“That’s right.”
“Oh Jesus, I’m wet—excuse my French. Okay, so what’s Mr. Pinkerton going to have for me when I call? If I call.”
I told Jenna the truth. “Maybe nothing right away. But you two might make a pretty good team on this one. You’ll have all the right angles covered.”
“I think I’m in love with you, Detective.”
“That’s another thing,” I said. “Sam pretty much hates my guts. You’ll probably get a lot further with him if you don’t happen to mention my name.”
As I hung up, Sampson was giving me a once-over from the driver’s seat. “I thought Sam Pinkerton was a friend of yours.”
“He is.” I pocketed the new phone next to my old one. “I’m just trying to keep it that way.”
Chapter 87
I HAD ONE more place to be that afternoon, and I asked Sampson to drop me off.
One of Washington’s favorite sons, and one of my favorite people too, Hilton Felton, had died a while back, way too young at the age of sixty. I’d spent countless nights listening to Hilton play at Kinkead’s in Foggy Bottom, where he’d been the house pianist since 1993. That’s where they were having a memorial concert for him.
Something like a hundred and fifty people squeezed in to celebrate Hilton’s life, and, of course, hear some great music from his friends. It was all very beautiful and relaxed and wonderful in its own way. The music could only have been better if Hilton had been there to play it himself.
When Andrew White got up and played one of Hilton’s original compositions, it made me feel incredibly lucky to have known the man behind that music, but also deeply sorry to know that I’d never hear him play it again in the way that only Hilton could.
I missed him terribly, and all the while I was there, I couldn’t stop thinking about Nana Mama too. She was the one who first took me to hear Hilton.
Chapter 88
AFTER THE EMOTIONAL stop at Kinkead’s I caught a cab over to Fifth Street, then went upstairs to work. As if things weren’t already interesting enough, we had a couple of unwanted visitors at the house that night. It was around eleven when Bree came up to my office in the attic to tell me the news.
“Alex, we’ve got company outside. Two guys in a Ford Explorer, parked across the street for the last hour. Cups on the dash, no coming and going. Just sitting there, watching the house. Maybe watching you up here.”
Bree has the best instincts I know, so I didn’t doubt that we had a new problem. I holstered my Glock and slid on a windbreaker over it.
Then I stopped in Damon’s room on my way downstairs for his old Louisville Slugger. A good piece of ash, not aluminum.
“Please don’t come out,” I asked Bree at the front door. “Call dispatch if there’s a problem.”
“If there’s a problem, I’m calling dispatch and I’m coming out,” she said. I took off out the front door and down the stoop. The Explorer was parked just past the house on the opposite side. The driver was getting out when I took my first swing and obliterated his left taillight.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he screamed at me. “Are you nuts, man?”
In the streetlight, I could see he was hefty but not fat, with a shaved head and a nose that had been broken a few times. I’d been thinking government, but now that I’d seen him, he looked more like a Yellow Pages PI.
“Why are you here watching my house?” I shouted at him. “Who are you?”
His partner got out on the other side, but they both kept their distance.
?
?Alex?” I heard Bree coming up behind me. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I shouted back. “Washington plates, DCY 182.”
“Got it,” she said.
The bald-headed guy flashed his palms for me. “Seriously, just take it down a notch, man. We know you’re a cop.”
“I’ll take it down when you tell me what you’re doing here where I live.”