The Ways of the Dead

by Neely Tucker

  “Blood on the pavement outside the dumpster? Side of it?”

  “Some.”

  “A puddle, a lake, a drop?”

  “More than the last, less than the middle.”

  “Eva, for Christ’s sake.”

  “It’s not clear if she was dragged there or killed on the spot if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Blood nearby?”

  Sully saw her look down at him. The light was muted, from overhead. He could see the beginning of crow’s feet, the full lips, the strong, high cheekbones. It struck him, her age, and by extension, his.

  “Scene is still being worked,” she said, finally.

  “Alright.”

  “You look like you’re half asleep,” she said.

  “You look fried.”

  “If I’m not, I’m going to be.” She nodded good night in parting, turned, and walked to her Jeep Cherokee. She pulled out and was gone.

  Sully called Tony, affirming the manhunt for the three black men in the store and giving the details of the throat slashing. He was careful with the description of the blood’s amount and location, to make it less likely he’d get burned if Eva’s initial description was less than exact. He decided to omit the bit about the black garbage bag; it was just too complicated to get into.

  Tony took the information and cut the line, no bullshitting this time.

  He blew out his lips and cursed softly.

  Eva was dripping out intel to her benefit, handing out the leak on the throat slashing like it was nothing, then holding back on the rest. Fine. Nothing personal. But his job, and his problem, was that he had to get ahead of her and the detectives and the federal agents swarming over this, putting their stamp of What Happened Here on it all.

  Trusting the police—particularly as fucked up as D.C.’s—had never been on his list of smart things to do, and he wasn’t going to start now.

  He limped up Princeton away from the crime scene, and slowly, as he thought, purpose came into his step. The pace picked up. He knew where he was going and what he was going to do. There was risk attached, yeah, but if he’d learned anything from eleven years in the worst hellholes on earth, it was that reporting without risk was an oxymoron.

  five

  The night was cooling by degrees and he was thinking maybe he should have kept the cycle jacket. A left turn on Warder, crossing Quebec—the neighborhood, Park View, row houses and semi-detached homes, had been an immigrant niche even before World War II. It had been Jews and Greeks and Italians then, waiters and carpenters and dockworkers and owners of shoe stores and merchants of hats and olives and corner markets.

  Now the immigrants were Jamaicans and Hondurans and Ethiopians and Nicaraguans and Nigerians and Algerians and a handful of Lebanese, taxi drivers and custodians and hotel doormen and lawn maintenance workers. The founding generation of this black and brown group—here for twenty, thirty, forty years, keeping their lawns looking as if they were trimmed with scissors, the azaleas fertilized—were seventy years old and stuck living alongside the drug dealers and the prostitutes and the alcoholics, a slow-motion spiral of decline of the second and third generation.

  He turned onto Rock Creek Church Road, passing three young men standing against the side of a house on a corner. They watched him walking and he watched them back and he nodded and they did not nod back. The trees were old and stout and cast great shadows beneath the streetlights. The yards were raised from the sidewalk, with low stone walls as borders, and the houses had porches populated by cheap folding chairs or old couches and lime-green outdoor carpeting.

  At a house in the middle of the block, Sully opened the metal gate, rusting on its hinges. He limped up the five concrete steps, two of them with chipped and broken chunks, and onto the front porch. There was an overstuffed couch, with several rips and exposed stuffing, and a wooden swing with peeling paint. Before he reached through the security gate to knock on the door, he heard the dog growling inside.

  The wooden door swung open on a dark hallway. The Rottweiler barked twice, his ears up and alert.

  Sly Hastings materialized from the darkness. He was wearing a white pullover, black basketball shorts, white socks with black flip-flops, and small, wire-framed glasses.

  “Donnell, hush up,” he said to the dog. He unlocked the door and pushed it open. “I hope you know more than what’s on TV, brother, ’cause they don’t know shit.”

  six

  The steel door leading to the basement was open and Sully turned right, took a step down to the landing, and then went down the steps. The house, a ramshackle shell above, turned into a well-appointed apartment below, one of the bases of Sly’s growing business enterprise.

  Downstairs, the overhead lighting was muted, and a large television was against a wall. The kitchen was at the far side. Sully went to the refrigerator, pulled out a Miller, and returned to the couch. He held the cold can against his right temple.

  “Damn,” he said. It felt that good.

  Sly returned to his seat on a bar stool at the counter, where a newspaper was folded into a quarter panel. He picked up a pen and looked down at the paper. The television was turned to a twenty-four-hour news channel broadcasting from the crime scene but the sound was off. The dog flopped down on the kitchen floor. Sully closed his eyes and let himself sink back into the comforts of the couch. Sly was, in the context of his life, in the context of working in Bosnia and Rwanda and Liberia and Lebanon and the taxi wars of South Africa, a warlord, and sort of a minor one at that. He would kill you graveyard dead—sure, they’d all do that—but most warlords, the ones who would tolerate your presence at all, would not fuck with you if you did not fuck with them. If you had the nerve to walk past the guns and the machetes to get to their front door, and did not jump the first time a flunky put a gun in your face and told you they were going to blow your fucking brains across the street, then they’d talk to you, give you their misshapen view of the world. Sly, operating in the United States, who didn’t even have a machete, was not, actually, one of the most frightening people he’d ever met, and probably was not in the top ten. He was deadly, yeah, and he killed people, but the United States had such a limited understanding of the uses of homicidal violence, and really none at all since the Deep South terrorism of the early 1960s . . . After a minute, Sully looked up. Sly was peering at the paper, writing on it occasionally, barely looking up at the television. Sully said, “I thought you’d be more bothered.”

  “By?”

  Sully nodded toward the screen. “The recent unpleasantness.”

  Sly did not look up. “Didn’t say I wasn’t.”

  “You don’t appear concerned.”

  “I don’t appear to be a lot of things.”

  Sully said, raising his chin, gesturing at the paper, “You been working that all day? It’s damn near eleven.”

  “It’s the Friday,” Sly said, still looking down. “You can’t fucking do the Wednesday.”

  Sully popped the beer tab, slurped, looked at the television. “They catch the bad guys yet?”

  Sly looked up. The news channel had cut to a stand-up shot on Georgia Avenue, the dance studio in the background. Klieg lights blasted the scene, the shadows deep off to the side. The police chief and a cadre of others were standing at a bank of microphones. Sly pointed a remote at the television, bringing up the audio.

  “The search in this case is intensely focused in this neighborhood,” the chief was saying, “but it is national in scope. This is not a D.C. homicide investigation. This is a national security issue. The task force we are putting together, that is already acting, reflects that. There are federal agents from more than half a dozen agencies already at work on this, and they will continue to be until it is resolved.”

  Shouted questions, brief mayhem.

  “There are three men in the store we want to talk to, yes. Suspects,
I don’t know about that, but they are persons we are interested in talking to, obviously.”

  Sly snorted. “Them three.” The hand came up again with the remote, and the volume retreated to zero.

  Sully looked at the scene unfolding a few blocks away. The chief was still talking, taking questions.

  “Them three?” he said.

  “Hell yeah, them three. In the store.”

  “Who are they?”

  Sly did not take his eyes off the television, but his tone was amiable. “You don’t need to know everything.”

  “But you know.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “And they won’t be turning themselves in?”

  Sly looked over his glasses at him.

  “Do they need to?” Sully asked.

  “Carter. Nobody in this neighborhood is stupid enough to kill the first white girl to come through here since God was a baby.”

  “So it’s outsiders after the Honorable Judge Reese?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “This wasn’t a Sly Hastings operation?”

  “You really don’t want to come in somebody’s house and talk that kind of shit.”

  “So who should local law enforcement be looking for?”

  Sly looked at the television, then down at the crossword puzzle in front of him. He sipped his coffee. “I been thinking on that. I don’t know.”

  “That’s remarkable, Sly,” he said, slurping the beer. “I thought it was your job to know.”

  Sly tapped the pen on the paper. He did not look up. “I said I did not know. I did not say I will not know.”

  “Bets?”

  “The habit of fools and drunks. The wise man follows the evidence at hand.”

  Sully kicked off his shoes. “Police get to have evidence, Sly. I’m a step back, if not two. They’re going to be all over shit until they lock somebody up and, you know, they’re gonna come looking for you and an alibi.”

  “It had never dawned on me, helpful white man.”

  “I’m saying this is one of those incidents where you and I can work together. Mutual benefit and all.”

  “Maybe.”

  “So where might I find them three for a dramatic interview?”

  “Nowhere. It ain’t time yet. Me and Lionel, we only started looking into this. Them three need to stay incognito. I got investments tying me up just now.”

  “The apartments? I thought your sis was running them for you.”

  “Nikki is my half sis and she can’t do every goddamn thing. She been distracted, got the day job at D.C. Housing. We’re up to three buildings now, twenty-eight units, I tell you that? But that ain’t on my mind right now. What’s on my mind right now, you were supposed to have dinner with my girlfriend tonight. What’s she saying?”

  “About what?”

  “Me.”

  “About what I told you she would. That you’re an asshole who needs to be locked up, a menace, blah blah. Also, they took that Chucky thing personal.”

  “Chucky? Fucking Chucky? That’s where they’re at?” He paused a minute, looking at the television, and then laughed. “Good. I like that. That’s good.”

  “I got the idea he was a cooperating witness.”

  “He was.”

  “They know you’re in Park View but they don’t really know what you’re into.”

  “She didn’t sniff you out?”

  “I said I’m looking at writing about a motherfucker who’s got juice. She brought you up.”

  Sly dropped his pen on the newspaper, folding his arms and swiveling in his chair. “Well. That’s almost a compliment. That’s good. Who else did she mention, power-broker-wise?”

  “We were interrupted by the passing of Miss Reese. But I didn’t sense she had anybody else in mind. Well. Rayful Edmond. She gave me Rayful as a history case. She was trying to sell me on a story about you. I guess to see if maybe it’d make you jump.”

  “If that’s what they down to.”

  “I think they’re down to seeing who cut Sarah Reese’s throat. So—so come on. You wanted me to see if they had anything on you they’d spill, so I did. Now. If it ain’t them three, who out there has got a dick problem? A little-white-girl problem? Who works with a knife?”

  “You just said her throat got cut.”

  “I did.”

  “They ain’t saying that on the TV.”

  Sully smiled. “Tomorrow’s news today, amigo. You ain’t the only one who knows shit.”

  “Who said?”

  “You don’t need to know everything. So. Who works with a knife?”

  Sly got up and went to the refrigerator, stepping over Donnell, irritated now, his phrasing being tossed back at him. “You trying to get to the end of the game without going around the board. Something this bad, there’s going to be all sorts of shit that pops out in the next twenty-four to forty-eight and almost all of it is going to be nothing. It’s going to be all about them three. White girl dead, police looking for three scary black dudes. Well, they going the wrong motherfucking way. That’s what I know that nobody else does. That’s what’s going to open things up for me to look elsewhere.”

  “How come you sure it ain’t them?”

  Sly stepped back over Donnell coming out of the kitchen, pissed off now, maybe a little rattled.

  “Because I am. Because I fucking well am. You don’t trust me, go ahead with your cops. They don’t know shit. Her throat cut? So? They gave you a lollipop. That’s a what, not a who. But you do happen to be talking to the one person who is ahead on this. You know why I’m ahead? Because while the rest of the world is looking for them three in the store, I already talked to them. We had a conversation. Yeah. So I know that. I also know that somebody just started some shit on my turf without prior fucking approval, and that shit is not going to stand. I know that, too.”

  He paused, seeming to catch himself. He was three feet from the couch.

  “Now. I can’t just go shut this down. It’s too far above the waterline. What I need is for local law enforcement to take care of this, pronto. I don’t need a—a swarm of FBI and CIA and DEA paratroopers pounding the street out there for weeks on end, rattling brothers on warrants, on child support, on whatever. Some shit is going to pop out, they do that, and I ain’t in the shit-popping-out business. So I’ll ask around, keep you in the loop—yeah, alright, okay, I can use a story in the newspaper with the true facts in it, put a little heat on the feds to play straight. You, now, you’re going to let me know what you hear about them getting anywhere close to me.”

  They looked at each other, the place quiet. Sly knew far more about the killing of Sarah Reese than he was saying, Sully knew that. His was the best intel on the street, possibly better than any law enforcement agency had. But there was no way to know exactly what it was, who it helped or hurt, or how Sly would play it out. But there was the same lesson from the war zones he’d covered until he got blown up applied here: If you want to know what the bad guys were doing, stick to the guys with the guns. They know the shit.

  “Deal,” Sully said.

  “Good enough.” Sly clicked the remote and the television died. “You can go home now.”

  “I ain’t got the bike. Gimme me a ride?”

  Sly snorted. “You can walk up to Georgia and try to get a cab or you can flop out on the couch. You not calling somebody to get you here.”

  “I’ll flop.”

  Sly shook his head, heading for his bedroom at the back, still tense, still worked up. “I’d stay on the couch, I was you,” he said, flicking off the lights. “Donnell ain’t partial to drunks walking around in the dark.”

  Sully felt around on the back of the couch until he found a throw, laid back, and pulled it over him. He put one of the couch pillows under his throbbing knee and another under his head
, then fished his cell out of his pocket, the thing bulky and awkward. He punched in Dusty’s home number. It went straight to voice mail.

  “Look at the news,” he whispered. “I didn’t just cut out.”

  seven

  Breakfast was an important start to the day, so Sully had another Miller and scrambled eggs. Sly, sitting on a bar stool at the kitchen counter, skipped the eggs and was sipping coffee, reading the A section, open to an inside page. It was just after eight and it was misting rain. He had taken Donnell out for a morning walk and was dressed in a black tracksuit that zipped up the front with white piping down the sides and sleeves.

  “Says here Reese is a Republican,” Sly said.

  “From Texas.”

  “I got that he was one of those Southern crackers from the accent, the time I heard him in court.”

  “He’s an asshole but he’s not a cracker.”

  Sly did not look up. “Say that again.”

  “Texans aren’t crackers.”

  Sly grunted.

  Sully doused his eggs with hot sauce. “I done told you. Dipshits from Georgia, north Florida, the Carolinas, those are crackers. West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas? Hillbillies. Hicks from Mississippi, Alabama, and north Louisiana—and just up in that western part of Tennessee and just across the river in the Arkansas delta? Those are your rednecks. South Louisiana? Cajuns. Not even God can help you with them.”

  “Y’all all look the same to me.”

  “I can’t help you with your prejudices.”

  “Which ones are the poor white trash?”

  “The ones who’ll shoot your ass somewhere between you calling them ‘white’ and ‘trash.’”

  “Which one are you?”

  “The river is sort of neutral ground. Mostly we stayed on the Louisiana side.”

  “You got Creole to you?”

  “Not so much as I know.”

  “So what are Texans? You never said.”

  “Texans. They fucking think the sun rises in Beaumont and sets in El Paso.”