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

“But you also wouldn’t want the inconvenience, and publicity, of an official police intervention.”

Samuels said, “And neither would you. You say you’re privately retained-if the cops, in effect, solve whatever it is you’re working on, wouldn’t that essentially make you unemployed?”

“We’re talking about boys,” LaDuke said with obvious impatience. “They’re being forced against their will-”

“Hold on a second,” Samuels said, his voice rising. He turned a framed photograph around on his desk so that it faced LaDuke. In the frame was a family picture-the businessman’s favorite prop-of Samuels, his wife, and two children, a teenaged boy and girl. Samuels regained his composure. “You see this? I’m a father, young man. Now, I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you. I’m only saying that we have to do te h bohis properly. Do you understand?”

LaDuke didn’t answer. I said, “What did you have in mind?”

“I’m going to speak to my attorney this afternoon. We’ll see how we can work this out. I’m thinking maybe by tomorrow, we’ll be able to get you in there, or at least get you some kind of answers. How can I reach you, Mr. Stefanos?”

“I’ll call you, first thing in the morning. And thanks. I appreciate the cooperation.”

We all stood then, as there was nothing else to say. Samuels showed us to the door. Out on 22nd, we walked to the Dodge.

“How’d I do?” LaDuke said.

“You gotta learn when to use the muscle and when not to. Samuels, he’s not going to respond to that. He doesn’t have to. He’s a developer-he probably has a relationship with every member of the city council. He could erase us, man, if we push it too hard.”

“You sayin’ I almost blew it?”

“You could use a little seasoning, that’s all.”

“You think he’s gonna help us?”

“He’ll help us,” I said. “He’s a smart man. The way I put it to him, he’s got no other choice.”

I drove to my apartment and cut the engine. LaDuke said that he had something to do, and I let him go. I watched his brooding face as he walked to his Ford, then I watched him drive away. Then I went inside and sorted through my mail, my cat figure-eighting my feet. The red light was blinking on my answering machine. I hit the bar.

A voice that I recognized came through the speaker: “Stefanos, this is Barry. I met you at Calvin Jeter’s apartment, at his mom’s? I’m the father to his sister’s baby… Anyway, I was headin’ over to Theodore Roosevelt Island this afternoon. Up behind the statue, there’s a trail, to the left? Down there to the end, where it comes to a T. You go straight in, on a smaller trail, down to the water, facing Georgetown. That’s where I’ll be. I just thought, man… I just thought you might want to talk. Like I say… I don’t know. That’s where I’ll be.”

I walked quickly from the apartment, the sound of the machine rewinding at my back.

Theodore Roosevelt Island is a nature preserve, eighty-eight acres of swamp, forest, and marsh in the middle of the Potomac River, between Virginia and D.C. I took the GW Parkway to the main lot and parked beside Barry’s Z. A couple of immigrant fisherman sat with their rods on the banks of the Little River, and a Rollerblader traversed the lot, but typical of a midweek day in midsummer, the park looked empty.

I took the footbridge over theI. I river, then hit a trail up a grade and into the woods, to the monument terrace. I crossed the square, walking around the seventeen-foot-high bronze statue of a waving Teddy Roosevelt that sat on a high granite base, and walked over another footbridge spanning a dry moat. Then I cut left onto a wide dirt path that wound through a forest of elm, tulip, and oak and took the path down to where it met the swamp trail that perimetered the island. I stayed straight on in, toward the water. Barry was there, wearing a white T-shirt and shorts, sitting on a fallen tree, beneath a maple that had rooted at the eroded bank.

“Hey, Barry.”

“Hey, man.”

I sat on the log, my back against the trunk of the maple. Barry watched me as I shook a cigarette out of my deck and struck a match. I rustled the pack in his direction. He closed his eyes slowly and I put the pack away.

Across the channel, the Georgetown waterfront sprawled out, with K street running below the Whitehurst Freeway. Behind it were buildings of varying size, with the smokestack tower of the Power House rising above the skyline. To the right was the Kennedy Center; to the left, Key Bridge; and on the hill beyond, the halls of Georgetown University. Barry stared at the crew-graffitied bulkhead on the D.C. side, transfixed by it, or maybe not thinking of it at all.

“You come down here a lot?”

“Yeah,” he said. “This here’s my spot. Know what I’m sayin’?”

“Sure.” I thought of my own place, the bridle trail off Oak Hill.

“Use to be, I’d ride my bicycle across town, come down here, when I was in junior high and shit, just look up at Georgetown U. Patrick was playin’ then, and Michael Graham. I used to dream about going to Georgetown some day, playin’ for Coach Thompson. ’Course, I never even thought you had to get the grades, the scores on the tests. Didn’t know that shit was all decided for you, even before the first day of elementary school. Just some kind of accident, where you get born, I guess.” Barry chuckled cynically to himself. “And you know what, man? I never could play no ball, anyway.”

“What about now?”

“Now? I come down here just to get away. You still see some of the city on this island-the drug deal once in a while, and sometimes those sad-eyed old motherfuckers, walking around the trail, lookin’ to make contact with some boy. But mostly, over here, it’s clean. It makes me feel good, for a little while, anyway. And jealous, too, at the same time. I look across this river, I see the people on the freeway in their cars, and sometimes a plane goes over my head, takin’ off from National-everybody but me, goin’ somewhere.”

I blew some smoke down toward the water. A breeze came off the river and picked it up. “You’re not doin’ so bad, Barry. You’ve got a steady job, and you’re sticking with your family. It means something, man.”

“My job. You know how I feel sometimes, workin’ there, with these young drug boys comin’ in, parkin’ their forty-thousand-dollar shit right outside the door, makin’ fun of me, of my uniform?”

“I know it can’t be easy.”

“Then I read the Post, these white liberals-so-called-talkin’ about this brother, wrote this book, talkin’ about how he went into some Mac Donald’s with a gun, stuck up who he called the ‘Uncle Tom’ behind the counter, then went to prison, got reformed and shit, became a newspaper writer himself.”

“I read about it.”

“That man behind the counter, he was no Uncle Tom. He was probably some young brother like me, just tryin’ to do a job, maybe pay the bills for his family or have a few dollars in his pocket to take his girl out on Saturday night. And that punk calls him an Uncle Tom? And those white boys at the Post, print that magazine they got, they be glorifyin’ that shit. Makes him wanna holler? Man, that shit makes me wanna holler!”

“What you’re doing,” I said again, “it means something.”

Barry looked in my eyes. “You really believe that tired shit, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“I know you do. That’s why I called you up. You got this one way of lookin’ at things, like it’s right or it’s not, and nothing in between. I guess, in my own way, that’s the way I got to look at things, too. I mean, somebody’s got to, right?”

I hit my cigarette hard and ground it under my shoe. “What did you want to tell me, Barry?”