The Top Detective

Monte ran past me like death itself was behind him, but as it turned out, he was racing toward it.

I fell back against my car to give him room. He shouted as he raced by.

“Dude was shot in his car.”

Well, news travels fast in my neighborhood, and murders in the southeast corner of the District aren’t exactly rare so I had to figure it was probably true. I was in no hurry to get into the apartment, and it was the first really warm day of spring, so I followed on foot. I’ve been mentoring Monte for a while now so I know he’s seen corpses before. Still, this kind of thing can affect you and I thought I should try to be on hand, just in case.

Two blocks later I saw I didn’t have to be so concerned. The police were already there, and the familiar yellow tape kept everybody, even inquisitive teenage boys, out of sight of the damage. But by the time I was standing beside Monte, I was already being made an exception.

“Jones,” Billy Johnson called to me as he approached the perimeter. Johnson was a local patrolman, real young and real tall. One of those fellows who made a police presence welcome rather than hated in the hood. It was kind of nice to have a brother on the streets.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“We got a little bit of a puzzle here,” he said. “Sure wish you’d come in and take a look.”

Never one to resist a crime scene I lifted the yellow tape and stepped under it. Monte tried to follow but I pushed him back. “I’ll report back,” I told him with a wink.

The scene of the crime turned out to be a brand new silver BMW 325i parked not far ahead. Two forensics guys were kneeling on either side of the car, leaning into the cramped back seat from opposite sides. It was pretty clear why. The dead man was still in the driver’s seat, at least most of him was. I leaned my forearms on the roof and looked in through the driver’s window. The hole in the back of the victim’s head was fairly small, but most of his thinking equipment and probably the top half of his face was smeared all over what remained of the windshield.

I was real glad I had made Monte stay behind.

“Looks like an execution,” I said. “This guy a gangsta? Hard to recognize what’s left.”

“You knew him,” Billy said. “Bumpy Walker. Drugs and numbers. Not a fan, myself, but nobody deserves to go like this.”

“Don’t sweat it,” I said, looking at the guys going over the back seat. “They’ll turn up all you need to find the shooter. Can’t do a thing like this without leaving trace.”

“Want to bet?” one of the techs said. Billy stood behind me like he didn’t want to get too close to Walker. I could have told him that death wasn’t catching.

“The lab boys haven’t found a thing,” he said. “It sure looks like somebody sat in the back seat and put a bullet in the back of Walker’s skull, don’t it? But there’s no evidence of anybody being in the back seat. And that ain’t all. There’s no GSR.”

I turned to face the young cop. “That can’t be right. There has to be some kind of gun shot residue. If not on the seats then at least on the body.”

“Not even on the body,” Billy said.

“Then he was shot from outside the car,” I said.

“I thought so at first, like a drive by, but that’d be a hard angle of impact to get, even with a window open. But when he was found all the windows were up and all the doors locked. And the key’s still in the ignition.”

“How the hell?” I asked no one in particular. I walked slowly around the car. All the glass was intact except for the hole in the windshield and that was clearly an exit hole. I leaned over one of the techs to check the back seat myself. I tried to imagine a shot from the trunk, but there was no hole in the upholstery. I was stumped.

“Thoughts?” Billy said. “Ideas? Theories?”

“Not a clue,” I said. “But if anything comes to mind I’ll let you know.”

When I got back on the other side of the police tape I shared everything I’d seen and heard with Monte. He seemed real excited to be in on a murder case. Me, I’d just as soon never see another murder. But Monte wanted more, and seemed disappointed when I stopped talking.

“Wish I had more for you, little guy, but I haven’t a clue how the shooter nailed old Walker without leaving gunpowder on the body or anyplace in the car.”

Monte looked around, and then came back with a question out of the blue.

“Was Walker driving his own car? The Beemer?”

“Brand new BMW 325i,” I said. “Silver, automatic, four-seater.”
“Oh,” Monte said. “Well, there you are, then.” When he saw the confusion on my face he smiled, then laughed, and finally pumped his fist.

“You don’t know, do you?” he asked, poking a finger at my face. “Do you? YES! I got it! I got it and you don’t know. I figured one out before you!”

I looked at him. “Okay, Einstein, just what do you have?”

“Nuh-uh. Not unless you let me see the crime scene.”

So a minute later, Monte was pacing around the vehicle, smiling in a way that worried me a little, while I hung back to talk to Billy.

“Monte says you’re in the wrong place looking for evidence in the back seat. He thinks the killer might have left prints on the controls up front.”

“Based on what?” Billy wanted to know. That’s when Monte walked up and took his dramatic moment.

“Based on the fact that you guys don’t know jack about cars. Walker’s new ride made him the man ‘cause it’s a drop top. That Beemer is one of the new hard top retractable convertibles. There’s no gun powder stuff in the car because the killer took the shot while the top was down. Then he or somebody in his posse just reached in and pushed the button that raised the top back into place. If they didn’t have gloves, that’s where you’ll find your evidence.”

Yeah, it was his dramatic moment. But hell, he earned it.

Mom's Day

“How come she wrote it that way?” Monte asked. “"To my honey". Not what most moms would say to their kid.”

It was an odd moment for me. Monte was looking at my only remaining photo of my mother. Normally the little frame stood on the fake mantle in my bedroom. I had moved it to the living room because it was the eve of Mother’s Day and I wanted to see her all night and all the next day.

It was an odd moment because of the losses we shared. Monte’s mother died in childbirth and his father left him with his grandmother soon after. Cindy’s father Ray was with us. He watched Cindy’s mother die of tuberculosis soon after they came to this country from Cuba. I lost my father to the Vietnam War when I was pretty small and my mother within a year of my high school graduation. Mother’s Day was a bittersweet event for each of us.

“It’s because of my skin tone,” I told Monte. “She called me her honey boy because she thought my skin was the color of honey.”

“You miss her don’t you?” Monte asked, maybe a bit rougher than he meant to. “You’re lucky you got somebody to miss.”

“Mother Washington is more mother to you than most get,” Ray said, sipping at a beer. “You ought to appreciate that. In fact, she’s a mother to everybody on the block, and everybody in her church. Did you get her something nice?”

“Didn’t know what to get, so I got a box of candy.” To his credit, he didn’t sound proud of it. Monte’s not quite a teenager, but he already has a good sense of what’s right and what isn’t.

“Every mom wants to feel special on Mother’s Day,” I said, looking deep into my own mother’s celluloid eyes. “Is it the same with Father’s Day, Ray?”

Ray thought a minute, and I could see his eyes fading back to when Cindy was Monte’s age, before Ray’s hair deserted him and ambition left him behind. “You know, at one time Father’s Day was very important to me. I remember how bad I wanted my little girl to see how hard I worked at raising her. Not just the trips to the park, you know, but the skinned knees I tended, the slumber parties I put up with, the days I pretended not to know she did something wrong, the nights I chased the bad boys away. All of it.”

“She appreciates it,” I said.

“Maybe. But she sure didn’t when she was a kid.”

“You’ll always be her father,” I said, lightly punching his shoulder. “That’s where Cindy has it over me and Monte here.”

“Well, I did all I could, but I’m through,” Ray said, slowly crushing his beer can. “She don’t need a father no more, she’s on her own. And you know, I’m not her friend the way…” he swallowed, his mouth already dry. “The way my Juanita was.”

“I get that,” I said, pulling another beer out of its plastic loop and handing it to Ray. “I mean, my dad was a soldier’s soldier. Maybe that’s just the thing with dads. They can be friends or they can be trainers.”

“Yeah, us men, we ain’t got the goods to be both. That’s what makes mothers special.” Ray clinked his beer can against mine. “Guys, even the best of us, can only be in one place at a time.”

“Y’all saying Grandma can be in two places at once?” Monte asked, eyeing the beer.

“You bet,” Ray said. “She can lead you, stand beside you, and get behind you, all at the same time. That’s what a mother can do.”

“Pretty poetic for a cab driver,” I said. “You deserved a gift on both days for raising Cindy alone.”

Ray waved the notion away. “Guys don’t care about that stuff. All I ever wanted on Father's Day was for the kid to call or come by and say thanks for trying. The rest is just… well it’s like wrappings on a present, you know? Guys don’t care about that crap but you know it’ll spoil it for the kid if you show you don’t care so you keep it to yourself.”

It was my turn to drift away. I was counting back, one year at a time, through the Mother’s Day presents I had given Mama. I got back to second grade before the memory train ran out of track.

“Mom’s ain’t like that at all. They make every flower, every card, every little gift bought with your allowance seem like solid gold and just what she was praying for. They make you feel good, just by appreciating your effort and a little thought. I know some of that reaction was for my benefit, and some was probably just tradition, like the gift wrapping you mentioned. But I know that mostly she loved whatever I did for her just cause I did it, just like I know she loved me no matter what I did.”

“That’s what makes a mother,” Ray said. “They love you no matter what. And you only get so many chances to tell her she’s special. So you got to be sure to go to your mom or whoever’s been your mom on Sunday and say thank you. Thank you for trying and for caring.”

I know that last bit was aimed right at Monte. I looked at him, and then at Ray, and we all seemed to be in the same place. I was the first one to stand up.

“You were right, Ray. Mother Washington has been a mother to all of us on the block. Come on. Let’s the three of us go out and see if we can find her something really special for tomorrow.”