A Firing Offense Read online

  I looked him over and said, “If I was, I would have called for backup by now.”

  “Damn straight,” he said, missing the irony and walking, with his friend, down the stairs to hang out in the cloakroom.

  I followed them down but veered off into the men’s toilet. I stood at the urinal and drained, reading the names of bands and slogans etched into the black walls.

  Below an anarchy symbol, two words were dug deep into the heart of the plaster. “No Future.” I buttoned up my fly and flushed the head.

  TEN

  THE RED-AWNINGED ROWHOUSE stood in the middle of G between Ninth and Tenth, just as flannel-shirt had said. I parked in front of it the next morning somewhere around eleven o’clock.

  Real estate salesmen pitched this area as Capitol Hill, and it was, though a far cry from the connotations that such a prestigious name would suggest. There were residential homes here, struggling group houses, neighborhood bars and shops, and a few marginally upscale businesses that quickly came and went.

  I opened a chain-link gate and stepped along a concrete walkway split and overgrown with weeds and clover. A mongrel shepherd in the adjacent yard was on the end of its tether, up on its hind legs and growling viciously.

  I stepped up onto a small porch with brown brick columns and knocked on a thin wooden door. A dirgelike bass insinuated itself through the walls of the house.

  I knocked again. The door swung open and a girl stood before me. She was taller than me, even allowing for the fact that she was up a step. Her legs were long and her hips immaturely narrow. Through the sides of her green tank top I could see the curvature and bottom-fold of narrow, sausagelike breasts. Her tired eyes bore the mark of experience, though her childlike bone structure put her at around seventeen.

  “I’m looking for John,” I said. “Is he in?”

  Leaning in the doorframe, she looked behind her, then back at me, and said, “Which one?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know there was more than one. John Heidel.”

  “There’s a lot of people live here, man, on and off. Johnny’s in his room, upstairs and through the second door on the left.”

  I thanked her, but she was already walking away. The sound of several loud male voices came from the kitchen, where she was heading. From the mismatched, worn furniture in the living room to the requisite black and white television with foil antenna, the place resembled a student group house without the books.

  I grabbed the loose wooden banister and took the steps slowly. At the top of the stairs I passed a room where a kid sat in the window box smoking. He didn’t return my nod.

  My knock on the second door was hard enough to open it halfway. A young man lay on his back on an unmade bed, reading a paperback. Smoke rose slowly from behind the book. An emotionless voice told me to “come on in.”

  He lowered the book and, squinting from the smoke of the cigarette that was planted in his mouth, cocked one eyebrow as he sized me up. He sat up on the edge of the bed and butted the weed in an overflowing ashtray set next to a radial alarm clock. From the looks of his wrinkled jeans, this would be the first time he had risen from the bed that day. His shirtless upper body was thick and naturally strong, without the artificial bulk obtained from weight machines, and there was a crescent scar half-framing his right eye.

  “What is it?” he asked, slowly rubbing the top of his shaven head.

  “John Heidel?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m Kevin DeGarcey from the Washington Times.” I flashed him a card imprinted with the Times logo, not giving him time to read DeGarcey’s title of advertising account executive. I extended my hand and received a grip weak with suspicion.

  “What do you want?”

  “The Post ran an article several weeks ago about the local skinhead movement that in my opinion was very negative. My editor feels they only captured, or chose to print, one side of the story.”

  “I would agree with that.”

  “He’s assigned me a different type of story on you guys. I’ve been working on it awhile now, doing interviews, talking to different people.”

  “Why did you want to talk to me?”

  “I heard you knew most of your peers on the local level.”

  “From who?”

  “Two younger guys I met at the Snake Pit last night. I didn’t get their names. One of them wore a flannel shirt, the other one was a little guy. They looked like they could have been in your group, but I have to admit, they were very eager to sell information.”

  “They’re ‘wanna-bes,’ not skins. I’ll have to speak to those two about giving out my name.”

  “What are you reading?” He seemed to warm to the question as I pulled a wooden chair next to his bed and had a seat. I took a pad and pen from my jacket.

  “The Territorial Imperative,” he said, “by Robert Ardrey.” He spelled the author’s name for me as I wrote.

  “Any good?”

  “Interesting ideas. The man doesn’t judge violence. Violence just is.”

  “What do you think about violence?”

  “In what sense?” He smirked. He was probably smarter than the majority of his friends, but it was a relative intelligence. There was something stupid in his dead eyes and slack jaw.

  “Skinhead violence, specifically,” I said. “The Post said your group beats up gays, the occasional black who gets in your way. Is that true?”

  “You and me, they call us human, but we’re really animals, right? And even though we’re animals, we’re supposed to suppress our natural instincts to preserve and protect our turf.” He paused to rub his head. “It just boggles my mind that there isn’t more violence out there, that people aren’t wasting each other wholesale in the street. I’m saying that since violence is a natural instinct, it’s amazing that there’s so little of it happening.”

  “Why gays, though? Why blacks? The Post article said that the recent P Street Beach beatings were done by the skinheads.”

  “Look,” he said, leaning in, “here’s the thing. We don’t care what people do in their own homes. We really don’t. But take that part of the park—P Street Beach—that’s my park too. I should be able to walk through it without stumbling on some freak faggots. So they get stomped once or twice, maybe they’ll take that shit back indoors where it belongs. As for the blacks, we send them a message every so often to remind them that we live here too. Fuckin’ bootheads act like they own this town.”

  “Do you personally approve of these acts?”

  “I’m not even saying we do the violence ourselves. But it is understandable. It’s a matter of protecting your turf.”

  “I interviewed a guy they call Redman,” I said abruptly.

  “You mean Eddie Shultz?” Heidel looked surprised and a little sad.

  “That’s him.” I wrote the name. “He made some interesting connections between the music you guys listen to and the violence. Any thoughts on that?”

  “Yeah. My thought is that anything Eddie Shultz says is bullshit.” He looked at me sourly and flipped open the top of his hardpack, put a smoke in his mouth and lit it, then absently threw the blown-out match onto the nightstand.

  “I thought he was one of you guys.”

  “He ain’t shit. Eddie was okay once, but he fucked up.”

  “How so?”

  He looked at me warily. “You writing a story about Eddie or the skins?”

  “The skins. But that’s the point. If I find out why someone falls out of favor in your group, I find out more about the group itself. Maybe the article will be more sympathetic.”

  He dragged hard on his cigarette. “Eddie started hanging with the wrong kinds of people. I mean, we just don’t get into the drug thing here, as an unwritten rule. We do consume some alcohol, though.” He smiled for the first time, revealing chipped and dirty teeth.

  “The times I interviewed him, he was with a younger boy and a good-looking woman.”

  His smile faded. “That’s what I�
�m talking about, man. He started running with this kid, and they were using a shitload of coke, and flashing it around like there was quantity. Then the chick starts hanging out with the two of them, and Eddie falls for her. I told him that the bitch had no interest in him or his friend, she just wanted to be around the drugs. It was so obvious.”

  “What was her name again?”

  “I have no clue, man. Never wanted to know.”

  “The boy?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  I was losing him. “You don’t know where I can reach any of them now, verify my facts?”

  He snorted. “You ain’t verifyin’ nuthin’ with Eddie. He left town with those two a couple of weeks ago. Headed south is what he said, whatever that means. I don’t know where he is.”

  I didn’t bother to try and shake his hand. Heidel was staring out the window as I left, smoking and squinting, as if straining to see his friend Redman walking down the street.

  At the foot of the stairs I noticed the girl who had answered the door, sitting with her legs draped over the arm of a shredded easy chair. She was watching a game show on TV while listening to Joy Division on the stereo. I walked in and turned the amplifier’s volume knob down. She looked over at me, only mildly bothered.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hey.”

  “John said it was all right to ask you a couple of questions.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m a reporter.” An image of Jimmy Olsen came to mind.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I need to talk to Eddie Shultz and the girl he was going around with.”

  “Eddie left town,” she said, looking out the corner of her eye at the interchangeable horse-toothed host on the television screen.

  “I know. You wouldn’t happen to know where they went?”

  “Uh-uh. He and Kimmy just split, with that Jimmy kid. A couple of weeks ago.”

  “Kimmy.”

  “Yeah. Kim Lazarus.”

  “She a local?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, anxiously shifting her gaze to the screen. “Why don’t you ask Redman’s old lady. They live in Prince Georges County someplace. I was there with him once.”

  “You remember the address? The street?”

  “Something ‘wood.’ Edgewood, Ledgewood, some shit like that.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Eddie and John were pretty tight, weren’t they?”

  “They were, until this Kimmy chick came around.”

  I readjusted the volume on the stereo, walked to the front door, and stepped out. I breathed cool, fresh air as the funereal bass trailed behind.

  ELEVEN

  MARSHA PICKED UP and responded in her usual cheerful manner when I phoned her from my apartment.

  “Nutty Nathan’s,” she nearly sang.

  “Hi, Marsha. It’s Nick.”

  “Nicky! Where are you?”

  “Home. Taking the day off.”

  “That’s nice,” she said.

  “Marsha, I need a favor.”

  “Sure, Nicky.”

  “Go to service dispatch and borrow their Hanes Directory, you know, the ‘crisscross.’”

  “Okay.”

  “Now write down this name.” I spelled Shultz for her. “In P.G. County, locate all the Shultzes for me who live on streets that end with the word wood, like Dogwood Terrace or Edgewood Road. Know what I mean?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Okay, Nicky. Want me to call you back?”

  “Please. You’ve got my number?”

  “Yup. I won’t be long,” she promised, and hung up.

  I pulled the metro phone books from the hall closet and laid them out on my desk. There were about forty total listings for the last name of Lazarus, and I began calling.

  It was early afternoon and many people weren’t in, though I left messages on their machines. Those that were home generally muttered the “wrong number” response and hung up quickly; a couple of elderly folks were eager to talk, but these too were not the homes of Kim Lazarus.

  Two hours later I dialed the final listing and received the same treatment. I called Marsha back.

  “It’s Nick, Marsha.”

  “I’ve been trying to get you for over an hour,” she scolded.

  “What have you got?”

  “I found a Joseph Shultz on Briarwood Terrace in Oxen Hill,” she said. “And there’s a Thomas and Maureen Shultz on Inglewood in Riverdale.”

  “Give me both phone numbers and the addresses.” She read me the information. “I owe you lunch, Marsha. Thanks a million.”

  WHEN I DIALED THE second number and asked for Eddie, Maureen Shultz told me he wasn’t in. I identified myself as DeGarcey from the Washington Times and explained the sympathetic portrait of Eddie and his friends that I was struggling to finish on deadline. Could I come over to the Shultz residence to get those last few details? Sure, she said.

  I drove north over the district line into Maryland, then made a right on 410, which wound, primarily as East–West Highway, through Takoma Park, Chillum, Hyattsville, and Riverdale. Inglewood was on my detail map. It was a street of Cape Cods with large, treeless front lawns. A row of oaks ran down the government strip the length of the street.

  Judging by the number of nonrecreational pickups parked in the driveways, this part of the neighborhood was largely blue-collar and middle-income at best. But the properties and houses had been functionally kept with that quiet pride peculiar to the working class.

  I knocked on the door of the address Marsha had given me and a heavy-hipped woman answered. Her worn housedress and graying, closely cropped hair made her appear older than I would have guessed from her phone voice. She let me into a house that was visibly free of dirt but smelled of dogs. One of them, an old setter, moved his eyes and nothing else as I passed with his mistress into the kitchen.

  I sat at a table that had a marbleized formica top. She made instant coffee while I looked around the room. The appliances were avocado green and the refrigerator had no kickplate.

  Maureen Shultz was an outwardly pleasant woman with whom it was fairly comfortable to sit and share coffee and conversation. But she seemed to get more anxious as we talked. Soon it became clear that she was interviewing me, and had apparently agreed to my visit for that purpose. She was worried about her son.

  “When was the last time you saw him?” she asked.

  “About two weeks ago,” I lied. “He was with an attractive woman and a younger boy.”

  “An attractive woman,” she sniffed. “I suppose she was, on the outside.” She took a sip of coffee, visibly embarrassed by her display of judgement or jealousy. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t know much about her. It was just a feeling I had.”

  “I got the feeling they didn’t belong together, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “He brought her over here once. Eddie’s friends were always welcome here. But you’re right. She might not have come from money, but she had done some high living. Eddie hadn’t, not yet.”

  “What gave you that impression?”

  “Small things,” she said, sipping her coffee. “She was older, for one, and the etiquette she used at dinner. She commented on my china, which isn’t actually very good at all. But the point is, Eddie wouldn’t know china from paper plates.”

  “What about her background?”

  “She never said, exactly. Neither did Eddie. She had a slight Southern accent that became more pronounced as her guard began to drop, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “She mentioned that she had a little college and worked in stores and restaurants before she moved up here. She said that she liked to go to the seashore back home.”

  All of that information was meaningless. Kim Lazarus could have been from any coastal state south of the Mason-Dixon line.

  “I talked to John Heidel today,” I said, dropping a name that perked her up a bit. “I got the imp
ression he might know more about the girl, but he wasn’t eager to talk.”

  “He knew the girl too,” she said vaguely, straightening her posture and wringing her hands.

  “What do you think about the crowd Eddie and John were in, the group they call the skinheads?”

  “Eddie and John went to high school together. Grades wise, they weren’t the brightest boys. I know they drank beer, raced their cars a little too fast. But that’s all a part of growing up. What they do now, that’s a phase too.”

  “Mrs. Shultz, you must be aware of the allegations against their group. The violence against minorities.”

  “Yes,” she said bitterly. “I’ve read the articles. And I’m not blind to the ways of my son. His father put that hatred into him. He’s an insecure man, and it passes from the father to the son. But Eddie wouldn’t beat up anybody if there wasn’t a reason.”

  “I’d like to explore his side of things. But I need to talk to him again to do it.”

  “How can I help you?”

  “You’ve known John Heidel for quite a long time. Give him a call and see if he has any idea where they were headed. I’ll be at this number.” I handed her the number to my answering machine that I had written on my pad.

  She began walking me to the front door but stopped in the living room to take a framed photograph off the fireplace mantel. She faced it towards me.

  “That’s Eddie’s high school picture. He looks an awful lot better with all that hair. It’s funny,” she chuckled. “At the time, I gave him hell about it being too long.”

  I could see why they called the boy Redman. His hair, long in the picture in some sort of shag, was bright orange, as were his eyebrows and the hopelessly weak mustache above his thin lips. Eddie’s eyes were narrow and rather cruel, a trait I found completely absent in his mother.

  “Talk to John and give me a call later,” I said.

  She nodded. I hurried to the door and turned to say good-bye. I watched her replace Eddie’s picture on the mantel, feeling vaguely intrusive as I saw her lightly run her finger around the edge of the frame.

  Sitting in my car in front of the Shultz residence, I found myself watching a young mother a few houses down who was watching her child crawl upon a white blanket that had been spread upon the lawn.