Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go

by George Pelecanos

  My wallet lay flat and open on the shotgun bucket. I picked it up, looked at my own face staring out at me from my District of Columbia license: “Nicholas J. Stefanos, Private Investigator.”

  So that’s what I was.

  I turned the key in the ignition.

  TWO

  MY GIRLFRIEND, LYLA McCubbin, stopped by my apartment early that evening. She found me sitting naked on the edge of the bed, just up from a nap, the blinds drawn in the room. I had thrown away my clothes from the night before and taken two showers during the course of the day. But I had begun to sweat again, and the room smelled of booze. Lyla had a seat next to me and rubbed my back, then pulled my face out of my hands.

  “I talked to Mai at the Spot. She told me she picked up your shift tonight. You had a rough one, huh?”

  “Yeah, pretty rough.”

  “What’s all over your face?”

  “Bites. Some kind of roaches, I guess. I woke up—I was layin’ in garbage.”

  “Shit, Nicky.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I called you last night,” she said.

  “I called you.”

  She looked in my eyes. “You been crying or something, Nick?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, looking away.

  “You got the depression,” she said quietly. “You went and got yourself real good and drunk. You did some stupid things, and then you fell out. The only thing you can do now is apologize to the people you dealt with, maybe try and be more sensible next time. But you shouldn’t beat yourself up about it. I mean, it happens, right?”

  I didn’t answer. Lyla’s fingers brushed my hair back off my face. After awhile, she got up off the bed.

  “I’m going to make you something to eat,” she said.

  “Sit back down a minute,” I said, taking her hand. She did, and everything poured out.

  Later, I sat on my stoop as Lyla grilled burgers on a hibachi she had set up on the brick patio outside my apartment. Lyla’s long red hair switched across her back as she drank from a goblet of Chablis and prodded the burgers with a short-handled spatula. My black cat circled her feet, then dashed across the patio and batted at an errant moth. I watched Lyla move against a starry backdrop of fireflies that blinked beyond the light of the patio, and I smelled the deep-summer hibiscus that bloomed in the yard.

  After dinner, Lyla drove up to Morris Miller’s, the liquor store in my Shepherd Park neighborhood, for more wine. My landlord, who owned the house and lived in its two top floors, came out and sat with me on the stoop. I had my first cigarette of the day while he drank from a can of beer and told me a story of a woman he had met in the choir, who he said sang like an angel in church but had “the devil in her hips outside those walls.” He laughed while I dragged on my cigarette, and pointed to my cat, still running in circles, chasing that moth.

  “Maybe if that old cat had two eyes, she’d catch that thing.”

  “She might catch it yet,” I said. “Nailed a sparrow and dropped it on my doorstep the other day.”

  “Whyn’t you get you a real animal, man? I know this boy, lives down around 14th and Webster? Got some alley cats would fuck up a dog.”

  “I don’t know. I bring a cat around here like your boy’s got, might scare away some of your lady friends.”

  “Wouldn’t want that.” My landlord hissed a laugh. “ ’Cause that woman I got now, that church woman? She’s a keeper.”

  Lyla returned, uncorked her wine, and poured another glass. My landlord gave her a kiss and went back in the house to his easy chair and TV. Lyla sat next to me and dropped her hand on the inside of my thigh, rubbing it there.

  “How you feeling?”

  “Better.”

  “You’ll be better still tomorrow.”

  “I guess.”

  She bent toward me, and I turned my head away. Lyla took my chin in her hand and forced me to meet her gaze. I looked into her pale green eyes. She kissed me then and held the kiss, her breath warm and sour from the wine.

  After awhile, we went inside. I dropped a Curtis Mayfield tape into the deck while Lyla lit some votive candles in my room. I undressed her from behind, kissing the pulsing blue vein of her neck. We fell onto my bed, where we made out slowly in the flickering light. Lyla rolled on top of me and put my hands to her breasts. The candlelight reflected off her damp hair, the sweat on her chest like glass.

  I shut my eyes and let her work it, let myself go with the sensations, the sounds of her open-mouthed gasps, the rising promise of my own release, the sweet voice of Curtis singing “Do Be Down” in the room. She knew what she was doing, and it worked; for a few minutes, I forgot all about the man I had become. Or maybe I had gone to another place, where I could let myself believe that I was someone else.

  LYLA HAD PLACED MY coffee next to the Post on the living room table the following morning. I picked up my mug and sipped from it while I stood over the newspaper and stared blankly at its front page. Lyla walked into the room, tucking a cream-colored blouse into an apple green skirt.

  “It made the final edition,” she said. “Deep in Metro. The Roundup.”

  The Post grouped the violent deaths of D.C.’s underclass into a subhead called “Around the Region”; local journalists sarcastically dubbed this daily feature “the Roundup.” As the managing editor of the city’s hard-news alternative weekly, D.C. This Week, Lyla was not immune to criticism of local media herself. But her competitive spirit couldn’t stop her from taking the occasional shot at the Washington Post.

  “What’d it say?”

  “You know,” she said. “ ‘Unidentified man found in the Anacostia River. Fatal gunshot wounds. Police are withholding the name until notification of relatives, no suspects at this time’—the usual. When you read it, you automatically think, Another drug execution. Retribution kill, whatever. I mean, that’s what it was, right?”

  I had a seat on the couch and ran my finger along the edge of the table. Lyla kept her eyes on me as she pulled her hair back and tied it off with a black band.

  I looked up. “You still got that friend over at the city desk at Metro?”

  Lyla moved my way and stood over me. She rested her hands on her hips, spoke tiredly. “Sure, and I’ve got my own sources in the department. Why?”

  “Just, you know. I thought you could see what else they got on this so far.”

  “So, what, you could get involved?”

  “Just curious, that’s all. Anyway, it’s been awhile. I wouldn’t know where to start.” I thought of my last case, a year and a half earlier: William Henry and April Goodrich, the house on Gallatin Street—a bloodbath, and way too much loss.

  Lyla leaned over and kissed me on the lips. “Get some rest today, Nick. Okay?”

  “I’m workin’ a shift,” I said.

  “Good,” she said. “That’s good.”

  She gave me one more knowing look and walked from the room. I listened to the slam of the screen door and slowly drank the rest of my coffee. Then I showered and dressed and left the apartment. The newspaper remained on my living room table, untouched, unread.

  THE SPOT COOKED DURING the lunch rush that day. Darnell’s special, a thick slice of meat loaf with mashed potatoes and gravy, moved quickly, and he was sliding them onto the reach-through with fluid grace. Ramon bused the tables and kept just enough dishes and silverware washed to handle the turns. Our new lunch waitress, Anna Wang, a tough little Chinese-American college student, worked the small dining room adjacent to the bar.

  Anna stepped up to the service bar, called, “Ordering!” She pulled a check from her apron, blew a strand of straight black hair out of her eyes while she made some hash marks on the check. I free-poured vodka into a rocks glass and cranberry-juiced it for color. Then I poured a draft and carried the mug and the glass down to Anna, a lit Camel in my mouth. I placed the drinks on her cocktail tray just as she speared a swizzle stick into the vodka.

  Anna said, “How about some of that, Nick?”


  I took the cigarette out of my mouth and put it between her lips. She drew on it once, let smoke pour from her nostrils, and hit it again as I plucked it out. She nodded and carried off the tray. I watched Ramon go out of his way to brush her leg with his as he passed with a bus tray of dirty dishes. Anna ignored him and kept moving.

  “Another martini for me, Nick,” said Melvin, the house crooner, whose stool was by the service bar. I poured some rail gin into an up glass and let a drop or two of dry vermouth fall into the glass. I served it neatly on a bev nap, watching Melvin’s lips move to the Shirley Horn vocals coming from the Spot’s deck, and then I heard Darnell’s voice boom from the kitchen over the rattle of china and the gospel music of his own radio: “Food up!”

  I snatched it off the reach-through and walked down the bar toward Happy, our resident angry alki, seated alone, always alone. On my trip, I stopped to empty the ashtray of a gray beard named Dave, who was quietly reading a pulp novel and drinking coffee at the bar, his spectacles low-riding his nose, doing his solitary, on-the-wagon thing. Some ashes floated down into Happy’s plate, and I blew them off before I placed the plate down in front of him. Happy looked down mournfully at the slab of meat garnished with the anemic sprig of wilted parsley and the gravy pooled in the gluey mashed potatoes. His hand almost but not quite fell away from the glass in his grip.

  “This looks like dog shit,” he muttered.

  “You want another drink, Happy?”

  “Yeah,” he said with a one o’clock slur. “And this time, put a little liquor in it.”

  I prepared his manhattan (an ounce of rail bourbon with a cherry dropped in it, no vermouth) and placed it on a moldy coaster advertising some sort of black Sambuca we did not stock. Then I heard Anna’s tired voice from down the bar: “Ordering!” I moved to the rail and fixed her drinks.

  That’s the way it went for the rest of the afternoon. Buddy and Bubba, two GS-9 rednecks, came in at the downslope of the rush and split a couple of pitchers. They argued over sports trivia the entire time with a pompadoured dude named Richard, though none of them had picked up a ball of any kind since high school. Before they left, they poked their heads in the kitchen and congratulated Darnell on the “presentation” of the meat loaf. Darnell went about his work, and Buddy sneered in my direction as he and Bubba headed out the door.

  After lunch, I put some PJ Harvey in the deck for Anna while she cleaned and reset her station. Phil Saylor had instructed me to keep blues and jazz playing on the stereo during the rush, but Happy, dashing in his dandruff-specked, plum-colored sport jacket, was now the only customer in the bar. Sitting there in a stagnant cloud of his own cigarette smoke, he didn’t ever seem to respond to the musical selection either way.

  Anna split for the day after bumming a smoke, and Ramon retreated to the kitchen, where he practiced some bullshit karate moves on an amused Darnell while I began to cut limes for Mai’s evening shift. I had just finished filling the fruit tray when Dan Boyle walked through the front door.

  Boyle parked his wide ass on the stool directly in front of me and ran fingers like pale cigars through his wiry, dirty blond hair.

  “Nick.”

  “Boyle.”

  His lazy, bleached-out eyes traveled up to the call rack, then settled back down on the bar. I turned and pulled the black-labeled bottle of Jack Daniel’s off the call shelf. I poured some sour mash into a shot glass and slid it in front of him.

  “A beer with that?”

  “Not just yet.”

  He put the glass to his lips and tilted his head back for a slow taste. The action opened his jacket a bit, the grip of his Python edging out.

  On any given night, the Spot could be heavy with guns, as the place had become a favorite watering hole for D.C.’s plainclothes cops and detectives, the connection going back to Saylor. Guns or no, Boyle had earned a different kind of rep, topped by his much-publicized role in the Gallatin Street shoot-out. I had been there with him, right next to him, in fact, but my participation had remained anonymous. I was reminded of it, though, every time I passed a mirror: a two-inch-long scar, running down my cheek.

  “Goddamn it, that’s good,” Boyle said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’ll take that beer now.”

  I tapped him one and set the mug next to the shot. Boyle pulled a Marlboro hard pack from his jacket, drew a cigarette, and tamped it on the pack. He put it to his lips and I gave him a light.

  “Thanks.” Boyle spit smoke and reached for the mug. I bent over the soak sink and ran a glass over the brush.

  “Good day out there?” I said, looking into the dirty gray suds.

  “Not bad today, if you really want to know. Picked up the shooter that fired off that Glock on school grounds over at Duval two weeks ago.”

  “The one where the bullet hit the wrong kid?”

  “The wrong kid? If you say so. The kid that got shot, he had a roll of twenties in his pocket, and a gold chain around his neck thicker than my wrist. So maybe he didn’t hit the kid he was going for, but he damn sure hit a kid that was in the life. Shit, Nick, you throw a fuckin’ rock in the hall of that high school, you’re gonna hit someone guilty of something.”

  “You’re a real optimist, Boyle. You know it?”

  “Like now I need a lecture. Anyway, you want to talk about sociology and shit from behind that bar, go ahead. In the meantime, I’m out there—”

  “In that concrete jungle?”

  “What?”

  “ ‘Concrete Jungle,’ ” I said. “The Specials.”

  “Gimme another drink,” Boyle mumbled, and finished off what was in his glass. He chased it with a swig of beer and wiped his chin dry with the back of his hand.

  Happy said something, either to himself or to me, from the other end of the bar. I ignored him, poured Boyle another shot. I leaned one elbow on the mahogany and put my foot up on the ice chest.

  “So, Boyle. How about that kid, the one that got it two nights ago—”

  “The one they found in the river?”

  “Yeah. I guess that was a drug thing, too.”

  “Bet it,” Boyle said. “But it’s not my district. So that’s one I don’t have to worry about.”

  “Let me ask you something. You know what the weapons of choice are on the street this month, right? I mean, it changes all the time, but you’re pretty much on top of it. Right?”

  “So?”

  “These enforcers. They in the habit of using silencers these days?”

  Boyle thought for a moment, then shook his head. He watched me out the corner of his eye as he butted his cigarette. Happy called again and I went down his way and fixed him a drink. When I came back, Boyle was firing down the remainder of his Jack and draining off the rest of his beer. He left some money on the bar, stashed his cigarettes in his jacket, and slid clumsily off his stool.

  “Take it easy, Nick.”

  “You, too.”

  I took his bills and rang on the register, dropping what was left into my tip jar. In the bar mirror, I saw Dan Boyle moving toward the front door. He turned once and stared at my back, his mouth open, his eyes blank. Then he turned again and walked heavily from the bar.

  I WORKED ANOTHER SHIFT on Friday, and in the evening Lyla and I caught a movie at the Dupont and had some appetizers after the show at Aleko’s, the best Greek food in town for my money, on Connecticut, above the Circle. Lyla had a few glasses of retsina at the restaurant and a couple more glasses of white before we went to bed. I didn’t drink that night—three days now without a drop, the longest downtime in a long, long while. I had some trouble going to sleep, though, and when I did, my dreams were crowded, filled with confusing detail, unfamiliar places, blue-black starlings rising in the corners of the frame.

  On Saturday, Lyla went into the office to put the finishing touches on a cover story, and I rode my ten-speed down to the Mall to catch a free Fugazi show at the Sylvan Theater. A go-go act opened to a polite crowd, and then the band cam
e out and tore it up. I saw Joe Martinson, a friend and contemporary of mine from the old postpunk days, and we hung together in the late-teen crowd that was getting off—clean off—on the music.

  That night, Lyla and I stayed at my place and listened to a few records. Lyla drank a gin and tonic and switched over to wine, and around midnight she called me outside, where I found her sitting on a blanket she had spread in the yard. She smirked as I approached her, and as she opened her legs, her skirt rode up her thighs, and I saw what that smile was all about. It was a good night, and another day gone by without a drink. But my dreams were no better than those of the night before.

  On Sunday, we drove down to Sandy Point and buried our toes in the hot orange sand, then cooled off in the bay, dodging the few nettles, which were late that year due to the heavy spring rains. In the evening, I drove over to Alice Deal Junior High and worked out with my physician, Rodney White, who ran a karate school in the gym. Though I had resisted “learning” tae kwon do—I had boxed coming up in the Boys Club and was convinced that hand technique was all I needed to know—I had been doing this with Rodney for years now, and he had managed to teach me some street moves as well as the first four forms of his art. I finished the last of those forms, and Rodney and I got into some one-step sparring.

  “All right, man,” Rodney said.

  We bowed in, and then I threw a punch. Rodney moved simultaneously to the side and down into a horse stance, where he sprang up and whipped a straight, open hand to within an inch of my throat. I heard the snap of his black gi and the yell from deep in his chest.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Ridge hand,” Rodney said. “Keep the first joints of your fingers bent. You’ll be striking with the whole side of your hand. And the kicker’s in the snap of the wrist, right before the strike. Step aside, and use the momentum coming up to drive it right into the Adam’s apple. You do it right, man, you’ll ruin somebody’s day.”