The Night Gardener

'People say you left the club with Dontay Walker.'

'Who?'

'Dontay Walker.'

'People gonna say what they want to.' Morris glanced at her watch. 'Look, I gotta get to work.'

'You got any idea where Dontay's been layin up since that night?' said Ramone.

'Who?'

Ramone gave her his card with his contact information. 'You see Dontay again, or you hear from him, or something comes to mind that you forgot to tell us, give me a call.'

'I gotta get to work,' said Morris, and walked the sidewalk toward the Metro station down the block.

'Cooperative type,' said Ramone as he and Rhonda went to an unmarked, maroon, MPD-issue Impala parked along the curb.

'One of those ghetto fabulous girls,' said Rhonda. 'My sons better not think about bringing home something looking like that, 'cause you know I'll hit the reject button.'

'She's just mad because her mother named her Trashon.'

'You name it, it's gonna become it,' said Rhonda. 'One of those self-fulfilling prophecies you hear about.'

At the Judiciary Center, Ramone and Rhonda Willis checked in on the first floor to fill out their court appearance worksheets, then went up to the ninth floor, which housed the Assistant U.S. Attorneys, the federal prosecutors who worked cases from arrest to trial and sometimes conviction. Many homicide police were standing in the halls and sitting in the offices of the prosecutors, a common scene. Some wore nice suits, some wore cheap ones, and others were dressed in sweats. They were there to testify, shoot the shit, report progress on cases, and make overtime. On certain days there were more homicide police in these offices than there were at the VCB or on the street.

Ramone found prosecutor Ira Littleton in his office. They discussed the Tyree case and the arraignment, a conversation that consisted of Littleton lecturing Ramone on courtroom procedure and etiquette. Ramone allowed the younger man to have his say. When he was done, Ramone went to the corner office of Margaret Healy, a hard-boiled, smart redhead in her midforties who headed the team of Assistant U.S. Attorneys. Her desk was overflowing with paper, and paperwork littered the floor. He dropped into one of her big comfortable chairs.

'Heard you made quick work out of that stabbing,' said Healy.

'That was Bo Green,' said Ramone.

'It's a team sport,' said Healy, using one of her favorite expressions.

'Congratulations on the Salinas brothers,' said Ramone. The recent conviction of two sibling members of MS- 13, a drawn-out murder case, had made a splash in the press due to the growing Hispanic gang problem in and around D.C.

'It was a nice win. I was proud of Mary Yu on that one. She took it all the way.'

Ramone nodded and pointed his chin in the direction of a photo on the prosecutor's desk. 'How's the family?'

'I suspect they're good. Maybe I'll take some time off this year and find out.'

An administrative assistant knocked on Healy's open door and told Ramone that he had a call from his wife. Ramone figured she had been trying him on his cell, but the service was spotty in the building. And if she was being that persistent, it had to be some kind of emergency. Alana or Diego, he thought immediately, and he got up out of his chair.

'Excuse me, Margaret.'

He took the call in an unoccupied office. He listened to Regina's emotional but controlled voice. Out in the hall, he saw Rhonda Willis bullshitting with a couple of detectives. He told her about his call and where he was going.

'Want some company?' said Rhonda.

'Thought you had to testify.'

'I been informed that I'm not on today's menu. What about the arraignment?'

'I'll come back for it,' said Ramone. 'C'mon, I'll bend your ear on the way out.'

Marita Bryant saw the squad and plainclothes cars arrive at the Johnson family house across the street from the vantage point of her home in Manor Park. She watched as the large bald-headed detective entered the house, and she kept watching as Terrance Johnson pulled up in his Cadillac, parked it sloppily, and ran to his front door. An ambulance arrived shortly thereafter. Helena Johnson, Terrance's wife and the mother of their children, Asa, fourteen, and Deanna, eleven, was carried from the house on a stretcher and taken away. Terrance came out with her, visibly distraught, staggering as he walked across his lawn. He stopped and spoke to his next-door neighbor, a retiree named Colin Tohey, and was then pulled along by the detective, who helped him into the plainclothes car. The two of them drove off. Marita Bryant left her house for the Johnson yard, where Colin Tohey still stood, somewhat shaken. Tohey told Bryant that the dead body of Asa Johnson had been found in that big community garden off Blair Road. Helena had collapsed upon hearing the news, necessitating the ambulance. Bryant, who had a daughter the same age as Asa and was familiar with Asa's crowd, immediately called Regina Ramone. She knew that Diego was friends with Asa, and thought Regina would want to be informed. Also, she was curious, as Gus would surely have some further information regarding the death. Regina had not yet heard the news and said that she did not think Gus had, either, otherwise he would have phoned. She ended the call while Marita Bryant was still talking and immediately tried to locate Gus.

'Your son was tight with this boy?' said Rhonda Willis, riding shotgun in the stripped-down, four-banger Impala, the most basic model Chevrolet produced. She and Ramone were going up North Capitol Street.

'Diego has a lot of friends,' said Ramone. 'Asa wasn't his main boy, but he was someone Diego knew fairly well. They played football on the same team last year.'

'He gonna take it hard?'

'I don't know. When my father died, he felt it because he saw the grief hit me. But this kind of thing is wrong in a different way. It's just unnatural.'

'Who's going to tell him?'

'Regina will pick him up at school and give him the news. I'll call him later. Then I'll see him tonight.'

'Y'all talk about the Lord much in your house?' said Rhonda.

'Not too much,' said Ramone.

'This one of those times you should.'

Rhonda's adult life had been challenging, what with having to raise four boys on her own. The God thing definitely worked for her. It was her rock and it was her crutch, and she liked to talk about it. Ramone did not.

'What's in your gut?' said Rhonda, cutting the silence in the car.

'Nothing,' said Ramone.

'You knew this boy. You know his family.'

'His father and mother are straight. They kept a close watch on him.'

'Anything else?'

'His father's kind of an unyielding guy. Athletics, the classroom, everything… He rode his son pretty hard.'

'Hard enough to push the kid someplace bad?'

'I don't know.'

"Cause that can do as much damage as not bein there at all.'

'Right.'

'You ever have any kind of indication or feeling that the boy was into something wrong?'

'No. That doesn't mean he wasn't. But I got no reason to think he was.'

Rhonda looked across the bench. 'Did you like him?'

'He was a good kid. He was fine.'

'I'm sayin, how did you feel about him? You know, how a man looks at a boy and sizes him up?'

Ramone thought of the times he'd seen Asa on the football field, making half-assed tackles, sometimes moving away from the man running with the ball. He thought of Asa entering Ramone's house, not addressing him or Regina directly, not greeting them at all unless he had to. He knew exactly what Rhonda was going for. Sometimes you'd look at a boy and see him as a man, and you'd think, He's going to be a tough one, or a strong one, or he's going to be successful in anything he does. Sometimes you'd look at a young man and think, I'd be proud if he were my son. Asa Johnson was not one of those boys.

'He lacked heart,' said Ramone. 'That's about the only thing that comes to mind.'

There was something else Ramone had felt sometimes, catching a kind of weakness in Asa's eyes. Like he could be got or took.