Nick's Trip

  In the rearview I saw him stand and brush the dirt from his billowing cashmere overcoat as he watched me drive away. Billy’s parents were behind him, staring at us both. They held each other on the steps of the church, wondering what kind of horrible thing had finally happened, just then, to end it between their son and his old friend.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE DAY AFTER April’s service I took the Metro to Gallery Place and had lunch at the District Seen. A bartender in combat fatigues served me a club sandwich and a cup of vegetable beef to go with it. I washed that down with a Guinness, and then another while I read that week’s City Paper and listened to De La Soul on the house deck. When bicycle messengers started to crowd the place, and Jaegermeisters were served, I settled up my tab.

  Out on the street I walked down Seventh, opened a common-entrance glass door, and took the stairs that led to both a portrait gallery and the offices of DC This Week, the alternative weekly that was itself a more hard-news alternative to City Paper. I entered the door marked DC THIS WEEK.

  A young woman in rimless glasses was sitting at a desk, talking into a headset as she clipped art on a rubber mat. She looked up as I walked in, and raised one finger in the air to hold me off. I waited until she had released her call.

  “Yes?” she said.

  I placed my business card in front of her on the mat. As she looked it over I said, “I’d like to speak to your editor, if he has a minute.”

  “Do you have an appointment with Jack?”

  “Nope.” I smiled. She didn’t.

  “What’s this abou—what’s this in reference to?”

  “It’s about my friend, William Henry.”

  She relaxed, took off her glasses, and rubbed her eyes. “You knew William?”

  “Yes.”

  The woman slid her glasses back on and punched a finger at the switchboard. “I’ll see if he’s in.”

  I stood with my hands in my overcoat pockets and listened to her mumble into the phone. Other phones rang from beyond the makeshift barrier that nearly encircled her desk, and in between their rings the tapping sounds of several keyboards meshed with a dublike bass. The multitalented receptionist removed her headset and stood up.

  “Follow me,” she said with a come-hither gesture.

  I walked behind her through a room where several tieless young men and young women typed on word processors. In the corner of the room a man with no hair on the sides of his head but plenty on top leaned over a drawing table and drew a line down a straightedge. A small boom box sat on a makeshift ledge above the drawing table, and out of the box Linton Kwesi Johnson spoke over a throbbing bass and one scratchy guitar. None of the people in the room looked up as I passed.

  The receptionist stopped at the first door on a row of small offices and opened her palm in direction. I thanked her and stepped into the office. A woman stood up from behind an oak desk.

  She was my height, with full-bodied, shoulder-length red hair that had fine threads of silver running through it in several key places. Her cream satin blouse was open three buttons down and tucked into a short olive green skirt. A wide black belt was wrapped around her waist. Black stockings covered her legs, and on her feet were a pair of olive green pumps. Her thin face was lightly freckled, and the freckles were the same shade of those that were liberally sprinkled across the top of her chest. Lipstick the color of her hair was drawn across her wide mouth. Her eyes were pale green. She extended her hand. I shook it and held it until she pulled it gently back.

  “You’re Jack?” I said.

  “Jack can’t see you,” she said. “My name’s Lyla. Lyla McCubbin. I’m the managing editor.”

  “Nick Stefanos.”

  I handed her the same card I had given the receptionist, removed my overcoat, and had a seat in a high-backed chair across from her desk. Lyla sat back down and studied the card.

  Her office was a clutter of newspaper and computer paper. Beside her desk was a word processor with green characters on the screen. A section of an article she was editing on the computer had been blocked off in black. Three Rolodexes, a black phone, and a blotter-style desk calendar crowded the top of her desk. Behind her on the white wall hung the office’s sole photograph, a picture of a fair-haired child standing between her parents, a young hippie family at a Dupont Circle rally, circa 1969. The child had freckles across her face, and she was holding her father’s hand. A Walkman rigged to an external speaker sat next to the computer, softly playing King Crimson’s “Matte Kudasai.”

  Lyla folded her hands in front of her on the desk. “Rolanda said you wanted to speak to someone about William Henry.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What about?”

  “His murder.”

  “What have you got to do with it?”

  “I’m looking into it.”

  Lyla took a pencil out of a leather cup and tapped the sharp end on her blotter. “Who are you working for?”

  “Myself,” I said. “And Henry.”

  Lyla’s phone rang. She kept her eyes on mine and let it ring a few times before she picked it up. “Tell him I’ll call him back.” She replaced the receiver and studied my face. “So,” she said finally. “You’re a private dick.”

  “ ‘A black private dick. With a sex machine for all the chicks.’”

  “ ‘Shaft’?”

  “ ‘You daamn right.’”

  Lyla threw her head back and laughed. It was an easy laugh, from way down in her throat. I liked the way it sounded and the unconscious way her mouth opened wide when she did it.

  “Well,” she said, “at least I know that we’re from the same generation.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I saw Shaft, first run, at the Town Theatre, on Thirteenth Street. 1971. My grandfather took me—against his better judgment.”

  “The Loews Palace on F Street,” she said. “That was my first downtown film experience. A Liz Taylor double bill, no less. Butterfield Eight, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

  “So you’re a real Washingtonian.”

  “All my life.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  Lyla replaced the pencil in the cup, smiled, and leaned back in her chair. The movement made her camisole shift beneath her satin blouse, and I watched the rise of her freckled breasts. She crossed her left leg over her right. The muscles in her thighs became defined with the action. I shifted in my chair to get a better look. She watched me do it, and neither of us flinched.

  “You came here to talk about William Henry,” she said.

  “Right.”

  “Any progress on the case?”

  “Not with the police. Apparently things got cold, real quick. I managed to dig up some stuff on my own.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “You asking questions now?”

  “Sorry,” Lyla said. She brushed some lint off the side of her skirt. “It’s a habit. You and I are basically in the same business, right?”

  I nodded. “I used to read your bylines when you were still doing investigative. Before they hired Henry and bumped you up to managing editor.”

  “William Henry improved on my work,” she said. “He was a damn good reporter.”

  “He was a good friend too.”

  “Yes, he was.” Lyla stared off toward the blank white wall to her left. “Jack had hired him, in a private interview. So on his first day of work, when he walked in, none of us knew what to expect. Anyway, he comes in, and here’s this trim, compact guy, on the short side, with long sideburns—they weren’t stylish then—and one of those Ben Bradlee striped shirts, with a rep tie. His hair was receding too, remember, and he wore wire-rims, which only added to that Ivy League schoolboy look.” Lyla ran a finger along the top of her lip. “So you can imagine that all of us so-called alternative types here didn’t trust him at first. But right away he had us all loosened up—that little son of a bitch had the driest sense of humor, and the finest heart, of anyone ever walked through that front door.” r />
  “His death,” I said. “It wasn’t a random murder. That lead, about the light-skinned guy with the bloody shirt, seen leaving his apartment—I think that was basically bullshit, a plant of some kind.”

  Lyla leaned in and said, “Tell me about it.”

  “The information I got was that the murderer was let up into Henry’s apartment, by the security guard who was on duty that night.”

  “Who gave you the information?”

  “The security guard.”

  “Then you should be talking to him.”

  I shook my head. “He’s gone. He’s been gone, since he left the message and admitted that he was bought. I finally got hold of his mother—she says he left home a few days ago and hasn’t been back since.” I winced inadvertently at the memory of her broken voice as she said it, knowing full well that he’d never be back.

  Lyla settled in her chair. “So that brings it back to us. How can I help you?”

  “What was Henry working on here when he died?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “The funny thing is, he had just filed his last story, a week before his death. That week, he took a few days off, though he was in and out of the office, every day. But the cops asked Jack about all that. They took all his notes, and his diskettes.”

  “The cops?”

  “The two investigators that were assigned his case.”

  “They talk to you?”

  Lyla nodded. “I didn’t have anything to tell ’em professionally. As for their personal questions, I just didn’t answer. I had the impression they weren’t going to follow up on the murder anyway.”

  Lyla watched me think things over. When I looked up, she was looking into my eyes, and her mouth was open, just a little. I felt something happen between us then, but I moved on.

  “It’s possible Henry was working on something you didn’t know about, isn’t it?”

  “Sure. He played his cards close to the vest, when he wasn’t on a specific assignment.”

  “He keep backup diskettes on his notes?”

  Lyla said, “Yep.”

  I said, “You give those to the cops too?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Any chance you’d print out those disks for me?”

  “A real good chance,” she said.

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  Lyla rang Rolanda and had her retrieve Henry’s diskettes from the file room. Rolanda entered with a container, and Lyla instructed her to use the laser to print out the last two months’ worth of work. Rolanda, who seemed a bit overworked, sighed a bit during the instructions. When she left, Lyla said, “It’ll be a few minutes.”

  I nodded to the photograph on the wall. “That’s you, right?”

  “Yeah. My parents were beatniks, and then they were hippies. They were a little old for it, even then. But for them it wasn’t a fad. I was raised to believe that if you had to go against the grain and suffer a little bit to change things, it was worth it, if it made a difference. Even a small difference.”

  “You’re doing it.”

  “I’m trying.”

  I said, “How close were you with Henry?”

  Lyla’s pale eyes widened a bit. Off guard, but only for a second. “You mean,” she said, “was I sleeping with him?”

  “Approximately.”

  “Well, it’s none of your business, Stefanos. But just to get things on the table—no, I wasn’t.” She smiled, but not at me. She was thinking about Henry. “But hell, I would have, in a heartbeat. And it’s not as if I didn’t try. Once, when I got him drunk, I even asked him.”

  “He was gay.”

  “Sure, he was. But he didn’t wear it on his sleeve. It was only one part of what he was. And since he didn’t talk about it much, I mean, I didn’t know if he was… exclusive about his gayness or not. Straight people are pretty naive about that kind of shit, aren’t they? Anyway, I liked him, and at the very least, I thought it was worth a shot.”

  “The cops thought his murder might have been a crime of passion, at first. You know any of his lovers?”

  Lyla shook her head. “Not personally. I did meet this guy once, a bartender, when William and I were drinking at the Occidental, in the Willard. The bartender’s name was Michael—a gorgeous guy, but stiff. I didn’t like him. William was a bit in the bag that night, and he told me that the two of them had dated.”

  “Anything worth checking out?”

  “I would say no. But I don’t know how your business works. How you get your information, how things shake out.”

  I shrugged. “I talk to a lot of people and things happen.”

  Lyla looked at my bandaged hand and then up at the deep purple crescent on my jaw. “They certainly do.”

  “Not as often as you’d think.”

  “You a drinker, Stefanos?”

  “Now it’s your turn to get personal.”

  “You look like a drinker.”

  “I know what it tastes like.”

  “No need to be defensive,” she said. “I like a man who can take a drink.”

  After that we sat without speaking. Her homemade tape was playing Richard Thompson’s Gypsy Love Songs. The time went by like that, and the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. I liked her looks, and her honesty, and her intelligence. I liked everything about her.

  Rolanda entered the office with a manila folder filled with papers. I took the folder and thanked her, and stood to put on my overcoat. Lyla McCubbin wrote a phone number on the back of her business card and pushed it across the desk. I slipped the card into the cellophane cover of my cigarette pack. She took my card and placed it in the front compartment of her desk drawer. Then she stood and shook my hand.

  “I hope this helps.”

  “I’ll let you know what happens. Thanks.”

  Lyla leaned on one foot. She let her other foot out of her olive green pump and ran her stockinged toe around the shoe’s instep. Then she crossed her arms and twisted her lovely mouth up into a lopsided smirk. “Call me. Okay, Stefanos?”

  I said, “I will.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  I WALKED EAST on Pennsylvania Avenue. The temperature had fallen with evening, but I was warm with the buzz of new energy against the night. At the National, older couples were exiting cabs, dressed and eager for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s latest scam on the theatergoing public. In Freedom Plaza tourists walked hurriedly past a man playing flute. The man stood coatless in front of an empty wax cup.

  At Fourteenth and Penn I entered the leaded glass doors of the Occidental Restaurant in the Willard Hotel. I walked through a long hall, past black-and-white portrait photographs—Pat Schroeder and Carole Thompson on my right, George Bush and Harry Truman on my left—and down a flight of stairs into the bar area of the restaurant. Cole Porter played as I descended the stairs. I felt like Fred Astaire, with a two-day beard covering a bruised face.

  I took off my black overcoat and hung it on a rack, transferred my smokes to the inside pocket of my Robert Hall sport coat, and had a seat at the bar. The seat I took was next to a black-haired Jewess who was picking at an appetizer plate of peppered scallops and squid on a bed of romaine lettuce. She held her fork as if it were hot. Next to her sat another young woman with large, expensive jewelry and a tiny nose that cost more than the jewelry. They were probably grabbing a bite to eat before heading a few blocks uptown to the Spy Club, where rich boys would buy them drinks from the proceeds of their trust funds. I gave the Occidental a look.

  The room was all dark wood and candles, deuces primarily, young affluent couples with pale skin who looked pleasant in the light. In the bar area, three businessmen were hitting on a rather plain-looking woman who was wearing a dress that appeared to be decorated with a doily. On the far side of the bar, a distinguished elderly couple sipped their martinis and stared straight ahead. At the service bar, the manager fingered his Brooks Brothers tie with one hand and his brush mustache with the other. I signaled for the bartender.

  The bartender walked
over and stood square. He buffed the spot in front me with a clean white cloth, though the spot was already dry. His name tag said MICHAEL, my first bingo in a very long while.

  “Welcome to the Occidental,” he said with a white-toothed smile. He had the handsome but vacuous blue-eyed look of a military cadet, and he was built low to the ground, broad-shouldered and thick. “How can I serve you?”

  I had seen him pour a half ounce of scotch into a rocks glass overflowed with cubes and serve it to an unfortunate man on the other end of the bar. I said, “You can serve me an Old Grand-Dad. Neat. And put a cold bottle of Budweiser next to it.”

  Michael’s smile went away but not his chipper tone of voice. “It would be my pleasure,” he said, and drifted.

  By the time he returned I had lit a cigarette. Michael placed my drink on the bar with a thud. About a dollar’s worth of bourbon splashed out over the lip of the glass.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Cheers!” Michael said, and walked away.

  I drank my Grand-Dad and chased it with beer. From the corner of my eye I saw the black-haired young woman fan away the smoke of my cigarette. I had one more deep drag, crushed the butt in a clean ashtray, and had a look at the bar.

  The bar blended mahogany and oak with an inlay of brass. The runoff board was shiny copper, and free of bar netting. The liquor wall was subtly lit and backed by an immaculately beveled mirror framed by miniature marble columns. “Stardust” played on the house stereo. I signaled Michael for another round.

  Michael returned with my bourbon and beer. “Cheers,” he said tiredly.

  “And to you,” I said as I slid my business card along the top of the bar until it touched his fingers.

  He looked it over. His eyes shifted toward his manager, then back at me. He was still smiling, but the smile was tight. “So what?” he said in a low, calm voice.

  “Remember William Henry?”

  Some color drained from his face, but he held on to the smile. “It’s my business if I do,” he said.