Thirteen
RAMONE, RHONDA WILLIS, Garloo Wilkins, and George Loomis methodically canvassed the residents living on the short block of McDonald Place, interviewing those who were home during a workday and leaving contact cards for those who were not. Ramone recorded the pertinent details of his conversations in a small Mead spiral notebook, the same type he had been using for many years.
Nothing significant came from the interviews. One elderly woman did say that she had been awakened by what she thought was the snap of a branch during the night but did not know the time, as she had not bothered to look at her clock radio before falling back to sleep. No one they spoke to had seen anything suspicious. Except for the woman, all, apparently, had slept soundly.
The Baptist church on the end of the block, where South Dakota came in, was unoccupied at night.
Wilkins and Loomis had spoken with the night crew at the animal shelter by phone. They would talk to these workers face-to-face later in the day. But the preliminary conversations indicated that no one at the shelter had heard or seen a thing relative to Asa Johnson’s death.
“That ain’t no surprise,” said Wilkins. “All those fuckin Rovers in there, barking their asses off.”
“You can’t think in that motherfucker,” said George Loomis, “much less hear.”
“Still some folks we haven’t talked to on McDonald Place,” said Rhonda. “They’ll be comin home from work later on.”
“I suppose the city, or the community organization, or whoever runs this garden’s got a list of the people who work all these plots,” said Ramone.
“I doubt they do gardening in the middle of the night, Gus,” said Wilkins.
“Doubtin ain’t knowin,” said Rhonda, repeating of one of her most used homilies.
“No stone unturned,” said Ramone, adding one of his.
“I’ll get that list,” said Wilkins.
Rhonda looked at her watch. “You gotta get downtown for that arraignment, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” said Ramone. “And I need to call my son.”
Ramone walked down a path cutting through the center of the garden. He passed plots decorated with lawn ornaments and homemade crosslike signs with sayings like “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “Let It Grow,” and “The Secret Life of Plants” painted on the horizontal planks. He passed things that twirled in the breeze and miniature flags like the kind displayed in used-car lots, and then he was out of the garden and near his car.
Ramone got in the Impala and stared through its windshield. That had been Dan Holiday in the monkey suit, standing by his Town Car. Wasn’t any question about it. Ramone had heard over the MPD telegraph that Holiday had started some kind of drive-for-hire business after he’d resigned. His appearance had changed very little since the both of them had been in uniform. A comical little belly on him, but other than that, he looked pretty much the same. Question was, why was he here? Holiday did love being police. He was probably one of those sad ex-cops who listened to the scanners long after they’d turned in their badge and gun. Maybe Holiday was having trouble getting the blue out of his system. Well, he should’ve considered that before he fucked up.
Holiday’s image faded. Ramone thought of Asa Johnson and the extreme fear he had probably experienced in his last moments. He thought of what Asa’s parents, Terrance and Helena, were facing. He saw Asa’s name and he turned it around and saw it the same way. He sat there for a while, thinking of that. Then Ramone thought of his son.
He cranked the ignition and headed downtown.
HOLIDAY STARED AT HIS drink. He took a sip of it and, before putting the rocks glass back on the bar, another. He shouldn’t have gone to that crime scene. He was curious, was all it was.
“Tell us a story, Doc,” said Jerry Fink.
“I’m fresh out,” said Holiday. He could not even remember the name of the woman he had done the night before.
Bob Bonano came back from the jukebox. He had just dropped quarters into it, and now he was strutting as mournful harmonica and the first solemn bars of “In the Ghetto” came into the room at Leo’s.
“Elvis,” said Jerry Fink. “Trying to be socially relevant. Who blew smoke up his ass and told him he was Dylan?”
“Yeah,” said Bonano, “but who’s doing this version?”
A woman began to sing the first verse. Fink and Bradley West, seated beside Holiday, closed their eyes.
“It’s that ‘Band of Gold’ broad,” said Jerry Fink.
“Nope,” said Bonano.
Holiday wasn’t hearing the song. He was thinking of Gus Ramone, standing over the body of the boy. Some cosmic fucking joke that Ramone had caught the case.
“She did that Vietnam song, too,” said West. “ ‘Bring the Boys Home,’ right?”
“That was Freda Payne, and I don’t care what she did,” said Bonano. He blew into a deck of Marlboro Lights and watched as the filtered end of one popped out. “She didn’t do this.”
Holiday wondered if Ramone had noticed that the boy’s first name, Asa, was the same spelled backward as it was forward. How the name was one of those palindromes.
“Then who is it, smart guy?” said Fink.
“Candi Staton,” said Bonano, lighting his smoke.
“You only know ’cause you read the name off the juke,” said Fink.
“Now for a dollar,” said Bonano, ignoring Fink, “what was Candi Staton’s big hit?”
Holiday wondered if Ramone had connected the boy with the other teenage victims with palindrome names. How all of them were found shot in the head, in community gardens around town.
Ramone was a good enough cop, though he was stymied, Holiday believed, by his insistence on following procedure. He wasn’t anywhere near the cop that he, Holiday, had been. He lacked that rapport with citizens at which Holiday had excelled. And those years Ramone had spent in IAD, working mostly behind a desk, hadn’t done him any favors as police.
“No clue,” said Fink.
“ ‘Young Hearts Run Free,’” said Bonano with a self-satisfied grin.
“You mean ‘Young Dicks Swing Free,’” said Fink.
“Huh?”
“It’s one of them disco songs,” said Fink. “Figures you’d like it.”
“I didn’t say I liked it. And you owe me a dollar, ya fuckin Jew.”
“I don’t have a dollar.”
Bonano reached over and pushed down on the back of Fink’s head. “How ’bout a dollar’s worth of this, then?”
Holiday killed his drink and put cash on the bar.
“What’s your hurry, Doc?” said West.
Holiday said, “I got a job.”