The Night Gardener

'Talk about it,' said Brock.

'Dude name of Tommy Broadus. Tryin to act like he big-time, but he just startin out. Came to the cut house where my friend works, inquiring about fees, all that. Said he got some white comin in. I'm talking about keys, and I'm hearin it's tomorrow. My friend say this man can be got.'

'So? I ain't want no fuckin dope. Do I look like a goddamn her-won salesman to you?'

'He go

'What about guns?' said Gaskins.

'Huh?'

'Even an amateur go

'That's on y'all,' said Fishhead. 'I stay out the mechanics. I'm sayin, some big money go

'When?' said Brock.

'After dark, but not too late. Mules don't like to make that Ninety-five run when the traffic too thin. Look for a trap car, I'd expect. The Taurus is popular, or the Mercury sister car.'

'Where this man stay at?' said Brock.

Fishhead Lewis passed a slip of paper over the bench. Brock took it, read it, and slipped it into the breast pocket of his rayon shirt.

'How you get the address?' said Gaskins.

'Our man ran his name through the database, somethin. Parked on the street, watched him go in and out his house. He stayin in a detached in a residential area. Real quiet around there, too.'

'Not too smart, let yourself get seen so easy.'

'What I'm sayin. Man that sloppy can get took.'

'Where he get the money?' said Gaskins, thinking it through.

'By turning his inventory,' said Fishhead, now improvising but trying to sound as if he knew. 'This here can't be the first buy the man done made.'

'I'm askin, how we know this Tommy Broad-ass fella ain't bein bankrolled by someone with power?'

"Cause my man at the cut house said he was braggin on the fact that he all alone.'

Gaskins looked at Brock. He could see from his eager look that Brock had already decided to go. He was looking at the money, feeling it between his fingers, spending it on women and clothing, a suit in red. What he wasn't doing was thinking it through.

'What's he look like?' said Gaskins.

'Say what?'

'Wouldn't want to take the wrong man.'

'My friend say he fat. Too old for the game, but I guess he startin late. Came to the cut house with a woman, had it all in the right places. Had a mouth on her, too. They was arguing over shit the whole time they was in there.'

'Anyone else?'

'Not that my man said.'

'You go

Fishhead forced a smile. His teeth were rotted, and there were scabs on his face.

'I been wonderin,' said Brock. 'Do it smell like fish to a fish?'

'All day,' said Fishhead, who hadn't had a clean woman in years.

'Get the fuck out. We'll take it from here.'

Fishhead got out of the car, hiking his pants up as he moved along. Brock and Gaskins watched him walk down the alley, a pit bull barking at him furiously from behind chain-link as he passed.

Brock turned to Gaskins. 'What you think?'

'I think we don't know shit.'

'We know enough to park ourselves outside this man's house and see what we can see.'

'I ain't stayin out late. I gotta be at the shape-up spot at dawn.'

Brock punched a number into his cell.

CHAPTER 13

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 sca

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?'