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

I fell to my knees and retched. The dry heave came up empty. I stayed there, caught air, stared at the garbage and debris floating stagnant in the river. I pushed off with my hands, stood and turned, stumbled a few steps, then went into a quick walk toward the trees. I didn’t look back.

I picked up the empty bottle of bourbon at the side of my Dodge and opened the door. I dropped the bottle inside and fell into the driver’s seat. My keys still hung in the ignition. I looked in the rearview at my eyes, unrecognizable. I checked my watch, rubbed dirt off its face: 6:30 A.M., Wednesday.

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.

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 thNice 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.” ontp 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 iv d a seathe 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.