Owning Up

by George Pelecanos

Genres: Short Stories; Private Investigators

Synopsis

Four blistering novellas, drawn together by themes of strife, violence, and humanity, from esteemed crime fiction writer George Pelecanos; "Like his hero Elmore Leonard, Pelecanos finds the humanity in the lowest of lowlifes."(Chicago Tribune)

When the son of the Carusos is involved in a hold up, the family home comes under siege in the form of a no-knock warrant. Months after the cops destroyed their home, the Carusos struggle to return to normal. Elsewhere, two former inmates reunite by chance on the set of a TV production. Both have found their way on the straight and narrow path, that is, until one sees the potential for an easy grift. A teenage boy must step into the man he'd like to be as a hostage crisis grips his hometown. A woman adrift meets a man tied to her grandmother's past, an encounter that awakens her to a bloody history that undergirds the place she grew up. 

Pelecanos' portraits are characterized by shades of grey, resisting the mold of heroes and villains, victims and perpetrators, good and evil. At once streetwise and full of heart, Owning Up grapples with random chance, the bind of consequence, and the forked paths a life can take.

Release date: February 6, 2024

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 272

Sample

THE FIRST TIME Ira Rubin met Jerrod Williams, both of them were in orange jumpsuits, sitting in the chapel of the D.C. Jail. They were waiting for the nonprofit guy to start the book club thing. Rubin was not much of a reader but he had signed up for the discussion to break up the monotony of his day.

Rubin had seen Williams on the cellblock and in the dining hall, noticed him initially because he was very tall. Williams was one of those guys who got along inside the walls due to his easy manner. At the same time, Williams didn’t seem soft. It was how to do your time in here, if you could manage it.

As for Williams, he had first noticed Rubin because he was white. Weren’t too many white guys incarcerated in the D.C. Jail. Not counting that period when those January Sixers were locked up, and depending on when you looked around, there were times when there weren’t any white guys in here at all. Not that there weren’t whites committing crimes in the District. But unless they were carrying charges of violence attached to a gun, most of them walked until it was their time to go to court. It was an unspoken thing that some judges tended to keep whites out of the Central Detention Facility for their own safety.

So Williams wondered what Rubin had done to draw incarceration time while he was waiting on his trial. Why he had not bailed out and was in here at all. He didn’t look to be a danger to anyone.

While Williams was pondering, Rubin started a conversation. He was seated next to Williams in the circle of chairs the do-gooders had set up, like, campfire-style. They could talk, because the “seminar” had yet to start.

Rubin leaned into Williams, nodded at the paperback in Williams’s hand. “Did you read that?”

Williams nodded. “Sure. I’ve read every one in the series.”

Rubin, who had the same book in his hand, shook his head with disdain. “I couldn’t finish it.”

“Oh, you’re a literary critic now.”

“The book was written on a fourth-grade level.”

“The whole series is. But so what? Reading any kind of book is a positive thing. Not everything got to be Dostoyevsky.”

“The characters don’t talk the way people talk. And most of the books in the series are about serial killers. If there were that many serial killers, we’d all be living behind walls with private security guarding our homes.”

“It’s fiction.” Williams shrugged. “Serial killer novels sell.”

“You telling me you like this?”

“Like got nothing to do with it. It’s a way for me to pass the time.”

“That Black detective?” said Rubin. “He isn’t written like any Black man I’ve ever known.”

“’Cause you’ve known so many.”

“Come on, man. You know what I mean.”

“My name is Jerrod. Not ‘man.’ If you’re gonna address me, do so correctly.”

“Okay,” said Rubin. What he meant was Don’t be so sensitive.

The guy to the right of them, wearing a woven kufi with diamond trim, whose eyes had been closed during their conversation, said, “Y’all mind? I’m praying to my god.”

“As-salaam-alaikum,” said Williams, shifting easily.

The discussion leader, more of a moderator, who was on the young side, arrived. The men treated him respectfully but not with too much deference, as that would give the impression of weakness. They noticed that he had tried to dress up, but that his shoes were scuffed and probably couldn’t get a shine, and that his ill-fitting sport jacket came off the rack from someplace like Kohl’s. In a way this endeared him to them, because it meant that he did not earn much money, but still he had made the effort to dress up in their house as a gesture of respect.

He was introduced by Danielle (they called her Miss Danielle), the jailhouse librarian, who then exited to do some clerical work. That left the inmates, the moderator, and a couple of guards. All men.

During the discussion, the talk turned from plot mechanics to ruminations on the main detective character, and whether he was “real,” which meant was he “Black enough.”

The conversation went something like this:

“He doesn’t seem Black to me.”

“If they made the brother too Black, white folks wouldn’t buy the books. So he got to love everybody, like ‘Ebony and Ivory’ or sumshit.”

“He’s like one of those people who claim they don’t see color. Which means, you know, you must be blind for real.”

“It’s like nobody else notices he’s Black or thinks nothing of it, either. Like, in the world of these books, racism doesn’t exist. He don’t seem to know it, either. Like when that Bush woman, Condoleezza, said that bullshit, that she never experienced racism in her life. He’s like Condoleezza.”

“My man’s got a white girlfriend, too.”

“Yeah, why is that? Why he couldn’t have a Black woman in his bed?”

“For the reason I said. They trying to sell a whole rack of books.”

“His lady should be Black.”

“What, you don’t like white women?”

“I’m attracted to Black women, is all.”

“I am, too. But I make exceptions.”

“So do I. Matter of fact, I’m color-blind when it comes to women.”

“For real?”

“Only color I see is pink.”

The men laughed. The moderator stifled a smile.

“You don’t hear this kind of thing at Politics and Prose,” said Rubin to Williams, speaking of the fancy bookstore in Upper Northwest.

“Sometimes you do,” said Williams. “I been to some book discussions there, got lively.” Williams looked him over. “What are you in for, by the way?”

“Paper hanging,” said Rubin. “You?”

“Gun charge,” said Williams. “But I’m about to be bounced.”

“You got something waiting for you when you get out?”

“What, like a woman?”

“I’m asking, what kind of work do you do?”

Williams’s posture straightened in his chair. “Trying to be an actor.”

“I like old movies,” offered Rubin.

“So?”

“I’m just making conversation, man. I mean Jerrod.”

“Cute,” said Williams.

“My name’s Ira,” said Rubin, and he extended his hand.

Reluctantly, Jerrod Williams shook it.

After Rubin drew probation, he went back to stay with his girlfriend, Maria Lopez. They had reconciled. She had a two-bedroom apartment on Eastern Avenue, inside the District Line, just off Georgia, one of those brick complexes with motion lights hung on the exterior walls. It was Maria’s place, which she had originally shared with a woman named Linda Rodriguez, who understandably didn’t like Rubin, even though he contributed to the rent. Rubin tried to stay out of Linda’s way, but she was never going to be into him, because Linda hadn’t signed up for a second roommate.

Maria was Salvadoran, first-gen American. Rubin used to buy his daily morning coffee at the 7-Eleven on Kansas Avenue and Blair Road, where Maria worked behind the counter, a job that helped with her tuition at the Montgomery College Takoma Park campus. Rubin was attracted to her immediately and talked to her every day, as many men tried to do, and finally he wore her down. On their initial date he took her to dinner at Vicino, an Italian restaurant in downtown Silver Spring, which in its modestly charming way, complete with piped-in opera music, could be, on the right night, a romantic spot. At the time Rubin had been writing checks at two banks, covering them by going back and forth. He was successfully playing the float, and had cash in his pocket. It caught up to him eventually, but at the time of their first date he was good.

Rubin liked Maria’s accent, it did it for him. He liked her work ethic and ambition. And he liked the way she looked, dark hair, big chocolate-brown eyes, a lush mouth, on the short side with real strong thighs and lady curves, kind of built like a running back. Didn’t sound sexy when you said it like that, but boy, it was in the flesh.

Once Rubin got Maria in a dark room, he had her. For it was the one thing he was truly good at. He didn’t just like women in bed, he liked them. When they spoke to him, he listened, he was interested, for real. He wanted to please them, he knew how, and he did. Rubin could go for hours if he wanted to, he could control it and he wasn’t in any hurry to get to that intercourse thing, there was so much more to do first that was pleasurable and fun, for both of them. He did want to get a nut, shit, everyone wanted to finish, but there was no rush. Even the women who became exasperated with him and cut him loose eventually had good memories of Rubin that they carried after he was gone. Yeah, you could call him a loser (legitimately so; he was thirty-two years old, after all, had been in jail, and didn’t seem to be “progressing”), but he did one thing right. For women, Ira Rubin was hard to forget.

Now he was back with Maria (and Linda, who called him “the convict”) in her spot. Maria had gotten Rubin a job on her cousin Julito’s landscaping crew, as he had to have a job as a condition of his probation. Julito was an easygoing guy, he had looked Rubin over and hired him, even though he assumed (correctly) that Rubin would never work as hard as the Latino guys on his crew. To Rubin it was just another job in a succession of them, but for the Latinos it was a vehicle to get somewhere, plus they seemed to take pride in a hard day’s work. They were highly motivated and he was Ira Rubin.

Julito put him on grass-and-leaf-blower duty, the least physical task. Rubin came up behind the sweaty guys who were mowing the lawns (with those wide-ass mowers, they could do a yard in five minutes) and cleaned up the driveways and porches. He wore the blower unit on his back.

Rubin figured he was one of the only, if not the only, Jewish guys on a landscaping crew in the D.C. area. The Spanish guys on the crew (he knew it wasn’t currently correct but Rubin still used the term Spanish in his head) were not unkind to him, and if they were not particularly friendly they looked upon him with amusement and a little bit of curiosity (they knew he’d recently come out of jail so there was some man-respect attached to that). Rubin had enough self-awareness to see these guys with some degree of awe—and also some degree of bewilderment at his own place in life. His people had been here for over a hundred years and he was nowhere. These guys had been in America a few years, spoke little or heavily accented English, and were already buying and building houses for themselves and their families. Sometimes, briefly, he’d think, Maybe there’s something wrong with me.

He only had to look at his own family and relatives to see that. Jewish people in America were generally successful and smart. Sure, it was a stereotype, albeit a positive one, but it was fairly accurate. Some of his relatives were white-collar professionals, some had liquor stores and independent grocery stores (that wisely sold beer and wine), but whatever they wore to work, tie or open-necked shirt, all of them owned real estate and had made money. Not Rubin.

At family get-togethers Ira was tolerated and, one could say, loved, but not really respected. He had grown up in Chevy Chase D.C., his father in real estate, his mother a lawyer representing nonprofits. Now he was living east of Georgia Avenue in a building with crime lights. He brought his Latina girlfriend along to Passover. They liked her, and were not surprised when they met her, because Rubin had a type. At this point, no one expected much of Rubin, they had pretty much accepted his place in life. His brother, David, worked in finance and ran the Wells Fargo office in Baltimore. Rubin blew leaves off driveways and was on probation. His father said, “At least you didn’t draw time.” Hardly an accomplishment.

But Rubin didn’t think too hard on his situation. He was an optimist. It would turn around for him someday. When he wrote bad checks, he thought, I’ll cover them. In the eyes of the law, what he did was a crime, but to him it was one that was victimless. His uncle Irving, Rubin’s role model, told him early on that passing the occasional bad check hurt no one. “Everything’s insured,” said Irving. “So there should be no guilt.” In his own mind, Rubin wasn’t a criminal, because criminals hurt people. He was just trying to get along.

He was out at dinner with Maria one night, they had gone to a film at the AFI Theater in Silver Spring, an old Robert Siodmak picture called Cry of the City (while it wasn’t her thing, she tolerated his interest in repertory film), and now they were eating enchiladas and pupusas at a place on Fenton Street. The Latino waiter had initially spoken to Rubin in Spanish. It wasn’t just that he was with Maria. Rubin was on the dark-skinned side, with dark hair and eyes. Some of the Black kids at Wilson, his public high school, had nicknamed him “Rubin the Cuban.” “I’m a Sephardic Jew,” he’d say to them, but that didn’t disabuse them of overusing the moniker.

“What’d you think of the movie?” said Rubin.

“It was okay,” said Maria without enthusiasm. “Who was that main guy?”

“Victor Mature. Handsome sonofabitch, right? A very natural actor, too.”

“Yeah, I like him. Even the bad guy, I like him, too.”

“Richard Conte. He wasn’t all bad. He couldn’t help himself, like. Product of his environment and all that. Conte was dependable. He was the lead in this picture I really liked, Thieves’ Highway.”

“Is that one black-and-white, too?”

“Why?”

“Maybe we could see a movie in color some time, Ira.”

“Next time, you pick the movie. I promise.”

“Thank you.”

The waiter had cleared their plates. They were finishing a carafe of red.

“I saw this thing on the internet today,” said Rubin. “Like, a casting call.”

“What does that mean?”

“Like when someone casts actors in a part.”

“You gonna be an actor now?” Her tone told him she was doubtful he’d do it, or follow through, like it was another short-lived scheme of his.

“No, not me, not a real actor. This was for extras, what they call background. The people who are standing around or moving in the shot. Like in that movie we saw tonight, all of the street scenes in New York, where you saw people walking on the sidewalk past the main actors, while they were doing their lines?”

“That’s a job?”

“Yeah. I mean, I saw the casting call and I thought it would be a kick. It pays money… Look, this landscaping thing is seasonal, and Julito is about to shut it down for the winter. I’ll still work for him while he’s up.”

“Don’t screw him, Ira.”

“I won’t.” Rubin put his hand over hers. “I appreciate you hooking me up with him. I’m not going to let Julito down, or you.”

“Okay.”

“I’m just going to check this out. I don’t even know if they’ll hire me. I don’t know how it works. But I want to make some money. For us. Maybe we can, you know, get our own place. I don’t think Linda likes me.”

“She doesn’t. But slow down, Ira. I’m okay the way I am.”

“I’ll say.” He smiled. “You’re a beauty.”

“You’re so nice to me.”

“I like you, Maria.” He rolled the “r” when he said her name. It was the best he could do. He wished like hell he knew more Spanish, but like a dumbass he’d taken French in high school instead. And he never did learn a lick of French.

“I like you, too.”

“So,” said Rubin, “could you use my phone to take a photo of me in the apartment when we go back? I need what they call a headshot.”

“Sure.”

“And then we could take some other ph. . .