Neely Tucker - Murder, D.C.

It was nearly an hour before he met Kenneth, the bouncer at Storm, who was bringing in cases of beer, wine, and whiskey from a truck parked out front. The place wasn’t open yet-not for business, anyway-but Kenneth told him that he could ask whatever he wanted as long as he was carrying a case inside while he did.

Sully picked up a case of Amstel Light off the flatbed and stumbled inside. The lighting was dim, the walls were black, and the hallway narrow before you went through a curtain of beads and into a large room, a long wooden bar with a mirror-lined wall behind it, bottles of spirits on the shelves, all the way up to the ceiling. He set the case on the counter, looking around, the banquettes along the wall looking greasy, like they needed to be wiped down.

“So who is it you work for again? You’re not with the cops?” Kenneth was talking, moving behind the bar, bottles clinking.

Sully pulled a card out of his wallet and flicked it across the bar. “D.C.’s finest already been here about the Ellison kid?”

Kenneth, looking at the card, fiddled with it. He shrugged. “I guess. I dunno. A couple of detectives were in here the other day, asking about Billy.”

“What’d they ask?”

“They talked to the boss, upstairs.”

“Right. When was this?”

“Yesterday.”

“I think you’re talking about the lead detective on Billy’s killing. You know what he talked about with the boss?”

“I wasn’t upstairs, so, hey, no idea. Other than I’m not supposed to talk to anybody about Billy. Nobody is. That’s what he came out and said.”

“Okay. So, ah, you’re not worried about talking to me?”

“Long as you don’t put my name to it. Boss is in Alexandria for the day.”

“While we’re chatting, anybody else been down here, asking around? Other reporters, maybe they look like private investigators?”

“Nah. It was the cops, the boss says, the cops want us to shut up; there hasn’t been anybody else asking around. Well. This photographer lady stopped in a few minutes before you did, but she had a card from the paper, too.”

“You didn’t talk to her?”

“I don’t like cameras.”

Sully nodded-too bad for Alex-and waded in. When he asked Kenneth if he knew Billy pretty well, Kenneth snorted and said of course and that there were hardly any black guys in here anyway, much less ones with dreads. Kenneth had some sort of New York accent but Sully didn’t have the familiarity to place the borough. He had this no-nonsense, confident manner, leaning forward slightly when he talked, heavy on the eye contact.

“Billy’d be in here Friday nights, Saturdays, sometimes Thursdays,” he said. “He liked to sit over there.” He motioned to the back corner away from the dance floor, a circular booth set into a corner notch.

“Okay, yeah,” Sully said, “the party nights. People like him? He a pain in the ass, what?”

“Liked. Billy was liked. Sweet kid. He’d pull up in a Benz convertible, one of the old four-fifties, one of the classic ones, always a white boy on his arm. Like he was the Great gay fucking Gatsby. You couldn’t miss him.”

“So, he was dealing ganja, a little coke out of the corner booth?”

A full stop, pausing, looking at him. “Not that I knew about.”

“Come on. You’re the bouncer. He brought it in, you had to be taxing that.”

Kenneth snorted again and stopped pulling wine bottles out of their cardboard cases and asked what it was to him, both hands on the bar.

“Nothing? He was doing nothing?” asked Sully. “I’m just trying to figure out if he used or dealt. Was he a big player or an end user? You see what I’m asking here.”

“I’n see it fine, I just don’t know why you’re asking it,” Kenneth said, going back to sorting the bottles. “There’s a connection or two in here, yeah, sure, whatever. But it wasn’t Billy.”

Sully, rubbing his hand across his mouth, trying to square this. “Maybe he did at the other clubs?”

“Nah. Something like that, I’d have known. The bouncers, the bartenders, the owners-it’s a small block. Now, hey, look, maybe Billy snorted a line or blew a spliff? But a dealer? No way.”

“Okay. I’d had somebody tell me he was.”

“They were wrong.”

“Fine. Okay. No skin off mine. You know Billy’s white boy?”

“Which one?”

“I was talking to one of his buddies, over at Georgetown, he seemed to think they were dating. Kid named Elliot.”

“You want some advice?”

“Sure.”

“Stop using people’s names.”

“Great. The white kid from Georgetown.”

“I know who you mean.”

“He seemed to think he and Billy were a pair.”

“When Billy wasn’t pairing with somebody else.”

“You’re saying Billy was sort of a slut.”

“Not to speak ill of the dead.”

“Hunh. But, okay, Billy, he bring in any fights, weapons, scary drug dudes?”

“He’d be banned for that, I mean, bounced hard. We got a license, right? You think we’re going to get any love from the city council, police stage a drug raid in a queer bar?”

“So, Billy, what you’re saying, wasn’t a scary guy?”

“Billy made Little Richard look butch.”

Outside, he turned a corner into an alley and there were two guys standing back there. One of them smiled and said, “Ten bucks?” Sully said thanks but no and went back into the street and Alex was pulling up in the rental, shades on, windows down, saying, “You getting blown off in the alley? Jesus.”

He popped open the passenger door and plunked down in the seat. “I was committing journalism,” he said, “not fellatio.”

“In an alley?”

“That’s not where I was committing it.”

“The journalism or the fellatio?”

“Could you just drop me off at my house, Pocahontas? I got calls to make.”

She accelerated, skipping through the light on South Cap, a light more red than yellow. “You get anything back there? Seriously, I got dick. The cameras. I got kicked out of Traxx. Nobody said sweet fuckall.”

“I got a bouncer in the main club. Sounds like Billy was hanging out. Guy was saying Billy might have blown a joint, but he wasn’t a dealer.”

“So?”

“The family is making a big deal about keeping Billy’s dealing out of the paper.”

“So they paid the bouncer to shut up.”

“Might be,” he said, watching the neighborhood roll by, “but it wasn’t the guy’s vibe. He told me the cops had been down there. I asked about other guys, these investigators the family hired? Dude said he hadn’t seen nobody like that.”

“I repeat: He gets paid to shut up.”

He bit his lower lip, squinting. “Yeah, but the thing is? I believed him a lot more than I believed Shellie Stevens, the family shill.”

“Nobody believes lawyers. About anything. I did my will last year, did I tell you? I was running around the West Bank all the time and started thinking about it. Wanted to make sure my mom would get my payoff if I got popped, y’know? So I got this lawyer to draw it up, and the first thing I did? Hired another guy to review it. They’re shit, all of them.”

“So had the first guy fucked you over?”

“No, thank God, but who can tell? That’s the point. With lawyers, who can ever fucking tell?”

MARCUS YOUNG, THEretired chief historian at Howard University, was a quotable son of a bitch, so when he picked up on the fourth ring, Sully skirted around the edge of the kitchen table, surprised at getting him so easily, balancing the phone in one hand and a Basil’s over ice in the other, trying not to drop either or both.