Neely Tucker - The Ways of the Dead

“Michelle was in Doyle’s? When?”

“Wait, now. This female, she’s all the time going into Doyle’s to buy a little something so they let her go pee while she’s working. She says when Doyle is there, he’s eyeing her up, telling her she can get shit for free for a little favor in the back.”

“Did she?”

“Nah. Pussy ain’t for bartering. Hers, anyway. But here it is. She’s back there squatting one night and she hears grunting, unh unh unh . She walks out the toilet real quiet, the office door ain’t all the way closed. She peeps, sees Michelle, titties out, shirt open, kneeling in front of the desk in Doyle’s office. She just tipped on out, didn’t think nothing about it, just thought Doyle musta been making his offer to a lot of females and Michelle took him up on it.”

“Michelle was turning tricks?”

“Girl was a crackhead. Crackheads’ll suck an exhaust pipe for ten dollars and a hit. So girlfriend here, she leaves out of Doyle’s, gets picked up the next night for, what do you call it, soliciting, and doesn’t know anything else until she gets out a couple days ago.”

“So what day was this she sees Michelle?”

“About six weeks back.”

“She sure?”

“She was in the lockup for forty-something days before the charges got dropped. She remembers it was the night before she got picked up.”

“And she reads the newspapers, does she?”

“There ain’t a lot to do in lockup.”

Sully leaned against the counter and thought for a minute.

“So, okay, Doyle lied about Noel. And he’s getting blow jobs or whatever from Michelle. Which means what to us exactly? I mean, I got a story running tomorrow, and it’s the judge’s ass or mine.”

Donnell’s eyes flicked open, looking up at Sly, then Sully, as if startled to see them there, then laid his massive head back on the carpet and yawned, long pink tongue flicking out over his teeth. Sully could no longer make out Sly’s face in the darkness, just glints of the sides of his glasses and his small, narrow nose, surprisingly delicately boned.

“I told you me and Lionel, we been pushing this hard. Turns out Doyle is a regular pussy hound. Man runs a tab up at the Show Bar, after he shuts his store down. And you know as well as me that Les, the owner? He’s working girls up in there. Les, he tells me that Doyle likes sisters, black and brown, don’t matter, long as they got some pigmentation. Gets blown off in the men’s once or twice a week, maybe more on the side.”

“All the women who are missing or dead-they’re all hookers or got a drug problem or they live right there on Princeton,” Sully said. “You thinking Noel was turning high-end tricks? That the judge was paying for it, and maybe Doyle, too? That, what, Doyle is the one out there killing women?”

“You got a better idea?”

“Why Sarah, then? She’s not anything like the others.”

“She got in the way. She saw something. He decided to branch out.”

“But she wasn’t sexually assaulted.”

“Maybe he couldn’t get it up, killed her when he got pissed off. I’m not a sick fuck. I don’t know. I don’t have to know the why . I just have to know the if .”

“So what is it you propose to do?”

“I don’t propose nothing. I’m saying what we’re going to do , brother - we’re going to find out. Lionel, he’s down there at the Show Bar keeping an eye on Doyle.”

“You don’t mean we’re going to go press him at the club.”

“No no no. You don’t think right. We’re going to check out his house while he’s up there getting his johnson polished.”

“What? Right now?”

“You got something better to do? Somebody’s shooting at you. Probably Doyle, you ask me. Then you come in here and tell me your comfy-ass job is on the line. I’m saying police are pressing people to talk about them three. It’s making my people nervous, and it ain’t in my best interest when my neighbors are nervous. So, brother. I’m taking care of my business. You? You in or out? I mean, I’m not the one going to get fired tomorrow if I’m wrong.”

Sly went to the back room and came back two minutes later with a large envelope. He opened the flap and held it down at an angle, shaking it. A series of pictures, all eight-by-tens, slid out. It was a series of pictures of houses just up the street. He fanned them out across the counter.

“Now. This here is Doyle’s place. All these old row houses on this street? They pretty much the same layout, same front porch, same front room, dining room, kitchen, basement, and bath and bedrooms upstairs. Look here. Window units. Cheap-ass ain’t even put in central air.”

Sully was going to point out that the top two floors of Sly’s house looked like a crack squat, but decided against it.

“You been staking him out?” Sully asked.

“I said I’m taking care of business. Now look. These here are the backyards of the houses on that block. See if you can pick his out.”

Sully looked at the pictures Sly had spread out-five, taken from different vantage points of the rear alley. The yards were all tiny, rectangular, sectioned off by stretches of sagging chain-link fences, overgrown grass and flowerpots and concrete parking spots in the yards. The paint on the rear brick walls on every house was peeling or chipped or faded. Some of the houses had drives that sloped sharply downhill from the alley to their basements. There was a recent-model blue BMW in one, a silver Honda just beyond, and a Caddy, sagging at the ass end, in another.

There was no need to guess.

In the middle of the block, there was one house with a yard sealed off from view by a solid wooden fence at least six feet high.

“So you still think the man ain’t done nothing?”

“It’s a fucking fence, Sly.”

“Y’all got problems with your belief system. Why would he have a fence up like that, he ain’t up to something?”

“He likes to sun himself naked. He wants the shade. Tired of kids jumping the fence and stealing his barbeque.”

Sly rolled his eyes and went to the back room again.

When he came back, he was dressed in a black tracksuit. In each hand, he held a ziplock bag, stuffed thick, and he tossed one underhanded to Sully. Inside was a black watch cap, gloves, plastic booties. Sly set two pencil-thin flashlights on the counter and told him not to pick his up until his gloves were on. He told him to leave the cycle jacket and tossed him a long-sleeve black T-shirt, a turtleneck, and told him to burn everything when they were done.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Sully said. Sly just looked at him, and Sully, in spite of himself, put the gear on. A few minutes later, Sly’s phone buzzed. He looked down at it and said, “Lionel’s out front. Let’s go.”

He opened the basement door, Sully out in front, and then locked it behind them. He took Sully by the arm as he walked past. “You ain’t gonna pussy out now, are you?”

Sully responded by taking the steps two at a time to get to street level and there was a Honda Odyssey idling at the curb, the side door sliding open. Lionel was at the wheel.

Sully stepped inside, then Sly.

They pulled out slowly, and Sully could not help himself.

“When did you start pushing a minivan, Dad?”

A full block passed before Sly spoke.

“Nothing is so stupid as driving your own car to do your dirt. We borrowing this from a driveway in Bethesda. The Camaro, see, one of my associates is tooling around Southeast, outside a few clubs, going to a drive-through McDonald’s.”

“So people will think they saw you.”

“I told you that boy was quick, Lionel.”