What It Was by George P. Pelecanos

her kindness in making his eggs southern, and slipped her a couple of dollar bills. He met Vaughn at the register, where he was hurriedly settling up with Nick.
    “I got this,” said Vaughn.
    “Did you see me reach?” said Strange.
    “Thanks, Marine,” said Nick, closing the register drawer.
    Vaughn and Strange walked toward their cars, parked together on Vermont.
    “Your mom doing all right?” said Vaughn.
    “She’s fine,” said Strange. “Working for an eye doctor downtown.”
    “I’ve been by the Three-Star. Heard your dad passed. My sympathies.”
    “Thank you.”
    Vaughn stopped walking, hit his cigarette, hot-boxed it with one last drag, and flicked the butt out to the street.
    “If you happen to come up on that ring…” said Strange.
    “Right,” said Vaughn. “Watch yourself out there.”
    “I plan to.”
    They shook hands.

 
    L OU FANELLA stood beside the bed of Roland Williams in D.C. General Hospital. Gino Gregorio leaned against a wall.
    There had been a nurse taking Williams’s vitals when they’d arrived, and Fanella had asked her to give them some privacy. He’d smiled at her in a way that implied no kindness and said, “Don’t go telling anyone we’re in here, sweetheart. I might take that to mean we’re not friends.” She left them with her eyes downcast and closed the door behind her. Outside the hospital, dusk had come, throwing long shadows on the stadium-armory complex grounds. A faint gray light had settled in the room.
    “Who robbed you?” said Fanella, looking down at Williams. “Don’t take too long thinking about it, either. I don’t have the patience or the time.”
    “He goes by the name of Red,” said Williams without hesitation. “Red Jones. Don’t know what the minister called him when he got baptized.”
    “How’d you know it was him?”
    “I knew him by rep. Tall, light-skinned dude with a fucked-up head of hair, kinda rusty like.”
    “Who hipped him to your supply?”
    “Tester of mine name Bobby Odum. Jones deaded Odum, then he and this little dude with gold teeth came after me.”
    “And they ripped you off for your product.”
    “At the point of a gun,” said Williams.
    “Funny he didn’t do you all the way.”
    “Wasn’t for lack of tryin.”
    “It was me, I would have put one in your head.”
    “The man shot me,” said Williams, seeing where Fanella was going and not liking it. “Close range, with a forty-five. You think I’d let him do me like that for
what?
To
pretend
I got robbed?”
    Fanella looked down on Williams and stared him in the eyes. “It makes me wonder, is all.”
    “I’m a businessman. You can ask Jimmy, up at One Sixteenth. I’m straight.” He was speaking on Jimmy Compton, Fanella and Gregorio’s man in Harlem.
    “Me and Gino already spoke to Jimmy,” said Fanella. “Now we’re speaking to you.”
    “Okay,” said Williams. “All right.” Bullets of sweat had risen on his forehead.
    “Tell us where we can find the heroin,” said Fanella. “Or the money. Makes no difference to me.”
    “Po-lice got half of the dope,” said Williams. “I only told Red where
some
of it was. Tried to keep it from him, see? But the law found the rest of it, in the spot where I keep it.”
    “Where’s that?”
    “At my crib.”
    “So half of it’s gone for good.”
    Williams thought to say something, but his mouth was dry. He felt his lip tremble. He tried to make it stop, but he could not.
    Fanella smiled. “You all right?”
    “Yes,” said Williams. He was ashamed and he looked away.
    “Let me see what Red did to you.”
    “Why?”
    “I’m curious.” Fanella looked over his shoulder and said, “Gino.”
    Gregorio moved to the door and put his back against it.
    “Don’t,” said Williams.
    “Don’t?”
    “Sayin, I wish you wouldn’t do that. Doctor said to leave it be.”
    “C’mon,” said Fanella, his thick eyebrows meeting comically as he mustered up a false face of concern. “Lemme