The Night Gardener

by George Pelecanos

  “Don’t know.”

  “Okay. And then, what, you fell asleep again, woke up, and got out to take a piss.”

  “That’s pretty much it. I had my mini Mag with me. I read the kid’s name off his school ID. I put it together with the other elements and called on Sergeant Cook.”

  “You called Sergeant Cook because of the Palindrome Murders.”

  “Right.”

  “That’s why you’re here?” said Ramone, looking at Cook.

  “You can’t ignore the similarities,” said Cook.

  “Or the differences,” said Ramone.

  “Which are?”

  “I’ll get to that.” Ramone turned back to Holiday. “Doc, I’m assuming you and others can account for your whereabouts that evening before you pulled over on Oglethorpe.”

  Holiday thought of the bar in Reston, the young salesman he had drunk with, and the woman, registered at the hotel. Also, there were the two men arguing about the Paul Pena record and the bartender he had spoken with at Leo’s.

  “I’m good,” said Holiday. “But I’m not a suspect, am I, Gus?”

  “Just trying to protect you.”

  “You’re looking out for me, huh?”

  Ramone bit down on the edge of his lip. He had expected this, and he supposed he deserved a little bit of it, too. But he wasn’t going to take more than a drop.

  “Are you the primary on this?” said Cook.

  “No, I’m assisting. Actually, it’s a little deeper than that. The decedent was friendly with my son. He was a neighborhood boy, and I know his parents.”

  “Anything so far?” said Cook.

  “No offense, sir,” said Ramone, “but I’m gonna ask that you go first.”

  “That’s not too sporting of you.”

  “What would you have done when you were out there? I’m a police officer working a live case, and you two are civilians. Okay, ex-cops, but that won’t cut it if I go up on charges or if this gets fucked up in court. You know the rules.”

  Holiday muttered a “bullshit” under his breath. Ramone ignored it, keeping his eyes on Cook.

  “W-we don’t have anything new,” said Cook. “I did have a strong suspect on those old murders. A fellow named Reginald Wilson. No hard evidence, just a feeling.”

  “The security guard,” said Ramone. “I read the files.”

  Cook appraised Ramone with his eyes. “He went to prison twenty years ago for fondling a boy and stayed in because of his violent nature. Wilson came out recently. I still like him for those old killings. I think he needs to be investigated.”

  “That’s it?”

  “So far, yes.” Cook pointed his chin toward Ramone. “Now you.”

  “This is where I’d normally say, Thanks for the chat, but any information related to this case is confidential.”

  “But?”

  “Out of respect to you, Sergeant, I’m going to give you something. And also because I want the both of you to leave this alone and let the police do their jobs.”

  “That’s fair,” said Cook.

  “First, said Ramone, “the similarities. The name Asa is a palindrome, obviously, and he was found in a community garden, as were the others. As you know, he died from a gunshot wound to the head.”

  “What did the autopsy show?” said Holiday. “Was he molested?”

  Ramone hesitated.

  “Was he?” said Cook.

  “There was semen found in his rectum,” said Ramone. “The parents don’t know —”

  “What we say here stays here,” said Cook impatiently. “Was it a rape?”

  “There was no tearing and very little bruising. Lubrication was apparently used. It’s possible that the sex was consensual. Or it’s possible that it occurred after his murder. Possible.”

  “Like the others,” said Cook.

  “But the differences are hard to ignore,” said Ramone. “Asa Johnson was not killed elsewhere and dumped in the garden. He was not held captive for several days before his death, and he hadn’t been re-dressed. He wasn’t from a low-income home. He lived in a middle-class neighborhood on the opposite side of town from Southeast.”

  “Was there hair missing from the boy’s head?”

  “If there was, it wasn’t noted in the report.”

  “You still gotta look at Reginald Wilson,” said Cook. “The man needs to be checked out. What y’all do with DNA now, if you had a sample from him you could match it up with what was found in the Johnson boy.”

  “Or it could exonerate him,” said Ramone.

  “So be it, then,” said Cook. “Aren’t you curious?”

  “You can’t just force him to give up a sample. You’ve got to have evidence linking him to Johnson in some way. A hunch isn’t enough.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that, young man.”

  “I’m saying… Look, all of this is moot if he couldn’t have committed the crime, isn’t that right?”

  “You mean if he’s got an airtight alibi.”

  “The man does have a night job,” said Holiday. The comment drew a cold glance from Cook.

  “You know where he works?” said Ramone to Cook.

  “I do. It’s out on Central Avenue, in P.G.”

  “If it’ll put your mind at ease, I’d be happy to check it out.”

  “Now?”

  Ramone checked his wristwatch. “Okay. Let’s do it now and put this to bed.”

  The three of them walked from the garden. They passed the whimsical plot with the spinning flags and the signs reading “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “Let It Grow,” and “The Secret Life of Plants.”

  “Little Stevie Wonder,” said Cook, inadvertently showing his age. “They were gonna mention one of his records, they could have picked a good one.”

  “I think it’s ’cause of the garden theme,” said Ramone helpfully.

  “Really?” said Cook.

  Holiday, feeling that cold thing touch his shoulder, stopped and looked back at the signs, then followed Ramone and Cook to the cars.

  “You mind driving?” said Ramone to Holiday.

  In the Town Car, Holiday took his hat off the seat beside him and put it on the floor behind his feet.

  THE GAS-AND-CONVENIENCE store was on the stretch of Route 214 known as Central Avenue, running out of the District from East Capitol into P.G. County. Across the avenue was a shopping center that had seen better tenants come and go. Night had arrived, but the light of the lot was bright as day. Tricked-out SUVs and dual-piped imports occupied the pumps. Ramone heard a go-go tune coming from one of the vehicles, recognizing it as a song his son had been playing of late, a group called UCB. He wondered if Diego had gotten home before dark, as he had promised.

  “You goin in?” said Holiday.

  “Yeah,” said Ramone, remembering why he’d come. “Wilson, right?”

  “Goes by Reginald, not Reggie,” said Cook.

  “This shouldn’t take long.”

  Ramone slipped out of the backseat. They watched him cross the lot, chest out, shoulders squared, the bulge of his Glock visible inside the jacket of his blue suit.

  “Ramone,” said Holiday. “Motherfucker is ramrod straight, isn’t he?”

  “Some just look like police,” said Cook. “I was the same way.”

  “Lookin ain’t being,” said Holiday.

  They sat there for a while, not speaking. Holiday reached into his jacket for his smokes, thought better of it because of the old man’s health, and left them alone.

  “Man’s got to be pumping sixty dollars’ worth of gas into that thing,” said Cook, looking at a young guy filling his Yukon Denali. “When it’s three dollars a gallon, you’d think they’d downsize.”

  “There’s never a gas crisis in America,” said Holiday, “even when there is one.”

  “Gasoline and television. Two things folks in this country will not do without.”

  “You know those apartments, Woodland Terrace, down on Langston Lane?” />
  “Government housing,” said Cook. “I had quite a few dealings down in there.”

  “Some of those people are paying eleven dollars a month for their apartment, subsidized rate. And then they pay eighty dollars a month for cable service and HBO. Talk about sucking on the federal tit.”

  “You had that area?”

  “Shit, I walked and rode patrol in One, Six, and Seven-D. I’d work any district, anytime. People knew me. They’d see my car number and wave. Drug dealers and their grandmothers, too. Not like our boy Ramone. Pulling desk duty while I was out there on the line.”

  Cook removed a pack of sugarless gum from his jacket, slid one out, and offered Holiday a stick. Holiday waved it away.

  “What happened between you two?” said Cook.

  “I was on the fringe of this thing,” said Holiday. “I just got caught up in something bigger that was happening at the time.”

  “How’d you get caught up?”

  “Ramone had an IAD case, an investigation into a group of vice cops who were being paid off by pimps to leave their girls alone. The undercover guys were having trouble making arrests because the prosties were being tipped off.”

  “Were they?”

  “I had heard that a couple of the vice guys were on the take. Sure.”

  “So?”

  “IAD was surveilling the stroll where these girls walked. Taking photographs from UC cars and shit. They got me on camera, talking to this white girl, name of Lacy. More than once.”

  “What were you doing with her?”

  “I talked to her regular, used her for information and just as my ear to the street. Prostitutes see things out there. You know that. Plus, we were friendly, like.”

  “I doubt her pimp was happy about that.”

  “He would have been furious if he’d known. This guy didn’t play. Dude named Mister Morgan, a real cool killer.”

  “Was Lacy his bottom?”

  “He told her she was. But he’d get violent on her, and sometimes she needed to get away. I’d buy her coffee once in a while, like that.”

  “What happened?”

  “Somehow, Ramone got Lacy to come in from the cold and testify against the vice guys. She was a heroin addict, and she was tired of it and tired of being in the life. Lacy knew exactly who was and who wasn’t dirty in Vice, and she was Ramone’s prize. He dangled witness protection in front of her, the whole ride. But, see, he fucked up. They should have grand juried her when they had her in the offices, but they let her go back to her pad to get her things. There was a squad car waiting out front of her place, but she must have gone out the alley or something.”

  “They lost her.”

  “Yeah. Ramone and his crew found a witness who noticed me talking to Lacy later that day. That was the last time anyone saw her.”

  “What did you and Lacy discuss?”

  “Wasn’t important,” said Holiday. “Look, I wasn’t on the take and I wasn’t corrupt. The only thing I can tell you is, with regards to that girl, I did what was right.”

  “Ramone was going to bring you up on charges?”

  “He was, and I walked. So fuck him.”

  “There he is,” said Cook.

  Ramone was moving across the lot.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  REGINALD WILSON’S NOT our man,” said Ramone, seated in the back of the Lincoln. “Not on this one, anyway.”

  “Who’d you talk to?” said Cook.

  “The owner-slash-manager. Guy named Mohammed.”

  “And he said what?”

  “Wilson pulls various shifts. That night he was working the ten p.m. to six a.m. He was working the night Asa was killed.”

  “This Ach-med, he actually see Wilson on the job?” said Holiday.

  “He did see him, until midnight, when Mohammed went home. But even if he hadn’t, there’s visual proof. He keeps a security camera running all the time in the place. Says he’s been robbed a couple of times. I looked at a sample tape. The way he’s got the camera placed, whoever’s working the register is always in the frame, as long as they’re behind the counter. If Wilson had left the job site, it would have showed up.”

  “Sonofabitch,” said Cook.

  “I can find his parole officer,” said Ramone, “confirm his work schedule, all that. But I don’t think it’s necessary, do you?”

  Cook shook his head.

  “What now?” said Holiday.

  “I’m gonna need a statement from you at some point,” said Ramone. “Nothing to worry about. You’re clear.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” said Holiday.

  “Least you can rest easy, Sarge,” said Ramone.

  Cook said nothing.

  “Let’s get a beer or somethin,” said Holiday.

  “Drop me at my car,” said Ramone.

  “C’mon, Ramone. How often do we see each other? Right?”

  “I’ll have a beer,” said Cook.

  Ramone looked over the bench at Cook. He seemed small, leaning against the door in the front seat of the car.

  “Okay,” said Ramone. “One beer.”

  RAMONE WAS FINISHING HIS third beer as Holiday returned from the bar with three more and some shots of something on a tray. Ramone and Cook were seated at a four-top near a hallway leading to the restrooms, listening to Laura Lee singing “Separation Line” from the juke. They were in Leo’s, which was fine with Ramone, as it was close to his house. Hell, if it came to it, he could walk. But he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He had picked up his Tahoe from the garden on Oglethorpe, and he intended to drive it home.

  “What is that?” said Ramone, as Holiday set the shot glasses down on the table crowded with empty bottles.

  “It ain’t Alizé or Crown or whatever they’re moving these days in this place,” said Holiday. “Good ol’ Jackie D, baby.”

  “Been a while,” said Cook. “But what the hell.” He threw his shot back without waiting for a glass-tap or toast.

  Ramone had a healthy sip. The sour mash bit real nice. Holiday downed his completely and chased it with beer. He and Cook were drinking Michelob. Ramone was working a Beck’s.

  “What time is it, Danny?” said Cook.

  Holiday looked at the clock on the wall, within easy sight of all of them. Then he remembered the schoolhouse clock in Cook’s house, off by several hours. It came to him that Cook wasn’t wearing a watch. The reason being, he couldn’t read the time.

  “You can’t see that?” said Holiday.

  “I still got some trouble with numbers,” said Cook.

  “I thought you could read.”

  “I can read some. Newspaper headlines, and the leads if I work at it. But I couldn’t get my numbers back.”

  “You had a stroke?” said Ramone, knowing the answer from Cook’s appearance but trying to be polite.

  “Wasn’t too serious,” said Cook. “Knocked me down some, is all it did.”

  “How do you use a phone?”

  “It’s hard for me to make outgoing calls. My daughter spent a few hours programming my speed dial on my home phone and cell. And then there’s the call-back button. I also have this El Salvador lady, comes once a week to do things for me I can’t do myself. Her visits are part of my veteran’s benefits. She makes appointments for me, writes checks, all that.”

  “They have, like, voice-activated phones available, don’t they?” said Holiday.

  “Maybe they do, but I don’t wanna go down that road. Look, all a this bullshit is frustrating, but I’ve seen people got more health problems than I do. I go down to the VA hospital for my checkups, there’s a lotta dudes in there way worse off than me. Younger than me, too.”

  “You’re doin okay,” said Holiday.

  “Compared to some, I’m fine.”

  Holiday lit a Marlboro and blew the exhale across the table. He was no longer self-conscious about having a cigarette in front of Cook. The bar was already thick with smoke.

  “Felt good working today,” said Cook.
/>
  It felt the same for Holiday. But he wasn’t about to admit it in front of Ramone.

  “You were one of the best,” said Ramone, pointing the lip of his shot glass at Cook.

  “I was the best, in my time. That’s not braggin, it’s fact.” Cook leaned forward. “Lemme ask you something, Gus. What’s your closure rate?”

  “Me? I’m up around sixty-five percent.”

  “That’s better than the department average, isn’t it?”

  “It is today.”

  “I was closing almost ninety percent of them in my best years,” said Cook. “Course, it wouldn’t be that high now. I read the writing on the wall when crack hit town in eighty-six. I could have worked a few more years, but I got out soon after that. You know why?”

  “Tell me.”

  “The job changed from what it was. The feds threatened to turn off the money faucet to the District unless the MPD put more uniforms on the streets and started making more drug arrests. But you know, locking people up willy-nilly for drugs doesn’t do shit but destroy families and turn citizens against police. And I’m not talking about criminals. I’m talking about law-abiding citizens, ’cause it seems like damn near everyone in low-income D.C. got a relative or friend who’s been locked up on drug charges. Used to be, folks could be friendly with police. Now we’re the enemy. The drug war ruined policing, you ask me. And it made the streets more dangerous for cops. Any way you look at it, it’s wrong.”

  “When I started out in Homicide,” said Ramone, “there were twenty detectives working four hundred murders a year. That’s twenty cases each year per detective. Now we got forty-eight detectives on the squad, each working four or five murders a year. And it’s a lower closure rate than when I came in.”

  “No witnesses,” said Holiday. “Not unless the victim is a kid or elderly. And even then, it’s not a given that anyone will come forward.”

  “No one talks to the police anymore,” said Cook, tapping his finger on the table. “That’s what I’m sayin. Neighborhoods are only safe if the people who live in them work with the law.”

  “That’s over,” said Holiday. He took a long swig of his beer. He dragged on his smoke and tapped off the ash.

  They had another round the same way. Ramone was feeling the alcohol. He hadn’t gone this deep in a bar in a long time.