Down By the River Where the Dead Men Go

TWENTY-TWO

Cases break, and major changes get put in motion, in seemingly innocuoutt sis ways.

My ex-wife and I met in a bar, on a night when I decided to go out for a late beer at the incessant goading of an acquaintance whose name I don’t remember. Similarly, I got my start in the sales business when, as a teenager, I happened to be hitching down Connecticut Avenue and found myself standing in front of the Nutty Nathan’s plate-glass window, staring at a HELP WANTED sign. And then there was my friend Dimitri, a Greek boy out of Highlandtown, who got into a car he didn’t know was stolen, then died after a high-speed chase at the age of seventeen. I often wonder how my life would have turned out had I not gone out for that beer, or had I been picked up hitchhiking farther north on the avenue that day. And I think about Dimitri, an innocent smile on his face as he climbed into that car, and I think of all the things my friend has missed.

The Jeter case was like that, too. The Jeter case might have ended with me and LaDuke parting company on a hot summer night. It might have ended, but it did not. The very next morning, I took a different route to work than I normally take, and everything got heated up again and boiled over in a big way.

My normal path out of Shepherd Park is 13th Street south, straight into downtown. From Hamilton Street on down, there was some road repair that morning, forcing a merge into one lane. I got into the lane and inched along for a while, but my hangover was scraping away at my patience. So I cut right on Arkansas, with the intention of hitting Rock Creek east of 16th.

I wasn’t the only one with that plan, however, and the traffic on Arkansas was as backed up as it had been on 13th. After Buchanan Street, the flow ebbed considerably, and just before Allison, things came to a complete stop. I was idling there, looking around absently and trying to clear my head, when I noticed the brick building of the Beverley ice company on my right. Some employees were walking out of the rear door of the icehouse, on the way to their trucks. The temperature that morning had already climbed to ninety-plus degrees, the sun blazing in a cloudless sky. Sitting in my car, I could feel the sweat soaking into my T-shirt; the men walking out of the icehouse wore winter coats.

I landed on my horn. The guy ahead of me moved up a couple of feet, enough for me to put two wheels on the sidewalk and get the car onto Allison. I punched the gas and got it on up to 14th, parking in front of a corner market. There was a pay phone outside the market, with a directory, miraculously intact, beneath the phone. I opened the book, flipped to the I ’s. I found plenty of wholesale ice merchants, most of them located in Northeast. There was only one located in Southeast: a place called Polar Boys, northwest of M, not too far from the Anacostia River-not too far from the river and only a short walk from the John Philip Sousa Bridge.

I dropped a quarter in the slot, woke Mai at home, and asked if she could work my shift.

“I’ll do it,” she said after the obligatory mild protest. “But I still want my whole two shifts tomorrow. And you owe me now, Nicky.”

“I’ll cover for you, Mai, anytime. Thanks a million, hear?”

She said good-bye. I ran down the sidewalk to my car.

Most detective work consists of watching and waiting. The job requires patience and the ability to deal with boredom, two character traits I do not possess. It’s one of the reasons I don’t take tail gigs anymore, following errant wives and hard-dick husbands to motel parking lots, waiting for them to walk out the door of room 12 so I can snap their pictures. The tip jar from the Spot not only keeps me solvent, it also allows me the luxury of selectivity.

I was thinking of the waiting game as I sat across the street from Polar Boys off M. I had parked near a store called Garden Liquors, though there appeared to be no garden or greenery of any kind in the general vicinity. The projects were located one block over, and some vampire was doing landmark business out of the store, selling forties and pints and lottery tickets at 11:30 in the morning. I sat behind the wheel of my Dodge, alcohol sweat beaded on my forearms, my ravaged stomach and my own smell making me sick. I could have used a beer myself, and another one after that.

A half hour later, some men began to filter out of the steel door of Polar Boys, removing their jackets in the sun as they walked across the broiling brown grass, some toward the liquor store, others toward a roach coach parked by the loading dock. Soon another man walked out alone, a bearded man approaching middle age, with a pleasant face framing quiet, serene eyes. He wore khaki pants, thick-soled boots, and a brilliant blue coat. I felt my pulse quicken as I stepped out of my car, then a chemical energy as I crossed the street.

“How’s it going?” I said, blocking the man’s path on the sidewalk.

“Very well,” he said, “thank you.” He went to move around me. “Excuse me, please.”

I stepped in front of him, keeping a friendly smile on my face. “Kind of hot to be wearin’ that coat, isn’t it?”

“Hot? Yes, I suppose it is.” He tried again. “Excuse me.”

I withdrew my wallet from my back pocket, flipped it open. “My name is Nick Stefanos. I’m a private investigator.” He glanced at my license despite himself.

“Yes?”

“There was a murder down by the river a couple of weeks ago. A young man was shot in the mouth.”

He waited, spoke carefully. “I read about it in the papers, I think. Yes, I seem to recall it.”

“I’m working on that case. I’m going to be blunt with you, because I don’t have much time. I believe you witnessed the murder.”

“You’re mistaken,” he said. “Or misinformed. Now if you’ll excuse me, I only have one hour for lunch.”

“I’ll just talk to your employer, then. And maybe after that I’ll go over to that pay phone, give the police a call. Since this is just a misunderstanding, you won’t mind clearing things up with them, right? Upstanding citizen like you-”

“Now wait a minute,” he said, his shoulders relaxing. “What is it that you want?”

“An hour of your time, an answer or two. And then I’ll go away.”

He looked back at the icehouse, then at me. “You have a car?”

I jerked my chin toward the Dodge. Something came into his eyes, passed just as quickly. The two of us crossed the street. I opened the passenger door, looked at him as he began to climb inside.

“You know?” I said. “You don’t look too crazy to me.”

“Crazy?” he said, glancing up at me as he settled into his seat. “Why, Mr. Stefanos, of course I’m crazy. As crazy as Ahab, or Lady Macbeth, or the quiet man who trims your neighbor’s lawn. We’re all a little bit crazy, in our own way. Don’t you agree?”

I GOT BACK ON M and took the 11th Street Bridge over the river, heading toward Anacostia. On the bridge, I caught him glancing over the rail, at the marinas and the clearing and the sunken houseboat below.

“What’s your name, anyway?” I said.

“William Cooper.”

I pushed in the dash lighter and put a cigarette to my lips. “I read a short story collection last year that I really liked. The stories were all set in D.C., written by a local guy. Guy’s name was William C. Cooper.”

“William C. Cooper,” he said, “is me.”

Cooper directed me to a short street off the east side of the bridge. We parked in front of his place, a clapboard row house fronted by a shaky wood porch, and went inside. I sat in a dark, comfortable living room while Cooper went off and built a couple of sandwiches and made a pitcher of iced tea. Books lined the shelves along the wall and were stacked on tables and beneath chairs throughout the room. I stood in the icy cool of the air conditioning and read the titles of the books, and after awhile Cooper, still wearing his coat, reentered the living room with lunch on a tray.

“You ever take that coat off?” I said between bites of a sandwich of sliced chicken on French bread with creole mayonnaise.

“I wear it from the time I leave every morning to the time I return from work.”

“It’s cold enough in the icehouse, and it’s definitely cold enough in here. But why outside, in this heat?”

Cooper shrugged. “I’ve worked in that icehouse for many years and my body has just adjusted. I found that I was getting ill very often in the beginning, taking my coat off outdoors, putting it on again when I went back inside. My body temperature is kept constant this way, I suppose. These days, I rarely get sick. I guess you could say that this old coat has contributed quite nicely to my continued good health.”

“You talk kinda funny, you know it?”

Cooper smiled tolerantly. “You mean, for a black man, don’t you?”

“Partly,” I admitted, “yeah. But to tell you the truth, I dohe hein’t know many white folks who talk like you, either. And zero Greeks.”

“It’s not the world you travel in, that’s all. I’m hardly a blue blood. I was raised in Shaw, but my higher education was extensive, and strictly Ivy League. It’s not an affectation, I can assure you of that. It’s simply where I spent my adult life.”

“So a guy like you… why an icehouse?”

Cooper had a long drink of his tea. “I wore the white collar and the rep tie and the Harris tweed and found that the life of an academic bored me. The politics, and the people, all of it was utterly bloodless, and ultimately quite damaging to my work. I took the job in the icehouse so that I could once again have the freedom to think. It might appear to the outsider that I’m doing menial labor, but what I’m really doing, all day, is composing-writing, in effect, in my head. And the amount of material I soak up in that place, it’s tremendous. Of course, I need the money, as well.”

“What about your morning routine, under the bridge. The boatyard workers, they all pegged you as a headcase.”

Cooper smiled. “And I did nothing to dispel their suspicions. That was always my time to be alone, and I preferred to keep it that way. I’d wake up in the morning, walk across the bridge, take my book and my cup of coffee, and have a seat under the Sousa. Sometimes I’d read, and oftentimes I’d sing. I’m in the choir at my church, you know, and the acoustics beneath that bridge are outstanding.”

“Were you there the morning that boy was killed?”

“Yes,” Cooper said with a nod. “And so were you. Your car was parked in the wooded area, to the right of the clearing. I recognized it as soon as you pointed it out to me.”

“I didn’t see anything, though. What did you see?”

“Not much. I heard a muted gunshot. Then a car drove by me, turned around at the dead end, and drove by once again.”

“You see the driver or the passenger?”

“No.”

“You read the plates?”

“No.”

“What kind of car?”

“One of those off-road vehicles-I don’t recall the model or make. A white one.”

“Anything else to identify it?”

Cooper looked in my eyes. “A business name was printed on the side. ‘Lighting and Equipment,’ it said. Does that help you?”

I sat back in my chair. “Yes.”

We finished our lunch in silence. He picked up the dishes and took them back into the kitchen. When he returned, I got up from the table.

“That do it?”

“One more question,” I said. “Why didn’t you go to the police?”

“I’m no one’s hero, Mr. Stefanos. And I had no wish to become involved. My anonymity and my solitude are my most prized possessions. I don’t expect you to understand. I’m sorry if you don’t.”

“I’m the last guy qualified to judge you.”

“Then I guess we’re through.”

“Yes. I never met you and you never met me.”

“Agreed,” he said. “Though don’t be surprised if you end up in one of my stories.”

“Make me handsome,” I said. “Will you?”

Cooper laughed and looked at his watch. “I’d better get going. Will you drop me back at work?”

“Yeah. I’ve gotta get to work, too.”

I HIT THE FIRST pay phone past Polar Boys and called LaDuke. I got his machine, and left a message: “Jack, it’s Nick. It’s Tuesday, about one-thirty in the afternoon. I found the witness to the Jeter murder. The shooters drove a white van, said ‘Lighting and Equipment’ on the side-the van came from the lot of the warehouse on Potomac and Half, across the street from the warehouse we knocked over last week. The killers didn’t leave town, Jack, they moved across the fucking street. Anyway, I’m headed home. Call me there when you get in; we’ll figure out what to do next. Call me, hear?”

BUT LADUKE DIDN’T CALL. I waited, did some push-ups, worked my abs, and then took a shower. I dried off and put some Husker Du on the platter, then a Nation of Ulysses, and turned the volume way up. When the music stopped, I left a second message for LaDuke and sat around for another hour. Then I got my ten-speed out and rode it a hard eight miles, came back to the apartment, and took another shower. I dropped a frozen dinner in the oven, ate half of it, threw the rest away. I made a cup of coffee and lit a cigarette and smoked the cigarette out on my stoop. By then, it was evening.

I dres sed in a black T-shirt and jeans, put an old pair of Docs on my feet, laced them tightly. I went into my bedroom and opened the bottom dresser drawer, looking for my gun. The gun was gone; I had dumped it in the trunk of LaDuke’s Ford after the warehouse job. I thought about my homemade sap and a couple of knives I had collected, but I left them alone. I went back out to the living room, looked through the screen door. The night had come fully now, the moths tripping out in the light of the stoop. My cat came from the kitchen and brushed against my shin. I picked up the phone and dialed LaDuke.

“Jack,” I said, speaking to the dead-air whir of his machine, “I’m going down there, to the warehouse. “It’s…” I looked at my watch, “It’s nine-forty-five. I’ve got to go down there, man. I’ve gotta see what’s going on.”

I stood there, listening to the quiet of my apartment and the rainlike hiss of the tape. My heart skipped and my hand tightened on the receiver.

“LaDuke!” I shouted. “Where the fuck are you, man?”