The Night Gardener Read Free Page A

there.”
    “If Sanitation didn’t pick up the trash yet,” said Rhonda.
    “I heard
that,
” said Ramone.
    “I’ll get some uniforms down there straight away,” said Hornsby, snatching a set of keys off his desk. “
And
I’ll make sure them rookies don’t fuck it up.”
    “Thanks, Gene,” said Ramone. “How’s that warrant coming, Rhonda?”
    “It’s comin,” said Rhonda. “Ain’t nobody going in and out of Tyree’s apartment until we get it. Got a patrol car parked right out front as we speak.”
    “All right.”
    “Nice one, Gus,” said Rhonda.
    “That was all Bo,” said Ramone.
    In the box, Bo Green got out of his seat. He looked at Tyree, who had sat up some in his chair. Tyree looked like he’d had a fever that had broken.
    “I’m thirsty, William. You thirsty?”
    “I could use another soda.”
    “What you want, same thing?”
    “Can I get a Slice this time?”
    “We don’t have it. All’s we got like it is Mountain Dew.”
    “That’ll work.”
    “You got enough cigarettes?”
    “I’m good.”
    Detective Green looked at his watch, then straight up into the camera mounted high on the wall. “Three forty-two,” he said before leaving the room.
    The light over the door of the interrogation room remained green, indicating that the tape was still rolling. Inside the video room, Antonelli read the sports page of the
Post
and glanced occasionally at the monitor.
    Bo Green was greeted by Ramone and Rhonda Willis.
    “Good one,” said Ramone.
    “He
wanted
to talk,” said Green.
    “Lieutenant said to come on back when you had something,” said Rhonda. “Prosecutor wants to, what’s that word,
interface
.”
    “Rhonda says we drew Littleton,” said Ramone.
    “Little man,” said Green.
    Gus Ramone stroked his black mustache.

Three
    D AN HOLIDAY SIGNALED the bartender, making a grand circular motion with his index finger over glasses that were not quite empty but empty enough.
    “The same way,” said Holiday. “For me and my friends.”
    The men at the bar were three rounds deep into a discussion that had gone from Angelina Jolie to Santana Moss to the new Mustang GT, their points argued with vehemence, but all of it, in the end, about nothing at all. The conversation was something to hang the alcohol on. You couldn’t just sit there and drink.
    On the stools sat carpet-and-floor salesman Jerry Fink, freelance writer Bradley West, a residential contractor named Bob Bonano, and Holiday. None of them had bosses. All had the kind of jobs that allowed them to drink off a workday without guilt.
    They met, informally, several times a week at Leo’s, a tavern on Georgia Avenue, between Geranium and Floral, in Shepherd Park. It was a simple rectangular room with an oak bar going front to back, twelve stools and a few four-tops, and a jukebox holding obscure soul singles. The walls were freshly painted and unadorned with beer posters, pennants, or mirrors, instead showing photographs of Leo’s parents in D.C. and grandparents in their Greek village. The bar was a neighborhood watering hole, neither a bucket of blood nor a home for gentrifiers. It was simply an efficient place to get a pleasant load on in the middle of the afternoon.
    “Jesus, you stink,” said Jerry Fink, sitting beside Holiday, rattling the rocks in his cocktail glass.
    “It’s called Axe,” said Holiday. “The kids wear it.”
    “You ain’t no kid, hombre.” Jerry Fink, raised off River Road and a graduate of Walt Whitman High, one of the finest and whitest public schools in the country, often spoke in double negatives. He felt it made him more street. He was short, had a gut, wore glasses with tinted lenses indoors, and sported a perm, which he called “my Jewfro.” Fink was forty-eight years old.
    “Tell me something I don’t know.”
    “I’m just askin you why you’re wearing that swill.”
    “Very simple. Where I woke up this morning, I didn’t have my own toiletries close by, if you catch my