The Night Gardener

CHAPTER 10

Holiday wasn't drunk. It was more like he was tired. He had sweated out most of the alcohol with Rita on top of the sheets. His vision was good, driving down the toll road and then the i

He listened to the classic rock station on the satellite radio as he drove. He was not much of a music guy, but he knew his '70s rock. His older brother, whom he'd once idolized, had played his records in the house when they were growing up, and this was the only period of music Holiday still paid attention to or knew. A live track from Humble Pie, Steve Marriott shouting, 'Awl royt!' in a slurred cockney accent before the band broke into a heavy blues-rock riff, was playing now.

Holiday didn't see his brother anymore, except when Christmas came around, and that was just so he could visit his nephews, let them know their uncle Doc was still in the world. But the nephews were getting up to college age now, and Holiday suspected the once-a-year visits would be soon coming to an end. His brother was in mortgage banking, lived out in Germantown, drove a Nissan Pathfinder whose only path was the 270 corridor, and had a wife that Holiday wouldn't fuck with the lights out. His brother was far away from the long-haired, cool teenager he had once been, spi

With his sister long gone and both his parents dead, Holiday was alone. The one thing he had had to get up for, the one thing that had made his eyes snap open in the morning and driven him from the bed, had been taken away. He had been a cop, and then he wasn't. Now he wore a stupid hat, made conversation with people who did not interest him at all, and jock-eyed luggage in and out of the trunk of a car.

All because of a fellow cop who wouldn't cut him any slack. A rule follower, like Holiday's brother. Another guy with a stick up his ass.

He didn't feel like going back to his place just yet. He exited the Beltway at Georgia Avenue and took it south into D.C. He still had time to catch one, maybe two, at Leo's before they brought up the lights.

The Ramone family ate di

'Good sauce, Mom,' said Diego.

'Thank you.'

'Tastes a little burnt, though,' said Diego, his eyes lighting on Ramone's.

'Your mom put a flame thrower to the garlic and onions,' said Ramone.

'Stop it,' said Regina.

'We're playin, honey,' said Ramone. 'It's real good.'

Alana had her face down near her bowl, trying to suck up a forkful of spaghetti. She was an intense eater who thought and talked about food often. Ramone liked to see a grown woman enjoy a meal, and he loved it in his little girl.

'Want me to cut that up for you, Junior?' said Diego.

'Uh-uh,' said Alana.

'Make it easier to eat.'

'Nope.'

'You eatin it like a pig do,' said Diego.

'Does,' said Regina.

'Leave her alone,' said Ramone.

'I'm just tryin to help.'

'Worry about yourself,' said Ramone. 'With those sauce stains on your shirt.'

'Dag,' said Diego, noticing the splatter marks on his wife-beater.

The talk turned to Diego's homework and his repeated claim that he'd done it at study hall. Then the Laveranues Coles trade and Ramone's assertion that Santana Moss was a sideline receiver only, as he tended to drop passes in the middle of the field when he heard footsteps. Diego, who had a jersey with Moss's name on the back of it, circa the Jets, disagreed.

'Who's Ashley?' said Regina to Diego, apropos of nothing.

'Just a girl at school,' said Diego.

'I saw her name on the caller ID,' said Regina.

'That a crime?' said Diego.

'Course not,' said Regina. 'Is she nice?'

'What's she look like?' said Ramone, and Diego chuckled.

'Mom, she's a girl I know at school. I don't have no one special, okay?'

'Anyone,' said Regina.

'But you are saying,' said Ramone, 'you're saying you do like girls.'

'Go ahead, Dad.'

'I was begi

'It's private,' said Diego.

"Cause you never talk about girls.'

'Dad.'

'It's okay to be like that,' said Ramone.

'Dad, I'm not gay.'

'I'd still love you if you were. Like that, I mean.'

'Gus,' said Regina.

They talked about the Nationals. Diego said baseball was a 'white sport,' and Ramone told him to look at all the black and Hispanic players in the major leagues. But Diego could not be moved. He told Ramone to check out the faces in the stands at RFK. Ramone agreed that most of them were white but finished by saying that he didn't see Diego's point.

'Dad closed a case today,' said Regina.

'What's a case?' said Alana.

'He locked up a bad guy,' said Diego.

'This guy wasn't all bad,' said Ramone. 'He did something bad. He made a bad mistake.'

After di

Regina was washing her face in the master bathroom when Ramone came up and undressed for bed. He noticed her outfit, one of Diego's football team T-shirts and worn pajama bottoms, and read the message: no sex tonight. But he was a man, as dim and hopeful as any other. He wasn't going to let some dowdy old outfit stop him completely. He'd give it a try.

He closed their door and slid between the sheets. She joined him and gave him a chaste kiss on the side of his mouth. He got up on his elbow and tried another kiss, just to feel her out.

'Good night,' she said.

'So soon?'

'I'm tired.'

'I'll make you tired.'

Ramone put his hand inside her pajama bottoms and stroked the inside of her thigh.

'Alana's go

Ramone kissed her. Her lips opened and she moved a little closer to him in the bed.

'She's go

'We'll be quiet.'

'You know that ain't true.'

'C'mon, girl.'

'How about I just yank you off?'

'I can do that myself.'

Regina and Ramone chuckled softly, and she kissed him more deeply. He began to pull her bottoms off, her back arched to let him, when they heard a knock on their bedroom door.

'Damn,' said Ramone.

'That's your daughter,' said Regina.

'That's not my daughter,' said Ramone. 'That's a seven-year-old chastity belt.'

Five minutes later, Alana was snoring between them in their bed, her small brown fingers splayed on Ramone's chest. It was true that he was a little disappointed. But he was happy, too.

Led's had a bit of a crowd, and the music from the juke was turned up loud. Holiday got a couple of head nods as he crossed the floor toward an empty stool back near the kitchen doors. He was known here, so there wasn't that stare thing that went with a white guy walking into an all-black neighborhood bar. It had gotten around the Leo's regulars that he had been a cop who'd been forced out under a cloud. It wasn't entirely true, since Holiday had resigned rather than face the official inquiry, but he let them think what they wanted. Dirty cop did hold a certain mystique. But he hadn't been dirty. He had never been on the take, nor had he worked both sides of the game, like some of those cops who'd come onto the force during that sloppy hiring binge in the late '80s. Hell, he had just been helping out a girl he knew. All right, she was a whore. But still.