George Pelecanos: The Night Gardener

Beside Brock, on a leather-topped stool, sat Conrad Gaskins, his older cousin. Gaskins was short and powerful, with broad shoulders and muscular arms. His eyes were Asiatic and his facial bones were prominent. A scar from a razor blade, acquired in prison, ran diagonally down his left cheek. It did not ruin him with women and it gave men pause. He stank of perspiration. He had not changed out of his work clothes, which he'd been wearing all day.

Gaskins said, 'How he go down?'

'Red?' said Brock. 'He'd done so many murders, assaults, and kidnappings in three months' time that he couldn't even keep track of who his enemies was.'

'Man was on a regular crime spree.'

'Shit, police and the Mob was both after him in the end. You heard of the Genovese family in New York, right?'

'Sure.'

'They had a contract out on his black ass, is what people say. Whether he knew it or not, he killed some man was connected. I guess that's why he left town.'

'He was got, though,' said Gaskins.

'Everyone gets got; you know that. It's how you roll on the way there.'

'Was it the police or the Corleones?'

'FBI got him down in Tennessee. Or West Virginia, I don't know. Caught him sleepin in one of them motor courts.'

'They kill him?'

'Nah. He got doomed in the federal joint. Marion, I believe. White boys murdered his ass.'

'Aryan Brotherhood?'

'Uh-huh. Back then they kept the whites separate from the blacks. Now, you know that some of the Marion prison guards were hooked up with those white supremacists. People say they saw the guards passin out knives to the ABs right before they cornered Red out in the yard. He held them off with a trash can lid for an hour. It took eight of those motherfuckers to kill him.'

'That boy was fierce.'

'You know it. Red Fury was a man.'

Brock liked the old stories about outlaws like Red. Men who just didn't give a good fuck about the law or if and when they'd go down. Having other men talk about you in bars and on street corners after you were dead and gone, that's what made a life worth living. Otherwise, wasn't anything about you that was special. 'Cause everybody, straight and criminal alike, ended up covered in dirt. For that reason alone it was important to leave a powerful name behind.

'Finish your beer,' said Brock. 'We got shit to do.'

Out on the street, Brock and Gaskins went to Brock's car, a '96 black Impala SS. It was parked on Wiltberger, a block of bland row houses fronted by stoops rather than porches, a street that looked more like Baltimore than D.C. Wiltberger ran behind the storied Howard Theater, once the local stage for Motown and Stax artists and chitlin circuit comics, the south-of-the-Mason-Dixon-Line version of Harlem's Apollo. It had been a charred shell since the time of the riots and was now surrounded by a chain-link construction fence.

'Looks like they finally gonna make somethin out the Howard,' said Gaskins.

'Gonna do it like they did the Tivoli,' said Brock. 'They tryin to fuck this whole town up, you ask me.'

They drove out of LeDroit, into Northeast and down into Ivy City off of New York Avenue. For many years this had been one of the grimmest sections of town, off the commuter path of most residents and so ignored and forgotten, a knot of small streets holding warehouses, dilapidated row houses, and brick apartments with plywood doors and windows. It was the long-time home of prostitutes, pipeheads, heroin addicts, dealers, and down-and-out families. Ivy City was nearly framed by Gallaudet University and Mount Olivet Cemetery, with an opening into the neighborhood of Trinidad, once known as the home base of the city's most famous drug lord, Rayful Edmond.

Now properties were being purchased and refurbished all over town, in places that doubters had said would never come back: Far Northeast and Southeast, Petworth and Park View, LeDroit, and the waterfront area around South Capitol, where ground was set to break on the new baseball stadium. Even here in Ivy City, For Sale and Sold signs could be seen on seemingly undesirable properties. Apartment buildings that had been shells for squatters, shooters, and rats were being gutted and turned into condos. Houses were bought and flipped six months later. Workers had begun to remove the rotting wood, put glass in the window frames, and brush on fresh coats of paint. Roofers hauled shingles and tar buckets up ladders, and real estate agents stood on the sidewalks, nervously aware of their surroundings as they talked on their cells.

'They gonna fix up this shithole, too?' said Gaskins.

'Like puttin a Band-Aid on a bullet hole, you ask me,' said Brock.

'Where those boys at?' said Gaskins.

'They always around that corner up there,' said Brock. He drove slowly down Gallaudet Street, passing a row of boxy brick apartment structures opposite a shuttered elementary school.

Brock curbed the SS and cut its engine.

'There go that boy Charles,' said Brock, chinning in the direction of a thirteen-year-old who wore calf-length shorts, a blue-and-white-striped polo shirt, and blue-and-white Nikes. 'Think he slick, too. Duckin my ass.'

'He just a kid.'

'They all just kids. But they gonna grow tall soon enough. Punk 'em now, and they won't have the mind to rise up later on.'

'We don't need to be hurtin no kids, cousin.'

'Why not?'

Brock and Gaskins got out of the car and walked down a weedy sidewalk veined with cracks. Residents sitting on the steps outside their apartments and in folding chairs on lawns of dirt watched them as they approached a group of boys gathered at the intersection of Gallaudet and Fenwick streets. They were corner boys, standing on the spot where they stood on the days when they were not in school, and much of every night.

At the sight of Brock striding toward them, rangy and muscled beneath his red rayon shirt, they turned and ran. The boys moved with more immediacy than they would have had they been pulled up by police. They knew who Brock and Gaskins were and they knew what they were there for and what they would do to get it.

Two of the boys did not run because they realized that running would be futile. The older of the two was named Charles and the younger one was his friend James. Charles led a loosely formed group of teenagers and preteens who sold marijuana exclusively on that particular stretch of Gallaudet. They had started out selling it for fun and because they wanted to be gangsters, but now they found themselves with a growing business. They bought from a supplier in the Trinidad area who had his own retailers, some of whom quietly worked Ivy City, but the supplier did not begrudge them having a corner, as they turned his product and paid as they moved the inventory. Charles's people sold dimes in small plastic bags with tops that sealed.

Charles tried to keep his posture as Brock and Gaskins came up on him. Though James held his ground, he did not look into the eyes of Romeo Brock.

Brock had a foot of height on Charles. He got close in and looked down on the boy. Conrad Gaskins turned his back on them, crossed his arms, and eye-fucked the residents who were watching the scene from across the street.

'Damn, Charles,' said Brock. 'You look like you surprised to see me.'

'I knew you'd come.'

'So why you look surprised?' Brock gave him his bright and menacing smile. His features were sharp and angular, accentuated by a precisely groomed Vandyke. His ears were pointed. He liked to wear the color red. He looked like a tall devil.

'I was there,' said Charles. 'I was where you said.'

'No, you weren't.'

'You said meet me at the corner of Okie and Fenwick at nine o'clock. I was there.'

'I ain't say no motherfuckin Okie. I said Gallaudet and Fenwick, where we at right now. Made it real simple on your little ass, so you wouldn't get confused.'