The Night Gardener

He accelerated, even as Dunne slowed to observe a red light ahead. Holiday pulled up beside him in the left lane, stopped, and rolled down his passenger window. He gave his horn a short punch.

Dunne, his window open, looked over with expressionless eyes. 'What?'

'Your right rear tire's about to go flat,' said Holiday. 'Just lettin you know.'

Dunne did not thank him for the information. He said something into the mic of his cell phone, ended the call, and dropped the unit on the bucket to his right.

At the green, Dunne took off and soon pulled over to the side of the road, where a crab shack had been set up near a widened shoulder. Holiday followed and parked his Town Car behind Dunne's SUV. He turned off his radio and cell. Dunne was already out of his vehicle, checking his tire. Holiday exited the Lincoln and walked toward him. He reached for his wallet, and when Dunne glanced over and saw this, he instinctively touched the gun holstered at the small of his back.

He did not pull it. Instead, he stood and spread his feet. He was thin and taller than Holiday by a couple of inches. His blond hair was cropped short, and his eyes were a very light blue.

'Hey,' said Holiday, his open wallet in hand. 'No worries. I just want to show you my ID.'

'Why?'

'Let me explain-'

'This tire's fine,' said Dunne. 'Why'd you tell me it was flat?'

'Name's Dan Holiday.' He flashed Dunne his driver's license and made sure he saw the old FOP card fitted beside it. 'MPD, retired. You're police, too, right?'

Dunne looked over at the Hispanic man working the crab shack, taking an order from a man through a drop-window set in a trailer. He returned his attention to Holiday.

'What do you want?'

'Oglethorpe Street, Northeast. The community garden. I was there after midnight, the early hours of Wednesday. I saw you with someone in the back of your patrol car.'

Dunne's eyes registered recognition. 'And?'

'You must know that a boy's body was found in that garden later that morning.'

'What'd you do, follow me here?'

'That's right. I followed you.'

Dunne's lip curled up into something like a smile. 'The drunken chauffeur, sleeping one off. I remember you.'

'And I you.'

'What is this, a shakedown? Because I'll go to my superiors and tell them I was there before I give you a fuckin cent. I've got nothing to hide.'

'I don't want money.'

'Then what's your malfunction?'

'A kid was killed. I'm looking for answers.'

'What are you, one of those jagoffs, listens to the scanner all day?'

'Did you know about the boy when you were there that night?'

Dunne shook his head slowly. 'No. I found out the next day.'

'Why didn't you come forward when he was found?'

'What for?'

"Cause you're police.'

'I just told you; I wasn't aware of it at the time. So I had no information to contribute to the case.'

'If you saw me parked there,' said Holiday, 'and you read me as drunk, why didn't you stop and roust me?'

'I was busy.'

'What were you doing on a dead-end street with a passenger in your vehicle?'

'Who are you?'

'A concerned citizen.'

'Go fuck yourself.'

'What were you doing on that street?'

'Bustin my load into some whore's mouth. You happy?'

'You're no cop,' said Holiday with naked disgust.

Dunne laughed and stepped close to Holiday. Holiday detected the sad and familiar smell of breath mint over vodka coming off of Dunne.

'Anything else?' said Dunne.

'Do you know a Reginald Wilson?'

Holiday looked into Dunne's eyes. There was nothing there, no recognition at all.

'Who?'

'The gas-and-go you just came from. Do you know the man working behind the counter?'

'Listen, asshole. I have no idea what you're talking about. I pulled into a station at random and bought some gas.'

'What did the clerk look like?'

'Some kind of sand nigger, I guess. Who else works in those places? I didn't even notice him.'

Holiday believed him. He felt his energy drain out.

'You're gonna be called in and questioned for Oglethorpe Street,' said Holiday.

'So?'

'I'll see you around.'

Dunne jabbed a finger into Holiday's chest. 'You're seein me now.'

Holiday didn't respond.

Dunne smiled through clenched teeth. 'You wanna try me?'

Holiday kept his hands at his side.

'I didn't think so,' said Dunne.

Dunne walked back to his Ford, got under the wheel, and drove away. Holiday stared at the Explorer's taillights until they faded from view. Then he went to his Town Car and drove back toward the gas station.

Dunne was a rotten apple. But he hadn't been involved with Asa Johnson and he didn't know Reginald Wilson.

It was over. He needed to tell the old man.

CHAPTER 36

Michael Tate made his way through the woods. Dusk was settling, and the trees and branches had lost their color and now were slate outlines against a gray sky. The forest was not dense, and he could see the house from his path. He walked with care and patience and made little sound.

He had a gun, a cheap Taurus nine that Nesto had sold him, holstered at his back. He didn't know what he was going to do when he got behind the house. But he did know that he wasn't going to shoot a girl.

In Raymond Benjamin's mind, Michael Tate was in his debt. Benjamin sent Tate's mother money every month. He had given Tate a job, even though Tate was not needed and did little more than apply tire shine and wheel cleaner to newly purchased cars. Benjamin believed that Tate owed him and that now it was time for Tate to go all in and commit the ultimate rite of passage, the taking of a life via a gun.

But in Tate's mind, he owed Benjamin nothing. Because Tate's older brother, Dink, had refused to testify at Benjamin's trial, Dink would be incarcerated for the next twenty years and come out a middle-aged man with zero prospects. The money sent monthly to their mother, a couple hundred dollars, didn't pay her grocery bills. No matter the amount, it could never compensate her for the loss of her son. Now Benjamin was about to bring Michael full into the life, as he had done with Dink long ago.

Michael had seen the results of such a move, in his family and in so many others where he'd come up. He wasn't about to step off that ledge. Besides, he didn't believe that killing turned a boy into a man. That was street wisdom, which most times equaled bullshit. The violent game had broken his mother's heart and stolen his brother's youth. That was all he needed to know. It wasn't gonna happen to him.

Tate found himself at the tree line behind the house. A light was on in one of the rear windows. He could see the top half of the woman. Some of her curly hair had come down about her shoulders. She was sitting, rubbing one hand against the other. She was a dark outline of a woman in a room, framed by the window, trapped inside that square. What was that word Tate was looking for… a silhouette. A silhouette of a woman, stressed and beautiful. Like a stressed and beautiful thing caged in a room.

Tate walked slowly out of the woods, toward the back of the house.

Chantel Richards felt a presence and looked up to a see a shadowy figure moving toward the window. She glanced at the locked bedroom door. She knew that she should open it and shout out to Romeo. Because surely this was one of those who had come to cause Romeo a world of hurt. But she didn't do this. Instead she watched as the young man's face came into view, and then studied it as he put it very close to the glass. She saw in his brown eyes that he was not there to hurt her, and she went to the sash window and pushed up on it so the two of them could talk.