On a rainy afternoon, Nick Stefanos and Derek
Strange are having drinks at Leo’s, content
enough to just be sitting down with each other. When The Dramatics’s In The
Rain, plays on the bar’s jukebox, it ignites in them reminiscences about
1972, the year of that song’s release. For Stefanos, it was “The summer that Watergate broke.” But
for Strange, it was an entirely different time. It was “…the summer that Red went off. (…) Some called him Red Fury. (…) on
account of his light skin and the tint of his hair. Fury was the car his woman
drove.”
“We got
all afternoon,” said Stefanos.
“Then let
me tell it,” replied Strange. And so he does.
Strange’s narration starts with the murder of
Bobby Odum and with a stolen ring, “probably
a fake piece”. Funkadelic’s I Wanna
Know If It’s Good To You (Eddie Hazel on guitar) played on the victim’s
turntable, and parked outside was “a Plymouth
Fury, the GT Sport, a two-door 440 V-8 with hidden headlamps and a four-barrel
carb.” Vanity plates: “Coco” –as in brothel-owner Coco Watkins, Robert Lee
Jones’s woman. More blood will soon flow as scores are settled.
Strange, who at the time was a private detective
–four years after the events from “Hard
Revolution” when he was a rookie cop— is hired by Maybelline Walker, Odum’s
friend, to recover her stolen ring.
Meanwhile, detective Frank Vaughn, Strange’s former partner in the DC police,
tries to catch ‘Red Fury’ and put an end to his murderous rampage. Vaughn and
Strange will team up together once again, although unofficially this time.
One of Pelecanos’s brilliant ideas is to use the
seemingly unimportant ring throughout the story, as it will change hands a few
more times before it ends up in its rightful owner’s possession, all the while
connecting different plot lines together and serving as a thread between some
characters, and helping others who follow its trail.
