The Night Gardener

by George Pelecanos

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I believe you. But that doesn’t make you right.”

  “Good day, Detective.”

  Mr. Guy stood. Ramone brushed by him and left the office. He had a spring in his step. He knew he had been aggressive and needlessly insulting, and he did not feel sorry at all.

  RAMONE CALLED REGINA FROM the parking lot. Diego had come home briefly, picked up his basketball, and gone out the door. He wasn’t angry, Regina said. Just quiet.

  Ramone drove over the District line down to 3rd and Van Buren. He parked, left his suit jacket in the car, loosened his tie, and walked up to the fenced court. Diego was shooting buckets, wearing shorts too big for him, a wife beater, and his Exclusives. He spun in a reverse layup, gathered up the ball, and tucked it under his arm. Ramone stood three feet away from him and spread his feet.

  “I know, Dad. I messed up.”

  “I’m not gonna lecture you. You made a choice and you did what you thought was right.”

  “How long am I out for?”

  “You’re not going back there ever,” said Ramone. “They found out we used the Silver Spring address to get you in.”

  “So where am I gonna go?”

  “I’ve got to talk with your mother. I expect we’ll put you back in your old school for the rest of the year. Then we’ll figure something out.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “It’s okay.”

  Diego looked out across 3rd. “Everything, this week…”

  “Come here.”

  Diego dropped the ball and went into his father’s arms. Ramone held him tightly. He smelled Diego’s perspiration, the Axe he sprayed on his body, that cheap shampoo he used. He felt the muscles of his shoulders and back, and the heat of his tears.

  Diego stepped out of Ramone’s embrace. He wiped at his eyes and picked up the ball.

  “Want to play some?” said Diego.

  “You got me at a disadvantage. You in your eighty-dollar sneakers and me in my brogues.”

  “You scared, huh?”

  “To eleven,” said Ramone.

  Diego took the ball out. It was over, really, with his first step off check. Ramone tried to beat him, but he could not. Diego was a better athlete at fourteen than Ramone had ever been.

  “You goin’ back to work like that?” said Diego, nodding at the sweat stains on Ramone’s shirt.

  “No one will notice. Women stopped looking at me five years ago.”

  “Mom looks.”

  “Occasionally.”

  “Five dollars says I can make it from thirty feet out,” said Diego.

  “Go ahead.”

  Diego banked it in off the glass. He flexed his arm, kissed his biceps, and smiled at Ramone.

  That’s my son.

  “You didn’t call backboard,” said Ramone.

  “I’ll take that five.”

  Ramone paid up. “I’m outta here. Got a long day today.”

  “Love you, Dad.”

  “Love you, too. Call Mom if you go anywhere, let her know where you are.”

  Ramone went to the Taurus and got under the wheel. Before he turned the key, Rhonda Willis called him on his cell. They had Dominique Lyons and Darcia Johnson in the boxes down at VCB.

  “I’ll be right there,” said Ramone.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  DARCIA JOHNSON’S MOTHER called her to say that her baby was feverish and having difficulty with his breathing. The detectives and uniformed backups who had been radioed for assistance had little time to get in place: within a half hour, a black Lexus GS 430 came up Quincy, stopping in front of the Johnson house. Inside, watching from the upstairs bedroom window, Virginia Johnson phoned Rhonda Willis, seated with Bo Green in the maroon Impala parked up the street. Virginia told Rhonda that the woman getting out of the Lexus was her daughter Darcia and, from what she could make out, the driver of the vehicle, memorable because of his braids, was Dominique Lyons. As Rhonda listened she nodded to Bo Green, who was on his radio with the sergeant in charge of the uniformed officers. Green told the sergeant to go.

  Two squad cars suddenly blocked the east and west access to Quincy Street as uniforms on foot emerged from the Warder Place alley with guns drawn, yelling at the driver of the Lexus to step out of the vehicle with his hands visible. The action was loud and swift, meant to shock and defuse any potential situation completely. Based on Lyons’s history, Rhonda was taking no unnecessary risks.

  Darcia Johnson sat down immediately on the steps of her parents’ row house and covered her face with her hands. Dominique Lyons did as he was told and got out of his car, his hands raised. He was cuffed and put into the back of a squad car. Darcia, also cuffed, was led to a different car. The Lexus was searched thoroughly. No weapons of any kind were recovered. Roughly an ounce of marijuana was found beneath the driver’s-side seat.

  Virginia Johnson emerged from the house holding Isaiah. She looked at her daughter in the squad car and saw fear and hate in Darcia’s eyes. Virginia asked Rhonda if she could come with them, and Rhonda told her that it would be fine.

  “We got a playroom set up for kids,” said Rhonda. It was Rhonda, in fact, who had pushed for the funding of such a room on the VCB premises. The idea of a waiting area for spouses, girlfriends, grandmothers, and children whose relatives were being arrested or questioned regarding murder-related business had entered few of her male colleagues’ minds.

  “I’ll have my husband meet me there,” said Virginia.

  “This is gonna be good for your daughter in the end,” said Rhonda. “You did right.”

  DAN HOLIDAY STOOD IN the community garden on Oglethorpe Street, smoking a cigarette. He had a job later in the day and was dressed in his black suit. He had come because he knew that the answer he was looking for was here.

  The crime scene had reverted to the state it had been in prior to Asa Johnson’s death. Someone had taken the yellow tape down and disposed of it. A few citizens were out in the garden, idly working their plots but socializing mostly, as full autumn had come to Washington, and the vegetables had been harvested and the growth of flowers and other plants had slowed.

  Holiday walked to his car. He had positioned it exactly where it had been parked as he had drifted in and out of sleep the night he discovered the body.

  He sat behind the wheel of the Lincoln and finished the rest of his Marlboro. He took a hit, examined the butt in his fingers, and hit it again before flipping it out into the road. He watched the smoke ripple up off the cherry smoldering on the asphalt.

  Holiday glanced over in the direction of the fancy plot with the used-car-lot flags and propellers, and the signs with song titles related to plants and botany. He had felt that cold finger the day before, passing by the signs.

  Let It Grow.

  Those were the words that had come to his mind when the patrol car had passed by, sometime in the night. But at the time, he hadn’t yet seen the sign.

  Holiday squinted, staring at nothing, thinking of the white policeman and the perp in the backseat of the car. Then he saw his brother, playing air guitar and high, long-haired and long ago, in the basement of their parents’ house in Chillum.

  “Fuck me,” said Holiday.

  He laughed shortly, pulled his cell along with Gus Ramone’s card, and made a call.

  “Ramone.”

  “Gus, it’s Holiday.”

  “Okay.”

  “Hey, man, I’m at the garden. On Oglethorpe? I came up with something.”

  “Go ahead,” said Ramone.

  “The patrol car, the one I saw that night? The car number was four sixty-one. As in Ocean Boulevard.”

  Ramone did not comment. He was trying to bring up a visual in his mind. The mention of the car number had immediately triggered something in his memory.

  “It came to me ’cause my brother was a Clapton freak,” said Holiday.

  “That’s fascinating,” said Ramone.

  �
��Should be pretty easy to check the Four-D logs, right? See who took out four sixty-one on the midnight that date?”

  “Except that I’m busy. I’m heading down to VCB right now. We’ve got a couple of live ones in the box.”

  “You get me the name of that patrolman, me and T.C. —”

  “You’re not police.”

  “That cop could be a witness. You’re gonna want to talk with him, aren’t you?”

  “I am,” said Ramone. “Not you.”

  “Me and Cook, we could, you know, check it out. With you bein’ so busy and all.”

  “You got no fuckin idea what my day is looking like,” said Ramone.

  “All the more reason,” said Holiday.

  “No,” said Ramone.

  “Hit me back,” said Holiday, and ended the call.

  Holiday got out of the car. He lit another smoke, thinking, He’ll call me with what I need. I saw it in him last night. He felt sorry for the old man and deep inside he knows he did me wrong. He’s not a bad guy, basically, always colors inside the lines, but that’s not awful. He won’t keep me out of this, even if it’s against the rules.

  Fifteen minutes later, Ramone called.

  “I thought about it,” said Ramone.

  He had, in fact, found his memory. The cocky blond patrolman who had been at the Asa Johnson crime scene was leaning on car number 461 when Ramone had first arrived. And he remembered the name on the uniform’s faceplate: G. Dunne. But he wasn’t going to give it up to Holiday. Doc and the old man were running on passion and desperation. Passion was always a positive. It was their desperation that worried Ramone.

  “And?” said Holiday.

  “I’d be nuts to hand over that information to you. It’s not gonna happen.”

  “I don’t need you. I’ll find it my own way.”

  “Just do me a favor and don’t act on anything unless you talk to me first.”

  “Got it,” said Holiday.

  “I mean it, Doc.”

  “Understood.”

  “That includes conducting your own investigation,” said Ramone. “Impersonating a police officer is a serious crime.”

  “Don’t worry, Gus, I won’t turn you in.”

  “You’re a funny guy, Doc.”

  “Thanks for calling me back.”

  Holiday hit “end.” Then he dialed the number for T. C. Cook that he had programmed into his phone. Cook picked up on the second ring. Holiday thinking, The old man was waiting for me to call.

  T. C. COOK SAT AT his kitchen table, drinking a cup of coffee. From back in the office, he could hear the squawk, dispatcher’s voice, and patrolman’s response coming from the Internet site on his computer. It was often the sole sound in his otherwise quiet house. The woman the VA sent, the El Salvador lady, she made some noise around here, livened things up. He looked forward to her visits, but she only came once a week.

  Mostly, his days were long on boredom. He got up early, made out what he could of the newspaper, then spent time in his office or the workshop in his basement, looking for something to do. He waited for his mail around noon and took longer than necessary to prepare his lunch. He fought off but often succumbed to an afternoon nap. He tried not to watch too much television, though that was something he could do without frustration. But it was a passive activity, all take and no give. Cook was someone who had always lived for goals, and now he had none.

  He wasn’t mentally weak. He had more reason than most to be unhappy, but he would not allow himself the out of depression. There was little upside for him to getting out of bed in the morning, but he did so and dressed before breakfast, as a man would who was headed off to work.

  Getting involved with the church was an option, but he wasn’t much of a Jesus type. His wife had been a devout Baptist, a woman of strong faith. Some police clung to God, but the job and what he had seen produced the opposite effect on Cook. Now that he was closer to death, it would have been easy and understandable for him to fall back into churchgoing, but also, he felt, hypocritical. He had not been an attentive or particularly model husband, but he had loved his wife and been faithful to her, and if there was a God, and if indeed He was good, Cook believed that He would see fit to put him and Willa together again, whether Cook attended Sunday services or not.

  Cook stared into his empty coffee mug.

  His doctor had said to have only one cup a day, if he had any at all. That caffeine made his heart race, and Cook didn’t need that. Thing of it was, the doctor had also told him that the likelihood of his having another stroke was high, and when it came, it could be worse than the last. Wasn’t like not having a second cup of coffee was going to prevent that.

  His circulatory system was fragile, the doctor said. No, I cannot tell you how long it will be before “the next event.” Could be weeks and it could be years. All those decades of smoking and poor diet. We wish we could do more for you, Mr. Cook. Another operation would be too risky. Unfortunately. Continue to lead an active but careful life. Take your medication. Bullshit piled on top of bullshit, on and on.

  Cook looked over at the kitchen counter. He had one of those organizers, two pills in each compartment, separated by days of the week. So he wouldn’t forget a day, or forget he had taken the pills already and swallow double the dose. This is what it had come to for him. If he lived past the next stroke, he would probably be one of those dudes, had dead arms and legs. Then the VA would have someone dropping by to bathe him. Put one of those bibs on him while he ate. Send some poor immigrant lady to wipe his old man’s ass.

  He’d sooner eat his gun. But that was a thought for another day.

  Holiday had called. Cook had then phoned an old friend in the 4th District whom he had mentored in the early ’80s, now a commanding officer. Cook told the lieutenant that an officer in 4D had done his niece a kindness and she wanted to write a letter commending him, but she could only remember the number she’d seen on his car. Cook had no niece, and the lieutenant’s hesitation told him that he sensed the lie, but he gave the information out to Cook just the same. When Cook asked about the officer’s schedule, the lieutenant told him, after a long pause, that he was on an eight-to-four that day.

  Holiday would come, and they could get to work. The young man carried heavy baggage, but he had energy and fire. Maybe the two of them would turn over the right rock.

  Cook went out to his car, a light gold Mercury Marquis with a blue-star FOP sticker on the rear window, and opened the trunk. He suspected that he and Holiday would be working a tail late in the day and that they would take two cars. He knew what was in the trunk, knew he had not moved its contents, but he was a little bit excited and wanted to have a look at his things.

  He kept the car maintenance items here, including oil, antifreeze, jumper cables, brake and power steering fluid, shop rags, a tire patch kit, and a pneumatic jack. There was one Craftsman box holding standard tools and another holding a 100-foot retractable tape measure, duct tape, 10 ¥ 50 binoculars, night vision goggles he’d never used, a box of latex gloves, a friction-lock expandable baton, a set of Smith and Wesson blued handcuffs, a variety of batteries, a digital camera that Cook did not know how to operate, and a Streamlight Stinger rechargeable steel-cased flashlight, which could double as a weapon. Also in the trunk was a steel jimmy bar.

  All was in place. Holiday would not be by for a while. Cook decided to go back in the house and pull his Hoppe’s kit and .38. He had time to clean his gun.

  MICHAEL “MIKEY” TATE AND Ernest “Nesto” Henderson sat in a pretty black Maxima, the new style with the four pipes coming out the back, in the lot of a strip mall on Riggs Road in Northeast D.C., not far from the Maryland line. There was a dollar store, pawnbroker, liquor store, Chinese-and-sub shop, check-cashing joint, papusa place, and two hairstyling shops. One specialized in nails and the other, called Hair Raisers, was known for braids and hair extensions. Chantel Richards was employed at Hair Raisers. Henderson could see her through the front window, standi
ng behind a woman in a chair, both of them running their mouths as Richards did her job. It was Henderson who was doing most of the surveillance. Tate was leafing through the latest Vogue.

  “Damn, she fine, though,” said Henderson.

  “That is a lot of woman,” said Tate, looking up. He was wearing big jeans, a long-sleeved Lacoste shirt, and matching shoes with the little alligators stitched on the sides.

  “She tall, too,” said Henderson, who wore a blue Nationals cap, the away game version, not because he followed baseball but because the color matched his shirt. The cap was tilted slightly on his head.

  “Her hair makes her look taller than she is,” said Tate. “Plus, she might be wearing high heels. These fashion girls like to get that height thing goin. Makes ’em look more slim.”

  “She fat where it counts.”

  “She dresses right for the type of body she got.”

  “Where you read that, in that girl magazine?”

  “I’m just sayin. She got that effect she was going for.” Tate noticed women’s clothing, their shoes and jewelry, how they carried themselves, all that. He was interested, was all it was. But he didn’t talk about it much around Nesto, who thought that reading magazines about such things, and indeed reading of any kind, was gay.

  “I worry about you, son.”

  “I’m just admiring her effort, is all.”

  “Yeah, well, we been admiring her long enough.”

  “I ain’t happy about it, either. My ass hurts from sittin out here, too.”

  “Sure it don’t hurt from something else?”

  “Huh?”

  “Has someone been puttin their pork inside you?”

  “Fuck you, dawg.”

  “You read them fashion magazines all the time; I worry.”

  “Least I can read.”

  “While you gettin pounded from behind.”

  “Go on, Nesto.”

  They were coworkers, but they had little in common. Michael Tate had arrived at where he was as a transfer point to someplace else. He was like all those waiters in New York he’d read about, who weren’t waiters for real but actors who were on the way to being movie and television stars. That’s how Tate thought of himself. He wasn’t about working a minimum-wage thing, though, until he blew up. No way was he going to leave out his house without a nice outfit on or money in his pocket, because he was like that. So here he was.