Nick's Trip (6 page)

“I read the paper,” I said, leaving out the fact that my grandfather had known the old man. “The DiGeordanos have been in it once or twice through the years. They’re what passes for a small-time crime family in this town. Nothing serious, by today’s standards—a little gambling, some Jewish Lightning in the old days.”

“I’m aware of those things,” he mumbled.

“Keep going,” I said.

“April and I—April, that’s my wife’s name—we socialized with Joey and his wife a few times early on. Right from the beginning I could see Joey had the eye for April. But that didn’t bother me much. I mean, I was used to it. April is a very good-looking woman.”

“Did they have an affair?”

“I can’t prove it if they did,” he said. “Let’s say it was a suspicion I had.”

“What was your relationship like when she left?”

“I thought it was good. We had our problems, but in general I was pretty content. And I was willing to work at it, that’s the thing. Then I came home one day and she was just gone. Her closet was emptied and there was a note, and that was that.”

“When was that?” I asked.

“A week ago yesterday,” he said. “Wednesday.”

“Anything unusual about the note?”

Billy considered that. “It came off a printer. I guess that’s unusual, huh? A typed Dear John.”

“Any idea why?”

“She ran the thing off on my computer. That was always a sticking point with her—I’d come home from work and immediately get on my computer and start running spreadsheets and figures. I guess I was pretty obsessed with making it and all that. Anyway, she certainly thought so. And the note was just her way of twisting the knife.”

I thought that over and said, “What about Joey DiGeordano? Are you still doing business with him?”

Billy said, “Our business relationship has become strained. I can’t exactly talk to him about it, even though I think he might have some idea where she is. That’s where you come in.”

I lit another cigarette and exhaled a thin gray veil that settled between us. “I’ll need to know a few things about your wife. Her history, family, that sort of thing. A recent picture.”

“Then you’ll help me.”

I nodded and said, “Yeah.”

“Thanks, Nick.” Billy shook my hand and held it for more than a few seconds. His felt cool. “I want you to understand that I didn’t come to you for any friendship deals.”

“There won’t be any,” I said. “I get two-fifty a day plus expenses, with a day’s worth up front.”

“No problem.” A few strands of his moussed hair had fallen across his forehead, and he brushed it back. “Listen, man, I’m a little drunk right now.”

“Me too,” I admitted.

“Anyway,” he said, “it’s as good a time as any to apologize for all the years that went by. The thing is, Nick, I think of life as being more… linear than you do, you know what I mean? High school, college, career, marriage, family, retirement—and
I have no trouble leaving the last phase behind me when I start a new one. Anyway, when I went away to school, I could see you just weren’t going to come along. I just don’t want you to think I forgot about you, man. I never did.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “You’re calling it straight. That’s exactly the way it was.”

The band was gathering for their next set. Billy reached for his wallet and said, “Come on, let’s get out of here. I’ve had enough.”

“You go on,” I said. “I only live a couple of blocks away. I’ll walk home.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

Billy shrugged and left a twenty on the table. I let him do it and watched him button his coat. “I’ll courier all that stuff to you tomorrow.”

“Send it here,” I said, and we traded business cards. His said
WILLIAM GOODRICH.

“Thanks again, Nick.”

I nodded and he walked away. As I watched him cross the room, I felt an odd sadness, that sense of irrevocable loss one feels upon seeing a friend who has changed so drastically over so many years. I recognized the feeling as little more than a burst of self-pity for my own youth, a youth that had quietly slipped away. But the recognition in itself didn’t seem to help.

He was right when he said that I had chosen not to come along, but it was not really something I was sorry for. He had become that characterless, you-can-have-it-all predator that was everything I had come to hate. But somewhere in that cadaver was the long-haired kid who had called out to me one day in the park, and now he was calling out again. William Goodrich had hired me, but it was for Billy that I was taking the case.

I had another bourbon while I watched the last set, then settled up my tab. Out on the sidewalk, I tucked a scarf into my black overcoat and weaved north. The branches of the trees
were heavy with powder, and the streets were still. The snow was ending, but its last flakes were still visible in the light of the street lamps. The snow made a sound like paper cutting skin as it fell. Tomorrow there would be a quick melt and a nightmare rush hour, a city of horns and tight neckties. But tonight D.C. was a silent, idyllic small town.

I turned the corner of my block and saw my cat huddled on the stoop of my apartment. I watched her figure slip down and cross the yard, a ball of black moving across a white blanket. Her grainy nose touched the fingertips of my outstretched hand.

F
RIDAY AFTERNOON’S LUNCH
had been typically hectic.

Our regulars had arrived early, shuffling in and nodding hello with pleading doe eyes while I hurriedly sliced fruit and tossed bleach tablets into the rinse sink. The patrons were eager to start their weekend binges. Darnell’s Fish Platter, a house favorite, began to get a lot of action, and at one point he was sliding the plates onto the platform of the reach-through faster than I could serve them. Ramon was lurking around somewhere, but, having blown a stick of sensimillion in the basement just before opening time, he was virtually useless.

That, however, had been the easy part of my day. When the rush ended I was left to baby-sit those few drinkers who had decided, as early as their first beer, not to return to work. Today this group of geniuses included Happy, who in his perfect world would someday be buried with one hand rigor mortised into a glass-holding
C,
the other in a horizontal victory
sign, the fingers spread just wide enough to accommodate a Chesterfield; Buddy and Bubba, today arguing about boxing (confusing it with bullying) and splitting a pitcher with such intense closeness that they appeared to be joined at the hip; an alcoholic Dutch secretary named Petra for whom we exclusively stocked Geneve, a syrupy gin that was rumored to have the power to induce hallucinations; and, least tolerable of all, a fat federal judge by the name of Len.

The fact that Len Dorfman was a federal judge is a point worth mentioning only in relation to his repulsive personality. Len would swagger in after a tough morning on the bench, announce to our deaf ears that he had just “worked out” at the gym (I would wager any amount that he could not, if a gun were to be placed in his mouth, execute one sit-up), and order a Grand Marnier because, he claimed, he had “earned” it. After one snifter he would check over the clientele and begin to brag about all the “savages” he had put away that morning, adding with bluster that he had “thrown away the key.” Then, like some third-rate Don Rickles (“Hey, if we can’t make fun of ourselves, who can we make fun of?”), he would launch into his “I’m a cheap Jew” routine, a tired shtick that had everyone at the bar staring into their drinks in embarrassment. The fact that Len himself was Jewish made it, contrary to his belief, no less offensive. Finally, after his third round, he would begin to trash gays with a lispy, plump-mouthed imitation so filled with vicious self-hatred that there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Len was a man who had, on several occasions and probably in some bathroom stall in our very hallowed halls of justice, fallen to his soft knees and, with a fervor equal in enthusiasm to his flamboyant bar soliloquies, sucked cock.

He was doing that imitation when Dan Boyle walked into the bar. Boyle hated Dorfman, not for his ignorant slurs (they shared roughly the same prejudices) but for what he perceived to be Len’s soft stance on criminals. Dorfman knew it and consequently settled up quietly and exited the Spot. The customers, even Happy, gave Boyle a round of applause.

I did my part and had a mug of draught in front of Boyle before his ass spread over the wood of his barstool. His eyes traveled up and lit on the stack of shot glasses. I separated the top one from the stack and set it next to his mug. Then I poured two inches of Jack Daniels into the glass.

“This one’s on the house.”

“You’re the greatest,” Boyle said.

“You Irish boys get so sentimental about your bartenders.”

“Leave me alone. It’s been a bad fuckin’ day.”

“Out on those mean streets, you mean?”

“Go ahead and laugh. After you walk a mile in my shoes.”

“ ‘Walk a Mile in My Shoes’?” I said. “Joe South, nineteen-sixty-nine.”

“Huh?”

“Forget it.”

I heard a sharp whistle and turned. Petra had done the whistling and now she was, with a perfectly angelic smile and the middle finger of her left hand pointed straight at the ceiling, flipping me off. Though she surely knew the meaning of that most universal symbol, some joker had convinced her one night that, in Washington’s bars, this was also an accepted method of ordering a quick drink.

Boyle said, “I think that Dutch broad needs another hit.”

I poured her a short one and while I was on that end drew a fresh pitcher for Buddy and Bubba. Buddy was a sawed-off little guy, and even while sitting straight, his wide shoulders barely cleared the lip of the bar. Now he was slouched and his blond head seemed to be sprouting directly up out of the mahogany. I placed the pitcher in front of that head. He nodded and then growled.

I changed all the full ashtrays into empties and moved back down to Boyle. He had taken off his overcoat and beneath that was wearing an old tweed with suede patches sewn on the elbows. As he turned to fold his coat on the adjacent barstool, I could see the bulge of his Colt Python protruding from the small
of his back. I slid him another mugful of draught and washed out the empty in the soap sink.

“I checked into that thing for you,” Boyle said.

“William Henry?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s happening?”

“Nothing, really. No new leads, not since the initial investigation.”

“What do you think?” I said.

Boyle had a long drink from his mug, then wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his sport coat. “It’s not in my jurisdiction,” he said. “I only looked at the jacket last night.”

“At a glance, then.”

“At a glance? Your friend probably knew his attacker. There weren’t any signs of forced entry. He had solid dead bolts on the door and an auxiliary lock; none of the jams were splintered. The ME’s report said he was stabbed over twenty times with a serrated knife, like the kind your buddy Darnell uses in his kitchen. Henry was probably dead or in shock before the guy was finished knifing him.”

“What does all that mean?”

“It could mean a lot of things. The intent was clear—he didn’t want to wound Henry, he wanted him dead. It could have been a drug deal gone bad. Or it was a crime of passion. You know, a homo burn.”

“A homo burn?” I frowned. “Come on, Boyle, what the hell is that?”

“We explore every possibility, Nick. That building he lived in, it had a history of homosexual tenants.”

I sighed and drummed my fingers on the bar. “Keep going.”

Boyle pointed to his empty shot glass. I reached behind me to the second row of call, grabbed the black-labeled bottle of Jack, and poured him some sour mash. He sipped it, chased it with some draught. “The main point I got out of the report, the angle I’d go for if I was looking into it, was how he got past the
security guard in the lobby.” Boyle winked. “That’s, like I say, if I was going to look into it.”

“What was the security guard’s name, Boyle? The one that was on duty.”

“I’ll deny this if it ever gets out.” I nodded and looked around the bar. Our regulars were drinking peacefully. A couple of them had solemnly closed their eyes and were mouthing the words to Joe Jackson’s version of “What’s the Use of Getting Sober? (When You’re Gonna Get Drunk Again)” as it came through the speakers. Boyle said, “James Thomas.”

I wrote down the name and said, “Any progress on the case?”

Boyle snorted and closed his eyes slowly as he sipped from the shot glass he held in his thick hand. When he was finished he put the glass down. “A case gets cold after a few days, Nick. And there’s always something else. Right now we’ve got hookers gettin’ whacked down in the Midnight Zone. Detectives working double shifts.” Boyle drained half of what was left in the mug. “The thing you got to remember is, almost one out of two homicides in the District go unsolved. Pretty good odds for the bad guys, huh? You kill someone in this town, you got a fifty percent shot at getting away with it.”

“What are you saying?”

“We’re never going to find that boy’s killer, Nick. That’s a fuckin’ bet.”