Neely Tucker - Murder, D.C.

He hit another blinking spell and it seemed to break his concentration. He turned to Sully and looked surprised to see him there, to see anyone at all, and he started walking back up the Bend, back toward the streets. There was a siren in the distance.

“I’s you,” he said, “I’d be getting my ass somewhere else.”

THE THING WASyou couldn’t run. You. Could. Not. Run. You want people to remember you? Start running after a gun goes off. Then they see you. Yeah, officer, this guy, he had this limp and he was hobbling down by the water, fast as he could gimp it…

So he started walking right back up the Bend, no rush but not fucking around, either. Curious George was ahead of him, heading off toward the right, to come out at the top of the park right by the wall at Fort McNair. Sully could see his profile every now and then against the streetlights from way up on Fourth.

His breath was ragged and his ribs hurt but it was getting less with each step. When he got off the knob of the Bend, he broke off to the left, away from Curious, heading for the walkway along the waterfront. That would take him back up to the Gangplank and the bike. As soon as he got there, he’d be home free. Just another schmuck walking off dinner, for all anybody knew, another boat owner, a party guest, a bar patron.

He was picking up the pace when something flicked at the corner of his vision. Curious George, way up ahead now, skylined by the lights on Fourth, suddenly broke into a dead sprint, running like hell along the wall of Fort McNair.

Bright white lights exploded along the wall alongside Curious. Searchlights. A patrol whoop whoop whoop ing, the red and blue misery lights atop one, now the other setting off, whipping flares of light onto the trees, the buildings. A car alarm started bleating. Sully lost sight of Curious, but heard the spectral voice of a cop on the loudspeaker of the patrol car blaring orders, car doors thumping.

Now running seemed like a pretty good goddamn idea. He took two steps and a searchlight from a patrol car suddenly on the paved walkway in back of the Carolina, the apartment building. It shot out across the Bend, maybe twenty yards behind him, sweeping the other way. Raised voices, shouting, more car doors thumping.

He froze. God help him, he crouched and froze.

The searchlight swept back this way and he flattened out on the ground, the beam illuminating two, maybe three cops heading down the slight incline into the Bend, the smaller beams of their flashlights bursting into life. He could hear their voices, hear them fanning out, establishing a perimeter. No way out. They had cut him off.

He pushed up, found his feet, and turned and ran back out onto the knob of the Bend, away from the cops, not looking back. He stumbled and nearly fell face-first on the shattered brick and stones. He cursed, slowing, trying not to make any sound, wading into the water, feeling and not feeling the cold embrace of it moving up his ankles and now his knees, the body of Short Stuff bobbing in the shallows off to his left.

The searchlight swept back again and there were shouts behind him and he could not stop himself from crouching down in the water, turning to look. Half a dozen flashlight beams now, coming from the top of the park and the side, all converging this way, down onto the knob of the Bend.

Nothing else to do now. He moved two more steps, three, and the bottom disappeared beneath him. Blackness swept over his mouth, his nose, his eyes, and he was beneath the water. The iciness swirled over him, his balls shriveling and tightening. He felt his foot touch mud and he let both legs come down now until he was in a crouch, cheeks puffed out with oxygen, and he was in a tiny ball at the bottom of the channel.

He opened his eyes and they stung and there was only blackness and he snapped them shut. He shot his hands and arms out in front of him and pushed off. His arms moved the water from in front of him and swept to the side. Two strokes, three, the water getting colder by degrees as he moved into the deeper water. When he felt his breath going, he drifted and stretched an arm up above his head. After a while, he felt the tips of his fingers break the surface.

His lungs were burning, but he forced himself to slow, and slow some more, until he turned his body and pushed his chin up and away from his chest until his face was almost parallel to the surface and water was trying to shoot up his nostrils. Then he let his nose and mouth and forehead break the surface, gulping in the night air, his eyes still closed, his ears beneath the water. Then he tilted his head forward, keeping his chin above the water, looking back toward the Bend.

Flashlights swept across it, waving like the arms and legs of an insect on its back. Two patrol car searchlights also swept across the Bend, intersecting and parting again. The flashlights were not pooled at the waterfront. If there were voices he could not hear them. They had not seen him. They were not looking for him. They had not found Short Stuff yet, but they would soon and that would occupy them, absorb their time and attention. He wondered if Curious’s gun had ejected a shell, if they had run him down.

The deep cold of the water swept over him again, raising gooseflesh. He put his face down in the water, pulling his right leg up, taking one shoe off and then the other, and he brought his face back up into the air. Beneath the surface, he tied each shoe tight against his belt.

The lights of Hains Point glittered across the water, but they no longer beckoned to him. The marina was maybe four hundred yards down the waterway on this side of the channel, an easy swim. There was no boat traffic and all he had to worry about was coming into the lighted area of the marina without being seen and pulling himself up onto one of the piers. From there, it’d be easy. Soaking wet, walking off the marina? Anybody asked, Yeah, damn, tying up and dropped my keys over the side, had to hop in with a net to get them-Christ, I gotta get home before I freeze.

He dipped beneath the water again, shooting his left arm forward, pulling it down and back toward him and then bringing the right arm over his head, reaching forward, taking the water again without slapping it, steadily kicking his legs below the surface.

Another stroke, and another, the muscles tight but they would loosen with the effort and the repetition, and then he was into a full overhand crawl, moving away from the Bend and toward the lights of the marina.

THE SUN WASout on his back porch the next morning, warming his bones. He was in jeans and a thermal long-sleeve, eating the last of a monstrous breakfast-omelet, toast, bacon-and making himself drink the coffee he’d just brewed and not think about how he’d rather have the morning julep, when the phone rang. The receiver, where was it… here. Beneath the morning paper, the sections splayed out and flapping. He looked at the digits on the phone, picked it up, and said, “Why, John Parker. How good of you to remember me.”

Wind was blowing on the other end. Parker was outside somewhere. “Why you not picking up your cell?”

“Enjoying a quiet morning at home, as a gentleman sometimes does.”

“Things don’t seem to be working out so good for you,” Parker said, coughing, then bringing the phone back to his mouth. “Last time I saw you was with Delores Ellison. Now I hear you got yourself suspended.”

“My employers are delicate little flowers.”

Parker snorted. “I told the missus. She says she’s worried about you. Wants me to get you to come over for dinner.”

“Say when. As long as she’s cooking. I’ve eaten yours before.” He made a study of his toenails, working to keep his tone flat.