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

“God damn, Sweet,” Coley said. “You’re just fuckin’ this man all up.”

Sweet twisted my hair, yanked my head up out of the blood. My eyes rolled up toward the ceiling. Purple clouds blinked in front of my eyes and I heard the gurgle of my own voice. I felt Sweet push down on the back of my head. I saw the wood rushing toward my face. The wood was black, like black water. I was in the water, and it was blessedly cool.

I opened my eyes.

I stared at the ceiling. It was a drop ceiling tiled in particleboard, with water damage in some of the tiles. Naked fluorescent fixtures hung from the ceiling. The light bore into my eyes.

I rolled onto my side. A Dixie cup full of water sat on the floor. Beyond the cup, a large roach crawled across the floor. It crawled toward Sweet’s boots. Past Sweet’s boots, Coley’s shoes were centered between the legs of the chair.

I got up, leaned on my forearm, and drank the water. I thought I would puke, but I did not. I dropped the cup on the floor and dragged myself over to the wall. I put my back against the wall, sat there. My nose ached badly and there was a ripping pain behind my eyes. I rubbed my hand on my mouth, flaked off the blood that had dried there. Coley was seated in the chair and Sweet stood with his back against the opposite wall. The. 22 dangled in Sweet’s hand, pointed at the floor. I looked at Coley. Coley moved his chin up an inch.

“Let’s kill him,” Sweet said. “You said to wait till he woke up. Well, he’s up.”

“Not yet. I want to get the word first.”

“Fuck the word. Let’s kill him now.” ove›

It went back and forth like that for a while. I started to feel a little better. Time passed, and I felt better still. The hate was doing it. What they had done to me and the thought of it were making me stronger.

I looked around the room: nothing to use as a weapon. Nothing on me but my car keys and a pack of matches. The keys were something; I could palm one, stab a key into Sweet’s eye when he came for me. I could hurt him in an awful way before he killed me. Somehow, I would do that. I would try.

“Go downstairs,” Coley said to Sweet. “Go down and call him. See what he wants to do.”

“Yeah, okay,” Sweet said. “You lock that door behind me, hear?”

“Sure thing.”

“I mean it,” Sweet said. “I’m gonna listen outside that door, make sure you do it.” And then to me: “I’ll be back in ten minutes. That’s how long you got to live. Ten minutes. You think about that.”

Sweet walked from the room. He shut the door, and Coley got up from his chair and went to the door. He jangled the chain around in the bolt, made sure Sweet heard the jangle from the other side of the door. Then he dropped the chain without locking it, chuckling as he walked back to his chair. He sat in the chair. His eyes moved to the door and then to me.

“Don’t get any ideas about that door,” Coley said. “ ’Cause this thirty-eight, at this range? You know I won’t miss.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good. That thing with the door, I just like to rattle that little redneck’s cage a little bit, that’s all.” Coley grinned. “You fucked him up pretty good, too. ’Course, he did you right back. He manage to break that nose of yours?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But it’s been broke before.”

“Yeah.”

“I can see. Where you get that scar on your cheek, man?”

“Who cut off your ear?”

Coley showed me some teeth. “Some brother, in the showers at the Maryland State Pen. Looked at him the wrong way, I guess. All part of my rehabilitation and shit.”

“That where you two are from? Baltimore?”

“Yeah. Roundabout that way. Why?”

“Nothing.” I looked Coley in the eyes. “You killed Roland, and the Jeter kid, too. Didn’t you?”

“Jeter, huh? That’s what that boy’s name was? Well, I didn’t pull the trigger. I take no pleasure in that, though I’ll do it if it’s called for. Sweet was the triggerman. He likes it, you know. But I guess you could say I killed those boys, yeah.”

“Why?”

“We’re runnin’ a business here, and we got to protect that. Powder right into the projects, straight up. They turn it to rock and then they kill themselves over that shit. But our end, we keep it clean. Now, my boss, the man who bankrolls all this? He favors boys. Young brothers, that’s what he likes. Likes to watch ’em on the videotape. He had this idea, why not get them in here and put ’em on tape, use ’em to run powder on the side. I could have told him that shit wouldn’t go. One of them got scared and the other one got greedy. We just had to go on and do ’em both.”

“Who’s your boss?” I said.

Coley laughed. “Aw, go on. What you think this is, True Confessions and shit? Uh-uh, man, you’re just gonna have to check out not knowing all that. Now let me ask you somethin’.”

“Go ahead.”

“Why’d you knock us over? It wasn’t for the money, I know that.”

“I was just trying to save a kid’s life. I was only trying to get Roland out of there. He didn’t even know who we were.”

“He wasn’t with you?”

“No. You killed him for nothing.”

Coley shrugged. “He would’ve made me, anyway. Eventually, he would’ve done somethin’ to make me kill ’im. He was that way. Just difficult and shit.”

Coley used the barrel of his gun to scratch his forehead. I eased my keys out of my pocket, palmed them, let the tip of the longest one peek through the fingers of my fist.

“But you know,” Coley said, “that don’t explain why you came back tonight.”

“I wasn’t finished,” I said. “I needed to know the rest of it.”

“Now you know,” Coley said. “Kind of a silly thing to die for, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess it is.”

Coley exhaled slowly, looked at me sadly. “I seen you pull out those keys and shit. Why don’t you just slide them over here, man. I’ll make sure what gets done to you gets done to you quick.”

I tossed the keys to the center of the floor. Footsteps sounded in the hall, louder with each step. Coley got out of his chair, bent over, and picked up the keys. He slipped them in his pocket.

There was a knock on the door.

Coley smiled. “Come on in, Sweet. It’s open.”

The door opened.

Jack LaDuke stepped into the room, the Ithaca in his hands.

The smile froze on Coley’s face. “Goddamn,” he said. “God damn.”

LaDuke pointed his shotgun at Coley. Coley pointed the. 38 at LaDuke.

“LaDuke,” I said.

“Nick.”

LaDuke kicked the door shut behind him, kept his eyes and the shotgun on Coley. LaDuke was wearing his black suit and the solid black tie. I felt a rush of affection for him then; looking at him, I could have laughed out loud.

“Where you been?” I said.

“Office of Deeds, like you taught me.” Without moving anything but his free arm, he reached under the tail of his jacket and drew my Browning. “This is you.”

He tossed the gun in my direction. I caught it, ejected the magazine, checked it, slapped the magazine back in the butt. I pointed the Browning at Coley. Coley kept the. 38 on LaDuke.

“How’d you get in, LaDuke?”

“Fire escape. The window was open-”

“Damn,” said Coley.

“And then I just came down the hall. Heard you guys talkin’.”

“Good to see you, LaDuke.”

“You all right? You look pretty fucked up.”

“I’m okay. Now we gotta figure out how to get outta here.”

“ Uh- uh,” Coley said.

“What’s that?” LaDuke said.

“You know I can’t let you fellahs do that,” Coley said, still smiling, the smile weird and tight. Bullets of sweat had formed on his forehead and sweat had beaded in his mustache.