Neely Tucker - The Ways of the Dead

He paused. The idea of floating the postmortem throat slitting popped into his head, to show her he had something, but he held back. Instead, he said, “So what’s happening is, you haven’t found the weapon and none of them are talking.”

“I’ll neither confirm nor deny. I will observe that they are charged with murder and that we like our case.”

She was at her office and being close to inscrutable. He sipped his drink.

“Okay, so does the timeline bother you? And motive?”

“You’re asking me to give you a psych eval of people who kill other people? I don’t really know. I don’t really have to know. I have sent people to prison for always and forever and had no idea why they did what they did. But I would say that opportunity is a powerful motivator. And chance. And, without being indelicate, sex, or the possibility thereof.”

“In the alley behind the store?”

“Did I omit stupidity?”

“But all those things could apply to something opportunistic, but stops short of murder.”

There was an exhalation on the other end of the line. “You think you know something, Sully?”

“No. I would just-” He heard a voice calling his name.

Sly Hastings’s head and upper body appeared above the chest-high brick wall bordering his backyard from the alley, the man wearing a white shirt and sunglasses. He looked at Sully and took off the shades, then reached for the handle that opened the metal back gate. Sully wagged a finger at him, signaling him not to come closer.

“I would just do your usual excellent job. Just look out on this one. Thanks for the time.”

“If there’s something you’re hearing-”

“I’ll call you.” He hung up.

“Been knocking out front, brother,” Sly said, unhooking the gate. “You really got to be more sociable. People could get the wrong idea. Come on. We got work.”

Sully was sitting in the back of the Camaro, Lionel driving, Sly in the passenger seat. Lionel was taking North Capitol heading up to the neighborhood, Sly leaning sideways in the front seat, talking back to him, shades on.

“Me and Lionel, we been driving around,” he said, “the past few days. We been asking people a few questions every now and then, if it looks like it might be profitable for us to do so.”

“Profitable? You just said ‘profitable’?”

“I did, yes, genius. Profitable. Fuck with me again-go ahead. See if it gets you where you want to go. We asking around, seeing what’s profitable. I talk to this dude down there on Columbia Road, the 500 block. He starts telling me his niece ain’t around no more. His niece-it’s his niece, Lionel?”

“Niece. From his ex-wife.”

Sully looked from Sly to Lionel and back again.

“Some dude can’t find his ex-wife’s niece? And this is profitable to know?”

“I said she wasn’t around no more. I didn’t say a thing about they can’t find her. They can find her just fine. She’s out to Lincoln Memorial Cemetery. Girl’s name is Escobar. Lana Escobar.”

He turned all the way in the seat and pulled off his glasses. “You want to talk to my boy now?”

Sully went up the steps of the narrow row house and into the front door, behind Sly and in front of Lionel. There was a small group of people, Hispanic, in the front room. Sully nodded, trying to make eye contact, and got nothing for it. They were in a hallway and then in a small kitchen, disheveled, a cabinet door open. A barrel-chested man with a mustache was sitting at a folding table. He was wearing work pants and a large white T-shirt. There was a cup of coffee in front of him. He was leaning forward on the table with his elbows and looking from Sly to Sully. Sully couldn’t interpret whether this meant he was accustomed to strangers barging into his kitchen or whether Sly had told him that was the way it was going to be.

Sly whispered to him for a minute and the man gestured for Sully to sit. He did, in a green chair on the opposite side of the table.

“ No hablo español, ” Sully said to the man, getting a smile in on the end of it. “Not much, anyhow.”

The man regarded him with his still brown eyes. It occurred to Sully he resembled Gabriel García Márquez, the slight potbelly, the salt-and-pepper gray hair and mustache, the flat gaze.

“It’s okay,” the man said. His voice was highly pitched. It didn’t match his physique, it was like Aaron Neville, that angelic voice in the bar bouncer body. “I been living in Washington fifteen years. I speak English pretty good.”

“I’m Sully,” reaching across the table to shake his hand.

“I’m Hector Ramos.”

“I’m a reporter.”

“I’m a grass mower.”

“Let me ask you something,” Sully said. “And it doesn’t matter to me at all personally, but are you here legally?”

The man shook his head no.

“So you don’t want to be quoted in my newspaper, right?”

“Never. They would deport me.”

Sully looked at Sly.

“Hector, tell the man about your niece. He don’t gotta know your name. Tell him what you was telling me.”

Hector looked at Sully. “You want for me to tell you about Lana?”

Sully nodded, pulling out his notebook. “But, okay, look. If I write a story- si , if, maybe-I’m not going to name you. I’ll say you’re a relative who is in the country illegally. I will use what you say, but not your name. Is that okay? Is there someone else in the family who could talk and use their name?”

Hector shook his head. “Only me. And the other, so, okay. Just no name.”

“ Sin nombre .”

Hector nodded, a slight tic of the head.

“Thank you,” Sully said. “What can you tell me about Lana? I don’t know much. I wrote a very short story when she was found, but that was about it.”

Hector’s face tightened, the muscles contracted.

“So, okay, Lana, she did not run around with men for money, like you say in the paper.” He held up his hand before Sully could say anything. “The police say it, but you write it. It was on the television, too. Well. Maybe she did once or twice-I cannot say for sure because I was not there. How am I to know? She was an illegal, too, but was taking some college classes, someway she and her aunt figure it out. That was my wife then, you know? Her aunt. Then her aunt and me, we divorce, and her aunt went back home, to Guatemala. Lana stayed here. We got along okay. She was going to help me with my business. She was going to answer the phone and talk to the people. Her English was very good. It was like she was born here.”

“She wasn’t?”

“No. We are all from Guatemala. Chimaltenango is the city. I met my ex-wife and Lana here. My ex-wife, she brought her here for her sister.”

“How did you meet your ex-wife? Lana’s aunt?”

“Her cousin was a friend of my cousin.”

“Lana have a boyfriend?”

Hector blinked. “She was not smart with men. She took the pictures for one of the men.”

“A picture.”

“Without the clothes.”

“Oh,” Sully said. “Naked? No clothes at all?”

“Only her shoes.”

“Her shoes.”

“Yes. The ones I saw, she had on only shoes.”

“You don’t look happy about this.”

The man shook his head, hard. “No, no. This is not how my family does things. We go to Mass. We work. We do not do drugs or-or things like this. It is a nasty business.”

“Who was the guy taking the pictures?”

“I do not know. I never met him, and Lana, she would not say.”

“How did you come across the pictures?”

“She left them in her room. On the bed. We lived a few blocks away then. Many of us. Lana had her room. Her phone was ringing and I went in to get it. The pictures were on the bed.”