The Night Gardener

by George Pelecanos

  Gaskins could see it was useless explaining it to the boy. Some of them were just thick. And anyway, who was he to bust on Romeo’s groove? His young cousin would see it in the end. Too late, but still.

  “All right, Romeo. All right.”

  “There you go.”

  “You hear from our man?”

  Brock nodded. “He say he’d see us soon. I told him the money was safe.”

  Gaskins stripped off his T-shirt. His face said thirty, but his body said nineteen.

  “I’m gonna have a shower,” said Gaskins.

  “Take a cold beer in there with you.”

  “I think I will.”

  Gaskins went to the kitchen to find that brew. Brock returned to his bedroom.

  Chantel Richards was up, pulling the bottle of Moët out of an ice bucket set on the dresser. She poured champagne into a tumbler and had a sip.

  “I wake you?” said Brock. He took a last drag off his Kool and stubbed it out in the ashtray.

  “It’s okay. Been a while since I had a nap in the afternoon. It felt good.”

  “You all rested?”

  Chantel looked his way and gave him a crooked smile. Her hair, done up earlier, had kind of tumbled out and was lying in curls on the shoulders of his red rayon shirt. She tipped the glass back and let some into her mouth. She did not swallow. She placed the tumbler on the dresser, walked over to Brock, and spit the champagne onto his bare chest. Drops of it rolled off his pecs and down his stomach. She held his hips and licked the bubbly from his abs and then moved her tongue up to his chest.

  “Girl,” said Brock in a clipped way. It was hard for him to catch his breath.

  Chantel stepped back and removed the shirt. She peeled it off one shoulder and then the other. Her bra was fastened by a small hook between its cups, and she unfastened it and let her breasts swing free. Her thumbs worked her lacy thong down her long legs and to her manicured feet. She stepped free of the panties and kicked them away.

  Chantel sat down naked on the edge of the bed, where fifties and hundreds lay scattered on the sheets behind her. She parted her legs and showed herself, unshaven and slick. Brock’s mouth went dry. He liked a woman natural.

  Chantel touched both of her purple nipples with her fingers and made circles there. Her aureoles bumped out and her nipples became erect.

  “Golly,” said Brock, as a boy would when seeing a woman in the altogether for the first time.

  “How you want it?” said Chantel.

  “Turn around,” said Brock. “Rub that money on your face and kiss it some.”

  “I can do that,” said Chantel.

  “Please do,” said Romeo Brock.

  TWENTY-THREE

  RAMONE PHONED REGINA on the way back down to the VCB offices, told her he’d seen Diego at the basketball courts and that their son had promised to be home before sundown. He said he’d be working late and that she should not expect him for dinner, but if she thought of it maybe she could put some of whatever she prepared aside for him. He’d heat it up when he got in.

  “What were you thinking of making, by the way?”

  “Pasta,” said Regina.

  “What kind of pasta?”

  “The kind comes out of a long box and slides into a pot of boiling water.”

  “Don’t overboil it. Eight minutes, tops.”

  “Now you gonna tell me how to boil spaghetti?”

  “Last time you had it on the stove for twelve minutes and it tasted like mush.”

  “Come home and cook it, you want it perfect.”

  “Al dente, baby.”

  “Don’t baby me.”

  “I was thinking of you today,” said Ramone.

  “Yeah?”

  “In that blue bathing suit, standing on the edge of the academy pool.”

  “I couldn’t fit in that suit today.”

  “You look better now, you ask me.”

  “Liar.”

  “I’m serious, honey. Neither one of us is in our prime. But I’m saying, when I look at you through my eyes —”

  “Thank you, Gus.”

  “You think, tonight?”

  “We’ll see.”

  Ramone, heading down South Dakota Avenue in the neighborhood of Langdon, phoned the office and got Rhonda Willis, still on the job. She said that she had some things to tell him, and that Bill Wilkins was in the office and looking to speak to him, too.

  “I’m ten minutes away,” said Ramone.

  He parked in the lot behind the Penn-Branch shopping center and entered the offices. Some of the detectives from the morning shift were mingling with the new-shift men and women, crowding one another’s cubicles. They were exchanging information and bullshitting about nonpolice matters. Some of the officers who were done for the day were collecting overtime and others were trying to stay out of bars or simply unwilling to face the loneliness, unhappiness, duties, or plain boredom of their home lives.

  Ramone saw Rhonda Willis seated at her desk, Bo Green towering over her, both of them having a laugh. He made a one-minute gesture with his finger to Rhonda and kept walking, negotiating detectives, plainclothesmen, and a woman from the Family Liaison Unit. He passed Anthony Antonelli, seated with his feet up, his Glock holstered on his ankle. Antonelli was holding out an overtime form to Mike Bakalis, whose hands were in his lap.

  “C’mon, Aardvark,” said Antonelli. “Sign my eleven-thirty, will you?”

  “Put your tongue in my tar pit,” said Bakalis, “and I’ll think about it.”

  Bill Wilkins was seated before his computer, tapping at the keyboard. Ramone pulled a chair over.

  “What do you have?” said Ramone.

  Wilkins handed him a manila folder. Inside it was the ME’s findings on the Asa Johnson autopsy. Ramone began to read it.

  “The slug was a thirty-eight.”

  “They’re running it through IBIS?”

  “Yeah. We’ll see if the markings match to any other murder guns. He died of the gunshot wound to the head, no surprise there.”

  Left temple, read Ramone.

  “He wasn’t asphyxiated or drugged or anything else. No foreign substances, alcohol, or narcotics in his body.”

  “He was killed at the scene,” said Ramone.

  “Looks like it. Probable time is on there.” Wilkins paused, watching Ramone, seeing his eyes flare and then grow dull. “You got to it.”

  “They found semen inside him,” said Ramone. His voice was weak. He was sickened, not only for the child but for the parents, too.

  “Keep reading,” said Wilkins.

  The ME had detected lubricant along with the semen. There were no signs of rectal tearing and there was only minor bruising.

  Ramone read the entire report and dropped it on the desktop before him. He thought of the victims of the Palindrome Murders, the traces of semen found inside the kids, a baffling lack of violent entry, evidence of consensual anal sex. On the other hand, the sex could have been initiated after the victims’ deaths. Ramone had to consider the possibility that Asa might have been violated in this way as well.

  “They found that stuff in him,” said Wilkins. “Like KY jelly or something.”

  Ramone stroked his black mustache. “I read it.”

  “It doesn’t look like he was raped.”

  “Doesn’t prove he wasn’t, either.”

  “I’m only sayin.”

  “Right.”

  Wilkins let Ramone have a moment.

  “I went through the boy’s bedroom,” said Ramone, having collected himself. “His locker as well.”

  “Anything?”

  “Nothing pertinent that I could see. He had a journal, apparently, but it seems to have disappeared. In light of this report, we need to prioritize finding that journal.”

  “When I spoke to him, Mr. Johnson said there was no cell phone.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did Asa have a home computer?”

  “There was a PC in his room. I
didn’t find much personal stuff on it. The Sent and Deleted e-mail boxes were empty. His Favorites column had listings for games and Civil War sites. Nothing else.”

  “Did you go into History?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “You got a teenage son,” said Wilkins. “You better get hip to this shit. You can delete your e-mails and the Internet sites you visit and bookmark, but it’s still in the computer, in History, unless the kid wipes it out. The really careful kids program their PC to automatically delete the history every day. Sometimes every seven days, or monthly. It’s like brushing your trail away. But if Asa didn’t do that, whatever he was into should still be in there, somewhere. It’s pretty easy to dig it out.”

  “For you.”

  “I’ll take care of it.” Wilkins tapped the eraser end of a pencil on his desk. “What else you get?”

  Ramone hesitated. “Nothing I can think of right now.”

  “This thing with the boy,” said Wilkins. “Someone’s gonna have to go over the autopsy with the family.”

  “I’ll talk to the father, the time comes.”

  “I can understand if you don’t want to. It’s my lookout.”

  “No, it’s on me.” Ramone stood.

  “Heading out?”

  “Goin home,” said Ramone.

  He stopped at Rhonda’s desk and had a seat on the edge of it. Bo Green was gone, and Rhonda was looking at a mess of papers like they had been powdered with anthrax.

  “That looks fun,” said Ramone.

  “You got some paperwork on your desk, too, Gus. Not that you go by there anymore.”

  “I’m hoping my secretary will do it.”

  “You get up with Garloo?” said Rhonda.

  Ramone told her about the ME’s findings and described his day.

  “Now you,” said Ramone.

  “I ran Dominique Lyons. Our boy’s got quite a history. Agg assault, which took, and attempted murder, which didn’t. Scheduled witnesses did not testify; possible intimidation noted. He was a suspect in two other murders, but those never went to trial. No weapons recovered, no wits. So what I did was, I got a photograph of Lyons from out the files and took it and the photographs of Jamal White, our victim, and I drove down to that classy bar on New York Avenue where Darcia Johnson and Shaylene Vaughn, Ho Number One and Ho Number Two, dance nekkid.”

  “I think they wear G-strings at the Twilight, if memory serves. Technically, they’re not in their birthday suits.”

  “They’re close enough. So I go down there and have a talk with our police officer friend, Randolph Wallace. Man who works the door when he’s not in uniform?”

  “He’s your friend now, huh?”

  “We’re not exactly backslappin buddies. But he was very cooperative. Seems our friend Dominique Lyons was in the club last night, and guess what? So was Jamal White. Officer Wallace knew of Lyons straight away because he frequents the Twilight and often leaves with either Darcia or Shaylene, and sometimes both.”

  “And how’d he remember Jamal?”

  “Jamal was seated at the bar. Dominique had some words with Jamal, more like a taunting kind of thing, and Jamal left out the place by hisself. About an hour later, Dominique and Darcia went bye-bye as well.”

  “Together?”

  “Uh-huh. I’m thinking Jamal took the bus down New York, transferred uptown to the Seventh Street-Georgia line, and was walking back home from Georgia Avenue when he was shot.”

  “You like Dominique Lyons for the murder.”

  “I liked him enough to put his name out on the sheets. And could be we got a witness in Darcia Johnson, too.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “I tried calling Darcia’s cell number, but she’s not answering the phone.”

  “No shit.”

  “What I also did was, I’ve got an officer placed over there by the girls’ apartment, around Sixteenth and W?”

  “Dominique knows we’re looking to talk to him. You think he’d go there?”

  “If Shaylene was trickin up in there last night, and it looked to me like she was, he’s gonna want to get his money sooner or later.”

  “Okay. You said you had something you wanted to see me about. So what else?”

  “This is a long play, but look: the slugs recovered from Jamal White’s body were thirty-eights. Garloo tells me that Asa Johnson also died from a thirty-eight.”

  “And?”

  “Same-caliber weapon used in killings just a few blocks apart within twenty-four hours. And you know a thirty-eight revolver is not the gun of choice for these young ones. I mean, it could be a coincidence, but it’s worth looking into.”

  “So, for shits and grins, you’re saying we should compare the markings. See if the bullets came from the same weapon.”

  “I ordered the tests.”

  “What in the world would connect a guy like Dominique Lyons to Asa Johnson?”

  “I’m not saying they are connected. But we might as well look at everything.”

  “You tell Garloo?”

  “I’m fixin to,” said Rhonda.

  “Okay,” said Ramone with a long exhale. “Okay.”

  “You look like you could use a drink.”

  “I could.”

  “There’s that place down on Second, got those booths. They play that Quiet Storm stuff at night. You remember that bartender, the one with the heavy hand?”

  “I’m going home,” said Ramone.

  “Suit yourself, handsome. Keep your cell on for further developments.”

  Out in the parking lot, where he could get service, Ramone activated his cell and dialed the number he had gotten from Janine Strange earlier in the day.

  “Hello.”

  “Dan Holiday?”

  “Speaking.”

  “It’s Gus Ramone.”

  Holiday did not respond. Ramone listened to dead air and then took the lead.

  “You want to come down to the offices and make an official statement?” said Ramone. “Or should I send a car out to get you?”

  “Neither,” said Holiday after another block of silence. “You wanna meet someplace neutral, I can do that.”

  “Just you and me?”

  “There’ll be someone else.”

  “I got no time for attorneys.”

  “He’s not a lawyer,” said Holiday. “You’ll remember this guy. But I don’t want to spoil it for you.”

  “Always gaming.”

  “You want to meet or not?” said Holiday.

  “Where?”

  “There’s this bar —”

  “Uh-uh. I want you sober.”

  Ramone gave him the location. Holiday said he’d see him there.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  RAMONE DROVE DOWN Oglethorpe Street and put the Tahoe behind Holiday’s black Town Car, parked across from the animal shelter. He could see Holiday and another, much older man standing in the community garden by the yellow tape that was still strung at the crime scene. The sun had dropped, as had the temperature. Some of the garden was shrouded in shadow and some was tinted golden by the dying light.

  As Ramone came upon them, he recognized the old man. His photograph had run in the newspaper stories included in the file he had copied from Cold Case. There had been extensive details about him in the Post regarding his command of the squad investigating the Palindrome Murders, as well as in the later follow-up story in the City Paper. And then there was his Stetson. Ramone would not have forgotten that.

  As he reached them, Ramone could see that Cook had aged badly, a result of possible health issues. His mouth drooped on one side, indicating a stroke.

  “Sergeant Cook,” said Ramone, extending his hand. “I’m Gus Ramone. Nice to see you again.”

  “You must have been a young man when we met,” said Cook.

  “We never met, officially. I was fresh fish out of the academy. I knew you by your reputation.” Ramone acknowledged Holiday. “Dan.”

  “Gus.”

  Up
close, Holiday’s preserved looks did not completely hold up. He had a drinker’s sallow complexion, the lined face of a smoker, and that belly, noticeable on his skinny frame.

  Ramone and Holiday did not shake hands.

  “You called in the body,” said Ramone.

  “That’s right.”

  “Tell me about how that came to be.”

  “Long and short of it, I had pulled over on this street sometime after midnight, say, one-thirty.”

  “Had you been drinking much?”

  “A little. I fell asleep in my car, woke up a few hours later, got out to take a leak, and found the corpse. I went up Blair Road and called it in from a pay phone outside the liquor store.”

  “You touch the body? You do anything to foul up the scene?”

  Holiday smiled tightly at the question. “I wouldn’t.”

  “I’m just asking because you were, you know, sleepy.”

  “The answer’s no.”

  “You hear a gunshot at any time?”

  Holiday shook his head.

  “What else?” said Ramone. “What do you remember seeing that night?”

  Holiday looked around at nothing. Cook said, “Tell him.”

  “I woke up a couple of times after I dozed off,” said Holiday. “You know, that driftin-in-and-out thing. I didn’t look at my watch. It’s all kind of hazy.”

  Because you were drunk.

  “Tell me what you saw,” said Ramone.

  “A patrol car drove by me, up from the dead end. There was a perp in the backseat, behind the cage. Thin shoulders and neck.”

  “Male cop?”

  “White male.”

  “Did he stop to check you out?”

  “No.”

  “You get a car number?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know the passenger was a perp?”

  “I don’t.”

  “What else?”

  “Later, I saw a Number One Male walking through the garden. Young, I’d say, from the energy in his movement.”

  “How did you identify him as black?”

  “It wasn’t dawn yet, but the sky had lightened some. I can tell you he wasn’t white. There was his hair, too. He was doing that dip thing in his walk. I knew.”

  “You say you saw this guy later. How much time between the patrolman and the young man?”