The Night Gardener

He remembered seeing this movie on television when he was younger. Steve McQueen, baddest white man ever walked in front of a camera, played a dude who robbed a bank and then took off with his girlfriend, running from the Mob, the law, and a vengeful man who had worked the heist. Toward the end of the movie, before guns and gunmen interrupted, McQueen and his girl had begun to make it on a bed of money, and Romeo Brock at that moment had said in his mind, I will do that with a woman someday my own self. This girl in the movie, she was too skinny for Brock's taste; matter of fact, she looked like a chicken with black hair. But there was something about her, he had to admit. Still, Steve's girl wasn't even on the same playing field as what he had in this bedroom right here. He couldn't have dreamed that he, Romeo Brock, would ever be with a woman as fine as Chantel Richards, drinking White Star, bottom-knocking that thing on a bed of clean sheets and green.

He looked at her for a moment, sleeping there. Brock, dressed in his boxers and nothing else, lit a Kool and tossed the match into a tire-shaped ashtray. He closed the door softly behind him as he left the room.

Brock went down a hall, the kitchen behind him, passing Gaskins's bedroom and the bathroom, and came out into a large living-and-dining-room area where Gaskins was standing.

'Tough day?' said Brock.

'Yeah,' said Gaskins, looking him over with a mixture of amusement and disgust. 'How 'bout you?'

'Go on, cuz. Tryin' to act like you don't wish you were me.'

'Sure, I'd like it. Lie around in a dark room all day with a fine woman, drinking whatever it is you drinking that's coming off your breath, smoking what I smell in the air. I'd like to try a little herb again someday, when I get off paper. I used to enjoy getting my head up.'

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 gonna buy some things with what's left. Before long, you'll be looking for more.'

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

'And how you think that story's gonna end?'

'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 gonna have a shower,' said Gaskins.

'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 dinner, but if she thought of it maybe she could put some of whatever she prepared aside for him. He'd heat it up when he got in.

'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 gonna tell me how to boil spaghetti?'

'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 Penn-Branch shopping center and entered the offices. Some of the detectives from the morning shift were mingling with the new-shift men and women, crowding one another's cubicles. They were exchanging information and bullshitting about nonpolice matters. Some of the officers who were done for the day were collecting overtime and others were trying to stay out of bars or simply unwilling to face the loneliness, unhappiness, duties, or plain boredom of their home lives.

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.