The Night Gardener

'Okay,' said Ramone. 'One beer.'

Ramone was finishing his third beer as Holiday returned from the bar with three more and some shots of something on a tray. Ramone and Cook were seated at a four-top near a hallway leading to the restrooms, listening to Laura Lee singing 'Separation Line' from the juke. They were in Leo's, which was fine with Ramone, as it was close to his house. Hell, if it came to it, he could walk. But he hoped it wouldn't come to that. He had picked up his Tahoe from the garden on Oglethorpe, and he intended to drive it home.

'What is that?' said Ramone, as Holiday set the shot glasses down on the table crowded with empty bottles.

'It ain't Alizé or Crown or whatever they're moving these days in this place,' said Holiday. 'Good ol' Jackie D, baby.'

'Been a while,' said Cook. 'But what the hell.' He threw his shot back without waiting for a glass-tap or toast.

Ramone had a healthy sip. The sour mash bit real nice. Holiday downed his completely and chased it with beer. He and Cook were drinking Michelob. Ramone was working a Beck's.

'What time is it, Danny?' said Cook.

Holiday looked at the clock on the wall, within easy sight of all of them. Then he remembered the schoolhouse clock in Cook's house, off by several hours. It came to him that Cook wasn't wearing a watch. The reason being, he couldn't read the time.

'You can't see that?' said Holiday.

'I still got some trouble with numbers,' said Cook.

'I thought you could read.'

'I can read some. Newspaper headlines, and the leads if I work at it. But I couldn't get my numbers back.'

'You had a stroke?' said Ramone, knowing the answer from Cook's appearance but trying to be polite.

'Wasn't too serious,' said Cook. 'Knocked me down some, is all it did.'

'How do you use a phone?'

'It's hard for me to make outgoing calls. My daughter spent a few hours programming my speed dial on my home phone and cell. And then there's the call-back button. I also have this El Salvador lady, comes once a week to do things for me I can't do myself. Her visits are part of my veteran's benefits. She makes appointments for me, writes checks, all that.'

'They have, like, voice-activated phones available, don't they?' said Holiday.

'Maybe they do, but I don't wanna go down that road. Look, all a this bullshit is frustrating, but I've seen people got more health problems than I do. I go down to the VA hospital for my checkups, there's a lotta dudes in there way worse off than me. Younger than me, too.'

'You're doin okay,' said Holiday.

'Compared to some, I'm fine.'

Holiday lit a Marlboro and blew the exhale across the table. He was no longer self-conscious about having a cigarette in front of Cook. The bar was already thick with smoke.

'Felt good working today,' said Cook.

It felt the same for Holiday. But he wasn't about to admit it in front of Ramone.

'You were one of the best,' said Ramone, pointing the lip of his shot glass at Cook.

'I was the best, in my time. That's not braggin, it's fact.' Cook leaned forward. 'Lemme ask you something, Gus. What's your closure rate?'

'Me? I'm up around sixty-five percent.'

'That's better than the department average, isn't it?'

'It is today.'

'I was closing almost ninety percent of them in my best years,' said Cook. 'Course, it wouldn't be that high now. I read the writing on the wall when crack hit town in eighty-six. I could have worked a few more years, but I got out soon after that. You know why?'

'Tell me.'

'The job changed from what it was. The feds threatened to turn off the money faucet to the District unless the MPD put more uniforms on the streets and started making more drug arrests. But you know, locking people up willy-nilly for drugs doesn't do shit but destroy families and turn citizens against police. And I'm not talking about criminals. I'm talking about law-abiding citizens, 'cause it seems like damn near everyone in low-income D.C. got a relative or friend who's been locked up on drug charges. Used to be, folks could be friendly with police. Now we're the enemy. The drug war ruined policing, you ask me. And it made the streets more dangerous for cops. Any way you look at it, it's wrong.'

'When I started out in Homicide,' said Ramone, 'there were twenty detectives working four hundred murders a year. That's twenty cases each year per detective. Now we got forty-eight detectives on the squad, each working four or five murders a year. And it's a lower closure rate than when I came in.'

'No witnesses,' said Holiday. 'Not unless the victim is a kid or elderly. And even then, it's not a given that anyone will come forward.'

'No one talks to the police anymore,' said Cook, tapping his finger on the table. 'That's what I'm sayin. Neighborhoods are only safe if the people who live in them work with the law.'

'That's over,' said Holiday. He took a long swig of his beer. He dragged on his smoke and tapped off the ash.

They had another round the same way. Ramone was feeling the alcohol. He hadn't gone this deep in a bar in a long time.

'"Monkey Jump,'" said Cook, as an instrumental came strong out of the Wurlitzer. 'Junior Walker and the All-Stars.'

'This place is all right,' said Ramone, looking around at the different age groups and types in the room.

'Gus loves all the peoples,' said Holiday.

'Shut up, Doc.'

'One thing about Leo's, you can meet some ladies in here,' said Holiday. 'Just look at that thing right there.'

A young woman came out of the hall and crossed the barroom floor. She was tall and had back on her that many men in the bar were in the process of appreciating.

'I'd kill that,' said Holiday.

'Nice way of puttin it,' said Ramone.

'I'm just a man who likes his licorice. Nothin wrong with that.'

Ramone drank beer down to the waist of the bottle.

'Whatsa matter, Giuseppe, did I offend you? Or is it that you don't think a woman of color would want to get with a man like me?'

Ramone looked away.

'Gus is married to a sister, he tell you that?' said Holiday to Cook.

'Shut the fuck up, Holiday,' said Ramone in a tired and unthreatening way.

'You say he married your sister?' said Cook, trying to cut the chill.

'My sister's dead,' said Holiday. 'She died of leukemia when she was eleven years old.'

'It's a joke,' said Ramone to Cook. 'He played that one on me when we were in uniform. It wasn't any funnier then.'

'I'm not joking,' said Holiday.

Ramone and Cook waited for the rest, but nothing came.

Cook cleared his throat. 'So, you're married to a black woman, Gus?'

'Last time I checked.'

'How's that working out?'

'I guess she's gonna keep me.'

'No bumps in the road?' said Holiday.

'A few,' said Ramone.

'Just a few?' said Holiday. 'Rumor was you were having, what do they call that, fidelity issues a while back.'

'Fuck your rumors. Who told you that, your boy Ramirez?'

'I don't remember. It could have been him. It was just something that was going around.'

'Bullshit.'

'Johnny said you dropped in on him today at the academy.'

'Yeah, I saw him. Ramirez was wearing his pink belt. Teaching recruits how to block a punch. The proper stance and all that. Another guy who rose to the bottom.'

'You mean like me.'

'I didn't say that.'

'You could work another twenty and you'd never be the police that I was.'

'You shouldn't drink so much, Doc. Your mouth overloads your asshole when you do.'

'What's your excuse?'

'I gotta take a leak,' said Ramone, and he got up out of his chair. He went down the hall.

Cook had watched and listened as they went quietly back and forth through forced smiles and tightened jaws. And now Holiday was relaxed, his hand wrapped loosely around the bottle of beer.

'You were pretty rough on him,' said Cook.