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

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

“Sure,” Darnell said.

LaDuke did not comment. He smiled and rubbed the top of his head.

We dropped Darnell at his efficiency near Cardoza High, in the Shaw area of Northwest. I thanked him and peeled off a couple of hundreds from the stack. He protested mildly, but I pressed it into his hand. He shrugged, pocketed the cash, and walked across the street.

“I could use a drink,” I said.

“Yeah,” LaDuke said, surprising me. “I could use one, too.”

Steve Maroulis shouted, “ Ella, Niko!” as LaDuke and I entered his bar.

Maroulis was the tender at May’s, below Tenleytown on Wisconsin, a liquorized pizza parlor and hangout for many of the town’s midlevel bookies. Though quantities of cocaine had moved through the place for a brief time in the eighties, gambling remained the main order of business here, a place where men in cheap sport jackets could talk with equal enthusiasm about Sinatra’s latest tour or the over/under on the game of the night. LaDuke and I had a couple of seats at the bar.

Maroulis lumbered our way, put a smile on the melon that was his face. “Way past last call, Nick. Drinks got to be off the tables in a few minutes.”

“Put four Buds on the bar, will you, Steve? We’ll leave when you say.”

“Right.”

He served them up. I grabbed mine by the neck and tapped LaDuke’s bottle, then both of us drank. Tony Bennett moved into Sam and Dave on the house system, a typical May’s mix of fifties pop and sixties frat. I shook a cigarette out of my pack, struck a match, and put the flame to the tobacco.

“How’d you think it went tonight?” LaDuke said.

“We got Roland out of there.”

“You didn’t push it too hard with him.”

“I’ll talk to him again.”

LaDuke motioned to my pack of smokes. “Give me one of those things.”

“You really want one?”

“I guess not. No.”

I dragged on mine, flicked ash off into the tray.

LaDuke said, “Those guys at the warehouse-Sweet and Coley. You think they had anything to do with Calvin’s death?”

“I’m not sure yet. But I’d bet it.”

“Why didn’t you press Coley?”

“Calvin’s dead. Gettin’ another kid killed isn’t going to even anything up. The object was to get Roland the fuck out of there. We did that. It’s only over for tonight. That doesn’t mean it’s done.”

“Why you figure it was Sweet and Coley?”

“It was a black man and a white man killed Calvin.”

“How do you know that?”

I hit my cigarette, watched myself do it in the barroom mirror. “Because I was there.”

LaDuke whistled through his teeth. “That’s not what you told me.”

“I know what I told you. I wasn’t hired by Calvin’s mother. I stumbled right up on that murder, man. I got drunk, real drunk that night, and I ended up down by the river, flat on my back and layin’ in garbage. I heard the voices of a black man and a white man; they were dragging someone to the waterline. I heard them kill him, man, but I couldn’t even raise my head. I was just fucked up, all the way fucked up, understand?” I rubbed at my eyes, then killed the first bottle of beer. I pushed that one away with the back of my hand. “That’s the way this thing started-with me on a drunk.”

I picked up the fresh beer, drank some of it off. LaDuke looked at the bottle in my hand.

“You better be careful with that stuff,” he said. “You fall in love with it too much, there’s no room for anyone else.”

“I know it,” I said, closing my eyes as I thought of Lyla.

“How is she, anyway?” LaDuke said.

“Who?”

“You know who. You haven’t mentioned her much these last few days.”

“It’s over,” I said, hearing the words out loud for the first time. “I’ve just got to work out the details. I’m doing it for her, man. She’s going nowhere fast, hanging out with me.”

“Self-pity, Nick. Another curse of the drinking man.”

“Thanks for the tip, Boy Scout.”

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“Your father raised you?”

“Me and my brother, yeah.”

“Where you from, anyway?”

“Frederick County, not far over the Montgomery line. Place about forty minutes outside of D.C.”

“Your father still alive?”

“Yeah,” LaDuke said, and a shadow seemed to cross his face.

“What’s he do?”

“Country veterinarian. Horse doctor, mostly.” LaDuke swigged at his beer, put it back on the bar. “What are you, writin’ my life story?”

I shook my head. “It would take way too long. You’re a work in progress, LaDuke.” I got off my bar stool, grabbed my beer. “Be right back. I gotta make a call.”

I went back to the pay phone outside the rest rooms. A couple of kitchen guys were working a video game nearby, and someone was puking behind the men’s room door. I sunk a quarter in the slot, dialed Boyle’s number at the station, and left a taped message directing his Vice boys to the warehouse on Potomac and Half.

LaDuke was finishing his beer when I returned to the bar. Maroulis had brought the white lights up, and he had put on “Mustang Sally,” the traditional “clear out” song for May’s. Most of the regulars had beat it. I ordered a six to go, and Steve arranged them in a cardboard carrier. I left thirty on eighteen, and LaDuke and I headed out the door.

We drove southeast, all four windows down and the radio off. The streets were empty, the air damp and nearly cool. I lit a cigarette, dangled the hand that held it out the window, drank off some of my beer. The speed had given me wide eyes and a big, bottomless thirst; I could have gone all night.

I had LaDuke stop at an after-hours club downtown, but even that had closed down. We sat on the steps of it, drank a round. Then we got back into the Ford and headed over to the Spot. LaDuke urinated in the alley two doors down while I negotiated the lock and got past the alarm. He joined me inside and I locked the door behind him. The neon Schlitz logo burned solo and blue. I notched up the rheostat, the conicals throwing dim columns of light onto the bar. My watch read half past three.

LaDuke had a seat at the bar and I went behind it. I iced a half dozen bottles of beer and put two on the mahogany, along with the bottle of Grand-Dad from the second row of call. I placed a couple of shot glasses next to that, an ashtray, and my deck of smokes.

“You with me?” I said, my hand around the bottle of bourbon.

“Maybe one,” said LaDuke.

I poured a couple, lifted my first whiskey of the night. It was hot to the taste and bit going down. My buzz went to velvet, as it always did with the first sip. I moved sihe Forddown to the deck and put on some Specials. Then I came back and LaDuke and I had our drinks. We chased them with beer and listened to the tape for its duration without saying much of consequence. I stayed in the ska groove and dropped a Fishbone mix into the deck. Walking back, I noticed that my watch read 4:15. I poured LaDuke another shot, then one for me. LaDuke sipped at it, followed it with beer.

I took the stickup money from my pockets, dumped it all on the bar. LaDuke didn’t comment, and neither did I. I lit a cigarette, gave it a hard drag, looked at the long night melting into LaDuke’s face.

“You’re hangin’ pretty good for a rookie,” I said.

“I’m no rookie,” LaDuke said. “I just haven’t done anything like this for a while, that’s all.”

“You gave it all up, huh?”

“Something like that. The funny thing is, after all that time off it, I don’t even feel that fucked up. I could drink whatever you put on this bar tonight, I swear to God. And I could keep drinking it.”