X. Atkins - Richmond Noir

When asked about the big black guy lying on the living room floor, we just said he was a newly made acquaintance we didn’t know all too well, which was kind of true. That didn’t sit well with them but there wasn’t much they could do about it right then. They found identification on him, took him out of the house, and told us to skip any foreseeable trips.

No one said a word about Ebone. Denby was doing most if not all of the talking by then, which Reggie and I were happy to let him do. I didn’t know why Ebone didn’t come up, but neither did I care very much to add anything else that would keep the police around any longer. I wanted them out almost as bad as the brothers did.

The sun was well upon its ascent by the time they all left. I sat on the leather sofa, leaning forward on my two crutches. My foot hurt, my shoulders hurt, my eyes hurt. But I couldn’t keep my good foot from tapping and my palms from sweating.

“So... why didn’t we mention Ebone? Besides the irritation it would cause?”

“She did me a favor,” Denby answered.

“How?”

“Before she left she must’ve took the kush out of the fridge. If the cops had found it, I’d be sitting between those redneck fucks for distribution.”

“Wow. Ebone comes through in the clutch. By scamming you. Again.” I leaned back, letting myself sink into the sofa as I closed my eyes.

“That bitch,” Denby grunted.

“Who do you think she was?” Reggie asked.

“Who?”

“The girl. That got killed.”

“Who were any of them? They probably all bought it. All the ones we’ve seen. All the same way. We’ve been living next to these guys for almost two months now. I’m getting sick thinking about it. What are we doing living here?” Denby said, smoking a Newport rapidly.

“The rent’s cheap,” I replied. The Baker brothers didn’t say anything. I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t go to sleep. I just kept my eyes closed. I was picturing myself walking out of the house and into my car and driving out of Oregon Hill. It was early so it wouldn’t be too hot outside yet.

Church Hill

Rachel’s beeper went off just as her back began growing numb, jammed against the pieces of broken and discarded furniture in the storage room. A second later, Bobby’s went off too. She unwrapped her legs from around his sweaty back, pulled herself up to a sitting position, and groped through the jumble of clothing and guns.

Six squads, Church Hill, multiple gunshots.

“They’re at it again, huh?” Bobby was already shoving his wilting erection into frayed boxers, reaching for his trousers. “No respect for a man’s lunch hour.”

Part of her training, Rachel could get into full battle rattle in two minutes flat. She slipped out the door while Bobby was still strapping on his holster, past the hedge of boxwoods that Vaughn loved for their evocative fragrance. To her they just smelled of cat piss.

She had moved to Richmond with Vaughn four years ago, his dream more than hers. He loved the Civil War, the relics, the history. They had spent hours together wandering the pretty streets up in Church Hill, the whole area looking like a nineteenth-century theme park with its gas lamps, wrought iron, and carefully restored brick houses. It was lovely, but for her money they could have stayed in Rochester.

She could say this for him: Vaughn always knew how to make anything sound good. Even when she was in the same place with him, sharing the same moment, he could make her see it differently. Strolling with him through Chimborazo Park, through the alleys where small crape myrtles wilted and the bright claws of someone’s abandoned steamed-crab lunch reeked in the August heat, Rachel could let herself relax into his descriptions of how things had been a hundred-plus years ago: thousands of wounded soldiers stretched out on the lawn under tents, surviving horrible injuries in the world’s largest hospital. Now, thinking it over, Rachel couldn’t imagine why he found the idea of all those festering wounds so romantic. But back then, she probably did too.

Romantic now meant late-night drives down by the river with Bobby. The kind of guy, actually, she’d had the good sense not to hook up with that whole year at Al Asad, though not for lack of opportunities. He was a big guy, knew how to carry himself, brown eyes, tight ass. Not super talkative, good guy to have around when things got rough, not given to whining, flirtatious.

Now she was actually sleeping with her partner, what Vaughn would have called fouling her own nest and Bobby would have called shitting where she lived. Except that he wouldn’t: they both felt right now that they were exceptions to this excellent general rule.

Riding down Broad Street with him, their sirens wailing, Coke turning warm and slushy in her crumpling paper cup, she asked, “Where we headed, anyway? Gilpin Court?”

He cut her a look sideways, slowing down just a little for the light on 25th before blasting on through. “Nah, it’s Libby Terrace.”

“They didn’t say who.” Before she could stop herself. There was one door she had thought about putting a few bullets through herself during one of her unauthorized midnight drives — past Vaughn’s new place, a renovated carriage house with a view of the old Libby Prison, where they used to starve the dysenteric Union POWs in filthy, overcrowded cells. Supposedly, Mr. Libby had built the giant corner house to give him a good view of what was happening there, and at a second, filthier prison down on Belle Isle. What he had hoped to see with his spyglass trained on the prison in the middle of the river, Rachel couldn’t begin to imagine. On the other hand, she pretty much knew what she was looking for on her late-night drive-bys.

She had gotten the “Dear Jane” letter her third month at Al Asad, when deployment no longer seemed like some kind of sick joke but before she was completely used to it. She had joined the Reserves for the college education because her mom didn’t have the money to help her out. It had seemed like a great idea at the time, but then there they were, sweating away in the 130-degree heat, on the base everyone called Camp Cupcake because it had a Burger King and a nice gym and KBR lobster tails and T-bone steaks once a week. Well, yeah, lobster tails, but they were also getting mortared just about every night that February she got the letter.

When the incoming began at night she would put on her Kevlar, roll under her cot with a flashlight, and read the letter again: Dear Rachel, These are the hardest words I have ever had to write . Like hell they were. The mortars kept coming. If they landed too close, they could jar your organs. You didn’t even need to get hit with shrapnel to sustain permanent damage. When she got to the phrase she hated most — the human heart is a strange muscle — what the hell did he mean by that? Had he plagiarized it from somewhere? — Rachel didn’t care how close the mortars hit.

Her sergeant had taken her over to JAG, where it seemed like even the air-conditioning worked better Miserable-looking soldiers waited their turns to see the lawyers; Sergeant Mackey had stood with his hand on her shoulder, steady pressure, while the JAG lawyer — bland, smooth-faced, young — helped her fill out all the paperwork, professional, like everyone in that office, but bored like she had seen it a thousand times before, which she no doubt had.

Rachel’s friends moved all of her stuff out of the row house she and Vaughn had shared in the Fan, leaving behind the carved Victorian sofa with the apricot velvet upholstery, the Queen Anne end table from his grandmother, the framed engravings depicting scenes from the war — not her war. When she had arrived home last fall, she’d had to MapQuest the new Northside apartment she’d rented.