smiled at the thought of it. But I wondered where he was going with it.
“Anyway, I was all fired up, like anyone on their first day of the job. After a year, I had me enough to rent my place on Harvard, out of the old neighborhood. But then I started to notice some shit. The company was always sending other guys to seminars, putting other guys in management training. When the big dogs came into the store, I got no recognition, man, nary a nod. I doubt they even knew my name. And then they started cutting our commissions, changing payplans every six months. I woke up one day, I saw I was sliding back to where I came from.”
“What are you telling me?”
He waved his hand the width of the block. “I don’t want to come back to these streets, man. I won’t come back to these streets, understand?” He lit another smoke and pitched the match out the window. “When I was listening to you earlier, I started to think. We both got a problem we need to work out. How could we take that situation they got down in that warehouse and turn it around to our advantage?”
“And?”
“I ain’t got it all nailed down yet, see what I’m sayin’? But it would involve other people.”
“Not McGinnes,” I said quickly. “There’s something wrong with him. I mean he’s not well.”
“Yeah, I think he’s getting ready to bottom on out. Besides, all the man wants is to sell televisions.”
“And what do you want?”
“I’m still thinkin’ on it,” he said. “Hold up a minute while I make a call.”
He left the car and walked to a payphone at the gas station on the intersection. I had a Camel while he talked on the phone. By the time I finished it, he was back on the seat at my side.
“We got an appointment to see some fellas,” he said.
“Who?”
“Just younguns, that’s all. They all right.”
“This is getting too complicated,” I said.
“Not complicated. Simple. Look here.” He slid closer to me on the seat. “You want the boy, that’s as plain as the light. But you got nothin’ to deal with. When that last shipment of goods leaves the warehouse tomorrow night, and they tighten up the loose ends, they gonna do that boy just like they done the one down in Carolina.”
“I could go to the cops,” I said, “like I should have done from the beginning.”
“Too late for that. You might get the boy killed, and take a fall yourself. No, man, there’s a better way.”
“Talk about it.”
“Twenty-five percent of the man’s goods,” he said. “That’s a big bargaining chip to sit down with at the table.”
I thought about that. “You mean, steal the rest of the cocaine.”
“That’s right, Country. Then trade it back to Rosen for the boy.”
I lit another cigarette and tossed the match, taking a deep lungful of the deathly smog. Then I watched my exhale stream out the window and disappear as it met the wind.
“What’s your angle?” I said.
“My angle? A way out. All the way out. The way you tell, there’s gonna be some money changin’ hands tomorrow night. The money will be mine. A hundred-thirty for me, twenty for the boys I just called.”
“So you think we can just walk in and grab it—all of it, the money and the shake—from these guys? You said yourself, these people don’t play.”
“Then neither will we.”
“You’d have to leave town. You’d never work or live in D.C. again. Have you thought about that?”
“This shit goes down in the street every day. As for work, well, a hundred and thirty grand is quite a start. For me, some things I’ve wanted for my mom. Yeah, I’ve thought about it.”
“It’s too fucking crazy, Andre.” I dismissed the idea with a motion of my hand. But even as I did so, I was picturing in my mind the layout of the warehouse.
Andre pointed to the key in the ignition. “Kick this bitch over,” he said. “I want you to meet my boys.”
WE VEERED OFF OF Florida and climbed sharply up Thirteenth Street. On our right was Cardoza High School; to our left were the Clifton Terrace apartments. At the crest of the hill, just past Thirteenth and Clifton, I made a “U” in the middle of the street and pulled the car over to the curb at Andre’s command.
Children kicked a ball around the glass-covered courtyard of the apartments. Boys walked from the high school, hunched and slower