Neely Tucker - Murder, D.C.

“Too bad you’re not with the rest of us at the Bend, on this fine spring morning. That little fat guy what works with you was telling me the paper got on you about the thing with Delores.”

“Chris?” Sully said, putting a note of surprise in his voice, like this was news. “What’s Chris doing at the Bend?”

“Your job. You didn’t hear? We got another body.”

Sully left the toenails to their fate and reached over on the plate, breaking off a piece of omelet with his fingers, then popping it in his mouth. Keeping it light. “No shit? For real?”

“Body’s out there in the water, not quite making it out to swim with the fishes. Your buddy Dave’s down here with his television truck.”

Sully sipped his tea and took another bite of toast, his gut tightening a little bit now.

“So who is it?”

“We’re waiting on a family ID before releasing it, but I’m pretty sure it was one Antoine Gillespie, better known as Ant. Enforcer for the Hall brothers.”

“Why ‘pretty sure’?”

“Because most of the left side of his head is gone.”

“Well there’s that.”

“Yeah. He’s-was-a player in the M Street Crew, like his buddy Dee Dee, who got popped a couple of weeks back.”

“This guy Ant, he kinda short, stocky, tends to run around with a hoodie?”

“That’s him.”

“Last time I saw him, he was threatening to kill me.”

“That sounds about right,” Parker said. “You want to come down and pay your respects? The techs are wrapping up, but they’ll be here another hour or so.”

“I think I’ll pass. Let Chris handle it.”

“Fine. You’ll have another chance. This ain’t the end of this shit. Some serious beefin’ is cranking up.”

Sully waited for a second, let some air in the conversation. “Any connection this guy Ant, Antoine Gillespie, had to Billy Ellison?”

“Could be, might be,” John said. “All this is going to be tied to that new high-test blow we been seeing down here. Somebody’s making a move. Three bodies in three weeks? That’s not an accident.”

“You catch the bad guys yet? Not the Dee Dee bad guys. The Ant shooter.”

“Not yet. Foot chase between some uniforms and a suspect last night. Maybe one of them, anyhow. We had a couple of patrols up on M Street-this Korean nail salon place’d just got robbed? And we get calls about a shot or shots down in the Bend. So they roll down there, just to see if there’s something to see, and soon as they pull up, some brother takes off running.”

“They didn’t grab him?”

“Lost him on the street.”

“You thinking he might have been the shooter?”

“No way to know. Might have been some dude scoring coke, hears the shot from down on the water, takes off on GP.”

“So this shooting, it was down by the riverside?”

“Yeah. The other units thought they saw somebody out there on the Bend, but nothing doing. They get down to the water, there’s Mrs. Gillespie’s bouncing baby boy, bobbing in the waves.”

“Good god.”

“I gave it to Jeff to take the lead on it, since he’s working the other shootings down here, but we’re getting the narcotics unit detailed, some help from DEA. We got uniforms canvassing every unit of the Carolina, that apartment building right by the Bend. You know how many helpful witnesses we’re going to get?”

“Zero?”

“You got a genius for this business.”

“Any forensics, shells?”

“None yet. But look, I got to jump. The Ellison funeral, that’s today, and the chief wants a show of respect. I got to switch into a suit and get into traffic.”

Sully blew out his lips into a raspberry. Christ. Delores. He hated funerals.

“You know they’re having a daily protest out in front of your paper about your story?”

“I do.”

“And that the funeral procession is passing by there on the way up to the cathedral?”

“I had missed that happy fact.”

“I think they’re trying to get you fired.”

Sully nodded, but he wasn’t sure if John meant the people outside the building or the people inside.

THE TAXI DROPPEDhim off at McPherson Square, four or five blocks from the paper. He had on jeans and a T-shirt under an old sport coat, plus a and a baseball cap and running shoes, so he didn’t look like much, and the sunglasses covered part of his face.

By the time he made it to the block of the paper, there were several hundred people-no, more, at least a thousand-clogging the sidewalks, spilling into the street, holding signs, chanting. Every few minutes, a group of ten or twelve protesters would sling their rubber-band-bound papers at the building all at once, hitting the glass windows with percussive thumps, the better arms getting to the second and third floors.

“Hold on wait a minute / got to put some bullshit in it!” went the chant, morphing into “Take it back! Take it back !”

Television cameras at the intersection picked it up, the patrol cars and lines of police containing the demonstration, the west-bound lane in front of the paper blocked off. The crowd, mostly black but a good bit white, bobbing, weaving, roiling, bouncing against the police barricades, energized but not out of control. He worked his way toward the front of the crowd, walking along the yellow tape where the television crews were doing standups. Dave wasn’t there. Surprising.

“Bitterly angry demonstrators,” one reporter was saying, talking earnestly into the camera, gesturing to the crowd behind her.

“I wouldn’t say they were enraged, David and Emily,” another said into the microphone, talking to hosts back in the studio, “but I think it fair to call it passionate, this outpouring after the suicide of Delores Ellison, one of the city’s most well-known socialites and philanthropists, which came less than twenty-four hours after a story on the front page of the paper, copies of which these protesters are hurling back at the paper that published this inflammatory…”

BILLY ELLISON DIED FOR YOUR SINS, read one sign.

Some of the others Sully could make out:

ELLISONS › HEADLINES

YOU HAVE BEEN CANCELED

TAKE IT BACK

RENEW THIS

In front of the crowd on the jostling sidewalk, a man in a somber black suit had a bullhorn, pacing back and forth. Sully recognized him as the pastor from the Capital City AME, a good-looking, charismatic preacher with a shaved head, exhorting the crowd milling back and forth in front of him, spilling into the street.

“We have labored all these years ,” he said, holding the horn close to his mouth, “to even be recognized by these types of media institutions.” A little feedback and distortion during the pause.

“And this is what we get?”

“No!” yelled the crowd.

“And THIS is what we get,” he came back, louder.

“ Nnnnooooo ,” lowed the crowd.

“They can’t hear you in there because they’re counting your money!” he bellowed.

“NNNNNOOOOOOOOOO!”

“Are you canceling your subscriptions?”

“YYEEESSSSSSS!”

And then, rising from the back, deep, booming, being picked up by the rest of the crowd until it was a resonating bit of rhythm cascading down the block, over all of downtown: “Hold on wait a minute / got to put some bullshit in it…”

By the time Sully got up to the National Cathedral, the clock going on two, the second Ellison funeral in a week was already unfolding. From his vantage point across Wisconsin Avenue, his view partially obscured by the trees, it still looked like an affair of state.