A Firing Offense

by George Pelecanos

  I changed into sweatpants, throwing my dirty clothes into a mounting pile next to my dresser. I boiled some water, made coffee, took the mug along with a pen and pad of paper, and sat down next to the phone. In the white pages I found the numbers for the bureaus of licensing in Maryland and D.C.

  I dialed the Maryland number and inquired about the requirements for a private investigator’s license in that state. A cool, efficient voice explained that one must have had at least five years’ experience as a police officer or served under a licensed investigator in an apprenticeship arrangement. I thanked her and hung up.

  The woman who answered the phone at the D.C. bureau reluctantly ran down the requirements. “Basically,” she said, “you come into our office and pick up a private detective agency package. There are several forms to fill out, and a blank application for a surety bond. You’ll need four full-face wallet-sized photos of yourself when you come in. They can’t be more than three months old. And you’ll need to be fingerprinted down on Indiana Avenue. After that we do a background check as to any felonies or misdemeanors you might have. That takes at least a couple of weeks. If you check out, you get a license.”

  “What does the license give me? The right to carry a gun?”

  “No, you cannot carry a weapon, by law. The license and certificate that comes with it merely legitimizes you.”

  “Where’s your office and what’s it going to cost me?”

  “Two Thousand, Fourteenth Street. Third floor. The application fee is one hundred and fifty-eight dollars. Fingerprinting fee is sixteen-fifty.”

  I thanked her and replaced the receiver. Then I dialed Pence’s number. The old man answered on the second ring.

  “What’s the dope, Mr. Stefanos?” he asked anxiously.

  “I may have gotten a lead last night,” I lied. “I’m going to follow it up this evening. Have you heard from Jimmy?”

  “No.”

  “Mr. Pence, has Jimmy ever been in trouble with the law? Vandalism, shoplifting, anything minor like that?”

  It took him a while to answer. “Not to my knowledge, Mr. Stefanos.”

  “Good. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow, then,” he said, and hung up.

  I dumped the rest of my coffee and walked into my bedroom, the largest single area of my apartment. In my gym bag I located my rope.

  I moved my rocking chair from the center of the room, put Tommy Keene’s EP, “Places That Are Gone,” on the turntable, cranked up the volume, and began to jump rope. After twenty minutes my T-shirt was soaked through.

  I had a hot shower, shaved, put on clean jeans, a deep blue shirt, and a gray, light wool Robert Hall sportjacket I had picked up at the thrift shop for twenty bucks. On my way out I carried the cat in one hand and her dish in the other and placed both of them on the stoop. I climbed into my car and headed towards Connecticut Avenue.

  THE STORE WAS STRANGELY quiet when I entered. Lee was behind the counter reading a textbook. Lloyd was sitting on a console watching the soaps. He turned his head, looked me over, and returned his gaze to the television.

  Lee looked up from her book and smiled. I walked around the counter and touched her arm, leaned into her and said, “Do you mind?”

  “Not at all,” she said. I kissed her. “You look better. Do you feel better?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you up to?”

  “I came in to correct the proofs for the weekend. Then I’ve got an appointment downtown.”

  “The courier delivered this an hour ago,” she said, handing me a thin white bag filled with tear sheets and proofs.

  The art department at the Washington Post was a sweatshop, and showed it by the manner in which eighty percent of my proofs were returned to me. In this particular proof, several different type styles were inexplicably set, art was shot upside down, key words were misspelled, and most of the phone numbers for the stores were incorrect. For this and other services my company paid a major account “discount rate” somewhere over $120 per column inch.

  I corrected the proof, using the standard editing symbols, then called ad services to tell them where to pick it up. McGinnes arrived at the counter as I hung up the phone. His eyes were watery and he was very pale. He took my jaw in his hand and turned my face to the right.

  “Not too bad,” he said.

  “No. It will be gone in a couple of days.”

  “I wish I could say the same. The guy who dropped me knew what he was doing.”

  “You hurting?”

  “Some,” he said. “I pissed a little blood this morning.”

  “You should have a doctor check it out.”

  “I’m on medication right now.”

  “I know,” I said. “I can smell it on you.”

  I shook his hand and said good-bye to Lee. Lloyd kept his eyes on the television, his mouth piped and jaw ajut, like an emaciated Douglas MacArthur.

  * * *

  I SPENT THE REMAINDER of the afternoon running between offices downtown, standing in lines, being fingerprinted, and filling out forms in triplicate. By the time I was finished my hangover was gone, and the previous night’s activities had become a romantic memory. Which is to say that I was ready, once again, for a drink.

  But first I had to make another stop, to see a guy McGinnes and I knew, a whale of a man who went by the alliterative name of Fat Fred.

  NINE

  SOUVENIR CITY WAS a small shop on Ninth between F and G run by Fat Fred, whose real name was the somehow even less appealing Fred Bort. Fat Fred had worked with McGinnes and me on the Avenue for a brief period in the late seventies, until the company got hip to the fact that he was fencing goods stolen from the store. He stayed in the fencing business, opening this store as a thinly veiled front. McGinnes called the place, which sold an indescribably garish inventory of useless trinkets, “Souvenir Shitty.”

  Fat Fred had been a fair retail salesman, though he lost more than a few deals due to his appearance and lack of hygiene. Besides hovering at an indelicate two eighty, quite a load for a man who stood five feet seven, he smelled like an ashtray and apparently showered only on a novelty basis.

  Fat Fred was in the rear of the shop when I entered, a lit weed in his hand. He took a deep drag from it and blew a cloud my way as I walked up to greet him. He was still buying his clothes from the “Work ’n’ Leisure” department at Sears, and his hair, which was plastered to his scalp in topographic sections, resembled black spinach.

  “Nick,” he said.

  “Freddie. What’s happening?”

  “You’re looking at it.” He waved his club of a hand the width of the store. “Slow tourist season. Must be the murder rate thing.”

  “What about your other business?”

  He grinned, then wheezed, “What can I do for you, Nick?”

  “You still do licenses?”

  “Sure. What did you have in mind?”

  “I need a relatively authentic private investigator’s license, D.C. style. Can you swing it?”

  “Yeah, not a problem.”

  “How much?”

  “Say, thirty.”

  “Say twenty, Freddie. And when you take my picture, take four extra for the real thing.”

  He shrugged and motioned me to the side of the shop, seating me in front of an old-fashioned box camera. “Turn your head to the left some,” he said, looking down into the viewfinder. “You don’t want that black eye showing up on your license. Good.” He took the shots.

  “How long will this take?”

  “Not long. Spell the name and address you want to use on the card.”

  I did that on a piece of scrap paper and asked, “Will this thing pass?”

  His jowls shook with his nod. “I wouldn’t go flashing it in front of D.C.’s finest. But, yeah, it’ll pass.”

  I walked around the shop. Sweatshirts and T-shirts seemed to be Freddie’s big number, the cheap Indonesian variety that begin to fray before the tourists reach t
he Pennsylvania Turnpike. Likenesses of President Bush and his first lady were decaled on some of these, stars haloed around their heads. I noted with some pleasure that, even when it was the artist’s job to make Mr. Bush seem strong, he still came off as the seventh-grade music teacher whose ass was kicked at least once a year by that particularly gene-deficient brand of student who always seemed to disappear or enter the Marines by high school.

  In the center of the store were souvenir racks full of salt and pepper shakers and paperweights, all in the shape of monuments. One of these racks held dinner plates and mugs, on which were enameled the “sights of Washington.” I picked up a plastic sphere half-filled with water containing a tiny Washington Monument, and shook it. Snow fell over the Ellipse.

  Fat Fred emerged from the back room about fifteen minutes later with my card. It certainly looked official enough, though I had no basis for judgment. What in the hell did I think I was doing?

  “I laminated it,” he said proudly.

  “You do good work,” I said, and gave him the original thirty he had asked for.

  “Why do you always gotta fuck with me, Nicky?”

  “’Cause I like you, Freddie.” I slapped his arm, which should have been on a meathook. “Thanks, buddy.” I put the ID and extra photos in my wallet and left the store.

  Two doors down was a combination lunch counter, bar, and arts house called the District Seen, where one could get a decent sandwich, listen to some music, and hear anything from readings by modernist beat poets to a capella new wave. Though the acts more often than not were sophomoric, there was that sad and noble quality in them of the intrepid amateur.

  I picked up the latest copy of City Paper at the door and had a seat at the black and white tiled bar. At this early hour the bartender was the only employee in the front of the house, though there was the sound of prep work coming from the kitchen.

  The bartender was a burly, balding, redheaded guy I had seen working in several clubs through the years. Gregory Isaacs, the “cool ruler” of reggae, was pouring through the Advents on either side of the bar.

  I ordered a club, a cup of split pea soup, and coffee, and opened the tabloid to the arts section, skipping over the paper’s customarily unfocused cover story. Joel E. Siegel, the most intelligent film critic in town, who made waste of the Post’s hapless duo (the gushing Hal Hinson and the unreadable Rita Kempley), had reviewed a couple of interesting documentaries. And Mark Jenkins, who on the plus side was a Smiths fetishist but on the minus side a Costello basher, had done an enthusiastic review of the neo-psychedelic Stone Roses.

  After my dinner I ordered a dark beer and drank it as I finished reading the paper. I nursed a second as the place began to fill up and become noisier. When the bartender switched over to Pere Ubu on the stereo, I settled up and left.

  It was dark now, between eight and nine o’clock. Working Washington was safe in the suburbs, leaving this part of the city virtually deserted. The storefronts, mostly shoe shops displaying the latest Bama-ish styles, were closed and secured with drawn iron gates. This section of town had its own smell in the early evening, of dried spit and alley dirt in the wedges of cracked concrete.

  Pigeons fluttered as I turned right off of Ninth and moved down F. Some punks were hanging outside the entrance of the Snake Pit, smoking cigarettes and looking patently sullen. The all-black dress and hairstyles had changed very little in ten years.

  I maneuvered around them and entered a long hallway postered with announcements of shows around town. As I neared the doorway, humid, smoky air rushed towards me, along with the sound of a chainsaw electric guitar.

  I paid for a ticket through a box office window and handed it to the doorman, a slight kid in black jeans and an army green T-shirt, with a bleached blond brush cut on his pale head. He ripped the ticket in half and returned the stub with his soft hand.

  The main room was half-filled with young people dressed in dark clothing, blending in against the black walls of the club. They were an odd mixture here of artsy college students, punks, black hipsters, geeks, and even a few rednecks who dug the music. An overweight computerscience major who haunted used record stores could fit in just as well at the Snake Pit as the latest trendy.

  I moved past the main bar and stage and headed for the back bar, which was located at the end of another long hall. The DJ was blasting through a set of garage rock, segueing from early Slickee Boys to the Hoodoo Gurus. The volume lessened as I entered the back room.

  I removed my jacket, hung it on a peg, and took a seat on the wall stool at the far end of the bar. Cocktail napkins were fanned out on the bar like white flowers blooming randomly from the dark wood.

  Bartenders at the Snake Pit generally had the look of the undead. The one who placed a coaster in front of me had thin, druggy arms and was sloppily dressed in purple on black. Her face was bloodless and set off by eggplant-colored lipstick, though not entirely unpleasant.

  “What can I get you?”

  “A Bud bottle,” I said, “and an Old Grand-Dad. Neat.”

  She hooked me up with a quick and professionally deft handling of the bottles. I thanked her and suggested she pour one for herself. She opted for Johnnie Walker Black in a rocks glass. I like scotch drinkers, when it’s a woman doing the drinking. We tapped glasses and drank slowly.

  “Who’s playing tonight?” I asked.

  “The Primitives,” she said coolly. “Blondie via the Jesus and Mary Chain.”

  “A lot of feedback?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Feedback and angst.”

  “Who’s opening?”

  “The Deaf Pedestrians. Pedestrian describes ’em.”

  “I’m looking for the little brother of a friend,” I said, pulling out the shaven picture of Broda and sliding it in front of her. “I think he hangs out with some of the skins here.”

  “Fuckin’ skinheads,” she said viciously and looked at the photo. “I don’t know him. But you might ask those assholes.” She pointed out the entranceway towards the stairwell, where two head-shaven boys were leaning against the wall smoking cigarettes. “They’re always here.”

  “Maybe later. How about another shot?”

  She poured one for me and moved down the bar to take an order. The place was getting denser and smokier. I had a warm, even buzz.

  The DJ was playing something hard and fast. The bartender sauntered in my direction and leaned in towards me, her forearms resting on the mahogany bar. There was color now on her cheeks.

  “Anything else?”

  “No, thanks. Cash me out.” She pulled my tab from between two rum bottles on the call rack.

  “Nine dollars,” she said.

  I put thirteen down on the bar. “See you later, hear?”

  “Sure. I’ve seen you around.”

  I grabbed my jacket off the wall and walked out into the hallway. The two skins were heading down into the narrow stairwell that led to the john and cloakroom. They were of average size and both wearing black jeans and black, steel-toed workboots. One had on a flannel shirt, the other a black T-shirt. I followed them into the stairwell. The DJ had kicked in Sonic Youth’s “Teenage Riot.”

  I said, “Hey,” and they turned, four steps down, to face me.

  They looked smaller and more vulnerable now. The one wearing the flannel shirt had eyelids at half-mast and his mouth hung open. The other had pale, girlishly veinless arms that hung like strings from the sleeves of his T-shirt. Both were trying to look tough, but I recognized them for what they were—pussies with crewcuts.

  “You guys mind if I ask you a couple of questions?” I used the friendliest tone I could stomach.

  “You a cop?” the one closest to me asked, but before I could answer his friend spoke up.

  “He’s no cop. Cops don’t get black eyes.” They both laughed drunkenly.

  “I’m looking for my little brother,” I said, pulling a twenty from my pocket along with the photo of Jimmy Broda. I kept the bill and handed them
the picture. They stared at it rather stupidly for a long while.

  “What’s this dude’s name?” flannel-shirt finally asked.

  “Jimmy Broda.”

  “The picture’s not too good,” he said, quickly adding, “but I seen him around.”

  “Recently?” He looked at his friend, then at the jacket pocket where I had replaced the Jackson.

  “All this talk is making me thirsty, big brother.”

  “You’re covered on the twenty,” I said. “Go ahead.”

  “I think I know who the dude is, if it’s the one I’m thinking of. He runs with a guy they call Redman, you know, this redheaded motherfucker.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And sometimes I seen him with this good lookin’ older bitch. But it might be that she hangs out with Redman.”

  “This Redman got a real name, or the girl?”

  “I don’t know his name or hers,” he said, disappointed but still hungry.

  “When’s the last time you saw him or his friends?”

  “It’s been awhile. I don’t know, a few weeks maybe.”

  “Would they hang out anywhere else?”

  “No, man,” he said, “this is it now. This place is happenin’, even though there’s too many niggers come in here for my taste.” His friend chuckled uneasily.

  “Who else would know more?” I asked, revealing the twenty once again.

  “We know all the skins, man,” he said defensively. “You know that graffiti—you can see it on the Red Line near Fort Totten—says ‘United Skinheads’ over an American flag?” I nodded that I had seen it. “I did that.”

  “That’s a nice piece of work. But there must be somebody else I can talk to who might know a little more.”

  He looked at his friend, then at me. “It will cost you another ten.”

  I pulled out the bill and slapped it together with the twenty.

  “There’s a rowhouse on Ninth and G, Southeast, got a red awning over the porch. The dude you want to talk to is John Heidel. But don’t tell him we turned you on to the address.” I handed him the thirty, and he eyed me suspiciously. “You sure you’re no cop?”