The Night Gardener

by George Pelecanos

  “My pops won’t let me go to Joe’s.”

  “Why not?”

  “Joe’s father has a gun. You know, that little thirty-two he got?”

  “We ain’t gonna mess with it.”

  “My father don’t want me in that house.”

  “Okay, then,” said Shaka, tapping Diego’s outstretched fist. “Later, dawg.”

  “Later.”

  Shaka walked west down Rittenhouse, toward his mother’s row house on Roxboro Place. Diego went east, in the direction of a pale yellow stucco colonial fronted by a porch, on a rise halfway up the block.

  His father’s Tahoe was not in the street. Diego felt that he was nearly a man, but he was still young enough to like the security of knowing his dad was home.

  Dusk was near. The dropping sun cast long shadows on the grass.

  EIGHT

  THE MUSIC OKAY, sir?” said Dan Holiday, checking the rearview, looking at his client, a fit guy in his midforties, relaxing on the right side of the backseat.

  “It’s fine,” said the client, pressed jeans and a top-end blazer, open-neck shirt, black leather boots, a Tag Heuer wristwatch that must have put him back a thousand beans. Guy had one of those expensive hairstyles, too, shooting off in different directions on top, with that flip-up thing in the front. The look said, I don’t have to wear a tie like all you other suckers, but I have money, rest assured.

  Holiday had watched the guy coming out of his house in Bethesda as he sat out in the black Town Car, waiting. He had estimated his approximate age and, knowing he was some kind of writer (Holiday had been contacted by a publishing house in New York, a frequent customer, for the pickup), figured the guy favored the new wave stuff of his youth, meaning ’77 and beyond. Holiday had found Fred, the “classic alternative” program, on the radio before the guy even slid into the car.

  “You can change it if you’d like,” said Holiday. “You’ve got your own controls on the back of the seat, right there in front of you.”

  They were heading out on the toll road toward Dulles Airport. Holiday had his black suit jacket on but had forgone the chauffeur cap, which made him feel like a bellhop. He only wore the cap when he was driving corporate bigwigs, politicians, and K Street types.

  Holiday didn’t feel the need to be real formal with this particular client, and that was nice, but the music, Christ, it was setting him on edge. Some heroin addict was whooping through the speakers. The writer in the backseat was moving his head a little to the beat as he studied the radio controls mounted in the leather before him.

  “You got satellite in here?” said the writer.

  “I put the XM unit in all my cars,” said Holiday. All. He had two.

  “Cool.”

  “Same idea behind GPS technology,” said Holiday. “We used it for tracking purposes when I was in law enforcement.”

  “You were a cop?” This seemed to waken the guy’s curiosity. His eyes met Holiday’s in the rearview for the first time.

  “In D.C.”

  “That must have been interesting.”

  “I got stories.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Anyway, after I retired, I started up this service.”

  “You seem too young to have retired already.”

  “I had all my years in, even if I don’t look it,” said Holiday. “Good genes, I guess.”

  Holiday reached for the slotted plastic piece under the sun visor, extracted a couple of business cards, and handed them over the bench to the client. The guy took them and read the embossed printing on the face of the one on top: “Holiday Car Service,” in Old English letters. And below it, “Luxury Transportation, Security, Executive Protection.” And then the tagline, “Let Us Make Your Workday a Holiday.” At the bottom was Holiday’s contact information.

  “You do security?”

  “That’s my main business. My expertise.”

  “Bodyguard stuff, too, huh?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Holiday left much of the “bodyguard stuff” to Jerome Belton, his other driver and sole employee. Belton, a former noseguard at Virginia Tech who had blown out his knee in his senior year, took the security jobs, driving high-level executives and third-tier rappers and other entertainers coming through town for shows. Belton was a big man who could affect, when needed, a hard, unsmiling expression, and so possessed the necessary equipment for the job.

  Holiday passed a Washington Flyer cabbie on the left and swerved his Town Car back into the right lane. In the mirror he saw the writer slip the cards into his breast pocket. He would probably throw them in the trash at the airport, but you never knew. You built a business by referral, or so Holiday had been told. Once you got them in the car, it was all about presentation. The items in the backseat, pristinely folded copies of the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal, the tin of Altoids, the bottles of Evian, and the satellite radio, they were all there to leave an impression of service and to make the client feel like he or she was a very special person, to elevate him or her above the cab-and-shuttle crowd. Holiday even kept a copy of the Washington Times in the trunk, in case the client looked to be of that fringe.

  “So, you’re a writer,” said Holiday, trying to put a tone of give-a-shit into his voice.

  “Yes,” said the client. “I’m leaving for a three-week book tour today, actually.”

  “Must be an interesting way to make a living.”

  “It can be.”

  “Is it fun to be on the road like that?”

  Do you get much pussy?

  “Sometimes. Mostly, it’s tiring. The airplane travel takes it out of you.”

  “That sounds rough.”

  “Getting through airport security is exhausting these days.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  You little girl.

  “I dread it sometimes,” said the writer.

  “I can imagine,” said Holiday.

  Take off your skirt and paste some hair on your balls.

  Holiday said little else for the rest of the ride. He had done his duty and passed out a couple of cards, and now he was finished. He sucked on an Ice Breaker breath mint and thought about his next drink.

  He was bored shitless. This was no way for a man to make a living. Wearing a stupid fucking hat.

  “I’m going out on United,” said the guy in the backseat as they neared the color-coded signs alerting them to the airport entrance.

  “Yes, sir,” said Holiday.

  Holiday dropped the client at his gate and pulled the man’s luggage out of the trunk. The writer gave him a five-dollar tip. Holiday shook his small hand and told him to “travel safe.”

  At this hour, 495 would be a parking lot from Virginia to Maryland. Holiday decided to find a bar and wait out the rush. Get back on the road when the traffic eased some. Maybe find someone to talk to while he put his head where it needed to be.

  He found a hotel in Reston a couple of exits back off the toll road. It was in something called a Town Center that looked like a block of chain retailers, eateries, and coffee shops that someone had lifted out of a real city and dropped in a cornfield. On the way to the bar he introduced himself to the concierge and handed him several cards along with a ten-dollar bill. Much of his business came from the hotel trade, which Holiday cultivated with the personal touch.

  The bar was fine, sports themed but not too aggressive with it. There were many high tables designed for those who wanted to stand in groups and stools for those who preferred to sit. A bank of windows gave a view of the fake street. Holiday had a seat at the stick and placed his cigarettes and matches on its marble top, cool to the touch. One good thing about Virginia, you could still smoke in a bar.

  “Yessir,” said the bartender, a low-slung blonde.

  “Absolut rocks,” said Holiday.

  Holiday drank and smoked down a Marlboro. The mostly male crowd was heavy with goatees, Kenneth Cole Reaction slacks, Banana Republic stretch oxfords, and golf
shirts for those who had taken the afternoon off. The women were similarly clean and square. In his black Hugo Boss suit, bought off the rack, and white shirt, Holiday looked like a businessman, on the Euro side, slightly more hip than the techies around him.

  He struck up a conversation with a young route salesman, and they bought each other’s drinks for the next two rounds. It had gotten dark out, Holiday noticed, by the time the salesman went up to his room. Holiday ordered another drink, got it in hand, watched as steam came up off the rocks in the glass. He was relaxed. He was going down that familiar darkened road, and still he had no desire to turn back.

  An attractive redhead who would never see thirty-five again took a seat on the stool beside him. She wore a greenish skirt-and-jacket business suit that complemented her hair color and picked up the green of her eyes. Her eyes were lively and told him that she’d be a freak in bed. Holiday took all of this in with a quick glance. He was good at this.

  He held up the cigarette burning between his fingers. “You mind?”

  He showed her his teeth and the laugh lines around his ice blue eyes. The first look was all-important.

  “Not if you let me bum one,” she said.

  “You got it,” said Holiday, and offered her the pack. He struck a match, put fire to her smoke, and blew out the flame. “Danny Holiday.”

  “Rita Magner.”

  “Pleasure.”

  “Thanks for this,” she said. “I only smoke on the road, y’know.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I get bored.” She winked. “It’s something to do.”

  “Sales can be a drag,” said Holiday. “Different hotel room every night…”

  “Bartender,” she said, raising her hand.

  He checked her out as she ordered a drink. He caught the sun line on her ring finger. Married, but that was fine; it only made them more eager. Her treadmilled thigh rippled as she crossed it over the other. He eyed her open suit jacket, her freckled chest, her small breasts, loose in a black brassiere.

  “On my tab,” said Holiday to the bartender as she placed the drink in front of Rita.

  “You’re gonna spoil me,” said Rita.

  “I’ll let you get the next one.”

  “Deal,” she said. “So what line are you in?”

  “Security,” said Holiday. “I sell trackers, surveillance equipment, wiretap devices, that kind of thing. To police.”

  He had a friend, an ex-cop like him, who did just that, so he knew enough about it to bullshit her.

  “Hmm.”

  “You?”

  “Pharmaceuticals.”

  “You got any samples you wanna lay on me?”

  “Bad boy,” she said with a crooked smile. “I’d lose my job.”

  “I had to ask.”

  “It’s okay to ask.”

  “It is?” said Holiday.

  She drank vodka tonics and he stuck to Absolut on ice. She matched him one for one. They finished his pack of smokes and he bought another. He moved closer to her and she let him and he knew that he was there.

  He told her about his most embarrassing moment as a salesman. It was a variation on a story he had told many times before. He changed the details as he went along. He was good at that, too.

  “What about you?” he said.

  “Oh, God,” she said with a toss of her hair. “Okay. I was in Saint Louis last year. I had flown in that morning for a big lunch meeting, and I thought I had cushion time between my arrival and the meeting. So I wore some comfortable clothes on the flight. Comfortable but definitely not appropriate for the meeting.”

  “I know where this is going.”

  “Let me tell it. The plane was real late getting in, and I had to pick up the rental car as well. By the time I did it, there wasn’t enough time to check into my hotel, change my clothes, and still make the meeting.”

  “So where’d you change?” said Holiday.

  “There was a garage under the restaurant where we were supposed to meet.”

  “You couldn’t use the hotel bathroom?”

  “It was real dark in the garage and nobody was around. I changed in the backseat of the rental. I had my top off, I mean completely off, because I had to put on a different bra than the one I had on, and this old guy walks by on the way to his car. Instead of doing the decent thing and walking on, maybe doing a double take, he comes over to the window and taps on it, and he’s staring at me, really checking me out…”

  “I don’t blame him.”

  “. . . and he says something like, ‘Miss, can I be of any assistance?’ ”

  Holiday and Rita Magner laughed.

  “That’s what makes the story,” said Holiday. “That detail.”

  “Right,” said Rita. “ ’Cause otherwise, it’s not all that unusual. I mean, it wasn’t the first time I’ve been nude in a car.”

  “And I bet it won’t be the last.”

  Rita Magner smiled, reddened a little, and knocked back the rest of her drink.

  “That day in the garage,” said Holiday. “Did you have on the black thong you’re wearing now?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “You’re definitely wearing a thong,” said Holiday. “And it’s gotta be black.”

  “You’re bad,” she said.

  She mentioned the minibar in her room.

  Going up in the elevator, he moved on her and kissed her mouth. She parted her lips, and against the wood-paneled wall her legs opened like a flower. His hand went up her bare thigh and touched the lace of her black thong and beneath it the dampness and the heat. She moaned under his kiss and touch.

  An hour later, Holiday was walking back to his Lincoln. She’d been as needy and voracious as he’d expected, and when it was done he left her to her memories and her guilt. She hadn’t given him any indication that she wanted him to stay. Rita was now like the others, a prop, a story to tell the boys at Leo’s, something for them to imagine and be envious of even as she was wiped from his mind. He’d forgotten her face by the time he turned the key to his car.

  NINE

  GUS RAMONE CAME through the front door and heard “Summer Nights” coming from the rec room at the back of his house. Alana would be there, watching a DVD, one of her favorite musicals. Judging from the smell of garlic and onions, Regina was in the kitchen, preparing dinner.

  They’re here and they’re safe. This was the first thought that came to Ramone as he walked through the hall. As he entered the kitchen, he thought of Diego and wondered if he was somewhere in the house, too.

  “How you doin, little girl?” said Ramone to his daughter, who was standing in front of the television set, dancing, imitating the moves she was watching on the screen. The rec room, which they’d added to the house a few years earlier, opened up off the kitchen.

  “Good, Daddy,” said Alana.

  “Hey,” he said to Regina, who had her back to him, moving a wooden spoon around in a pot set on a gas stove. She wore some kind of athletic outfit, pants with stripes on the side and a matching shirt.

  “Hey, Gus,” she said.

  Ramone put his rig, a clip-on belt holster holding his Glock 17, and his badge case, in a drawer he had equipped for security and locked the drawer with a small key on his ring. He and Regina, and no one else, had keys to the drawer.

  Ramone went back to his daughter, now doing pelvic thrusts in the center of the living room, aping the young actor onscreen. The man was smiling lasciviously, dancing in the bleachers, as lean and fluid as an alley cat, his Brylcreemed cohorts egging him on, singing, “Tell me more, tell me more…”

  “Did she put up a fight?” sang Alana, as Ramone bent down and kissed her on the top of her head, sprouting a mass of thick black curls, an inheritance from her father.

  “How’s my sweet little girl?” said Ramone.

  “I’m good, Dad.”

  She kept on dancing, thumbs out like Danny Zuko. Ramone went back into the kitchen and wrapped his arms around Regina’s sho
ulders and kissed her on the cheek. He pushed himself into her behind just to let her know he was still in the game. The lines at the corners of her eyes told him she was smiling.

  “Is that movie she’s watching appropriate?” he said.

  “It’s Grease,” said Regina.

  “I know what it is. But Travolta is air-humping over there and our daughter’s copying him.”

  “She’s just dancing.”

  “That’s what they call it now?”

  Ramone unwrapped his arms and stepped to her side.

  “Good day?” said Regina.

  “We had a bunch of luck. I wouldn’t say anyone feels good about it, though. Man wasn’t a criminal. He got crazy behind some crack and killed his wife because he was jealous and despondent. She’s in the morgue, he’s probably down for twenty-five, and the kids are orphans. Nothing good about that.”

  “You did your job,” she said, a familiar refrain in their home.

  He talked to her every night about his workday. He felt it was important, in that those cops who didn’t, in his experience, were headed for disasters in their marriages. Plus, she understood. She had been police, though now that seemed like a long time ago.

  “Where’s Diego?” said Ramone.

  “Up in his room.”

  Ramone looked into the pot. The garlic and onions, cooking in olive oil, were beginning to brown.

  “You’ve got the fire up too high,” said Ramone. “You’re burning the garlic. And those onions are supposed to get clear, not black.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “The only time that flame ought to be on high is when you’re boiling water.”

  “Please.”

  “You making a sauce?”

  “Yes.”

  “My mother’s?”

  “My own.”

  “I like my mother’s sauce,” said Ramone.

  “You should have married your mother.”

  “Listen, turn that flame down, will you?”

  “Go see your son.”

  “I plan to. What happened today?”

  “He says he didn’t know his cell was on. One of his friends called him as he was coming out of the bathroom, and Mr. Guy heard it.”