by Neely Tucker
He was picking up the pace when something flicked at the corner of his vision. Curious George, way up ahead now, skylined by the lights on Fourth, suddenly broke into a dead sprint, running like hell along the wall of Fort McNair.
Bright white lights exploded along the wall alongside Curious. Searchlights. A patrol whoop whoop whooping, the red and blue misery lights atop one, now the other setting off, whipping flares of light onto the trees, the buildings. A car alarm started bleating. Sully lost sight of Curious, but heard the spectral voice of a cop on the loudspeaker of the patrol car blaring orders, car doors thumping.
Now running seemed like a pretty good goddamn idea. He took two steps and a searchlight from a patrol car suddenly on the paved walkway in back of the Carolina, the apartment building. It shot out across the Bend, maybe twenty yards behind him, sweeping the other way. Raised voices, shouting, more car doors thumping.
He froze. God help him, he crouched and froze.
The searchlight swept back this way and he flattened out on the ground, the beam illuminating two, maybe three cops heading down the slight incline into the Bend, the smaller beams of their flashlights bursting into life. He could hear their voices, hear them fanning out, establishing a perimeter. No way out. They had cut him off.
He pushed up, found his feet, and turned and ran back out onto the knob of the Bend, away from the cops, not looking back. He stumbled and nearly fell face-first on the shattered brick and stones. He cursed, slowing, trying not to make any sound, wading into the water, feeling and not feeling the cold embrace of it moving up his ankles and now his knees, the body of Short Stuff bobbing in the shallows off to his left.
The searchlight swept back again and there were shouts behind him and he could not stop himself from crouching down in the water, turning to look. Half a dozen flashlight beams now, coming from the top of the park and the side, all converging this way, down onto the knob of the Bend.
Nothing else to do now. He moved two more steps, three, and the bottom disappeared beneath him. Blackness swept over his mouth, his nose, his eyes, and he was beneath the water. The iciness swirled over him, his balls shriveling and tightening. He felt his foot touch mud and he let both legs come down now until he was in a crouch, cheeks puffed out with oxygen, and he was in a tiny ball at the bottom of the channel.
He opened his eyes and they stung and there was only blackness and he snapped them shut. He shot his hands and arms out in front of him and pushed off. His arms moved the water from in front of him and swept to the side. Two strokes, three, the water getting colder by degrees as he moved into the deeper water. When he felt his breath going, he drifted and stretched an arm up above his head. After a while, he felt the tips of his fingers break the surface.
His lungs were burning, but he forced himself to slow, and slow some more, until he turned his body and pushed his chin up and away from his chest until his face was almost parallel to the surface and water was trying to shoot up his nostrils. Then he let his nose and mouth and forehead break the surface, gulping in the night air, his eyes still closed, his ears beneath the water. Then he tilted his head forward, keeping his chin above the water, looking back toward the Bend.
Flashlights swept across it, waving like the arms and legs of an insect on its back. Two patrol car searchlights also swept across the Bend, intersecting and parting again. The flashlights were not pooled at the waterfront. If there were voices he could not hear them. They had not seen him. They were not looking for him. They had not found Short Stuff yet, but they would soon and that would occupy them, absorb their time and attention. He wondered if Curious’s gun had ejected a shell, if they had run him down.
The deep cold of the water swept over him again, raising gooseflesh. He put his face down in the water, pulling his right leg up, taking one shoe off and then the other, and he brought his face back up into the air. Beneath the surface, he tied each shoe tight against his belt.
The lights of Hains Point glittered across the water, but they no longer beckoned to him. The marina was maybe four hundred yards down the waterway on this side of the channel, an easy swim. There was no boat traffic and all he had to worry about was coming into the lighted area of the marina without being seen and pulling himself up onto one of the piers. From there, it’d be easy. Soaking wet, walking off the marina? Anybody asked, Yeah, damn, tying up and dropped my keys over the side, had to hop in with a net to get them—Christ, I gotta get home before I freeze.
He dipped beneath the water again, shooting his left arm forward, pulling it down and back toward him and then bringing the right arm over his head, reaching forward, taking the water again without slapping it, steadily kicking his legs below the surface.
Another stroke, and another, the muscles tight but they would loosen with the effort and the repetition, and then he was into a full overhand crawl, moving away from the Bend and toward the lights of the marina.
THIRTY-ONE
THE SUN WAS out on his back porch the next morning, warming his bones. He was in jeans and a thermal long-sleeve, eating the last of a monstrous breakfast—omelet, toast, bacon—and making himself drink the coffee he’d just brewed and not think about how he’d rather have the morning julep, when the phone rang. The receiver, where was it . . . here. Beneath the morning paper, the sections splayed out and flapping. He looked at the digits on the phone, picked it up, and said, “Why, John Parker. How good of you to remember me.”
Wind was blowing on the other end. Parker was outside somewhere. “Why you not picking up your cell?”
“Enjoying a quiet morning at home, as a gentleman sometimes does.”
“Things don’t seem to be working out so good for you,” Parker said, coughing, then bringing the phone back to his mouth. “Last time I saw you was with Delores Ellison. Now I hear you got yourself suspended.”
“My employers are delicate little flowers.”
Parker snorted. “I told the missus. She says she’s worried about you. Wants me to get you to come over for dinner.”
“Say when. As long as she’s cooking. I’ve eaten yours before.” He made a study of his toenails, working to keep his tone flat.
“Too bad you’re not with the rest of us at the Bend, on this fine spring morning. That little fat guy what works with you was telling me the paper got on you about the thing with Delores.”
“Chris?” Sully said, putting a note of surprise in his voice, like this was news. “What’s Chris doing at the Bend?”
“Your job. You didn’t hear? We got another body.”
Sully left the toenails to their fate and reached over on the plate, breaking off a piece of omelet with his fingers, then popping it in his mouth. Keeping it light. “No shit? For real?”
“Body’s out there in the water, not quite making it out to swim with the fishes. Your buddy Dave’s down here with his television truck.”
Sully sipped his tea and took another bite of toast, his gut tightening a little bit now.
“So who is it?”
“We’re waiting on a family ID before releasing it, but I’m pretty sure it was one Antoine Gillespie, better known as Ant. Enforcer for the Hall brothers.”
“Why ‘pretty sure’?”
“Because most of the left side of his head is gone.”
“Well there’s that.”
“Yeah. He’s—was—a player in the M Street Crew, like his buddy Dee Dee, who got popped a couple of weeks back.”
“This guy Ant, he kinda short, stocky, tends to run around with a hoodie?”
“That’s him.”
“Last time I saw him, he was threatening to kill me.”
“That sounds about right,” Parker said. “You want to come down and pay your respects? The techs are wrapping up, but they’ll be here another hour or so.”
“I think I’ll pass. Let Chris handle it.”
“Fine. You’ll h
ave another chance. This ain’t the end of this shit. Some serious beefin’ is cranking up.”
Sully waited for a second, let some air in the conversation. “Any connection this guy Ant, Antoine Gillespie, had to Billy Ellison?”
“Could be, might be,” John said. “All this is going to be tied to that new high-test blow we been seeing down here. Somebody’s making a move. Three bodies in three weeks? That’s not an accident.”
“You catch the bad guys yet? Not the Dee Dee bad guys. The Ant shooter.”
“Not yet. Foot chase between some uniforms and a suspect last night. Maybe one of them, anyhow. We had a couple of patrols up on M Street—this Korean nail salon place’d just got robbed? And we get calls about a shot or shots down in the Bend. So they roll down there, just to see if there’s something to see, and soon as they pull up, some brother takes off running.”
“They didn’t grab him?”
“Lost him on the street.”
“You thinking he might have been the shooter?”
“No way to know. Might have been some dude scoring coke, hears the shot from down on the water, takes off on GP.”
“So this shooting, it was down by the riverside?”
“Yeah. The other units thought they saw somebody out there on the Bend, but nothing doing. They get down to the water, there’s Mrs. Gillespie’s bouncing baby boy, bobbing in the waves.”
“Good god.”
“I gave it to Jeff to take the lead on it, since he’s working the other shootings down here, but we’re getting the narcotics unit detailed, some help from DEA. We got uniforms canvassing every unit of the Carolina, that apartment building right by the Bend. You know how many helpful witnesses we’re going to get?”
“Zero?”
“You got a genius for this business.”
“Any forensics, shells?”
“None yet. But look, I got to jump. The Ellison funeral, that’s today, and the chief wants a show of respect. I got to switch into a suit and get into traffic.”
Sully blew out his lips into a raspberry. Christ. Delores. He hated funerals.
“You know they’re having a daily protest out in front of your paper about your story?”
“I do.”
“And that the funeral procession is passing by there on the way up to the cathedral?”
“I had missed that happy fact.”
“I think they’re trying to get you fired.”
Sully nodded, but he wasn’t sure if John meant the people outside the building or the people inside.
THIRTY-TWO
THE TAXI DROPPED him off at McPherson Square, four or five blocks from the paper. He had on jeans and a T-shirt under an old sport coat, plus a and a baseball cap and running shoes, so he didn’t look like much, and the sunglasses covered part of his face.
By the time he made it to the block of the paper, there were several hundred people—no, more, at least a thousand—clogging the sidewalks, spilling into the street, holding signs, chanting. Every few minutes, a group of ten or twelve protesters would sling their rubber-band-bound papers at the building all at once, hitting the glass windows with percussive thumps, the better arms getting to the second and third floors.
“Hold on wait a minute / got to put some bullshit in it!” went the chant, morphing into “Take it back! Take it back!”
Television cameras at the intersection picked it up, the patrol cars and lines of police containing the demonstration, the west-bound lane in front of the paper blocked off. The crowd, mostly black but a good bit white, bobbing, weaving, roiling, bouncing against the police barricades, energized but not out of control. He worked his way toward the front of the crowd, walking along the yellow tape where the television crews were doing standups. Dave wasn’t there. Surprising.
“Bitterly angry demonstrators,” one reporter was saying, talking earnestly into the camera, gesturing to the crowd behind her.
“I wouldn’t say they were enraged, David and Emily,” another said into the microphone, talking to hosts back in the studio, “but I think it fair to call it passionate, this outpouring after the suicide of Delores Ellison, one of the city’s most well-known socialites and philanthropists, which came less than twenty-four hours after a story on the front page of the paper, copies of which these protesters are hurling back at the paper that published this inflammatory . . .”
BILLY ELLISON DIED FOR YOUR SINS, read one sign.
Some of the others Sully could make out:
ELLISONS > HEADLINES
YOU HAVE BEEN CANCELED
TAKE IT BACK
RENEW THIS
In front of the crowd on the jostling sidewalk, a man in a somber black suit had a bullhorn, pacing back and forth. Sully recognized him as the pastor from the Capital City AME, a good-looking, charismatic preacher with a shaved head, exhorting the crowd milling back and forth in front of him, spilling into the street.
“We have labored all these years,” he said, holding the horn close to his mouth, “to even be recognized by these types of media institutions.” A little feedback and distortion during the pause.
“And this is what we get?”
“No!” yelled the crowd.
“And THIS is what we get,” he came back, louder.
“Nnnnooooo,” lowed the crowd.
“They can’t hear you in there because they’re counting your money!” he bellowed.
“NNNNNOOOOOOOOOO!”
“Are you canceling your subscriptions?”
“YYEEESSSSSSS!”
And then, rising from the back, deep, booming, being picked up by the rest of the crowd until it was a resonating bit of rhythm cascading down the block, over all of downtown: “Hold on wait a minute / got to put some bullshit in it. . . .”
• • •
By the time Sully got up to the National Cathedral, the clock going on two, the second Ellison funeral in a week was already unfolding. From his vantage point across Wisconsin Avenue, his view partially obscured by the trees, it still looked like an affair of state.
The Veep was already inside; the guys in suits talking into their fingers were flanking the cathedral, all entrances, eyes up. Sully counted four black SUVs, rear doors open, a discreet M16 barrel poking out of one. There was probably a Supreme Court justice inside, certainly an undersecretary of state. Traffic on Wisconsin was impossible, a parking lot in both directions, cops with whistles and pissed-off expressions, arms windmilling, c’mon c’mon, or flat palms out, whistles blaring.
The pearl-gray hearse was parked just in front of the steps leading to the cathedral entrance. Three black limousines were behind it, parked, while others circled through, dropping off mourners. A man in a suit was rolling a heavy LOT FULL sign out to the road, telling people to forget the garage beneath the cathedral. Faintly, borne on the breeze, there was the sound of the organ. Television trucks and reporters outside, the antennae on the trucks rising into the air.
Chris was over there in the bank of reporters covering it, looking like a stuffed sausage in his suit, waddling up the sidewalk, talking to a few mourners along the way, stepping onto the grass to take down their names and remembrances in his notebook.
Sully stood across the far side of Wisconsin.
Another taxi had dropped him two blocks up and he had walked back down, now loitering in front of the Charleston, an art deco–era apartment building, watching the procession across the street, keeping tabs on the event for reasons he could not precisely name.
The guilt that coursed through him had grown into a snake of monstrous proportions. Billy Ellison and his mother had, less than ten days ago, been rulers of social Washington, the elite of the elite. Then Billy had died and Sully had written one story and then another, and now they were both in the ground, the Ellison family line wiped off the planet.
He had a small p
air of binoculars but did not pull them up lest he draw undue attention, which, after the scene downtown, he was in no mood to do. As he leaned against a car, trying to affect an air of boredom, his eyes jumped around the perimeter, picking out Stevens’s goons, standing separately, apart from the small knots of mourners. They were not the Secret Service guys, no, but they were keeping an eye out, looking for him, no doubt, looking to score points even after Delores was dead. Creating a scene would be a kill shot to his career. Stevens knew that as well as he did.
And suddenly there he was, Stevens, the man himself, emerging from behind one of the cathedral pillars, coming down the steps to the hearse, his feet shuffling along like he was wearing lead shoes. Sully tucked himself against the windshield of the car and pulled up the binoculars. Stevens had apparently asked the driver of the hearse for something. He was leaning against the rear of the vehicle, head down, hands on his knees.
Sully briefly panned the glasses down to the pavement to see if he had thrown up, but no, he hadn’t. The driver came back, stopped short, a set of papers in his hand, and Stevens looked up at him and reached out to take the papers and then went back to his head-down posture, the papers trapped against a knee.
His head shook and the hand with the papers fluttered. The driver walked back to the front of the car. Stevens stood upright, but still leaning his right shoulder against the hearse. Then Sully could see his face. It was the color of shale, a great misshapen thing that settled above his collar as if in a choke hold. The eyes appeared as hard as ball bearings, gray orbs you could pull out of his head and still not be able to crack with a hammer.
“Jesus,” Sully muttered.
Stevens stirred, coming back to himself, and Sully put the glasses back in the pocket of his sport coat and pushed himself up off the car, moving around a little bit, beneath the extended awning of one apartment building, and then back out into the sun.
