George Pelecanos - Down By the River Where the Dead Men Go

“See you later, Eddie,” I said.

Eddie turned to LaDuke. “Take care of yourself, Stretch.”

He got out of the car, and shut the door behind him. I watched him strut across the street and disappear over the hill at the start of the bridge. He li cbrior ved for money, but he was stupid and he was sloppy, and he had a short attention span. He’d lose my card, or forget my name; I knew I’d never hear from him again.

“ God damn it,” LaDuke said softly from the backseat.

I lit the cigarette that I had been playing with for the last five minutes, took some smoke into my lungs. “Listen, Jack. These kids out here, man, they’re going to get into some shit. You didn’t think Roland was totally innocent, did you? If you’re going to do this kind of work, you’ve got to stop setting yourself up for disappointment.”

“It makes me sick, that’s all. To think that Roland comes from a home where his mother raised him with love, and then he ends up down in some woods, having some middle-aged man suck his dick, maybe go butt-up in some porno movie. A kid is confused enough, Nick; he doesn’t know shit yet about what he is. To have all these adults doing these things to him… I swear to God, it just makes me sick.”

“We’re not done yet,” I said. “And what we found out here, it could be nothing compared to what we’re going to find. Earlier today, I talked to this cop I know. He told me that they’ve got some information-I don’t know how reliable it is-that Calvin and Roland were moving drugs.”

“Who were the cops talking to?”

“An informant of theirs, out of Southeast.”

“Well, let’s find this guy, talk to him ourselves!”

“There’s things we can’t do, LaDuke. The cops can go into those projects, ask around, because they’re cops. We go in there, a couple of white-boy private cops, nobody’s gonna talk to us. And it’s a good way to get ourselves capped.”

“What now, then?”

“We keep doing what we’re doing, work with what we know. Here’s the thing: Calvin was killed because of something wrong he and his friend got themselves into-there’s no doubt about that now. You’re going to have deal with it, Jack-Roland might be dead, too.”

“ God damn it,” LaDuke said again, and shook his head.

We didn’t say much after that. I sat there and smoked my cigarette and checked out the flow of traffic while the bike messengers and the homeless and the hustlers moved about in the park. LaDuke mumbled to himself occasionally, and once he slapped the back of my seat with his palm. Then he picked up a couple of empty beer cans that were at his feet and told me he was going to throw them away.

I watched him walk around the front of the car, moving heavily, shifting his shoulders awkwardly, a tall, gawky guy not entirely comfortable in his own skin, like an adolescent who has grown too fast. There was something else, too, something a little off center and soiled beneath Jack LaDuke’s fresh-scrubbed looks. I couldn’t put my finger on it that day, and when I did, it was way too late. Eventually, the snakes that were crawling around inside his head found their way out. By then, there was nothing I could do but stand beside him, and watch them strike.

Lyla McCubbin had grown up in a boxy brick house on a street named Bangor Drive, in an unremarkable but pleasant development called Garrett Park Estates in the Maryland suburb of Kensington. Her parents had raised three children there, and they had remained long after Lyla, the last child, had graduated from college and gone out on her own. Lyla said that the neighborhood had changed very little since her childhood: a mixture of starter homes and rentals, none too ostentatious, a comfortable kind of place, where you came to recognize the bark of every dog through the open window of your bedroom as you drifted off to sleep on summer nights.

Lyla’s mother, Linda, had practically raised the children herself, as the father, Daniel McCubbin, was usually off at some meeting, organizing the unions or planning the demonstration for his latest cause. The first day I met Lyla, in her office at D.C. This Week, I had noticed the photograph of her as a child, stand ing between her bearded father and straight-haired mother, at a Dupont Circle rally circa 1969. Lyla said that the family never had a dime, but there was some pride in her voice as she said it, never regret. Her father, a fine trial lawyer by all accounts, had managed to resist the advances of the corporate firms in town throughout his career, preferring to use his talents to advance the causes of those individuals whom he considered to be on the side of “right.” He wasn’t your typical pompous windbag, though. I liked him and I admired him, despite the obvious fact that he was not awfully crazy about me.

We were greeted at the door by Linda McCubbin, who kissed Lyla and then me on the cheek. Linda was Lyla with thirty years added to the odometer, with more silver in the hair than red now and an organic heaviness around the waist and in the hips. Men were always told to look at the mothers, as if that was some kind of test; it never had been for me, but if it had been, then Lyla would have passed.

“Here, Ma,” Lyla said, handing Linda a bag containing two liter bottles of white wine. Lyla had insisted we stop for it, though both of us had once again consumed a little too much the night before.

Linda took it, said, “Come on in.”

Daniel sat under an overextended air conditioner in the simply furnished living room, in a La-Z-Boy chair, the arms of which had been shredded by the McCubbin cat, a mean tom that someone had ironically named Peace. Lyla bent to her father and kissed him, and then he shook my hand without rising from the chair.

“Don’t get up,” I said.

“Didn’t plan to,” he said. “Hot day like this, I’m going to expend as little energy as possible. How’s it going, Nick?”

“Good. Good.”

Daniel smiled, studied me, and kept the smile until it looked nothing like a smile at all. Maybe I had overdone the aftershave, or maybe it was the unironed khakis or the color of my shirt. Or maybe he liked me just fine, and it was just that I was dating his baby daughter.

“Linda,” Daniel said, watching my eyes. “Get Nick here a drink. What’ll it be, Nick?”

“Nothing just yet. Too early for me,” I said, rocking on my heels.

“Is it?” Daniel said, scratching beneath the white of his beard.

“Well,” Lyla said, “ I’ll have one. C’mon, Mom, let’s go in the kitchen. I’ll help you get ready.”

Lyla winked, left me there with her dad. I gave her a brittle smile as she walked away. I had a seat on the sofa, crossed one leg over the other, nervously missed it on the first go-round.

“Where’s the rest of the family?” I said.

“They’ll be along,” Daniel said. “How’s the bar business going?”

“Good. Real good.”

“You know, I used to go into that place, in the old days, when I was working on the Hill.”

“Really.”

“Yes, it was called something else back then. You’ve been there awhile, haven’t you? Thought you might own a piece of it by now.”

“No, not me. Tough business, that.” Real tough.

“And your investigative work?”

“Coming along,” I said as I watched my free foot wiggle in the air. “How about you… how’s retirement?”

Daniel raised his substantial eyebrows. “Linda says I don’t know how to spell the word retirement. I guess the difference is, now I don’t get paid for what it is I do. Right now, I’m setting up group homes for Haitian refugees. Our church owns these properties, so… I’m helping fix them up.”

“Why fix them up?” I said, my foot pinwheeling now, out of control. “You could make more profit by, you know, leaving them the way they are. Crowd a bunch of people in the rooms, I mean-where they come from, they’re used to it. Jack up the rents, too, while you’re at it.”