by Neely Tucker
Sully had not attended a church service since.
A woman stepped onto the altar, Sully tilting his head to see her, tall and thin, black dress falling from her shoulders. The organ came in softly. And now she looked out over the assembled and opened her mouth and her voice began on the lower reaches, rolling out over them like the tide, like something unleashed more than performed.
“Ave Maria” rumbled all the way to the back, effortless, the held and released notes. And then she took a breath and moved into the higher registers, something hard to believe could emerge from a single human being, a thing that caught him below the ribs and made him hold his breath, a mezzo-soprano voice as pure as sunlight, as rich as mahogany. Now it soared into the vast reaches of the cathedral, high above them, unseen and untouchable, a thing that curled around and caressed them all. He felt something stir inside him, something lost and forgotten.
Twelve inches from his right ear, a clean-shaven white man with bull shoulders and a tiny microphone in his ear settled his left hand on Sully’s shoulder, whispering: “Sir? I’m going to need you to get up and come with me.”
• • •
They were outside, the bull-shouldered man behind him, two others flanking him now. There was a man in front of them all, pulling off his sunglasses, his double-breasted suit impeccable.
“Mr. Carter,” he said, flat, toneless. It was unsettling, the difference between the operatic range inside and this nasal pecking sound, this ex–federal agent, this goon hired by Shellie Stevens to find the killers of Billy Ellison and, in their spare time, shut Sully up.
“Yeah,” Sully said, “what’s the rumpus?”
“This is a restraining order,” the man said, holding out a folded sheet of paper. “It is signed by D.C. Superior Court Judge Michael G. Canon. It orders you not to come within two hundred yards of Delores Ellison, her home, or office, until such a time as the court orders otherwise. You were told by Mrs. Ellison’s legal representative not to approach her again, and yet you have come to her son’s funeral service. The court instructs you to desist at once or face arrest and prosecution.”
“Up to and including the full extent of the law,” Sully said, leaning off his bad leg. “You forgot that part.”
The man reached out, took Sully’s hand—he was bracketed by the suits on three sides—and slapped the folded papers into his palm, then took his fingers and closed them over it.
“You have been served,” he said.
Sully took the paper, unfolded it, looked at the seal, the date, and looked off to his left. Somewhere, people thought this was a lovely spring day.
He wadded the paper into a ball and tossed it, lightly, back in the man’s face, bouncing it off his nose.
“And so have you, pumpkin,” he said.
He took the shove in the back and stumbled, nearly falling, out into the driveway, thumping into the side of one of the Lincolns, catching his chin on the glass, opening a stinging ribbon of blood.
They watched him walk off, none of them moving. Limping out to the street, he saw a familiar form push off a tree, where she had been leaning, long lens dangling from her neck.
“Lemme guess,” Alexis said, approaching. “Those are some more guys you pissed off.”
“I didn’t do shit.”
“Are you actually bleeding?”
“We’re going to kick these guys in the ass.”
“Which guys?” she said, trying to suppress a laugh. “This isn’t even from last night,” she said, sounding amazed, dabbing the cut on his chin with a finger.
“I got me a list,” he said, pulling his chin back, “and it just keeps getting longer every goddamned day.”
TWENTY
SOMEWHERE OUT THERE in this great country of ours, Sully figured, there were writers who labored from a place of love, some deep passion stirring them to heights of literature.
He himself wrote from a sense of fury, tapping into this well unconsciously in the very first newspaper story he’d ever written, a freelance feature piece for the Times-Picayune, a thing about oil well pollution in the Atchafalaya Basin, reported from the boats and tugs and shrimpers that had been his father’s world.
These many years later, half the world’s war zones in his rearview mirror, he sat at his desk in an office in a violent city, his back purple, his leg aching, and a narrow dab of dried blood on his chin, writing from the same pit of emotion.
Slouching in his chair, he slapped at the keyboard, the Bend looming as the backdrop, as the scenery for the city’s waterside tableau to unfold. Lanky Dreads and Short Stuff and killers like them came onstage, bumping shoulders with the vibrant gay scene along O Street, coke on tables in dimly lit booths, baggies in the shadows of the Bend.
Billy Ellison, the bright and engaging son of D.C. society, had a brilliant future in front of him—Georgetown Law, wealth, personal and professional connections in the nation’s capital, a seat at the White House on social occasions. The 21-year-old was popular at college, drove a stylish Mercedes convertible, and excelled at his studies. It was the stuff of the American dream writ large for the latest generation of one of Washington’s most storied families.
So when he turned up dead in the Washington Channel last week, shot once in the head at point-blank range, it was as shocking as the apparent place of his killing—Frenchman’s Bend, the packed-dirt and weed-choked knob of land and open-air drug market that juts into the channel along the Southwest Waterfront. Police records show the former slave pen is the deadliest spot in the city, the murder capital of the nation’s murder capital, a place where drugs and homicide are as common as rainfall, and sometimes more so.
The manila folders on the desk beside him furnished names, numbers, statistics. He cold-called relatives of other young men who had been killed in the Bend, not getting anything from most but adding the names and their short lives to the narrative, likely the last times those names would ever be mentioned in a public document. His murder map gave him context and vision and geography, a spatial relationship of homicide relative to the population, and he looked at it from time to time to confirm his vision.
Jeff Weaver, the detective, was not answering his cell, so Sully called John Parker and kept calling him until he found him at home, and with him he verified details of Ellison’s slaying, of what he could and could not say in print. He got on the record that the Bend was the focus of the investigation, that police had “little doubt” Ellison had been shot there, given the blood and the shoe, and Parker gave him permission to attribute all that information to him, not to “a source familiar with the investigation.”
His notes—his hand-scrawled details and factoids, the life-sustaining capillaries of any story—gave him the details of Billy’s relationship with Elliot. He called Elliot back to confirm details and the kid was spunky, telling him to put it on the record that he was Billy’s “partner” in an act of spite toward Delores Ellison, who, further confirmed, had lambasted her son for his sexual orientation.
This admission was key, as it elevated Billy’s relationship preferences from anonymous speculation to attributed statement. Buttressed by the information from Kenneth, the bouncer from the bar, the information was solid, unimpeachable, and relevant because it put Billy in the neighborhood that eventually claimed him.
Ellison was a corner-table regular at Storm, an O Street SW bar that caters to a mostly gay clientele, according to an employee who declined to give his name, fearing he would be fired for speaking with a reporter. “He was one of the fixtures of the club,” the employee said, “particularly on weekend nights. It’s not just that we recognized him. We even recognized his car.”
The fax from Stevens he dutifully quoted: stellar high school performance, college success. Phone crooked into his shoulder, he called Georgetown’s American Studies program and got lucky, the director of the program taking the call, saying what a great young man Billy was and
so on, the man apparently oblivious of what Sully had on the screen in front of him. Sully kept the material about Billy’s mental instability out of it, just as his mother had asked.
He worked the phones into the evening, went home, slept, came back, and took it up again the next day.
The 19th-century family patriarch, Nathaniel Ellison, made a fortune in banking, and his financial prowess extended down the generations. His son, Lambert, followed his father into the bank as manager, as did his son, Lambert II, until it was consumed in a merger with the National Bank in 1965, under the management of Lambert III. Delores Ellison, his only child, now works as a strategist at the law firm of Sheldon Stevens, one of the most influential and seldom-seen power brokers in Washington. A long-established force in political operations, Stevens . . .
And then, the coup de grâce, his favorite part of the story:
Stevens, acting as family spokesman, declined comment for this story. Instead, he sent a two-page fax listing Billy Ellison’s achievements. When a reporter from this newspaper attended Ellison’s public funeral at the Washington National Cathedral, private investigators escorted the reporter from the service and served him with a restraining order in the parking lot. They then shoved him into the side of the hearse.
“Pucker up, Shellie,” he said under his breath to the screen.
• • •
By that night, Friday, the five-thousand-word draft had made the round of editors, lawyers, and executives. Eddie Winters convened a meeting in his glass-walled office after the Saturday first edition had closed, but the suburban edition was still a couple of hours away.
“So the gay stuff—it’s relevant? We’re sure?” Winters was saying from behind his desk, the usual big-story crew assembled. Anytime you had the center-front Sunday lede on 1-A, you were going to get this kind of grilling, and you wanted it. You wanted everybody poking holes in your copy before it ran, not after.
Melissa Baird, the metro chief, energetic, sitting on the near side of the desk, skeptical as always but listening; Lewis Beale, the attorney, sitting slightly behind Sully, off to the right, also head down, reading, underlining, circling; Sully and R.J. directly across from Eddie.
“Yes,” Sully said. “The club, Storm, was a key transaction point. Billy was selling or scoring there or both. It’s seven, maybe eight, blocks from the Bend. It puts him in the area in which police say he was killed, with a motive for being there. And we have multiple sources.”
“Give me the background,” Eddie said. “This is a kid from a politically connected family, with no record, and we’re outing him. Plus we’re saying he’s a drug user and maybe a low-level dealer—
“There’s some exposure here,” cut in Lewis, the attorney. “We really want to be—”
“—careful,” Melissa cut in.
“I didn’t think you could libel the dead,” Sully said. “I don’t see that much exposure at all.”
“Sources, please,” Melissa said.
Sully gave it up. The family, first and foremost, on the drugs angle. Elliot, firsthand and on the record, on the gay thing. John Parker, firsthand and on the record, on where he was found. Tony Hall, firsthand and (this would be a surprise to him) on the record about Billy appearing in the Bend, complete with the homophobic slur. Kenneth, the bouncer, firsthand but off record. And another drug dealer, just as background, but off the record. This was Sly, and Sully did not want them to ask but of course they did.
“The street source—who’s that?” Eddie aid.
“A guy who knows. Who knew Billy Ellison by name as a user down there. We’re not quoting him or attributing any information to him. It’s just one more confirmation.”
“And what’s his name?”
“Can’t say. It’s our agreement.”
Eddie looked up at him, assessing.
“Why on earth would a dealer confess to you that he was selling drugs to or through a murder victim?”
“I wouldn’t call it a confession.”
“Tell, then. Why would he tell you?”
“Because, Eddie. Because this source tells me lots of stuff and the deal is, it never comes back to him, and officially I never spoke to him. Because this is what I do.”
Eddie looked at him.
“You paid me to deal with warlords and psychopaths and mujahideen and Serbian and South African thugs abroad, and hey, I came home and found a few warlords here. I’m not quoting this dude. I’m not calling Billy Ellison a cokehead because he said so. Our main sources—that’s two guys on MPD, the lead detective and the head of homicide. Another is the dead man’s significant other, who also testifies to the fact on the record. Further, I backstopped this through the street, which led me to this guy, who is, in my experience, reliable. You want to throw him out as a source, great. We still have two sources on MPD, the boyfriend, and the head of the M Street Crew referring to Billy as a ‘faggot.’ It’s zipped up tight.”
“The family denies the gay angle,” said Melissa. “Vehemently.”
“Thank Shellie Stevens. You know he’s called the White House on this? The fucking West Wing? The point is we’re on solid ground. If you don’t like it, don’t print it. But what—just think—what are the odds that when I show up and ask, two cops, two drug dealers, and the bouncer in a gay bar all decide to say Billy Ellison was gay, all independent of one another? When, in fact, young master Billy was in the campus library the whole time?”
Silence reigned.
“Lewis?” This was Eddie, looking up now.
The lawyer squirmed in his seat, moving his bulk around. “The sexual orientation, as long as we don’t put it up high, don’t focus on it, doesn’t worry me. It’s not an inherent insult. It’s not actionable on its own. But, looking down in the piece, do we need the scene where Sully gets served with the restraining order and shoved into the car? On the invasion of privacy issue. It was a family funeral.”
“There weren’t invitations,” Sully said. “As stated, it was an open event, given wide public notice. I respectfully sat in the back pew and was pulled out.”
Melissa uncrossed her legs, Melissa-speak for Listen to me. “But, I mean, what led to that?” she said. “Didn’t Stevens tell you they’d hit you with that? And you went to her house anyway, then to the funeral?”
“Yes. Sure.” The room was stale with recycled air, the window looking over a two-story parking garage, the upper deck open-air, half-empty now. “I went back to Delores Ellison after Stevens shut me down—but before the restraining order—and told her I would leave if she wanted me to, but that I had a couple of questions. She invited me in and answered them.”
“But hadn’t Stevens warned you about a restraining order?” This was Melissa again. The tone not accusatory, not just yet.
“People threaten all sorts of things.”
She flared a half smile. “Stevens wasn’t bluffing.”
“Bully for him.”
“This doesn’t look good. A judge has got to have some grounds to grant—”
“I really don’t think,” Sully said, “a superior court judge is much of a pull for Shellie Stevens.”
She sighed, looking like she had to pee, and flicked a glance at Eddie and said, “I’d feel better if we cut that scene. It’s the only part where the reporter is inserted into the story.”
Sully bit his lip, waiting for R.J. to take the bait.
Eddie looked from Melissa to him, then to R.J. Then back to him.
“Entirely relevant,” Sully said. “Shows hostility, willingness to use legal and physical force, shows family desire to shut down unflattering information.”
“Cut it,” said Eddie, the sound of his pen scratching across the page loud, like a knife through muslin. “Delores lost her son. Give her some space.”
Sully looked up. “Delores? We’re on a first-name basis?”
Eddie looked back at him. “You’re sitting here saying ‘Billy’ this and ‘Billy’ that, like you guys played racquetball three times a week. So, yes, ‘Delores.’ I’ve seen her at social functions, as has everybody else in town. You knew they didn’t want you at the funeral, you went anyway—I’m not saying, as your editor, that you were wrong—and they kicked you out. Fair play, you ask me. I’m guessing there were words exchanged if they shoved you into the hearse. So, internally, privately, that’s par for the course. Externally, no, we don’t need to tell readers.”
He looked around the room. People studied their printouts of the story, kept their heads down, letting the two of them have it out. “Then let’s kick it over to the copy desk and let them get at it tonight and all day tomorrow. Sully, stay close for edits and questions.”
“We have gotten,” R.J. said carefully, “several television requests for interviews with Sully on Sunday morning, once it’s run. Apparently our PR department has been active in this regard. How should we respond?”
Eddie looked at R.J. at Sully, leaning back in his chair. “Want to?” This, directed at Sully.
He shrugged. “Why not? We don’t have anything to hide.”
Eddie nodded, looked over the sheaf of papers again, and then stood up, declaring an end to the conversation without saying anything. He leaned over the desk, reaching out for Sully’s hand, making eye contact, looking hard, looking sincere, looking, for everything he was worth, like a no-shit newspaper editor sitting on a story that was about to blow up.
“Fabulous work,” he said, gripping Sully’s hand, hard. The murder capital of the murder capital. Frenchman’s Bend. Have you seen Alexis’s art? Stunning.”
TWENTY-ONE
HE WOKE UP Saturday morning in a room he did not recognize.
It was daylight outside but dark behind the drawn curtains—he could tell that much with one eye open. The other eye was closed against the mattress, the air floating over his skin turning his shoulders to gooseflesh. The sheet on which he lay was ironed, soft, and tucked in at the corner. Hotel, had to be. Raising his head, he looked to the other side and there was no one in bed with him.