“After that night, there just wasn’t a way for me to be right with myself. I was done bein Faro for a while, case the po-lice figured out anything ’bout the tickets. It wasn’t a week, and I was back in to dopin. Erno tried hard to stop me, but with time to think, I wasn’t havin any more of him. One day I’m at Lamplight and there’s Gandolph. This has to be two months after all this mess. And with twenty dudes around, he reaches into his pocket, and wrapped in this ratty piece of tissue, there’s Luisa’s cameo. I knew it straight out. I’d seen it on her neck.
“‘Faro,’ he says to me—that’s all he knew to call me—‘Faro, man what-all’m I gone do with this thing now? Ain worth nothin to nobody else.’
“I’m like, ‘Word up, nigger, you gone put yourself under. You best get rid of that. Po-lice be sayin you the one who busted a cap in her.’
“He’s like, ‘How they do that, when I ain done nothin? I’m in mind to find her kin. They pay good for this here, now that she dead. They owe me, cause of how she held out on me.’
“I’m like, ‘Do what you have to, brother, but maybe you oughta hold up with that till somebody else is under the weight for dropping her down six. And I don’t want to never hear nothin over them tickets.’
“He says, ‘Ain no chance of that.’
“Uncle Erno, man, he just was trippin when I told him. He was lookin around for Gandolph after that, gonna roust him and get that piece off him before he made trouble for himself and the both of us, but Erno didn’t ever find him, I guess. Wasn’t quite winter yet, so Gandolph wasn’t hangin at the airport.”
Muriel made a sound. Winter. As carefully as Erdai had papered over Collins’s role, he’d missed that detail when he’d invented his own encounter with Gandolph and the cameo, and she’d nailed him on the witness stand. It was the first instant she was certain he was lying.
“Pretty soon, I had trouble enough on my own,” Collins said. “Second of October I got set up on a big buy-bust. Videotape and everything. Cops knew they had me bad, even when they were shovin me in the cruiser. ‘Third time for you, boy. Take a good look out the window, cause you ain never gonna see the street again for the rest of your life.’ They were cold. But I had to give them something. I would have started in talking on the way to the station, if I didn’t figure those Gangster Outlaws I was kickin down to would kill me first night in the jail.
“Anyway, couple hours back inside, and I’d gotten it in my head that this was all Uncle Erno’s fault. If he didn’t go and shoot those people, I wouldn’t be jammed up like this. And if I stooled on my uncle, wouldn’t be any gangbangers to kill me for doing that. Erno though, he was a smart one. Knew damn well what I was fixin to do. He was the first visit I got.
“He’s like, ‘You told them anything?’ I was pretending I didn’t understand, but he wouldn’t let me get away with that. ‘Oh, don’t bullshit a bullshitter. I know what you’re thinking. And I’m not gonna tell you not to do it for my sake. But I will say that for yours. You tell them the truth, they’ll put you right in the middle of it. Whose shoes are on that dead man? Who was stealing tickets with that girl? You’re facing life for the dope. They offer fifty, sixty years for murder, you gotta take it. That’s not what you want, is it?’ Course not. And I’d rather not blame my uncle, specially when I was lookin at him. And he was right anyhow. Erno knew how the cops worked.
“Said he had a better idea. Put all of the blame on that poor lame Gandolph. He’d been runnin his mouth ’forehand how he was gonna kill Luisa anyway. Sort of made himself suspect number one. Just had to lead the po-lice the right way. I wasn’t sure Squirrel’d be silly enough to keep that cameo around after I warned him, but Erno said not to worry, he had all that stuff still buried under his toolshed at home, worse came to worst, he’d figure some way to put a piece of that in Gandolph’s hand, say they discovered some stash of his at the airport. Never had to, of course, because that poor hook was still holdin on to the cameo when you-all found him. Still gonna get himself the money he was owed. Dude that soft, once an idea gets into his head, you can’t get it out.” Collins shook his face in grim wonder.
“Only thing is, I couldn’t ever believe anybody would look at that skinny little Squirrel and figure him for a killer. ‘Dog’ll do it to any bitch he finds,’ Erno told me, ‘once he smells heat.’ My uncle knew the po-lice.”
Muriel glanced over to see how Larry had taken that observation, but he was zoned again, staring through the blinds at the parking lot. The truth, as far as Muriel could see, was that Erno had figured things pretty well. His biggest risk was that when Squirrel was arrested, he would start talking about the tickets in order to explain the cameo. But apparently even Gandolph realized that story put him in too deep. Threatening Luisa was way too close to killing her. And even if Squirrel had coughed all of that up, Erno and Collins both knew the police would have a hard time finding Faro.
“That’s why you said at the jail in ’91 that you’d never testify, right?” she asked Collins. “When you told us about the cameo?”
“Right,” said Collins. “Couldn’t do that. Rommy would have recognized me as Faro straightaway. No way to keep the whole tale from comin out then. But it worked. I got my ten, and Uncle Erno, he just drove on by like it was an accident on the highway.
“My uncle was good to me all the time I was inside, come visit, packages, whatnot, lecturing me to make the most of this chance when I got out. That came late ’96. Old Faro, nobody had tumbled to that, so I was Faro again, ready to go back into travel agenting, but the truth is I wasn’t on the street forty-eight hours ’fore I had a pipe in my hand. Everything the same. I was strung out, Erno wouldn’t even speak my name. Only thing, I was afraid to start in slanging again. I knew it was life for sure if I got busted with quantity. Couldn’t give up my uncle on the murders this time, cause I’d put Gandolph inside already and there’d be nobody to believe a different tale.
“One night I was hurtin bad. Needed to cop and didn’t even have those moths in my pocket they show in cartoons. And it come to me that Erno had said all that stuff that we took out of Paradise that night was still under his toolshed. I went over there with a shovel and started in diggin till I found that apron. Cloth was full of holes, but everything was inside. All I had in mind to do was sell some of it—the watches and rings—so I could buy a couple bottles, but I saw that gun in there and it come in my head that if I had that, I could shake big money out of my uncle. Might be that his fingerprints were still on the gun, so he’d have no choice, gonna have to give what he owed me. I was back to that. How he owed me. Owed me and owed me.
“My aunt came home and said he was down at Ike’s. I run in there holdin that gun by the barrel, so I didn’t wipe off any prints Erno’d left on the handle. I was screamin about how he messed me up and owed me. I wasn’t thinkin too good, naturally enough. Half the folks in that place were po-lice and armed, and they all had their gats out and pointed straight at me ten seconds after I said my first word.
“‘Gimme that thing,’ Erno says and takes the pistol straight out of my hand, pushed me outside, trying to talk sense, how I was gonna get killed carryin on like this, and couldn’t put those killings on him now that I put them on Gandolph. I said, ‘Hell, that gun probably got your fingerprints all over it.’ ‘What of it?’ he says. ‘Twenty cops just saw me take it out of your hand.’ He was right, too, probably, but it was the same old doo-doo so far as I was concerned, him right and white, and me black and back. ‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘I got the rest of where that come from back at your house and a hole under your shed where it been, and you ain walkin from what you done this time, I’m goin back in there, tell everybody you know what a murderin coward you been.’
“Erno, like I said, he didn’t care for surprises. Not at all. I was sashayin back inside, and he was screamin out to me, Don’t do it, don’t do it. If I’d been in a better frame of mind, I surely would have remembered Gus. But I didn’t. Anyway, last I recall was goin through the door
. Don’t even remember the bang. Just the light. I saw Jesus’ face that night. I truly did. I heard His voice. I was layin on that floor dyin, I think, but wherever I was, I knew I was all right now.
“And I have been. I went down to Atlanta not long after I was out of the hospital. Been there since. Had my life and finally done right.
“Now, course, it was all turned around. Erno was inside and I was outside. I was the one goin to visit and tellin him how Jesus could be lookin out for him, too. Might be he heard me, I was never sure. But somethin come to him once he knew he was sick. Couldn’t just die with all those sins on him. I went to see him not long after New Year’s, when he got the word about how bad the cancer was. I was tryin to offer comfort and he just looks at me in the middle of stuff, and says, ‘They’re gonna execute that poor moron pretty soon.’ I knew what he meant. Wasn’t the first time we’d talked about it. ‘We can’t let them do that,’ says Erno.
“‘Do what you have to,’ I told him.
“‘No,’ he says, ‘I ain gonna have shot you through the back to save your life and mine just to put you in the middle of all this now. It’s still the same as I said—the po-lice will never believe you weren’t in on the shooting. I’ll tell what needs to be told. Not too sure I can get anybody to listen. But I’m gonna try. You just keep your mouth shut. Call Lawyer Aires. Fifth Amendment all the way.’” Collins looked up from his lap and his light eyes found Muriel’s again with the same directness as when he’d started.
“That’s what happened,” he told her.
IT WAS ONE; OF THOSE DAYS when it was just going to get hotter until the sun set. Even at 4 p.m., as she stood with Molto and Larry in the parking lot outside Aires’s office, she could feel the blacktop softening under her feet. She’d left her sunglasses in her car and she squinted at both men. Facing the tyrannical sun, you didn’t have to wonder why people had worshiped it.
“So?” she asked.
Each was mopey.
“I need to think about it,” said Molto. “I want to go over the case file. Give me twenty-four. Let’s all have a conference on Friday.”
Larry and Molto made at once for their cars to escape the heat. Muriel walked to Larry’s Concorde before he left. She could feel a touch of the air-conditioned cool inside when he let down the window.
“We never had that talk,” she told him.
“No, we didn’t.” He had put on his Oakleys and she couldn’t see his eyes, which was probably just as well. “Any point?”
“I have some things to say.”
He shrugged. “I’ll be at that house tomorrow night,” he said, “putting together a punch list for my crew. Stop by for a beer if you like.”
“There or square,” she said.
He pulled out without looking back at her.
She opened her car and was still outside, letting the heat escape, when Jackson toddled from the glass doors toward his Cadillac, his briefcase under his arm. He was in a hurry.
“Got a date?” Muriel asked.
Spry and lively, Jackson nonetheless showed an additional spark when he answered, “As a matter of fact. Taking a fine lady to the Symphony in the Park.” He’d been a widower for two or three years now.
Muriel asked how Collins was doing. He was in his wife’s arms when they’d left.
“He’s in there prayin, like he oughta be doin. Take him some time, but he’ll be all right. That was the God’s truth you just heard, Muriel. I hope you’re smart enough to know that.”
“If God wants the job, Jackson, I won’t even bother trying. But otherwise I’m going to have to figure this out on my own.”
“Don’t you play with me, Muriel. There wasn’t a word that young man spoke that didn’t ring true. I’m not even gonna worry about you thinkin otherwise.” To start his car and lower the windows, Jackson leaned over the column. After touching the wheel, he cursed the heat and took a second to lick his thumb, but that didn’t stop him from waving a finger at Muriel when he turned her way again.
“One thing you should know, Muriel. I been representing that young man since he was a juvenile. Bad a hoodlum as all the rest, but Erno, may he rest in peace, he kept up sayin, ‘He’s all right, he’s all right, he’s gonna be okay.’ Never can tell, Muriel, which of them will come around. You folks don’t even care to try these days. Lock ’em up as long as you can, as many as you can, even kill ’em if they give you a chance.”
“Did I just hear you use the word ‘hoodlum,’ Jackson?”
“Hoodlum or not, you can’t ever give up on a human being,” Jackson said. “You know why? Because there is just no point in that. Can’t be any reason to what we’re doing here, if we’re gonna give up on people.”
If you made Jackson Aires the P.A. tomorrow, he’d condemn half his clients faster than he swatted flies. But he never saw a side he wouldn’t take, as long as it put him opposite a prosecutor.
“Enjoy your evening, Jackson.”
“I certainly intend to.” He allowed himself a wicked laugh, then he sat stiffly on the Cadillac’s red leather front seat with his feet still in the parking lot, using his hands to drag his legs beneath the wheel. Apparently, his back was giving him trouble, but whatever his infirmities, Jackson was not too old for love. Nobody was. He revved the engine enthusiastically. With Larry’s recent departure, Muriel again was dragged down in an undertow of regret. A few days ago she’d been wondering if she might be willing to trade everything for love. The bizarre ironies of the way this case was working out suddenly pierced her. Somehow it had ended up winner take all. Jackson and Arthur were going to walk their clients and have love to boot. Muriel would get nothing.
“Have you heard the latest on this case?” she asked Jackson before he could close his window.
“What’s that?”
“Arthur Raven and Gillian Sullivan. In the chapel of love.”
“No,” said Jackson. He emitted the same high cackle he had a second before. “How long is that goin on?”
Muriel shrugged.
“Doesn’t that beat everything?” Jackson asked. “Arthur Raven and the Junkie Judge.”
“The who?”
“Oh, that’s just what I called her. The Junkie Judge. Gillian the Junkie Judge. I had several clients who swore they saw her coppin out on the street when she was still on the bench.”
“Crack?”
“Heroin. So they said.”
“Are you sure, Jackson?”
“They were just street riffraff, but there were plenty of them. Probably be happy to tell you the same thing today if you had any need to hear it. Put them in an angry frame of mind when they had to come up before her, I’ll tell you that. Even a thug, Muriel, knows what’s fair.”
She couldn’t tell if she was more astounded or amused. She laughed as she contemplated the whole notion.
“A junkie,” said Muriel.
“That’s what she was. But she isn’t today. Today she’s in the chapel of love.” Jackson put his car in gear, but he smiled at her with great satisfaction. “See,” he said, “it’s just like I said.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s just no point to ever give up on a human being.”
39
AUGUST 23, 2001
First
FIRST, THEY FUCKED. He’d heard her say ‘talk’ in Aires’s parking lot, but he knew what was coming. She wasn’t through the door thirty seconds before they were together, and he couldn’t say who had moved first. There was no logic to resisting. Nothing was going to get any better or worse.
But they were less shocked by themselves and thus more at ease. They went to the center, to that timeless essential place where pleasure becomes our whole purpose on earth. At the end, there was an instant when they were changing positions, her hand was on him, and his hand was in her, they had each other’s button, and as her eyes briefly opened she gave him a grin of perfect celestial delight.
Afterwards, they lay on the same rug that still hadn’t been cl
eaned, naked and silent for quite some time.
“Wow,” said Muriel finally. “Home run. Grand slam.”
He repeated her words, then went off to the kitchen to get a beer for each of them. When he returned, he took a seat on a stepladder one of the painters had been using.
“So,” he said, “I take it this is au revoir.”
“You think that’s what I came here to say?”
“Isn’t it?”
“Not exactly.”
“Okay, so tell me.”
Nude, she sat up with her hands behind her. He wondered exactly where her tits had gone. She hadn’t had much to start with, but now it was just beans on a plate. Not that he had anything to talk about, with a stomach that got in the way of his hard-on. Life, when you faced it, was cruel.
“Larry, I’ve done a lot of thinking. I want things that run smack into each other.”
“Such as?”
“Am I running for P.A.?”
“You’re running. What’s next on the checklist?”
She gave him a look. “Do you think it would be as crystal clear if it was your life?”
“It is my life.”
“Larry, how can you make love to me like that, then hate me so much ten minutes later?”
“Because I’m not going to make love like that to you again. Right?”
“What if you ease up a little, and come sit beside me, and do something stupid like hold my hand, and talk to me as if we’re two people who care a lot for each other, instead of the Palestinians and the Israelis?”
They weren’t hand-holding types. He and Muriel never had found a middle ground. Either they were fully joined or completely apart. But he settled next to her on the rug and she circled her arm over his biceps.
“You’re right, Larry, I’d like to make this campaign. But I’m not sure that the windup on this case is going to permit that. Either way, though, I’m not walking out on Talmadge today—for the right reasons and the wrong ones, too. I can’t win without him—that’s the brutal truth. But, Larry, he also deserves better than that from me. I need to look him in the eye and tell him this marriage hasn’t gone very well. I’ve never done that.”