Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go

by George Pelecanos

  “You with me?” I said, my hand around the bottle of bourbon.

  “Maybe one,” said LaDuke.

  I poured a couple, lifted my first whiskey of the night. It was hot to the taste and bit going down. My buzz went to velvet, as it always did with the first sip. I moved down to the deck and put on some Specials. Then I came back and LaDuke and I had our drinks. We chased them with beer and listened to the tape for its duration without saying much of consequence. I stayed in the ska groove and dropped a Fishbone mix into the deck. Walking back, I noticed that my watch read 4:15. I poured LaDuke another shot, then one for me. LaDuke sipped at it, followed it with beer.

  I took the stickup money from my pockets, dumped it all on the bar. LaDuke didn’t comment, and neither did I. I lit a cigarette, gave it a hard drag, looked at the long night melting into LaDuke’s face.

  “You’re hangin’ pretty good for a rookie,” I said.

  “I’m no rookie,” LaDuke said. “I just haven’t done anything like this for a while, that’s all.”

  “You gave it all up, huh?”

  “Something like that. The funny thing is, after all that time off it, I don’t even feel that fucked up. I could drink whatever you put on this bar tonight, I swear to God. And I could keep drinking it.”

  “The speed,” I said. “You’ll feel it in the morning, though, boy. You can believe that shit.”

  “I guess that’s what got me going back there, too.”

  “You blew the fuck out of that camera, LaDuke. I could have done without that.”

  “I wanted to break something.”

  “I know.”

  “Anyway, it’s not like I don’t know how to handle this stuff. You rib me all the time, Stevonus, ‘Boy Scout’ this and ‘Boy Scout’ that. Shit, I was like any teenager growing up when I did—I tried everything, man. The difference between you and me is, I grew out of it, that’s all.”

  “So when’d you stop?”

  LaDuke said, “When my brother got killed.” He pointed his chin at the pack of smokes on the bar. “Give me one of those, will ya?”

  “Sure.”

  I rustled the deck, shook one out. LaDuke took it and I gave him a light. He dragged on it, held the smoke in, kept it there without a cough. He knew how to do that, too.

  I put one foot up on the ice chest, leaned forward. “What happened?”

  “My brother and I, we were both up at Frostburg State. I was in my senior year and he was a sophomore. It was Halloween night; there were a lot of parties goin’ on and shit, everybody dressed up in costume. I was at this one party; all of us had eaten mushrooms, and the psilocybin was really kicking in. Just about then, a couple of cops came to the door, and of course everybody there thought they had come to bust the shit up. But they had come to get me, man. To tell me that my brother had been killed. He had been at this grain party, up over the Pennsylvania line. Driving back, he lost it on a curve, hit a fuckin’ tree. Broke his neck.”

  I hit my cigarette, looked away. The tape had stopped a few minutes earlier. I wished it hadn’t stopped.

  “So anyway,” LaDuke said, “they took me to identify the body. So I was in the waiting room, and there was this big mirror on one wall. And I looked in the mirror, and there I was: I had dressed up like some kind of bum that night, for the party, like. I had bought all this stupid-lookin’ shit down at the Salvation Army store, man. None of it matched, and goddamn if I didn’t look like some kind of failed clown. I looked at myself, thinkin’ about my brother lying on a slab in the other room, and all I could do was laugh. And trippin’ like I was, I couldn’t stop laughing. Eventually, they came and put me in another room. This room had quilted blankets on the walls—the kind moving guys use to cover furniture—and a table with a pack of Marlboro Lights in the middle of it, next to an ashtray. And no mirrors. So that was the night, you know? The night I decided, It’s time to stop being some kind of clown.”

  I stabbed my cigarette out in the ashtray, lit another right behind it.

  “That’s rough, Jack,” I said, because I could think of nothing else to say.

  “Sure,” he said. “It was rough.” He rubbed at the tight curls on top of his head, looking down all the while. I drew two beers from the ice, put them on the bar.

  “How’d your father handle it?” I said.

  “My father,” LaDuke muttered, savagely twisting the cap off the neck of the bottle.

  I watched him tilt his head back and drink.

  “What’s wrong with you, man?” I said.

  LaDuke tried to focus his eyes on mine. I could see how drunk he was then, and I knew that he was going to tell it.

  “My father was sick,” LaDuke said. “Is sick, I guess. I haven’t seen him for a long time. Not since my brother’s funeral.”

  “Sick with what?”

  “His problem.”

  “Which is?”

  LaDuke breathed out slowly. “He likes little boys.”

  “Shit, Jack.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You tellin’ me you were abused?”

  LaDuke drank some more beer, put the bottle softly on the bar. “I was young… but yeah. When I finally figured it out—when I figured out that what he was doing, when he was coming into my room at night, handling me that way—when I figured out that it was wrong, I asked him about it. Not a confrontation, just a question. And it stopped. We never even talked about it again. I spent the rest of my childhood, and then my teenage years, making sure the old man stayed away from my little brother. When my brother died, man, my life was finished there. I got through college and then I booked.”

  “Booked where?”

  “I went south. I never liked the cold. Still don’t. Lived in Atlanta for a while, Miami after that. I had a degree in criminology, so I picked up work for some of the security agencies. But, you know, you tend just to come back. I’ve been looking for answers, and I thought I might find out more about myself the closer I got to home.”

  “You’ve talked to your father?”

  “No.” LaDuke took in some smoke, crushed the cherry in the ashtray. “I guess you think I ought to hate him. But the truth is, I only hate what he did. He’s still my old man. And he did raise me and my brother, and it couldn’t have been easy. So, no, I don’t hate him. The thing is now, how do I fix my own self?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t believe in this victimized-society crap. All these people pointing fingers, never pointing at themselves. So people get abused as kids, then spend the rest of their lives blaming their own deficient personalities on something that happened in their childhoods. It’s bullshit, you know it? I mean, everybody’s carrying some kind of baggage, right? I know I was scarred, and maybe I was scarred real deep. But knowing that doesn’t straighten anything out for me.” LaDuke looked away. “Sometimes, Nick, I don’t even know if I’m good for a woman.”

  “Oh, for Chrissakes, Jack.”

  “I mean it. I don’t know what the fuck I am. What happened to me, I guess it made me doubt my own sexuality. I look at a man, and I don’t have any desire there, and I look at a woman, and sometimes, sexually, I don’t know if it’s a woman I want, either. I’m tellin’ you, I don’t know what I want.”

  “Come on.”

  “Look here,” LaDuke said. “Let me tell you just how bad it is with me. I go to the movies, man. I’m sitting there watching the man and the woman makin’ love. If it’s really hot, you know, I’ll find myself getting a bone. And then I start thinking, Am I getting hard because I wish I was him, or am I getting hard because I wish I was her?”

  “Are you serious, man?”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “Because if you’re serious, LaDuke, then you are one fucked-up motherfucker.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” he said. “I am one seriously fucked-up motherfucker.”

  Both of us had to laugh a little then, because we needed to, and because we were drunk. LaDuke’s eyes
clouded over, though, and the laughter didn’t last. I didn’t know what to do for him, or what to say; there was too much twisting around inside him, twisting slowly and way too tight. I poured him another shot of bourbon, and one for myself, and I shook him out another smoke. We sat there drinking, with our own thoughts arranging themselves inside our heads, and the time passed like that. I looked through the transom above the front door and saw the sky had turned to gray.

  “You know, Jack,” I said, “you were right about everybody having some kind of baggage. I never knew my mother or father; they sent me over from Greece when I was an infant. I got raised by my grandfather. He was a good man—hell, he was my father—and then he died, and my marriage fell apart, and I thought I was always gonna be alone. And now I’m fixing to blow the best thing that’s ever come my way. But, you know, I’ve got my work, and I’ve got this place and the people in it, and I know I can always come here. There’s always someplace you can go. There’s a whole lotta ways to make a family.”

  “So, what, you’re sayin’ this place is like your home?”

  “I guess so, yeah.”

  “But it’s a shithole, Nick.”

  I looked around the bar. “You know somethin’? It is a shithole.” I smiled. “Thanks for pointing that out to me.”

  LaDuke smiled back. “Yeah, you gave it a good try.”

  We had some more to drink, and after awhile his eyes made their way over to the money heaped on the bar. I watched him think things over.

  “It’s a lot of cash,” I said, “you know it?”

  “Uh-huh. What are we gonna do with it?”

  “I don’t know. You want it?”

  “No.” LaDuke shook his head. “It’s dirty.”

  “It’s only dirty if you know it’s dirty.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “I was thinkin’… why not just take this money, put it in an envelope, and mail it off to Calvin’s mother. I’ve been to her place, man, and she sure could use it. There’s a couple of babies there—”

  “What, just put it in the mail?”

  “I’ve got an envelope around here somewhere.”

  LaDuke shrugged. “All right.”

  I found a large manila envelope in Darnell’s kitchen. There was a roll of stamps back there, too, in a file cabinet next to Phil Saylor’s logbook. I ripped off a line of stamps and took them and the envelope back to the bar. Then I grabbed a D.C. directory that was wedged between the cooler and the wall and put that on the bar, as well. I looked through the Jeter listings while LaDuke stuffed the money into the envelope.

  “There’s a shitload of Jeters,” I said.

  “You know the street?”

  “I think so.”

  “You think so? We’re gonna mail out ten grand on an ‘I think so’?”

  “Here it is,” I said. “Gimme the envelope.”

  I used a black Magic Marker to address it, then applied the stamps and gave it a seal. LaDuke had a look at my handiwork and laughed.

  “It looks like a kid did this,” he said. “Like it’s first grade, and you just learned how to write and shit.”

  “What, you could do better?”

  “Man, I can barely see it.”

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  I set the alarm, locked the place up. The two of us walked out the door. Dawn had come, the sun was breaking over the buildings, and the bread men and the icemen were out on the streets.

  “Shit,” I said, shaking my head as we moved down the sidewalk.

  “What?” LaDuke said.

  “I was just thinking of you sittin’ in a movie theater, not knowing if it’s the man or the woman givin’ you a hard-on. I mean, it’s really hard to believe.”

  “I guess I shouldn’t have told such a sensitive guy like you. I know you’re never gonna let me forget it. But believe it or not, you’re the first person I ever unloaded this on. And I gotta tell you, just letting it out, I do feel a little better.”

  “You’ll get through it, LaDuke.”

  “You think so, huh.”

  “It’ll pass. Everything does.”

  I dropped the envelope in the mailbox on the corner. LaDuke slipped, stepping off the curb. I grabbed him by the elbow and held him up. We crossed the street and headed for the Ford, parked in a patch of clean morning light.

  TWENTY

  I WOKE UP a little after noon. I was spread out on top of the sheets, soaked with sweat, still dressed right down to my shoes. My cat was lying sphinx-style on my chest, kneading her claws through my shirt, her face tight against mine. Starved for food or attention, it didn’t matter which. I got up and opened a can of salmon and spooned it into her dish. The smell of the salmon tossed my stomach and I dry-heaved in the kitchen sink. I stripped, climbed into the shower, stood in the cold spray, going in and out of sleep against the tiles. When I stepped out, the phone was ringing, so I went into the living room and picked up the receiver. Boyle was on the line, thanking me for the previous night’s tip.

  “You get anything?”

  “Nothing human,” Boyle said. “All the warm bodies were long gone by the time Vice secured the warrant. They found a whole bunch of tools, some lighting and equipment, a camera that had been blown to shit. Looked like someone had quite a party in there, from what I understand. I guess they were in a hurry clearing out.”

  “I guess.”

  “You sound a little tired,” Boyle said.

  “It’s hot in here, that’s all.”

  “Heat wave moved in this morning. Say it’s gonna be up around a hundred the next few days.”

  “I’m working a shift this afternoon, so I’ll be out of it.”

  “Uh-huh.” Boyle cleared his throat. “The porno operation in that warehouse—that have anything to do with the Jeter murder?”

  “No. I thought it did, but it didn’t. I got in there, saw what was going on, and got out. Then I called you.”

  “Right,” Boyle said after a meaningful pause. “Well, I guess that’s it. Take it easy, Nick.”

  “You, too.”

  I hung up the phone, got myself into shorts and a T-shirt, and headed down to the Spot.

  Mai was behind the stick when I walked in. She gave me a wave, untied her apron, and walked out the front door. I stepped behind the bar. Happy, Buddy, Bubba, and Mel were all in place, snuggled into their stools, drinking quietly under the buzz of the air conditioner and the Sonny Boy Williamson coming from the deck. Buddy asked for another pitcher, his lip curled in a snarl. I drew it for him, placed the pitcher between him and Bubba. Happy mumbled something in my direction, so I fixed him a manhattan. I placed the drink on a bev nap in front of him, and he burped. The smell of Darnell’s lunch special drifted my way. I replaced the blues on the deck with an Impressions compilation, and the intro to “I’ve Been Trying” filled the room. Mel closed his eyes and began to sing. Looking through the reach-through to the kitchen, I could see Ramon doing some kind of bull-jive flying sidekick toward Darnell, Darnell stepping away from it with grace, the two of them framed beneath the grease-stained Rudy Ray Moore poster thumbtacked to the wall. I knew I was home.

  Anna Wang came in from the dining area, leaned on the service bar, and dumped out her change. She began to count it, arranging it in sticks. I poured a cup of coffee for myself, added some whiskey to the cup, and took it over to Anna. She reached into the pocket of my T and found a cigarette. I gave her a light. She exhaled and shook a bunch of black hair out of her face.

  “Welcome back.”

  “Thanks.”

  She grinned. “How you feelin’, Nick?”

  “Better now,” I said, holding up the cup. And I did, too.

  “Phil came in first thing this morning. Said there were enough Camels in the ashtray to service the Egyptian army.”

  “Yeah, that was me. And LaDuke. Was Phil pissed?”

  “Not really. At least you set the alarm this time.”

  Anna pushed the stacks of change
across the bar. I went to the register, turned the coin into bills, took the bills back and handed them to Anna. She folded her take and stuffed the money in the pocket of her jeans.

  She said, “So how’s Jack?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “Tell him I said hey, will you?”

  “Sure, Anna, I’ll tell him.”

  Happy hour was on the slow side, but I had plenty to do, restocking the liquor and arranging the bottles on the call shelf to where they had been before I left. Evening came and my regulars drifted out like pickled ghosts, and then it was just me and Darnell. I locked the front door and drove him back to his place through the warm, sticky night. He didn’t mention the warehouse affair, and neither did I.

  Back at my place, Lyla had phoned, so I phoned her back. She wanted to come over and talk. I said that it was probably not a good idea, and she asked why. I said it was because I didn’t want to see her. She raised her voice and I raised mine back; things just went to hell after that. The conversation ended very badly, and when it was done, I switched off the light and sat at the living room table and rubbed my face. That didn’t amount to much, so I went to the bedroom and lay down in the dark and listened to the purr of my cat somewhere off in the apartment. It seemed like a long time before I fell asleep.

  Jack LaDuke phoned early the next morning. Roland Lewis had been found dead beneath the John Philip Sousa Bridge: one bullet to the head.

  TWENTY-ONE

  THE AUTOPSY DELAYED the funeral, so it wasn’t until Monday that Shareen Lewis put her son in the ground. Roland made the Roundup in Saturday’s Post, with a corresponding death notice in the obits giving out the funeral home’s location and burial particulars. There had been a dozen gun kills that weekend, so column-inch space was at a premium, and even for a young black male, Roland’s death received very little ink. He had spent his whole life wanting to be large, but in the end his public memorial was two generic sentences buried deep in Metro; he was simply erased.