George Pelecanos - The Night Gardener

'On my tab,' said Holiday to the bartender as she placed the drink in front of Rita.

'You're gonna spoil me,' said Rita.

'I'll let you get the next one.'

'Deal,' she said. 'So what line are you in?'

'Security,' said Holiday. 'I sell trackers, surveillance equipment, wiretap devices, that kind of thing. To police.'

He had a friend, an ex-cop like him, who did just that, so he knew enough about it to bullshit her.

'Hmm.'

'You?'

'Pharmaceuticals.'

'You got any samples you wanna lay on me?'

'Bad boy,' she said with a crooked smile. 'I'd lose my job.'

'I had to ask.'

'It's okay to ask.'

'It is?' said Holiday.

She drank vodka tonics and he stuck to Absolut on ice. She matched him one for one. They finished his pack of smokes and he bought another. He moved closer to her and she let him and he knew that he was there.

He told her about his most embarrassing moment as a salesman. It was a variation on a story he had told many times before. He changed the details as he went along. He was good at that, too.

'What about you?' he said.

'Oh, God,' she said with a toss of her hair. 'Okay. I was in Saint Louis last year. I had flown in that morning for a big lunch meeting, and I thought I had cushion time between my arrival and the meeting. So I wore some comfortable clothes on the flight. Comfortable but definitely not appropriate for the meeting.'

'I know where this is going.'

'Let me tell it. The plane was real late getting in, and I had to pick up the rental car as well. By the time I did it, there wasn't enough time to check into my hotel, change my clothes, and still make the meeting.'

'So where'd you change?' said Holiday.

'There was a garage under the restaurant where we were supposed to meet.'

'You couldn't use the hotel bathroom?'

'It was real dark in the garage and nobody was around. I changed in the backseat of the rental. I had my top off, I mean completely off, because I had to put on a different bra than the one I had on, and this old guy walks by on the way to his car. Instead of doing the decent thing and walking on, maybe doing a double take, he comes over to the window and taps on it, and he's staring at me, really checking me out…'

'I don't blame him.'

'… and he says something like, "Miss, can I be of any assistance?'"

Holiday and Rita Magner laughed.

'That's what makes the story,' said Holiday. 'That detail.'

'Right,' said Rita. "Cause otherwise, it's not all that unusual. I mean, it wasn't the first time I've been nude in a car.'

'And I bet it won't be the last.'

Rita Magner smiled, reddened a little, and knocked back the rest of her drink.

'That day in the garage,' said Holiday. 'Did you have on the black thong you're wearing now?'

'How do you know that?'

'You're definitely wearing a thong,' said Holiday. 'And it's gotta be black.'

'You're bad,' she said.

She mentioned the minibar in her room.

Going up in the elevator, he moved on her and kissed her mouth. She parted her lips, and against the wood-paneled wall her legs opened like a flower. His hand went up her bare thigh and touched the lace of her black thong and beneath it the dampness and the heat. She moaned under his kiss and touch.

An hour later, Holiday was walking back to his Lincoln. She'd been as needy and voracious as he'd expected, and when it was done he left her to her memories and her guilt. She hadn't given him any indication that she wanted him to stay. Rita was now like the others, a prop, a story to tell the boys at Leo's, something for them to imagine and be envious of even as she was wiped from his mind. He'd forgotten her face by the time he turned the key to his car.

Gus Ramone came through the front door and heard 'Summer Nights' coming from the rec room at the back of his house. Alana would be there, watching a DVD, one of her favorite musicals. Judging from the smell of garlic and onions, Regina was in the kitchen, preparing dinner.

They're here and they're safe. This was the first thought that came to Ramone as he walked through the hall. As he entered the kitchen, he thought of Diego and wondered if he was somewhere in the house, too.

'How you doin, little girl?' said Ramone to his daughter, who was standing in front of the television set, dancing, imitating the moves she was watching on the screen. The rec room, which they'd added to the house a few years earlier, opened up off the kitchen.

'Good, Daddy,' said Alana.

'Hey,' he said to Regina, who had her back to him, moving a wooden spoon around in a pot set on a gas stove. She wore some kind of athletic outfit, pants with stripes on the side and a matching shirt.

'Hey, Gus,' she said.

Ramone put his rig, a clip-on belt holster holding his Glock 17, and his badge case, in a drawer he had equipped for security and locked the drawer with a small key on his ring. He and Regina, and no one else, had keys to the drawer.

Ramone went back to his daughter, now doing pelvic thrusts in the center of the living room, aping the young actor onscreen. The man was smiling lasciviously, dancing in the bleachers, as lean and fluid as an alley cat, his Brylcreemed cohorts egging him on, singing, 'Tell me more, tell me more…'

'Did she put up a fight?' sang Alana, as Ramone bent down and kissed her on the top of her head, sprouting a mass of thick black curls, an inheritance from her father.

'How's my sweet little girl?' said Ramone.

'I'm good, Dad.'

She kept on dancing, thumbs out like Danny Zuko. Ramone went back into the kitchen and wrapped his arms around Regina's shoulders and kissed her on the cheek. He pushed himself into her behind just to let her know he was still in the game. The lines at the corners of her eyes told him she was smiling.

'Is that movie she's watching appropriate?' he said.

'It's Grease ,' said Regina.

'I know what it is. But Travolta is air-humping over there and our daughter's copying him.'

'She's just dancing.'

'That's what they call it now?'

Ramone unwrapped his arms and stepped to her side.

'Good day?' said Regina.

'We had a bunch of luck. I wouldn't say anyone feels good about it, though. Man wasn't a criminal. He got crazy behind some crack and killed his wife because he was jealous and despondent. She's in the morgue, he's probably down for twenty-five, and the kids are orphans. Nothing good about that.'

'You did your job,' she said, a familiar refrain in their home.

He talked to her every night about his workday. He felt it was important, in that those cops who didn't, in his experience, were headed for disasters in their marriages. Plus, she understood. She had been police, though now that seemed like a long time ago.

'Where's Diego?' said Ramone.

'Up in his room.'

Ramone looked into the pot. The garlic and onions, cooking in olive oil, were beginning to brown.

'You've got the fire up too high,' said Ramone. 'You're burning the garlic. And those onions are supposed to get clear, not black.'

'Leave me alone.'

'The only time that flame ought to be on high is when you're boiling water.'

'Please.'

'You making a sauce?'

'Yes.'

'My mother's?'

'My own.'

'I like my mother's sauce,' said Ramone.

'You should have married your mother.'

'Listen, turn that flame down, will you?'

'Go see your son.'

'I plan to. What happened today?'

'He says he didn't know his cell was on. One of his friends called him as he was coming out of the bathroom, and Mr Guy heard it.'

'Mr Guy-guy.'

'Gus…'

'I'm sayin, dude has name a like that, he's gonna have some issues.'

'He's not the manliest fellow on the planet, I'll give you that.'