What It Was Read Online Free PDF Page B

technically, but the title meant nothing more than manager for a multi-bed operation housing six small, cut-up rooms, each of which held a bare mattress, a particleboard dresser, a freestanding rack with wire hangers, and a low-watt lamp. The girls made their connectionsout on the street, leaning into the open windows of idling cars, and handed over the prepaid fee, thirty for the act, five for the room, to Coco before entering with their johns.
    There was no pimp involved in this particular operation. It was fairly unusual for a woman to have such unchallenged control over a stable, but it was known that Robert Lee Jones was Coco’s man, and Red’s hard rep was such that she stayed protected. Even when Jones was incarcerated, few had tried to mack on Coco’s women.
    Coco and Jones sat in her office, which fronted 14th. A nice big room with a bar, a king-size, brass-headboard bed, red velvet couch and chairs, desk, compact stereo, and a couple of windows giving to a view of the wide street below. Coco was lounging on the couch in a negligee, her hair high and elegant, a live Viceroy in hand, the cluster-stone ring on her finger. Jones was in a chair, using an oiled cloth to polish one of two .45s he owned, classic Colts with stainless slides and black checkered grips. He had broken the .22 on a guardrail near the Anacostia and thrown its pieces into the river.
    “Where you about to go with that heater?” said Coco.
    “Me and Fonzo got business.”
    “Contract?”
    “Freelance.”
    “Be mindful. The Odum thing’s still warm.”
    “They got nothin.”
    “What I been hearin, that Detective Vaughn caught the case.”
    “The one they call Hound Dog.”
    “Him. Girl I know name Gina Marie told me he been askin around.”
    “Least they put a man on it.”
    Coco dragged on her cigarette. “That dude got no quit.”
    “Do I look like I care?”
    After coming to the city from West Virginia at an early age, Jones had grown up in one of D.C.’s infamous alley dwellings, way below the poverty line. No father in his life, ever, with hustlers in and out the spot, taking the place of one. A mother who worked domestic when she could. Half brothers and sisters he barely knew or kept track of. Twenty-five dollars a month rent, and his mother could rarely come up with it. All of them hungry, all the time. Being poor in that extreme way, Jones felt that nothing after could cut too deep. Take what you want, take no man’s shit. No police can intimidate you, no sentence will enslave you, no cell can contain your mind.
    Jones stood, holstered the .45 in the dip of his bells, dropped the tail of his shirt over the bulge. His chest looked flat under clothing, but he was just shy of concrete. Five hundred push-ups a day in lockup, the same regimen on the outside. Legend was, an ambitious young dude had tried to shank him in jail and the blade had broken off in Red’s chest. It wasn’t a legend. Homemade shiv, but still.
    “My Fury’s in the alley,” said Coco.
    “We taking Fonzo’s short,” said Jones. He bent down, kissed her full red mouth. His fingers grazed the inside of her bare thigh, and she got damp.
    “Will I see you tonight?”
    “Bet,” said Jones.
    He left the room and walked down the hall, where a young working woman, a big mark above her lip, stood outside a room in a sheer slip, huffing a smoke.
    “Red,” she said.
    “Girl.”
    Out on 14th, Alfonzo Jefferson pulled up in his ’68 Electra, a gold-over-black convertible with 360 horses, a Turbo-400 trans, wide whitewalls, and rear-wheel skirts. It was a big, pretty beast, one of the nicest deuce-and-a-quarters on the street. Jones slid into the passenger side and settled on the bench. Jones and Jefferson had first met in the D.C. Jail and, when they could, had worked together since. Jones liked Jefferson’s fierce nature, and his style.
    Jefferson, small and spidery, looked like a man-child under the wheel. He wore a button-down synthetic shirt, slacks