The sign outside Derek Strange’s place of business, on 9th and Upshur NW, was constructed in neon tubing and read, “Strange Investigations.” A lump-sum payday on one of his first cases, back in the 1970s, had financed it. When Strange designed it, he had asked for a magnifying glass arranged over the words, enlarging a couple of its letters. Portions of the neon had long ago gone dark, first in one letter, then another, and the sign remained in disrepair.
He maintained this storefront office, as he had for over fifty years, a fixture in the neighborhood of Petworth, so that young men and women, many moving in and out of Roosevelt High School across Georgia Avenue, could see a Black man turning the key of his front door, in his own shop, every day. A broken sign was a chink in his armor. When young folk saw it, they didn’t see something strong or successful; it said, faded or on its last legs. Strange couldn’t afford to fix the sign. It bothered him, affected his pride, but business was off; these days, he was barely getting by.
Billy Lake had noticed the failed neon, because it was dark outside, and Strange always turned the sign on at night, even after parts of it had burned out. It was the first thing Lake mentioned after greeting Strange with a “we’re brothers” handshake. Strange had agreed to meet him after hours, after Lake said he was too busy “litigating” to come in during the day.
“You need to get correct with your sign,” said Lake.
“Haven’t gotten around to it, is all,” said Strange.
Lake sat before Strange’s desk, wearing an Italian-made suit, a French-cuff dress shirt with links, a Hermès tie, and those dress shoes with the red soles that said, I have money and look at me. He had draped his cashmere over-coat on a nearby chair. The watch on his wrist was expensive, no doubt, a showy combination of gold and silver, what a colleague of Strange’s once called a “Greek Rolex.” Strange noticed that Lake had gotten out of a Mercedes S-Class on 9th Street when he arrived. Billy Lake looked exactly like the person he was: a drug lawyer.
Lake was a defense attorney who exclusively represented drug dealers and those charged with attendant RICO crimes. Most of these lawyers were straight. Some, like Lake, were mainly paid in cash and spent it on expensive clothing, jewelry, and cars. They developed close social relationships with their clients and, with them, attended choice-seat sporting events and parties.
In the VIP sections of the clubs, they drank from over-priced bottles together and often swung with the same women.
“Don’t get me wrong,” said Lake. “I wasn’t being critical. That sign of yours is a local landmark. I been seeing it since I was a kid. I was always curious about you, and that’s why I hit you up, Derek. You don’t mind if I call you Derek, do you?”
“No, I don’t mind. But that’s why you contacted me? Because of my sign?”
“Your rep,” said Lake, shifting his weight in his chair. The dog lying at Strange’s feet looked up without moving his head and issued a low growl.
“Simba,” said Strange softly, and the dog, a red-nosed American pit bull, sighed and closed his eyes.
“He all right?” said Lake.
“He doesn’t like sudden movements,” said Strange. “You’re fine.”
Strange had adopted Simba, a seventy-pounder with amber eyes, a tan coat, white chest, and white paws, a year earlier. After the passing of his beloved boxer, Greco, Strange had vowed not to get another animal. The truth was, the death of Greco had been too traumatic for Strange to endure again, and a man, unless he was sick or very old, tended to outlive his pets. But then Simba just came along, washed up outside Strange’s office one day, hungry and worn out. Strange believed that people didn’t need to actively seek out dogs; rather, dogs found you. Typical of the breed, Simba was good-natured, obedient, and protec-tive. They took to each other quickly, and there was never a question that Strange would keep him. Also, Strange knew that it wasn’t healthy for him to be alone.
“What brings you in?”
“I have a client who needs some help,” said Lake.
“You must have a regular investigator that you use.”
“My man fell in love with a California gal, up and left for the coast.”
Lake sat back and folded his hands upon his lap. He looked around the office, inspecting it, as if he himself was deciding whether or not to hire Strange. But Lake knew full well that it was the other way around.
The office was Spartan, holding two desks. Local sports-related memorabilia hung on the walls: framed photos of Earl Monroe driving the lane in his whirling-dervish style for the Baltimore Bullets; Wes Unseld, a lynchpin of the 1978 champion Washington Bullets, about to launch an outlet pass; Gilbert Arenas draining a baseline jumper for the Washington Wizards; and many players and famous plays of the Washington Redskins and Washington Commanders: John Riggins’s 43-yard touchdown run in Super Bowl XVII, Riggo breaking the tackle of Miami cornerback Don McNeal; Noah Brown catching the Hail Mary from Jayden Daniels in a cru-cial game against Chicago during the Commanders’ storied 2024 season; Darrell Green giving his farewell speech to the crowd in 2002; a to-the-house Brian Mitchell kick return; Art Monk catching a one-hander down-field; Doug Williams shredding the Broncos’ secondary in Super Bowl XXII; and Strange’s prize possession, a personalized, signed photograph of workhorse running back Larry Brown circa 1972, his MVP season.
To Lake, it looked like some senior citizen’s man cave in here. In addition to the sports stuff, there were framed posters of Western films that Lake hadn’t seen because they were well before his time, and also because he didn’t care for Westerns. And a framed photograph of an old man in watch cap and specs, glancing downward. To top it off, there was a beat-up portable sound system playing something too soft for Lake to recognize, ’70s funk if he was to guess; more old-time jive.
“I don’t see any hockey photos,” said Lake. “You don’t like the sport?”
“I don’t dislike it,” said Strange.
“You think it’s a white sport.”
“That’s not it. I never played it. Nobody I knew played it. Where would we? And who could afford the equipment?”
“Where’d you grow up?”
“Seven-Sixty Princeton Place.”
“Not too many skating rinks down there.”
“Wasn’t any,” said Strange, cutting off this line of con-versation, tiring of Lake’s showtime presence. “Tell me about your client.”
“I represent a man named Antone Anthony. He’s currently locked up in the DC Jail, awaiting trial on distro charges.”
“Distribution of what?”
“Marijuana. No violence attached to it. The feds were on him. He did what they say he did. Anthony was moving weight, and he admits to that.”
“Why’s he still inside if the crime was nonviolent? I assume he had the money to bail out.”
“More recently, he was charged with a murder.”
“A murder that occurred while he was incarcerated?”
“Before his drug bust. Anthony was out on the street at the time, but he didn’t do it. Matter of fact, he’s got an ironclad alibi.”
“Homicide police don’t charge someone with murder unless they have clear evidence or eyewitnesses. The pros-ecutors don’t want to bring a case to trial that’s gonna fall in court. They hold Homicide to a tough standard.”
“The victim was Anthony’s childhood friend. Anthony is adamant that he wasn’t involved.”
“Elaborate.”
“A girl named Cynthia Barnes drove the victim, Nigel Walker, to his car after they had spent the afternoon together. Barnes then drove away. She says that Walker was going to meet Anthony at the apartment of Ricardo Lennox, a mutual acquaintance. You should know that Lennox is also involved in Anthony’s business.”
“You’re telling me that he’d lie for Anthony.”
“I’m just giving you the full picture.”
“Keep going.”
“After Cynthia left him at his car, Nigel Walker was sitting behind the wheel with his key in the ignition, when he was shot and killed by an assailant.”
“Where was the location of the shooting?”
“He was parked on Otis Street Northeast, by Taft Field. One block away from Cynthia’s house.”
“Why was he parked a block away?”
“Apparently Cynthia’s father is a hard-ass. Nigel didn’t want the father to know that he was visiting.”
“I assume Nigel was having physical relations with Cynthia.”
“Correct.”
“Were there any witnesses to the murder?”
“No one has come forward.”
“Cameras on the street?”
“No.”
“So, what did the police have on Anthony to make the charge?”
“Cynthia Barnes says that Nigel and Anthony were beefing over an unpaid debt. She’s another childhood friend. The three of them have been knowing each other their whole lives.”
“An alleged beef is not enough to put a murder charge on someone. It’s motive without evidence.”
“I haven’t gotten to that yet,” said Lake. “When Anthony’s spot was raided for the marijuana bust, not long after Nigel Walker was killed, a gun was found. Homicide didn’t immediately connect the gun to the Walker murder, but eventually they got there. A routine ballistics test on the gun matched it to the gun that killed Walker.”
“You buried the lede on that one,” said Strange.
“I was headed there.”
“Okay. What’s Anthony’s alibi?”
“At the time of the shooting, he was in an apartment out on Cherry Hill Road in Maryland with another male, childhood friend, smoking weed and watching a movie. The friend he was with, Kenneth Norton, will swear to it.”
“Ken Norton,” said Strange.
“Like the boxer.”
“Okay . . .”
“Never mind. What’s the name of the movie?”
“Huh?”
“You said Antone Anthony and Kenneth Norton were watching a movie the night of the murder. Curious to know the name of it.”
“I’ll get back to you on that.”
“So, you’re telling me that all of these alibis check out.”
“Yes. Lennox, Norton, even Anthony’s alibi is good. But then the gun was found in Anthony’s stash house, and that changed things.”
“The police got to the arrest and charges pretty quick.”
“The Homicide detective who caught the case, a guy named C. J. Preston, is a bit myopic. Do you know what I mean?”
“I understand what the word means, yes.”
“Preston was unable to see the possibility of other suspects, or more likely, he simply wanted to put the case down.”
Strange sat back in his chair. He closed his eyes. “Get Down,” the leadoff track from Mayfield’s Roots album, was playing so softly from the portable stereo box that Billy Lake could barely hear it, or identify it, if in fact he’d recognize it at all. But Strange could hear it clear. It took him back to the early ’70s, when he’d be listening to this very song, driving around town in his ’70 Monte Carlo, a triple-black model he’d bought on time from Curtis Chevrolet on Georgia Avenue. Goodyear radials with rally rims, a small-block 350 under the hood, bucket seats, factory 8-track in a wood-grain dash, a horseshoe shifter on the floor. A young man’s beautiful ride, driven in a thrilling time.
“Strange?” said Lake.
“I’m here,” said Strange.
“What do you think?”
“This Cynthia Barnes, was she deposed?” “Yes.”
“Sounds like you need to shore up Anthony’s alibi and rebut the lady’s testimony.”
“That’s right.”
“The gun part of it’s gonna be tough.”
“The toughest. I’m aware of that.”
“Do you have the prosecution’s discovery?”
“I do. I’ll share it with you if you sign on. What do you get for your services?”
Strange gave him the option of an hourly fee or a flat sum.
Lake nodded. “Are you interested?”
“I have to sleep on it,” said Strange.
Lake gave Strange his cell number. Strange pushed a business card across the desk and Lake screen shot it with his phone.
Minutes later, Strange stood by the plate glass window of his office and watched Lake pull away in his Benz. A passerby on the sidewalk, a neighborhood barber named Rolo, nodded at Strange. What Rolo saw was this: a six-footer in a black leather jacket and black Nike boots, on the old side but not too worn, mostly hard beneath the fifteen pounds of extra weight he had been carrying since early middle age. A dark-skinned, handsome gentleman with a silver Van Dyke. Someone with presence.
Broad-shouldered, straight-backed, and straight DC. A man.
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