Marlena Bittner, Tracy Williams, Heather Rizzo, Karen Torres, Miriam Parker, Betsy Uhrig, and everyone who has worked so hard on my behalf at Little, Brown over the years; Jon Wood, Malcolm Edwards, Susan Lamb, Gaby Young, Sophie Mitchell, and the kind staff of Orion Books in the U.K., and Robert Pepin in France. Proudly, this is my first book published under the imprint of my longtime editor and friend Reagan Arthur. A special shout-out to Emily, Nick, Pete, and Rosa, and to all the readers who have come along with me on this excellent trip.

George Pelecanos is an independent-film producer, an essayist, the recipient of numerous international writing awards, a producer and an Emmy-nominated writer on the HBO hit series
The Wire,
and the author of a bestselling series of novels set in and around Washington, D.C. He currently writes for the acclaimed HBO series
Treme.

Following is an original short story featuring Spero Lucas.

Evangelos “Van” Lucas was behind the wheel of a Land Cruiser, his wife, Eleni, beside him. They were driving home from a Sunday barbecue in upper Northwest, hosted by a business associate of Van’s. Most of the guests were people Van and Eleni had not met before. There had been polite conversation, food eaten off paper plates, and a bit of afternoon drinking.

“You know that lady I was speaking with by the food table for a long time?” said Van. “With the sweatshirt falling off her shoulder?”

“The
Flashdance
woman. She was nice.”

“She was all right. But why’d you have to go and tell her about our kids?”

“She asked to see photographs,” said Eleni. “Once I pull those out, there are questions. It’s easier just to tell people.”

“But see, then I had to continue the conversation with her.”

“You didn’t look like you minded.”

“Please. She wasn’t my type. That lady was all angles and bones. It would be like doing a skeleton.”

“How would you know what that’s like?”

“My point is, I’m into a woman who
looks
like a woman. A woman with curves. Like you.”

“I think there’s a compliment in there.”

“And you’re smart.”

“Thanks loads.”

“Not, like, mousy smart. Don’t get me wrong; I like a smart woman. But I also like a nice round ass and a beautiful rack. Which, thank you, Jesus, you happen to have. Matter of fact, you’ve got the whole female package.”

“You’re about to make me blush.”

“But that woman, she just bothered me.”

“I noticed.”

“Not like that. She wanted to talk about our kids, how wonderful it must be to have a rainbow family, how I was doing God’s work, all that bullshit. What a
good man
I am. Like, just because I adopted a bunch of kids, that makes me good.”

“As you were trying to look down her sweatshirt.”

“Exactly.” Van looked over at Eleni. “You saw me?”

“From across the room.”

“She’s too skinny for me.”

“You like a nice round ass and a beautiful rack.”

“Don’t forget smart,” said Van.

“I know,” said Eleni. “The whole female package.”

They were coming out of the city, going up Alaska Avenue near the District line. Soon they would cross into Maryland and arrive at the close-in neighborhood where the Lucas family made their home. Van and Eleni were in their early thirties. They had four children, ages seven, six, two, and one. All but the oldest had been adopted. It seemed to have happened very fast.