Right as Rain

'I've heard this one,' said Qui

'It's a little more subtle than that. Mr Billy Paul, he justified an entire career with this single right here. Glad I recorded it before I lost my album collection. Had to throw them all out after the pipes busted in my house, couple years back.'

'You can buy it on CD, I bet.'

'I have a player. But I like records. Was listening to this Blackbyrds tape yesterday, Flying Start? Thinking about the liner notes on the i

'If you were there, I guess.'

'Don't you like music?'

'When it speaks to my world. How about you? You ever listen to anything current?'

'Not really. The slow jams got to be the end-all for me. Nothin' worth listening to, you get past seventy-six, seventy-seven.'

'I was eight years old in seventy-seven.'

'Explains why you don't have an appreciation for this song.' Strange looked across the bench. 'You're a D.C. boy, right?'

'Silver Spring.'

'I heard it in your voice.'

'Graduate of the old Blair High School. You?'

'Roosevelt High. Grew up in this neighborhood right here. Still live in it.'

Qui

'My grandparents lived down this way,' said Qui

'That's around the block from where I live.'

'I used to play out in their alley. It always seemed, I don't know, dark down there.'

Because of all those dark people, thought Strange. He said, 'That's because you were off your turf.'

'Yeah. It made me a little bit afraid. Afraid and excited at the same time, you know what I mean?'

'Sure.'

'One day these kids came up on me while I was playing by myself.'

'Black kids, right?'

'Yeah. Why you ask that?'

'Just trying to get a picture in my mind.'

'So these kids came along, and the littlest one of them picked a fight with me. He was shorter than I was and lighter, too.'

'It's always the littlest one wants to fight, when he's in a group. Little dude got the most to prove. You fight him?'

'Yeah. I had walked away from a fight at my elementary school earlier that year, and I'd never forgiven myself for it. Matter of fact, I still can't bear to think of it today. Fu

'Not really. This kid in the alley, you beat him?'

'I lost. I got in a punch or two, which surprised him. But he knew how to fight and I didn't, and he put me down. I got back inside the house, I was shaking but proud, too, 'cause I didn't back down. And I saw that kid a couple of years later, the day of my grandfather's wake. He was walking by their house and stopped to talk to me. Asked me if I wanted to play some football, down by the school playground.'

'And you learned?'

'What breeds respect. Not to walk away from a fight. Take a beating if you have to, but a beating's never as bad as the feeling of shame you get when you back off.'

'That's your youth talking right there,' said Strange. 'One day you're go

8

Down past Howard University, at the Florida Avenue intersection, Georgia Avenue became 7th Street. They stayed on 7th and then they were in Chinatown, passing nightclubs, sports bars, and the MCI Center, which anchored the new downtown D.C. Farther along there were more nightclubs and restaurants and the short strip of the arts and gallery district, and at Qui

'This is it,' said Strange. 'You were right about here?'

'Except that we parked it in the middle of the street. We came in just like this, from Seventh. My partner was driving the cruiser.'

'That would be Eugene Franklin.'

'Gene Franklin, right.'

'What made y'all pull over?'

'We were working. We had just come off a routine traffic stop, guy in a Maxima had blown a red up at Mt Vernon Square. Up around Seventh and N, you want the exact location.'

'So you were headed south on Seventh after that, and Franklin turned left onto D. He see something, or was that just some kind of pattern?'

'No, we hadn't seen anything yet until we made the turn. This stretch of D is unlit at night, and there's hardly any activity. Pedestrian traffic, none. Sun goes down, rats stroll across the street like they own the real estate.'

'What about that night? You pulled onto D, what did you see?'

Qui

'Describe this aggressor.'

'Black, mid-to-late twenties, medium build, street clothes.'

'And the guy he had on the ground?'

'White…' Qui

'So you and your partner, you happen on the scene of this confrontation. What happens then?'

Qui

'You got a talent for reading minds?'

'I'll put it another way. The aggressor keeps the gun on the guy he's got pi

'His intent being, the intent of this black aggressor I mean, to do harm to the white guy he's got pi

'I saw a man holding a gun on another man in the street.'

'All right, Qui

'We're about twenty-five yards back from them, I'd say.'

'Okay,' said Strange.

Qui

'You do what next?'

'I've got my gun on the aggressor. I yell for him to drop his weapon and lie facedown on the street. He yells something back. I can't really hear what he's saying, 'cause Eugene's yelling over him, telling him what I'm telling him: to drop his weapon. The lights… the red and blue lights from the overheads are strobing the scene, and I can hear the crackle of our radio coming from the open doors of our cruiser behind us.'

'Sounds like a lot of confusion.'

'Yes. Gene and I are both yelling now and there's the lights and the radio, and the aggressor, he's yelling back at us, not moving the gun from the guy's face.'

'What's Wilson – what's the aggressor yelling now?'

'His name,' said Qui