The Night Gardener

by George Pelecanos

“I was beginning to wonder.”

  “It’s private,” said Diego.

  “ ’Cause you never talk about girls.”

  “Dad.”

  “It’s okay to be like that,” said Ramone.

  “Dad, I’m not gay.”

  “I’d still love you if you were. Like that, I mean.”

  “Gus,” said Regina.

  They talked about the Nationals. Diego said baseball was a “white sport,” and Ramone told him to look at all the black and Hispanic players in the major leagues. But Diego could not be moved. He told Ramone to check out the faces in the stands at RFK. Ramone agreed that most of them were white but finished by saying that he didn’t see Diego’s point.

  “Dad closed a case today,” said Regina.

  “What’s a case?” said Alana.

  “He locked up a bad guy,” said Diego.

  “This guy wasn’t all bad,” said Ramone. “He did something bad. He made a bad mistake.”

  After dinner, Regina read to Alana, and Alana, who was coming along in sounding out her words, read back to her. Ramone and Diego watched one of the last regular-season Nationals games on TV. At the end of the seventh, Diego gave his father a pound and went to his room. Alana kissed Ramone and went to her room with Regina, who read to her some more and put her to bed. Ramone cracked a bottle of Beck’s and watched the rest of the game.

  Regina was washing her face in the master bathroom when Ramone came up and undressed for bed. He noticed her outfit, one of Diego’s football team T-shirts and worn pajama bottoms, and read the message: no sex tonight. But he was a man, as dim and hopeful as any other. He wasn’t going to let some dowdy old outfit stop him completely. He’d give it a try.

  He closed their door and slid between the sheets. She joined him and gave him a chaste kiss on the side of his mouth. He got up on his elbow and tried another kiss, just to feel her out.

  “Good night,” she said.

  “So soon?”

  “I’m tired.”

  “I’ll make you tired.”

  Ramone put his hand inside her pajama bottoms and stroked the inside of her thigh.

  “Alana’s gonna be in here any minute,” said Regina. “She wasn’t even asleep when I left her room.”

  Ramone kissed her. Her lips opened and she moved a little closer to him in the bed.

  “She’s gonna walk in on us,” said Regina.

  “We’ll be quiet.”

  “You know that ain’t true.”

  “C’mon, girl.”

  “How about I just yank you off?”

  “I can do that myself.”

  Regina and Ramone chuckled softly, and she kissed him more deeply. He began to pull her bottoms off, her back arched to let him, when they heard a knock on their bedroom door.

  “Damn,” said Ramone.

  “That’s your daughter,” said Regina.

  “That’s not my daughter,” said Ramone. “That’s a seven-year-old chastity belt.”

  Five minutes later, Alana was snoring between them in their bed, her small brown fingers splayed on Ramone’s chest. It was true that he was a little disappointed. But he was happy, too.

  LEO’S HAD A BIT of a crowd, and the music from the juke was turned up loud. Holiday got a couple of head nods as he crossed the floor toward an empty stool back near the kitchen doors. He was known here, so there wasn’t that stare thing that went with a white guy walking into an all-black neighborhood bar. It had gotten around the Leo’s regulars that he had been a cop who’d been forced out under a cloud. It wasn’t entirely true, since Holiday had resigned rather than face the official inquiry, but he let them think what they wanted. Dirty cop did hold a certain mystique. But he hadn’t been dirty. He had never been on the take, nor had he worked both sides of the game, like some of those cops who’d come onto the force during that sloppy hiring binge in the late ’80s. Hell, he had just been helping out a girl he knew. All right, she was a whore. But still.

  “Vodka rocks,” said Holiday to Charles, the night tender. Leo was gone or in the back counting out the day.

  “Any flavor, Doc?”

  “Rail’s good.” This deep into it, the shelf juice was a waste.

  Charles served Holiday his drink. The juke was playing a cover of “Jet Airliner,” done in a truly smoking soul-rock fashion. The two gentlemen to the right of Holiday were arguing about the song.

  “I know this is Paul Pena,” said the first man. “He did it first. I’m askin you, who was the white boy who took it and made it into a big hit?”

  “Johnny Winters or sumshit like him,” said the second man. “I don’t know.”

  “It was one of them Almond Brothers,” said the first man.

  “Say it was the Osmand Brothers?”

  “Almond, and five says it’s true.”

  “Steve Miller Band,” said Holiday.

  “Say what?” said the first man, turning to Holiday.

  “This song’s a killer, man.”

  “Damn sure is. But can you tell my boy who made it a hit?”

  “No clue,” said Holiday. Pride had made him blurt out the answer, but now that he had, he didn’t want to get further involved.

  Holiday beat the last-call lights with one more drink. He fired it down and walked from the bar unsatisfied. Thinking about his old life and how he’d left it had blackened his thoughts.

  HE DROVE EAST. HE lived in a garden apartment out by Prince George’s Plaza, off East-West Highway, and the way to get there from Leo’s was south to Missouri and then over to Riggs Road. But he got confused down near Kansas Avenue, trying to cut time on the back streets, and going along Blair he realized he needed to turn back. He made a left onto Oglethorpe Street, thinking he could take it through to Riggs.

  He knew as soon as he got onto Oglethorpe that he’d fucked up. He remembered too late from his cop days that this stretch of Oglethorpe dead-ended at the Metro and B&O railroad tracks. He recognized the Washington Animal Rescue League on his left and the printing company below it down by the tracks. And on the right, one of those community gardens, which were fairly common around D.C. This one covered several acres of land.

  His cell, mounted in a kind of holster set below the dash, went off. It was Jerome Belton, calling to tell him about his night. Holiday pulled over to the right shoulder of the road, on sand and gravel, and cut the engine. Belton told him a story about a wannabe player he had taken to the Tyson-McBride fight at the MCI Center a few months back, and something about the man’s phony gators, which had been flaking off in the backseat of the car.

  It was a funny if too familiar story. Holiday had a laugh with Belton and ended the call. Then, on the quiet dead-end street, parked beside the community garden, Holiday leaned his head back and rested his eyes. He wasn’t drunk. He was tired.

  A light swept across his face, waking him. He opened his eyes. He made out an MPD blue-and-white topped by an inactive light bar, approaching his car from the turnaround at the railroad tracks. The patrolman behind the wheel had a passenger, a perp or a suspect, in the backseat of the car. He wondered where his breath mints were as the Crown Victoria slowly came his way. Holiday did not look directly into the car, though one darting glance registered white police. In silhouette and shadow, Holiday saw the backseat passenger, thin of shoulder and neck. His instinct said adult female or teenager. In his side vision he saw a number on the lower portion of the car’s front quarter panel. The police officer passed without stopping, obviously seeing Holiday parked there but not bothering to check him out. The image of the numbers left Holiday’s mind, and he thought, “Let it grow,” and as this thought came to him he chuckled without apparent reason and drifted back to sleep.

  When he woke sometime later, his head was still fogged. He looked out into the garden, which held the black shapes of hastily constructed arbors, staked plants, and low rows of vegetables. A person of indeterminate age, medium height, walked across the landscape. Number One Male, thought Holiday, studying the wal
k with squinted eyes. Holiday blinked slowly. His vision blurred, and he went back to sleep.

  He woke again, confused, but this time only for a short period of time, as the passing hours had granted him sobriety. The sky had lightened a shade, and swallows dipped and sailed through the sky above the gardens and sang out, announcing the morning yet to come. He checked his watch: 4:43 a.m.

  “Christ,” said Holiday.

  His neck was stiff. He needed to get to bed. But first he had to relieve himself. He grabbed a small Maglite from the glove box and stepped out of the car.

  Holiday walked onto a path, using the flashlight to guide him. He put the mini Mag in his mouth as he loosed his meat and let piss stream onto the ground. He looked around at his surroundings, turning his head as he urinated. The light landed on what looked to be a human figure lying unconscious or asleep on the edge of a vegetable garden holding staked tomato plants long since harvested. Holiday tucked himself in and zipped his fly. He went to the figure and turned the light directly on it.

  Holiday chewed his lip and got down on his haunches. The light was close in now and made the subject clear. A young black man, perhaps in the middle of his teens, in a winter-weight coat, T-shirt, jeans, and Nike sneaks. A bullet wound, beginning to congeal, starred his left temple. The top of the young man’s head was pulped from the bullet’s exit, his blood and brain matter thick as chowder. His eyes were bugged from the jolt. Holiday let the light play over the ground. He lighted a wide area on the path and in the garden itself. He did not see any shell casings or a gun.

  He focused the light again on the young man. A chain holding some sort of card hung around his neck. It lay flat on the T, face out, between the folds of the coat. It was some sort of identification badge. Holiday squinted and read the name on the badge.

  He stood and turned, trying to put as little weight as possible on his feet as he walked back to his car. There was no one on Oglethorpe, and he quickly ignitioned the Town Car and swung it around, going up to Blair Road with his headlights off and then waiting until Blair was completely clear before firing the headlights and going right, toward the 7-Eleven on Kansas. There was a pay phone there, but the parking area was too public and lit, and he went on to the shuttered liquor store up the road, which also had a pay phone in an empty lot that sat in near darkness. There he dialed 911 with his back to the road and got a dispatcher on the line. He did not give his name or location when asked but instead talked right through the dispatcher’s repeated requests and reported a body in the community garden at Blair and Oglethorpe. The woman was still talking to him, demanding personal information, as he cradled the phone. Holiday quickly returned to his car, sped out of the liquor store lot, and lit a cigarette. There was something both familiar and unidentifiable about the body that left him energized and on edge.

  Once in his apartment he slipped into his bed but did not fall asleep. As sunlight began to bleed through his venetian blinds, he stared at the ceiling. But he did not see the ceiling. Rather, he saw himself as a young man in uniform, standing in a community garden very much like the one he had just left. In his memory, the homicide police T. C. Cook was there, working in his coat and brown hat. He saw the crime scene lit by strobing colors coming off the light bars of the cruisers and the occasional flashes of cameras.

  It was like he was looking at a photograph in his mind. He could see the lights, the white-shirt commanders, that reporter from Channel 4, and, clearly, himself and Detective T. C. Cook. Also in the photograph, young and in uniform, he saw Gus Ramone.

  ELEVEN

  AS DAY-SHIFT workers arrived for their jobs at the animal shelter and the printing company, homicide police and technicians from the Mobile Crime Lab worked around the body of a young man lying in the community garden at Oglethorpe Street and Blair Road. Uniformed officers and yellow tape kept the workers, speculating among themselves and calling friends and loved ones from their cells, away from the scene.

  Detective Bill “Garloo” Wilkins, working the midnight-to-eight at the VCB, was on the tail end of it when the call came in from the dispatcher after the anonymous tip. He drove to the community garden with Detective George Loomis, a slope-shouldered man who had grown up in the Section Eights near the Frederick Douglass home in Southeast. Wilkins would be the primary on the case.

  As Wilkins and Loomis worked the scene, Gus Ramone arrived at the VCB offices for the start of his eight-to-four. Rhonda Willis, who liked to come in early, have her coffee, and map out her day, was already at her desk. As usual, they discussed their plans for the shift, as well as any violent-crime activity that had occurred since they had last been on. The unidentified gunshot victim found off Blair Road was mentioned, along with the fact that Garloo Wilkins had caught the case. Ramone had the arraignment of William Tyree on his plate, and Rhonda was to testify in a drug burn case she had closed several months earlier. Ramone wanted to try and catch an interview with a potential witness to a homicide before she went off to her job at the McDonald’s over by Howard U. Rhonda agreed to go with him, then ride together over to the Judiciary Center on 4th and E.

  The potential wit, a youngish woman named Trashon Morris, turned out to be less than helpful. She had been seen in a club on the fringes of Shaw, hanging closely with a young man who was wanted in a killing later that same night. The young man, Dontay Walker, had been beefing at the club, witnesses said, with a guy who was later found shot to death inside his Nissan Altima on 6th, south of U. Walker was being sought in connection with the killing and so far was in the wind. But when Ramone questioned Trashon Morris, catching her on the way out the door of her apartment building, she could not remember any kind of argument in the club or anything else, seemingly, about that night.

  “I don’t recall it,” said Trashon Morris, never looking Ramone in the eye nor acknowledging the presence of Rhonda Willis. “I don’t know nothin about no beef.” Morris had extralong, loudly painted fake nails, large hoop earrings, and big hair.

  “Had you been drinking much that evening?” said Ramone, trying to determine her credibility in the unlikely event that she would regain her memory and be called to testify in court.

  “Yeah, I’d been drinkin. I was in a club; what you think?”

  “How much?” said Rhonda.

  “Much as I wanted to,” said Morris. “It was a weekend and I’m twenty-one.”

  “People say you left the club with Dontay Walker.”

  “Who?”

  “Dontay Walker.”

  “People gonna say what they want to.” Morris glanced at her watch. “Look, I gotta get to work.”

  “You got any idea where Dontay’s been layin up since that night?” said Ramone.

  “Who?”

  Ramone gave her his card with his contact information. “You see Dontay again, or you hear from him, or something comes to mind that you forgot to tell us, give me a call.”

  “I gotta get to work,” said Morris, and walked the sidewalk toward the Metro station down the block.

  “Cooperative type,” said Ramone as he and Rhonda went to an unmarked, maroon, MPD-issue Impala parked along the curb.

  “One of those ghetto fabulous girls,” said Rhonda. “My sons better not think about bringing home something looking like that, ’cause you know I’ll hit the reject button.”

  “She’s just mad because her mother named her Trashon.”

  “You name it, it’s gonna become it,” said Rhonda. “One of those self-fulfilling prophecies you hear about.”

  At the Judiciary Center, Ramone and Rhonda Willis checked in on the first floor to fill out their court appearance worksheets, then went up to the ninth floor, which housed the Assistant U.S. Attorneys, the federal prosecutors who worked cases from arrest to trial and sometimes conviction. Many homicide police were standing in the halls and sitting in the offices of the prosecutors, a common scene. Some wore nice suits, some wore cheap ones, and others were dressed in sweats. They were there to testify, shoot the shit, report pr
ogress on cases, and make overtime. On certain days there were more homicide police in these offices than there were at the VCB or on the street.

  Ramone found prosecutor Ira Littleton in his office. They discussed the Tyree case and the arraignment, a conversation that consisted of Littleton lecturing Ramone on courtroom procedure and etiquette. Ramone allowed the younger man to have his say. When he was done, Ramone went to the corner office of Margaret Healy, a hard-boiled, smart redhead in her midforties who headed the team of Assistant U.S. Attorneys. Her desk was overflowing with paper, and paperwork littered the floor. He dropped into one of her big comfortable chairs.

  “Heard you made quick work out of that stabbing,” said Healy.

  “That was Bo Green,” said Ramone.

  “It’s a team sport,” said Healy, using one of her favorite expressions.

  “Congratulations on the Salinas brothers,” said Ramone. The recent conviction of two sibling members of MS-13, a drawn-out murder case, had made a splash in the press due to the growing Hispanic gang problem in and around D.C.

  “It was a nice win. I was proud of Mary Yu on that one. She took it all the way.”

  Ramone nodded and pointed his chin in the direction of a photo on the prosecutor’s desk. “How’s the family?”

  “I suspect they’re good. Maybe I’ll take some time off this year and find out.”

  An administrative assistant knocked on Healy’s open door and told Ramone that he had a call from his wife. Ramone figured she had been trying him on his cell, but the service was spotty in the building. And if she was being that persistent, it had to be some kind of emergency. Alana or Diego, he thought immediately, and he got up out of his chair.

  “Excuse me, Margaret.”

  He took the call in an unoccupied office. He listened to Regina’s emotional but controlled voice. Out in the hall, he saw Rhonda Willis bullshitting with a couple of detectives. He told her about his call and where he was going.

  “Want some company?” said Rhonda.

  “Thought you had to testify.”