Neely Tucker - Murder, D.C.

“Whyn’t you think he didn’t fall off a yacht?” Yat.

“’Cause that’s not what MPD thinks.”

Short Stuff snorted like he was about to hawk up a wad. “Like they know shit.”

“John Parker,” Sully said, cutting his gaze back to Shorty. “When I say MPD? I’m meaning John Parker.”

He threw the name out there-the head of D.C. Homicide-to show he wasn’t a fuckhead, right, and to see if they knew the name, to get a gauge of what level of the crew he was dealing with. Short Stuff clocked his head a quarter turn.

“Hey, Parker? John Parker? Hey, fuck him, fuck you,” he said. “You know where you at, fool?”

“The Bend.”

“Then you ought to fucking know better.”

“So you saying you didn’t see nobody down here last night, picking up a couple dime bags? Gunshots? Nothing?”

The two didn’t speak or look at one another. But Lanky Dreads blinked again-three, four times, bap bap, just like that-and it gave Sully the idea that maybe Lanky didn’t have the heart for what had gone down. That was all the confirmation he needed.

“MPD been down here?” Sully said, putting the top back on the pen, flipping the notebook shut. Short Stuff and Lanky were ten feet away, standing maybe three feet apart, between him and the rest of the park.

“Parker’s your bitch,” Short Stuff said. “Ask him.” Axt.

Sully nodded, a half smile, not putting much into it. “Well. Yeah. So.” He picked up the helmet and backpack, moving forward, right between them because going around would have been giving ground and if you flinched, hunched over, slowed, showed any sign of deference, they’d beat your ass into the dirt for being that weak. It was the same everywhere you went. Bosnia, Somalia, South Africa, Lebanon, the Bend. Dudes, half-cocked.

He got within two steps of them and Lanky said, “That your Ducati at the curb?” Sully got the smell of sweat, of flesh, of ganja, of closed rooms and broken mirrors and moldy carpet, the smell and feel of the projects.

“The 916. Yeah.”

“Bring that out to the Cove. Run you for pinks.”

Sully worked up a cough, laughing, the you-gotta-be-kidding-me thing, turning his shoulders to edge through, making sure he didn’t bump either one of them. “For pinks ? Nah, nah, you ride what, I’m guessing here, a ’Busa?” he said. “And it’s an eleven-second bike in the quarter, some shit like that?”

“Ten-eight.”

He was past them now, walking backward, keeping eye contact, keeping it light. “Doubt that. But the Duc ain’t a straight-line bike. I’d be looking at your ass the last two hundred.”

“Reporter man?” This from Short Stuff.

Sully kept walking backward, not slowing down but not going any faster than he had to, either, and now he switched his gaze to acknowledge who was talking. Short Stuff had shucked his piece down into his hand, which was now out of his jacket pocket, flat against his leg.

“Stop walking.”

“I’m on deadline.”

“I say stop walking.”

Sully, still moving, looked at his watch, looked up and smiled. “I got an hour and fifteen. And I got to-”

Short Stuff flipped the pistol forward and brought it level, pointed sideways, gangster chic, aiming at Sully’s chest.

Sully stopped, still smiling, but raising his eyebrows, giving the man the respect he wanted. He brought his hands up a hey-you-got-me motion. “Okay. What? What are we talking about here?”

“Don’t be bringing that broke-ass bike back down here, ’less you want to float yourself. You feel me?”

“Yeah. I do. Yeah. Okay? I hear you. But you got to know MPD’s gonna come down here in a couple hours, start sweating you, the Hall brothers, everybody? You know that, right? That throwing the dude in the channel didn’t fool anybody with a double-digit IQ?”

Short Stuff brought his chin up. “Thought you said they made the floater for military. From the fort. Over there.”

Sully, giving him that same shrug, moving backward again. “Me, myself? I don’t trust MPD for shit.”

“IT’S A FLOATERstory, but I don’t know how good,” he was saying, back in the newsroom, back in the recycled air of the office, the quiet hum of the overhead fluorescents making him wish he was back out on the water, wishing R.J. would get up off him for a minute.

“Dead body in the Washington Channel, scaring the tourists, what’s not to love?” R.J. said, leaning over the wall of his cubicle, an editor looking for fresh meat for the final edition. He was rubbing his beard, the paper’s wise old man in high good humor, his still-black hair slicked back over his scalp, the bow tie knotted at the button-down collar, all but chortling about this one. “I saw it on the television a few minutes ago. It’s all over cable now, did you know? Talking heads yammering about floating bodies, the nation’s capital gone to hell in a handbasket.”

“I sort of thought it did that a while back.”

“And you got the tourists, right?” R.J. said, looking down at him, his eyes big and weird through the bifocals. “Yahoos from flyover, a-damn-mazed this happened in sight of the Capitol Building?”

“Yes. At the marina. They were quite upset.”

“You’d think they’d read the papers before they got here,” R.J. snorted. “We’ve been the murder capital since when, Bush? Reagan? Carter? You get anything great? Like, ‘I had to cover my kid’s eyes,’ or-”

“Two of them said it was Clinton’s fault.”

“Any logic ascribed to that position?”

“Are you serious?”

“Like maybe they thought he tossed Monica in the water, and-”

“Floater was black. And male.”

R.J. sighed, still with the beard. “Well. That’s not very creative.”

“No.”

“That’s going to put a dent in the story-I mean, not that it should, but you know-”

“I could just make some shit up.”

“Nah,” R.J. said absently, looking at his nails now, not getting it. “Nobody has a sense of humor anymore.” He blew out his lips, looking around, coming out of a trance, realizing the hour. “We gotta do something for the daily.”

“I know it.”

“You got out on the water, talked to the cops?”

“With Dave, on the WCJT launch. I been thinking about getting me a little boat myself.”

“Thrilled. Look, if you can get MPD to say it was drug related, that’d help. Could you do that? You know, ‘Drug wars spilling out into tourist country,’ yada yada. But what would be great, I mean give this thing some elevation, if he’s some sort of diplomat, an attaché at an embassy, or an, an operative , with a couple of passports-”

“A diplomat in baggy jeans and dreads,” Sully said, rolling back in his chair, propping his feet on his desk. “The Ambassador to the State of the Most High.”

“Jamaican! He could be, like, an operative of-”

“-the dreaded Blue Mountain coffee mafia? Rastas don’t get into the diplomat thing, R.J. And he might be a narc, but that’s hardly your CIA henchman.”

R.J., pulling off his glasses, polishing them, looking at his watch. “Yeah, yeah. Okay. Trying to get us somewhere. Look, unless we get some sort of ID on floater man? I’m talking twelve inches below the fold on the Metro front. Maybe even inside. A lost day.”

Ah, shit , Sully thought. Little in the life of R.J. was worse than a lost day. He’d won two Pulitzers, been a finalist twice more, never mind the George Polks. The man was carpe diem and kick over the sandbox of life.Front page and cleavage or it was bullshit, that was R.J.’s take.

“Sometimes it’s just vitamins, brother, not steak sauce,” Sully said.