The Night Remembers

19

The first address on Conroy’s log was a white bungalow on A Avenue N.E., over in what realtors like to call transitional neighborhoods. Not too long ago you would have seen Packards and Chryslers sitting in the drives and also along the curbing. Now the cars ran to ten-year-old heaps whose rusty bumpers proclaimed how they’d visited shrines such as Graceland or Grand Ole Opry or Six Flags in Nebraska. Women of many races — white, black, oriental — dragged reluctant kids along the sidewalk, threatening to spank them or worse, while on the porches, despite the temperature, sad-eyed men without shaves or hope sat sucking on cigarettes and quarts of 3.2 beer. They were waiting for something that had long ago passed them by, and probably without them even knowing it.

The porch tilted when I stepped on it. As I approached the door, I heard whispers inside the front window, and I saw a young girl jump behind a couch. She was playing, probably at her mother’s instructions, a game of hide-and-seek, the same sort she’d play when a bill collector came to call. I didn’t like the feeling that I was ruining the life of a four-year-old.

I knocked confidently, as if I didn’t have anything at all to hide, as if I was the most reasonable and gentle man who’d ever come to call.

This time I saw a woman in her mid-thirties pop up from behind an overstuffed chair and then pop back down. There was something familiar about her, though at the moment I wasn’t sure why.

I knocked once more and while I waited moved over a few steps to the rusty black mailbox that was hanging at an angle to the door, held in place by a single nail.

Through a slot in the lid I could see the white edge of an envelope. Quietly, I lifted the lid and took the envelope out. As I’d hoped, it was mail coming in, not going out.

Her name was Kathy Stacek. I knew instantly why she’d looked familiar a moment ago. Kathy Stacek had played a key role in convicting George Pennyfeather of murdering Karl Jankov. She was the witness who testified that she’d seen George at the scene of the crime, and probably carrying a gun.

I put the envelope back, and just as I turned to go back to the door I heard the porch creak and I saw the two of them moving toward me. Obviously they’d been inside. They’d come out the back door and around front.

“What do you want?” the red-headed one said.

They were dressed similarly but not identically. Both big men gone to early-thirties beer fat, they wore chafed black leather jackets, T-shirts, faded and grubby jeans, and motorcycle boots bulked at the toes with steel reinforcement. The redhead had more scars than the blond-haired guy. Both of them looked in need of jobs, shaves, baths, and dental work.

“I was hoping to speak with Kathy,” I said.

“Kathy don’t want to speak with you,” the redhead said.

“You mind if she tells me that herself?”

By now they were on the porch. I’d expected an argument, some macho banter back and forth, but they surprised me by getting down to business right away.

The redhead got me by the shoulder and slammed me face first into the front door. I could taste the dry dust drifting up from the rusty screen. He got my arm behind me and bent it sharp and fast.

“Hey, Christ, Johnny,” said his buddy. “Take it easy. This guy’s gotta be sixty years old.”

“Who the hell are you?” Johnny said, and gave my arm another sharp twist that again pushed my head into the screen door.

“My name’s Walsh,” I said. “I’m a private investigator.”

“What the hell you doin’ here?”

More pressure on my arm. I could feel the pain all the way up into my shoulder.

“I saw this address in a log.”

“What log?”

“Belonging to another private investigator. Conroy.”

“That’s who that sonofabitch was this morning,” Johnny said to his pal. “I told you, Eugene. I told you he was some kind of cop or something.”

Apparently, Johnny was of the opinion that he could get back at Conroy by hurting me. I looked down the street. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention to a white-haired guy pushed up against the door while two bikers had sullen fun with him, that white-haired guy being me of course. I watched a small kid Hoyt’s age in a red snowsuit. He sat perched on a small mound of dirty city snow. He was, of course, eating the snow.

Johnny surprised me. He let me go.

I spent the first thirty seconds just rubbing my wrist and forearm.

“You leave her alone, you hear me?”

“Who?” I said.

“You mess with her,” Eugene said, “and Johnny’s really going to lose it.” He chucked me under the chin. I didn’t know when, but someday I was going to pay him back for that. “He didn’t do jack-shit to you today — not compared to what he could do. You dig?”

I said, “Do you know a man named Pennyfeather?”

Johnny and Eugene glanced at each other.

“You really want a good one, don’t you?” Johnny said.

“Then I take it you do know Pennyfeather?”

“Pops,” Johnny said, and in a curious way he spoke out of pity and not anger, “I can really be a bad guy. Now why don’t you go get in your car and get out of here?” He nodded to my arm, which I was still rubbing. “I’m sorry if I overdid it. I’ve just got this temper, all right?”

In the window now I saw the four-year-old girl, wearing dirty pink pajamas, pressing her sweet dirty face against the pane, watching me.

I said, “Why don’t you tell the police everything you know? They’re going to be here sooner or later.”

“Just get out of here, pal, and that’s my last warning.”

“He’s getting pissed again,” Eugene said. “Usually he isn’t this nice.”

I sighed, rubbed my hand again, and started off the porch.

The little girl watched me as I started down the stairs. She looked sadder than any child her age ever should.