Neely Tucker - Murder, D.C.

“The bike’s at home,” Sully said.

“You walked over here?”

“More or less.”

Sly opened his container, the pork plate, but just sucked on his sweet tea and sat back in his chair.

“I don’t know, if that’s what you asking me,” he said.

“You moving in on the Hall brothers,” Sully said, getting to it. “They get capped, and you want me to believe you just don’t know.”

“I said I did not know.”

“Then you must be one scared motherfucker.”

“I wouldn’t say that, neither.”

“Police come tap-tap-tapping on your door?”

“About five this morning, yes they did.”

“They have a warrant, or was this a social call?’

“Hey, I’m a hardworking black man who has left his difficult youth behind, you hear? Earning an honest living in real estate. Low-income units. Sometimes? They elements in the police force, I don’t want to call them racist, but they got this cynical view and do not believe in, what do I want to say, my basic integrity. Sometimes these motherfuckers come by my house. ’Cause they too dumb to know the shit theyselves.”

“So, no warrant.”

“Not even.”

“And what did you tell them about the situation, this double homicide?”

“That I didn’t know shit and they ought to get up off my porch.”

Sully took a bite of his greens, using the little white plastic fork. “Hey Sly, you remember Noel Pittman? That fine sister who went missing on Princeton Place last year?”

Sly cut his eyes to him now, hard.

“You told me you didn’t know nothing about her, neither,” Sully said.

“I didn’t and I don’t,” Sly hissed.

“Then good luck with the Bend,” Sully said. “You going to need it.”

He came in his backyard through the alley, walked up the steel steps to the back door, his breath catching short, even though he was expecting it: The window on the Dutch door was broken. None of it outside. When he walked up and peeked in, he saw it all shattered on the kitchen floor. The deadbolt was pulled back. Door wasn’t locked.

He pushed it open with a knuckle and the smell of bourbon was everywhere. They’d taken his stash in the kitchen and poured it over the floors, the walls, the furniture. The plates and glasses were raked out of shelves and onto the floor, shards everywhere. The dining room table was knocked on its side. Broken glass, he saw, stepping into the front room; they’d smashed the bottles against the marble of the fireplace mantel, breaking off a chunk of it in the process. The couch upended. CDs pulled out of the racks, dumped on the floor.

Upstairs was worse. Sheets ripped off the bed, books pulled off the shelves, clothes pulled out of closets. File cabinets pulled out and dumped on the floor. A puddle of urine on the bathroom tiles, just a little smooch on the cheek. The sense of violation was there, the fury, but it was in check until he went to the bedroom window, the one fronting Sixth Street, and looked on the street outside.

The Ducati lay on its side, the rearview mirrors knocked off, the panels dented, the paint keyed.

“You motherless little bastards,” he whispered. “You sister-fucking freaks. I will find you.”

For fifteen minutes he walked the place, checking out the basement (equally trashed), his mood oddly calm. Nothing appeared to be taken. It was just a calling card, a cheap shot to let him know they could get to him.

After a while, he went back upstairs. He pulled open the folding doors to the hallway closet. He’d had it lined in cedar, one of his little upgrades, and stood on the lower shelf, where he put his sweaters. That gave him access to unlatch the small trapdoor into the attic. Reaching his hand up there, he found the small velvet pouch.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, unfolding the cloth, he felt the weight of the Tokarev M57, a gift from the Bosnian commander that night on the mountain. He pulled the last fold of cloth back and it lay open before him, black, dull, and deadly. He popped the magazine open, checked the rounds, and then ratcheted it back into place.

He dropped it in his jacket pocket and picked up the phone, calling news research at the paper.

“Hey gorgeous, it’s me,” he said, getting Susan, thank God. “I need an address and a home number this time.”

She talked.

“Of course, it’s off the books,” he said. “I got suspended, didn’t you hear?” Then he said, “Sheldon Stevens. The home, not the office.” And, “Wait. Lemme get a pen.”

Six minutes later, the phone rang down the other end. Shellie Stevens picked up.

“Hey motherfucker,” Sully said. “Love what you did with the place.”

There was a pause. “What I did with what place?”

“When you see me coming? Counselor, I advise you to run.”

“Run? Is this you, Carter?”

“You hear me? I know . What you know? What Delores knew? What Billy found out? Counselor, I know. That sound you hear? It’s the dirt thumping on your coffin.”

THE FOURTH FLOORat D.C. Superior Court held, just to the right of the escalator, the pending- and past-records room, the history of the city’s crime and criminals in thousands upon thousands of folders and case files.

The reception area to the records room was a grimy little rectangular space, with an ever-present line of unhappy people waiting to get to the counter. A good many, like those today, were there to get an official records search on themselves. To get a stamped document for a prospective employer that showed they were no longer on probation, or parole, or that the arrest that had shown up on their record was actually, like, long since closed, or that some other dude had been arrested for it, only he had a similar sort of name, you see that right here. Or there were women trying to track down men they wished they had not dated, or fucked that one time, or married, or ever seen once in their goddamn lives, and is that son of a bitch locked up down at Lorton.

The floor was peeling linoleum and the tiled ceiling had brown spots of water damage. It smelled like disinfectant and felt like the waiting room for the end of the world.

One wall held a printer, and against the opposite wall were two public-access terminals for computerized record searches. One computer was out of order and the screen was dark. Seated at the second one was a fat-ass PI with a bad haircut and a yellow notepad filled with a long list of names, potential employees for some company or another, running them through the system. He had a Styrofoam cup of coffee from the cafeteria downstairs and talked a mile a minute into his cell. When he got a hit on a name on his pad, he scratched a line through it and went to the next. After a while, he looked over his shoulder and acknowledged Sully by holding one finger aloft, as in, “just a minute.”

Twenty-two minutes later, the dude got up, pulling his notepad and briefcase with him, still gabbing, giving Sully a pat on the shoulder as he left. Sully took the still-warm seat and winced at the sensation when he sat down, moving his ass to the edge of the seat, then rolling the chair up to the terminal.

He only had one name: Ferris, George.

He punched it in, the machine thought about it and spit out one match: George Mercury Ferris. Date of birth August 16, 1976. Police Department ID number 673214. Aliases: Curious.

“Bingo,” Sully said, hitting the button to call up the case histories.

More computer humming, and then lines and lines of green type popped up, filling the screen. Assault with a deadly weapon (baseball bat); assault with a deadly weapon (shod foot); possession of narcotics (marijuana, less than one ounce); possession with intent to distribute (cocaine); public intoxication; breaking and entering; robbery; robbery; simple assault. Nine arrests, and the man had been an adult all of five years.