The Man Who Came Uptown
- Автор: Пелеканос Джордж
- Год: 2018
- Язык: английский
- Год: Mulholland Books / Little, Brown and Company
- ISBN: 978-0-316-47982-0
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Man Who Came Uptown». Краткое содержание книги:
“I might have something for you,” said Monique. “Could be good.”
“Talk about it.”
“Girl I work with up at the makeup counter? Beautiful girl, goes by Lourdes? Used to work the houses but got herself out. She got a friend named Marisol who’s in a brothel in Columbia Heights, near a bar owned by this dude Gustav.”
“You saying Gustav owns the brothel too.”
“Right.”
“What’s the story with Marisol?”
“She was trafficked. Got sold to a recruiter in Guatemala and then smuggled into America, same trail they use for guns and drugs. She working off her debt now in that brothel in Columbia Heights.”
“And?”
“I told my friend Lourdes about you. Not by name, understand. And she told her girl Marisol. Marisol wants to speak to you. This dude Gustav is a real entrepreneur. Owns a house-painting business and a little jewelry store in Langley Park. Lourdes say it’s one of those stores that never seems to have a customer in it.”
“So Gustav is laundering cash through his other businesses.”
“That’s right.”
“Is it okay if I contact Marisol?”
“She’ll contact you. I’ll give her your number if that’s cool.”
“It is.”
“And if this pans out, there’s something in it for me, right?”
“Something. Not a grand, though.”
“You’ll take care of me, Phil.” Monique checked her watch and drained her wineglass. “You always been a gentleman.”
Ornazian sat in his Edge in the neighborhood of Deanwood in Far Northeast, where brick apartment buildings mingled with houses in varying conditions on large lots. Deanwood’s residents were urban in appearance but the atmosphere had a southern, country vibe. There were smokers and barbecue grills out in the yards, and men worked on their own cars here. Deanwood folks had been keeping chickens long before it became a suburban trend, and one man owned a goat. Ornazian was on the high ground, on Jay Street and Forty-Seventh. The hilly terrain with its view of the federal city was typical of D.C.’s eastern quadrants.
He was waiting for Christopher Perry, an attendee at the Weitzman party, to come back from school. Woodson High’s day had ended a half an hour earlier and Ornazian was hoping to catch Perry as he arrived at his house, half of a ramshackle duplex that stood at the top of the hill. Ornazian knew a Woodson math teacher who had once been in a band, which was not an unusual progression for the Positive Force crowd. After assurances that Ornazian was not going to jam the kid up, the teacher had given him the name of the street on which Perry stayed, but he stopped short of giving him an address. A real property tax database search confirmed that a house on Jay Street was owned by a Debra Perry, Christopher’s mother or grandmother.
Ornazian was about to give up and hit the ignition button when Christopher Perry appeared, walking east on Jay with a book bag slung over his shoulder. His face was an approximate match to the photo that appeared on his Facebook page. Ornazian got out of his car and crossed the street. Perry, a big kid, eyed him mildly and without concern and kept walking. Ornazian was obviously off his turf. Deanwood and its adjacent neighborhood Burrville had yet to gentrify.
“Christopher Perry?” said Ornazian.
“Yeah?” Perry stopped walking and dropped his book bag, freeing his arms. It was what Ornazian would have done.
Ornazian had drawn his wallet and opened it to show Perry his license. “Phil Ornazian. I’m an investigator.”
Unlike many who accepted the deliberately vague title of investigator, Perry studied the license before Ornazian closed his wallet.
“You’re not MPD,” said Perry.
“Private.”
“So I don’t have to talk to you.”
“Let me ask you one question,” said Ornazian. “You went to a party in Potomac, Maryland, recently.”
“So?”
“The house got robbed of some valuable jewelry that night. A girl was sexually assaulted.”
This caught his attention. He looked a bit surprised.
“You had a question?” said Perry.
“You know anything about that?” said Ornazian. “You were there with a friend, right?”
“Me and my boy had nothing to do with it.”
“I didn’t say you did. I’m just wondering if you saw anything. I’m working for the man who owns the house.”
Perry shrugged. “We just went out there for fun. See if we could talk to some girls. Trust me, I wouldn’t do it again.”
“Why not?”
“Those people were acting stupid. Rich kids all trying to be like Gucci Mane and shit, sippin that Drank.”
“You don’t use it?”
“Nah, I don’t mess with it. It’ll do you permanent. Pimp C died behind it. Thing was, the kids at that party was actin more fucked up than they was.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The dudes who brought the Lean, the ones who was sellin it? They were runnin a game.”
“Who were they?”
“Three older white dudes, inked up. The guy I was with—”
“What’s his name?”
“Nah. Uh-uh.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“My friend looked at one of the prescription bottles they brought in with them,” said Perry. “They had taken a needle and syringed out some of the medicine. Probably replaced it with NyQuil or some shit like that.”
“So they were cutting it. How do you know?”
“There was a burn mark on the bottle, where they had sealed the hole back up with fire. We know what that’s about. But those kids out there in that fancy neighborhood don’t know shit.”
“Were these older guys the same ones who trashed the house?”
“Tellin you, I don’t know. Me and my boy, we left out of there early.”
“Why?”
“Those guys who brought the Lean were mean-muggin us. Calling us lawn jockeys and shit like that. Didn’t care if we heard it either.”
Ornazian considered that. It fit the profile, given what he had seen carved into the table at the Weitzman home.
“So you ghosted.”
“We were outnumbered. Besides, I wanted to get back to a party I knew about in Northeast. Hang with my own.”
Ornazian thought of his sons and what they would be facing in the world as they came of age. For a moment, he considered making an apology to Christopher Perry, even knowing how lame and ineffective it would be. But Perry had already picked up his book bag and was walking toward his home.
Twelve
The District Line kitchen, in the basement, was not much bigger than the cooking area in most homes. It was L-shaped, and at the elbow of the L was a wood-fired oven where all of the prep and cooking was done. There was no grill. Beside the brick-faced oven was a steel rack holding split logs. Two separate stations, one for colds and salads, one for pizza toppings, were set up on each leg of the L, with refrigeration beneath the work boards. Beer and white wine were stored in a refrigerated walk-in, and there was shelving for canned goods and an area for kegs whose tap lines ran through the basement ceiling to the bar above. It was a crowded but efficiently organized space.
In another open space, around the corner from the kitchen’s L, was the small station where Michael Hudson did his job. It too was very narrow and consisted of an automatic dishwasher and two stainless-steel basins with a power-spray nozzle and hose suspended above them. Mounted on the wall were chemical housing units with plastic tubing that automatically dispensed cleaning agents and nonspotting drying fluids to the dishwasher. The silverware, plates, and glassware went into the machine. The basins were used for the soaking and manual scrubbing of pots and pans.