Neely Tucker - The Ways of the Dead

“They’re the last ones to see her and then wind up with her money, their prints.”

“Seem to be.”

“That’s not good.”

“I already told you they’re going to walk. Look, this shit ain’t over. Whoever it was that brought this down on all us, who done killed the little white girl, and whoever killed that fine sister and the Mexican chick, I’m thinking they can’t be but one person that stupid out there. Now. There some brothers out here with a dick problem. I-”

“She wasn’t Mexican.”

“Who?”

“Lana Escobar. She’s Guatemalan, not Mexican.”

“Guatemalan, Mexican, Costa fucking Rican. She’s dead.”

“What is it you think happened?”

“To who?”

“Any one of them. Sarah. Noel. Lana.”

Sly looked out the front window. He started to chew on a nail and stopped.

“The white girl is the biggest problem, see. I go asking around on that, you go asking around on that, we going to bump into dudes with badges, you see that? The way I got it, I find out who offed that Mexican chick, or Noel, or both, that’ll tell me something I need to know.”

“How you figure?”

“One, it’s going to tell me who killed two bitches on my turf.”

“But you didn’t go looking when Lana got killed.”

“She’s a ho. That shit happens. Noel, college girl passing through. Far as I knew, she’s in LA making look-at-my-ass porn flicks.”

“But now?”

“Now the white girl changes everything. This makes three, and you and me, we know the police are all wrong on it. So we find out who killed the other two? Maybe it’s nothing. Or maybe it’s the same one what killed the white girl. That’d be three -for-one shopping right there. But I can’t go around asking on the white chick. I’m taking the play that’s available. Cops go left. I go right.”

He half turned in his seat. “You?”

“Why you think,” Sully said, “I’m taking notes on Lana Escobar?”

Sly and Lionel dropped Sully off a few minutes later. He walked stiffly to the black iron gate at the sidewalk and then up the steps. The real problem, he thought, turning the dead bolt on the front door, was that if Sly figured out who the killer was first, no one would ever know. He’d off the dude and that would be that. There would just be years of unanswered questions.

And Sly was motivated, he could see that. The nail chewing, the antsy chatter-the man was rattled by the police uptick in a neighborhood that usually got ignored, feds slapping on doors, busting guys on meaningless warrants just to get them downtown, threaten to violate them on their probation, squeeze them. Usually, these were the neighborhood cops, who knew the perps, who knew them, and everybody knew the game.

But the feds were assholes who didn’t care about the day-to-day rules. Who knew what knowledge was out there that, if it changed hands, could rain down hell in another direction? That was what Sly was sweating. That was why he needed Sully’s help to get Sarah’s murder solved and the feds out of his neighborhood. If resolving the other two killings helped do that, fine, but there was no fooling anyone-nobody cared who killed Noel and Lana. It was all about Sarah Reese.

Two hours later, the woman let him in, telling him to sit down, motioning toward a worn-out couch. There was a television and an empty bag of potato chips and two beer cans on the floor beside a chair. The house, a sagging brick row house in a crappy block of Thirteenth Street NW, ten or twelve blocks away from Princeton Place. The last known address of William J. Darden, hirer of prostitutes, beater of women.

She went upstairs, was up there a minute, and Sully sat down on the couch, waiting, wanting to come out of this with something he could use, something about the grime of the trade, the whole poverty and debasement of it all, the soup they were swimming in. Footsteps came down the stairs, hard, fast, not feminine, and more than one set of them. Sully startled, spread his feet, ready to stand in a hurry, but did not get up.

William Darden was a big man-Jesus, the arrest card hadn’t said the man was a fucking grizzly-and he stomped into the room, a head of steam, barreling forward. There were two men behind him, not as big, but Sully didn’t have time to look.

“You-” he said, pointing at Sully, moving forward. “You are one dumb motherfucker.”

Sully stood. The man was fully sleeved, the jailhouse tats running down both arms. “Mr. Darden, I was just looking to talk to friends of Lana Es-”

The pistol came out in Darden’s right hand as if he’d shucked it out of a sleeve and he brought it hard and fast, head level, not even slowing down. Sully got an arm up and turned, blocking part of it, the force of it knocking him sideways, skittering by the couch but keeping his feet.

His vision blurred and one of the men behind Darden, quick as a cat, got both hands on his shoulders, shoving him into the foyer and into the wall.

The notebook went flying, his shoulders banging against the wood paneling. He kept his feet but kneeled over, out of breath, reaching into his cycle jacket. Darden was closing on him and Sully sat down backward and then he was whipping the heavy Yugoslavian pistol up and out of the jacket in both hands, flicking the safety down with his thumb and firing two rounds into the ceiling, the muzzle flashing, then pointing it back at Darden’s chest.

Darden flinched backward at the shots, nearly falling over himself.

“The fuck you doin’?” he bellowed. “You can’t do that!”

“Swing on me one more time and I’ll put two in your goddamned brain,” Sully said. He had both hands on the pistol, sitting on the floor, back against the wall, three feet from the door, his hands steady as iron. The man on his left wasn’t moving. The third one had vanished back up the stairs.

“Repo men can’t get a goddamned gun,” Darden said, still looking shocked. “You-you can’t come in here shooting.”

“I’m not a goddamned repo man.”

“What? She said you were here about the flat-screen.”

“I could give a fuck about your big-ass TV. I-”

“You a narc? Show me-show me the badge.”

“I’m a fucking reporter. At the paper. I don’t give a goddamn about what you-”

“A reporter ? With that thing? What, it was your daddy’s?”

“Put the goddamn gun down,” Sully said. “This is some shit. All I wanted to ask you about is a hooker.”

“A what?” But the tone softening.

“Lana Escobar. A hooker. You got busted two years ago, an undercover female cop, a sting? You gave up Lana’s name as one of your steadies. Girl’s Hispanic, about five-two, thick. Nice ass.”

Darden pointed his gun down. Sully did, too.

“Show me the ID. And keep your voice down.”

The woman upstairs somewhere, listening.

The press card was on a metal-beaded lanyard around his neck. Sully pulled it off and tossed it. Darden caught it, looked at it, then tossed it back.

“Thought you came for the television. She’s behind on it.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t.”

Darden went to the half-ass couch and sat down, still looking at him, amazed. Sully put the pistol back in his jacket pocket, then mopped the sweat from his face with his shirttail. He let out a long breath. “I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Darden, that was some shit just then.”

“ You telling me ?”

Sully almost laughed, and then he did. “Alright, Christ. Okay. Let’s get this over with and get on with our happy lives. So. Lana Escobar. You gave her up in the sting.”

“Man, I barely remember. I don’t know nobody’s name. They showed me some pictures. I picked her out. They violated me on parole. Got to, you know, give up somebody unless you want to go back.”