Paolo Rona spent the rest of Saturday night and most of Sunday morning in a gay porn filmhouse on South Carolina Avenue, sitting in the back row in the steaming dark of the low arch-shaped hall with his shoes up on the seatback in front of him and his face covered with a copy of The Washington Post. It was better than sleeping in a sewer pipe, although the only difference was the screen full of naked boys at the far end of the pipe.
The theater ran an endless loop of hard-core porn, most of it filmed in Europe fifteen, twenty years ago. All the guys in it had long scraggly hair and sideburns, wore white socks, and had needle marks all over their arms and pimples everywhere else. They were as attractive as interstate roadkill, but the clientele was strictly in-the-closet suburban white guys who came down to Seven District for cheap thrills and anonymous gropes in the latrines. Look at them, like hanging dogs—no one in here ever looked anyone else in the face. They were too busy keeping their heads down and their hands busy. If you could stand the atmosphere, it was a very good place to hide out until the D.C. cops got their usual case of Fugitive Alzheimer’s; there were so many people running from the cops in D.C. that anybody not caught in the first twelve hours was pretty much home free.
He checked his watch by the glow from the aisle light. Noon. He’d been in here for almost twelve hours. Even the Marshals would have packed it in by now. Even that son of a bitch Luke Zitto. What the hell he was doing in D.C., Paolo had no idea.
The last time Paolo had seen Zitto was on the steps of the Bronx Borough Courthouse in 1989. Paolo was with his lawyer, Jimmy Della, dead now but alive then, before he crossed one of his clients up and got his throat opened up with a chain saw. Jimmy Della was talking about Paolo’s plea bargain, and a bunch of federales had come down the steps heading for a big white van. Jimmy Della had gone pale, shut up, and stepped back behind a pillar, pulling Paolo with him.
Marshals, he’d said. See that one, lean guy with the big black mustache?
Paolo said, Yeah, so what?
That’s Zitto. La Culebra.
The Snake? That’s the Snake?
Sí, La Culebra, the one who took out Jugo Sarpente, the Ching-a-Ling armorer. Paolo had looked around the pillar and watched Zitto pass, marking the face. Jugo Sarpente had been a major force around the South Bronx. In 1984 he’d machine-gunned a bar up near Gun Hill Road, killed a federal officer and six other people. He was wanted nationwide for executions, neck-ties, rapes; a very bad man, an hombre. The story was that Zitto had found the guy through some finks, taken him down with only two other guys, a couple of Bronx detectives. Killed him flat too, so the story was told. With a twelve-gauge.
And now here Paolo was, on the make in D.C., and who the hell comes in his front door but La Culebra himself. And he was no Jugo Sarpente.
Somehow he didn’t feel good about it. Not good at all. He had maybe a hundred dollars in a canvas money pouch strapped to his ankle. The Glock was shoved down into his crotch, where it was making a very uncomfortable package. And he had Crow’s Virginia driver’s license. So not only was Luke Zitto of the U.S. Marshals Service looking for him, but so was Crow. It was a bad situation. But it was also an opportunity. Because he was the only guy in the game who knew all of the players. Sitting there in the dark, running through the possibilities, Paolo Rona finally reached a decision. He gathered himself together, zipped up his jeans, readjusted the Glock, and walked out of the theater, where the noon sun struck him in the face like a blow.
The broad street was packed with cars and people, lined with low-rent shops and secondhand stores, car lots, bars, bodegas, and groceterias. The summer heat poured down from a hot flat disk of sun hanging like a pimp’s medallion in a lemon-yellow sky. Paolo’s head began to pound. His skin went hot, then cold. At that point a D.C. cop car went rolling by like a cruising shark, following the curb lane, two black cops in the dusty car, their caps back, faces slack, uniforms rumpled and shirts open.
He stood there outside the theater, got a grip on his pain, and watched the car go by, watching the cops, where they were looking. They missed him, never even looked his way. He saw a pushcart peddler, went over and bought a crushed-ice drink, raspberry, and drank it down, feeling the chill numb the ache in his throat. This was bad, this throat thing, and he had better do something about it, get some medicine, because there was no way he could afford to come down with the flu or anything right now. He needed to change his cover, change the way he looked, change the odds.
At a place called Simba’s he picked up an army surplus fatigue jacket and a boonie-rat hat. Also some black boots and a couple of black T-shirts. Sunglasses and a sling bag to carry the Glock in. Soap and a toothbrush, a couple of pink Bic razors. A huge black woman took his cash without even looking up from her paper. He changed in one of the back rooms, stuffing his jeans and the pink T-shirt into the sling bag, covering the Glock. The Glock’s mag held fifteen rounds. That was all the ammunition he had. There was a shop called Blue Star Sports at South Carolina and Thirteenth. They’d have some nine-mills under the counter for sale to their select customers, at fifty bucks a box. But they might have surveillance on them too. Well, he’d have to risk it. No ammo, and your piece is just a paperweight.
The jacket was hot as hell, and a few minutes under that noon sun had Paolo running with sweat inside it. He kept it on because half the addicts down here wore jackets just like it all the time. About the only advantage crack-heads enjoyed was that the summer heat never bothered them; they were cold all year round. If Paolo wanted to pass as just another street person down here in Seven District, he’d have to put up with the heat and the sweat.
There was a row of pay phones at the corner of Thirteenth Street, across from Blue Star Sports, a low bunker of a building with iron bars across the painted windows. Out of the four pay phones, one was gone entirely, one was gutted and smashed, one was covered with spit or something worse. And one was working.
He dropped in a quarter, dialed, and leaned against the phone, looking out at the people passing by, at the traffic, and at the rooftops around the intersection. Rusted-out cabs chugging by, spouting blue smoke. A bagel cart manned by a skinny black kid who looked about nine. Delivery trucks idling at the curbs, unloading crates of food at the grocery store. Garbage and scraps of loose paper lying in heaps in the gutters. Crowds of blacks hanging out all down the block, leaning on stained and graffiti-covered walls, sitting on the stoops, walking back and forth with their hands in their pockets and their eyes taking in everything. If there was routine surveillance in place around Blue Star Sports, he couldn’t see it. Chances had to be taken. The line was answered.
“Tintoreria.”
A woman’s voice, Indio accent, Miskito. No one he knew.
“Hey, is Joey Rag there?”
“Who are you?” She made it sound like “Whuare choo?”
“I’m looking for him. It’s business.”
“Juss a minoot.”
There was a wait. Paolo could hear high-pitched female voices in the background, speaking an unknown language, and the steady thumping of machinery.
“Who’s this?”
“Joey? This is Paolo Rona from Denver. I need to see Crow.”
“He’s not here. You moved last night, hey?”
“What, was it in the papers?”
“No. Crow went over, sees nothing but cops.”
Christ.
“What’d he say?”
“He was disappointed.”
“You can see, I mean, if Crow knows I moved, well then—”
“You got a situation?”
“Do I? Do I have a situation?”
“I’d say you got a situation.”
“Jeez, Joey, here I am calling, I mean, you know the guy. Why—”
“Well, I got nothing to say about Crow. He’s not here.”
“I really need to—”
“Where are you?”
“Joey, I’m not—I’m in a position, you understand. I don’ wanna put that out there right now, you follow?”
“So what can I do?”
“You can tell me something, man. I’m in a thing here, I gotta get—”
Three black kids had settled down along a wall right in front of him, no more than ten feet away. Sharks jackets, hats on full-lock, black and teal colors, heavy lazy-eyed black faces, and all three of them sizing him up, unblinking, chilly. Joey Rag sensed the change in Paolo’s voice.
“Problem there?”
“Maybe. I absolutely gotta know where to look for Crow.”
“I’m not gonna help you there. You know that, man. But I—you say where you can be, I’ll see what I can do. That’s all.”
The three black kids looked like dogs waiting for dinner. No, wolves. Paolo turned to face the phone booth, and the muscles along his back crawled like snakes and eels. He had the sling bag in front of him, his hand fumbling for the Glock under his clothes. If he was going to have to wait somewhere to meet Crow, he’d want to do it in a wide-open place, see the man coming. He wished to hell he knew this city better. He looked up and saw a white pyramid rising over the low ragged line of the storefronts, hazy in the distance, red lights strobing.
“The monument. The big needle. How about that?”
“Yeah. When?”
You’d think Joey Rag paid by the letter. It was like talking to a machine. Paolo didn’t know the guy well, had only met him once last week, when Joey Rag had driven Crow over for their first meet in Chinatown. They said he had been a worker for Barra back in Honduras, but he looked soft now. Paolo was looking for some kind of human comeback and was getting a robot. Probably there was nothing inside Joey Rag but wheels and gears and calculations. Paolo figured, if you were in bed with the guy, you could hear his generator running, it would keep you awake all night.
“It’s twelve-thirty. I’ll be there at three. Down the hill toward that big pond.”
“The pool? Okay. I got no guarantees. Three o’clock.”
The line went dead. Paolo turned around, looked at the three black guys, only now there were five, all staring at him. He leaned back and stared out at them, pulled the Glock out of the sling bag far enough for them to see what was in his hand.
There was a long pounding time where nothing happened. Then one of them smiled and got to his feet and walked away. Then they all left, walking slowly and swaying in that kind of drunken-sailor walk they had. He watched them until they were a long block away, and then he dropped another quarter into the pay phone, dialed, and waited.
The line connected. He heard a hollow click, a pause.
Then a voice. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, well, ah, this is Paolo Rona.”
The man’s voice was calm, deep, and very cold.
“Go ahead.”
“He’s pissed at me, man. What do you want me to do?”
“What’d he say?”
“He wants to meet. I told him the Washington Monument.”
“When?”
Paolo thought about it.
This was the tricky part.
“I told him four o’clock, man.”
“What happened last night?”
“Hey, you tell me! That’s your end, man.”
“We’ll deal with it. Stay cool. Keep your end up.”
“But he wants a meet, man.”
“So meet him.”
“That’s all. Just meet him? You don’t get it. It’s risky!”
“I’m crying. West side of the monument. Be there at four.”
The line went dead.
Chilly fuck.
Paolo looked at his watch. This was going to take timing.
But it could be done.