Neely Tucker - Murder, D.C.

“I don’t got a beef with you,” Sully said, “but that’s the way it went. Now I’m just on the way out.”

He started walking, cutting in between Curious and Shorty, heading for the walkway that ran along the channel, up to the Spirit of Washington , the tour boat, and then the parking lot for the Gangplank. He needed ten steps, could be twelve, and it would be over. Shorty would yell at him, curse him, but he wasn’t going to follow him.

But his third step put him between Short Stuff and the waterfront. Short Stuff stepped forward, bringing his hands up, and he shoved Sully at the shoulder, knocking him off balance, his bad leg not absorbing the load. He stumbled sideways, hands going down to the ground, trying to stay on his feet, staggering out onto the knob of the Bend.

“Can’t even believe this motherfucker,” Short Stuff said, shoving him again. The second blow sent him tumbling, his left shoulder crashing into the ground. He took the fall and rolled twice, the world spinning, the sound of the water close now, him getting back to his feet, the left foot finding purchase first, the right one stabbing the ground behind him for balance. It missed and he went down again. Short Stuff kicked him just below the ribs, an explosion in his gut, knocking him farther out to the water.

“He ain’t worth it,” Curious said, hunching his shoulders, watching, ambling forward. “Man, I ain’t even in the mood for-”

“You shut the fuck up,” Shorty hissed back. Sully rolled twice and made his feet, just in time for Short Stuff to walk right up on him. He shoved the gun to the back of Sully’s head, poking him with it, Sully feeling it as a hard point of metal at the base of his skull. There was another shove in the back, moving him the last few feet to the edge of the rocks at the waterfront.

“You in deep enough ,” Short Stuff spit out at Curious. “Carlos finds out you been tapping ass instead of out here working? Shit. I spend twenty motherfucking minutes walking back and forth out here, hitting your damn pager, and now this bitch shows up. I guess he think we playing. I guess, what, motherfucker, you thought that beatdown at the track was as bad as it gets?”

He pushed Sully in the back again, sending him stumbling, taking three steps out on the rocks, the water splashing up around his shoes now. They were going to shoot him and dump him, that’s what it was, he was going to be swimming in the channel, this is how it had gone with Billy Ellison, this right here, and the thought flickered darkly through his mind, You wanted to know who killed him and now you know .

There was the possibility, Sully thought, looking at the black water, the quarter-mile expanse over to Hains Point, that he could take five or six running steps and be in the water and dive and he’d swim.

The channel wasn’t shit next to the Big River and his mind flashed to his old man, half-drunk but not mean, he’d never been mean a day in his life, making him swim the breadth of the river, right beside him in their johnboat, saying, Swimming pools are for girls, a man come off a boat out here in the river currents branches cottonmouths nah they ain’t no lifeguards out here this the only water you going to drown in boy this the water you got to swim in to live out here boy come on now we ain’t but two hunnert yards out hell if it’s nasty then stop swallowing it , but he didn’t think he’d ever make it three steps. He’d take two steps and the first shot would knock him down and the second one, Shorty would just walk up and put that one in his head.

This place, the Bend, it had been claiming bodies for more than a century and a half and it was going to claim his. The slaves, he thought, his mind ricocheting, they stood right here and got pushed onto boats headed down to the Carolinas or Georgia or Florida or on around Key West and back up to Mobile or Gulfport or New Orleans. Billy Ellison, he’d died right here, Dee had died right over there, so what difference did one more make?

He turned, his tongue dry and leatherlike and stuck to the roof of his mouth, time running out. He focused on making two moves at once. Drop down from the knees and lunge forward, hit Shorty low, get under the gun when it went off, and then go for his neck, his eyes, his balls.

There was enough light to see Short Stuff looking at him, the gun up at Sully’s head, his features set in stone. Curious was five or six feet to the right, still ambling forward, lazily coming down to get a good look at the show.

“Hey, dog?” Curious George said.

Short Stuff moved his head a tic to the left, as if listening, and Curious brought his gun up and out of the hoodie and it exploded in a flash of orange and yellow light and he shot Short Stuff in the side of the head.

The man’s gun went flying and he dropped like a freight train falling off a bridge. He went facedown. His foot quivered for a minute but then he was still.

The sound of the shot was a pop pop pop that skittered across the water like a flat rock tossed from shore. And then both light and echo were gone, darkness falling again as if nothing had happened. Curious put the gun back in the pouch of his hoodie and walked over, stooping down beside the body. He extended the sleeve of the sweatshirt over his hand and then nudged the shoulder with it. Then he turned the exploded head back toward him. He inspected the open skull cavity.

Sully, looking down, then up over the expanse of the park, expecting sirens, flashlights, running cops. There was nothing, just a light breeze coming in off the water. At the far end of the Bend, way back up toward Fourth, where they had entered the park, he could see three, now four figures moving hurriedly but something was wrong with them and he blinked and realized they were running away from the sound of the blast, not toward it.

“What-” he started to say, but Curious was saying something.

“You see where that gun went?” He didn’t stop looking at the head. “His piece? You see it?”

Sully walked forward, his feet on the rocks, the water lapping at his toes. He bent down and looked in the water, over the rocks. And there it was, barrel down, wedged between a stone the size of a watermelon and a shattered bit of concrete block.

“Right there,” he said, pointing.

Curious looked in that direction, then went back to the head, blood still oozing. “Hand it to me?”

Sully put his hand inside his shirtsleeve and leaned over, stretching the fabric, but picking up the piece only with the cloth touching the metal. It was lighter than he expected, and he stood back up and handed it to Curious, who, still kneeling beside the dead body, took it and put it in the pouch of his hoodie with the other one.

“Brains,” he said, looking at Short Stuff. “You figure, you know, they’d look like something. But they just scrambled eggs, every time.” He sounded disappointed and then he stood up. He kept his hands inside the sleeves of his sweatshirt and then kneeled back down and pushed the body over the rocks and into the water, giving it one more shove but being careful to stay on the rocks. The body moved out a foot or two but stuck there.

“Fuck it,” he said. He took off his Timberlands and stepped into the water in his socks and then pushed the body hard, until it was floating.

Then he came back, his jeans wet halfway to the knee, and put on his shoes. They watched the body for a minute, facedown, slumped in the black water.

Sully turned to look at him. “What did-” but Curious was blinking, the lids going up and down rapid-fire, and he starting talking over him, cutting him off.

“Fucker forgot to look sideways,” he said, watching the body, now ten feet out. “Sly said you was to get through the park okay.”