Richmond Noir (6 page)
Inside, Doo sat on a chair and put her feet up on the sofa. She lit a blunt right away. Gaia didn’t want to risk an incident with Doo, especially when Doo was high and tipsy. She went into the bedroom to get away from the smoke and sort her mind out.
Gaia hadn’t grown up wanting to be this way. At eight years old, survival wasn’t something that entered into daily decisions, like whether to play dress-up or hopscotch. And though, shortly after, she could no longer make sense of her upturned life, it had taken Charlene’s words to make her realize that it wasn’t beauty alone that determined her fate. There were plenty of beautiful girls in the home. She had been marked. It was an obvious fact and the only possible thing to do was embrace it—the same way she had embraced how her legs eventually grew like stems—and use it to her benefit.
Tonight, she would be as irresistible as ever and she would be paid because of it. She set her handbag on the nightstand and took out the Glock, which she slipped underneath a pillow. She sat down to lotion her penny-colored skin and thought about what Charlene had said a year ago, the first time she approached Gaia with Doo’s big scheme.
Girl
, look
at you. You already know they gon’ come after you, whether you like it or not. So why not make them pay for it? Make him forget his own name, his wife’s name, shit, his kids’ names. He’ll think he’s winning, until he gets the bill. Don’t be scared, girl. I’ll be right there
. She could almost hear Charlene’s voice, almost feel her in the room.
Doo knocked on the door.
Gaia took a deep breath before she opened it. Doo was standing there with Mr. X. His cropped brown hair was slick with hair gel. His pale blue eyes set a sharp contrast against his all-black business attire. Towering a foot over Doo, his belly was the only part of his body that had already crossed the threshold. He looked to be in his late forties.
“Where’s the other one?” Mr. X queried, scanning the room.
Doo had met Mr. X while she was bartending a party in one of those sprawling estates on Monument Avenue. She had been keeping him well-stocked in pills and cocaine ever since, and had been secretly following him, studying him for weeks.
Gaia reached for his hand. It was plump and sweaty. She slowly rubbed the back of it with her thumb. “Char’s not feeling well. It’s just me tonight. Is that okay?”
He hesitated, looking thoughtfully at Gaia. She didn’t doubt for a second that he would stay. She was a magnet, a stronger force than even she herself could control. She felt the tension go out of his hand.
“Are you just going to stand there and watch? Get the fuck out,” he told Doo, never taking his eyes off Gaia.
The corners of Gaia’s red lips turned up into a seductive smile. “Watch? I can make her go away like this.” She snapped her fingers.
Mr. X laughed as Gaia pulled him forward over the threshold and kicked the door closed with her foot.
She led him to the bed, purposely swaying her ass, knowing his eyes were fixed there. He sat down and started taking off his shoes. “No,” she said. He looked up at her His lustful stare felt like a tongue licking her face. “Let me do that.”
She undressed him, throwing his pants clear across the room toward the door, as he ran his hands up the inside of her leg, making low, guttural noises. He stood up and she was eye to eye with his coarse chest hair. He was impatient with her, almost tearing her dress.
“Slow,” she whispered.
She had done this dozens of times by now. Each man desperately wanted to invade the space between her legs, not knowing that it did not belong to her. She could never feel any sensation down there because it wasn’t a part of her real body, and any man who entered soon found he would have to pay a higher price than he had thought. That is why she welcomed them and laughed inside while they grunted and moaned. A soundproof wall separated her from them, kept her from hearing the compliments they choked out between heavy breaths. The only sound she would listen for tonight was Doo, tiptoeing back into the room to get their insurance.
Mr. X had Gaia pressed against a wall, between the bed and the nightstand. Her nose was crushed against his neck and she breathed in his woodsy cologne. The scent stung her nostrils and went sliding down her throat, into her mouth. It sat bitterly on the back of her tongue. She hadn’t smelled it in three years, but the scent was unmistakable. Suddenly, his lips felt familiar against her skin. His hands were bony and wrinkled. She thought her knees might buckle as she squeezed her eyes shut tightly, her head growing light. She was losing it. The control was slipping from her hands and into his. She tried to take it back.
“Stop,” she said.
He tore his lips away from her shoulders. “Why?” he asked breathlessly.
“Your cologne. Wash it off.”
“What? No.”
He pushed her against the wall again. Grabbing a fistful of her hair, he yanked her head back and smothered her protests with his lips. She looked up into his eyes, but they were closed. What color had Gardener’s eyes been? Her breathing was so staccato that her chest started to ache. And the scent, his scent, was so thick she feared she might be suffocated. She gasped when he lifted her leg and forced himself inside of her. For the first time in years, she felt something. She tried to expand herself, to make herself wide enough for two ships to pass through.
She didn’t know how long it lasted, but when it was over, she heard him say, “That was amazing.” She heard his zipper going up, his expensive loafers sliding against the carpet, the door swinging closed. Lying naked on the bed, she wondered if it was her or the room that was spinning. She closed her eyes to try and regain her balance. When she opened them, she was not alone. Doo was leaning over her. Gaia tried to sit up, but she felt pinned to the bed. Her throat was dry and her tongue was like cotton.
Doo was smiling. “I got the pictures. You did good. See, we didn’t even need Charlene. We’re a great team.” She brushed a stray hair away from Gaia’s face.
Gaia watched Doo’s lips come closer and closer and shut her eyes when she tasted whiskey and stale cigarettes on Doo’s thick tongue.
Gaia shook her head, started to say no.
“Shh,” Doo’s mouth whispered. Her hands came up to grip one of Gaia’s exposed breasts.
Trembling, Gaia’s fingers searched for the cold steel underneath her pillow. Her arm felt like it weighed fifty pounds when she lifted the gun and swung it over and over against the back of Doo’s head. The hard steel connected with bone and made a cracking sound. Doo shrieked in pain and covered her head with both hands. They fell to the ground with a thud, the lamp, the alarm clock, and the nightstand all clattering down with them.
Doo went limp, stopped moving or making any sounds, the back of her head against the carpet. Gaia dropped the gun and crawled to the corner behind the door, sitting with her red knees pulled up to her chest. She watched as the pool of blood coming from Doo’s head turned the beige carpeting purple-red.
The muffled beeps of the fallen alarm clock sounded like they were coming from inside Doo’s baggy jeans. Laughter bubbled in Gaia’s stomach and rose up her throat like a gush of water. Her whole body shook with laughter as Doo beeped and beeped. Gaia crawled over to the body. She hovered above Doo and then lifted her shirt. Doo’s breasts were strapped down in layers of ace bandages. “Shh,” Gaia whispered, pulling the bandages down. She laughed as one soft breast tumbled out.
Gaia was about to touch it with the tip of her finger when a loud screeching of tires squealed just outside the window.
She shook her head and blinked rapidly. Her breathing hastened as a weight seemed to suddenly sit down on her chest. What had she done?
Oh God, Doo! And Charlene
. Charlene would hate Gaia, never speak to her again. Gaia’s body collapsed and she dropped her head to the carpet. She felt like dying. She felt like disappearing, like hiding. She felt … cold. She spied her dress lying at the foot of the bed and crawled to get it. She pulled it over her head and felt the fabric wiping away the tears that rushed down her cheeks.
Turning her head slowly back toward the spot on the floor where Doo lay, she started to say, I’m
sorry, Charlene
, but the words caught in her throat. She stared at Doo’s tar-stained lips until they were two brown blurs, and realized it wasn’t true. She wasn’t sorry. She stood up momentarily and then sat on the bed as she surveyed the room. Overturned tables, blood-soaked carpet. She was sitting on something hard. She got up, saw that it was Doo’s small, silver camera, and squeezed it between her hands. She was holding one of the only pieces of real evidence that she had ever been here tonight. She studied Doo’s small body. Doo couldn’t be more than a hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty pounds. Could she?
Gaia drove east toward Providence Park, by instinct, not choice. She knew exactly what was waiting for her back there. Zooming down the interstate, Gaia felt only relief when she thought about Doo’s lifeless body wrapped in a sheet on the floor of the Cadillac. She had protected herself and taken control of what belonged to her. Doo had been right. She
didn’t
need Charlene. Charlene didn’t love her. And she could take care of herself. She didn’t need a play mother. She didn’t need any mother at all. She understood now how to keep away the bad things, the ghosts, the past, and it was not by fear. It was by force.
At 3 a.m., she stood in front of the abandoned group home. She waved at Doo, who was lying at peace in Gardener’s attic. An empty fuel can dangled from Gaia’s fingers.
Wrongs did not correct themselves. Someone had to make the decision to fix things. People could not live their lives the whole time expecting things to happen; people had to make things happen. Cold gasoline had to be spilled deliberately, dousing the ground, the walls. A match, struck in the dark, had to be dropped in a shallow puddle of fuel. And the girl, the one in the wrinkled black dress, would not run away yet. She had to watch as the scorching flames licked and devoured the home. Ladies Mile Road had been a haven, a place where women felt safest. This building had mocked that history and tainted the whole neighborhood.
H
e lies sprawled facedown in the water just short of the beach as if he tried to swim across the James and came up short. I turn him over, pull his upper body out of the water, then discover his lower torso hasn’t quite turned with the rest of him. He couldn’t have been swimming anywhere like this. His pelvis is crushed. He’s dark, probably Mexican or Guatemalan. He has on one battered leather garden glove, on his right hand. His left hand is bent at an odd angle, and a bone protrudes from his left forearm.
I throw up in the river and call 911.
I’m at Texas Beach, I tell them, on the water. There’s a dead man here. They tell me to stay with him. I say I will. That’s what I need. To sit with a dead man. I’ve come down here to wallow in grief. My old dog whose favorite haunt this was when she was alive died a couple of days ago, and I’ve been pretty much useless ever since. I was almost on top of the dead man before I realized what I was looking at. It’s early Thursday, the sun just coming up. I haven’t slept much.
His feet are still in the water. He’s wearing heavy, oil-stained work boots, almost cracked. His jeans have ridden up on his oddly pale shins. Something floats out of the top of one of the boots, and I grab it before it drifts off. A wood chip. I put it in my pocket. It could be evidence of something. I pull him the rest of the way out of the water. More chips spill out as the jeans catch on the sand and unfurl, covering his shins.
When I moved to Richmond from Texas twenty years ago, I missed seeing brown faces. Richmond was a town in black and white. That’s changed since NAFTA, like the rest of the country. When I was a kid walking across the bridge into Juárez with my parents, there’d be kids my age standing in the tarnished water of the Rio Grande, their hands uplifted for pennies tossed from the bridge. This man, the dead man, has gray temples, crow’s feet. He could be my age, sixty. He could’ve been one of those kids half a century ago.
I wonder how he ended up here—not in Richmond, I understand those economic realities well enough—but here, washed up on the shore of Texas Beach, almost broken in half. I wonder if he was the victim of a hit and run. I wonder if he was murdered. When the sun shines upon his face, I take pictures of him from several angles.
I sit with him another fifteen minutes, absorbing what I can. I’ve probably disturbed the body too much already. I want to look in his pockets, but I resist. They appear to be empty.
Pretty soon there’s a crowd. I hear one of the guys tending to the body telling another to be careful because “his midsection’s smashed up pretty bad.” The cop who’s going to question me keeps me waiting while he gives the relevant facts over the phone to some anxious superior somewhere: a presumed illegal, no identification, appears to have died elsewhere of undetermined causes. He ends with, “Yes sir, I will, sir,” repeated several times like a ritual response.
Most everyone else has gone with the body back through the woods and over the bridge spanning the tracks and the canal, up a steep trail to the parking lot. Off in the distance you can hear someone shouting, “Watch it! Watch it! Watch it!” We’re standing on the beach beside where I found the body.
The cop asks me what I know, and I tell him. I tell him about the wood chips. He doesn’t seem particularly interested. “Do you think it’s a homicide?” I ask.
“We haven’t ruled it out. We plan an immediate autopsy to determine cause of death. We don’t want any idle speculation in the press.”
“What happens if it is homicide?”
“Since we don’t know who the man was, the investigation would be difficult. We hope someone will come forth with information, of course. It’s not likely in my experience, with cases like these, but you never know.”
“Cases like these?”
“Victims from the illegal immigrant community. They fear bringing any scrutiny upon themselves. Understandable. Times like these. To tell you the truth, I doubt anything will come of it. We’ve got nothing to go on.”
Times like these. I suppose that phrase means the strident debate over “illegals,” as if that’s the single quality that matters. I would share with him what I think of these times, but what point is there telling a cop what you think of the law? He’s only entitled to one opinion. In the silence between us, I hear the river. It’s never completely silent down by the river. Dog and I used to sit on the beach and listen, or maybe for her it was the smells. Whatever it was, it always made her smile.
I walk home across Byrd Park where dog used to retrieve Fris-bee, ball, stick, anything, until she got too old. I imagine, if she were here, I’d talk it over with her. She’d agree, I imagine, that I can’t just let this thing go. She had a highly developed sense of fair play and a good heart. Concern for the law, not so much: no dogs are allowed in Byrd Park. The signs are everywhere, right next to the ones fantasizing about the speed limits. A few blocks away is a drug-free zone, in case you’re in the market.
By the time I get home, I’m pissed off.
Nothing to go on?
Why isn’t a dead man enough to go on? Anger seems to take the edge off the grief.
I sit in front of my computer and try to write for a couple of hours with a negative word count of 325. I quit while I’m behind. I call a former crime reporter I’m friendly with. He was recently downsized in the local newspaper’s successful attempt to make itself even more fluffy and irrelevant than before, while retaining its essential reactionary character, a task I would’ve thought impossible. I ask him if he can find out what the autopsy turns up. He calls the dead man “Juan Doe.” Ha-ha. He’s kind of a macho jerk, but a good reporter.
He calls back Friday evening. Usually dog and I would be out walking. I’m just sitting around thinking about that. My wife’s upstairs in bed, crying or sleeping.
He tells me about the dead man: “Crushed by something big, probably a tree, causing massive trauma. He was dead before he went in the water. Accidental death. The tree did it. Case closed.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“The wheels of justice, my friend.”
“How did he get in the water, when he was pinned under a tree with massive trauma?”
“Undetermined. The river did it. But he died on dry land, and he died slow. Somewhere between forty-five minutes and ninety minutes between trauma and death. He bled out. Within twenty-four hours of when you found him, probably less.”
“The river level hasn’t changed in a week.”
“Nobody wants this one. It’s got a bad smell to it. This way it goes away. Another illegal dies in a work-related accident. Tough break. Adios.”
Sunday morning I’m back at Texas Beach. Dog and I used to go upriver from here all the time. About a half-mile up, the outflow from the canal cuts off easy passage. The rocks are slippery as hell, so you can either trespass on the railroad tracks or wade in the shallows. It’s chilly, so I illegally trespass. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but I suspect the dead man was dumped in the water somewhere on the north bank and floated down to Texas Beach. I guess I’m looking for the killer tree. Then maybe I’ll interrogate the beavers who chewed him out from under the killer tree and dragged him to the water after the muskrats emptied his pockets.
This is the wildest stretch of the park, spectacular towering pines, sycamores, oaks, and hickories. Woody Woodpecker and his girlfriend swoop through here often. It’s just a narrow strip of land sandwiched between the James and the CSX tracks. The old Kanawha Canal runs on the other side of the tracks, cutting off easy access. Dog and I spent many a wilderness hour here. I reach the end of park property, just opposite the three-mile canal locks and the old pumphouse, which have their own park.
Unfortunately, the only way to proceed west is to continue trespassing across the tracks. There’s a break in the fence, familiar to dog and me, a short jog away. She hadn’t been able to make the dash in a while with her stiff hind legs, and it turns out the fence has been repaired. I jog a little farther and scramble up the embankment into Pumphouse Park. The always short-handed Richmond police used to have undercover cops working the park looking to entrap gay men back before the Supreme Court decided homosexuality isn’t illegal after all. Amnesty for nature. What is the world coming to? Sunday morning, there’s nobody around but dog walkers, and they won’t care.
The canal continues west from the park all the way to the water treatment plant, the old towpath alongside it. It’s not clear to me who owns the canal and the towpath.
They belong to history
would be a truly Richmond sentiment. CSX, however, seems to be the ones putting up the
No Trespassing
signs. There’s a verse of “This Land Is Your Land” not sung much around the campfire that points out there’s two sides to such signs, the side saying nothing being the one belonging to you and me. I wanted to quote that neglected verse as an epigraph in a novel of mine a few years back, but I was told I’d have to pay the owners a few hundred bucks or it would be illegal. Woody Guthrie was dead by then. I’m sure he would’ve been amused at the ironies.
Stretches are overgrown with greenbriers, but I’ve brought a folding handsaw and gloves. Dog hated greenbriers and slunk along reluctantly when I’d get one of these bushwhacking urges, but slink along she did, through damn near anything. Dogged, they call it.
By the time I pass under the spectacular railroad bridge Richmond likes well enough to use on its logo, the worst of the greenbriers have thinned out. I’ve reached the limits of any exploration dog and I ever made. Before 9/11 my wife and I paddled a canoe up the canal, right through the water treatment plant. With a couple of portages we made it the length of the canal. Land passage is trickier, especially with a dog, but I’m dogless now, so I persist. The way becomes increasingly obscure and likely even more illegal, but I’m determined to find the truth, if not necessarily eager to confess how I get there.
I smell it first, the scent of fresh cut wood. A dozen trees of various sizes are scattered about like jackstraws. It doesn’t take long to figure out why. A house as grand as its view of the James stands on the bank above me. These trees were in the way. There’ve been a couple of cases in recent years like this: rich folks on either side of the river cutting down trees to get the view they paid for, willing to pay the fine and repent, claiming ignorance of the law. The rich don’t read the paper apparently. You see, it’s illegal to fuck with the watershed like that. Who better to do an illegal job than an illegal?
Every level of the house has a grand balcony of some sort. Windows gleam in the sun. All empty. No eyes at home. Maybe they’re looking to heaven in some slate-roofed church. I climb among the fallen trees. There’s sawdust everywhere. I approach a fallen sycamore trunk lying flat that comes up to my chest. About ten yards from the water, a hollow has been dug out of the sandy soil beneath it. I stare into the shallow recess, and I can hear the shovels hitting the dirt to make this hole with quick, frantic strokes. I buried dog in our tiny backyard. It’s probably illegal. I fought with my wife about it. She was probably right. I can’t say it’s actually delivered on the promised closure I’ve heard others say it gave them. Maybe I don’t want closure.
I crawl into the hole to see the underside of the sycamore, like a beached white whale, and there’s blood, has to be, soaked into the bark. The tree indeed did it. There are at least four distinct shoe tracks on the beach, not counting mine. There’s a furrow through the sand to the water. A beaver maybe, or a man’s heels. In the grass beside the furrow, I find an ordinary work glove like the dead man was wearing. A left. The river had an accomplice.
It doesn’t take long to find out who owns the house. I even have a nice Google Map photo of the place from space taken back when there were trees along the river. Naturally, I’ve heard of the guy. If you’re rich enough to have a big place on the river, chances are you’ve made a ripple. This guy’s more like a deep current. Lately he’s been riding that current right into the legislature. Illegals are his hot-button issue. His TV ad promising he’ll get tough on illegals has him in front of St. John’s Church where Patrick Henry made his treasonous speech.
I call up the cop who questioned me, leave several messages. I’m sitting in the backyard beside dog’s grave, drinking a beer, when he finally calls me back Monday evening. I tell him what I’ve found out. He tries to talk me out of it meaning anything.
“What about the glove?”
“And what links the glove to the victim?”
“The matching glove on the victim?”
“There was no glove on the victim.”
“What are you talking about? I saw it. There was a glove on his right hand.”
“I’m telling you. I’ve got the file right here in front of me, and there’s no glove.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you whose house it was right off.”
There’s a silence I take to mean I’m supposed to think he’s offended. “I assure you we will investigate as we deem appropriate. I suggest you leave this matter to the proper authorities. And I remind you that trespassing on private property is a serious offense and potentially dangerous to the trespasser.”