Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go

by George Pelecanos

  I moved to the side, bent my knees, and sprang up, swinging with the momentum. I whipped my open hand into his throat, snapping my wrist sharply at the point of contact, aiming for the back of his neck. My straight-open hand connected at his Adam’s apple, knocking him one step back. It felt as if a piece of Styrofoam had snapped.

  Sweet grabbed at his throat with both hands. I went in, threw one deep right, followed through with it, dead square where his nose met the purple bruise of his face. Something gave with the punch; blood sprayed onto my shirt and Sweet went down. He fell to his side, moved a little, made choking sounds. Then he did not move at all. His hands dropped away from his throat.

  “Goddamn,” Coley said. “You kill ’im?”

  “No. You hit the Adam’s apple, the muscles around it contract, for protection. Cuts off your breathing for a few seconds. He’ll live.”

  I heard Coley’s slow footsteps as he crossed the room. The footsteps swelled, then stopped.

  “What’d you call that?” Coley said, close behind me. “That thing you did to his throat?”

  “Ridge hand,” I said.

  “Sweet’s gonna want to know,” Coley said, “when he wakes up.”

  I felt a blunt shock to the back of my head and a short, sharp pain. The floor dropped out from beneath my feet, and I was falling, diving toward a pool of cool black water. Then I was in the black water, and there was only the water, and nothing left of me. Nothing left at all.

  I WOKE FROM A dream of water.

  “Some water,” I said, looking at their feet.

  Coley’s shoes were between the legs of the chair, where he now sat. Sweet’s were near my face.

  “Get him some water,” Coley said.

  “Fuck a lotta water,” Sweet said.

  Sweet’s shoes moved out of my field of vision. Then his knee dropped onto my back. I grunted as the knee dug into my spine. Sweet took my arm at the wrist and twisted it behind my back. I sucked at the air.

  “Where’s your partner?” he said, his breath hot on my neck. “The one with the shotgun.”

  “He’s gone,” I said, my voice high and unsteady.

  “He’s gone,” Sweet said, mimicking my tone. He giggled and pushed my hand up toward my shoulders. He held my other hand flat to the hardwood floor. I tried to dig my nails into the wood.

  “Where’s he gone to?” Coley said.

  “He split with his share of the money,” I said. “I don’t know where he went.”

  Sweet jerked my arm up. I thought my arm would break if he pushed it farther. Then he pushed it farther. It hit a nerve, and the room flashed white. I tightened my jaw, breathed in and out rapidly through my nose.

  “Uh,” I said.

  “Say what?” Sweet said.

  “Where is he?” Coley said.

  My eyes teared up. Everything in front of me was slanted and soft.

  “I don’t know where he is,” I said. “Coley, I don’t know.”

  Coley said nothing.

  Sweet released my arm. I rested the side of my face on the floor.

  Then Sweet grabbed a handful of hair at the back of my head and yanked my head back up. He slammed my face into the floor. Blood spilled out of my nose and onto the wood. My mouth was wet with it; I breathed it in and coughed. I looked at the grain in the wood and the blood spreading over the grain.

  “Goddamn, Sweet,” Coley said. “You’re just fuckin’ this man all up.”

  Sweet twisted my hair, yanked my head up out of the blood. My eyes rolled up toward the ceiling. Purple clouds blinked in front of my eyes and I heard the gurgle of my own voice. I felt Sweet push down on the back of my head. I saw the wood rushing toward my face. The wood was black, like black water. I was in the water, and it was blessedly cool.

  I OPENED MY EYES.

  I stared at the ceiling. It was a drop ceiling tiled in particleboard, with water damage in some of the tiles. Naked fluorescent fixtures hung from the ceiling. The light bore into my eyes.

  I rolled onto my side. A Dixie cup full of water sat on the floor. Beyond the cup, a large roach crawled across the floor. It crawled toward Sweet’s boots. Past Sweet’s boots, Coley’s shoes were centered between the legs of the chair.

  I got up, leaned on my forearm, and drank the water. I thought I would puke, but I did not. I dropped the cup on the floor and dragged myself over to the wall. I put my back against the wall, sat there. My nose ached badly and there was a ripping pain behind my eyes. I rubbed my hand on my mouth, flaked off the blood that had dried there. Coley was seated in the chair and Sweet stood with his back against the opposite wall. The .22 dangled in Sweet’s hand, pointed at the floor. I looked at Coley. Coley moved his chin up an inch.

  “Let’s kill him,” Sweet said. “You said to wait till he woke up. Well, he’s up.”

  “Not yet. I want to get the word first.”

  “Fuck the word. Let’s kill him now.”

  “Not yet,” said Coley.

  It went back and forth like that for a while. I started to feel a little better. Time passed, and I felt better still. The hate was doing it. What they had done to me and the thought of it were making me stronger.

  I looked around the room: nothing to use as a weapon. Nothing on me but my car keys and a pack of matches. The keys were something; I could palm one, stab a key into Sweet’s eye when he came for me. I could hurt him in an awful way before he killed me. Somehow, I would do that. I would try.

  “Go downstairs,” Coley said to Sweet. “Go down and call him. See what he wants to do.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Sweet said. “You lock that door behind me, hear?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “I mean it,” Sweet said. “I’m gonna listen outside that door, make sure you do it.” And then to me: “I’ll be back in ten minutes. That’s how long you got to live. Ten minutes. You think about that.”

  Sweet walked from the room. He shut the door, and Coley got up from his chair and went to the door. He jangled the chain around in the bolt, made sure Sweet heard the jangle from the other side of the door. Then he dropped the chain without locking it, chuckling as he walked back to his chair. He sat in the chair. His eyes moved to the door and then to me.

  “Don’t get any ideas about that door,” Coley said. “ ’Cause this thirty-eight, at this range? You know I won’t miss.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Good. That thing with the door, I just like to rattle that little redneck’s cage a little bit, that’s all.” Coley grinned. “You fucked him up pretty good, too. ’Course, he did you right back. He manage to break that nose of yours?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But it’s been broke before.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I can see. Where you get that scar on your cheek, man?”

  “Who cut off your ear?”

  Coley showed me some teeth. “Some brother, in the showers at the Maryland State Pen. Looked at him the wrong way, I guess. All part of my rehabilitation and shit.”

  “That where you two are from? Baltimore?”

  “Yeah. Roundabout that way. Why?”

  “Nothing.” I looked Coley in the eyes. “You killed Roland, and the Jeter kid, too. Didn’t you?”

  “Jeter, huh? That’s what that boy’s name was? Well, I didn’t pull the trigger. I take no pleasure in that, though I’ll do it if it’s called for. Sweet was the triggerman. He likes it, you know. But I guess you could say I killed those boys, yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re runnin’ a business here, and we got to protect that. Powder right into the projects, straight up. They turn it to rock and then they kill themselves over that shit. But our end, we keep it clean. Now, my boss, the man who bankrolls all this? He favors boys. Young brothers, that’s what he likes. Likes to watch ’em on the videotape. He had this idea, why not get them in here and put ’em on tape, use ’em to run powder on the side. I could have told him that shit wouldn’t go. One of them got sc
ared and the other one got greedy. We just had to go on and do ’em both.”

  “Who’s your boss?” I said.

  Coley laughed. “Aw, go on. What you think this is, True Confessions and shit? Uh-uh, man, you’re just gonna have to check out not knowing all that. Now let me ask you somethin’.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Why’d you knock us over? It wasn’t for the money, I know that.”

  “I was just trying to save a kid’s life. I was only trying to get Roland out of there. He didn’t even know who we were.”

  “He wasn’t with you?”

  “No. You killed him for nothing.”

  Coley shrugged. “He would’ve made me, anyway. Eventually, he would’ve done somethin’ to make me kill ’im. He was that way. Just difficult and shit.”

  Coley used the barrel of his gun to scratch his forehead. I eased my keys out of my pocket, palmed them, let the tip of the longest one peek through the fingers of my fist.

  “But you know,” Coley said, “that don’t explain why you came back tonight.”

  “I wasn’t finished,” I said. “I needed to know the rest of it.”

  “Now you know,” Coley said. “Kind of a silly thing to die for, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess it is.”

  Coley exhaled slowly, looked at me sadly. “I seen you pull out those keys and shit. Why don’t you just slide them over here, man. I’ll make sure what gets done to you gets done to you quick.”

  I tossed the keys to the center of the floor. Footsteps sounded in the hall, louder with each step. Coley got out of his chair, bent over, and picked up the keys. He slipped them in his pocket.

  There was a knock on the door.

  Coley smiled. “Come on in, Sweet. It’s open.”

  The door opened.

  Jack LaDuke stepped into the room, the Ithaca in his hands.

  The smile froze on Coley’s face. “Goddamn,” he said. “God damn.”

  LaDuke pointed his shotgun at Coley. Coley pointed the .38 at LaDuke.

  “LaDuke,” I said.

  “Nick.”

  LaDuke kicked the door shut behind him, kept his eyes and the shotgun on Coley. LaDuke was wearing his black suit and the solid black tie. I felt a rush of affection for him then; looking at him, I could have laughed out loud.

  “Where you been?” I said.

  “Office of Deeds, like you taught me.” Without moving anything but his free arm, he reached under the tail of his jacket and drew my Browning. “This is you.”

  He tossed the gun in my direction. I caught it, ejected the magazine, checked it, slapped the magazine back in the butt. I pointed the Browning at Coley. Coley kept the .38 on LaDuke.

  “How’d you get in, LaDuke?”

  “Fire escape. The window was open—”

  “Damn,” said Coley.

  “And then I just came down the hall. Heard you guys talkin’.”

  “Good to see you, LaDuke.”

  “You all right? You look pretty fucked up.”

  “I’m okay. Now we gotta figure out how to get outta here.”

  “Uh-uh,” Coley said.

  “What’s that?” LaDuke said.

  “You know I can’t let you fellahs do that,” Coley said, still smiling, the smile weird and tight. Bullets of sweat had formed on his forehead and sweat had beaded in his mustache.

  LaDuke took one step in. The floorboard creaked beneath his weight.

  Coley stiffened his gun arm and did not move.

  “Let’s get out of here, LaDuke.”

  “Maybe you ought to run, Pretty Boy,” Coley said.

  LaDuke’s face reddened.

  “And maybe,” LaDuke said, “you ought to make a move.”

  “LaDuke,” I said.

  His finger tightened on the trigger.

  “Know what this thirty-eight’ll do to that pretty face?” Coley said.

  LaDuke just smiled.

  Their eyes locked, and neither of them moved. The sound of our breathing was the only sound in the room.

  “Hey, Jack,” I said, very quietly.

  Coley squeezed the trigger on the .38 and LaDuke squeezed the trigger on the shotgun—both of them, at once.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  THE ROOM EXPLODED in a sucking roar of sonics and fine red spray. LaDuke’s head jerked sharply to the side, as if he had been slapped.

  A rag doll slammed against the wall, fell in a heap to the floor, the head dropping sloppily to the chest. The rag doll wore the clothes of Coley. Everything above the hairline was gone, the face unrecognizable; the face was soup.

  “I’m shot, Nick,” LaDuke said almost giddily. “I’m shot!”

  I went to him, pulled him around.

  The right side of his jaw was exposed, skinless, with pink rapidly seeping into the pearl of the bone. You’re okay, LaDuke, I thought. You turned your head at the last moment and Coley blew off the side of your face. You’re going to be badly scarred and a little ugly, but you’re going to be okay.

  And then I saw the hole in his neck, the exit hole or maybe the entry, rimmed purple and blackened from the powder, the hole the size of a quarter. Blood pumped rhythmically from the hole, spilling slowly over the collar of LaDuke’s starched white shirt, meeting the blood that was the blow-back from Coley.

  “Nick,” LaDuke said, and he nearly laughed. “I’m shot!”

  “Yeah, you’re shot. Come on, let’s get out of here. Let’s go.”

  I went to Coley, kicked his hand away from the front of his pants, where it lay. I reached into his pocket and retrieved my keys. LaDuke stood by the door, facing it, shuffling his feet nervously, one hand on the stock of the Ithaca, the other on its barrel. I crossed the room.

  “How many in the shotgun?” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “How many in that Ithaca?”

  LaDuke mouthed the count, struggled to make things clear in his head. “It’s a five-shot. Four now, I guess.”

  “You got more shells?”

  He nodded. “And my Cobra. And your extra clip.”

  “Good. Give it to me.” I took the extra magazine, slipped it in my back pocket. “Now listen. There’s more of them, and they’re gonna be comin’ up the stairs. Maybe outside, covering the fire escape, too.”

  “Okay.”

  “We gotta go out this door now, see what’s what. We gotta go now. We don’t want to be trapped in this room.”

  “Okay.”

  I jacked a round into the chamber of my nine. LaDuke pumped one into the Ithaca.

  “You ready?”

  “Yes,” LaDuke said, nodding rapidly. “I’m ready.”

  I opened the door, ran out blindly, LaDuke close behind me. I turned to my left.

  A man was coming through the open window at the end of the hall. He was cursing, pulling at his shirt where it had snagged on a nail in the frame. There was a .45 in his free hand.

  From the stairway at the other end of the hall, Sweet emerged from the darkness. Sweet ran toward us, the .22 straight out in front of him.

  “You!” he shouted.

  I kept my eyes on the man in the window. My back bumped LaDuke’s. I heard the pop of the .22, and the round blowing past us, and the ricochet off the metal shelving in the hall.

  “Kill Sweet, LaDuke. Kill him.”

  LaDuke fired the shotgun. Sweet’s scream echoed in the hall behind me. Then the .22 was popping and the shotgun roared over the pop of the gun.

  The man in the window freed himself, pointed his weapon in my direction. I fell to the side, squeezed the trigger on the nine, squeezed it three times, saw the man was hit, saw him caught in the broken glass. I aimed, squeezed off another round. The man in the window rocked back, then pitched forward, a black hole on his cheek and a hole spitting blood from his chest. The casings from my gun pinged to the floor. I turned around at the sound of the Ithaca’s pump.

  LaDuke walked between the offices fronted with corrugated glass. He stood ov
er the convulsing body of Sweet, Sweet’s heels rattling at the hardwood floor. LaDuke kicked him like an animal. He stepped back, fired the shotgun. Flame came from the barrel and wood splintered off the floor. Sweet’s body lifted and rolled.

  “Hey, Nick,” LaDuke said. Through the smoke, I could see his crazy, crooked smile.

  A man in a blue shirt came running out of the stairwell, an automatic in his hand.

  I shouted, “LaDuke!”

  LaDuke stepped through an open door. Blue Shirt moved his gun arm in my direction.

  I dove and tumbled into the bathroom as a vanity mirror exploded above my head. Another round blew through the doorway. The round sparked, ricocheted, took off some tiles. A ceramic triangle ripped at my sleeve. The glass of the shower door spidered and flew apart. Glass rained down and stung at my face.

  I looked behind me, saw the bricked-up window. The footsteps of the shooter sounded near the door. I could feel the sweat on my back and the weight of glass in my hair. The Browning felt slick in my hands. I gripped it with both hands. From the hall, LaDuke yelled my name.

  Then there were gunshots, and more glass, the corrugated glass of the offices blowing apart. I rolled, screaming, out of the bathroom, looked for anything blue, saw blue and the black of LaDuke’s black suit, fired my gun at the blue.

  The man in the blue shirt danced backward, shot off his feet, caught between the bullet of my gun and the blast of LaDuke’s shotgun. He hit the floor, saliva and blood slopping from his open mouth.

  I walked through the smoke toward LaDuke, glass crunching beneath my feet. A steady high note sounded in my ears and blood pumped violently in my chest. LaDuke pulled a fistful of shells from his jacket pocket, thumbed them into the Ithaca. I wrist-jerked the magazine out of my automatic, found the loaded clip in my back pocket. My hand shook wildly as I slapped it in.

  “What now?” LaDuke said.

  “Out the window,” I said. “Come on.”

  “I say we finish things up downstairs. The rest of them are down those stairs.”

  “You’re bleeding bad, Jack. You gotta get to a hospital, man.”