The Night Gardener

by George Pelecanos

  “Looks like they finally gonna make somethin out the Howard,” said Gaskins.

  “Gonna do it like they did the Tivoli,” said Brock. “They tryin to fuck this whole town up, you ask me.”

  They drove out of LeDroit, into Northeast and down into Ivy City off of New York Avenue. For many years this had been one of the grimmest sections of town, off the commuter path of most residents and so ignored and forgotten, a knot of small streets holding warehouses, dilapidated row houses, and brick apartments with plywood doors and windows. It was the longtime home of prostitutes, pipeheads, heroin addicts, dealers, and down-and-out families. Ivy City was nearly framed by Gallaudet University and Mount Olivet Cemetery, with an opening into the neighborhood of Trinidad, once known as the home base of the city’s most famous drug lord, Rayful Edmond.

  Now properties were being purchased and refurbished all over town, in places that doubters had said would never come back: Far Northeast and Southeast, Petworth and Park View, LeDroit, and the waterfront area around South Capitol, where ground was set to break on the new baseball stadium. Even here in Ivy City, For Sale and Sold signs could be seen on seemingly undesirable properties. Apartment buildings that had been shells for squatters, shooters, and rats were being gutted and turned into condos. Houses were bought and flipped six months later. Workers had begun to remove the rotting wood, put glass in the window frames, and brush on fresh coats of paint. Roofers hauled shingles and tar buckets up ladders, and real estate agents stood on the sidewalks, nervously aware of their surroundings as they talked on their cells.

  “They gonna fix up this shithole, too?” said Gaskins.

  “Like puttin a Band-Aid on a bullet hole, you ask me,” said Brock.

  “Where those boys at?” said Gaskins.

  “They always around that corner up there,” said Brock. He drove slowly down Gallaudet Street, passing a row of boxy brick apartment structures opposite a shuttered elementary school.

  Brock curbed the SS and cut its engine.

  “There go that boy Charles,” said Brock, chinning in the direction of a thirteen-year-old who wore calf-length shorts, a blue-and-white-striped polo shirt, and blue-and-white Nikes. “Think he slick, too. Duckin my ass.”

  “He just a kid.”

  “They all just kids. But they gonna grow tall soon enough. Punk ’em now, and they won’t have the mind to rise up later on.”

  “We don’t need to be hurtin no kids, cousin.”

  “Why not?”

  Brock and Gaskins got out of the car and walked down a weedy sidewalk veined with cracks. Residents sitting on the steps outside their apartments and in folding chairs on lawns of dirt watched them as they approached a group of boys gathered at the intersection of Gallaudet and Fenwick streets. They were corner boys, standing on the spot where they stood on the days when they were not in school, and much of every night.

  At the sight of Brock striding toward them, rangy and muscled beneath his red rayon shirt, they turned and ran. The boys moved with more immediacy than they would have had they been pulled up by police. They knew who Brock and Gaskins were and they knew what they were there for and what they would do to get it.

  Two of the boys did not run because they realized that running would be futile. The older of the two was named Charles and the younger one was his friend James. Charles led a loosely formed group of teenagers and preteens who sold marijuana exclusively on that particular stretch of Gallaudet. They had started out selling it for fun and because they wanted to be gangsters, but now they found themselves with a growing business. They bought from a supplier in the Trinidad area who had his own retailers, some of whom quietly worked Ivy City, but the supplier did not begrudge them having a corner, as they turned his product and paid as they moved the inventory. Charles’s people sold dimes in small plastic bags with tops that sealed.

  Charles tried to keep his posture as Brock and Gaskins came up on him. Though James held his ground, he did not look into the eyes of Romeo Brock.

  Brock had a foot of height on Charles. He got close in and looked down on the boy. Conrad Gaskins turned his back on them, crossed his arms, and eye-fucked the residents who were watching the scene from across the street.

  “Damn, Charles,” said Brock. “You look like you surprised to see me.”

  “I knew you’d come.”

  “So why you look surprised?” Brock gave him his bright and menacing smile. His features were sharp and angular, accentuated by a precisely groomed Vandyke. His ears were pointed. He liked to wear the color red. He looked like a tall devil.

  “I was there,” said Charles. “I was where you said.”

  “No, you weren’t.”

  “You said meet me at the corner of Okie and Fenwick at nine o’clock. I was there.”

  “I ain’t say no motherfuckin Okie. I said Gallaudet and Fenwick, where we at right now. Made it real simple on your little ass, so you wouldn’t get confused.”

  “You said Okie.”

  Brock’s right hand flew up and slapped Charles hard across the face. Charles was knocked back a step, and his eyes rolled some as he took the strike. Tears welled in his eyes, and his closed lips went out like a muzzle. Far as stripping a boy of his pride, Brock knew that the open hand was more powerful than the closed fist.

  “Where was we gonna meet?” said Brock.

  “I…” Charles struggled to speak but could not.

  “Aw, you fixin to cry?”

  Charles shook his head.

  “Are you a girl or a man?”

  “I’m a man.”

  “ ‘I’m a man,’ ” repeated Brock. “Well, if you are, you a poor excuse for one.”

  A tear rolled down Charles’s cheek. Brock laughed.

  “Get the money and let’s get gone,” said Gaskins, his back still turned.

  “I’m gonna ask you again,” said Brock. “Where was we supposed to meet, Charles?”

  “Right here.”

  “Good. And why you ain’t post?”

  “ ’Cause I ain’t had no money,” said Charles.

  “You still in business, right?”

  “I just now bought my stash. I’m fixin to have some money soon.”

  “Oh, you gonna have some soon.”

  “Uh-huh. Soon as I move my stash.”

  “What’s that lump in your pocket, then? And don’t even try and tell me it’s your manhood, ’cause we already established that you ain’t got none.”

  “Leave him alone,” said James.

  Brock turned his attention to the smaller of the two boys, who couldn’t have been more than twelve. He had braids under an NY cap turned sideways.

  “You say somethin?” said Brock.

  James raised his chin and for the first time looked Brock in the eye. His fists were balled as he spoke. “I said, leave my boy alone.”

  Brock’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “Look at you. Hey, Conrad, this boy here showin some heart.”

  “I heard him,” said Gaskins. “Let’s go.”

  “I’m here now,” said Charles desperately. “I wasn’t runnin. I been waitin on you to show all day.”

  “But you shouldn’t have lied. Now I’m ’a have to give you your medicine.”

  “Please,” said Charles.

  “Beggin-ass bitch.”

  Brock grabbed hold of the right pocket on Charles’s low-riding jean shorts and pulled down on it so violently that the boy fell to the sidewalk. The jeans ripped open at the side, exposing the inner pocket. Brock tore the pocket clean away and turned it inside out. He found cash and some dime bags of marijuana. He tossed the marijuana to the ground and counted the money. He frowned but slipped the money into his own pocket.

  “One more thing,” said Brock.

  Brock kicked Charles in the ribs. He kicked him again, his teeth bared, and Charles rolled over on his side as bile poured from his open mouth. James looked away.

  Gaskins pulled on Brock’s arm and moved between him and Charles. They stared at
each other until the fire went out of Brock’s eyes.

  “Y’all coulda made this easy,” said Brock, stepping back and shaking his head. “I was willin to share. I was only lookin to take half. But you had to fuck up and lie. And now you prob’ly thinking, We gonna get this motherfucker. We gonna come back on him, or we gonna find someone who can, and get righteous on his ass.” Brock straightened his shirt. “But you know what? You never will. Y’all ain’t man enough to fuck with me. And you don’t have anyone to protect you. If you knew someone bad enough to do it, they dead or in jail. If you had someone in your life who gave a fuck about you to begin with, you wouldn’t be out here on this corner. So what do you have? Your little-ass, no-ass selves.”

  The boy on the ground said nothing and neither did his friend.

  “What’s my name?”

  “Romeo,” said Charles, his eyes closed in pain.

  “We’ll be comin ’round again.”

  Brock and Gaskins walked back to the Impala SS. None of the residents or onlookers had made a move to help the boys, and now they averted their eyes. None, Brock knew, would talk to the police. But he wasn’t satisfied. It was too easy, and not worth the effort for a man of his reputation. It hadn’t been a challenge, and the payoff was shit.

  “How much we get?” said Gaskins.

  “Buck forty.”

  “Hardly seem worth it.”

  “Don’t worry. We gonna step it up from here.”

  “It’s lookin to me that all we doin is roughin kids and shit. I’m askin where we goin with this, cuz. What’s this about?”

  “Money and respect,” said Brock.

  They got into the car.

  “We’ll head back to Northwest,” said Brock. “Got a couple more appointments we need to keep.”

  “Not me,” said Gaskins. “I got to be up before the sunrise. ’Less you sayin you need me.”

  “I’ll drop you off at the house,” said Brock. “I can handle the rest myself.”

  Brock made a call on his cell, ignitioned the SS, and drove off.

  Soon after he and Gaskins left the neighborhood, a police cruiser came slowly down Gallaudet. Its driver, a white man in uniform, looked at the residents in front of the apartments and at the boy on the corner who was helping another boy, holding his side, to his feet. The uniformed officer gave the cruiser gas and continued on his way.

  SIX

  HOW IS IT?” said Detective Bo Green, back in the box.

  “Taste good,” said William Tyree, placing the can of soda on the table.

  “Cold enough for you?”

  “It’s good.”

  In the darkness of the video room, Anthony Antonelli grunted in disgust. “Fucknuts thinks he’s in a restaurant.”

  “Bo’s just making him comfortable,” said Ramone.

  Green shifted his weight in his chair. “You feel all right, William?”

  “Not so bad.”

  “You still high?”

  “I been high for a day.” Tyree shook his head in self-disgust.

  “When did you get first get high yesterday?”

  “Before I got on the bus.”

  “You took the bus to…”

  “Jackie’s.”

  “How much crack had you smoked? You remember?”

  “I don’t know. But it musta hit me good. I was upset to begin with. The rock made me feel, you know, fierce inside.”

  “What were you upset about, William?”

  “Every goddamn thing. I got laid off from my job a year ago. I was a driver for a linen service, you know, one of those companies that deliver uniforms, tablecloths to restaurants, and stuff. I been havin trouble finding a job since I lost that one. It’s hard out there.”

  “I know it is.”

  “It damn sure is. And then, to lose my wife and kids on top of that. I mean, I’m an honest man, Detective. I ain’t never been in trouble in my life.”

  “I know your family. You come from good people.”

  “I never even messed with no drugs before my luck turned bad. A little marijuana, maybe.”

  “That ain’t no thing.”

  “And then my wife goes and takes up with a low-ass criminal. Man sleepin in my bed, telling my kids what to say and do… telling them to shut their mouths and show respect. To him.”

  “It bothered you.”

  “Shit. Wouldn’t it bother you?”

  “It would,” said Green, giving him that. “So you smoked some crack yesterday and you went to see your ex-wife.”

  “She was still my wife. We ain’t had no divorce proceedings yet.”

  “My mistake. I got some bad information.”

  “We were still married. And I was just… I was angry, Detective. I’m sayin my head was on fire when I left out the house.”

  “Did you take anything with you when you left?”

  Tyree nodded. “A knife. You know, that knife I told you about.”

  “The one you put in the Safeway bag.”

  “Uh-huh. I snatched it up off the counter before I tipped out.”

  “You carried it on the Metrobus.”

  “It was inside my shirt.”

  “And then you walked up Cedar Street with the knife in your shirt and you went to your wife’s apartment.” When Tyree nodded again, Green said, “You knocked on the door, right? Or did you have a key?”

  “I knocked. She asked who it was, and I told her it was me. She said she was busy and couldn’t see me right then, and asked me to go away. I said I just wanted to talk to her for a minute, and she opened the door. I went inside.”

  “Did you say anything else to her when you went inside?”

  In the video room, Antonelli said, “No, I just fucking murdered her ass.”

  “What did you do when you went inside, William?” said Green.

  “She was unloading groceries and stuff. I followed her over to where the groceries were at, by the eating table.”

  “And what did you do when you got there?”

  Ramone leaned forward.

  “I don’t remember,” said Tyree.

  Rhonda Willis entered the video room. To Ramone she said, “Gene found the Safeway bag in the Dumpster. The clothes and the knife are inside it.”

  Ramone did not feel elation of any kind. “Tell Bo,” he said.

  Ramone and Antonelli watched the monitor as Green’s head turned at the sound of a knock. The door opened, and Rhonda came half through it to tell Green he had a call he should probably take.

  Before Green left the interrogation room, he looked at his watch, then up at the camera, and said, “Four thirty-two.”

  He returned several minutes later, stated the time the same way, and took a seat across the table from William Tyree. Tyree was now smoking a cigarette.

  “You all right?” said Green.

  “Yes.”

  “Need another soda, somethin?”

  “I still got some.”

  “Okay, then,” said Green. “Let’s go back to your wife’s apartment yesterday. After you went inside, you followed her over there to the eating table. What happened next?”

  “It’s like I said: I don’t remember.”

  “William.”

  “I’m telling you straight.”

  “Look at me, William.”

  Tyree looked into the big soulful eyes of Detective Bo Green. They were caring eyes, the eyes of a man who had run the same streets and walked the halls of Ballou High School, just like Tyree had done. A man who had come up in a strong family, just like him. Who had listened to Trouble Funk and Rare Essence and Backyard, and seen all those go-go bands play for free at Fort Dupont Park, just like him, when both of them had been young men. A man who was not all that different from Tyree, who Tyree could trust to do him right.

  “What did you do with the knife when you followed Jackie over to that table?”

  Tyree did not answer.

  “We have the knife,” said Green without any tone of threat or malice. “We have the cl
othes you were wearing. You know the blood on the clothing and the knife is going to match your wife’s blood. And the skin under your wife’s fingernails is gonna be the same skin got took off your face, from that cut you got right there. So William, why don’t we get this done?”

  “Detective, I don’t remember.”

  “Did you use the knife we found in the bag to stab your wife, William?”

  Tyree made a clucking sound with his tongue. His eyes were heavy with tears. “If you say I did, then I guess I did.”

  “You guess you did or you did?”

  Tyree nodded. “I did.”

  “You did what?”

  “I stabbed Jackie with that knife.”

  Green sat back and folded his hands on his ample belly. Tyree dragged on his cigarette and tapped its ash into a heavy piece of foil.

  “I gotta hand it to Bo,” said Antonelli. “He’s good with them hootleheads.”

  Ramone said nothing.

  Ramone and Antonelli watched and listened as William Tyree told the rest of the story. After stabbing his wife, he had taken her car and, using all the cash in her wallet, bought more crack. He then proceeded to smoke it in various pockets of Southeast. He didn’t eat or sleep all night. He rented Jackie’s car out to two different men. He used her credit card to buy gas for the hack and also for cash advances to buy more rock. He stayed high and without a plan, except to wait for the police, who he knew would eventually come. He had never done anything remotely criminal before on the violent end and had no knowledge of the underground. He didn’t know how to hide. And if he were to run, he could think of no place to go.

  When Tyree was talked out, Green asked him to stand and remove his belt and shoelaces. Tyree complied, then sat back down in his chair. He cried a little, and afterward wiped the tears off his face with the back of his hand.

  “You all right?” said Green.

  “I’m tired,” said Tyree very softly. “I don’t wanna be here no more.”