What It Was by George P. Pelecanos Page A

see.”
    Fanella pulled his switchblade from the pocket of his sport jacket and opened it with the touch of a button. The blade locked into a place with a soft click. Williams recoiled and made a small humming sound. Fanella chuckled as he cut the sling from Williams’s shoulder. Then he used the knife to slice away the bandages that covered his wound. Williams winced at the wet sucking sound of gauze pulling away from dressing and skin.
    “Wow,” said Fanella. “You should look at this, Gino.”
    Gregorio did not move.
    “Please, man,” said Williams.
    “That’s a big hole,” said Fanella. The entrance wound wasthe size of a quarter, black around the edges, pinkish in the center where the skin had begun to come back, slick and shiny from the dressing. “Don’t even look like it’s infected.”
    “Please.”
    “What’d you tell the police?”
    “What I told
you
. I gave up Red’s name. That’s all.”
    “They found heroin in your apartment and they’re not even going to charge you?”
    “It was an
ex
change, ’cause I gave up good information. Plus, they searched my spot without a warrant.”
    “You said you knew Red’s rep. So you must know more.”
    “I told the law enough to leave me alone.”
    “I’m not the law,” said Fanella. “What’d you leave out?”
    “I can’t say no more, for real. I’m not tryin to get doomed.”
    Fanella put one knee up on the mattress to steady himself. He loosely placed his hand on Williams’s shoulder above the wound and kept his thumb free.
    “What didn’t you tell them?” Fanella grinned. “What else?”
    “Red got this woman,” said Williams, a tremor in his voice. “Goes by Coco. Runs whores in a house on Fourteenth. What I heard, anyway.”
    “Heard where?”
    “The street.” Williams gave him the location and described the building.
    “That’s it?”
    “Swear for God.”
    Fanella gripped Williams shoulder. “Does this hurt?”
    “No.”
    “How about this?” Fanella pushed his thumb into thegunshot wound. It felt like jelly as he broke through the skin. Williams began to thrash and scream.
    “Lou,” said Gregorio, and turned his head away.
    Fanella put his right hand over the man’s mouth. Williams urinated on the sheets before he passed out.
    “Niggers aggravate me,” said Fanella.
    They left the room and walked down the hall. They did not move quickly, because Lou Fanella felt that a man should leave a scene unhurried, with his shoulders square and chin up. They went by a nurse who did not notice them, and an aged orderly pushing a wheelchair, and a tall, uniformed security guard with chiseled features who was standing against a wall, giving them a long stare.
    “Fuck you lookin at?” said Fanella to the young man.
    “Nothin, sir.”
    “I didn’t think so.”
    Clarence Bowman studied them as they passed.
    FRANK VAUGHN sat in an unmarked Dodge beside Detective Henry A. Passman, a gentle family man who, because of his initials, was called “Hap” by nearly everyone on the force. Like many career police officers who aspired to rise above uniform status, he had been shuttled around various divisions and had finally found a home in what had once been Prostitutions and Perversions but was now known by the more succinct description of Vice.
    Night had come to the city. The calendar said close to summer, and there were folks dressed lightly and out on the street. On 14th at R, a spring-gold ’70 Camaro, up on HiJackers, was curbside, idling. A white girl in white hotpants and a red gingham midriff shirt was leaning into its open driver’s-side window, negotiating with the muscle car’s occupants. Music was coming loudly from the eight-track system, but to Vaughn it was just screams and guitars. His focus was on the girl, a minor from the looks of her, and the heads of the five long-haired young men squeezed into the car.
    “It’s somebody’s birthday,” said Vaughn.
    “One of the boys in the backseat just turned sixteen,”