by Neely Tucker
“He’s with me,” Sly said.
T-Money looked at Sully, munching on some popcorn. “Does he talk?”
“When he’s pissed.”
“Hunh,” said T-Money.
“So what I was saying,” Sly said, “is that I understand. That’s what I came to tell you. Dee got to being a real asshole. So I got no problems with him getting capped, you hear? None.”
T-Money rolled his eyes back to Sly, the man high as a goddamn kite.
“We moving a little new product in from my skinny white Balkan brother over there,” Sly continued. “I’m working with Tony and Carlos on it. It’s all cool. But Dee, right? He started sampling product, couldn’t handle the shit. Somebody had let me know about it, I’d taken care of it myself.”
“Okay,” T-Money said.
“I was thinking Tony and Carlos was on top of things,” Sly said.
“Okay.”
“So, what I’m saying is, I came down here—was getting dinner right up there on the Hill?—to make sure you knew I wasn’t taking it as any disrespect or anything. You boys popping Dee. I got no beef. Full, straight-up respect.”
T-Money blinked. “The fuck you talking about?”
“Dee. Don’t be simple. Got popped two weeks ago in the Bend.”
“I heard that, Negro. I asked, why you think I canceled his ass?”
“Come on, T,” Sly smiling now, his manner easing, looking around the room, trying to draw a smile out of Curious, Sully, somebody. “Boy’s car got shot up coming out of Splash, like, the week before he got capped. That’s your turf—”
“Jordy, stick your hand up,” T-Money said. “See Jordy over there? He plugged the car. Dumb-ass Dee was moving product in the Mickey D’s, which is this side of the street. Jordy gave him a friendly little Gat to help him remember what’s what.”
The video on the television changed. Chicks at the beach on the screen and the sudden burst of illumination threw a wave of light across the room.
Sully kept his eyes on Sly and T-Money but took in the rest of the room: the men in the room all standing, save for Sly and T-Money, nobody leaning against a wall; limp curtains over the windows, catching the reflected light of the television. Sully risked a glance to his right at Curious George, who was staring at Sly but his fingers were working inside the pouch of his hoodie.
“Right, see, I’m with you,” Sly was saying, forearms on top of knees, fingers making a steeple. “And Dee, he didn’t get the hint, you know? So you had to cap him.” He shrugged, rolling his shoulders. “I get it, brother. Like I say, it’s none offa mine, asshole like that.”
“Maybe you don’t hear so good,” T-Money said, his knees not jiggling back and forth anymore. “But Ima say it slow this time. We. Did. Not. Cap. Dee. The. Motherfucking. End.”
Sly looked at him, his fingertips pressing together hard now. “You sure?” he said. “You, like, real sure, T? ’Cause if you didn’t cap Dee, then it’s a goddamn mystery. Then I got work. ’Cause I got to know who did.”
The big man rolled from the back of the couch, his girth flopping over the front of the basketball shorts. “I ain’t done shit,” he said, his eyes taking on the glare of resentment now. “I ain’t done shit, Sly. Believe that or go fuck yourself, walking up in my house like this. And you bringing product down here? To the Bend, Southwest? You best to remember where South Cap is, you hear?”
Sly, frozen in place now, like ice, like granite.
“Fuck myself?” he whispered back, lips peeling back to bare teeth. “Fuck me? I come down here, respecting your beef, and you say fuck me?”
Nobody moved, the room electric, ready to explode.
“I said we ain’t done shit,” T-Money said. “You heard it.”
Sly pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, resettling them. For a half beat, Sully thought he was going to pull them off and wipe them and that he was going to die in this crappy hellhole, headlines in the paper, “Twelve Dead in Gun Battle in SE Row House.”
But Sly only adjusted the glasses, then moved his hand from his face and pushed off the balls of his feet and stood up, rising to his full height, six feet and change, so that he lorded over T-Money and his fat ass on the couch.
When he spoke, it was a Miles Davis hiss, like the gates of hell had swung open and this was the sound of rust on the hinges. “I find out different, T-Money? Different in any way? I’m gonna start with your sister. You want me to say that slow?”
TWENTY-NINE
“THAT SEEMED TO go well.”
Lionel was driving deeper into Southeast, turning right, the Anacostia appearing off to the left, black and silvery. Between the road and the river there was a long row of crumbling buildings, one- or two-story warehouses with loading docks, sprawling junkyards, a cement mixing plant, all hulking in a grayish gloom behind ratty chain-link fences.
“I’d drop it, I was you,” Sly said.
“No, seriously. I’d say T-Money was open, receptive to new ideas—”
“Drop it, fuckface.”
“You still think he did it? Or do we cross the South Caps off the list?”
They had been back in the car for five minutes, maybe ten, after stalking out of the house, game faces on, Lionel peeling off in a fuck-you squeal. Nobody had said anything, the dim lights and broken neighborhood rolling by, until Sully looked at Curious looking out the window, then started fucking with Sly.
“That ain’t an easy question,” Sly said. “T bet his existence on convincing me he didn’t, I give him that. We don’t cross him off, we don’t clock him. He just stays in play.”
“So, what you’re saying is, we didn’t get a damn thing done.”
Sly harrumphed in the front seat, pushing his glasses back up on his nose, not deigning to turn and look at him. “We got his goddamned attention from off that TV set,” Sly said. “He knows we’re looking now. He knows some shit is ready to drop. We keep an eye on him the next few days, see what move they make. We did that.”
His face was impassive, a finger tapping the end of his nose. The eyes themselves looked straight ahead, not left or right.
The car went silent, Curious George looking out his window at the crappy landscape rolling by, turning back west now, crossing South Capitol, back into Southwest, back into the Hall brothers’ turf. The streets were dark, the same low-rent industrial eyesores, the long brick wall of Fort McNair, topped with razor wire. When the Jeep pulled to the curb at Fourth and P, at the top of the Bend, Curious George got out, wordless. The car didn’t move.
“Go on,” said Sly.
“I’m down at the marina,” Sully said.
Sly, still looking straight ahead, said, “You’n get there from here. I got shit to do. Curious’ll get you through the Bend. Ain’t nobody gonna fuck with you.”
This is bullshit, Sully thought, but he got out, hitch-stepping to catch up with Curious, the Jeep pulling off behind them, trailing a thin plume of exhaust.
They went down the gentle incline, beneath the trees, between the fort and the old apartment buildings, the channel down in front of them. The only illumination was dots of yellow light from within apartment windows, but there was sound. People murmuring or talking in the shadows, against the wall to the fort, the ravings of the high and the stoned, might be some sort of sexual thing over there to the left.
At the end of the park, as they made the waterfront, Curious stopped and snapped his head to the right. Materializing out of the gloom, a figure was coming down to them, a darker shadow moving in long, arrogant steps.
“The fuck you been at?” The figure moved closer, skullcap over his head, a leather jacket, and now Sully made out Short Stuff. It was addressed to Curious, but now he was looking back at Sully, his eyes opening wider.
“And this—this motherfucker here? You been somewhere with this motherfucker?”
&nb
sp; Curious George glanced at Sully like he had forgotten he was there, then ticked his head back at Short Stuff. “He was up there at the top of the Bend. He started walking down here behind me, asking questions. I said whatever, man, it ain’t none of mine.”
“Ain’t none of—this fool done been told. Carlos looking for you, you know that? You ain’t nowhere, you not picking up your pager, and you show up with this bitch? No, motherfucker, no, this shit right here ain’t right.”
Curious kept his chin up, meeting the glare, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, sounding resentful. “I’n get a piece when I want. Little shorty up there off Prospect? Her momma wasn’t home? She hit me on the pager. I ain’t got to tell Carlos every time I get me a piece.”
“Yeah? Frankenstein here? He waxin’ that ass, too?”
“I done told you, he was up there at the head of the Bend. He ain’t none of mine.”
Short Stuff turned to Sully, the pistol coming out and up, and he shook his head, like a bull shark closing in on fresh meat. “You one dumb motherfucker. Get down there by the water. Get. Move.”
Sully flicked his eyes at Curious but couldn’t make out his face.
“What I’m gonna do,” Sully said, looking Short Stuff in the eye, “is go where I been going, which is to my bike, which is at the Gangplank. I’s up there at the O Street clubs, talking to them people over there about Billy Ellison and his coke, now I’m on the way back.”
“Bullshit,” said Short Stuff.
“I don’t got a beef with you,” Sully said, “but that’s the way it went. Now I’m just on the way out.”
He started walking, cutting in between Curious and Shorty, heading for the walkway that ran along the channel, up to the Spirit of Washington, the tour boat, and then the parking lot for the Gangplank. He needed ten steps, could be twelve, and it would be over. Shorty would yell at him, curse him, but he wasn’t going to follow him.
But his third step put him between Short Stuff and the waterfront. Short Stuff stepped forward, bringing his hands up, and he shoved Sully at the shoulder, knocking him off balance, his bad leg not absorbing the load. He stumbled sideways, hands going down to the ground, trying to stay on his feet, staggering out onto the knob of the Bend.
“Can’t even believe this motherfucker,” Short Stuff said, shoving him again. The second blow sent him tumbling, his left shoulder crashing into the ground. He took the fall and rolled twice, the world spinning, the sound of the water close now, him getting back to his feet, the left foot finding purchase first, the right one stabbing the ground behind him for balance. It missed and he went down again. Short Stuff kicked him just below the ribs, an explosion in his gut, knocking him farther out to the water.
“He ain’t worth it,” Curious said, hunching his shoulders, watching, ambling forward. “Man, I ain’t even in the mood for—”
“You shut the fuck up,” Shorty hissed back. Sully rolled twice and made his feet, just in time for Short Stuff to walk right up on him. He shoved the gun to the back of Sully’s head, poking him with it, Sully feeling it as a hard point of metal at the base of his skull. There was another shove in the back, moving him the last few feet to the edge of the rocks at the waterfront.
“You in deep enough,” Short Stuff spit out at Curious. “Carlos finds out you been tapping ass instead of out here working? Shit. I spend twenty motherfucking minutes walking back and forth out here, hitting your damn pager, and now this bitch shows up. I guess he think we playing. I guess, what, motherfucker, you thought that beatdown at the track was as bad as it gets?”
He pushed Sully in the back again, sending him stumbling, taking three steps out on the rocks, the water splashing up around his shoes now. They were going to shoot him and dump him, that’s what it was, he was going to be swimming in the channel, this is how it had gone with Billy Ellison, this right here, and the thought flickered darkly through his mind, You wanted to know who killed him and now you know.
There was the possibility, Sully thought, looking at the black water, the quarter-mile expanse over to Hains Point, that he could take five or six running steps and be in the water and dive and he’d swim.
The channel wasn’t shit next to the Big River and his mind flashed to his old man, half-drunk but not mean, he’d never been mean a day in his life, making him swim the breadth of the river, right beside him in their johnboat, saying, Swimming pools are for girls, a man come off a boat out here in the river currents branches cottonmouths nah they ain’t no lifeguards out here this the only water you going to drown in boy this the water you got to swim in to live out here boy come on now we ain’t but two hunnert yards out hell if it’s nasty then stop swallowing it, but he didn’t think he’d ever make it three steps. He’d take two steps and the first shot would knock him down and the second one, Shorty would just walk up and put that one in his head.
This place, the Bend, it had been claiming bodies for more than a century and a half and it was going to claim his. The slaves, he thought, his mind ricocheting, they stood right here and got pushed onto boats headed down to the Carolinas or Georgia or Florida or on around Key West and back up to Mobile or Gulfport or New Orleans. Billy Ellison, he’d died right here, Dee had died right over there, so what difference did one more make?
He turned, his tongue dry and leatherlike and stuck to the roof of his mouth, time running out. He focused on making two moves at once. Drop down from the knees and lunge forward, hit Shorty low, get under the gun when it went off, and then go for his neck, his eyes, his balls.
There was enough light to see Short Stuff looking at him, the gun up at Sully’s head, his features set in stone. Curious was five or six feet to the right, still ambling forward, lazily coming down to get a good look at the show.
“Hey, dog?” Curious George said.
Short Stuff moved his head a tic to the left, as if listening, and Curious brought his gun up and out of the hoodie and it exploded in a flash of orange and yellow light and he shot Short Stuff in the side of the head.
The man’s gun went flying and he dropped like a freight train falling off a bridge. He went facedown. His foot quivered for a minute but then he was still.
The sound of the shot was a pop pop pop that skittered across the water like a flat rock tossed from shore. And then both light and echo were gone, darkness falling again as if nothing had happened. Curious put the gun back in the pouch of his hoodie and walked over, stooping down beside the body. He extended the sleeve of the sweatshirt over his hand and then nudged the shoulder with it. Then he turned the exploded head back toward him. He inspected the open skull cavity.
Sully, looking down, then up over the expanse of the park, expecting sirens, flashlights, running cops. There was nothing, just a light breeze coming in off the water. At the far end of the Bend, way back up toward Fourth, where they had entered the park, he could see three, now four figures moving hurriedly but something was wrong with them and he blinked and realized they were running away from the sound of the blast, not toward it.
“What—” he started to say, but Curious was saying something.
“You see where that gun went?” He didn’t stop looking at the head. “His piece? You see it?”
Sully walked forward, his feet on the rocks, the water lapping at his toes. He bent down and looked in the water, over the rocks. And there it was, barrel down, wedged between a stone the size of a watermelon and a shattered bit of concrete block.
“Right there,” he said, pointing.
Curious looked in that direction, then went back to the head, blood still oozing. “Hand it to me?”
Sully put his hand inside his shirtsleeve and leaned over, stretching the fabric, but picking up the piece only with the cloth touching the metal. It was lighter than he expected, and he stood back up and handed it to Curious, who, still kneeling beside the dead body, took it and put it in the pouch of his hoodie wi
th the other one.
“Brains,” he said, looking at Short Stuff. “You figure, you know, they’d look like something. But they just scrambled eggs, every time.” He sounded disappointed and then he stood up. He kept his hands inside the sleeves of his sweatshirt and then kneeled back down and pushed the body over the rocks and into the water, giving it one more shove but being careful to stay on the rocks. The body moved out a foot or two but stuck there.
“Fuck it,” he said. He took off his Timberlands and stepped into the water in his socks and then pushed the body hard, until it was floating.
Then he came back, his jeans wet halfway to the knee, and put on his shoes. They watched the body for a minute, facedown, slumped in the black water.
Sully turned to look at him. “What did—” but Curious was blinking, the lids going up and down rapid-fire, and he starting talking over him, cutting him off.
“Fucker forgot to look sideways,” he said, watching the body, now ten feet out. “Sly said you was to get through the park okay.”
He hit another blinking spell and it seemed to break his concentration. He turned to Sully and looked surprised to see him there, to see anyone at all, and he started walking back up the Bend, back toward the streets. There was a siren in the distance.
“I’s you,” he said, “I’d be getting my ass somewhere else.”
THIRTY
THE THING WAS you couldn’t run. You. Could. Not. Run. You want people to remember you? Start running after a gun goes off. Then they see you. Yeah, officer, this guy, he had this limp and he was hobbling down by the water, fast as he could gimp it. . . .
So he started walking right back up the Bend, no rush but not fucking around, either. Curious George was ahead of him, heading off toward the right, to come out at the top of the park right by the wall at Fort McNair. Sully could see his profile every now and then against the streetlights from way up on Fourth.
His breath was ragged and his ribs hurt but it was getting less with each step. When he got off the knob of the Bend, he broke off to the left, away from Curious, heading for the walkway along the waterfront. That would take him back up to the Gangplank and the bike. As soon as he got there, he’d be home free. Just another schmuck walking off dinner, for all anybody knew, another boat owner, a party guest, a bar patron.