George Pelecanos - Shoedog

“No,” said Delia. “I found those, in the bottom of the dresser, after she died. My mother had friends, after my father left. But only friends.”

“A woman can get along all right without a man, I guess.”

“She lived a long life. But she was never happy.” Delia’s eyes were wet in the light of the candle. She blew out the flame, touched Constantine’s hand in the dark. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”

DELIA drove Constantine to the motel on Georgia Avenue, stopped the Mercedes out front. She kept the headlights on and let the engine run. Constantine leaned across the seat, kissed her on the edge of her mouth.

“Thanks.”

Delia wrote the number of her private line on a card, handed it to Constantine. She touched his cheek.

“This isn’t over,” she said.

Constantine did not answer. He got out of the car, shut the door, moved across the sidewalk to the doors of the motel, heard the Mercedes pull away from the curb. He bought a pack of smokes from the machine in the lobby, went to the elevator and pushed on the up arrow.

Constantine waited for the elevator, listened to a Johnny Guitar Watson tune coming from the lounge. He smiled a little, shook his head, turned, and headed for the lounge.

At the entrance, he passed a middle-aged man holding the wall for support. The man nodded at Constantine, tried to focus his eyes.

Constantine smiled. “A real mother for ya,” he said.

The man pushed his hat back on his head and said, “Ain’t that cold?”

Constantine entered the lounge and took a seat at the bar.

Isaac sat on the edge of the bed, polishing his. 45 in the yellow light of the lamp that sat on the nightstand. Next to the lamp, a General Electric clock radio, the dial set on WHUR, played softly in the room: Norman Conners, “You Are My Starship.” Isaac loved that one. He rubbed the oilskin down the barrel of the Colt, and sang along.

He had cleaned and oiled the gun while Nettie, his wife of twenty-three years, cooked dinner one floor down. Isaac could smell the garlic of the pork roast, the biscuits, the onions frying with the potatoes, all of it coming up the stairs, warming the house. It felt right, sitting there, the aroma of the dinner in the room, Nettie working in the kitchen, the sounds of her pans clattering below, the fit of the. 45 in his hand.

It had been a while since he killed a man. Twenty-two years, back in Vietnam. The way he felt then, he would have done anything to get back to his young wife and baby girl. He would have killed them all.

Besides, it had been work, and when a man was paid to do something, he did it. He had gotten back to the world, and he had gotten a straight-up job, and the baby girl had grown up fine, a junior now at UDC. He had stayed married to Nettie, too, not always an easy woman to live with, but a fine woman just the same. Good God, the woman could cook.

The job at the liquor store, that had always done him right. His paycheck read two fifty-five, but young Rosenfeld added two hundred in green to the envelope every single time, and it was the saving of that cash over the years that had bought his daughter’s education, some other things as well. Yeah, the Rosenfelds had always done him right.

And there was the other thing. Isaac’s father had been a stone drunk, a street-corner fixture in the Le Droit Park neighborhood where he had grown up. Old man Rosenfeld had taken Isaac’s father in, taken him off the street, and given him a full-time job at the old liquor store on 5th and T. Isaac’s old man straightened up then, and though the damage had been done-a rotten liver and a chest full of cancer-he lived out his last years with some dignity.

So when Isaac got back from the war, he took his father’s place at the new liquor store on Wisconsin and Brandywine. In the garage next to the store he taught young Rosenfeld not to drop his left when throwing a right, and he showed him how to get down in a three-point stance. He watched him grow up, and he watched the father grow old. He listened to their trash-talking bullshit every day, how they played each other and the customers, and sometimes he winced at it, but always he kept his mouth shut. He owed the family for what they’d done, for his father and for him. He did his job.

Now the hustler had given him ten grand to kill a man, and he’d do that too. He’d make a modest dollar on the sale of the house, and he’d’ hook that up with the ten, and move with Nettie off Fairmont, to someplace safer, Oxon Hill maybe, or Landover, or Capitol Heights. Nettie could grow tomatoes, some spices in the yard. He’d buy her a few things, a new dress, and some shoes-good God, the woman loved shoes-and a few things for himself.

He thought of the man in the maroon sport coat, the man the hustler had met outside the liquor store, at the car. It bothered him a little bit, ‘cause he knew the man. He forgot about it, though, as Nettie’s voice called from down the stairs.

“Dinner, Isaac.”

“I’ll be right down, baby!” he yelled.

Isaac palmed a full clip into the butt of the. 45, safetyed it, placed it in the top drawer of the nightstand. He switched off the radio, then the light, and walked out of the room.

Gorman cut the Caddy’s engine, got out of the car, and walked across the lot. He checked the lot for undercover boys, guys sitting in their Fords wearing mustaches and shades and Peterbilt caps. He couldn’t see a one. Most likely, they were parked across 261, bayside, in the lot of the Rod and Reel. They alternated stakeouts between the Rod and Jethro’s, the crab house and bar that sat back on Fisherman’s Creek, the marina area on the canal that dumped into the bay. Jethro’s was where Gorman was headed.

Gorman felt comfortable in Chesapeake Beach. The drive was only thirty minutes from the Grimes estate, and he liked the water, and the air smelled salty and clean. And not too many spades. Always plenty of bikers, though, which meant that. Gorman knew he could take the short drive down to Chesapeake, anytime, and cop. There was always reefer, and if he wanted green, he could get it, the good shit too, not Mexican sprayed with Raid. But tonight Gorman wasn’t interested in smoke. Tonight Gorman was looking to score some crank.

He walked into the open-aired lounge at the side of Jethro’s, had a seat at the bar to the left of a group of young steamfitters he had seen before. The steamfitters, a loud row of beards, were all sloppy drunk. They watched a pro basketball game on the television set mounted over the call rack, and every time a shooter would miss, one of them would say, “That was close,” and another would add, “Close only counts in horseshoes and grenades,” and all of them would laugh.

Gorman nursed a draft and pretended to watch the game, though Gorman did not follow sports much, and he especially did not follow basketball, basketball being a game for bootheads. After a few sips of his beer, Gorman nodded across the horseshoe bar to a long-haired man in a leather jacket, and then Gorman went to the head in the back of the restaurant to take a piss.

Gorman drained in the urinal, then washed his hands in the sink. As he dried his hands on a brown paper towel, the long-haired man in the leather jacket walked into the bathroom.

“Spunk,” Gorman said. “Thanks for comin’.”

“You called, man. I’m here.”

Gorman tossed the crumpled towel in the wastebasket, drew a fifty from his wallet, handed it to Spunk. Spunk leaned his back against the bathroom door, took a snowseal from the pocket of his leather, and put it in Gorman’s palm.

Spunk’s hair looked wet. He shook it away from his face. “You want to take a look?”

“Uh-uh. It’s got weight.” Gorman put the drug in his pocket. “You never fucked me before, Spunk.”