Read Online What It Was by George P. Pelecanos - Free Book Online

Wallace.
    “My knee kept me out. Football injury.”
    “You oughta thank the one who put the hurtin on you.”
    “I reckon I should,” said Strange. “You see much action?”
    Wallace did not reply. As it was for many veterans, his combat experience was sacred to him and the men he had fought with. He had no intention of discussing it with this young man.
    “What’s this about?” said Wallace.
    “I wanted to talk to you about the Odum murder.”
    “Figured as much. But we gonna have to settle on something first.”
    “I don’t have any money to speak of.”
    “It’s not about coin. I’ll talk to you but no one else. And if you put the police on me, I’ll deny I told you anything.”
    “The law can protect you.”
    “I’m not afraid. But my mother lost a leg to diabetes, and now she’s confined to a chair. She needs me, man. Understand?”
    “You have my word,” said Strange. “Did the police question you?”
    “A white detective tried to give me money and liquor in exchange for conversation. Like I was some kind of bum.”
    “You knew Odum?”
    “Not really. Seen him on the street now and then.”
    “Were you over there on that wall at the time of the killing?”
    “There every day.”
    “And?”
    “The music got my attention, comin from this apartment on the second floor. It was soft at first, then real loud. And then, under it, a little pop. Small-caliber gun. Few minutes later, a tall light-skinned dude with a fucked-up natural come out the building, walkin like nothing happened. He went to a car.”
    “What kind of car?”
    “Late-model Fury, red over white. Had the fold-in headlamps. A woman with big hair or a wig was behind the wheel. The tall man got in the passenger side.”
    “He see you?”
    “If he did, he didn’t much care.”
    “I’m looking for a ring was in Odum’s possession the time of his death. Wonderin maybe if the tall man had it in hand when he walked to the Plymouth.”
    “Shit.” Wallace chuckled. “Now you expectin me to know too much.”
    “I took a swing at it.”
    “You on a treasure hunt, huh.”
    “Somethin like that.”
    “Plenty of police went in and out of Odum’s crib. Might could be one of them took that ring.”
    “I thought of that.”
    “Or you just gonna have to ask the tall dude yourself.”
    “Hoping to avoid that if I can,” said Strange. “What else about the car? You didn’t get the plate number, did you?”
    “Wasn’t no numbers,” said Wallace. “Plate was the kind had words on it.”
    “You remember what it said?”
    “Coco,” said Wallace. “C-O, C-O.”
    “D.C. tags?”
    “Right.”
    Strange experienced a small familiar rush. All the bullshit jobs he’d taken for money lately, it had been a while since he had been involved in something real.
    “You got strong observation skills,” said Strange. “What do you do for work?”
    “I don’t do a thing.”
    “You can’t find a job?”
    “Can’t keep one. Man at the VA says I got problems. Emotional stress brought on by my ‘intense experience overseas.’ Says time gonna heal me.”
    “Maybe he’s right.”
    “Truth, is, I don’t know
what
to do. So I sit.” Wallace smiled a little, catching a memory. “Your brother Dennis was a funny dude. We laughed like crazy in the day.”
    “He was good.”
    Dennis had been found in the alley behind their boyhood home, his throat cut open with a knife. He’d been butchered like an animal.
    But I took care of the one who did it, thought Strange.
    Me and Vaughn.
    “Thanks for this.” Strange put out his hand.

 
    L OU FANELLA and Gino Gregorio had come down from Newark on the Turnpike, taking the BW Parkway south into D.C. They entered the city via New York Avenue in a black ’69 Continental sedan with suicide doors and a 460 V-8.
    “What a shithole,” said Fanella, big and beefy, with dark hair and Groucho eyebrows. His thick wrist rested on the wheel as he drove, a cigarette burning between his fingers.
    He was