The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos Page B

Regina Ramone. She knew that Diego was friends with Asa, and thought Regina would want to be informed. Also, she was curious, as Gus would surely have some further information regarding the death. Regina had not yet heard the news and said that she did not think Gus had, either, otherwise he would have phoned. She ended the call while Marita Bryant was still talking and immediately tried to locate Gus.
    “YOUR SON WAS TIGHT with this boy?” said Rhonda Willis, riding shotgun in the stripped-down, four-banger Impala, the most basic model Chevrolet produced. She and Ramone were going up North Capitol Street.
    “Diego has a lot of friends,” said Ramone. “Asa wasn’t his main boy, but he was someone Diego knew fairly well. They played football on the same team last year.”
    “He gonna take it hard?”
    “I don’t know. When my father died, he felt it because he saw the grief hit me. But this kind of thing is wrong in a different way. It’s just unnatural.”
    “Who’s going to tell him?”
    “Regina will pick him up at school and give him the news. I’ll call him later. Then I’ll see him tonight.”
    “Y’all talk about the Lord much in your house?” said Rhonda.
    “Not too much,” said Ramone.
    “This one of those times you should.”
    Rhonda’s adult life had been challenging, what with having to raise four boys on her own. The God thing definitely worked for her. It was her rock and it was her crutch, and she liked to talk about it. Ramone did not.
    “What’s in your gut?” said Rhonda, cutting the silence in the car.
    “Nothing,” said Ramone.
    “You knew this boy. You know his family.”
    “His father and mother are straight. They kept a close watch on him.”
    “Anything else?”
    “His father’s kind of an unyielding guy. Athletics, the classroom, everything… He rode his son pretty hard.”
    “Hard enough to push the kid someplace bad?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “ ’Cause that can do as much damage as not bein there at all.”
    “Right.”
    “You ever have any kind of indication or feeling that the boy was into something wrong?”
    “No. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t. But I got no reason to think he was.”
    Rhonda looked across the bench. “Did you like him?”
    “He was a good kid. He was fine.”
    “I’m sayin, how did you feel about him? You know, how a man looks at a boy and sizes him up?”
    Ramone thought of the times he’d seen Asa on the football field, making half-assed tackles, sometimes moving away from the man running with the ball. He thought of Asa entering Ramone’s house, not addressing him or Regina directly, not greeting them at all unless he had to. He knew exactly what Rhonda was going for. Sometimes you’d look at a boy and see him as a man, and you’d think, He’s going to be a tough one, or a strong one, or he’s going to be successful in anything he does. Sometimes you’d look at a young man and think, I’d be proud if he were my son. Asa Johnson was not one of those boys.
    “He lacked heart,” said Ramone. “That’s about the only thing that comes to mind.”
    There was something else Ramone had felt sometimes, catching a kind of weakness in Asa’s eyes. Like he could be got or took.
    “Least I got an honest opinion out of you.”
    “Doesn’t mean anything,” said Ramone, mildly ashamed.
    “It’s more than Garloo’s gonna see. ’Cause you know he’ll look at that boy and think what he’s gonna think, automatic. And I’m not even sayin that Bill’s like that. He’s just… The man’s got a dull mind. He likes to take those mental shortcuts.”
    “I just need to get up there and get a look at things.”
    “If we ever get there.”
    “They give all the real vehicles to the regular police,” said Ramone.
    “We do get the bitch cars,” said Rhonda.
    Ramone punched the gas, but it only made the engine knock.
    THE CROWD AT THE crime scene had thinned of spectators and grown with officials and one print reporter by the time