The Night Gardener

CHAPTER 12

Gonrad Gaskins came out of a clinic located beside a church off Minnesota Avenue and Naylor Road, in Randle Highlands, Southeast. He wore a T-shirt darkened with sweat stains and faded green Dickies work pants. He had been up since 5:00 a.m., when he had risen and walked over to the shape-up spot on Central Avenue in Seat Pleasant, Maryland. He was picked up there every morning by an ex-offender, one of those Christians who saw it as their duty to hire men like they themselves had once been. The shape-up spot was near the rental he shared with Romeo Brock, a shabby two-bedroom house in a stand of woods up off Hill Road.

Brock was waiting on him in the SS, idling in the lot of the clinic. Gaskins dropped into the passenger seat.

'You piss in that cup?' said Brock.

'My PO makes sure I do,' said Gaskins. 'She said I gotta drop a urine every week.'

'You can buy clean pee.'

'I know it. But at this clinic, they damn near search your ass before you go into the bathroom. Ain't nobody gettin away with that bullshit. Why my PO sends me here.'

'You be dropping negatives, anyway.'

'True. I ain't even fuck with no weed since I been uptown.'

Gaskins felt good about it, too. He even liked the way his back ached at the end of an honest day's work. Like his back was reminding him he did something straight.

'Let's get your ass cleaned up,' said Brock. 'I can't take your stink.'

They drove into Prince George's, crossing Southern Avenue, the border between the city and the county, where the dirt was done. Those on the outlaw side knew you could move back and forth across that border and rarely get caught, as neither police force had cross-jurisdiction. They had tried to enlist the aid of U.S. Marshals and ATF officers but as of yet had been unable to coordinate the various forces and agencies. Between the gentrification of the city, which had displaced many low-income residents to P.G., and the disorganization of local law enforcement, the neighborhoods around the county line had become a criminal's paradise, the new badlands of the metropolitan area.

'You all right?' said Brock.

'I'm tired, is all it is.'

'That all? You just tired? Or are you pressed about somethin? 'Cause you know I got everything fixed airtight.'

'Said I was tired.'

'You just mad 'cause you still on paper. You got to pee in a little old plastic cup, and here I am, free.'

'Hmph,' said Gaskins.

His young cousin was all bravado and had not yet seen the other side of the hill. Gaskins had been on both slopes. He had been involved in the drug trade at an early age. He had been an enforcer. He had fallen on agg assault and gun charges, and had done time in Lorton, and when they'd closed Lorton they moved him out of state. There was nothing about any of it that he wanted to visit again. But he had promised his aunt, Romeo Brock's mother, that he would stay by her son and see that he came to no harm.

So far he had made good on that promise. Mina Brock had raised Gaskins after his own mother died when he was a child. You couldn't go back on a blood oath made to a woman as purely good as his aunt. She was probably on her knees right now, scrubbing the urine from some hotel bathroom floor or cleaning the jam off someone's sheets. She had fed and clothed Gaskins, and tried to slap some sense into him when she had to. She was plain good. Least he could do was look after her natural child.

But Romeo wasn't right. He was inching toward that line and was close to crossing it, and though Gaskins would have liked nothing better than to bail out on him, he felt he was trapped. It sickened him to know where Romeo was taking him, and still he had to stay.

They were driving toward a cliff. The doors were locked and the car had no brakes.

Gaskins showered and changed in the single bathroom of their house, a one-story structure fronted by a porch, set back on a gravel drive and nearly hidden among old-growth maple, oak, and one tall pine. A large tulip poplar grew alongside the house. Branches from that tree had fallen and lay on the roof. The home was in need of repair, replumbing, and rewiring, but the owner never visited the property. The rent was small, in line with the physical condition of the house, and Brock always paid on time. He didn't want the landlord or anyone else coming around.

Gaskins pulled a hooded sweatshirt over his head and checked himself in the mirror. The landscape work was keeping him in shape. He had thrown weights in prison regular, so it wasn't like he'd ever fallen off. Compact and with thick, muscular thighs, he had been a pretty fair back in his youth, a low-to-the-ground Don Nottingham type, hard to grab, hard to bring down. He had played Pop Warner in the city but drifted away from it when he got involved with some corner boys in the Trinidad neighborhood, where he'd come up. Coach had tried to keep him in it, but Gaskins was too smart for that. There was money to be made, and all the things that went with it. And he'd gotten those things, too. For a short while. He could have been a fair halfback, though, if he'd stayed past the tenth grade at Phelps. But he had been too smart.

He walked into Brock's room, as messy as a teenage boy's. Brock was sitting on the bed, checking the load of a Gold Cup.45.

'That new?' said Gaskins.

'Yeah.'

'What happened to your other piece?'

'I traded up,' said Brock.

'Why you got to bring it?'

'I always carry when I work. You gonna need a roscoe, too.'

'Why?'

'I spoke to the man,' said Brock. 'Fishhead gonna give us something for tonight.'

'What kinda somethin?'

'Something good, is all I know. The man say we gonna get us some real.'

'I shouldn't even be in a car with someone got a gun. We get searched, that's an automatic nickel for me.'

'Then stay here. I can find someone else to back me up.'

Gaskins looked him over. Boy was headed for prison or a grave, and neither one of those prospects made him shudder. Long as he left a rep behind. Wasn't like Gaskins was gonna stop it from happening. But he had to try.

'What you got for me?' said Gaskins.

Brock pulled a piece of oilskin out from under his bed. Inside the cloth was a nine-millimeter automatic. He handed it to Gaskins.

'Glock Seventeen,' said Brock.

'Shit is plastic,' said Gaskins.

'It's good enough for the MPD.'

'Where'd you get it?'

'Gun man down there in Landover?'

Gaskins inspected the weapon. 'No serial number?'

'Man filed it off.'

'That there's another automatic fall. You don't even have to be using the motherfucker; they catch you with shaved numbers, you goin back in on a felony charge.'

'Why you so piss-tess?'

'Tryin to teach you somethin.'

Gaskins released the magazine, thumbed the top shell, and felt pressure against the spring. He pushed the magazine back into the grip with his palm. He holstered it behind the waistband of his jeans, grip rightward so that he could reach it naturally with his right hand. It felt familiar against his skin.

'You ready?' said Gaskins.

'Now you talkin,' said Brock.

Ivan Lewis had been called Fishhead most of his life because of his long face and the way his big eyes could see things without his having to turn his neck. It wasn't that he looked like a real fish, but more that he looked liked a cartoon version of one. Even his mother, up to the day she passed, had called him Fish.

He was coming from his sister's place, walking down Quincy Street in Park View, looking at what the new people were doing to the houses he had been knowing his whole life. He never thought Park View would gentrify, but the evidence of it was on every block. Young black and Spanish buyers with down-payment money were fixing up these old row homes, and some pioneer white folks were, too. Shoot, a couple of white boys had opened up a pizza parlor on Georgia earlier in the year. Whites starting up businesses again in the View, that was something Fishhead thought he'd never see.

Not that the gamers had gone away. There was plenty of dirt being done on this side of Georgia, especially down around the Section Eights on Morton. And the Spanish had gripped up much of the avenue's west side, into Columbia Heights. But property owners were making improvements around here, house by house.

Fishhead Lewis wondered how a man like him was gonna fit in this town much longer. Once people put money into their homes, they didn't want to see low-down types walking out front their properties, not even on the public sidewalks. These folks voted, so they could make things happen. Now you had politicians, like that ambitious light-skinned dude, councilman for that area up top of Georgia, trying to make laws about loitering and stopping cats from buying single cans of beer. Shoot, not everyone wanted a six-pack or could afford one. Friends of Fishhead said, 'How they gonna discriminate?' Fishhead had to tell them, with money and power behind you, you damn sure could. The light-skinned dude, he didn't really care about folks hanging out, and he didn't care if a man wanted to enjoy himself one beer on a summer night. But he was running for mayor, so there it was.

He turned into an alley behind Quincy, up by Warder Place. There, idling down at the end of the alley, was a black Impala SS. They were waiting on him where they liked to do.

Fishhead did not have a payroll job. He made money by selling information. Heroin users were perfect for such work. They went places other people couldn't go. They heard dope and murder gossip that went deeper than the ghetto telegraph of the stoop and the barbershop. They seemed harmless and pitiful, but they had ears, a brain, and a mouth that could speak. Addicts, testers, cutters, and prostitutes were inside to the extreme, and the best informants on the street.

Fishhead had got something that morning. He had heard about it from a boy he knew, worked at a cut house in lower LeDroit. Boy said some pure white was coming in tomorrow from New York, to be distributed by a man looking to become a player but not yet there. A man not plugged into a network, what they called a consortium, with other dealers. An independent with no one to watch his back but an underling who was hoping to go along for the ride.

Fishhead was looking to get out of his sister's basement. It had been their mother's house, but the sister had managed to claim it, and the inheritance, with the help of a lawyer. Because she did have a conscience, she allowed him a room downstairs, rent-free but with no kitchen privileges and a lock on the door leading up to the first floor. It was not much more than a mattress, a hot plate for cooking, a cooler, and a toilet with a stand-up shower, had roaches crawling on the floor. He didn't blame her for treating him like a dog you didn't let upstairs. All the shit he'd done to disappoint his family, he could understand it. But no man, not even a low-ass doper like him, should have to live like that.

This information he had today was his way out. He had been getting low that morning with his cut man friend when the dude started talking. Matter of fact, Fishhead had just pushed down on the plunger when the news came his way. He hoped he had heard it right.

Fishhead slipped into the backseat of the SS and settled down on the bench.

'Charlie the mother-fuckin tuna,' said Brock, under the wheel. He did not turn his head but communicated with his eyes via the rear-view. 'What you got for us, slim?'

'Somethin,' said Fishhead. He liked the drama of giving it up slow. Also, he didn't care for Romeo Brock. Slick boy, always looking down from his high horse. The quiet one, his older cousin, he was all right. And tougher than the boy with the mouth.

'Give it up,' said Brock. 'I'm tired of these bullshit plays. Tired of shakin change out the pockets of kids.'

'That's what you do,' said Fishhead. 'Ya'll rob independents got no protection. Most times, they be kids. If they was men, shit, they'd be connected, and it would come back on you.'

'Said I'm ready to move up from that.'

'Well, I got somethin.'

'Talk about it,' said Brock.

'Dude name of Tommy Broadus. Tryin to act like he big-time, but he just startin out. Came to the cut house where my friend works, inquiring about fees, all that. Said he got some white comin in. I'm talking about keys, and I'm hearin it's tomorrow. My friend say this man can be got.'

'So? I ain't want no fuckin dope. Do I look like a goddamn her-won salesman to you?'

'He gonna need to pay for the package, right? If he sending a mule to NYC, he gonna send the cash up with him. Seein as how he green with the New York connect, he surely don't have no credit.'

'What about guns?' said Gaskins.

'Huh?'

'Even an amateur gonna have something behind him.'

'That's on y'all,' said Fishhead. 'I stay out the mechanics. I'm sayin, some big money gonna come out this man's house this evening and some dope gonna come back in. I'm just passin this along.'

'When?' said Brock.

'After dark, but not too late. Mules don't like to make that Ninety-five run when the traffic too thin. Look for a trap car, I'd expect. The Taurus is popular, or the Mercury sister car.'

'Where this man stay at?' said Brock.

Fishhead Lewis passed a slip of paper over the bench. Brock took it, read it, and slipped it into the breast pocket of his rayon shirt.

'How you get the address?' said Gaskins.

'Our man ran his name through the database, somethin. Parked on the street, watched him go in and out his house. He stayin in a detached in a residential area. Real quiet around there, too.'

'Not too smart, let yourself get seen so easy.'

'What I'm sayin. Man that sloppy can get took.'

'Where he get the money?' said Gaskins, thinking it through.

'By turning his inventory,' said Fishhead, now improvising but trying to sound as if he knew. 'This here can't be the first buy the man done made.'

'I'm askin, how we know this Tommy Broad-ass fella ain't bein bankrolled by someone with power?'

"Cause my man at the cut house said he was braggin on the fact that he all alone.'

Gaskins looked at Brock. He could see from his eager look that Brock had already decided to go. He was looking at the money, feeling it between his fingers, spending it on women and clothing, a suit in red. What he wasn't doing was thinking it through.

'What's he look like?' said Gaskins.

'Say what?'

'Wouldn't want to take the wrong man.'

'My friend say he fat. Too old for the game, but I guess he startin late. Came to the cut house with a woman, had it all in the right places. Had a mouth on her, too. They was arguing over shit the whole time they was in there.'

'Anyone else?'

'Not that my man said.'

'You gonna earn somethin serious, this plays out,' said Brock. 'Buy yourself a mermaid or sumshit.'

Fishhead forced a smile. His teeth were rotted, and there were scabs on his face.

'I been wonderin,' said Brock. 'Do it smell like fish to a fish?'

'All day,' said Fishhead, who hadn't had a clean woman in years.

'Get the fuck out. We'll take it from here.'

Fishhead got out of the car, hiking his pants up as he moved along. Brock and Gaskins watched him walk down the alley, a pit bull barking at him furiously from behind chain-link as he passed.

Brock turned to Gaskins. 'What you think?'

'I think we don't know shit.'

'We know enough to park ourselves outside this man's house and see what we can see.'

'I ain't stayin out late. I gotta be at the shape-up spot at dawn.'

Brock punched a number into his cell.