Nick's Trip (39 page)
I sat on a stool at the bar, tried to strike a match. A cigarette had burned down, dead-cold in the ashtray. I lit a fresh one, tossed the match toward the ashtray, missed. I reached for my shot glass and saw the half-filled bottle of Grand-Dad in the middle of a cluster of empty beer bottles. I tasted whiskey. The tape had ended. There was not a sound in the bar.
Black.
I stepped off the curb outside the Spot. A whooping alarm screamed in the night. Stella walked by me, said, “Nicky, Nicky,” went through the open front door of the Spot, reset the alarm. She asked for and took my keys, then locked the front door. A few women had spilled out of Athena’s onto the sidewalk. Stella returned, held my keys out, then drew them back as I reached for them.
“Come on, Nicky. Come on and sleep it off in the back.”
“I’m all right. Gimme my keys.”
“Forget it.”
“Gimme my keys. I can sleep in my car. What the fuck, Stella, it’s ninety degrees out here. You think I’m gonna freeze? Gimme my fuckin’ keys.”
Stella tossed me the keys. I tried to catch them, but there was an open beer in one of my hands and the bottle of Grand-Dad in the other. I went to one knee to pick my keys up off the street. I looked up, tried to thank Stella. She had already walked away.
Black.
Driving down Independence Avenue, a Minor Threat tune at maximum volume, blowing through the speakers of my Dodge. I stopped my car in the middle of the street, let the motor run, got out of the car, urinated on the asphalt. To my left, the Mall, the Washington Monument lit up and looming, leaning a little toward the sky. Tourists walked hurriedly by on the sidewalk, fathers watching me from the corner of their eyes, pushing their children along, the singer screaming from the open windows of my car: “What the fuck have
you
done?” Me, laughing.
Black.
I drove down M Street in Southeast, the Navy Yard on my right. My first car, a ’64 Plymouth Valiant, bought there at a government auction, accompanied by my grandfather. Must have tried to get back to the Spot, made a wrong turn. Lights everywhere, streetlights and taillights, crossing. I hit my beer, chased it with bourbon. The bourbon spilled off my chin. A blaring horn, an
angry voice yelling from the car at my side. The beer bottle tipped over between my legs, foam undulating from the neck. My shorts, soaked; pulled my wallet from my back pocket and tossed it on the bucket seat to my right. Music, loud and distorted in the car.
Black.
The car went slowly down a single-lane asphalt road. Trees on both sides of the road. To the right, through the trees, colored lights reflected off water. No music now in the car. The surge of laughter far away, and trebly slide guitar from a radio. Blurry yellow lights ahead, suspended above the water, shooting straight out into the sky. Had to pee, had to stop the car, had to stop the lights from moving. Heard gravel spit beneath the wheels, felt the car come to rest. Killed the ignition. Opened my door, stumbled out onto the gravel, heard the sound of a bottle hit the ground behind me. Started to fall, then gained my footing, stumbling, running now to the support of a tree. Needed to lie down, but not there. Pushed off the tree, bounced off another, felt something lash across my cheek. Shut my eyes, opened them, began to float into a fall. Nothing beneath me, no legs, a rush of lights and water and trees, spinning. The jolt of contact as I hit the ground, no pain. On my back, looking up at the branches, through the branches the stars, moving, all of it moving. Sick. The night coming up, no energy to turn over, just enough to tilt my head. A surge of warm liquid spilling out of my mouth and running down my neck, the stench of my own flowing puke, the steam of it passing before my eyes.
Black.
A sting on my cheek. Something crawling on my face, my hands dead at my sides. Let it crawl. The branches, the stars, still moving. My stomach convulsed. I turn my head and vomit.
Black.
The slam of a car door. The sound of something dragged through gravel and dirt. A steady, frantic moan.
The voice of a black man: “All right now. You already been a punk, and shit. Least you can do is go out a man.”
The moan now a muffled scream. Can’t move, can’t even raise my head. A dull plopping sound, then a quiet splash.
The black man’s voice: “Just leave him?”
Another voice, different inflection: “Kill a coon in this town and it barely makes the papers—no offense,
you
know what I mean. C’mon, let’s get outta here. Let’s go home.”
Black.
A Preview of
Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go
Praise for George Pelecanos’s Nick’s Trip
George Pelecanos is the author of several highly praised and bestselling novels, including, most recently,
The Way Home
and
The Cut
. He is also an independent-film producer, an essayist, and the recipient of numerous writing awards. He was a producer and Emmy-nominated writer for
The Wire
and currently writes for the acclaimed HBO series
Treme
.
The Cut
The Way Home
The Turnaround
The Night Gardener
Drama City
Hard Revolution
Soul Circus
Hell to Pay
Right As Rain
Shame the Devil
The Sweet Forever
King Suckerman
The Big Blowdown
Down By the River Where the Dead Men Go
Shoedog
Nick’s Trip
A Firing Offense
“Breezy entertainment…. A cast of sharply etched minor characters… adds to the pleasures offered by the offbeat Nick, with his gruff sensibilities and fine taste in women and music.”
—Publishers Weekly
“This particular entry in the series is as tough as they get: an urban nightmare of greed, betrayal, and kick-ass revenge.”
—Bill Ott,
American Libraries
“Snaps with authentic street talk and with a switch-hitting plot… the novel has something important to say about trust and treachery.”
—Tom Kakonis,
Washington Post
“The kind of book you are always hoping to find but rarely do.”
—James Sallis
“An even more promising follow-up to Pelecanos’s highly recommended first novel,
A Firing Offense.
”
—New Mystery
“Here is your first turn-of-the-century crime writer.”
—Charlie Gillett
“The coolest writer in America.”
—GQ
Copyright © 1993 by George P. Pelecanos
Reading group guide copyright © 2011 by George P. Pelecanos and Little, Brown and Company
Excerpt from
Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go
copyright © 1995 by George P. Pelecanos
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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www.HachetteBookGroup.com
.
First eBook Edition: June 2011
Back Bay Books is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. The Back Bay Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
ISBN: 978-0-316-12690-8
