Soul Circus

Book 3: Derek Strange and Terry Quinn Series

by George Pelecanos

Genres: Private Investigators; Suspense

Synopsis

Bleak, gritty and moving, Soul Circus superbly brings to life a devastating story of life and death in Washington's black ghettos. Private Investigator Derek Strange and his partner, Terry Quinn, are running a detective business in the seedy underbelly of Washington, DC when they are approached by a young man asking them to find his girlfriend who has gone missing. And so Strange and Quinn find her. Just another day? Not quite. In the grimy underworld inhabited by Strange, nothing is that simple. For Strange and Quinn's efforts have led to a young mother being brutally murdered -- a devastating discovery that causes them both to question the morality by which they live. And yet at the same time they need to continue the search for another missing girl, a teenage runaway who shows up in a porn video. And who hasn't been seen since. Step by step, Strange and his partner are drawn into the darkness, confronting gunrunners, crime lords, drug dealers, and ordinary people caught up in the ruthless violence of the business. Soul Circus is a heart-stopping thriller that could only have been written by George Pelecanos, the writer who "has gone from cult favorite to acknowledged master" ( Booklist).

Release date: February 3, 2003

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 416

Sample

“Clear any breakfast meetings off your calendar—you’re gonna be up late reading this one.”

—Jonathan Miles, Men’s Journal

“Soul Circus serves up what George Pelecanos’s fans have come to expect, and once again, the effect is sharp and satisfying: a richly
textured tapestry, a quirky plot, a large, multicolored cast of lawbreakers, law enforcers, misfits, malfeasants, and innocent
bystanders.… The novels of Pelecanos are passionate, vital, and vigorously demotic. If they have sense, historians will plumb
them for evidence of how men and women lived, feared, and coped in the war zones of everyday life: not only when they preyed
on each other, but when they talked, loved, listened to music, or just wasted time.”

—Eugen Weber, Los Angeles Times

“In the realm of crime noir, few contemporary writers connect criminal acts and the society that spawns them as efficiently
as Pelecanos. His writing in his eleventh novel is as polished and as exquisitely honed as the guns that wreak havoc in the
neighborhoods where his novels are set. You’ll want to reread scenes of violence for the beauty of the language and the cinematic
quality that pushes readers to envision urban evil in all its forms.”

—Carol Memmott, USA Today

“George P. Pelecanos covers Washington, D.C., like a police-beat reporter. He attends trials, rides with cops, burns shoe
leather, keeps his ears open.… Soul Circus may be his most moving venture yet.”

—Zach Dundas, Willamette Week

“Pelecanos’s most satisfying Derek Strange novel.”

—Entertainment Weekly

“Last year Pelecanos hit the bestseller list for the first time with the critically lauded Hell to Pay. His latest, Soul Circus, is a worthy successor, because Pelecanos has the first-rate writer’s ability to entertain you and break your heart on the
same page. His storytelling keeps you turning pages to determine the guilt or innocence of a drug lord on death row.… Derek
Strange is one of the realest creations in contemporary fiction, whether he’s solving a crime or worrying about getting a
haircut. Just for the record, he’s an admirable guy too. The only unbelievable thing about this powerfully affecting character
is the notion that Pelecanos made him up.”

—Malcolm Jones, Newsweek

“Like Walt Whitman in ‘Song of Myself,’ Pelecanos plays ‘not marches for accepted victors only’; he also plays ‘marches for
conquer’d and slain persons.’ And what eloquent literary ‘marches’ they are, swelling with the music of Philly soul, rap,
the soundtracks from spaghetti Westerns, and a bit of Springsteen.… Pelecanos writes with intelligence and complexity, as
well as with a sober recognition of the evil at large in the world. His latest novel, Soul Circus, may be his best yet—but I’ve been declaring that clichéd judgment about a lot of his novels ever since I’ve been reading
him.… Soul Circus grapples with some of the Big Questions, along with the relatively mundane ones that Strange and Quinn are hired to investigate.
The American racial divide, the existence of God (and, especially, a God that would allow harm to children), the meaning and
transience of life—they’re all on the board here. What’s so brilliant about Soul Circus, and Pelecanos’s novels in general, is that he raises these questions not only in meditative passages but also in scenes of
the rawest violence.”

—Maureen Corrigan, Washington Post

“Pelecanos balances several stories with amazing skill. Tension and outrage build as the pages fly by.… Thanks to Pelecanos’s
insight and talent, readers will agree that they can’t wait to see what happens next.”

—Michele Ross, Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Pelecanos is fascinated with the way things work, and he takes apart the gun trade like an urban anthropologist, fitting
the pieces into the drug business and the gang culture with an exactness that is breathtaking—and depressing. At the same
time, he treats his criminals like human beings, talking their talk, driving their cars, listening to their music, getting
into their world with something that can only be called sympathy.”

—Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

“When George P. Pelecanos began his current series featuring an unlikely pair of D.C. private investigators, he told readers
he intended to make a trilogy. Well, Soul Circus is the third of these novels, and it is such an outstanding effort that the author will no doubt be hearing howls of protest
as people plead, ‘Don’t stop now!’… Soul Circus should both solidify Pelecanos as one of the best crime writers working today and boost his sales into the bestseller regions.”

—John Clutterbuck, Houston Chronicle

“Pelecanos expertly constructs both a gripping thriller and a tense internal drama. As always, his deeply textured portraits
of the victims of poverty and violence add an almost Dickensian breadth to the novel. Throw in a shocking conclusion with
far-reaching ramifications for the series, and you have one more superb installment in what has become a remarkably revealing
portrait of urban life and the most intimate matters of heart and mind.”

—Booklist (starred review)

THE chains binding Granville Oliver’s wrists scraped the scarred surface of the table before him. Manacles also bound his ankles.
Oliver’s shoulders and chest filled out the orange jumpsuit he had worn for half a year. His eyes, almost golden when Strange
had first met him, were now the color of creamed-up coffee, dull in the artificial light of the interview room of the D.C.
Jail.


“Looks like you’re keeping your physical self together,” said Strange, seated on the other side of the table.

“Push-ups,” said Oliver. “I try to do a few hundred every day.”

“You still down in the Hole?”

“You mean Special Management. I don’t know what’s so special about it; ain’t nothin’ but a box. They let me out of it one
hour for every forty-eight.”


Strange and Oliver were surrounded by Plexiglas dividers in a space partitioned by cubicles. Nearby, public defenders and
CJA attorneys conferred with their clients. The dividers served to mute, somewhat, the various conversations, leaving a low, steady
mutter in the room. A thick-necked armed guard sat watching the activity from a chair behind a window in a darkened booth.


“It won’t be long,” said Strange. “They finished with the jury selection.”

“Ives told me. They finally found a dozen D.C. residents weren’t opposed to the death penalty, how’d they put it, on principle. Which means they found some white people gonna have no problem to sit up there and judge me.”


“Four whites,” said Strange.

“How you think they gonna find me, Strange? Guilty?”

Strange looked down and tapped his pen on the open folder lying on the table. He didn’t care to take the conversation any
further in that direction. He wasn’t here to discuss what was or was not going to happen relative to the trial, and he was,
by definition of his role as an investigator, uninterested in Oliver’s guilt or innocence. It was true that he had a personal
connection to this case, but from the start he had been determined to treat this as just another job.


“The prosecution’s going to put Phillip Wood up there first,” said Strange.

“Told you when I met you the very first time he was gonna be my Judas. Phil can’t do no more maximum time. Last time he was
inside, they took away his manhood. I mean they ass-raped him good. I knew that boy would flip.” Oliver tried to smile. “Far
as geography goes, though, we still close. They got him over there in the Snitch Hive, Strange. Me and Phil, we’re like neighbors.”


Wood had been Granville’s top lieutenant. He had pled out in exchange for testimony against Oliver. Wood would get life, as
he had admitted to being the triggerman in other murders; death had been taken off the table. He was housed in the Correctional
Treatment Facility, a privately run unit holding informants and government witnesses in the backyard of the D.C. Jail.


“I’ve been gathering background for the cross,” said Strange. “I was looking for you to lead me to one of Phillip’s old girlfriends.”


“Phil knew a lot of girls. The way he used to flash… even a bitch can get some pussy; ain’t no trick to that. Phil used to
drive this Turbo Z I had bought for him around to the high schools, ’specially over in Maryland, in PG? Drive by with that
Kenwood sound system he had in there, playin’ it loud. The girls used to run up to the car. They didn’t even know who he was,
and it didn’t matter. It was obvious he had money, and what he did to get it. Girls just want to be up in there with the stars.
It’s like that, Strange.”


“I’m looking for one girl in particular. She swore out a brutality complaint against Wood.”

“The prosecution gave you that?”

“They don’t have to give you charges, only convictions. I found it in his jacket down at the court. This particular charge,
it was no-papered. Never went to trial.”


“What’s the girl’s name?”

“Devra Stokes. Should be about twenty-two by now. She worked at the Paramount Beauty Salon on Good Hope Road.”

Oliver grunted. “Sounds right. Phil did like to chill in those beauty parlors. Said that’s where the girls were, so he wanted
to be there, too. But I don’t know her. We went through a lot of young girls. We were kickin’ it with ’em, for the most part.
But we were using them for other shit, too.”


“What else would he have used a girl like Devra Stokes for?”

“Well, if she was old enough, and she didn’t have no priors, we’d take her into Maryland or Virginia to buy a gun for us.
Virginia, if we needed it quick. We paid for it, but she’d sign the forty-four seventy-three. What they call the yellow form.”


“You mean for a straw purchase.”

“A straw gun, yeah. Course, not all the time. You could rent a gun or get it from people we knew to get it from in the neighborhood. It’s easy for a youngun to get a gun in the city. Easier than it is to buy a car. Shoot, you got to register a car.”


Strange repeated the name: “Devra Stokes.”

“Like I say, I don’t recall. But look, she was workin’ in a salon, chance is, she still doin’ the same thing, maybe somewhere
else, but in the area. Those girls move around, but not too far.”


“Right.”

“Phil’s gonna say I killed my uncle, ain’t that right?”

“I don’t know what he’s going to say, Granville.”

Oliver and Strange stared at each other across the desk.

“You standin’ tall, big man?” said Oliver.

Oliver was questioning Strange’s loyalty. Strange answered by holding Oliver’s gaze.

“I ain’t no dreamer,” said Oliver. “One way or the other, it’s over for me. The business is done. Most of the boys I came
up with, they’re dead or doin’ long time. One of the young ones I brought along got his own thing now, but he’s cut things
off with me. Word I get is, he still got himself lined up with Phil. Shoot, I hear they got two operations fighting over what
I built as we sit here today.”


“What’s your point?”

“I feel like I’m already gone. They want to erase me, Strange. Make it so I don’t exist no more. The same way they keep poor
young black boys and girls out of the public’s eyes today, the same way they did me when I was a kid. Warehousin’ me and those
like me down in the Section Eights. Now the government wants to bring me out and make an example out of me for a hot minute,
then make me disappear again. And I’m a good candidate, too, ain’t I? A strong young nigger with an attitude. They want to
strap me to that table in Indiana and give me that needle and show people, that’s what happens when you don’t stay down where
we done put you. That’s what happens when you rise up. They want to do this to me bad. So bad that they’d fuck with someone
who was trying to help me to stop it, hear?”


You left out the part about all the young black men you killed or had killed, thought Strange. And the part about you poisoning
your own community with drugs, and ruining the lives of all the young people you recruited and the lives of their families.
But there were some truths in what Granville Oliver was saying, too. Strange, following a personal policy, did not comment
either way.


“So I was just wondering,” said Oliver. “When they try to shake you down—and they will—are you gonna stand tall?”

“Don’t insult me,” said Strange. “And don’t ever let me get the idea that you’re threatening me. ’Cause I will walk. And you
do not want me to do that.”


Strange kept his voice even and his shoulders straight. He hoped his anger, and his fear, did not show on his face. Strange
knew that even from in here, Oliver could have most anyone killed out on the street.


Oliver smiled, his face turning from hard to handsome. Like many who had attained his position, he was intelligent, despite
his limited education, and could be a charming young man at will. When he relaxed his features, he favored his deceased father,
a man Strange had known in the 1960s. Oliver had never known his father at all.


“I was just askin’ a question, big man. I don’t have many friends left, and I want to make sure that the ones I do have stay friends. We square, right?”


“We’re square.”

“Good. But, look here, don’t come up in here empty-handed next time. I could use some smokes or somethin’.”

“You know I can’t be bringin’ any contraband in here. They bar me from these meetings, it’s gonna be a setback for what we’re
trying to accomplish.”


“I hear you. How about some porno mags, though?”

“I’ll see you next time.”

Strange stood.

“One more thing,” said Oliver.

“What is it?” said Strange.


“I was wonderin’ how Robert Gray was doin’?”

“He’s staying with his aunt.”

“She ain’t right.”

“I know it. But it’s the best I could do. I got him all pumped up about playing football for us this year. We’re gonna start
him in the camp this summer, comin’ up.”


“That’s my little man right there. You’re gonna see, that boy can jook. Check up on him, will you?”

“I get the time, I’ll go by there today.”

“Thank you.”

“Stay strong, Granville.”

Strange signaled the fat man in the booth and walked from the room.



OUT in the air, on the 1900 block of D Street in Southeast, Derek Strange walked to his car. He dropped under the wheel of his
work vehicle, a white-over-black ’89 Caprice with a 350 square block under the hood, and rolled down the window. He had a
while to kill before meeting Quinn back at the office, and he didn’t want to face the ringing phone and the message slips
spread out on his desk. He decided he would sit in his car and enjoy the quiet and the promise of a new day.


Strange poured a cup of coffee from the thermos he kept in his car. Coffee was okay for times like this, but he kept water
in the thermos when he was doing a surveillance, because coffee went through him too quick. He only sipped the water when
he knew he’d be in the car for a long stretch, and on those occasions he kept a cup in the car with a plastic lid on it, in
which he could urinate as needed.


Strange tasted the coffee. Janine had brewed it for him that morning before he left the house. The woman could cook, and she
could make some coffee, too.


Strange picked up the newspaper beside him on the bench, which he had snatched off the lawn outside Janine’s house earlier
that morning on his way to the car. He pulled the Metro section free and scanned the front page. The Washington Post was running yet another story today in a series documenting the ongoing progress of the Granville Oliver trial.


Oliver had allegedly been involved in a dozen murders, including the murder of his own uncle, while running the Oliver Mob,
a large-scale, longtime drug business operating in the Southeast quadrant of the city. The Feds were seeking death for Oliver
under the RICO act, despite the fact that the District’s residents had overwhelmingly rejected the death penalty in a local
referendum. The combination of racketeering and certain violent crimes allowed the government to exercise this option. The
last execution in D.C. had been carried out in 1957.


The jury selection process had taken several months, as it had been difficult to find twelve local residents unopposed to
capital punishment. During this time, Oliver’s attorneys, from the firm of Ives and Colby, had employed Strange to gather
evidence, data, and countertestimony for the defense.


Strange skipped the article, jumping inside Metro to page 3. His eyes went to a daily crime column unofficially known by longtime
Washingtonians as “the Roundup,” or the “Violent Negro Deaths.” The first small headline read, “Teen Dies of Gunshot Wounds,”
and beneath it were two sentences: “An 18-year-old man found with multiple gunshot wounds in Southeast Washington died early
yesterday at Prince George’s County Hospital Center, police said. The unidentified man was found just after midnight in the
courtyard area behind the Stoneridge apartments in the 300 block of Anacostia Road, and was pronounced dead at 1:03 A.M.”


Two sentences, thought Strange. That’s all a certain kind of kid in this town’s gonna get to sum up his life. There would
be more deaths, most likely retribution kills, related to this one. Later, the murder gun might turn up somewhere down the food chain. Later, the crime might get “solved,” pinned on the shooter
by a snitch in a plea-out. Whatever happened, this would be the last the general public would hear about this young man, a
passing mention to be filed away in a newspaper morgue, one brief paragraph without even a name attached to prove that he
had existed. Another unidentified YBM, dead on the other side of the Anacostia River.


River, hell, thought Strange. The way it separates this city for real, might as well go ahead and call it a canyon.

Strange dropped the newspaper back on the bench seat. He turned the key in the ignition and pushed a Spinners tape into his
deck. He pulled out of his spot and drove west. Just a few sips of coffee, and already he had to pee. Anyway, he couldn’t
sit here all day. It was time to go to work.


TWO house wrens, a brownish male and female, were building a nest on the sill outside Strange’s office window. Strange could
hear them talking to each other as they worked.


When Strange was a child, his mother, Alethea, had held him up to their kitchen window on mornings just like this one to show
him the daily progress of the nest the birds made there each year. “They’re working to make a house for their children. The
same way your father goes to work each day to make this a home for you and your brother.” His mother had been gone two years
now, but Derek Strange could recall her words, and he could hear the music in her voice. She still spoke to Strange in his
dreams.


Late-spring light shot through the glass, the heat of it warming the back of Strange’s neck and hands as he sat at his desk.
The wedge-shaped speaker beside his phone buzzed. Janine’s voice, transmitted from the office reception area up front, came
from the box.


“Derek, Terry just came in.”


“I’ll be right out.”

Strange glanced down beside his chair, where Greco, his tan boxer, lay. Greco looked up without moving his head as Strange
rubbed his skull. Greco’s nub of a tail twitched and he closed his eyes.


“I won’t be gone long. Janine’ll take care of you, boy.”

In the reception area, Strange nodded at Terry Quinn, sitting at his desk, a work station he rarely used. While Quinn tore
open a pack of sugarless gum, Strange stopped by Janine’s desk.


She wore some kind of pants-and-shirt hookup, flowing and bright. Her lipstick matched the half-moons of red slashing through
the outfit. It would be like her to pay attention to that kind of detail. Strange stared at her now. She always looked good.
Always. But you couldn’t get the full weight of it if you saw her seated behind her desk. Janine was the kind of tall, strong woman,
you needed to see her walking to get the full appreciation, to feel that stirring up in your thighs. Like one of those proud
horses they marched around at the track. He knew it wasn’t proper to talk about a woman, especially a woman you loved, like
she was some kind of fine animal. But that’s what came to mind when he looked at her. He guessed it was still okay, until
the thought police came and raided his head, to imagine her like that in his mind.


“You okay?” said Janine, looking up at him with those big browns of hers. “You look drunk.”

“Thinking of you,” said Strange.

Strange heard Lamar, seated at Ron Lattimer’s old desk, snicker behind him. For this he turned and stared benignly at the
young man.


“I ain’t say nothin’,” said Lamar. “Just over here, minding my own.”

Strange had been grooming Lamar Williams to be an investigator as soon as he got his diploma from Roosevelt High and took
up some technical courses, computer training or something like it, at night. In the meantime, Strange had Lamar doing what he’d been doing the past couple of years: cleaning the office,
running errands, and keeping himself away from the street-side boys over in the Section 8s, the nearby Park Morton complex
where Lamar lived with his mom and little sister.


Strange looked back at Janine, then down to the blotter-style calendar on her desk. “What’s my two o’clock about?”

“Man says he’s looking for a love.”

“Him and Bobby Womack,” said Strange.

“His lost love.”


“Okay. We know him?”

“Says he’s been seeing our sign these last few years, since he’s been ‘frequenting an establishment’ over on Georgia Avenue.”

“Must be talkin’ about that titty bar across the street. Our claim to the neighborhood.”

“Georgetown’s got Dunbarton Oaks,” said Janine with a shrug. “We’ve got the Foxy Playground.”

Strange leaned over the desk and kissed Janine fully on the lips. Their mouths fit together right. He held the kiss, then
stood straight.


“Dag, y’all actin’ like you’re twenty years old,” said Lamar.

Strange straightened the new name plaque on the desk. For many years it had read “Janine Baker.” Now it read “Janine Strange.”

“I didn’t have it so good when I was twenty,” said Strange, talking to Lamar, still looking at Janine. “And anyway, where’s
it say that a man’s not allowed to kiss his wife?”


Janine reached into her desk drawer and pulled free a PayDay bar. “In case you miss lunch,” she said, handing it to Strange.

“Thank you, baby.”

Terry Quinn stood, a manila folder under his arm. He had the sun-sensitive skin of an Irishman, with a square jaw and deep
laugh ridges framing his mouth. A scar ran down one cheek where he had been cut by a pimp’s pearl-handled knife. He kept his hair short and it was free of gray. The burst of lines that had
formed around his green eyes was the sole indication of his thirty-three years. He was medium height, but the width of his
shoulders and the heft of his chest made him appear shorter.


“Can I get some of that Extra, Terry?” said Lamar.

Quinn tossed a stick of gum to Lamar as he stepped out from behind his desk.

“You ready?” said Strange.

“Thought you two were gonna renew your vows or something,” said Quinn.

Strange head-motioned to the front door. “We’ll take my short.”

Janine watched them leave the office. Strange filled out that shirt she’d bought him, mostly cotton but with a touch of rayon
in it for the stretch, with his broad shoulders and back. Her man, almost fifty-four, had twenty years on Terry, and still
he looked fine.


Coming out of the storefront, they passed under the sign hanging above the door. The magnifying-glass logo covered and blew
up half the script: “Strange Investigations” against a yellow back. At night the light-box was the beacon on this part of
the strip, 9th between Kansas and Upshur, a sidearm-throw off Georgia. It was this sign, Janine’s kidding aside, that was
the landmark in Petworth and down into Park View. Strange had opened this business after his stint with the MPD, and he had
kept it open now for over twenty-five years. He could just as well have made his living out of his row house on Buchanan Street,
especially now that he was staying full-time with Janine and her son, Lionel, in their house on Quintana. But he knew what
his visibility meant out here; the young people in the neighborhood had come to expect his presence on this street.


Strange and Quinn passed Hawk’s barbershop, where a cutter named Rodel stood outside, dragging on a Newport.

“When you gonna get that mess straightened up, Derek?” said Rodel.


“Tell Bennett I’ll be in later on today,” said Strange, not breaking his stride.

“They got the new Penthouse in,” said Quinn.


“You didn’t soil it or nothin’, did you?”

“You can still make out a picture or two.”

Strange patted his close-cut, lightly salted natural. “Another reason to get myself correct.”

They passed the butcher place that sold lunches, and Marshall’s funeral parlor, where the white Caprice was parked along the
curb behind a black limo-style Lincoln. Strange turned the ignition, and they rolled toward Southeast.


ULYSSES Foreman was just about down to seeds, so when little Mario Durham got him on his cell, looking to rent a gun, he told Durham
to meet him on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, up a ways from the Big Chair. Foreman set the meeting out for a while, which
would give him time to wake up his girl, Ashley Swann, and show her who her daddy was before he left up the house.


An hour and a half later, Foreman looked across the leather bench at a skinny man with a wide, misshapen nose and big rat
teeth, leaning against the Caddy’s passenger-side door. On Durham’s feet were last year’s Jordans; the J on the left one, Foreman noticed, was missing. Durham wore a Redskins jersey and a matching knit cap, his arms coming out
the jersey like willow branches. The back of the jersey had the name “Sanders” printed across it. It would be just like Durham,
thought Foreman, to look up to a pretty-boy hustler, all flash and no heart, like Deion.


“You brought me somethin’?” said Foreman.


Durham, having hiked up the volume on the Cadillac’s system, didn’t hear. He was moving his head to that single, “Danger,”
had been in heavy rotation since the wintertime. Foreman reached over and turned the music down.


“Hey,” said Durham.

“We got business.”

“That joint is tight, though.”

“Mystikal? He ain’t doin’ nothin’ J. B. didn’t do twenty years back.”

“It’s still a good jam.”

“Uh-huh. And PGC done played that shit to death.” Foreman upped his chin in the direction of Mario. “C’mon, Twigs. . .