Neely Tucker - The Ways of the Dead

“You got to start keeping bourbon in here,” he said, looking inside.

“I don’t drink the shit.”

Sully got a can of Miller, popped it open, and took a long swallow.

“Somebody took a shot at me,” he said. “Shots.”

Sly, settling on a bar stool, looking at the television, a news channel with the sound off, looked over at him. He did not seem surprised. “For real?”

“In that house on Princeton, where Noel Pittman was found.”

“Why?”

“The fuck do I know? I was down in the basement poking around, seeing what there was to see. Fucker came in, put a hand in the basement door, and let loose. We didn’t talk about it.”

“You didn’t get a look at who it was?”

“No.”

“Just one shooter?”

“Near as I could tell.”

“So why didn’t they come down and waste you?”

“Possibly because I shot back.”

Sly’s eyes narrowed, and there was a pause.

“You went to this house, down into this basement thing, and you went packing?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t know you carried.”

“Since somebody blew me up with a grenade.”

“That was in the war, though, right?”

“I took it personal.”

“I didn’t think reporter types were supposed to do that, carry a gun.”

“Not that I’m aware of, no, we’re not.”

“But you do.”

“I do.”

“And you tried to shoot this motherfucker over there just now?”

“What did I just tell you?”

“I’m just saying, you got two dudes shooting at each other, nobody hitting anything. Most times, you want to shoot somebody, you do.”

“I’ma go to the range in the morning, work on my aim.”

“What were you looking for down there?”

“Whatever there was to see. I don’t know. You never know unless you go look.” He looked at his hand, the tremors again. “Jesus, don’t you got whiskey? At all?”

Sly ignored him, thinking. “Well. This shooter. In that house, taking potshots at somebody in the basement. The dude didn’t see you? Didn’t know it was you in particular?”

“Not so far as I know.”

“Then this means what? That somebody out there, maybe who killed Noel, don’t want anybody down there. Maybe he thinks he left something.”

“The cops have already been all over it.”

“Yeah, well, still. Maybe they missed something. You trespassing in a house nobody owns. Don’t make any sense. Somebody’d havta be following you or watching the house-”

“Wait a minute. I had a tail, I’d swear it, a blue Olds a few days ago. Tailed me from that presser at Reeses’s. Two chunky white guys, the sweatshirts, the hoodies, the whole undercover thing. I took them to be detailed to Reese’s case. I went into Reese’s house, we had an unpleasant conversation, so I figured they slapped me with a tail. A brushback pitch.”

“What was unpleasant about the conversation with the judge?”

“I-” It dawned on Sully, almost too late, that he had used Sly’s information to tell the judge the three arrests were bogus. He couldn’t tell Sly that. “I would say that every conversation I have with Reese is unpleasant. He’s a prick. Plus his daughter had just been killed.”

“Hunh.”

“But that’s not what I came here to tell you, though. David Reese. I came to tell you something else about David Reese.”

Sly nodded, sitting at the counter, twiddling his pencil back and forth.

“He was screwing Noel Pittman. Or at least I think he was.”

Sly kept the poker face, but his pencil stopped mid-twitch. “And why do you think that?”

“Because somebody who might know just outed him to me. I’m curious if anybody else who might know told you.”

Sly leaned back on his bar stool and crossed his arms. Sly working to keep his jawline steady. They regarded each other for a moment. Sly waiting to see if he’d say more. Sully didn’t.

“Well, then, we got ourselves another problem,” Sly said, “because nobody told me that shit at all.”

His face seemed to become stronger and yet more diffuse, things working beneath the surface, a storm cloud building, lightning inside the vapor. Sly put his left hand to the top of his forehead, pulling it down his face until his hand cupped his chin. He cursed, suddenly, with a violent jerk of his head. “I don’t know how I didn’t think of this before.”

Sully pulled another draft on the beer, eyeing him. “Think of what?”

“Come on, goddammit,” Sly said, getting up. “Put that thing down. We got to talk to somebody.”

He was up and out the basement door, no coat, no jacket, Sully pouring the rest of the beer down the sink, hurrying to catch up.

Sly walked them down Warder and then turned right onto Princeton Place. The baseball field was just across the street. Sly walked past the first large house, past an alley paved with brick, and then past three, four houses, the yards slightly elevated from the sidewalk, more so as the street sloped downhill. At one house, Sly turned right, went up four or five concrete steps, and, motioning Sully to follow, strode across the sidewalk and then up five or six more steps to the porch. There was a wooden swing and two iron chairs with striped cushions.

Sly rapped on the door, hard. “Open the door, Mommy. It’s me. Open the door.”

They stood, waiting. Sully could hear footsteps just behind the door and felt, rather than saw, someone looking through the peephole. The door slid open, chain still in place, and an elderly woman’s face appeared through the slot. She peered unhappily at them both.

“I said it was me, Mommy,” Sly said. “Now open the door. Come on.”

The woman closed the door and the chain slid back and the door opened into darkness, with a light on in a room at the end of the hall. Sly followed her into the kitchen. Sully trailed them both. It reminded him of Curtis Williams’s home, only decorated in grandmotherly fashion. There were cheap prints on the wall, of black people at an island-style open-air market, of a woman drinking from a coconut.

In the kitchen, the woman returned to the stove, stirring whatever was in the pot before her. Sully was about to guess she was from the Caribbean when she opened her mouth and removed all doubt that she was Jamaican.

“What are you wanting me for?” She said it to Sly but was looking at Sully. She was wearing jeans, a floral print top, slippers, small gold hoop earrings, and a scarf wrapped around her head. The television was blaring from the other room. Sully saw two bottles of ginger ale on the table. He wondered where the other ginger ale drinker was.

“He’s a reporter dude,” Sly said, nodding back at Sully. He pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and sat down without being asked. “He wants to ask you something. I wouldn’t mind knowing myself.” He nodded at Sully.

Sully sat down, pulled out his backpack, and laid out the pictures of the three girls.

The woman came over from the stove and said, “Oh my Jesus.”

Sully looked inside the backpack again and pulled out a newspaper. He flipped to an inside page, the story of Reese’s driveway press conference, a large photograph of him at the microphones, folded and quartered the paper so the picture was dominant. Spinning it around so it was in front of her, he cleared his throat and said, “My name is-”

“Skip all that old shit,” Sly said, cutting him off. “She knows you’re a reporter, right, Mommy?” The woman narrowed her eyes and nodded.

“My name is Sully Carter and I work at the paper,” Sully said, glaring at Sly, giving his standard spiel anyway. “Okay, then. I’m working on a story about these three girls. You recognize them, I think. What I want to know is if you’ve seen this gentleman on the block.” He tapped on the picture of Reese, smoothing the paper out as he did so.