The Night Gardener

Brock hit his cigarette and let the smoke out and in, French style. 'So why don't you?'

"Cause I got to work. I don't mean I have to report to a job, which I do. I'm sayin I got the need to go to work every day.'

'You shouldn't anymore. We got money.'

Gaskins shook his head. 'You mission my point, Ro.'

'Cousin, we are rich.'

'Not hardly. We got to cut up the pie. And I know you go

'And I'll get it. The same way I got what's in that bedroom.'

'And how you think that story's go

'Huh?'

'Every story's got an ending,' said Gaskins.

Brock, his mouth open as he breathed through it, looked at Gaskins with waxed eyes. Then he smiled. 'You just too damn serious. Here we are with everything, and you talkin doom.'

Gaskins could see it was useless explaining it to the boy. Some of them were just thick. And anyway, who was he to bust on Romeo's groove? His young cousin would see it in the end. Too late, but still.

'All right, Romeo. All right.'

'There you go.'

'You hear from our man?'

Brock nodded. 'He say he'd see us soon. I told him the money was safe.'

Gaskins stripped off his T-shirt. His face said thirty, but his body said nineteen.

'I'm go

'Take a cold beer in there with you.'

'I think I will.'

Gaskins went to the kitchen to find that brew. Brock returned to his bedroom.

Chantel Richards was up, pulling the bottle of Moët out of an ice bucket set on the dresser. She poured champagne into a tumbler and had a sip.

'I wake you?' said Brock. He took a last drag off his Kool and stubbed it out in the ashtray.

'It's okay. Been a while since I had a nap in the afternoon. It felt good.'

'You all rested?'

Chantel looked his way and gave him a crooked smile. Her hair, done up earlier, had kind of tumbled out and was lying in curls on the shoulders of his red rayon shirt. She tipped the glass back and let some into her mouth. She did not swallow. She placed the tumbler on the dresser, walked over to Brock, and spit the champagne onto his bare chest. Drops of it rolled off his pecs and down his stomach. She held his hips and licked the bubbly from his abs and then moved her tongue up to his chest.

'Girl,' said Brock in a clipped way. It was hard for him to catch his breath.

Chantel stepped back and removed the shirt. She peeled it off one shoulder and then the other. Her bra was fastened by a small hook between its cups, and she unfastened it and let her breasts swing free. Her thumbs worked her lacy thong down her long legs and to her manicured feet. She stepped free of the panties and kicked them away.

Chantel sat down naked on the edge of the bed, where fifties and hundreds lay scattered on the sheets behind her. She parted her legs and showed herself, unshaven and slick. Brock's mouth went dry. He liked a woman natural.

Chantel touched both of her purple nipples with her fingers and made circles there. Her aureoles bumped out and her nipples became erect.

'Golly,' said Brock, as a boy would when seeing a woman in the altogether for the first time.

'How you want it?' said Chantel.

'Turn around,' said Brock. 'Rub that money on your face and kiss it some.'

'I can do that,' said Chantel.

'Please do,' said Romeo Brock.

CHAPTER 23

Ramone phoned Regina on the way back down to the VCB offices, told her he'd seen Diego at the basketball courts and that their son had promised to be home before sundown. He said he'd be working late and that she should not expect him for di

'What were you thinking of making, by the way?'

'Pasta,' said Regina.

'What kind of pasta?'

'The kind comes out of a long box and slides into a pot of boiling water.'

'Don't overboil it. Eight minutes, tops.'

'Now you go

'Last time you had it on the stove for twelve minutes and it tasted like mush.'

'Come home and cook it, you want it perfect.'

'Al dente, baby.'

'Don't baby me.'

'I was thinking of you today,' said Ramone.

'Yeah?'

'In that blue bathing suit, standing on the edge of the academy pool.'

'I couldn't fit in that suit today.'

'You look better now, you ask me.'

'Liar.'

'I'm serious, honey. Neither one of us is in our prime. But I'm saying, when I look at you through my eyes-'

'Thank you, Gus.'

'You think, tonight?'

'We'll see.'

Ramone, heading down South Dakota Avenue in the neighborhood of Langdon, phoned the office and got Rhonda Willis, still on the job. She said that she had some things to tell him, and that Bill Wilkins was in the office and looking to speak to him, too.

'I'm ten minutes away,' said Ramone.

He parked in the lot behind the Pe

Ramone saw Rhonda Willis seated at her desk, Bo Green towering over her, both of them having a laugh. He made a one-minute gesture with his finger to Rhonda and kept walking, negotiating detectives, plainclothesmen, and a woman from the Family Liaison Unit. He passed Anthony Antonelli, seated with his feet up, his Glock holstered on his ankle. Antonelli was holding out an overtime form to Mike Bakalis, whose hands were in his lap.

'C'mon, Aardvark,' said Antonelli. 'Sign my eleven-thirty, will you?'

'Put your tongue in my tar pit,' said Bakalis, 'and I'll think about it.'

Bill Wilkins was seated before his computer, tapping at the keyboard. Ramone pulled a chair over.

'What do you have?' said Ramone.

Wilkins handed him a manila folder. Inside it was the ME's findings on the Asa Johnson autopsy. Ramone began to read it.

'The slug was a thirty-eight.'

'They're ru

'Yeah. We'll see if the markings match to any other murder guns. He died of the gunshot wound to the head, no surprise there.'

Left temple, read Ramone.

'He wasn't asphyxiated or drugged or anything else. No foreign substances, alcohol, or narcotics in his body.'

'He was killed at the scene,' said Ramone.

'Looks like it. Probable time is on there.' Wilkins paused, watching Ramone, seeing his eyes flare and then grow dull. 'You got to it.'

'They found semen inside him,' said Ramone. His voice was weak. He was sickened, not only for the child but for the parents, too.

'Keep reading,' said Wilkins.

The ME had detected lubricant along with the semen. There were no signs of rectal tearing and there was only minor bruising.

Ramone read the entire report and dropped it on the desktop before him. He thought of the victims of the Palindrome Murders, the traces of semen found inside the kids, a baffling lack of violent entry, evidence of consensual anal sex.

On the other hand, the sex could have been initiated after the victims' deaths. Ramone had to consider the possibility that Asa might have been violated in this way as well.

'They found that stuff in him,' said Wilkins. 'Like KY jelly or something.'

Ramone stroked his black mustache. 'I read it.'

'It doesn't look like he was raped.'