The Night Gardener

'So where am I go

'I've got to talk with your mother. I expect we'll put you back in your old school for the rest of the year. Then we'll figure something out.'

'I'm sorry, Dad.'

'It's okay.'

Diego looked out across 3rd. 'Everything, this week…'

'Come here.'

Diego dropped the ball and went into his father's arms. Ramone held him tightly. He smelled Diego's perspiration, the Axe he sprayed on his body, that cheap shampoo he used. He felt the muscles of his shoulders and back, and the heat of his tears.

Diego stepped out of Ramone's embrace. He wiped at his eyes and picked up the ball.

'Want to play some?' said Diego.

'You got me at a disadvantage. You in your eighty-dollar sneakers and me in my brogues.'

'You scared, huh?'

'To eleven,' said Ramone.

Diego took the ball out. It was over, really, with his first step off check. Ramone tried to beat him, but he could not. Diego was a better athlete at fourteen than Ramone had ever been.

'You goin' back to work like that?' said Diego, nodding at the sweat stains on Ramone's shirt.

'No one will notice. Women stopped looking at me five years ago.'

'Mom looks.'

'Occasionally.'

'Five dollars says I can make it from thirty feet out,' said Diego.

'Go ahead.'

Diego banked it in off the glass. He flexed his arm, kissed his biceps, and smiled at Ramone.

That's my son.

'You didn't call backboard,' said Ramone.

'I'll take that five.'

Ramone paid up. 'I'm outta here. Got a long day today.'

'Love you, Dad.'

'Love you, too. Call Mom if you go anywhere, let her know where you are.'

Ramone went to the Taurus and got under the wheel. Before he turned the key, Rhonda Willis called him on his cell. They had Dominique Lyons and Darcia Johnson in the boxes down at VCB. 'I'll be right there,' said Ramone.

CHAPTER 28

Darcia Johnson's mother called her to say that her baby was feverish and having difficulty with his breathing. The detectives and uniformed backups who had been radioed for assistance had little time to get in place: within a half hour, a black Lexus GS 430 came up Quincy, stopping in front of the Johnson house. Inside, watching from the upstairs bedroom window, Virginia Johnson phoned Rhonda Willis, seated with Bo Green in the maroon Impala parked up the street. Virginia told Rhonda that the woman getting out of the Lexus was her daughter Darcia and, from what she could make out, the driver of the vehicle, memorable because of his braids, was Dominique Lyons. As Rhonda listened she nodded to Bo Green, who was on his radio with the sergeant in charge of the uniformed officers. Green told the sergeant to go.

Two squad cars suddenly blocked the east and west access to Quincy Street as uniforms on foot emerged from the Warder Place alley with guns drawn, yelling at the driver of the Lexus to step out of the vehicle with his hands visible. The action was loud and swift, meant to shock and defuse any potential situation completely. Based on Lyons's history, Rhonda was taking no u

Darcia Johnson sat down immediately on the steps of her parents' row house and covered her face with her hands. Dominique Lyons did as he was told and got out of his car, his hands raised. He was cuffed and put into the back of a squad car. Darcia, also cuffed, was led to a different car. The Lexus was searched thoroughly. No weapons of any kind were recovered. Roughly an ounce of marijuana was found beneath the driver's-side seat.

Virginia Johnson emerged from the house holding Isaiah. She looked at her daughter in the squad car and saw fear and hate in Darcia's eyes. Virginia asked Rhonda if she could come with them, and Rhonda told her that it would be fine.

'We got a playroom set up for kids,' said Rhonda. It was Rhonda, in fact, who had pushed for the funding of such a room on the VCB premises. The idea of a waiting area for spouses, girlfriends, grandmothers, and children whose relatives were being arrested or questioned regarding murder-related business had entered few of her male colleagues' minds.

'I'll have my husband meet me there,' said Virginia.

'This is go

Dan Holiday stood in the community garden on Oglethorpe Street, smoking a cigarette. He had a job later in the day and was dressed in his black suit. He had come because he knew that the answer he was looking for was here.

The crime scene had reverted to the state it had been in prior to Asa Johnson's death. Someone had taken the yellow tape down and disposed of it. A few citizens were out in the garden, idly working their plots but socializing mostly, as full autumn had come to Washington, and the vegetables had been harvested and the growth of flowers and other plants had slowed.

Holiday walked to his car. He had positioned it exactly where it had been parked as he had drifted in and out of sleep the night he discovered the body.

He sat behind the wheel of the Lincoln and finished the rest of his Marlboro. He took a hit, examined the butt in his fingers, and hit it again before flipping it out into the road. He watched the smoke ripple up off the cherry smoldering on the asphalt.

Holiday glanced over in the direction of the fancy plot with the used-car-lot flags and propellers, and the signs with song titles related to plants and botany. He had felt that cold finger the day before, passing by the signs.

Let It Grow.

Those were the words that had come to his mind when the patrol car had passed by, sometime in the night. But at the time, he hadn't yet seen the sign.

Holiday squinted, staring at nothing, thinking of the white policeman and the perp in the backseat of the car. Then he saw his brother, playing air guitar and high, long-haired and long ago, in the basement of their parents' house in Chillum.

'Fuck me,' said Holiday.

He laughed shortly, pulled his cell along with Gus Ramone's card, and made a call.

'Ramone.'

'Gus, it's Holiday.'

'Okay.'

'Hey, man, I'm at the garden. On Oglethorpe? I came up with something.'

'Go ahead,' said Ramone.

'The patrol car, the one I saw that night? The car number was four sixty-one. As in Ocean Boulevard.'

Ramone did not comment. He was trying to bring up a visual in his mind. The mention of the car number had immediately triggered something in his memory.

'It came to me 'cause my brother was a Clapton freak,' said Holiday.

'That's fascinating,' said Ramone.

'Should be pretty easy to check the Four-D logs, right? See who took out four sixty-one on the midnight that date?'

'Except that I'm busy. I'm heading down to VCB right now. We've got a couple of live ones in the box.'

'You get me the name of that patrolman, me and T.C.-'

'You're not police.'

'That cop could be a witness. You're go

'I am,' said Ramone. 'Not you.'

'Me and Cook, we could, you know, check it out. With you bein' so busy and all.'

'You got no fuckin idea what my day is looking like,' said Ramone.

'All the more reason,' said Holiday.

'No,' said Ramone.

'Hit me back,' said Holiday, and ended the call.

Holiday got out of the car. He lit another smoke, thinking, He'll call me with what I need. I saw it in him last night. He felt sorry for the old man and deep inside he knows he did me wrong. He's not a bad guy, basically, always colors inside the lines, but that's not awful. He won't keep me out of this, even if it's against the rules.

Fifteen minutes later, Ramone called.

'I thought about it,' said Ramone.