Neely Tucker - The Ways of the Dead

Parts of the job he liked: This.

Midway down the block one more time, he popped it into neutral, then hit the kill switch. The engine coughed and died. He made a show of pushing his visor up, looking down over the motor, to the left and right. He let the bike coast about fifty feet, distracting attention from his right hand, which he was squeezing ever so slightly, to apply the front brake and stop the bike before he passed an alley to the south.

The three-story brick building John had described was in a direct line of sight. Pulling off the helmet, he spit on the street, acting disgusted. He unlocked the seat, pulling the tool kit from the underside niche, and, taking a knee and pulling out a wrench, he loosened and tightened the screws of the frame that held the battery in place.

It didn’t take long. A car rolled up behind him, unnaturally close. He half turned and saw it was one of the white Caprices.

“’s the problem, Evel?” A low baritone.

Sully turned back to the bike and reached for a wrench. “’s it to you, ace?”

“Hey,” the voice said. Sully ignored it.

“ Hey ,” the voice said, and he heard a door open and it slapped into his back, knocking him into the bike.

He stood up and wheeled around, acting shocked, acting pissed, selling it hard. The cop, one of the SWAT team members sitting in the car, bulletproof vests under sweatshirts, held a badge up beside his face, but not outside the car.

“Get your broke-ass bike off the street,” the man said, nodding toward the badge.

Sully took a half step to look at the badge, peered at it, still with the dumb thing. “Well, Christ, dude, how was I supposed to know? Want me to push it over there?” He indicated P Street with a nod of the head.

“Further down,” the man said, motioning down First.

Sully figured he had about fifty yards to give and still be in eyesight of the apartment building. He heard a chopper overhead, somewhere in the distance.

“Let me get my tools up and I’ll push off.”

The cop flicked cigarette ash off his chest. “Put them on the fuckin’ bike and move. ” He backed up until he got back in the car. They rolled off, went down the street, and made a left. Circling, Sully thought, back to their original spot.

He pushed the bike down First, watching the building from his peripheral vision, then stopped, pulling the wrench back. He kneeled behind the bike.

A few minutes later, a white cargo truck parked across the street in front of him. There was a pause, and then a heavy van with blackened windows rolled past him, wheeled hard onto P, and slammed to a stop. Four, five, six SWAT team members leaped out, running to the front of the apartment building, the first one carrying a Plexiglas shield, two behind him with assault rifles. At the same time, the back door of the cargo van rolled up and a jumble of agents leaped out, sprinting across a neighbor’s yard, leaping over a small boundary fence.

Percussive booms ran up the street and a puff of smoke emerged from the apartment building. Yelling. A window shattered. Two and then three flat pops. The overhead thump-thump-thump intensified, the helicopter directly overhead now. Sully ran to the street now, pretense gone. A cop turned, briefly put a gun on him, Sully stopped, hands up, and the cop turned back.

Officers boiled out of the narrow doorway of the apartment building, a handcuffed man between them, head down, pushing and pulling, yelling, swearing, an awkward run to the black van parked in the street. Another knot of officers at the apartment doorway, a plume of smoke trailing them, and a second man emerged, again in handcuffs, again force-marched to the van. Seconds later, a third man, feet dragging. He did not appear to be conscious.

Sirens hit full force, the vans and squad cars roaring out. Sully whipped out his cell and called Patrick on the desk.

“Suspects just got popped,” he said, giving the address and a few more grafs to get the story started.

“I’m coming with the rest,” he said, looking over his shoulder. Cops on the perimeter were looking at him, talking into their fingers, starting to move toward him.

He cursed, rushing to put the tools back, hearing a siren start whoop-whoop-whoop ing, and saw a patrol car start to make a U-turn. He cranked the bike, and it roared into life, and then he had the helmet on, leaning over the gas tank as he hit the throttle to keep the front end of the bike from rearing into the air as he shot forward, leaving the patrol car behind.

A block down, blowing the stop sign, the bike flying past sixty, now to seventy, he saw the blue Olds parked at the curb, waiting, not bothering to give chase.

Five hours later he was sitting at the mahogany bar in Stoney’s at the back end of the long L-shaped fixture, the Sazerac in front of him, the glass chilled, the lemon peel at the bottom like a little pickled fish.

“Wait,” the guy at the other end of the bar was saying. “Turn it back up. They saying something.”

Sully looked up in time to see Dmitri, working the bar, trying to clean up and close down, reach above the mirrored glass and turn the sound on the television up.

“-and have just released the names of the three suspects apprehended today. They are Reginald Jackson, seventeen, of the District of Columbia; D’onte Highsmith, eighteen, also of the District; and Jerome Deland, twenty-two, of Prince George’s County.” The man was looking down at a sheet of paper reading. “According to a police spokesman, all three have criminal records. Deland has four arrests, for assault, battery, unlicensed use of a vehicle-that’s the District’s charge for car theft-and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. Court records show he was on, ah, parole. Highsmith has two arrests, both on drug possession charges, and had been released five weeks ago to await trial. Police say Jackson was at Oak Hill, the city’s juvenile detention facility, and escaped two weeks ago. They were apparently at a neighborhood basketball court just before the Sarah Reese killing, and then again minutes later, and were found to have an item of Sarah’s in their possession when arrested earlier today at-”

“What is ‘item’?” Dmitri said. “Why don’t they just say?”

“’Cause the police didn’t tell them,” Sully said. “They didn’t tell me, either. Why bother? It’ll come out in court. What they want-what the police want right now-is for people to go to bed thinking it’s all over.”

Dmitri turned the sound down. “You want another?” Vant . Sully tapped the top of his glass in response. Dmitri raised his eyebrows at the man three seats down, who shook his head no. Dmitri made another Sazerac and told him that would be the last one. Sully said sure and then his phone buzzed.

“How did you know?” Melissa.

“Lucky guess.”

“Look, if you’re just going to be an ass-”

“So glad I was out at the Reese house taking dictation while your boy was killing it on the investigation.”

There was fifteen seconds of silence. Then, “I said you were right, okay, but-”

“I wouldn’t get real excited about these arrests, either,” he said, jumping ahead to keep her off balance. “They look screwy.”

“Screwy? Eddie said you were on about this. These morons were just out of jail when this went down. Something happened in that store and they-”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me about it tomorrow,” he said, and clicked off the phone.

A bartender had materialized from the back room, walking the length of the bar, turning the sound down on the television, sliding around Dmitri in the narrow space, her shoulder-length brown hair swinging as she did so. She walked up to Sully and put one hand, then two, on the bar between them. She took his whiskey glass and took a pull of the Sazerac.