Down By the River Where the Dead Men Go

EIGHT

The heavy woman with the elephantine thighs sat out front of the Jeter apartment, her folding chair in the same position as it had been two days before. I turned into the lot and parked beside Barry’s Z, walked across the worn brown grass, into the cool concrete stairwell, and down the steps to the Jeters’ door. I knocked on it, listening to the noises behind it, television and laughter and the cry of a baby, until the peephole darkened and the door swung open. Calvin’s sister stood in the frame, her baby resting on her hip.

“Yes?”

“Nick Stefanos. I was here the day before yesterday, talking to your mom.”

“I remember.”

“Is she in?”

The girl looked behind her. Barry’s younger brother and another shirtless young man about his age sat on the couch, describing a movie they had both seen, talking loudly over the minstrel-like characters acting broadly on the television.

“Uh-uh,” the girl said. “She’s at the store.”

“Can I talk to Barry for a minute?”

She thought about it while I listened to the shirtless young man talking about the movie: “Carlito” did this and “Carlito” Nht=m" ught abodid that, and “Carlito, he was badder than a motherfucker, boy.” Then the young man was on his feet, his hand figured in the shape of a pistol, and he was jabbing the hand back and forth, going, “Carlito said, bap-bap-bap-bap-bap.”

“Come on in,” the girl said, her lips barely moving.

I followed her into the room and back through the hall. The young men stopped talking as I passed, and when my back was to them, they broke into raucous laughter. I supposed that they were laughing at me. Calvin’s sister gestured me toward a bedroom. I stepped aside to let her pass back through the hall.

I went to the bedroom and knocked on the frame. Barry stood next to an unmade double bed in a room as unadorned as the rest. He read from a book, one long finger on the page. He looked up at my knock, gave me an eye sweep, and returned his gaze to the book.

“Wha’sup?”

“I need to get something out of Calvin’s room. It’s nothing personal of his. Would that be all right?”

Barry closed the book and sighed. “Come on.”

He walked with me to Calvin’s bedroom. Barry folded his arms, watched me go to the footlocker and get the folded copy of D.C. This Week that sat beneath the basketball. When I turned around, he was looking at the paper. I thought I saw some kind of light come into his eyes.

“What am I, getting warm or something?”

Barry said, “You’re really into this shit, aren’t you?”

“I’m going to find out who killed Calvin, if that’s what you mean.”

“And if you do? What’s that, gon’ bring Calvin up from the dead?”

“No. But maybe his mother might rest a little easier if she knew what happened to her son. You ever think about that?”

Barry breathed out heavily through his nose. “Moms ain’t worried about no justice. She thinks Calvin’s up there, sittin’ by the right hand of Jesus and shit, right now. Anyhow, who asked you to get on this?”

“That doesn’t matter. The point is, I’m being paid now, and that makes it work. And when someone pays you to do something, you do it. Once you accept that, you don’t think about why, and you finish whatever it is you started.”

“I wouldn’t understand about all that.”

“The thing is, I think you do understand. See, I noticed that uniform in the back of your car. You got that fast-food job of yours-what do you make, five and a quarter an hour, maybe five-fifty?”

Barry’s eyes narrowed. “So?”

“So, you could be like all those other knuckleheads out there, making ten times that a week on the street. But instead, you’re being a man, trying to be right for your family.”

“Listen, man, I ain’t got time for all this bullshit, understand? Matter of fact, I got to get into work, right now.”

I withdrew my wallet, slipped out a card, and handed it to Barry.

“Here,” I said. “You dropped this the first time around.”

“I got to go to work,” he said softly, slipping the card into his shorts. “Come on, I’ll let you out.”

We walked back into the living room. Barry stopped by the TV set and I headed for the front door.

The shirtless young man said, “Hey, Barry, who’s your boy?”

“Man’s a private detective,” Barry said mockingly. “He finds things.”

Barry’s younger brother said, “Maybe he could find Roger some onion, know what I’m sayin’? ’Cause Roger ain’t had none in a long time.”

“Go on, man,” Roger said. “I forgot about more pussy than you ever had, boy.” Barry’s brother and Roger touched hands and began to laugh.

I looked at Barry. He wasn’t laughing, and neither was I. I tucked the newspaper under my arm and left the room.

On the way to my place, I stopped at Athena’s and had a seat at the bar. I lit a cigarette, drew on it, and laid it in the ashtray. It was early yet for any kind of crowd, but I recognized a couple of regulars in quiet conversation, along with an Ultimate solo drinker who was as beautiful as a model and an intense woman I knew who was running the pool table on a youngish woman I had never met. Stella came over and wiped the area in front of me with a damp rag. She cocked her head and raised her eyebrows. I nodded my head one time. She reached into the cooler and pulled a bottle of beer. She popped the cap and set it down on a dry coaster. I thanked her and had a swig.

“So you’re back to it,” she said.

“Never had any intention of getting off it. I’ve never kidded myself about what I am. I’ve just got to try and not be so stupid about it, that’s all. Like I was that night.”

Stella adjusted her eyeglasses, put her fist on her hip. “That some kind of back-door apology?”

“Yeah, and a thank-you at the same time. I was probably rude about you stepping in-you know how I get. I know you were just trying to look out for me.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You’d do the same for me, right?”

“You bet.”

“Anyway, nobody got hurt.”

I left that alone and reached across the bar and shook her hand.

“So what’re you up to tonight, Nick?”

“Date with Lyla. But I wanted to S I ighask you something.”

“Go ahead.”

“You still play in that gay and lesbian bartenders’ softball league?”

“Every Monday night.”

“You know anybody from over at the Fire House, on P?”

Stella rubbed a finger under her nose. “There was this guy, Paul Ritchie, played for a long time on our team. Knees went out on him a couple of years back. Good guy. Good ballplayer, too. Ritchie, he could really hit.”

“You ever in touch with him anymore?”

“He still comes to the games. It’s more a chance to see old friends now than it is a competition. So, yeah, he stays up with us.”

“He still tends at the Fire House?”

“He’s been there, like, a hundred years. Where’s he gonna go?”

I drank off some of my beer. “I need to talk with him, if I can. I’m working on something that might involve that place.”

“Something that could get him into trouble?”

“Not unless he’s directly involved. The truth is, I don’t know yet. But I’ll do my best to keep him out of it. Could you hook me up?”

Stella took her hand off her hip, pointed a stubby finger at my face. “I thought you came in here to apologize, Nick.”

“I did, Stella.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I’ll give Paul a call, see what he says.”

“Tomorrow would be good for me,” I said.

“Don’t push it,” Stella said sternly. “I’ll call him.”

I told her to leave a message about it on my machine. She nodded and went to fix a cocktail for a customer. I drank the rest of my beer and put my cigarette between my teeth. Stella winked and gave me a little wave. I left ten on three and went out the front door. I walked to my car in the gathering darkness.

The two copies of D.C. This Week were identical, the last ones printed before Calvin Jeter’s murder. That the issues were the same couldn’t have been a coincidence, but as I looked through them, sitting at the desk of my makeshift office in my apartment, I saw no connection to either Calvin’s death or Roland’s disappearance. I skimmed every article, weekly feature, arts review, and column and came up empty. So I showered, changed into slacks and a blue cotton shirt, and went to pick up Lyla.

“Wow,” I said as she opened her door.

She wore a gauzy green-and-rust sundress cut high above her knees. Her hair was pulled back, with some of it left to fall around her lovely face, the light catching threads of silver in the red.

“You’re late, Nick.”

“I know. I’m sorry, I just got hung up in what I’ve been working on.”

“That’s okay.” She held up her goblet of wine. “But I got started without you.”

“I’ll catch up,” I said. “Let’s go.”

We drove across town in my Coronet 500, all four windows down, some Massive Attack pumping from the deck. Lyla was moving her head, digging on the music and the night, and I reached across the buckets and put my hand in her hair. At the next stoplight, we kissed and held it until the green. The air felt clean, with a crispness running through it, a rarity for that time of year; it was a fine summer night in D.C.

We ate at a Thai place on Massachusetts Avenue, in a row of restaurants east of Union Station. We talked about our respective days over satay and spring rolls and a barbecued beef salad; Lyla stayed with white wine while I worked on a couple of Singhas. By the time the waitress served our main course, a whole crispy fish with hot chili and garlic, the subject turned to Lyla’s newspaper and what I had found that day.

“Any thoughts?” I said.

“If you think something criminal is going on in relation to the newspaper, a good bet would be the personals.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s all sort of things happening in there-messages for meeting places that are really drop locations, model searches looking for porno candidates, stuff like that. Nick, you wouldn’t believe how many of the entries are just ads for prostitution, or for some other scam that’s even worse.”

“And you guys know about it?”

“We don’t knowingly take any ads or personals that are criminal. But we’re running a business. The Post and City Paper are doing it and making good money at it, and we have to do it, too. With the personals-it’s a nine hundred number-we get ninety-five cents a minute. There’re a couple hundred of those in each issue. When you annualize the revenue-well, you figure it out.”

“Yeah, I see what you’re saying. I’ll go back to it, check it out.” I cut a piece of fish off and dished it onto Lyla’s plate. “Here.”

“Thanks.” Lyla had a bite and signaled the waitress for another wine.

“You’re hittin’ it pretty good tonight,” I said.

“It’s all this hot stuff,” she said. “This fish is making me thirsty.”

“It’s making me thirsty, too. Next time that waitress goes by, get me a beer, as well.”

After dinner, we walked across Mass to a nice quiet bar in a fancy restaurant run by friends of Lyla’s. We ordered a couple of drinks-a bourbon rocks for me and a vodka tonic for Lyla-and had them slowly, listening to the recorded jazz that was a part Sat v› my stool and drank quietly and allowed myself to grow jealous. On the way out of the place, Lyla tripped on the steps and fell and scraped her knee on the concrete. We got into my car and I leaned forward and kissed the scrape, tasting her blood with my tongue. From that fortuitous position, I tried to work my head up under her dress. She laughed generously and pushed me away.

“Patience,” she said. I mumbled something and put the car in gear.

We stopped once more that night, to have a drink on the roof of the Hotel Washington at 15th and F, a corny thing to do, for sure, but lovely nonetheless, when the city is lit up at night and the view is as on time as anything ever gets. We managed to snag a deuce by the railing, and I ordered a five-dollar beer and a wine for Lyla. We caught a breeze there, and our table looked out over rooftops to the monuments and the Mall. A television personality-a smirky young man who played on a sitcom called My Two Dads (a show that Johnny McGinnes called My Doo-Dads)-and his entourage took a large table near ours, and on their way out, Lyla winged a peanut at the back of the actor’s head. The missile missed its target, but we got a round of applause from some people at the other tables who had obviously been subjected to the show. I could have easily had a few more beers when I was done with the first, could have sat in that chair for the rest of the night, but Lyla’s eyes began to look a little filmy and unfocused, and her ears had turned a brilliant shade of red. We decided to go.

We drove to Lyla’s apartment off Calvert Street, near the park, and made out like teenagers in her elevator on the way up to her floor. At her place, I goosed her while she tried to fit her keys to the lock and then we did an intense tongue dance and dry-humped for a while against her door, until a neighbor came out into the hall to see what the noise was all about. Inside, she pulled a bottle of white from the refrigerator, and we went directly to the bedroom. Lyla turned on her bedside lamp and pulled her dress up over her head while I removed my shirt. The sight of her-her freckled breasts, the curve of her hips, her full red bush-shortened my breath; it never failed to. She draped the dress over the lamp shade, kicked her shoes off, and walked naked across the room, the bottle in her hand. She took a long pull from the neck.

“We don’t need that,” I said.

Lyla pushed me onto my back on the bed and spit a mouthful of wine onto my chest. She straddled me, bent over, and began to slowly lick the wine off my nipples.

“You sure about that?” she said.

I could only grunt, and close my eyes.

Lyla’s heavy breathing woke me in the darkness. I looked at the LED readout on her clock, laid there for a half hour with my eyes open, then got out of bed, ate a couple of aspirins, and took a shower. I dressed in my clothes from the night before, made coffee, and smoked a cigarette out on her balcony.

I came back into the apartment, checked on Lyla. In the first light of dawn, her face looked d Sfactil arawn and gray. Her mouth was frozen open, the way she always slept off a drunk, and there was a faint wheeze in her exhale. I kissed her on the cheek and then on her lips. Her breath was stale from the wine. I brushed some hair off her forehead and left the place, locking the door behind me.

I drove straight down to the river, passed under the Sousa Bridge, turned the car around, and parked it in the clearing. No sign of a crazy black man in a brilliant blue coat. No cops, either; I guessed that, by now, the uniforms had been pulled off that particular detail.

I got out of my car, sat on its hood, and lit a cigarette. A pleasure boat pulled out of its slip and ran toward the Potomac, leaving little wake. Some gulls crossed the sky, turned black against the rising sun. I took one last drag off my cigarette and pitched it into the river.

Back in Shepherd Park, my cat waited for me on my stoop. I sat next to her and rubbed the hard scar tissue of her one empty eye socket and scratched behind her ears.

“Miss me?” I said. She rolled onto her back.

I entered my apartment and saw the blinking red light of my answering machine. I hit the bar, listened to the message. I stripped naked, got into bed, and set the alarm for one o’clock. Stella had come through; I had an appointment with Paul Ritchie for 2:30 that afternoon at the Fire House on P.