Down By the River Where the Dead Men Go

SIX

I stood there staring at him. He had a boyishly handsome face, clean-shaven and straight-featured, almost delicate, with a long, lanky body beneath it. His light brown hair was full and wavy on top, shaved short in the back and on the sides, a High Sierra cut. His manner was tough, but his wide brown eyes were curiously flat; I couldn’t tell what, if anything, lived behind them. He tightened his grip on the short-barreled. 357.

“Why aren’t you moving?” he said.

“I don’t think I have to,” I said. “You’re not going to mug me, or you’d already have me in that alley. And you’re not going to shoot me-not with your finger on the outside of that trigger guard. Anyway, you’nt›bre not throwing off that kind of energy.”

“That a fact.”

“I think so, yeah.”

He shifted his feet, tensed his jaw, and tilted his head toward his car. “I’m not going to ask you again, Stevonus.”

“All right.” I moved to the passenger side and put my hand to the door.

“Uh-uh,” he said, and tossed me his keys. “You drive.”

I walked around to the front of the car and got into the driver’s seat. LaDuke settled into the shotgun side of the bench. I fitted his key in the ignition and turned the engine over.

“Where to?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, the gun still pointed at my middle. He wore a long-sleeved white shirt and a plain black tie tightly knotted to the neck. His slacks were no-nonsense, plain front, and he wore a pair of thick-soled oxfords on his feet. A line of sweat had snaked down his cheek and darkened the collar of the shirt. “Drive around.”

I pulled the boat out of the space and swung a U in the middle of 8th. I headed toward Pennsylvania Avenue, and when I got there, I took a right and kept the car in traffic.

“You gonna tell me what this is about?”

“I’ll tell you when I’m ready to tell you.”

“That’s a good line,” I said. “But you’re in the wrong movie. Let me help you out here. This is the part where you’re supposed to say, ‘I’m asking the questions here, Stevonus.’ ”

“Shut up.”

“You’re making a mistake,” I said, speeding up next to a Mustang ahead of me and in the lane to my left. “You’ve been making mistakes all day. Your shadow job was a joke. Stevie Wonder could have made your tail.”

“I said, shut up.”

“Then you sit out front of where I work for I don’t know how long. How many people you figure walked down 8th in that time happened to see you? Those are all people that could ID you later on.”

“Just keep pushing it,” he said.

“And now this. ‘You drive’-that’s some real stupid shit, pal. You let me drive, and who do you think’s got the power? Yeah, you’re holding the gun, but I’ve got both our lives in my hands. I can drive this shitwagon into a wall, or into a cop car, or I can drive it right into the fucking river if I want to. Or I can do this.”

I stuck my head out the window and yelled something at the driver of the Mustang. The man turned his head, startled. I yelled again and flipped him the bird. The driver was alone, but he was a Southeast local, and he wasn’t going to take it. He screamed something back at me and swerved into my lane.

“No Cizet. He scw he’ll remember us,” I said, talking calmly over the man’s angry shouts. “And he’ll remember the car. In case you got any ideas of doing me and dumping me out somewhere. I guess I better make sure he’s got our plate numbers, too.”

I accelerated and cut in front of the Mustang, then jammed on the brakes. The Mustang missed us, but not by much. I floored it, leaving some rubber on the street.

LaDuke’s fingers dug into the armrest on the door. “What the fuck are you doing, man!”

“Put that gun away,” I said, and cut across two lanes of traffic. The oncoming headlights passed across LaDuke’s stretched-back face. I jetted into a gas station without braking. The underside of the Ford scraped asphalt, and as the shocks gave it up, the top of LaDuke’s head hit the roof. I continued straight out of the station lot, tires screaming as I hit the side street.

“Put it away!” I said.

“Fuck,” he muttered, shaking his head. He opened the glove box in front of him, dropped the revolver inside, and shut it. I pulled the car over in front of some row houses and cut the engine.

LaDuke wiped his face dry with his shirtsleeve and looked across the seat. “Fuck,” he said again, more pissed off at himself than at me.

“Just sit there and cool down.”

“You know,” he said, “she told me she had the feeling you were some kind of headcase.”

“Who told you?”

He turned his head and stared out the window. “Shareen Lewis.”

“What is she to you?”

He withdrew his wallet from the seat of his pants and slid out a business card. I took it and read it: “Jack LaDuke, Private Investigations.” His logo-I’m not kidding-was one large eye. I stifled a grin and slipped the card into my shirt pocket.

“You know,” I said, “you didn’t need to pull that gun.”

“Just wanted to see how you’d handle it.”

“Am I auditioning for something?”

“You might be,” he said, giving the mysterious routine one last try.

I shrugged and fished a smoke out of my pack and pushed in the dash lighter. “Cigarette?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Okay.” I lit the Camel and drew some tobacco into my lungs. I noticed that my hand was shaking, and I put it by my side. On the corner up ahead, a neighborhood market stood open for business, moths swarming in the spotlight mounted above the door. Young people walked in and out carrying small packages and forties in brown paper bags wrapped to the neck. An older man leaned against the store’s plate glass and listlessly begged for change, barely raising his head. I sat there calmly and smoked my cigarette and wai Cretgainst ted for Jack LaDuke to regain his composure and enough of his pride to the point where he could talk. After awhile, he did.

“Shareen Lewis hired me to find her son,” he said.

“So she is worried about him.”

“Yes.”

“Why’d she call you?”

“She didn’t,” he said, “at first. She called a bondsman she knew named William Blackmon.”

“I’ve heard of him.”

“Yeah, they tell me he’s been around forever. But he farms out a lot of his work now. First thing I did when I came to town, I went to all the skip tracers and bondsmen, went to see if I couldn’t work something out.”

“Blackmon recommended you to Shareen Lewis.”

“They go to the same church. Blackmon took me for a flat referral fee.”

“And when I dropped my card in the Lewis’s door, she wanted to know what was going on.” LaDuke nodded. “She agreed to meet with me just so you could set up the tail, check me out.”

“That’s right,” LaDuke said. “Now I’ve been straight with you. What is going on, Stevonus?”

“I’m working on the Calvin Jeter murder,” I said, “just like I told her. Roland Lewis seems to be the key.”

“Working for who? And don’t kid me with that ‘police assistant’ crap, okay?”

I considered how much I wanted him to know. “I was the first one to find Jeter’s body. I came on it by accident. I called it in anonymously to the cops. The cops have gone as far as they’re going to go on it. I’m doing some digging on my own.”

“For who?” he repeated.

“Jeter’s mother. And me.”

LaDuke eyed me suspiciously. “There’s more to it than what you’re telling me. But I guess that’s good enough for now, Stevonus.”

“The name’s Stefanos. What have you got, a speech impediment or something?”

“I’ve got trouble with names,” he said with a touch of embarrassment. “That’s all.”

“Call me Nick, then. You can remember that, can’t you?”

“Sure.”

I flicked my cigarette out the window and watched its trail. LaDuke shifted nervously in his seat, tapped his fingers on the vent window.

“So what are we going to do now?” I said.

“Well,” LaDuke said, “I could use a little help on my end.”

“I bet you could.” I looked him over. “How long you been in D.C.?”

“Does it show?”

“A little.”

“I don’t know. Six, maybe seven months.”

“Six months. Shit, LaDuke, you don’t even know your way around yet. You’re never gonna find that kid.”

“It’s beginning to look like that.” He rubbed the top of his head. “How much have you got on the Jeter case?”

“A few things,” I said.

“I was thinking… maybe you and me, we ought to work together on this. You know, feed each other information. I mean, you’re not getting paid right now, isn’t that right? We could cut it straight down the middle.”

“Cut what? After Blackmon’s piece, that doesn’t leave enough for two.”

“I’ve got a couple of other cases I’m working on,” he said. “I’m after a deadbeat husband, for one. Maybe you could help me out there, too.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Sleep on it,” he said. “Because, the thing is, if you’re set on talking to Roland Lewis about Jeter, you’re going to have to go through me. Shareen Lewis isn’t going to let you near her house, that’s for sure. I don’t think she cares too much for you.”

“She must prefer them on the clean-cut side,” I said, scanning his shirt-and-tie arrangement, damp and limp now in the evening heat.

“Yeah, well, this is a business. If you’re going to make it, you’ve got to treat it like a business, act in a businesslike manner, and be presentable.”

“And brush your teeth after every meal.”

“What’s that?”

“Forget it. We about done?”

“Yeah,” he said, “let’s go. But move over, will you? This time, I’m gonna drive.”

He parked the ford in front of the Spot and let it idle. I got out, went around to the driver’s side, and leaned my arms on the lip of the open window.

“Think about my proposition,” he said.

I nodded and said, “I will.”

He looked at me curiously. “Something else?”

“There’s one thing I wanted to tell you.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t ever pull a gun on a man unless you intend to use it. And even then, don’t pull it. Do you understan Cyou"27"›

“I know all about guns,” he said. “I grew up in the country. I’ve known how to shoot since I was a kid.”

“Congratulations. But it’s not the same thing. An animal’s not a man.”

“No shit,” he said with a cocky grin.

I pushed off from the car and stood straight. “Well, I guess you already know everything there is to know. So you might as well get on home.”

“Right. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Take care, hear?”

I walked across the street to my car. LaDuke drove away.