Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go

by Pelecanos, George

  “Not usually,” she said. “But he’s cute as shit, man. What’s he do?”

  I winked broadly. “Private dick.”

  “Why’s he keeping it private?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?”

  She did, but it didn’t work out. She started by getting herself a beer and having a seat next to LaDuke and initiating some conversation. LaDuke was polite, but clearly uncomfortable. Anna took his manner for disinterest; she downed her beer quickly and drifted away. Darnell came out of the kitchen and introduced himself, and soon after that Mai arrived in a chipper mood and relieved me of my position behind the stick. I changed into something presentable and told LaDuke that it was time to go.

  We headed into Northeast in LaDuke’s Ford. He stared ahead as he drove, his hands tight on the wheel, ten and two o’clock, right out of driver’s ed. I tried to get a station on his radio, but he reached across the bench and switched it off. I wondered, What does this guy do to get off?

  “Anna thought you were interesting,” I said.

  “You know that little guy? The busboy, the guy with the gold tooth?”

  “You mean Ramon?”

  “Yeah,” LaDuke said. “Him. Does he like her or something?”

  I laughed. “Ramon likes anything that has to sit down to take a piss. But no, they got nothin’ going on.”

  “Well, she’s really cute.”

  “That’s what she said about you. So why’d you blow her off?”

  LaDuke blinked nervously. “I didn’t mean to, exactly. I’m not very good with women, to tell you the truth.”

  “I’m not very good with them, either. But when I find one I like and I think she likes me back, I give it a better shot than you did. Anyhow, a pretty motherfucker like you shouldn’t have any problems.”

  “I’m not pretty,” he said, a touch of anger entering his voice.

  “Relax, man, I’m only kidding around.”

  “Look,” he said, “just forget it, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  We drove for a couple of miles in silence. LaDuke looked out the window.

  “Maybe I’ll give her a call,” he said.

  SHAREEN LEWIS WAS SITTING on the rocker sofa on her porch when we reached the top of the steps leading to her house. She stood and took LaDuke’s hand, then briefly shook mine without looking in my eyes. She wore linen shorts and a short-sleeved blouse, with a masklike brooch pinned beneath the collar. As on the day before, the makeup somehow managed to match the clothes. She was a handsome woman, nicely built; she might have been lovely had she simply smiled.

  We followed Shareen through the front door and found seats in her comfortably appointed living room. For my benefit, LaDuke repeated to Shareen what they had obviously discussed earlier over the phone: that I would team up with him in trying to locate her son, and that the teaming could only double our chances of finding him. Her eyes told me that she doubted his reasoning, but she nodded shortly in agreement. I asked her for a recent photograph of Roland. Shareen Lewis nodded with the same degree of enthusiasm. I asked her if she had heard from her son either directly or by message and she said, “No.” I asked her if she had any idea at all as to his whereabouts. To that one, she also said, “No.” We sat around and listened to the clock tick away on her mantelpiece. After some of that, I asked to see Roland’s room.

  We took the carpeted stairs to the second floor—three small bedrooms and a bath. We passed the largest room, which I guessed to be Shareen’s. Its absolute cleanliness and frilly decor told me that, under this roof at least, Shareen Lewis slept alone. The next room belonged to the teenaged daughter, Roland’s sister, who had blown me off two days earlier on the phone. She was in there, sitting at a desk, listening to music through a set of headphones. She was already heavier than her mother, and she had chunkier features, or it could have been that she was at an awkward age. We made eye contact, and for some reason, I dumbed up my face. She laughed a little and closed her eyes and went back to her groove. Then we were in Roland’s room at the end of the hall.

  Shareen pulled the blinds open and let some light into the space. LaDuke leaned against a wall and folded his arms while I took it in: another clean room, too clean, I thought, for a boy his age. Maybe Shareen had tidied it up. But even so, there was something off about it, from the rather feminine color scheme to the schmaltzy souvenir trinkets on the dresser. A large dollar sign had been cut out and tacked to the wall. On an opposite wall, a poster of the group PM Dawn. No pictures of fat-bottomed women, no basketball stars, no hard rappers, no gun-culture or drug-culture symbolism, nothing representative of the mindless, raging testosterone of a seventeen-year-old city boy trying to push his manhood in the 1990s. Nothing like my own bedroom at seventeen, for that matter, or the bedrooms of any of my friends.

  “Mind if I look in the closet?” I said.

  “Go ahead,” Shareen said.

  I went to it, opened it. I scanned a neat row of clothing, shirts of various designs and several pairs of slacks, the slacks pressed and hung upside down from wooden clamps. I put my hand on the shelf above the closet rod, ran it along the dustless surface. I found a back issue of D.C. This Week and took it down. I looked at it with deliberate disinterest, folded it, and put it under my arm.

  “Anything?” LaDuke said, nodding at the newspaper.

  “No,” I said, and forced a smile at Shareen. “You don’t mind if I take this, do you?”

  “I don’t mind,” she said, looking very small, hugging herself with her arms as if she was chilled.

  “Thanks. By the way, did you clean this room recently?”

  “I haven’t touched a thing. Roland always kept it this way.”

  “Have you noticed anything missing? Did he take any clothes with him, pack anything before… the last time you saw him?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said, a catch in her voice.

  “You keep a nice house,” I said, trying to keep things light.

  “Thank you. It’s not easy with these kids, believe me.”

  “I can imagine,” I said, but it was too much.

  “You can?”

  “Well, no. Actually, not really.”

  “Then don’t patronize me.” The resentment crept back in her tone. “Let me tell you how it is. When I inherited this house from my mother, I also inherited the balance of the mortgage. That, and everything else it takes to be a single working mother—car, clothing, new stuff for the kids all the time. You come into this part of town, see what it is over here, and maybe you make a judgment about where I prioritize my family in the scheme of my life. What you don’t know is, I’d like to get my children out of this neighborhood, too, understand? But the way it is out here, in this economy, me and everyone I know, we’re all one paycheck away from the street. So, no, it’s not easy. But I’ve done pretty good for them, I think. Anyway, I’ve tried.”

  I didn’t ask for all that, but I allowed it. LaDuke cleared his throat and pushed off from the wall.

  “I’ll take that photograph of Roland now,” I said, “if you don’t mind. Then we’ll be on our way.”

  She left the room. I walked out with LaDuke and told him to meet me at the front door. After some hesitation, he followed Shareen downstairs. I went to the daughter’s room, knocked on her open door. She pulled one earphone away from her head and looked up.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m Nick Stefanos.”

  “So?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Danitra.”

  “So how’s it going?”

  “It’s goin’ all right.”

  “Listen, Danitra, I’m here because your mom hired me and my friend to find your brother, Roland.”

  “So?”

  “Just wanted to introduce myself, that’s all. What are you listening to?”

  “Little bit of this and that. Nothin’ you’d know.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right. But I recognized that Trouble Funk you an
d your friends had on the other day when I called.”

  “That was you?”

  “Yep.”

  For a second, she looked like she might apologize for her attitude that day, but she didn’t. Instead, she shrugged and began to replace the earphone over her ear.

  “Hold on a second,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You got any idea where your brother went off to?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “You think he’s okay?”

  “That fool’s all right,” she said.

  “Why are you so sure?”

  “ ’Cause if he wasn’t, he would’ve called. Listen, most likely he’s off on one of his money things. That boy just wants to be large, know what I’m sayin’? Always wantin’ to be like some movie star, ride around in a limousine. When he finds out it ain’t like that, he’s gonna come home.”

  “You think so, huh?”

  I stood there and waited for a reply. But she turned away from me then and went back into herself. I left her alone and headed back down the stairs.

  “MRS. LEWIS REALLY DIGS you, man,” LaDuke said with a laugh as he negotiated the Ford around RFK, then got it on to East Capitol. “Every time you open your mouth, she’d like to bite your head off.”

  “Yeah, thanks for all your support back there.”

  “Kinda liked watchin’ you bury yourself.”

  I fired a smoke off the dash lighter. “Well, the funny thing is, in some ways I agree with what she’s saying. She’s out there working for a big firm, and she probably knows just about as much law now as the people she’s working for. You know how that goes, Xeroxing and taking messages for people who really have no more intelligence than you. I mean, lawyers, they’ve got the degree, and they worked for it, but that doesn’t necessarily make them geniuses, right? But I’m sure that doesn’t stop them from condescending to her all day long. Then she’s trying to raise those kids in a bad environment, with no way to get out…. I don’t know… I guess I can see why she’s so angry. ’Course, that doesn’t explain why she’s so angry at me.”

  “Maybe you remind her of the type of guy that left her with those kids,” he said.

  “Yeah, maybe.” The thought of my failed marriage crossed my mind. The thought must have transferred to my face.

  “Hey look, Nick, I didn’t mean anything.”

  “Forget it.”

  LaDuke punched the gas and passed a Chevy that was crawling up ahead. He drove for a couple of miles, then said, “You get anything from the sister?”

  “Uh-uh. Typical teenager with no time for me, and nothing good to say about her brother. She thinks he’s just out there being an entrepreneur, trying to make some kind of score.”

  “You saw the dollar sign plastered on his bedroom wall. Maybe that is all he’s into. Maybe he’s running some kind of game.”

  “What else you see in that room?”

  “I saw what you saw,” he said.

  “No, I mean the details.”

  LaDuke rubbed the top of his head, something I had seen him do over the last couple of days when he was trying to think. “Well, it’s kind of a funny room for a seventeen-year-old boy. It looked like it could have been his sister’s room.”

  “Right. How about that PM Dawn poster?”

  “PM Dawn? What the hell is that?”

  “It’s a rap group—but soft, man, all the way soft. Not what anyone down here would call ‘street authentic.’ Like what U2 is to rock and roll.”

  “U2?”

  “Yeah. The Eagles, in black leather.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. It’s just not the kind of music a kid in that neighborhood would want to advertise that he was into. That and the room, you know, if it got around, it’s something that could get your ass kicked for you.”

  LaDuke breathed out through his mouth. “You sayin’ that maybe him and the Jeter kid were boyfriends?”

  “No, not exactly.”

  But I thought of Barry calling Roland a “punk.” And the killer had called Calvin one, too. And then there was the Fire House matchbook from Calvin’s room. I dragged on my cigarette, blew the exhale out the open window.

  “What, then?”

  “It’s just that this Lewis kid is different, that’s all, at an age when being different from your peers is the last thing you want to be. It might not mean anything. I don’t know if it does, not yet.”

  I picked up Roland Lewis’s photograph: unsmiling, like Calvin’s, but with a certain vulnerability. Unlike the sister, Roland looked very much like his mother. I slipped the photograph in the folded-up newspaper. LaDuke watched me do it.

  “What’s with the paper, anyway?” he said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit. Don’t hold out on me, Nick.”

  I hot-boxed my cigarette and pitched it out the window. “I’m not.”

  “Yes you are,” he said. “But you won’t keep holdin’ out, not for long. ’Cause we’re gonna do this thing, you and me. You hear me?” He was pumped, his face lit and animated. A horn blew out as he lost his attention and swerved into another lane.

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll find the kid, LaDuke. But do me a favor.”

  “What?”

  “Keep your eyes on the road.”

  He dropped me in front of the Spot. I thanked him for the lift, picked up the newspaper, and started to get out.

  “What are we, done already?”

  “I am. I’ve got a date tonight.” He looked a little deflated. “Listen, man, we’ll get on this again, first thing tomorrow. Hear?”

  “Sure, Nick. I’ll see you later.”

  He pulled away from the curb and drove down 8th. I went to my Dodge and fumbled with my keys. When LaDuke was out of sight, I walked into the Spot, phoned Lyla, and told her I’d be a little late. Then I returned to my car, ignitioned it, and headed back into Northeast.

  EIGHT

  THE HEAVY WOMAN with the elephantine thighs sat out front of the Jeter apartment, her folding chair in the same position as it had been two days before. I turned into the lot and parked beside Barry’s Z, walked across the worn brown grass, into the cool concrete stairwell, and down the steps to the Jeters’ door. I knocked on it, listening to the noises behind it, television and laughter and the cry of a baby, until the peephole darkened and the door swung open. Calvin’s sister stood in the frame, her baby resting on her hip.

  “Yes?”

  “Nick Stefanos. I was here the day before yesterday, talking to your mom.”

  “I remember.”

  “Is she in?”

  The girl looked behind her. Barry’s younger brother and another shirtless young man about his age sat on the couch, describing a movie they had both seen, talking loudly over the minstrel-like characters acting broadly on the television.

  “Uh-uh,” the girl said. “She’s at the store.”

  “Can I talk to Barry for a minute?”

  She thought about it while I listened to the shirtless young man talking about the movie: “Carlito” did this and “Carlito” did that, and “Carlito, he was badder than a motherfucker, boy.” Then the young man was on his feet, his hand figured in the shape of a pistol, and he was jabbing the hand back and forth, going, “Carlito said, bap-bap-bap-bap-bap.”

  “Come on in,” the girl said, her lips barely moving.

  I followed her into the room and back through the hall. The young men stopped talking as I passed, and when my back was to them, they broke into raucous laughter. I supposed that they were laughing at me. Calvin’s sister gestured me toward a bedroom. I stepped aside to let her pass back through the hall.

  I went to the bedroom and knocked on the frame. Barry stood next to an unmade double bed in a room as unadorned as the rest. He read from a book, one long finger on the page. He looked up at my knock, gave me an eye sweep, and returned his gaze to the book.

  “Wha’sup?”

  “I need to get something out of Calvin’s room. It
’s nothing personal of his. Would that be all right?”

  Barry closed the book and sighed. “Come on.”

  He walked with me to Calvin’s bedroom. Barry folded his arms, watched me go to the footlocker and get the folded copy of D.C. This Week that sat beneath the basketball. When I turned around, he was looking at the paper. I thought I saw some kind of light come into his eyes.

  “What am I, getting warm or something?”

  Barry said, “You’re really into this shit, aren’t you?”

  “I’m going to find out who killed Calvin, if that’s what you mean.”

  “And if you do? What’s that, gon’ bring Calvin up from the dead?”

  “No. But maybe his mother might rest a little easier if she knew what happened to her son. You ever think about that?”

  Barry breathed out heavily through his nose. “Moms ain’t worried about no justice. She thinks Calvin’s up there, sittin’ by the right hand of Jesus and shit, right now. Anyhow, who asked you to get on this?”

  “That doesn’t matter. The point is, I’m being paid now, and that makes it work. And when someone pays you to do something, you do it. Once you accept that, you don’t think about why, and you finish whatever it is you started.”

  “I wouldn’t understand about all that.”

  “The thing is, I think you do understand. See, I noticed that uniform in the back of your car. You got that fast-food job of yours—what do you make, five and a quarter an hour, maybe five-fifty?”

  Barry’s eyes narrowed. “So?”

  “So, you could be like all those other knuckleheads out there, making ten times that a week on the street. But instead, you’re being a man, trying to be right for your family.”

  “Listen, man, I ain’t got time for all this bullshit, understand? Matter of fact, I got to get into work, right now.”

  I withdrew my wallet, slipped out a card, and handed it to Barry.

  “Here,” I said. “You dropped this the first time around.”

  “I got to go to work,” he said softly, slipping the card into his shorts. “Come on, I’ll let you out.”

  We walked back into the living room. Barry stopped by the TV set and I headed for the front door.