I looked at Barry. He wasn’t laughing, and neither was I. I tucked the newspaper under my arm and left the room.
On the way to my place, I stopped at Athena’s and had a seat at the bar. I lit a cigarette, drew on it, and laid it in the ashtray. It was early yet for any kind of crowd, but I recognized a couple of regulars in quiet conversation, along with an Ultimate solo drinker who was as beautiful as a model and an intense woman I knew who was running the pool table on a youngish woman I had never met. Stella came over and wiped the area in front of me with a damp rag. She cocked her head and raised her eyebrows. I nodded my head one time. She reached into the cooler and pulled a bottle of beer. She popped the cap and set it down on a dry coaster. I thanked her and had a swig.
“So you’re back to it,” she said.
“Never had any intention of getting off it. I’ve never kidded myself about what I am. I’ve just got to try and not be so stupid about it, that’s all. Like I was that night.”
Stella adjusted her eyeglasses, put her fist on her hip. “That some kind of back-door apology?”
“Yeah, and a thank-you at the same time. I was probably rude about you stepping in-you know how I get. I know you were just trying to look out for me.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You’d do the same for me, right?”
“You bet.”
“Anyway, nobody got hurt.”
I left that alone and reached across the bar and shook her hand.
“So what’re you up to tonight, Nick?”
“Date with Lyla. But I wanted to S I ighask you something.”
“Go ahead.”
“You still play in that gay and lesbian bartenders’ softball league?”
“Every Monday night.”
“You know anybody from over at the Fire House, on P?”
Stella rubbed a finger under her nose. “There was this guy, Paul Ritchie, played for a long time on our team. Knees went out on him a couple of years back. Good guy. Good ballplayer, too. Ritchie, he could really hit.”
“You ever in touch with him anymore?”
“He still comes to the games. It’s more a chance to see old friends now than it is a competition. So, yeah, he stays up with us.”
“He still tends at the Fire House?”
“He’s been there, like, a hundred years. Where’s he gonna go?”
I drank off some of my beer. “I need to talk with him, if I can. I’m working on something that might involve that place.”
“Something that could get him into trouble?”
“Not unless he’s directly involved. The truth is, I don’t know yet. But I’ll do my best to keep him out of it. Could you hook me up?”
Stella took her hand off her hip, pointed a stubby finger at my face. “I thought you came in here to apologize, Nick.”
“I did, Stella.”
“Uh-huh. Well, I’ll give Paul a call, see what he says.”
“Tomorrow would be good for me,” I said.
“Don’t push it,” Stella said sternly. “I’ll call him.”
I told her to leave a message about it on my machine. She nodded and went to fix a cocktail for a customer. I drank the rest of my beer and put my cigarette between my teeth. Stella winked and gave me a little wave. I left ten on three and went out the front door. I walked to my car in the gathering darkness.
The two copies of D.C. This Week were identical, the last ones printed before Calvin Jeter’s murder. That the issues were the same couldn’t have been a coincidence, but as I looked through them, sitting at the desk of my makeshift office in my apartment, I saw no connection to either Calvin’s death or Roland’s disappearance. I skimmed every article, weekly feature, arts review, and column and came up empty. So I showered, changed into slacks and a blue cotton shirt, and went to pick up Lyla.
“Wow,” I said as she opened her door.
She wore a gauzy green-and-rust sundress cut high above her knees. Her hair was pulled back, with some of it left to fall around her lovely face, the light catching threads of silver in the red.
“You’re late, Nick.”
“I know. I’m sorry, I just got hung up in what I’ve been working on.”
“That’s okay.” She held up her goblet of wine. “But I got started without you.”
“I’ll catch up,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We drove across town in my Coronet 500, all four windows down, some Massive Attack pumping from the deck. Lyla was moving her head, digging on the music and the night, and I reached across the buckets and put my hand in her hair. At the next stoplight, we kissed and held it until the green. The air felt clean, with a crispness running through it, a rarity for that time of year; it was a fine summer night in D.C.
We ate at a Thai place on Massachusetts Avenue, in a row of restaurants east of Union Station. We talked about our respective days over satay and spring rolls and a barbecued beef salad; Lyla stayed with white wine while I worked on a couple of Singhas. By the time the waitress served our main course, a whole crispy fish with hot chili and garlic, the subject turned to Lyla’s newspaper and what I had found that day.
“Any thoughts?” I said.
“If you think something criminal is going on in relation to the newspaper, a good bet would be the personals.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s all sort of things happening in there-messages for meeting places that are really drop locations, model searches looking for porno candidates, stuff like that. Nick, you wouldn’t believe how many of the entries are just ads for prostitution, or for some other scam that’s even worse.”
“And you guys know about it?”
“We don’t knowingly take any ads or personals that are criminal. But we’re running a business. The Post and City Paper are doing it and making good money at it, and we have to do it, too. With the personals-it’s a nine hundred number-we get ninety-five cents a minute. There’re a couple hundred of those in each issue. When you annualize the revenue-well, you figure it out.”
“Yeah, I see what you’re saying. I’ll go back to it, check it out.” I cut a piece of fish off and dished it onto Lyla’s plate. “Here.”
“Thanks.” Lyla had a bite and signaled the waitress for another wine.
“You’re hittin’ it pretty good tonight,” I said.
“It’s all this hot stuff,” she said. “This fish is making me thirsty.”
“It’s making me thirsty, too. Next time that waitress goes by, get me a beer, as well.”
After dinner, we walked across Mass to a nice quiet bar in a fancy restaurant run by friends of Lyla’s. We ordered a couple of drinks-a bourbon rocks for me and a vodka tonic for Lyla-and had them slowly, listening to the recorded jazz that was a part Sat v› my stool and drank quietly and allowed myself to grow jealous. On the way out of the place, Lyla tripped on the steps and fell and scraped her knee on the concrete. We got into my car and I leaned forward and kissed the scrape, tasting her blood with my tongue. From that fortuitous position, I tried to work my head up under her dress. She laughed generously and pushed me away.
“Patience,” she said. I mumbled something and put the car in gear.
We stopped once more that night, to have a drink on the roof of the Hotel Washington at 15th and F, a corny thing to do, for sure, but lovely nonetheless, when the city is lit up at night and the view is as on time as anything ever gets. We managed to snag a deuce by the railing, and I ordered a five-dollar beer and a wine for Lyla. We caught a breeze there, and our table looked out over rooftops to the monuments and the Mall. A television personality-a smirky young man who played on a sitcom called My Two Dads (a show that Johnny McGinnes called My Doo-Dads)-and his entourage took a large table near ours, and on their way out, Lyla winged a peanut at the back of the actor’s head. The missile missed its target, but we got a round of applause from some people at the other tables who had obviously been subjected to the show. I could have easily had a few more beers when I was
