of the honest hardworking citizens—and that constituted most of the folks who lived here—just stayed inside and kept their heads down.
Even in daylight people moved around on the streets with furtive looks. It was as though they just knew stingers launched from nickel-plated Glocks with drilled-off serial numbers or else hollow-points exploding out of virgin pistols looking for first kills could be heading their way. Even the air here seemed to stink, and the sunlight felt degraded by a cover of hopelessness as thick as the carbon emissions eroding what was left of the ozone.
She slowed the Ducati and watched several of the people walking by on the street. The homicide rate in D.C. was nowhere near what it used to be in the late 1980s and early 1990s when young drug kingpins wearing brutish crowns formed from the tendrils of the crack cocaine era enjoyed their reign of terror. Back then a body violently dropped on average over once a day, every single day of the year, including the Sabbath. Yet currently nearly two hundred mostly young African American males every year required a medical examiner’s certification as to their cause of death, so it wasn’t exactly violence-free either. The men around here craved respect, and they seemed to believe they only would get it in increments of nine-millimeter ordnance. And maybe they were right.
She stopped the bike, lifted off her helmet, and shook free the static from her hair. Normally coming here on a fat-cat motorcycle at any time of the day or night was not smart, particularly if you were white and weaponless, as Mace was. Yet no one bothered her, no one even approached her. Maybe they figured a woman not of color coming here alone on a Ducati was obviously psychotic and thus apt to blow up herself like some suicide bomber.
“Hey, Mace! That you?”
She twisted around on her seat to look behind her.
The gent coming toward her was short and stick-thin with a shaved head. He had a pair of two-hundred-dollar LeBron James sneakers on his feet minus the shoelaces.
“Eddie?”
He approached and looked over the bike.
“Nice, nice shit. Heard you were in.”
“I got out.”
“When?”
“About five seconds ago.”
“Just a deuce, right, so you just be an inmate.” He grinned at this insult.
“Just two years, that’s right. Not a con. Just a lowly inmate.”
“My little brother’s already done ten, and he’s only twenty-five. No family court crap for little bro. Hard time,” he added proudly.
“How many people did he kill?”
“Two. But them assholes both had it coming.”
“I bet. Well, two years was plenty long enough for me.”
He patted the Ducati’s gas tank and grinned, showing teeth so white and perfect that she assumed he’d gotten a nice deal on some veneers, probably bartering some prescription pills for them. Being seen talking to even a former police officer was not smart around here. However, Eddie was just a bottom-level huckabuck, a street thug. Not too bright and not connected at all, and the most illegal thing he’d ever done was to retail bags of processed weed, a few Crocks, and handfuls of stolen OxyContin pills on the street. The real players here knew that, and they also knew that Eddie had no information about their operations that he could possibly sell to the cops. Still, Mace was surprised he was alive. The dumb and the weak around here were usually eradicated extremely efficiently. So maybe he was wound tighter than she thought. Which could make him useful to her.
“Neighborhood all the same?”
“Some things don’t change, Mace. People pop and drop. You know that.”
“I know someone screwed me.”
His grin faded. “Don’t know nothing ’bout that.”
“Yeah, but maybe you know somebody who does know.”
“You out now, girl. Ain’t no good looking in the rearview mirror. There might be something you ain’t want to see. Besides, your sister already had her boys come down through here with a fine-tooth comb. Hell, they were just down here last week.”
“They were? Doing what?”
“Asking questions, doing their CSI thing. See that’s the cool thing having a police chief in the family. Cold case don’t never go cold. But I bet she gets some shit for it anyway. Not everybody loves the top blue, Mace.”
“Like what shit?”
“How the hell I know? I just on the street getting by.”
“Her guys talk to you?”
He nodded. “And I told ’em the truth. I ain’t know nothing ’bout nothing.” He patted the Ducati’s gas tank again. “Hey, can I take it for a ride?”