The Dead Don't Bleed: A Novel

by David Krugler

  “No,” I answered.

  “Let me serve my paying customers. Then you can tell me who it is you want to know if he’s been in here.”

  He didn’t wait for our approval. Set the wine bottle and two glasses on a small tray, walked over to the table, no hurry. Gurgle of the wine being poured, no one spoke. With a practiced hand, the bartender swiped the lip of the bottle with a white napkin and returned.

  “Hope you brought a photo. Tall, dark, and handsome describes a lot of our clientele.”

  “What’s your name, sweetheart?” Terrance asked in a low voice.

  “Ernest.” He met my partner’s glare with a cool look.

  “Look, Ernie, we won’t tell you again to button it. You speak when you’re spoken to—got it?”

  “Or what? You’re gonna show me what a real man is like?”

  “Listen, you homo, we can shut this place down and have you in jail faster than you broke your mother’s heart when she found out what you are.”

  Ernest didn’t flinch. “Yeah? You gonna take us in on Section Twenty-two charges? Two gentlemen enjoying a bottle of wine? How long you think that’ll stick? Or maybe you think they’re not of age. You’re not vice, so don’t try to play the game—the Sand Bar has a very good attorney. Two, actually.”

  Terrance clenched his fist, the tendons in his wrist tightened. I placed a steadying hand on his flexed bicep as Durkin watched us with an amused look.

  “Let’s show him the photo,” I said.

  Terrance grunted and slid Skerrill’s photo across the bar. “Seen him here?”

  Ernest picked up the glossy and took it underneath the cash register lamp. After a moment, he returned, shaking his head.

  “Never?” I asked dubiously.

  “Can’t say never. But ours is a regular clientele. And a naval lieutenant would be popular here.”

  Terrance looked ready to explode, but I cut him off.

  “You know the stripes.” I gestured at the photo.

  “Took enough orders, should know the rates. Sir.”

  “You were Navy?” Terrance snorted derisively. “That’s rich.”

  “No one seemed to mind at Tarawa.”

  “Let me guess why you’re out: you won the Congressional Medal of Honor, and now you tour the country selling war bonds. When you’re not bartending here.” Terrance flicked his hand dismissively.

  He didn’t answer, just kept up that level look. Not much we could say would get under his skin. A thought occurred to me.

  “This isn’t a field investigation because someone ratted on him,” I said. “He was murdered, and we’re trying to find his killer.”

  “I meant what I said: I’ve never seen him in here.”

  “If not here,” I asked, “where might he have gone?”

  “Try the Maystat. Sixteenth and L.”

  I nodded and picked up the photo. Outside we blinked in the bright sunshine.

  “Jesus, Voigt, are we gonna have to go back there soon and ask about you?” Terrance said irritably.

  “What?”

  “Thought you were about to ask that swish to the prom, way you sweet-talked him.”

  I almost lost my temper, checked it. “Bad cop, good cop—isn’t that our routine? Besides, your rough-trade act wasn’t working.”

  For a second, his face flashed with anger. But then he grinned broadly. “Rough trade, funny.” He patted me on the shoulder as Durkin smirked.

  Who the hell got the answer we needed? I thought angrily. But I kept quiet, remembering Rule Number One of the O.N.I.: never quarrel in front of outsiders.

  CHAPTER 4

  WHEN I GOT HOME, A NOTE FLUTTERED FROM THE DOOR. MEET ME AT the Palace for dinner? Be there till 7, Liv. I yanked the paper free and let myself in. Franklin D. was at the threshold, back arched, brushing against me. I held the door open so he could go out, but he just stared up at me impassively, then turned effortlessly, like cats do, to rub my other leg. I crumpled the note and threw it down the hall, but he didn’t feel like playing, probably just wanted to be fed. I hadn’t seen any mice in a few days, so I opened some Spam and set the can on the floor. He settled into a crouch and tilted his head to get at the hash. I brought a beer in from the kitchen and dropped to my lone upholstered chair.

  Terrance and I had called it a day after taking Durkin back to the Fifth Precinct. No point in visiting the Maystat, or any other swish joint, until we knew more about Skerrill’s personal life. And that meant interviewing Skerrill’s comrades in 16-Z in the morning. I wanted nothing more than to drink a beer, or three, and get some rack time. Still could, if I ignored the note. Considered flipping a nickel, heads to stay, tails to go, but decided not to bother. If it came up heads, I knew I’d flip the coin again.

  The Little Palace was on the corner of Fourteenth and U, the kind of diner where the counterman started pouring your coffee as soon as you came through the door and a well-timed nod caught you the daily special. Its counter and booth tops were wrapped in corrugated metal, and folded paper menus drooped, like neglected flowers, from brackets clipped to the table edges. The owner was a hulking immigrant with the improbable name of Gerald, his close-cropped hair the same texture and color as his griddle brush.

  Liv sat in a corner booth, reading, a half-full coffee cup and a plate scattered with pie crumbs in front of her. White pleated blouse, herringbone-patterned slacks, matching jacket with padded shoulders. Jet-black curls, coiled like springs, brushing her shoulders, a forefinger absently teasing a curl. Even with her head tilted to the book, her smoothly planed cheekbones, demure nose, and wide round eyes were visible.

  I slid into the facing seat, vinyl squeaking.

  “You came.” She didn’t put the book down—just looked at me over the covers, and I had to guess she was smiling from her arched eyebrows. That, and the gleam in her eyes.

  “Was in the neighborhood.” Shrugging.

  “You live in the neighborhood.”

  “Lately doesn’t feel like it.”

  “Big case?”

  “Vacation, actually.”

  “And how is the Riviera this time of year?”

  “Cold. But at least they’re speaking French again.”

  Liv laughed and finally lowered the book, set it to the side. She was smiling, and I was suddenly glad I hadn’t wasted time flipping a coin. “Hungry?” she asked.

  “Starving.” Gerald was hovering in the vicinity, and I motioned him over.

  “Yes, you want?”

  “Steak, mashed potatoes, any vegetable.”

  He nodded—he never used a pad and pencil.

  “How will you be?” Liv asked after Gerald had left.

  Not, how are you, not how have you been, the question I asked her not long after we met. She’d shaken her head. How will you be—ask me that. Part of her personal philosophy, she’d explained. Always be interested in what’s going to happen, not what already has.

  “Good, hoping for better,” I decided to say.

  “You work too hard, El,” smiling brightly. No one called me El but Liv. Ellis from Chicago, she’d said the night we met. City of big shoulders, city with an el.

  “Maybe you should write me a doctor’s note.”

  “Just a few weeks more, right?”

  Shaking my head, I said, “I think this war’s got some legs yet.”

  “What will you do? Whenever it’s over?”

  “Start going to church. Teach my cat to dance.” Truth was, I was awful good at not thinking about what I was going to do when it was finally over. “How about you?”

  “I’m going to the Pacific.”

  “Good God, why?” Laughing, certain she was kidding.

  But she wasn’t.

  “Don’t you read the papers? All those beautiful islands. Tropics, beaches, sun-drenched one minute, awash in rain the next. Papua New Guinea. The Solomons. Bikini. Did you even know these places existed before the war? I wanna pack a trunk of books, some clothes, and island-hop.”
/>   “Marines can send you tomorrow, all expenses paid.”

  “I think I’ll start in San Francisco,” she went on, ignoring my crack. “Work a while, save some more money. You could come visit.”

  “What if the Navy makes me an admiral?”

  “You need to get out of the Navy after the war, El, at least promise me that.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in promises.” Another part of her philosophy. Promises are just preludes to disappointment.

  “You can believe in them, if it helps get you outta the Navy.”

  Gerald arrived with my food. Steam wafted from a dark puddle of gravy in the potatoes, buttered lima beans glistened.

  “You had something, right?” I asked Liv.

  She nodded and said, “Eat, El—we’ll talk when you’re done.” Without another word, she picked up her book and resumed reading. How inconsiderate, some might say, but that was Liv. Way she saw it, to keep talking while only one of us was eating was ruder than picking up her book. Ever think how much effort we waste on unnecessary rituals? she’d asked the night we met. Guess I’ll never send you a Christmas card, I’d answered.

  So I watched Liv read as I ate. Ulysses. Looked like she was about a hundred pages in. Last time we saw each other, she’d proudly told me that after being on the library’s waiting list for months, she’d finally been able to check out a copy. Now that she had the book, nothing—not the clatter of dishes from the kitchen, the scrape and clink of my utensils, a gale of laughter from a nearby table—could distract her.

  I crossed my knife and fork, pushed the plate to the side. “Due back soon?”

  She lifted a finger, not taking her eyes off the page. A long moment, then she slipped the marker back in and put the book down. “Sorry, I wanted to finish that sentence.”

  “Helluva sentence.”

  “You have no idea. And it’s due back in two weeks.”

  “So, Liv.”

  “Yes?” Smiling.

  “How will you be?”

  “Wonderful. It’s spring—how could I not be?”

  “Been awful cold and rainy.”

  She shook her head, curls swaying, as if shaking off that rain. “Never for very long, have you noticed?”

  “Not really, no.”

  She reached across the table and took my hand. “Will you come with me to the cherry blossoms?”

  “Now?”

  She nodded brightly.

  “But it’s nighttime—you can’t see anything.”

  “Which is why I’m gonna close my eyes when we get there.”

  I laughed, thinking she was joking. Then I noticed she wasn’t laughing. “For real?” I asked.

  “Don’t they say your other senses are heightened when one is taken away?”

  “You just wanna smell the blossoms, that’s what you’re saying?”

  Now she smiled. And nodded.

  I said, “Good way to end up awful wet.”

  “Not if we’re careful.”

  “Oh Christ, Liv, you can’t go strolling along the Tidal Basin with your eyes closed.”

  “El.”

  “What?”

  “Live free.”

  “No.”

  “And the rest will follow.” Live free, and the rest will follow. The heart of Liv’s philosophy.

  “Tonight’s not good for freedom, Liv.”

  “If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be here.”

  I shook my head and reached for my wallet.

  WE TOOK A BUS TO THE MALL. THIS LATE IN THE WAR, ONLY THE memorials—Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson—remained dark. Scattered lights twinkled in the tempos, headlights flashed on Fourteenth Street, warning buoys bobbed and blinked red along the bridge abutments in the Potomac. Liv slipped off her flats to walk barefoot, dangling the shoes from her fingertips. A cloudless sky and three-quarters moon, its reflection rippling on the Basin and the river, softened the darkness. A stiff breeze chilled the air as we walked toward the pink crowns of the cherry trees.

  “Did you read the book I gave you?” Liv asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “Wilde’s better.”

  “Not better. Different.”

  “Better. I like periods at the end of sentences. Also capitalization.”

  “But how else to tell us how Benjy sees the world?”

  “Signifies nothing, so why bother?”

  She pushed me playfully. “You just don’t like writers who’re still alive.”

  True enough. Liv had found me at the D.C. Public Library, reading a collection of Goethe’s poems as she walked from the water fountain. You can read Goethe in German? she’d asked. I’d nodded. Read me some. So I read Goethe aloud, Liv leaning over my shoulder, her hair grazing my ear. A librarian shushed me, we both looked up, startled, then looked at one another; and Liv came into focus. Smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, lips glistening from her drink of water, eyes green-gray, color of the ocean catching sun on a wintry day. I turned back to the poem and resumed reading—silently. When she saw me moving my lips, she laughed so loud we both got kicked out. We spilled out onto K Street for proper introductions, the library’s white marble walls tinged pink in the summer dusk, pigeons fretting at crumbs on the walkway, a young couple necking on a bench on the library’s lawn.

  Now we were upon the cherry trees, and Liv breathed in deeply. “Isn’t it exquisite?”

  The scent of the blossoms was faint, but I nodded anyway. I raised myself to perch on the iron railing of the path running alongside the trees. “I’ll wait here till I hear a splash, then I’ll call the Coast Guard,” I said.

  Liv pulled me off the railing. “We’re not going to fall in.”

  “You’re really gonna close your eyes and start walking?”

  “Yep, and so are you. C’mon.” She bent to slip on her shoes, then grabbed my hand, fingers of her other hand grazing the railing lightly, as if she was testing the keys of a piano. Ahead of us, the dome of the Jefferson Memorial was almost luminescent in the moonlight. Its columns looked like sentries on a remote picket. Mister Jefferson himself was lost within the shadows. Watching with a grin, I hoped—heard he was a bon vivant.

  “Eyes closed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes.” I blinked once, twice—the Memorial disappeared, as did the trusses of the Long Bridge. Liv quickened our pace. Gravel rasped underfoot, murmuring voices drifted across the Basin. Another couple—a trio?—approached, interrupted by our heedless charge. “What the hell—hey!” “Watch where you’re going!” Scrape of shoes, rustle of clothes as they stepped swiftly aside. “Idiots,” I heard over my shoulder. A low-hanging branch almost toppled my hat, and suddenly I realized Liv was right—the blossoms’ aroma had intensified.

  “Liv?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you know when to stop?”

  “Hope so!” And with that she halted and spun around, reached for my other hand, and pulled me close. We were near the base of the Memorial. “Wasn’t that fun?”

  I looked down into her eyes, her rushed breath caught between parted lips. “Yes.”

  “They really smell better that way, don’t you think?”

  I nodded. She sighed and settled against my chest, arms wrapped around me, head tucked beneath my chin. Neither of us spoke for a moment. In the distance, the dim bulk of the Lincoln Memorial was just visible, and the canopies of the Mall’s trees were dark green, almost black. Overhead, the thrum of an airplane’s engine.

  “El?”

  “Liv?”

  “Take me home.”

  I AWOKE ABRUPTLY, GROGGY, EVICTED FROM MY SLUMBER BY AN unsettling dream. The one I’d been having every night lately, about the girl I’d known years ago in Chicago. Delphine. This time, I glimpsed her on Broadway, outside Goldblatt’s, but the sidewalks were crowded, shoulder-to-shoulder, and it seemed an eternity before I’d pushed, bumped, and pressed my way to her, curses and threats tr
ailing me like a foamy wake. Delphine, Delphine, I kept shouting before she finally turned. Bits of grass and dirt clung to her hair; her face was dirty. She took my hand—her grip was icy cold—and pressed her lips to my ears. You shouldn’t have come, Ellis. As soon as I protested, she disappeared—and I awoke.

  Franklin D. lifted his head, blinking, when he heard me stir, stretched his front paws out on the bedroom chair, and closed his eyes. Liv slept with her head on my chest, left leg draped over me. She stirred as I shifted but didn’t wake. Dawn not long to arrive, I guessed, but I didn’t look at the ticking alarm clock. If I was lucky, I’d ease back to sleep in a few moments, get at least another hour.

  I wasn’t lucky. As tired as I was, I lay awake remembering Liv’s last visit, two, maybe three weeks prior. She had been lying next to me, naked, my palm resting on her hip, sweep of hair across my outstretched arm, breath warm on my bicep.

  “Are you cold?” I’d asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you have to go?”

  She’d lifted her head and smiled. “Go where?”

  “Home.”

  “Silly. This is home, right now.”

  “Welcome back. How was your trip?” An edge in my voice.

  “El.” Smile gone.

  “Liv.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  She hadn’t answered, only waited.

  “Okay, it’s just that, well,” I’d begun. Long pause. “Well, seems to me that you could. . . .” But I’d never finished the sentence.

  She’d raised herself up, propped her chin in her hand to look at me. “Could what?” Asking inquisitively, no hint of concern.

  “Tell me a little bit more about yourself?”

  “Is that important to you, El?”

  Good question. What I knew about Liv could be written on a postcard while leaving room for “Wish you were here.” Came from Cleveland, or was it Cincinnati? Taught herself to type at the public library. Saw the government ad in a newspaper and bought a one-way ticket to Washington. These little bits I’d gleaned from rare, fleeting comments. But did it matter where Liv came from, did I need to know how many siblings she had, if she’d played the clarinet or the violin in high school, what her father did for a living? We had plenty to talk about when we saw each other—poetry, novels, music, ideas. Yesterday’s Liv, a school girl, an awkward teenager, an adult striking out on her own, belonged to another time and place. Was I worried that Liv had secrets, had she run away from a drunkard of a husband, had she gotten pregnant at sixteen and given up the child? So what if she had, didn’t we all have secrets? We also had time—we had the present, ours to savor or squander, depending on the choices we made. As she said so often, live free and the rest will follow. First time Liv had said that, I’d almost laughed, the adage sounded so hokey. But maybe I was catching on.