A Firing Offense

by George Pelecanos

  “Now I know why you’ve been calling,” I said. “You’re leaving, right?”

  “Yes. The company’s moving me to Philadelphia this week.”

  “Congratulations,” I said, careful to omit any hint of sarcasm. “I assume it’s a good move for you.”

  “It’s an excellent opportunity. I got a substantial raise, and something like a signing bonus. I’m looking forward to the change.”

  “I’m sure you’ll do well.”

  “I’ve been trying to call you,” she said. “I mean, I wouldn’t have left without saying good-bye.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you. There’s so much been going on.”

  “I can see,” she said. “Are you all right?”

  “My nose is broken. In the last week I’ve been beaten up, twice. Yesterday I lost my job at Nathan’s. I’m not exactly on the fast track.”

  “Shit, Nicky.” She shook her head slowly. I hadn’t meant to go for sympathy, but her news had made me bitter.

  We sat for a while without speaking. I listened to the tick of my watch.

  “You look good,” I said, cutting the silence. We had often sat like this without awkwardness.

  “Thanks. But I’ve put on a few.”

  She leaned forward to stand. I looked down her loose T-shirt guiltlessly. Karen had truly beautiful breasts. I remembered waking before her some mornings and admiring them, slightly flattened as she lay sleeping on her back.

  I turned down her offer for more coffee. She washed the cup, and with her back to me said, “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’ve got a couple of grand in my retirement account. That will get me through the bills for a while. In the meantime, I was hired by this old guy to find his missing grandson.”

  “That why you got beaten up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A detective now,” she stated flatly, though she might as well have told me just to grow up. I must have looked pathetic, sitting on the floor wearing my little adhesive nose mask. She rubbed her hands dry with a paper towel. Looking down at her feet, she said, “I’m sorry, Nick. But I’ve got an awful lot to do today, with moving and all.”

  “Sure, Karen,” I said, laboring to my feet. “I should get going too.”

  As she walked me to the door, I felt unsteady, as if another piece of my youth was being torn away. She faced me. The edge in her eyes, the dark side of her that had attracted me, was gone.

  “Take care of yourself, Nicky,” she said. “I’ll write from Philly when I get settled.”

  “So long,” I said, and kissed her mouth. I felt her warm exhale on my face when she withdrew.

  I stepped out and down the walkway. The sound of her door closing behind me was final, like that of a vault.

  * * *

  I CROSSED THE RIVER via Chain Bridge and took Nebraska Avenue through to Connecticut, where I turned right and headed south a few blocks to Pence’s building. One look at my battered face convinced him that I was indeed “on the case”; he stroked me an expense check without flinching.

  “Good luck, son!” he shouted, as I bolted out the door.

  I spent the remainder of my day doing laundry, listening to music, and taking codeine siestas. By evening I had spoken to my landlord as to the location of the cat food and litter box, and packed my knapsack and overnight bag. When I was done, I phoned McGinnes at his apartment.

  “What’s going on, Johnny?”

  “I’m on vacation till the weekend.”

  “Brandon give you a few days off to think about things?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “but the little prick wants me back on the floor by Saturday, so he can make his numbers. How’s your early retirement going?”

  “Keeping busy. Some guys tried to warn me off the Broda thing yesterday. One of them put a boot to my face to make his point.”

  “What now?”

  “I’m leaving town for a couple of days to check out a lead. I could use some company.”

  He thought it over. “It beats sucking down draughts in the Zebra Room.”

  “Good. I’ll pick you up at eight, tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll pack the cooler,” he said.

  “Fine. And bring a swimsuit.”

  “Now you’re talkin’. Where we headed?”

  “Elizabeth City,” I said. “North Carolina.”

  EIGHTEEN

  BY THE TIME we neared Richmond, traveling south on 95, we had listened to Green on Red’s Gas, Food, Lodging, and on the other side of the tape, Lou Reed’s Coney Island Baby. I slid in a fresh cassette, an instrumental mix from the Raybeats, Love Tractor, and the Monochrome Set, and turned off onto 64, heading east towards Norfolk.

  “Jesus Christ, man,” McGinnes pleaded, “pull over! I gotta pee like a racehorse.”

  “I’ll pull over when your bladder’s ready to burst.”

  “It’s ready now. Anyway, I didn’t know we were being timed on this trip. What is this, the fucking Cannonball Run?”

  I found a Stuckey’s on one of the turnoffs. He was out of the car before I stopped, running through the pounding rain across the parking lot to the store and rest area. I pumped gas into my Dodge under the sheltering overhang.

  “Nice weather,” I said to the attendant, an old guy who stood expressionless in his uniform, shoulders hunched up, hands in his pockets.

  “For ducks,” he said.

  McGinnes trotted back to the car, a paper bag in his hand, and got in the passenger side. I pulled back onto the highway, turning up the volume on my deck to cover the scraping of my wipers.

  “Man, that felt good,” McGinnes said. “I’m ready now.” He was pulling assorted candies and pecan logs from the bag.

  “Careful. You might have bought something healthy. By mistake, I mean.”

  “I doubt it,” he said. “You want a beer?”

  “No.”

  But an hour later there was a cold can of Bud between my legs and McGinnes was working on his third one.

  As we approached the Tidewater area, traffic increased and we crossed several small bridges. McGinnes rolled a joint, which we smoked while driving over and through the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel. We had been on the road for just under four hours.

  At Route 17 I headed south along the Dismal Swamp Canal. The leaves on the trees had not yet begun to turn here. The rain had stopped and steam rose off the asphalt up ahead. We rolled our windows down. Jonathan Richman was on the stereo, telling his girl to “drop out of BU.”

  I looked over at McGinnes, who was wearing a Hawaiian print shirt with three pens in the breast pocket, a pair of twills, and Chucks. I had never seen him in sneakers.

  “I like the shirt,” I said.

  “I’m on a holiday,” he said with a Brit accent, holding the shirttail out and pointing it in my direction. “Do you fancy it?”

  “Yeah, I fancy it. But what are the pens for? You plan on writing some business while we’re down here?” We crossed the state line into North Carolina, and McGinnes tapped my can with his.

  “Just a habit,” he said.

  “Hey, maybe you could get some work. Nathan Plavin’s got a brother in the business down here, has a few retail stores of his own.”

  “Yeah, I know. Ned Plavin. Ned’s World, it’s called. Jerry Rosen worked for him before he worked for Nathan. But his stores are in South Carolina, smartass.”

  “Nutty Nathan’s and Ned’s World. Their parents must be proud.”

  “Anyway,” he said, “you’re the one out on his ear. I’ve still got a job.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I just hope you know what you’re doing,” he said. “I talked to Andre, told him the whole deal. Let’s just say he’s more familiar with the types of people you’re dealing with now. He says the guys who worked you over aren’t going to let that shit lie.”

  “What else did Andre say?”

  “He said the next time you’re in the way, your Korean buddy won’t be around to protect you. And t
hen they’ll take you down, man.”

  “I’m not worried,” I said, and pinched his cheek. “I’ve got you.”

  WE REACHED THE ELIZABETH City area before two in the afternoon. McGinnes suggested we drive around to get a feel for the place. In certain residential areas of the city were large Victorians, some with wraparound porches on more than one level. Cypress trees stood handsomely on wide green lawns.

  We drove by the waterfront, which seemed to be rundown to the point of decay in several sections. There was little commercial activity on the Pasquotank River that day, though there were a few pleasure boats heading out to the sound.

  “This used to be quite a port,” McGinnes said.

  “It doesn’t look like it was in our lifetime.”

  “Not in our lifetime. I’m talking about in the nineteenth century. Some serious Civil War shit went down in these parts. Naval battles. The Union ended up taking this place early in the war.”

  “How do you know so much about it?”

  “I grew up in this state.”

  “Come on, man,” I said. “You’re not talking to one of your customers now.”

  “No, I’m serious. My old man was stationed at Lejeune. So we spent some time on the Carolina coast.”

  “Then maybe you can steer us to a motel.”

  “Is that an order?” he said, and wiggled his eyebrows.

  We found a place off the bypass, a row of cottages that looked like toolsheds with stoops. The sign said Gates Motel. McGinnes kept calling it the “Bates Motel” as we approached it, and insisted we stay there.

  The woman in the office had probably seen a few things. But she couldn’t help staring when we walked in, announced by the sleigh bells that hung on the inside of the door. McGinnes had on his Hawaiian retailer outfit and a beer in his hand, and I my crisscross adhesive nose mask.

  “We’d like a room, please,” McGinnes said.

  “Sure,” she wheezed, her slit of a mouth barely moving on her swollen face. “Eighteen a night, checkout at eleven. How many nights you fellas plan on stayin’?”

  “Just tonight for now,” I said. I signed the book and paid her as she suspiciously eyed a smiling McGinnes.

  “Anything else?”

  “Is there a phone?” I asked. “I’ll be needing to make some local calls.”

  She went into a back room and returned with a dial phone and directory, placing them both on the counter in front of me.

  “There’s a jack in the room. Number nine.”

  I took the key and handed her a ten. “This should cover the phone.”

  “That’ll do.”

  “Any bars around here?” McGinnes asked sheepishly.

  “Sure is, son,” she said with a nasty grin. “But if you was to go into any of ’em, I wouldn’t wear that shirt.”

  AFTER A SHOWER I sat on one of the twin beds in the room, with the phone in my lap and the white pages spread in front of me. McGinnes was out walking.

  There were four Lazarus listings in the directory for the entire region. I began dialing.

  My third call was to a T. J. Lazarus. The man who answered sounded old and either drunk or tired.

  “’Lo,” he said.

  “Mr. Lazarus?”

  “Yes?”

  “Kim’s father?”

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Nick Stefanos,” I said quickly. “I’m a friend of your daughter’s.”

  “Kim’s away,” he said.

  “I know. But I was heading south on business and stopped in town for the night. Thought I might meet Kim’s folks.”

  “Kim’s mother passed on last year.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t bother yourself,” he said. “But you just missed Kim. She was in town last week.”

  “I’d like to drop by and meet you anyway, sir.”

  “I don’t know what the hell it is you want,” he said bluntly. “But if you want to come by, come by. And stop and pick up some beer on your way out, will you?”

  “Yessir.” I took his directions, thanked him, and hung up.

  I shaved and removed my bandages, deciding I looked more vulnerable and less intimidating that way. McGinnes entered the room.

  “There’s a train runs behind here,” he said excitedly. “I walked into the woods out back and down a hill to some tracks.” I didn’t answer him. He looked at the keys in my hand. “Where you headed?”

  “I found the Lazarus girl’s father,” I said. “I’m going to talk to him.”

  McGinnes drew a beer from the cooler at the foot of the bed. “Check you later,” he said.

  T. J. LAZARUS LIVED on a street of old bungalows set on large pieces of land. His, a gray and white-shuttered affair, badly needed paint.

  I crossed the walkway onto a wide wooden porch, where a black Lab rose clumsily to greet me. He sniffed at my jeans, then my hand, and gave me one perfunctory lick. Then he stood next to me and slowly wagged his tail as I knocked on the door.

  The man who opened up and stood before me was well into his seventies. He was tall and thin and rawboned, and wore blue chinos with a faded yellow T-shirt. There was a gardening glove on one of his hands. His eyes were alert and a fluid blue.

  “Well, come on in,” he said, taking a good look at me before he shook my hand. “We’ll walk through the house and out back.”

  His house was clean and furnished with worn, cushiony armchairs and sofas. A stereo television and VCR were set in the bookshelf, new models that made everything else in the place seem archaic. The dog stayed next to me as I followed Lazarus through the dining room to a back door that led to a screened porch.

  “Been in a scuffle?” he said, his back to me.

  “Yes,” I said. “Like my grandfather used to say, I zigged when I should have zagged.”

  “Well,” he chuckled, “no shame in taking a punch now and again.”

  We walked back deep into the yard to a garden that ran the width of his property. I pulled two cans of beer off the six I was cradling, holding the remaining four with a finger hooked through the plastic ring. He took them both and opened them, handing one back to me. Sipping the beer, he kept one eye in my direction.

  “What was the name again?”

  “Nick Stefanos.”

  “Okay, Nick. Mine would be T. J.”

  “I’ve been anxious to meet you,” I said.

  “You have?” he said almost mockingly. “Let’s step into the garden. We can talk while I do a little work.”

  I followed him to a row of tomato plants, where he bent down and untied a stake, tossing it out of the garden.

  “Good year?”

  He nodded. “Steady rain last spring, hot and wet all summer. Great for tomatoes. I’ve cleared out most of the vine vegetables—squash and cucumbers and that sort of thing. Melons were no good this year—went rotten before I got ’em on the tiles.” He waved his hand around the expanse of greenery. “Still pulling carrots and onions.”

  “Kim told me about this garden,” I said, realizing how stupid it sounded as the words were coming from my mouth.

  “She did, huh?” That mocking tone again. He squinted up at me. “Funny. She never took a bit of interest in it all the time she grew up here.”

  “Sorry I missed her. Was she alone?”

  “No,” he said, tired of the game. “She wasn’t alone.” He rose from his knees and stood to face me. “Why don’t we set up on the porch and knock down these beers?”

  ON THE BACK PORCH T. J. Lazarus moved two garden chairs together and pulled the remaining beers from my hand, setting them on a low aluminum table between us. He pulled a fresh one off the ring and popped it.

  “Who are you, son?” he said. “You sure as hell didn’t come here to see my garden, and I don’t believe you’re a friend of my daughter’s. Now I don’t appreciate the company of a liar, especially in my own house. But if she’s in some kind of trouble, I want to know. You a cop?”

  “Private cop,” I said,
my own words sounding unreal. I was getting tired of telling lies to honest people. Nevertheless, I handed him my phony ID.

  He inspected it. “I didn’t think you were a cop. Cops don’t get beat up.”

  “So I’ve been told. I apologize for not being honest with you. But I’m not looking for Kim. I’m after one of the boys she was with. She was with two boys, wasn’t she?”

  “That’s right. What’s going on?”

  “I was hired by the grandfather of one of the boys to find him.”

  He studied me. “Where you from, Nick?”

  “Washington, D.C.”

  “Murder Capitol, huh?” I didn’t answer. “You just get into town?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Hungry?”

  “I could use something to eat,” I admitted. “I really could.”

  “LIKE IT?”

  “I like it fine.”

  We were sitting at his kitchen table, eating an early supper of grilled chops, fresh corn, and a tomato and onion salad. The late afternoon sun came in through the west window, brightening the colors on my plate. Lazarus brought a glass out of the cupboard and placed it next to my can.

  “Here,” he said. “Drink it like a white man.”

  I poured the beer into the glass. “What did you think of the boys Kim was with?”

  “They only spent the night. The one boy said his name was Eddie, but the younger one called him Red.”

  “Redman,” I said.

  “That’s right. This Redman was the tougher of the two, a brawler from the looks of him. And cocky, like everything was a joke.”

  “What about Jimmy, the other one?”

  “He was trying to be tough, but it wasn’t in him. You know what I mean.”

  “Where did Kim fit in with the two of them?”

  “My daughter was way too old for both of them,” he said bluntly. “This Redman character clearly thought he had a shot at her. Maybe something was going on between ’em, I don’t know. But like everything else, she didn’t seem to be too serious about the situation.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He stared into his beer can. “Ruth and me had Kimmy late in life. That’s not an excuse, but we were a little old to be raising a girl in these times. When she was in her teens, we thought her wildness was just something she’d grow out of, but she went through her twenties the same damn way. After Ruth passed on, I lost touch with her. She sends me expensive gifts on holidays now, but to me it doesn’t mean much.”