Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go

by George Pelecanos

  I couldn’t tell if he had been shot again. There was an awful lot of blood on his shirt now; blood still pulsed from the hole in his neck.

  “You see that turpentine, man, and those jars?”

  “Jack.”

  “Come here, Nick. I gonna show you what we’re gonna do now.”

  He went to the shelved area of the hall, and I followed. Behind us, from the stairwell, I could hear men shouting at us from the first floor.

  LaDuke stopped at the jars and the thinners and the paints. He put his shotgun on the floor. I kept my gun trained on the stairwell. He poured paint thinner into the jars, then ripped some rags apart, doused the rags in thinner, and stuffed the doused rags into the necks of the jars.

  I put my hand around his arm, but he jerked his arm away.

  “Man,” he said, “we are going to light this motherfucker up!”

  “Let’s go, Jack.”

  LaDuke smiled, the smile waxy and frightening. The bone of his jaw was jagged and the pink had gone to red. His eyes were hard and bright.

  “You’re going into shock, Jack.”

  “You got matches? You always got matches, Nick.”

  The men continued to shout from below. From the window at the end of the hall, I could hear the faint beginnings of a siren. I found my matches and pressed them into LaDuke’s clammy palm.

  “Thanks,” he said, picking up the jars and cradling them in his arms. “It’s all been leading up to this for me. You know that, don’t you, Nick?”

  “Bullshit. The object is to stay alive. Nothing else. If you got a different idea, then you’re an idiot, LaDuke. I’m not going through that door with you, man. I’m not coming with you. You hear me? I’m not.”

  “See you around, Nick.”

  He walked down the hall toward the open doorway of the stairwell. I went the opposite way and got to the window. I climbed halfway through the window, then looked back.

  LaDuke passed in front of the open doorway. A round fired from below and sparked at his feet. He kept walking calmly with the jars tight to his chest, stopping on the other side of the doorway. He set the jars down on the floor and drew the .357 Cobra from the holster behind his back.

  “Jack,” I said, almost to myself. Then I screamed his name out with all I had. But he didn’t respond. He didn’t even move at the sound of his name.

  LaDuke struck a match. He touched the match to the three rags, ignited them all. He took one jar and tossed it down the stairs. It blew immediately, sending heat and fire up through the open frame. The men below began to yell. LaDuke threw the second jar, then the third right behind it. Smoke poured up from the stairwell and there was a muffled explosion; the men’s voices intensified.

  LaDuke pulled the hammer back on the Cobra. He turned the corner and disappeared into the smoke.

  There were gunshots then, gunshots and screams. I closed my eyes and stepped out onto the fire escape. It was still night, and two sirens wailed from far away. I went down the fire escape, hung on the end of it, and dropped to the pavement.

  LaDuke had driven the Ford right into the fence. There was a hole there now, where the hood protruded into the lot. I walked straight out and crossed the street to my Dodge.

  The sirens swelled and there were more gunshots. The spit and crackle of the fire deepened and the screams grew more frenzied. I got in, closed the door and turned the ignition key, and kept the windows rolled up tight. I couldn’t hear anything then, except for the engine. I put the car in gear, zigzagged out of the warehouse district with my headlights off. When I hit M, I flipped on my lights and headed west.

  I drove across town through empty streets. Fifteen minutes later, I entered Beach Drive and the cool green cover of Rock Creek Park. I touched the dash lighter to a cigarette.

  I rolled down my window. The sounds of the guns and the sounds of the fire had gone away. The screams had not.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I DROVE TO my apartment and dropped into bed. Maybe I slept. The dreams I had were waking dreams, or maybe they were not. I turned over on my side, stayed there until noon. Slots of dirty gray light leaked through the spaces in the drawn bedroom blinds. I could hear the drone of a lawn mower, and from the kitchen, my cat, pacing, making small hungry sounds. I got out of bed, went to the kitchen, and spooned a can of salmon into her dish.

  The Post’s final edition was lying out on the stoop beneath a sunless sky, its plastic wrap warm to the touch. I brought the newspaper inside, made a cup of coffee, and had a seat on my living room couch. The burning of the warehouse—the burning and the death—had made the front page. Nothing about violence, though, and no mention of foul play. That would come later in the day, or the next.

  I thought of my bullet casings scattered on the second floor of the warehouse. And then there was the matter of my prints. If Boyle and Johnson chose to push it and make the connection, the casings could be traced to my gun. I’d have to get rid of the Browning, and I didn’t have much time.

  I battered a slice of eggplant, fried it, and put it between two slices of bread, then washed it down with another cup of coffee. Then I took a long, cold shower and reapplied ointment to the cuts in my face, where I had tweezered out the slivers of glass the night before. In the mirror, I looked at my swollen eyes, the area beneath my left eye, black and gorged with blood, and the purple arc across the bridge of my nose. I looked into my own eyes and I thought, That thing in the mirror is not me. But when I moved, the thing in the mirror moved in the exact same way. And I was the only one standing in the room.

  I shook some Tylenols out into my hand, ate them, and got dressed. Then I went out to my Dodge and headed downtown.

  I PARKED NEAR THE District Building, walked toward the CCNV shelter on D, and cut into the courtyard at the Department of Labor. There was a blind corner there where some men from the shelter gathered to smoke reefer and drink beer and fortified wine during the day. Two men stood with their backs against the gray concrete, passing a bottle of Train in the midday heat. I picked the cleaner of the two, engaged him in a brief introduction, and took him to lunch at a bar called My Brother’s Place on 2nd and C. Then I had him clean up in the upstairs bathroom, and when he sat back down at our table, smelling a little less powerfully than he had before, I handed him some written instructions and ripped a twenty in half, promising him the other half upon his successful return. He shambled off in the direction of the Office of Deeds. This man would disappear eventually, become one of the anonymous urban MIA. But looking as I did, even with the benefit of elapsed time, I knew that I would be remembered later on.

  I had a slow beer and a shot of bourbon out on the patio and talked to my friend Charles, the bar’s dishwasher and unofficial bouncer, an unassuming giant and tireless worker who is one of the few purely principled men left in this city. Then the man from the shelter returned and gave me my information. I sat staring at it, and I laughed, but it was laughter devoid of pleasure, and the man from the shelter asked me what was funny.

  “Nothing’s funny,” I said. “I thought I was pretty smart, but I’m stupid, and I think that’s pretty goddamn funny. Don’t you?”

  He shrugged and took the rest of his twenty. I tore up the written instructions and asked him if there was anything he’d like, and he said he’d like a Crown Royal rocks with a splash of water. I ordered him one and dropped money on the table, then left the coolness of the overhead fan and walked back into the heat.

  Back in my apartment, I made a phone call and set the time for the appointment. Then I took a nap and another shower, gathered up the instruments that I thought I might need. On the way out the door, I passed the mirror that hung on the living room wall and saw the thing with the purple nose and the blood-gorged eye—the thing that was not me—walking toward the door.

  I PARKED IN THE lighted lot at 22nd and M. It was night, and the heat that had enshrouded the city for days had not receded. Suburban kids locked their Jeeps and Mustang 5.0s and walked toward the New Orle
ans–style nightspot on the north side of M, the boys clean-shaven and beer-muscle cocky, the girls freshly showered and dressed in the latest cookie-cutter, mall-purchased attire. I lit a cigarette and dangled the cigarette out the open window.

  At nine o’clock sharp, Richard Samuels walked across the lot to my car, his fine white hair catching the light. He wore a tie but no jacket, the tie’s knot firmly entrapped between the points of his tabbed white collar. He saw my Dodge and then me, and he forced a spring in his step. He opened the passenger door and dropped into the bucket. His face was ridged with lines of sweat.

  “Mr. Stefanos.”

  “Samuels.”

  “My God, what happened to your face?”

  “Your people,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “Well.”

  I dragged on my cigarette, flipped it out, where it arced to the asphalt. “No one knows you’re here?”

  “No. Of course, you phoned today when my secretary was out. No, no one knows but you and me.”

  “Good.”

  Samuels relaxed his shoulders. “I’ll tell you, I’ve had one hell of a day. The police came to me first thing this morning. And the insurance people have been swarming all over me. What with you bringing Vice down on me last week, it’s not going to be long before this whole thing blows up in my face, and yours. I’m not waiting around to find out how it plays out. I assume you’ll be leaving town, too, after we settle things.”

  “You’re pretty casual about all this, Samuels.”

  “Just practical.” He spread his manicured hands. “I’m a businessman, after all. I’ve always known when to cut my losses. Surely you would understand. I mean, that’s what this is about, isn’t it?” I stared ahead. “Now, your partner, the one who you brought along to my office? He didn’t understand at all. He let his emotions get in the way of what is, after all, a process of logic. I assume that he died with my men. His emotions were what killed him, isn’t that right?”

  I gripped the steering wheel, watched the blood leave my knuckles. “How does a man like you get involved in all this, anyway?”

  Samuel’s wet red lips parted in a weak smile. “Simply put, I saw the demand in the market. In the world I traveled in, in the 1980s, it seemed as if every commercial broker in D.C. was driving around town in his three-twenty-five, a one shot vial of coke lying within easy reach. I thought, Why don’t I get some of that action? It wasn’t difficult to locate and establish a relationship with a supplier, and soon afterward I was in business. Then cocaine went out of white-collar fashion—for the most part, anyway—and the market went from powder to rock. I simply made an adjustment. My supplier put me in touch with some gentlemen who could deal with the rougher situations, and I moved the powder straight into the inner city. I had the space to run it through—”

  “Your real estate holdings. And your profit centers—you make movies; you own the equipment, and the lights. You said yourself, the first time I met you, that you favored control all the way down the line.”

  “Yes. And I had the manpower to make it work. My own hands never touched the stuff. It was going beautifully, in fact, until you intervened.”

  “You made a mistake. You had a couple of innocent kids killed.”

  “Innocent? Mr. Stefanos, don’t be naïve. I’m not happy at how it turned out for them, but—”

  “Don’t. I know all about you, Samuels.”

  Samuels stared off balefully in a theatrical gesture of remorse. He looked into his lap and spoke softly. “I can’t help the way I am, any more than you can change your own proclivities. The decision I made was a business decision, as are all of my decisions. As this is, right now.” He straightened his posture. “Which brings us to the real reason we’re sitting here.”

  “Let’s get to it, then.”

  “All right. How much?”

  “What?”

  “How much do you want? What is it going to take to make you go away?”

  “Samuels,” I said, reaching beneath my seat, “I think you’ve misunderstood me.”

  His eyes widened as I brought up my sap. He tried to raise his hands, but he was too old and way too slow. I swung the sap sharply, connecting at his temple. He slumped forward, his forehead coming to rest against the glove box.

  I checked his breathing, then pulled everything else up from beneath the seat. I tied his hands behind his back and covered his mouth with duct tape. A wool army blanket lay folded in the backseat. I arranged Samuels fetally and covered him with the blanket.

  I eased out of the lot and headed east.

  I PARKED IN THE clearing that faced the river and cut the engine. The lights of the Sousa Bridge shimmered on the river’s black water. Through the trees, Christmas lights glowed colorfully, strung along the dock of the marina. Country music and the laughter of a woman lifted off a pontoon boat and drifted in on the river breeze.

  I took the blanket off Samuels and sat him up. His silver hair was soaked in sweat, his complexion pale and splotched. I pulled the duct tape away from his mouth, let the tape dangle from his face. His eyes blinked open, then slowly closed. I poured some bottled water on his lips and poured some into his open mouth. He coughed it out, straightened up in his seat, opened his eyes, kept them open as he moved to make himself comfortable. Samuels stared at the river.

  “Untie me, please,” he said quietly.

  “No.” I reached over and loosened the knot of his tie. He breathed out, his breath like a long deflation.

  “Please,” he said.

  “No. And don’t think of screaming. I’ll have to tape your mouth again. All right?”

  Samuels nodded blankly. I slipped my cigarette pack from the visor and rustled it in his direction. He shook his head. I lit one for myself. I smoked some of it down.

  Samuels said, “Why? I don’t understand this. I can’t believe… I can’t believe we can’t make some sort of deal.”

  I exhaled smoke and watched it fade.

  “I just don’t understand,” he said.

  Some birds glided down from the trees and went to black against the moon. A Whaler passed in the river, the throttle on full, its wake spreading in a swirl of foam and current. I thought of my grandfather and closed my eyes.

  Samuels turned in my direction. “Do you ever wonder where dead men go, Mr. Stefanos?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “What I mean is, do you believe in God?”

  The woman from the party boat screamed and then there was more laughter, her laughter drunken and mixed with the wolfish shouts of men.

  “No,” Samuels said. “Of course you don’t. Everything is black and white with people like you. People like you can’t even see the possibility of a higher power. No, I’m certain that if you were asked, you’d say that there is no God.” Samuels’s face turned childish, impudent. “I believe in God. You’re saying to yourself, There’s a contradiction here, a man like this believing in God. But you know, I pray for myself every day. And do you think I could have sent those boys to their deaths if I didn’t believe that I was sending them to a better place? Do you think that?” He chewed at his lip. “I’m sorry. I’m talking quite a bit, aren’t I? I’m nervous, you know.”

  I stabbed my cigarette out in the ashtray.

  “Talk to me,” he said, a quiver in his voice. “Why don’t you say something to me, please.”

  I fixed the tape back over his mouth and stepped out of the car. I went around to the other side, opened the door, and pulled him out. He fell to his side, tried to stay down. I yanked him back to his feet. Samuels bugged his eyes, made muffled moaning sounds beneath the tape.

  I pushed him along the graveled clearing, his feet dragging, stirring up dust. We got to the bulkhead, where the river lapped at the concrete. Beyond the bulkhead, the Whaler’s wake splashed against the pilings and slipped over the rusted window frames of the sunken houseboat.

  Samuels’s hands squirmed against the rope. I turned his back to the water and kicked him behind
the legs. He fell to his knees. I ripped the duct tape off his face.

  “Oh, God,” he said as I drew the Browning from behind my back.

  “There isn’t one,” I said, and shoved the barrel into his open mouth. “Remember?”

  TWENTY-SIX

  I BURIED UNCLE Costa in the fall. His grave was next to Toula’s, just twenty yards from my grandfather’s, in Glenwood Cemetery, off Lincoln Road in Northwest. It was an immigrant’s graveyard, unofficially sectioned off, with a special section for Greeks, many of them Spartans, the grounds run down at times, littered with beer bottles and cartons, but clean now and live with the reds and oranges of the maples and poplars on the hills.

  A small group attended, old-timers mostly, the very last of a generation, the men who had ruled at the picnics of my childhood, men in white shirts and pleated gray slacks who danced to the wild clarinets and bouzoukis and played cards and drank and laughed, the smell of grilled lamb and fresh phyllo in the air. Lou DiGeordano was there, as frail as I had ever seen him, held at the arm by his son Joey, and a few other men and women, stooped and small, with black marble eyes and hair like the frazz of white rope, men and women I no longer recognized. And Lyla was there, her red hair long and lifting in the breeze, our hands touching, the touch of two friends.

  It hadn’t ended suddenly with me and Lyla, as it does not end suddenly between two people who are breaking things off but still in love. We went out a couple of times to our regular restaurants, but the restaurants had lost their shine and the people who served us looked to us as strangers. Lyla had given up drinking and I had not, the change just something else that had dropped between us. We slept together on those nights, the sex needed and good. But the sex, we knew, would not save us. So things continued like that, and one afternoon I realized that I had not spoken with Lyla for a couple of weeks, and I knew then that that part of us was finally over.

  The weather did not begin to turn until late September. As the days cooled, I rode my bike more frequently and kept the Dodge parked and covered. Mai went off to Germany to visit her family and Anna returned to school. I took on double shifts at the Spot into October, and in that period there was Costa’s funeral and solitary nights and occasionally nights with friends, all of them unmemorable and with the certain sameness that comes with the worn wood and low light of bars and the ritual of drink. My face healed quickly, though when it healed, I noticed that I had aged, the age and a kind of fading in my eyes. My scars had become a part of me now, suggesting neither toughness nor mystery, rarely prompting the interest of acquaintances or the second look from strangers. No one came to me for outside work; I would not have considered it if they had.