hallway.
“I played football at Howard,” José said.
“Yeah. So?” Frank replied.
“I’m not on the team anymore . . . but I still know the lineup.”
SIX
F resh?” Frank asked. He was already measuring grounds into the coffeemaker.
José nodded. He opened Skeeter Hodges’s file jacket and spread an assortment of documents across his desk. “Lot of reading.”
Frank switched the coffeemaker on. “Skeeter had a long run.”
For the next hour, the two men worked through the files, taking notes, reconstructing Hodges’s life as seen through the prism of his brushes with the law. Frank came across a photograph of him in cap and gown, smiling into the camera, and behind him, with the same smile, Sharon Lipton, then a handsome woman in a silk dress and dramatically sweeping brimmed hat.
“Boy and happy mother?” he guessed, holding the picture up for José to see.
Over the top of his half-round reading glasses, José gave the photograph an appraising look. “A real mama, all right.” He sifted through the papers on his desk until he found a rap sheet. Tilting back in his chair, he eyed the document.
“Sharon Stilton Lipton,” he read, “aka ‘Babba,’ 1979, possession of narcotics, intent to sell . . .”
Fourteen, Frank thought, kid would have been fourteen.
“. . . 1980, solicitation for prostitution.” José shook his head. “ ’Eighty-two was a busy year . . . two charges receiving stolen goods, one sale of narcotics.”
Frank looked at the graduation picture again: Hodges, grinning with a kick-ass confidence. Proud mama, a hand on her son’s shoulder.
Hand . . . A special kind of hand on a kid’s shoulder. The encouraging squeeze you gave before you sent them out . . . to the first day of school . . . away for the first camping trip . . . back into a game already lost . . . off to basic training at Fort Jackson . . . when you tried your best to pass on a small measure of your own strength, of your own knowledge about the world. Where was Babba Lipton sending her son?
“Helluva education he got,” he said.
José slipped the rap sheet into the file. “Another testimonial for home schooling.”
Frank pushed his chair back, stood up, stretched, and walked to the window. Several blocks away, the trees along the Mall were greening up after winter. Off to the right, the castle towers of the Smithsonian, brick-red under the late-morning sun.
To the left, the Capitol crowned Jenkins Hill. All his life—as far back as he could remember, anyway—the massive building, white and shining, had reminded him of pictures of monasteries in Tibet. Every so often, he’d idly wonder how he’d come to think of it that way. The Hill certainly wasn’t a hangout for holy men. He’d probably made the connection as a kid, he thought. Back when he’d known for certain—without any doubt—that you could always tell the good guys because they wore the white hats.
The James Hodges that emerged from the files didn’t resemble the morning papers’ romantic spin about a charming and only slightly roguish urban outlaw.
A hot-out-of-the-box start in 1981—sweet sixteen andcharged with assault with a deadly weapon. Charge dropped. A year later, a suspended sentence for heroin possession. Thanks, Mama Babba.
Grand theft auto gave Skeeter a year at Lorton and new contacts for his life’s work. There, he met one of Juan Brooks’s lieutenants.
For years, Juan Brooks had been the District’s kingpin of kingpins. A logistics genius, he built an organization of over five hundred street retailers and Uzi-toting enforcers, a ruthless enterprise that smuggled, packaged, and retailed hundreds of kilos of cocaine in the District each month.
Just days out of Lorton, Skeeter signed on with Brooks. By 1991, he had climbed the rungs to become a senior executive in Brooks’s multimillion-dollar monopoly.
Then, in December 1992, Brian Atkins bagged Brooks. Got him big-time, life
“I played football at Howard,” José said.
“Yeah. So?” Frank replied.
“I’m not on the team anymore . . . but I still know the lineup.”
SIX
F resh?” Frank asked. He was already measuring grounds into the coffeemaker.
José nodded. He opened Skeeter Hodges’s file jacket and spread an assortment of documents across his desk. “Lot of reading.”
Frank switched the coffeemaker on. “Skeeter had a long run.”
For the next hour, the two men worked through the files, taking notes, reconstructing Hodges’s life as seen through the prism of his brushes with the law. Frank came across a photograph of him in cap and gown, smiling into the camera, and behind him, with the same smile, Sharon Lipton, then a handsome woman in a silk dress and dramatically sweeping brimmed hat.
“Boy and happy mother?” he guessed, holding the picture up for José to see.
Over the top of his half-round reading glasses, José gave the photograph an appraising look. “A real mama, all right.” He sifted through the papers on his desk until he found a rap sheet. Tilting back in his chair, he eyed the document.
“Sharon Stilton Lipton,” he read, “aka ‘Babba,’ 1979, possession of narcotics, intent to sell . . .”
Fourteen, Frank thought, kid would have been fourteen.
“. . . 1980, solicitation for prostitution.” José shook his head. “ ’Eighty-two was a busy year . . . two charges receiving stolen goods, one sale of narcotics.”
Frank looked at the graduation picture again: Hodges, grinning with a kick-ass confidence. Proud mama, a hand on her son’s shoulder.
Hand . . . A special kind of hand on a kid’s shoulder. The encouraging squeeze you gave before you sent them out . . . to the first day of school . . . away for the first camping trip . . . back into a game already lost . . . off to basic training at Fort Jackson . . . when you tried your best to pass on a small measure of your own strength, of your own knowledge about the world. Where was Babba Lipton sending her son?
“Helluva education he got,” he said.
José slipped the rap sheet into the file. “Another testimonial for home schooling.”
Frank pushed his chair back, stood up, stretched, and walked to the window. Several blocks away, the trees along the Mall were greening up after winter. Off to the right, the castle towers of the Smithsonian, brick-red under the late-morning sun.
To the left, the Capitol crowned Jenkins Hill. All his life—as far back as he could remember, anyway—the massive building, white and shining, had reminded him of pictures of monasteries in Tibet. Every so often, he’d idly wonder how he’d come to think of it that way. The Hill certainly wasn’t a hangout for holy men. He’d probably made the connection as a kid, he thought. Back when he’d known for certain—without any doubt—that you could always tell the good guys because they wore the white hats.
The James Hodges that emerged from the files didn’t resemble the morning papers’ romantic spin about a charming and only slightly roguish urban outlaw.
A hot-out-of-the-box start in 1981—sweet sixteen andcharged with assault with a deadly weapon. Charge dropped. A year later, a suspended sentence for heroin possession. Thanks, Mama Babba.
Grand theft auto gave Skeeter a year at Lorton and new contacts for his life’s work. There, he met one of Juan Brooks’s lieutenants.
For years, Juan Brooks had been the District’s kingpin of kingpins. A logistics genius, he built an organization of over five hundred street retailers and Uzi-toting enforcers, a ruthless enterprise that smuggled, packaged, and retailed hundreds of kilos of cocaine in the District each month.
Just days out of Lorton, Skeeter signed on with Brooks. By 1991, he had climbed the rungs to become a senior executive in Brooks’s multimillion-dollar monopoly.
Then, in December 1992, Brian Atkins bagged Brooks. Got him big-time, life
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