return to sleep. I reached for the pack of Camels on the nightstand, found a matchbook, and struck a flame to the tobaccoed end.
The first lungful was toxic with sulfur, but I held it in and tried to watch the smoke of my exhale drift up toward the ceiling. What I saw was a subtle change of the spare light, like the slow movement of deep water on a moonlit night. I studied the lit end of the smoke and made a trail of it with a small circular motion of my hand. Lee woke and got up on one elbow. She put one small hand on my chest and with the other brushed the hair back away from her face.
“What’s up, Nicky?” she said.
“Just thinking,” I said. “The thinking woke me up, and now it’s keeping me up.”
“Thinking about what?”
I took a deep drag off the cigarette. “I had a run-in with this guy yesterday. This guy just happened to be Italian. Anyway, I belted him across the mouth. And after I did that I called him a name.”
“What kind of name?”
“A Guinea. A dago. I don’t remember.”
“Go to sleep, Nicky. You didn’t mean anything.”
“Something like that always means something.”
“Go to sleep.”
“I got a feeling here,” I said. “That this whole thing with Billy Goodrich—his wife, the DiGeordanos, all of it—there’s something not right about it. Nothing ever good comes from situations like that, Lee. It’s going to turn out bad.”
SEVEN
W ASHINGTON, D.C., IS laid out in quadrants with the Capitol serving as the point at which they all meet. Numbered streets progress, well, numerically, and run north to south. Lettered streets are arranged alphabetically and run east to west. At the border of each quadrant this numerical progression begins again. Thus it is nearly impossible to get lost in our nation’s capital. Unless, of course, one hails from some hotbed of logic like, say, Baltimore.
I had parked my Dodge early Monday morning on Florida Avenue, facing west. Florida Avenue bisects the city at the fall line of the Piedmont Plateau. It is no accident that well-to-do whites live on the more stable high ground of upper Northwest, while moderate to poor blacks reside in North and Southeast; rather it is a geographic divination that seems to evolve in all the major cities of the Northeast. It is also no accident, then, thoughit can be said to have been mildly prophetic, that Florida Avenue once went by the name of Boundary Street.
I turned the collar of my overcoat up to warm my neck against the stinging wind and walked beside a retaining wall toward Sixteenth. On the wall was spray-painted, in red, STOP THE PHONY U.S. DRUG WAR IN PANAMA . At the corner of Sixteenth and Florida, on the opposite side of the street, was the apartment building gone condo where William Henry had lived and died. I gave it an uncritical eye as I waited for the light to change. The light changed, and I crossed Sixteenth and passed beneath a concrete archway, on which was painted the slogan CHE LIVES !. When I was through the archway, I was in Meridian Hill Park.
Meridian Hill Park could have been the most beautiful park in the city, a cross between a European palazzo and a garden. Neighborhood people in the pre–air-conditioned forties used to sleep here on summer nights and enjoy starlit concerts ranging from classical to swing. The park also had a grand view of downtown, until a high rise erected at Florida and New Hampshire avenues put an end to that. Sometime in the seventies the D.C. government renamed it Malcolm X Park, though since they had no legal right to do so (the Feds owned it), the place is still known officially as Meridian Hill. Most people who follow the teachings of Malcolm X agree that this is for the better, since Meridian Hill Park is now little more than a drug market.
I walked across a balustraded promenade that spanned an empty pool situated at the foot of a graduated series of empty fountains. I passed the large statue of James Buchanan on the east side of the park
The first lungful was toxic with sulfur, but I held it in and tried to watch the smoke of my exhale drift up toward the ceiling. What I saw was a subtle change of the spare light, like the slow movement of deep water on a moonlit night. I studied the lit end of the smoke and made a trail of it with a small circular motion of my hand. Lee woke and got up on one elbow. She put one small hand on my chest and with the other brushed the hair back away from her face.
“What’s up, Nicky?” she said.
“Just thinking,” I said. “The thinking woke me up, and now it’s keeping me up.”
“Thinking about what?”
I took a deep drag off the cigarette. “I had a run-in with this guy yesterday. This guy just happened to be Italian. Anyway, I belted him across the mouth. And after I did that I called him a name.”
“What kind of name?”
“A Guinea. A dago. I don’t remember.”
“Go to sleep, Nicky. You didn’t mean anything.”
“Something like that always means something.”
“Go to sleep.”
“I got a feeling here,” I said. “That this whole thing with Billy Goodrich—his wife, the DiGeordanos, all of it—there’s something not right about it. Nothing ever good comes from situations like that, Lee. It’s going to turn out bad.”
SEVEN
W ASHINGTON, D.C., IS laid out in quadrants with the Capitol serving as the point at which they all meet. Numbered streets progress, well, numerically, and run north to south. Lettered streets are arranged alphabetically and run east to west. At the border of each quadrant this numerical progression begins again. Thus it is nearly impossible to get lost in our nation’s capital. Unless, of course, one hails from some hotbed of logic like, say, Baltimore.
I had parked my Dodge early Monday morning on Florida Avenue, facing west. Florida Avenue bisects the city at the fall line of the Piedmont Plateau. It is no accident that well-to-do whites live on the more stable high ground of upper Northwest, while moderate to poor blacks reside in North and Southeast; rather it is a geographic divination that seems to evolve in all the major cities of the Northeast. It is also no accident, then, thoughit can be said to have been mildly prophetic, that Florida Avenue once went by the name of Boundary Street.
I turned the collar of my overcoat up to warm my neck against the stinging wind and walked beside a retaining wall toward Sixteenth. On the wall was spray-painted, in red, STOP THE PHONY U.S. DRUG WAR IN PANAMA . At the corner of Sixteenth and Florida, on the opposite side of the street, was the apartment building gone condo where William Henry had lived and died. I gave it an uncritical eye as I waited for the light to change. The light changed, and I crossed Sixteenth and passed beneath a concrete archway, on which was painted the slogan CHE LIVES !. When I was through the archway, I was in Meridian Hill Park.
Meridian Hill Park could have been the most beautiful park in the city, a cross between a European palazzo and a garden. Neighborhood people in the pre–air-conditioned forties used to sleep here on summer nights and enjoy starlit concerts ranging from classical to swing. The park also had a grand view of downtown, until a high rise erected at Florida and New Hampshire avenues put an end to that. Sometime in the seventies the D.C. government renamed it Malcolm X Park, though since they had no legal right to do so (the Feds owned it), the place is still known officially as Meridian Hill. Most people who follow the teachings of Malcolm X agree that this is for the better, since Meridian Hill Park is now little more than a drug market.
I walked across a balustraded promenade that spanned an empty pool situated at the foot of a graduated series of empty fountains. I passed the large statue of James Buchanan on the east side of the park
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