Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go (8 page)

“No.”

“But he didn’t attend Calvin’s funeral, did he?”

“How do you know that?”

“The police haven’t talked with Roland since the murder. Don’t you think it’s odd that Roland didn’t attend Calvin’s funeral, seeing that the two of them were best friends?”

She spoke quietly, but for the first time her voice registered emotion. “I would hardly say, Mr. Stefanos, that Roland and Calvin were best friends. Roland might have felt sorry for that boy, but nothing in the way of real friendship. After all, the Jeter boy lived in a welfare setup, down in those… apartments.”

So she was about that. I didn’t like it, and stupidly, I’ve never been one to hide it. I leaned forward. “I’ve been to your house, remember? And those apartments are just a few blocks away from you. The people who live in them are your neighbors. And I’ve got to tell you, Calvin’s mother—that welfare mother you’re talking about—treated me with more dignity and grace than you’re showing me here.” I relaxed in my chair, then tried to throw some water on the fire. “I’m only trying to help.”

But it didn’t move her. If anything, she sat up straighter, eyeing me coldly. She tapped her fingernail on the lacquered table—the only sound in the room.

“All right,” she said. “Let me tell you why I agreed to see you today. It’s not to talk about my son, I can assure you of that. You just told me that you were ‘assisting’ the police on the Jeter case. It’s the second time you’ve told me that. And not only is what you’re telling me a straight-up lie; it happens to be a criminal offense. I work in a law firm, Mr. Stefanos. I’m not an attorney, but I’m not just a message-taker, either, and I’ve had this checked out. I could turn your ass in to
day
, my friend, bust you right out of your license. I don’t know what your business is with this, but I’m telling you, I don’t want to know. I don’t ever want to see you or hear from you or have you around my house or near my children again. Understood?”

“Yes.”

“This conversation is over.” She stood from her chair and left the room.

I waited a couple of minutes to let the heat dissipate. I found my way out.

I FIRST NOTICED THE
white sedan as I drove east on Constitution toward the Spot. The driver had tried to catch up by running a red, and the horns from the cars starting through the cross street caught my attention. It wasn’t until I got stuck in a bus lane and saw the white sedan deliberately pull into that same stalled lane that I knew I was being tailed. I made a couple of false turn signals after that, saw the tail make the amateur’s mistake and do the same. I hit the gas at the next intersection and hooked a wild right into the 9th Street tunnel. I lost him in the Southwest traffic and went on my way.

The Spot was empty of customers when I arrived. Mai untied her change apron as I entered and tossed it behind the cooler. She wore her angry face, splotched pink, and she left without a word. An argument with Jeremy, most likely—or had she said Jerome? Anna Wang had hung out past her shift and now stood in the kitchen, talking with Darnell, showing him some crystals she had bought in Georgetown. The week my son was born, when I flew out to San Francisco to visit Jackie and her lover, Sherron, Anna had given me four crystals wrapped and tied in a square of yellow cloth, crystals specifically selected to protect me on my journey. The crystals hung now in their cloth sack from the rearview of my Dodge, along with a string of worry beads given to me by my uncle Costa, the two elements forming some hoodoo version, I suppose, of a St. Christopher’s medal.

I changed into shorts and a T-shirt, poured myself a mug of coffee, put some music on the deck, and began to slice fruit for the tray. After that, I washed the dirty glasses from lunch, soaked the ashtrays, and wiped down the bar. Mai should have
prepped all that, but I didn’t mind. The dead time between lunch and happy hour, standing idly in front of the sexy, backlit pyramid of liquor with nothing much to do, was just plain dangerous for a guy like me.

Mel came through the door as I finished the prep. He found his stool, ordered a gin martini, and requested “a little Black Moses.” I managed to find our sole Isaac Hayes tape buried in a pile of seventies disco and funk and slipped it into the stereo. Mel closed his eyes soulfully, began to sing off-key: “You’re my joy; you’re everything to me-ee-eee.” Happy entered at about that time, sat at the other end of the bar, complained about the speed of my service as I placed his manhattan down in front of him, stopped complaining as he hurriedly tipped the up glass to his lips. Then it was Buddy and Bubba taking up the middle of the place, two pitchers deep, and later a gentleman I’d never seen before, who started off fine but degenerated spectacularly after his first drink, and an obnoxious judge named Len Dorfman, who spouted off to a dead-eared audience, and Dave, reading a paperback Harry Whittington, and a couple of plainclothes detectives talking bitterly about the criminal-justice system, cross-eyed drunk and armed to the teeth. Finally, after all of them had gone or been asked to leave, it was just Darnell and I, closing up.

“You about ready?” Darnell said, leaning one long arm on the service bar.

“Yeah, but—”

“I know. You’re gonna have yourself a drink.”

“Just one tonight. If you want to stick around, I’ll give you a lift uptown.”

“That’s all right.” Darnell tipped two fingers to his forehead. “Do me good to catch some air, anyhow. See you tomorrow, hear?”

“Right, Darnell. You take care.”

He went through the door and I locked up behind him. I dimmed the lights and had a shot and a beer in the solitary
coolness of the bar. I smoked a cigarette to the filter, butted it, and removed my shirt. I washed up in the basin in Darnell’s kitchen, changing back to my clothes from the afternoon. Then I set the alarm and walked out onto 8th.

Parked out front beneath the streetlamp was a white sedan, a big old piece-of-shit Ford. I recognized the grille as belonging to the car that had tailed me earlier in the day. No one sat inside the car. I looked around and saw nothing and began to walk. A voice from the mouth of the nearby alley stopped me.

“Stevonus?”

“Yes?”

I turned around and faced him. He walked from the shadows and moved into the light of the streetlamp. He had a revolver in his hand and the revolver was pointed at my chest.

“Who are you?” I said.

“Jack LaDuke,” he said. He jerked the gun in the direction of the Ford. “Get in.”

I
STOOD THERE
staring at him. He had a boyishly handsome face, clean-shaven and straight-featured, almost delicate, with a long, lanky body beneath it. His light brown hair was full and wavy on top, shaved short in the back and on the sides, a
High Sierra
cut. His manner was tough, but his wide brown eyes were curiously flat; I couldn’t tell what, if anything, lived behind them. He tightened his grip on the short-barreled .357.

“Why aren’t you moving?” he said.

“I don’t think I have to,” I said. “You’re not going to mug me, or you’d already have me in that alley. And you’re not going to shoot me—not with your finger on the outside of that trigger guard. Anyway, you’re not throwing off that kind of energy.”

“That a fact.”

“I think so, yeah.”

He shifted his feet, tensed his jaw, and tilted his head toward his car. “I’m not going to ask you again, Stevonus.”

“All right.” I moved to the passenger side and put my hand to the door.

“Uh-uh,” he said, and tossed me his keys. “You drive.”

I walked around to the front of the car and got into the driver’s seat. LaDuke settled into the shotgun side of the bench. I fitted his key in the ignition and turned the engine over.

“Where to?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, the gun still pointed at my middle. He wore a long-sleeved white shirt and a plain black tie tightly knotted to the neck. His slacks were no-nonsense, plain front, and he wore a pair of thick-soled oxfords on his feet. A line of sweat had snaked down his cheek and darkened the collar of the shirt. “Drive around.”

I pulled the boat out of the space and swung a U in the middle of 8th. I headed toward Pennsylvania Avenue, and when I got there, I took a right and kept the car in traffic.

“You gonna tell me what this is about?”

“I’ll tell you when I’m ready to tell you.”

“That’s a good line,” I said. “But you’re in the wrong movie. Let me help you out here. This is the part where you’re supposed to say, ‘I’m asking the questions here, Stevonus.’ ”

“Shut up.”

“You’re making a mistake,” I said, speeding up next to a Mustang ahead of me and in the lane to my left. “You’ve been making mistakes all day. Your shadow job was a joke. Stevie Wonder could have made your tail.”

“I said, shut up.”

“Then you sit out front of where I work for I don’t know how long. How many people you figure walked down 8th in that time happened to see you? Those are all people that could ID you later on.”

“Just keep pushing it,” he said.

“And now this. ‘You drive’—that’s some real stupid shit, pal. You let me drive, and who do you think’s got the power? Yeah, you’re holding the gun, but I’ve got both our lives in my
hands. I can drive this shitwagon into a wall, or into a cop car, or I can drive it right into the fucking river if I want to. Or I can do this.”

I stuck my head out the window and yelled something at the driver of the Mustang. The man turned his head, startled. I yelled again and flipped him the bird. The driver was alone, but he was a Southeast local, and he wasn’t going to take it. He screamed something back at me and swerved into my lane.

“Now he’ll remember us,” I said, talking calmly over the man’s angry shouts. “And he’ll remember the car. In case you got any ideas of doing me and dumping me out somewhere. I guess I better make sure he’s got our plate numbers, too.”

I accelerated and cut in front of the Mustang, then jammed on the brakes. The Mustang missed us, but not by much. I floored it, leaving some rubber on the street.

LaDuke’s fingers dug into the armrest on the door. “What the fuck are you doing, man!”

“Put that gun away,” I said, and cut across two lanes of traffic. The oncoming headlights passed across LaDuke’s stretched-back face. I jetted into a gas station without braking. The underside of the Ford scraped asphalt, and as the shocks gave it up, the top of LaDuke’s head hit the roof. I continued straight out of the station lot, tires screaming as I hit the side street.

“Put it away!” I said.

“Fuck,” he muttered, shaking his head. He opened the glove box in front of him, dropped the revolver inside, and shut it. I pulled the car over in front of some row houses and cut the engine.

LaDuke wiped his face dry with his shirtsleeve and looked across the seat. “Fuck,” he said again, more pissed off at himself than at me.

“Just sit there and cool down.”

“You know,” he said, “she told me she had the feeling you were some kind of headcase.”

“Who told you?”

He turned his head and stared out the window. “Shareen Lewis.”

“What is she to you?”

He withdrew his wallet from the seat of his pants and slid out a business card. I took it and read it: “Jack LaDuke, Private Investigations.” His logo—I’m not kidding—was one large eye. I stifled a grin and slipped the card into my shirt pocket.

“You know,” I said, “you didn’t need to pull that gun.”

“Just wanted to see how you’d handle it.”

“Am I auditioning for something?”

“You might be,” he said, giving the mysterious routine one last try.

I shrugged and fished a smoke out of my pack and pushed in the dash lighter. “Cigarette?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Okay.” I lit the Camel and drew some tobacco into my lungs. I noticed that my hand was shaking, and I put it by my side. On the corner up ahead, a neighborhood market stood open for business, moths swarming in the spotlight mounted above the door. Young people walked in and out carrying small packages and forties in brown paper bags wrapped to the neck. An older man leaned against the store’s plate glass and listlessly begged for change, barely raising his head. I sat there calmly and smoked my cigarette and waited for Jack LaDuke to regain his composure and enough of his pride to the point where he could talk. After awhile, he did.