Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go

by Pelecanos, George

  Ritchie shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe they were working the corner outside, working with all those other hustlers. The ones I’m talking about, they come in here, snag matches, bum smokes, sometimes try to hit on my customers. I’m telling you, my clientele’s not interested. I know a couple of these hustlers, and some of them are all right. Most of them are country kids. You look at ’em, weight lifters, gym rats, with the sideburns and the pompadours, they all look like young Elvises. But usually, if they’re not drinking—and most of the time they’re not—I ask them to leave. There’ve been a couple incidents, and I just don’t want those guys in here.”

  “What kind of incidents?”

  “Where some people got hurt. See, the way it typically goes down, the way I understand it, these hustlers make the arrangement with the customer, usually some closeted businessman who works up around the Circle, and then they go down to the woods around P Street Beach. The money changes hands, and after that they do whatever it is they do—giving, receiving, whatever. But what happened last month, a couple of kids were leading those businessmen down there to the woods, then taking them for everything they had.”

  I dragged on my cigarette. “You know who these guys were?”

  “No. ’Course, it never got reported to the cops. But it got around down here fast. What I heard, the other guys out on the street, they took care of the problem themselves. The whole thing was bad for their business.”

  “Ooordering,” came the voice from down the bar.

  Ritchie rolled his eyes. “Be back in a minute,” he said.

  I stood up and finished my beer, slid the photographs back in the folder. I took out my wallet and left money on the bar for the beer, and an extra twenty for Ritchie, with my business card on top of the twenty. Ritchie came back, wiping his hands with a damp rag.

  “Thanks for your help,” I said.

  “Wish I could have done more.”

  “You did plenty. Any chance you could hook me up with one of those hustlers you were talking about? There’s money in it for them—I’d pay for their time.”

  “I could give it a try, yeah. I don’t see why not, if you’re talking about money. I don’t know what an hour of their time is worth, though. I’m out of that scene, way out. Not that I didn’t have my day in the sun. But I’ve had the same boyfriend for the last five years. When I’m not in here. I’m sitting at home on the couch, watching sports on the tube, like the old fart that I am.”

  “Stella said you used to be pretty good with a bat.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I blew out my fucking knees. Now about the only thing I can do is water sports.”

  “Water sports, huh.”

  “Don’t be a wise guy, Stefanos. I’m talking about swimming laps, down at the Y.”

  “Sorry.” I ran my hand down the lapel of my sport jacket. “So you don’t think too much of my threads, huh?”

  A light came on in Ritchie’s eyes. “Hey, look, don’t feel bad. I used to have a jacket just like that.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Ritchie said. “Then my father got a job.”

  “Lucky me. I get to talk to an ex-jock bartender who doesn’t drink. And I get a comedian in the bargain.”

  “I’m crackin’ myself up here.”

  “Take it easy, Ritchie.”

  “Yeah, you, too. I’ll let you know if I can set that thing up.”

  “Gimme a call,” I said. “The number’s on the card.”

  TEN

  I HEARD FROM Paul Ritchie, and some others, early on Saturday morning at my apartment. Boyle called first, and he asked about my progress on the case. I told him that up to that point, my few leads had led only to blind alleys. I kept on that tack, and when I was done, I had managed to dig a big hole and fill it to the top with lies. I asked Boyle if the cops had anything new. He told me that an informant in a Southeast project had claimed that Jeter and Lewis were mules for a supplier down that way. I asked them if his people had any details on it and he said, “Nothing yet.” We agreed to keep up with each other if something shook out on either end. I didn’t like lying to him, and I wasn’t exactly sure why I was doing it, but I had the vague feeling that I could see the beginning of some kind of light off in the distance. And it just wasn’t in me to give anything away.

  Paul Ritchie called next. I thanked him and promised to buy him a beer the next time he was in my part of town. He reminded me that he didn’t drink, and I suggested that instead I’d buy myself one and dedicate it to him. Ritchie laughed, but he couldn’t help mentioning how good it felt each morning to wake up with a clean head and be able to remember all the details from the night before. I told him I appreciated the testimonial, thanked him once again, and said good-bye.

  Later in the morning, the phone rang for the third time that day. I thought it might be Lyla, but instead I heard the excited voice of Jack LaDuke.

  “Nick!” he said.

  “LaDuke!”

  “What do we got?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe something, maybe not.”

  “I called you yesterday, Nick. Why you didn’t call me back?”

  “I was out during the day. And then I had a night shift, got home late.”

  “Out doing what? Working on the case?”

  “Well, yeah. LaDuke, you got to understand, I’ve got to ease into this, man. I’m used to working alone.” He didn’t respond. I crushed the cigarette I had been working on in the ashtray. “Listen, LaDuke, I’ve got an interview with this guy, later today. You want to come along?”

  “Damn right I do.”

  “Okay. I’ll pick you up in an hour.”

  “Uh-uh. I’ll pick you up.”

  “What’s the big secret? You don’t want me to know where you live?”

  “I’ll swing by in an hour, Stevonus.”

  “It’s Stefanos, you asshole.”

  “One hour,” LaDuke said, and hung up the phone.

  PAUL RITCHIE HAD SET me up with one of the hustlers who worked the corner outside the Fire House, a guy who called himself Eddie Colorado. The name was a phony, but it sung, a canny cross of urban hood and westerner. Over the years, I had seen some of the men who stood around and worked that part of the street, and out of all the butch gimmicks that had passed through town—soldier of fortune, construction worker, lumberjack, and others—the cowboy thing seemed to have more staying power than the rest.

  “What have you got goin’ on this weekend?” LaDuke said. We were sitting in my Dodge, alongside a small park near the P Street Bridge.

  “Dinner with Lyla’s folks tomorrow, at their house. What about you?”

  “I’ve got a date with Anna Wang tonight.” LaDuke grinned, proud of himself. “I called her up.”

  “Congratulations,” I said, then pointed through the windshield to the bridge. “Here comes our boy.”

  Eddie waited for the green at 23rd, crossed the street, and headed for my car. Ritchie had told me to look for an unnatural blond, a “skinny rockabilly type with bad skin,” and Eddie fit the bill. His orangish moussed hair contrasted starkly with his red T-shirt, the sleeves of which had been turned up, the veins popping on his thin biceps. His jeans were pressed and tight, and he walked with an exaggerated swagger, a cigarette lodged above his ear, a cocky smile spread across his face.

  “Look at this guy,” LaDuke said with naked disgust.

  “Relax,” I said, “and get in the backseat. Okay?”

  LaDuke got out of the shotgun bucket, left the door open for Eddie, and climbed into the back. Eddie stepped up to the door, took a look around like he owned a piece of the park, pulled a wad of gum from his mouth, and chucked it onto the grass. He leaned a forearm on the frame and cocked his hip.

  “You Stefanos?” he said.

  “Yeah. Get in.”

  “Sure thing,” Eddie said with a slow accent that had just crawled down off the Smokies. He dropped into the bucket and pulled the door closed.

  I looked across the consol
e at Eddie. “Paul Ritchie said twenty-five would buy some of your time.”

  “A little of it.”

  “Here.” I passed him a folded twenty along with a five. Eddie Colorado pushed his pelvis out and jammed the bills into the pocket of his jeans. He hit my dash lighter, slid the cigarette off the top of his ear, and put the filtered end in his mouth.

  “No,” LaDuke said from the backseat, “we don’t mind if you smoke.”

  Eddie turned his head, gave LaDuke a quick appraisal, smiled, followed the smile with a tight giggle. “Who’s your friend?”

  “His name’s Jack.”

  Eddie smiled again, raised his eyebrows, touched the hot end of the lighter to his smoke. He held the cigarette out the window, settled down in his seat, the sun coming directly in on his face. The acne on his cheek looked red as fire in the light.

  Eddie stared straight ahead. “Paul told me you wanted me to look at some pictures.”

  I opened the chrome cover on the center console, took out the photographs of Calvin and Roland, gave them to Eddie. He dragged on his cigarette and blew smoke down at the images in his hand.

  “You know them?” I said.

  Eddie’s mouth twitched a little. He nodded and said, “Yes.”

  “Were they workin’ this area?”

  “For a little while, yeah.”

  “And you and your buddies kicked them out.”

  “Right.”

  “What’d they do to make you do that?” I said.

  Eddie grinned. “You’re getting into somethin’ here that might come back to me. It’s gonna cost you another twenty-five.”

  “Bullshit,” LaDuke said. “This guy didn’t kick anybody out of anywhere, Nick. Look at him.”

  “Your friend thinks I’m weak,” Eddie said. “But I’ve been dealing with rednecks all my life, calling me this and that, beatin’ me up on the way to and from school. Let me tell you somethin’, it ain’t no different here in Washington D.C. than in the country. First day I got into town, I went into this burger joint off New York Avenue. This guy says to me, ‘Hey, you fuckin’ queer.’ You wanna know what I did about it? I broke his fuckin’ jaw.”

  I watched a man with matted hair carry a backpack past my car. “So, what, you kicked these two off your turf because they called you a name?”

  Eddie shook his head and said, “The twenty-five.”

  I said, “Give it to him, Jack.”

  LaDuke pulled his wallet, withdrew the money. He crumpled the bills and dropped them over Eddie’s shoulder, into his lap. Eddie smoothed the bills out carefully, folded them, and slipped them into his pocket.

  “You say you knew these two,” I said. “What were their names?”

  “I don’t know. Ain’t nobody uses his real name down here, anyhow.”

  “They were doing prostitution down in those woods?”

  “ ‘Doing prostitution’?” Eddie laughed. “If you want to call it that. They were workin’, Stefanos, that’s what they was doin’.”

  “Down in those woods?”

  “On the edge of the beach,” Eddie said. “At first, it didn’t bother anybody, ’cause, you got to realize, there’s a certain kind of man only goes for boys got dark meat.”

  “Jesus Christ,” LaDuke muttered.

  “So,” Eddie said, “it wasn’t no competition for the rest of us. But then this one here—Eddie put one dirty finger on the face of Roland Lewis—“he took some man’s money. I mean all his money. Took more than they agreed to. Just took it.”

  I said, “You sure he wasn’t provoked? Maybe one of these johns threatened him or something, tried to hurt him.”

  Brown lines of tobacco stain ran between the gaps of Eddie’s toothy grin. “The johns, man, they don’t hurt us. Most of the time, if there’s anything like that to be done, they want us to do it to them. Just last week, I had this old man down in the woods, this lawyer works for some fancy firm, down around 19th? He had me slide this rod with little barbs on it right up into his dick. And right before he came, he had me rip it out. Man, you should have seen the blood in his jizz. With all his screamin’ and shit, it was hard to tell the pleasure from the pain.”

  “Goddamn it,” LaDuke said, “stick to what we’re talking about here.”

  “Stick to it, Eddie,” I said. “We don’t need all the extra details.”

  “All right.” Eddie looked in the rearview at LaDuke, back at me. “So anyway, we find out from some of our regulars that this thing has been happening again and again. That these boys are rolling our businessmen on a regular basis, takin’ the short road to big money. But there is no short road, see? This is work, like anything else. You don’t treat your customers right, they’re gonna go somewheres else. So we went and had a meeting with your boys one night, down in the woods.”

  “You told them to get lost?” LaDuke said.

  “It wasn’t all that dramatic,” Eddie said. “The one who started all the shit said that they were off to something better, that they didn’t need this anymore.”

  “Off to what?”

  Eddie stabbed a finger at Roland’s picture once more. “He said they were going to get themselves into the movies. Said they met a man who was going to make them a whole lot of money. Big money, man, extralarge.”

  LaDuke said, “Porno?”

  “What do you think?” Eddie said.

  “This kid you keep pointing to,” I said. “Did he seem to be the leader of the two?”

  “Appeared to be.”

  I took a cigarette from the pack on the dash, rolled it unlit between my fingers. “Eddie, did these guys seem like they were into what they were doing?”

  “They were into making money,” Eddie said. “But what you really mean is, Were they faggots? If I had to make some kind of guess, I’d say the other kid was kinda, I don’t know, not sure about anything he was doing. The leader, though, he was definitely into it.”

  “Into it how?”

  “His eyes.” Eddie looked in the rearview at LaDuke, held his gaze. “Me and my friends, when things are slow out here, we play this game: Gay, Not Gay. We check out these suit-and-tie boys walking down the street and we make the call. Me, I look at their eyes. And when it comes to knowing what it really is that they’re about, I believe I’m usually right.” Eddie smirked a little at LaDuke.

  “Fuck this,” LaDuke said. “I’ve had enough.”

  “A couple more questions,” I said. “You know anybody in this movie business you were talking about?”

  “Uh-uh,” Eddie said. “Not my thing. I like the fresh air, Stefanos. Can’t stand being cooped up in a small space, under some hot light. I ain’t got no ambition to be that kind of star.”

  “Some of your friends might know something about it.”

  “Maybe,” Eddie said. “I’ll ask around. I find out anything, I’ll give you a call.”

  I gave him my card. “There’s money in it for you if you come up with something.”

  “That’s the case,” Eddie said, “you know I’ll call.”

  “We about done?” said LaDuke.

  “Your friend needs to relax,” Eddie said. “It’s not good for him to be so angry.”

  “See you later, Eddie,” I said.

  Eddie turned to LaDuke. “Take care of yourself, Stretch.”

  He got out of the car, and shut the door behind him. I watched him strut across the street and disappear over the hill at the start of the bridge. He lived for money, but he was stupid and he was sloppy, and he had a short attention span. He’d lose my card, or forget my name; I knew I’d never hear from him again.

  “Goddamn it,” LaDuke said softly from the backseat.

  I lit the cigarette that I had been playing with for the last five minutes, took some smoke into my lungs. “Listen, Jack. These kids out here, man, they’re going to get into some shit. You didn’t think Roland was totally innocent, did you? If you’re going to do this kind of work, you’ve got to stop setting yourself up for disappointment.”


  “It makes me sick, that’s all. To think that Roland comes from a home where his mother raised him with love, and then he ends up down in some woods, having some middle-aged man suck his dick, maybe go butt-up in some porno movie. A kid is confused enough, Nick; he doesn’t know shit yet about what he is. To have all these adults doing these things to him… I swear to God, it just makes me sick.”

  “We’re not done yet,” I said. “And what we found out here, it could be nothing compared to what we’re going to find. Earlier today, I talked to this cop I know. He told me that they’ve got some information—I don’t know how reliable it is—that Calvin and Roland were moving drugs.”

  “Who were the cops talking to?”

  “An informant of theirs, out of Southeast.”

  “Well, let’s find this guy, talk to him ourselves!”

  “There’s things we can’t do, LaDuke. The cops can go into those projects, ask around, because they’re cops. We go in there, a couple of white-boy private cops, nobody’s gonna talk to us. And it’s a good way to get ourselves capped.”

  “What now, then?”

  “We keep doing what we’re doing, work with what we know. Here’s the thing: Calvin was killed because of something wrong he and his friend got themselves into—there’s no doubt about that now. You’re going to have deal with it, Jack—Roland might be dead, too.”

  “Goddamn it,” LaDuke said again, and shook his head.

  We didn’t say much after that. I sat there and smoked my cigarette and checked out the flow of traffic while the bike messengers and the homeless and the hustlers moved about in the park. LaDuke mumbled to himself occasionally, and once he slapped the back of my seat with his palm. Then he picked up a couple of empty beer cans that were at his feet and told me he was going to throw them away.

  I watched him walk around the front of the car, moving heavily, shifting his shoulders awkwardly, a tall, gawky guy not entirely comfortable in his own skin, like an adolescent who has grown too fast. There was something else, too, something a little off center and soiled beneath Jack LaDuke’s fresh-scrubbed looks. I couldn’t put my finger on it that day, and when I did, it was way too late. Eventually, the snakes that were crawling around inside his head found their way out. By then, there was nothing I could do but stand beside him, and watch them strike.