Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go

by George Pelecanos

  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.”

  SIX

  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 tob
acco 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.

  “Shareen Lewis hired me to find her son,” he said.

  “So she is worried about him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why’d she call you?”

  “She didn’t,” he said, “at first. She called a bondsman she knew named William Blackmon.”

  “I’ve heard of him.”

  “Yeah, they tell me he’s been around forever. But he farms out a lot of his work now. First thing I did when I came to town, I went to all the skip tracers and bondsmen, went to see if I couldn’t work something out.”

  “Blackmon recommended you to Shareen Lewis.”

  “They go to the same church. Blackmon took me for a flat referral fee.”

  “And when I dropped my card in the Lewis’s door, she wanted to know what was going on.” LaDuke nodded. “She agreed to meet with me just so you could set up the tail, check me out.”

  “That’s right,” LaDuke said. “Now I’ve been straight with you. What is going on, Stevonus?”

  “I’m working on the Calvin Jeter murder,” I said, “just like I told her. Roland Lewis seems to be the key.”

  “Working for who? And don’t kid me with that ‘police assistant’ crap, okay?”

  I considered how much I wanted him to know. “I was the first one to find Jeter’s body. I came on it by accident. I called it in anonymously to the cops. The cops have gone as far as they’re going to go on it. I’m doing some digging on my own.”

  “For who?” he repeated.

  “Jeter’s mother. And me.”

  LaDuke eyed me suspiciously. “There’s more to it than what you’re telling me. But I guess that’s good enough for now, Stevonus.”

  “The name’s Stefanos. What have you got, a speech impediment or something?”

  “I’ve got trouble with names,” he said with a touch of embarrassment. “That’s all.”

  “Call me Nick, then. You can remember that, can’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  I flicked my cigarette out the window and watched its trail. LaDuke shifted nervously in his seat, tapped his fingers on the vent window.

  “So what are we going to do now?” I said.

  “Well,” LaDuke said, “I could use a little help on my end.”

  “I bet you could.” I looked him over. “How long you been in D.C.?”

  “Does it show?”

  “A little.”

  “I don’t know. Six, maybe seven months.”

  “Six months. Shit, LaDuke, you don’t even know your way around yet. You’re never gonna find that kid.”

  “It’s beginning to look like that.” He rubbed the top of his head. “How much have you got on the Jeter case?”

  “A few things,” I said.

  “I was thinking… maybe you and me, we ought to work together on this. You know, feed each other information. I mean, you’re not getting paid right now, isn’t that right? We could cut it straight down the middle.”

  “Cut what? After Blackmon’s piece, that doesn’t leave enough for two.”

  “I’ve got a couple of other cases I’m working on,” he said. “I’m after a deadbeat husband, for one. Maybe you could help me out there, too.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Sleep on it,” he said. “Because, the thing is, if you’re set on talking to Roland Lewis about Jeter, you’re going to have to go through me. Shareen Lewis isn’t going to let you near her house, that’s for sure. I don’t think she cares too much for you.”

  “She must prefer them on the clean-cut side,” I said, scanning his shirt-and-tie arrangement, damp and limp now in the evening heat.

  “Yeah, well, this is a business. If you’re going to make it, you’ve got to treat it like a business, act in a businesslike manner, and be presentable.”

  “And brush your teeth after every meal.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Forget it. We about done?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “let’s go. But move over, will you? This time, I’m gonna drive.”

  HE PARKED THE FORD in front of the Spot and let it idle. I got out, went around to the driver’s side, and leaned my arms on the lip of the open window.

  “Think about my proposition,” he said.

  I nodded and said, “I will.”

  He looked at me curiously. “Something else?”

  “There’s one thing I wanted to tell you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t ever pull a gun on a man unless you intend to use it. And even then, don’t pull it. Do you understand?”

  “I know all about guns,” he said. “I grew up in the country. I’ve known how to shoot since I was a kid.”

  “Congratulations. But it’s not the same thing. An animal’s not a man.”

  “No shit,” he said with a cocky grin.

  I pushed off from the car and stood straight. “Well, I guess you already know everything there is to know. So you might as well get on home.”

  “Right. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Take care, hear?”

  I walked across the street to my car. LaDuke drove away.

  SEVEN

  I WOKE UP early the next morning, fed my cat, went outside and picked my Post up off the stoop, then went back in and read it over a couple of cups of coffee. After a week, there had still been no follow-up on Calvin Jeter’s murder. Nothing in the Post or in the Washington Times, and nothing on the TV news.

  I phoned Boyle, and when he phoned me back he confirmed it: “This one’s already cold, Nick.”

  He asked me what I had. I said, “I’ve got nothing.” It wasn’t exactly the truth, but it was close enough. Boyle told me to keep in touch before he cut the line.

  I paced around some after that, did a few sets of sit-ups and push-ups in my room, showered, dressed for work, and paced around some more. I found Jack LaDuke’s business card on my dresser and rubbed my finger across its face. I put it down and walked into another room. A little while later, I returned to my bedroom and picked the business card up off the dresser once again. I went to the phone and dialed LaDuke’s answering service. He phoned me back right away.

  “Glad you called,” he said.

  “Just wanted to make sure you were all right after last night.”

  “I’ve got a hell of a stiff neck. All that bouncing around and shit. Where’d you get your license, anyway? Sears?”

  “You were holding a gun on me, remember?”

  “Yeah, well…”

  “Listen, last night’s over, as far as I’m concerned. You say you can get me into the Lewis house.”

  “Sure I can.”

  “Well, let’s do it. Today.”

  “It’ll have to wait until after Shareen gets off work.”

  “That’s fine. I’ve got a day shift at the Spot. I can swing by afterward, pick you up. Where’s your crib?”

  “Never mind that,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at the bar. You tellin’ me we got a deal?”

  “Not so fast. Let’s take this a little bit at a time, okay?”

  “Just don’t want to give everything away and get nothing back.”

  “I don’t blame you. But let’s see if we can work together first. And LaDuke?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t forget your tie.”

  He didn’t forget it. He was wearing it, a solid blue number on a white shirt, knotted tightly despite the heat, when he walked into the Spot at half past four that
afternoon. LaDuke had a seat next to Mel, who had stretched a lunch hour into three and was working on his fifth martini of the day. Anna stood by the service bar, counting the sequence of her checks. She glanced at LaDuke when he entered, then gave him a second look as he settled onto his bar stool.

  “Nice place,” LaDuke said. “Really uptown.” He wiped his hands off on a bev nap and left the crumpled napkin on the bar.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Get you something?”

  “I’ll just have a Coke, please.”

  “So you don’t drink, either.”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Okay, Boy Scout. One Coke, coming up.” I shot a glassful from the soda gun and placed it in front of him. “Want a cherry in it?”

  “No. But do you have a place mat I can color on?”

  I heard Anna laugh from the service end of the bar. Ramon walked behind her on his way to the kitchen and patted her ass. She slapped his hand away. Mel continued to croon along to the Staple Singers coming from the system, doing a Mavis thing with his pursed-out mouth. Happy sat in the shadows, his hand curled listlessly around a manhattan.

  “I’ll be ready to go,” I said, “soon as my replacement shows up.”

  “I’ll just sit here and soak up the atmosphere,” said LaDuke.

  “Cash in!” Anna yelled.

  I went to her and took her tip change, all lined up in neat little rows, and turned it into bills. I handed it over to her and she put her hand into my breast pocket and withdrew a smoke. I lit it for her and she blew the exhale away from my face.

  “Who’s the guy?” she said.

  “Name’s Jack LaDuke.”

  “I like it,” she said.

  “The name?”

  “The whole package.”

  “You go for the puppy-dog type?”