Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go

by Pelecanos, George

  I GOT BACK ON M and took the 11th Street Bridge over the river, heading toward Anacostia. On the bridge, I caught him glancing over the rail, at the marinas and the clearing and the sunken houseboat below.

  “What’s your name, anyway?” I said.

  “William Cooper.”

  I pushed in the dash lighter and put a cigarette to my lips. “I read a short story collection last year that I really liked. The stories were all set in D.C., written by a local guy. Guy’s name was William C. Cooper.”

  “William C. Cooper,” he said, “is me.”

  Cooper directed me to a short street off the east side of the bridge. We parked in front of his place, a clapboard row house fronted by a shaky wood porch, and went inside. I sat in a dark, comfortable living room while Cooper went off and built a couple of sandwiches and made a pitcher of iced tea. Books lined the shelves along the wall and were stacked on tables and beneath chairs throughout the room. I stood in the icy cool of the air conditioning and read the titles of the books, and after awhile Cooper, still wearing his coat, reentered the living room with lunch on a tray.

  “You ever take that coat off?” I said between bites of a sandwich of sliced chicken on French bread with creole mayonnaise.

  “I wear it from the time I leave every morning to the time I return from work.”

  “It’s cold enough in the icehouse, and it’s definitely cold enough in here. But why outside, in this heat?”

  Cooper shrugged. “I’ve worked in that icehouse for many years and my body has just adjusted. I found that I was getting ill very often in the beginning, taking my coat off outdoors, putting it on again when I went back inside. My body temperature is kept constant this way, I suppose. These days, I rarely get sick. I guess you could say that this old coat has contributed quite nicely to my continued good health.”

  “You talk kinda funny, you know it?”

  Cooper smiled tolerantly. “You mean, for a black man, don’t you?”

  “Partly,” I admitted, “yeah. But to tell you the truth, I don’t know many white folks who talk like you, either. And zero Greeks.”

  “It’s not the world you travel in, that’s all. I’m hardly a blue blood. I was raised in Shaw, but my higher education was extensive, and strictly Ivy League. It’s not an affectation, I can assure you of that. It’s simply where I spent my adult life.”

  “So a guy like you… why an icehouse?”

  Cooper had a long drink of his tea. “I wore the white collar and the rep tie and the Harris tweed and found that the life of an academic bored me. The politics, and the people, all of it was utterly bloodless, and ultimately quite damaging to my work. I took the job in the icehouse so that I could once again have the freedom to think. It might appear to the outsider that I’m doing menial labor, but what I’m really doing, all day, is composing—writing, in effect, in my head. And the amount of material I soak up in that place, it’s tremendous. Of course, I need the money, as well.”

  “What about your morning routine, under the bridge. The boatyard workers, they all pegged you as a headcase.”

  Cooper smiled. “And I did nothing to dispel their suspicions. That was always my time to be alone, and I preferred to keep it that way. I’d wake up in the morning, walk across the bridge, take my book and my cup of coffee, and have a seat under the Sousa. Sometimes I’d read, and oftentimes I’d sing. I’m in the choir at my church, you know, and the acoustics beneath that bridge are outstanding.”

  “Were you there the morning that boy was killed?”

  “Yes,” Cooper said with a nod. “And so were you. Your car was parked in the wooded area, to the right of the clearing. I recognized it as soon as you pointed it out to me.”

  “I didn’t see anything, though. What did you see?”

  “Not much. I heard a muted gunshot. Then a car drove by me, turned around at the dead end, and drove by once again.”

  “You see the driver or the passenger?”

  “No.”

  “You read the plates?”

  “No.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “One of those off-road vehicles—I don’t recall the model or make. A white one.”

  “Anything else to identify it?”

  Cooper looked in my eyes. “A business name was printed on the side. ‘Lighting and Equipment,’ it said. Does that help you?”

  I sat back in my chair. “Yes.”

  We finished our lunch in silence. He picked up the dishes and took them back into the kitchen. When he returned, I got up from the table.

  “That do it?”

  “One more question,” I said. “Why didn’t you go to the police?”

  “I’m no one’s hero, Mr. Stefanos. And I had no wish to become involved. My anonymity and my solitude are my most prized possessions. I don’t expect you to understand. I’m sorry if you don’t.”

  “I’m the last guy qualified to judge you.”

  “Then I guess we’re through.”

  “Yes. I never met you and you never met me.”

  “Agreed,” he said. “Though don’t be surprised if you end up in one of my stories.”

  “Make me handsome,” I said. “Will you?”

  Cooper laughed and looked at his watch. “I’d better get going. Will you drop me back at work?”

  “Yeah. I’ve gotta get to work, too.”

  I HIT THE FIRST pay phone past Polar Boys and called LaDuke. I got his machine, and left a message: “Jack, it’s Nick. It’s Tuesday, about one-thirty in the afternoon. I found the witness to the Jeter murder. The shooters drove a white van, said ‘Lighting and Equipment’ on the side—the van came from the lot of the warehouse on Potomac and Half, across the street from the warehouse we knocked over last week. The killers didn’t leave town, Jack, they moved across the fucking street. Anyway, I’m headed home. Call me there when you get in; we’ll figure out what to do next. Call me, hear?”

  BUT LADUKE DIDN’T CALL. I waited, did some push-ups, worked my abs, and then took a shower. I dried off and put some Hüsker Du on the platter, then a Nation of Ulysses, and turned the volume way up. When the music stopped, I left a second message for LaDuke and sat around for another hour. Then I got my ten-speed out and rode it a hard eight miles, came back to the apartment, and took another shower. I dropped a frozen dinner in the oven, ate half of it, threw the rest away. I made a cup of coffee and lit a cigarette and smoked the cigarette out on my stoop. By then, it was evening.

  I dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans, put an old pair of Docs on my feet, laced them tightly. I went into my bedroom and opened the bottom dresser drawer, looking for my gun. The gun was gone; I had dumped it in the trunk of LaDuke’s Ford after the warehouse job. I thought about my homemade sap and a couple of knives I had collected, but I left them alone. I went back out to the living room, looked through the screen door. The night had come fully now, the moths tripping out in the light of the stoop. My cat came from the kitchen and brushed against my shin. I picked up the phone and dialed LaDuke.

  “Jack,” I said, speaking to the dead-air whir of his machine, “I’m going down there, to the warehouse. “It’s…” I looked at my watch, “It’s nine-forty-five. I’ve got to go down there, man. I’ve gotta see what’s going on.”

  I stood there, listening to the quiet of my apartment and the rainlike hiss of the tape. My heart skipped and my hand tightened on the receiver.

  “LaDuke!” I shouted. “Where the fuck are you, man?”

  TWENTY-THREE

  I STARTED THE Dodge and headed downtown. On North Capitol, between Florida and New York avenues, the people of the neighborhood were out, sitting on trash cans and stoops, their movements slow and deliberate. Later, passing through the Hill, the sidewalks were empty, the residents cocooned in their air-conditioned homes. Then in Southeast, by the projects, the people were outdoors again, shouting and laughing, the drumbeat of bass and the sputter of engines and the smell of reefer and tobacco smoke heavy in the air.

>   I turned onto Half and drove into a darkened landscape of line and shadow, animation fading to architecture. And then it was only me, winding the car around short, unlit streets, past parked trucks and fenced warehouses and silos, to the intersection of Potomac and Half.

  I pulled behind a Dumpster and killed the engine. There was the tick of the engine, no other sound. A rat ran from beneath the Dumpster and scurried under the fence of an empty lot. I lit a cigarette, hit it deep. I had a look around.

  The knock-over warehouse sat still and abandoned, no cars in the lot, a police tape, wilted and fallen, formed around the concrete stoop.

  Across the street, near the steel door of the second warehouse, two LIGHTING AND EQUIPMENT vans and the Buick Le Sabre were parked behind a fence topped with barbed wire.

  I looked up at the east face of the building: A fire escape led to a second-story sash window. Behind the window, a pale yellow light glowed faintly from the depths of a hall. I dragged on my cigarette. Ten minutes later, I lit another. Through the second-story window, a shadow passed along the wall. The shadow disintegrated, and then it was just the pale yellow light.

  I pitched my cigarette and stepped out of my car. I crossed the street.

  Putting my fingers through the fence, I climbed it, then got over the double row of barbs without a stick. I swung to the other side of the fence, got halfway down its face, and dropped to the pavement in a crouch. My palms were damp; I rubbed them dry on the side of my jeans. Staying in the crouch, I moved across the lot to the bricks of the building.

  I touched the wall, put myself flat up against it. My heart pumped against the bricks. I could hear it in my chest, and the sound of my breathing, heavy and strained. Sweat burned my eyes and dripped down my back. I blinked the burn out of my eyes. I waited for everything to slow down.

  The air moved in back of me as I stepped away from the wall. I started to turn around, stopped when something cool and metallic pressed against the soft spot behind my ear. Then the click of a hammer and the hammer locking down.

  “Don’t shoot me,” I said.

  Coley’s voice: “You came back. Damn, you know? I was hoping you would.”

  “You don’t have to shoot me,” I said.

  “You’ll live a little longer,” he said, “if you keep your mouth shut. You’d like to live a little while longer, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Coley pushed the muzzle in on my skin. “You alone?”

  I nodded.

  “Walk to the door,” Coley said.

  He kept the gun against my head, put his hand on my shoulder, and pushed me along the wall to the steel door at the wall’s end. I looked up, saw the window at the top of the fire escape, saw that it was open—the only way out, if I got the chance. Then we were at the end of the wall.

  Coley reached over my shoulder and knocked on the door.

  “Listen to this,” he said with a chuckle. “My redneck friend Sweet, he’s gotten all jumpy and shit since you and your pretty sidekick fucked up his face.”

  Sweet’s voice came from behind the door. “Yeah?”

  “It’s Coley, man. Lemme in.”

  “Prove it,” Sweet said.

  “I’ll prove it all over your narrow ass. Open this motherfucker up. Right now.”

  I stood there, staring at the door, unable to raise spit, not wanting the door to open.

  “Open it, Sweet,” said Coley. “I got someone here you been wantin’ to see.”

  The door opened. Coley pushed between my shoulder blades, and then we were inside. Sweet closed the door, slid a bolt and dropped it, and grinned. He turned the key on the lock and slipped the key in his pocket.

  “My, my,” he said. The bruised side of his face had gone to purple and one eye drooped where the socket had caved. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt tucked into jeans. The knife-in-skull tattoo contracted on his tightly muscled, drug-thin forearm as he reached behind his back. He pulled his gun and lightly touched the barrel to my cheek. The gun was a .22.

  “My, my,” he said again.

  “Let’s take him upstairs,” Coley said.

  Sweet stroked at the hairs of his billy-goat beard. “Right.”

  I walked between them down a hall that was empty, then into a large room crowded with garden tools and machinery. In the center of the room was an oak table and some chairs, where several men were seated. I could see a scale on the table, amid many bottles of beer, but I didn’t linger on the setup, and I didn’t look any of the men in the eye. Coley kept walking, and I stayed behind him. Once in a while, Sweet prodded me on the neck with the muzzle of the .22, and when he did it, a couple of the men at the table laughed. One of them made a joke at Sweet’s expense, then all of them laughed at once, and Sweet prodded me harder and with more malice.

  Coley cut left at an open set of stairs. I followed, relieved to be going out of the large room. We took the stairs, which were wooden and did not turn, up to the second floor, through an open frame, Sweet’s footsteps close behind me. Then we turned into another hall with offices of some kind on either side, the offices windowed in corrugated glass. Through one open door, I saw an old printing press, and I noticed that the outside windows had been bricked up. The hallway of corrugated glass ended and the room widened, shelved floor to ceiling, with paints, thinners, glass jars, brushes, and rags on the shelves. Then there was a bathroom, its outside window bricked up, and then an open door, where Coley turned and stepped inside. I followed, noticing before I did the window leading to the fire escape at the end of the hall. Sweet came into the room behind me and shut the door.

  “Keep your gun on him,” Sweet said.

  “Yes, sir,” Coley said, amused.

  Sweet went to the door, connected a chain from door to frame, and slid the bolt. Coley held his gun, a .38 Special, loosely in his hand and kept it pointed at my middle. He shifted his attention to Sweet, fixing the chain lock in place. Coley’s eyes smiled.

  The room had no furniture except for a simple wooden chair turned on its side against a wall. An overflowed foil ashtray sat on the scarred hardwood floor, next to the chair. There had been a window once, but now the window was brick.

  “Hold this,” Sweet said. He handed Coley the .22. Coley took the gun, let that one hang by his side. “Good thing you were outside, Coley.”

  “Heard that car of his. Some old muscle car with dual exhaust and shit. Makes one hell of a racket. Not the kind of ride you want to be usin’ when you’re trying to make a quiet entrance. Not too smart.”

  “Yeah,” Sweet said. “Real stupid.”

  Sweet came and stood in front of me, not more than three feet away. He shifted his shoulders, smiled a little, his vaguely Asian eyes disappearing with the smile. Alcohol smell came off him, and he stunk of day-old perspiration.

  “You see what your partner did to my face?” he said.

  I didn’t answer. I tried to think of something I had that they would want, something that would save my life. But I couldn’t think of one thing. The realization that they were going to kill me sucked the blood out of my face.

  Sweet said, “Our friend here looks afraid. What you think, Coley? You think he looks afraid?”

  “He does look a little pale,” Coley said.

  “You afraid?” Sweet said, moving one step in. “Huh?”

  I didn’t see the right hand. It was quick, without form or shape, and Sweet put everything into it. He hit me full on the face, and the blow knocked me off my feet. My back hit the wall and my legs gave out. I slid down the wall to the floor.

  “Whew,” said Coley.

  Sweet walked across the room, bent over, grabbed a handful of my shirt. He pulled me up. The room moved, Sweet’s face splitting in two and coming back to one. He hit me in the face with a sharp right. Then he pulled back and hit me again, released his grip on my shirt. I fell to the floor. I swallowed blood, tasted blood in my mouth. Stars exploded in the blackness behind my eyes.

  “Fuck!” I heard Sweet
say. “I fucked up my fuckin’ hand on his face!”

  “Go clean it up,” Coley said.

  “The guy’s a pussy,” Sweet said. “Won’t even fight me back. I think maybe he likes it. What do you think, Coley? You think he likes it?”

  “Go clean up your hand,” said Coley.

  “Lock the door behind me,” Sweet said.

  “Yeah,” Coley said, chuckling. “I’ll do that.”

  Sweet left the room. When the door closed, I opened my eyes and got up on one elbow. Coley did not move to lock the door. I pushed myself over to the wall, sat up with my back against it. I looked at Coley, who stood in the center of the room, looking at me.

  “You know,” Coley said, “we’re just gonna have to go on and kill you.”

  I wiped blood from my face with a shaky hand. I stared at the floor.

  “The reason I’m tellin’ you is, I hate to see a man go down without some kind of fight. That little redneck’s gonna come back in here, and if you let him, he’s gonna bitch-slap your ass all around. I mean, you’re dead, anyway. But it’s important, and shit, not to go out like some kind of punk. Know what I’m sayin’?”

  I flashed on my drunken night by the river, hearing similar words spoken to Calvin Jeter. Spoken, I knew now, by Coley.

  “Anyway, you got a little while,” Coley said. “I’m gonna ask you a few questions first, partly for business and partly just because I’m curious. Whether you answer or not, either way, I’m gonna have to put a bullet in your head tonight. Just thought you might like to know.”

  There was a knock on the door.

  “It’s open,” Coley said.

  Sweet walked in, looked with disappointment at the chain swinging free on the frame. “I thought I told you to lock it.”

  “Damn,” Coley said mockingly. “I damn sure forgot.”

  Sweet looked at me. “Get up,” he said.

  I stood slowly, gave myself some distance from the wall. I looked at Sweet’s right hand: swollen, the knuckles skinned and raw. He walked toward me, the inbred’s grin on his cockeyed face. He balled his right fist, but his right was done; I knew he wouldn’t use it, knew he would go with the left. He came in. He faked the right and dropped the left.