The Cut (Spero Lucas) by George P. Pelecanos Read Free Book Online Page B

who was not.
    Armed with this information, he left the store, phoned Tavon Lynch, bought a sandwich and a bottle of water at the nearest Subway, and drove south.
    TAVON LYNCH and Edwin Davis were on the low end of the Clifton Street slope, down near 11th, sitting in Tavon’s Impala,when Lucas passed them in his Jeep. He did not slow down. He parked on 12th and waited for Tavon and Edwin to join him. Soon he saw them in the rearview, coming on foot. Tavon slid into the passenger seat beside him and Edwin got in back. It was close to 11 A.M .
    Tavon was wearing a light jacket with epaulets over a Black Uhuru T-shirt, with a different pair of Lacoste sneaks on his feet than he had worn the day before. Edwin wore a UCB Live at the Crossroads T. From the two times they had met, Lucas surmised that Tavon was a reggae man and Edwin was into go-go, but with these guys their choice of shirts could have just been a fashion thing. Edwin had a belt on with a big G buckle, which Lucas guessed advertised Gucci, and he was sporting Ray-Ban aviators. Tavon was wearing, to Lucas’s untrained eye, an expensive pair of sunglasses, too. Maybe they were both wearing shades because they were high. They had reeked of marijuana when they got into the Jeep.
    “What’s shakin, Spero?” said Tavon, and he offered his fist. Lucas dapped him up.
    “On the job,” said Lucas.
    “Us, too,” said Edwin, and Lucas saw him in the mirror, studying the screen of the phone in his hand.
    “We’re gonna have to leave up out of here soon,” said Tavon. “Why’d you call us in?”
    “I’ve got names to put inside the houses now,” said Lucas, patting his notebook, which rested atop the console on his right. “I was wondering if any of them meant anything to y’all.”
    “Lemme see.”
    Lucas opened the Moleskine notebook to the appropriate page and handed it to Tavon. Tavon moved his sunglasses to the top of his head, fitting them into his nest of braids, and stared at the diagram and notations, his lips moving soundlessly as he read.
    Lucas looked through the windshield to the street. An old woman on the even-numbered side stood outside her weathered house, staring down at a garden of flowers and ground cover arranged at the base of her porch. She wore a faded housedress and held a trowel. On the same side of the street, farther down, a woman nearing middle age and wearing a business suit left her row house and walked briskly south on 12th. Lucas made voice notations into his phone, noting the addresses so that he could match the numbers to names later on.
    Tavon passed the notebook over his shoulder to Edwin, then looked at Lucas. Tavon’s pupils were dilated and the whites were pink. “I don’t recognize none of the names.”
    “Not even Lisa Weitzman?”
    “Who’s she?”
    “The woman who owns the house where you arranged the drop.”
    “If you mean the white girl who left for work each mornin and stayed away all day, then that’s her. I didn’t feel the need to find out her name.”
    “That’s sloppy, man.”
    “Ain’t like we don’t have our operation in control,” said Tavon, with a small shrug.
    “If you had it under control you wouldn’t have lost the package.”
    “We’re makin money,” said Edwin, by way of rebuttal. He passed the notebook back to Lucas.
    “These here are Christian Dior,” said Tavon, as if an expensive accessory erased Lucas’s criticism. He took the oversize sunglasses off his head and showed them to Lucas. “Three hundred dollars.”
    Lucas grabbed a handful of his pants leg. “Dickies. Twenty-nine ninety-five.”
    Tavon laughed, showing a slight overbite. It wasn’t that funny, but in his state he found it to be.
    “You think we’re just dumb younguns,” said Tavon, still grinning.
    “I don’t think you’re stupid,” said Lucas. “But both of you are baked right now. That tells me you’re capable of making bad decisions. And mistakes.”
    “You don’t get high?”
    “Not while