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 washe Metrod 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 fred hthe 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.”
‹" wheatfont size="3"›“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.”