Richmond Noir by Andrew Blossom Page A

Sure, I say.
    It’s a grim, tired place, but affordable. If it has a name, I don’t see it. There’s a certain coziness about the old trailers crammed in close together, the sounds of TVs and radios, cooking smells. I roll through slow, my General Lee beard must look like Casper floating by. A woman watches me pass through a tiny trailer window. She must be bent over her kitchen sink. At number seventeen, several somber men are waiting for me. We go inside where there are several more men and a single woman packed into what is likely the largest living room in the park. The men whose voices I recognize from the phone continue their argument. Not everybody thinks inviting me was such a great idea. Enough, several say. Let the man speak. So I tell my story. They’re not taking any chances on my Spanish. A woman named Irayda translates.
    Then they tell her their story, and Irayda tells it to me, though I get the gist in Spanish. They were working with Felix—Felix is the dead man—when the man who hired them—the man who lived in the big house up above—showed up to hurry them. People were coming to his house, and he didn’t want anyone to see them working, but it was a big job and dangerous because there were some large trees and not much room to get out of the way if anything went wrong.
    The big white tree came crashing down on Felix while the man from the house was there shouting at them. He told them not to call 911 or they’d all be arrested and deported, and they could dig Felix out and take him to the hospital just as fast themselves. They started digging. They didn’t have enough shovels for everyone. One of the men went back to the truck to get some more, but they couldn’t get Felix out before he died. The man said he’d call 911 after they took off, so they wouldn’t be arrested. They had left the man alone with Felix’s body Wednesday night. Then I showed up at Lowe’s the following Tuesday with his picture. Antonio stayed with Felix’s son when he first came to Richmond. His son was killed in a robbery last year.
    Irayda says, “They appreciate what you’ve done for Felix, but they would like you to stop now. If it was only them, it would be different, but they must consider the welfare of others—their families, their neighbors, their children. They know whose house it is. Things are hard enough already, the way things have been lately. You understand?”
    I wish I didn’t, but I do, so I don’t give her any argument. I shake hands all around. She leaves when I do, driving to a more affluent part of town. Probably here legally, well-educated, from a prosperous family back home in Mexico or Guatemala—maybe she knew Felix, or maybe she just wanted to help.
    I miss my turn, or something inside me refuses to take it, and I head for the house of the man promising on the radio to keep America safe for Americans or some such gibberish. I twist and turn through streets all named with a bit of the lord-and-manor about them. Once you get anywhere close to the river-fronting properties, the roads are all private. If I hadn’t pored over the Google photo, I don’t think I would’ve known which one to take. I roll right up front. I’m surprised there’s not a fence or something. Maybe there’s a virtual fence, like the one in Arizona. The lights are on. Someone’s home.
    And quite a home it is, stretched to make room for windows on one side and plenty of pavement on the other. Several cars much nicer than my Civic are parked here. They’re all wearing the host’s bumper sticker on their ass. Sounds like a party going on, people talking and laughing over Cuban jazz. Campaigning must make for some late nights, or maybe he just can’t sleep. The air is heavy with the smell of charred wood. Must put a damper on the festivities.
    I button up my shirt and tuck it in, ring the bell, and smile into the camera. General Lee calling. The candidate himself opens the door, and I tell him I’m a constituent