And there was something else, too. A black man could seriously injure or kill another black man in town and get a tepid response from the police and the press. When a black attacked a white, though, the cops and the media came down hard on both the perpetrator and the neighborhood. It had always been that way. As a white investigator in a predominantly black city, Stefanos had an edge.
There was nothing here for him today. He hadn’t expected there to be. He glanced at the market’s windows and down along the concrete landscape as if he were looking for something in particular, and then he walked back to his car.
Ronald Weston lived with his mother and younger sister in an apartment on 9th, between Missouri and Peabody, about a mile northwest of 1st and Kennedy. The radio towers of the Fourth District Police Headquarters rose behind the roofline of the complex, a half dozen boxy units with screened porches in the rear.
Stefanos parked on 9th. He had phoned Ronald Weston early that morning, and Weston had told him to come on by.
Weston opened the door to the apartment. He was a thin boy, not past his mid-teens, wearing an oversize T-shirt, extrawides, and unlaced Timberland boots. His ears were too long for his face. He had large brown eyes and crooked teeth. He gave Stefanos a casual nod, reaching for hard.
“Nick Stefanos. I called.”
“Come on in.”
Stefanos followed him back through a hall. Go-go music grew louder as they entered a living room. A Nintendo 64 was hooked up to a large-screen television in a cheap hutch set against the wall. Fast-food wrappers littered a glass-top table, and a Big Gulp soda sat half full amid the wrappers.
A phone rang. Ronald Weston found the cordless beneath a Taco Bell bag. He activated the phone, said something to the caller, said to Stefanos, “Hold up,” and walked away. Stefanos could see him in the kitchen, hand gesturing as he spoke. From Weston’s shy smile Stefanos guessed that he was talking to a girl.
Stefanos went to a portable stereo, saw a Northeast Groovers CD atop a nearby stack. He turned the volume down to conversation level as Weston came back in the room.
“All right, man. Had to talk to this jazzy girl I know. I’m all done with that.”
Stefanos had a seat on the couch and pulled out his pad and a pen. Weston chose a hard-armed chair beside the glass table. He kept the phone held loosely in his hand.
“So Ronald —”
“Yeah.”
“Like I told you on the phone, your brother Randy’s trial is coming up. We’re still working on his defense, and I need to ask you some questions.”
“They gonna put me up there on the stand?”
“I don’t think so.”
“’Cause whatever I said, they’d say I would lie for my brother, right?”
“Would you?”
“To keep him out of jail? Goddamn right I would.”
“Okay, but do me a favor. Just don’t lie to me today.”
Weston looked Stefanos over. “You get paid, right?”
“Yes.”
“They pay you good?”
Stefanos looked down at his pad. “Your brother — did he deal drugs?”
Weston laughed and shook his head. “Damn, you go right to it, don’t you?”
“Did he?”
“Why you think I’m gonna tell you that?”
“Look, I’m not going to pass on any information that would hurt your brother. Like I told you, I’m working for the woman that’s defending him. I’m just trying to find out what happened, okay? So let me ask you again: Did Randy deal drugs?”
Weston licked his lips. “He had a little thing goin’ on, yeah.”
“Rock?”
“Uh-uh. Powder. He didn’t fuck with no rock.”
“How big was his operation?”
“Wasn’t no operation, man. He just had a little somethin’ personal goin’, like I said. Little extra on the side to put next to his other money.”
“What other money? He had a job?”
“No. Not since last year.”
“But he did have his own apartment down the street from here, and a nice car. And a girlfriend, too. So his business must have been bigger than what you’re describing.”
Weston looked past Stefanos. “He had a couple of younguns runnin’ for him, that’s all. No gunslingers, no kind of drama like that.”
“Down around First and Kennedy?”
“Yeah. But it wasn’t no thing. Boy name of Forjay runnin’ the shit down there, and Randy always made sure to step out of Forjay’s way. Randy, he just gettin’ a little bit of it for his own self.”
“Okay. What about Donnel Lawton?”
“I didn’t know him personal.”
“Lawton was a known dealer down in that neighborhood. Did Randy ever talk about him?”
“Not that I know.”
“Witnesses saw your brother and Lawton arguing the day of the murder.”
“Look, Randy was doin’ business down there. Maybe Lawton was lookin’ to shake out on Randy’s strip. Man tries to do you like that, you got to step to him, know what I’m sayin’?”
Stefanos said, “Your brother own a gun?”
“No.”
“Never owned a Beretta ninety-two?”
“He never did own any kind of gun.”
“The cops found a ninety-two in your brother’s apartment. The markings on the slugs taken from Lawton’s corpse matched that gun.”
“Maybe they did, I ain’t gonna argue it. But if they found the murder gun there then somebody put it there and framed my brother up good. My brother was hard when he had to be, but he wasn’t down with no guns.”
“Let’s go on to something else. Your brother’s girlfriend.”
“What about her?” said Weston distastefully.
“I’m talking about Erika Mitchell.”
“I know who you mean. And fuck that bitch.”
“You don’t like her.”
“Bitch was with Randy the night Lawton got doomed. Randy told me they went to some movie together down at Union Station.”
“Which show?”
“That Bruce Willis joint, out in space? Randy said it was the nine-forty-five.”
“If that’s true, then Erika could testify that the two of them were there.”
“She could. But now she won’t alibi my brother. She be changin’ her story now, say she wasn’t with him that night.”
“Why would she do that?”
“You need to be askin’ her.”
“I will.”
“And while you’re at it, maybe you ought to be talkin’ to her pops. She live with him out there in Chillum. Randy always had to pick her up there, get the treatment from her father, like where you be takin’ my little girl and shit. So I know her father saw the two of them go out together the night Lawton was killed.”
Stefanos made a notation. “One more thing. What kind of car does your brother drive?”
“Late model Legend. Cherry red with limo tints.”
“He ever drive a red Ford Torino?”
“One of those old-time cars?”
“Yes.”
Weston shook his head and pursed his lips. “Naw, man.”
“He know anyone who owns one?”
“Even if he did, Randy wouldn’t be drivin’ no hooptie and shit.”
The phone rang, and Ronald answered it. He said, “See you then, girl,” and cut the connection.
“Your girlfriend?” asked Stefanos, trying to get through Weston’s shell.
“Just some girl I know. She on her way over here now.” Ronald smiled. “Gonna hit it like a girl like it to be hit, too.”
Stefanos rubbed his eyes. He wanted to tell the kid that he didn’t have to prove anything. He wanted to tell him that he was tired of it, that he just didn’t care.
“What’re you, Ronald? Fifteen?”
“I’m sixteen. Why?”
“No school today, I guess.”
“Half day.”
“Teachers’ meetings
or something?”
Ronald grinned. “You caught me, Mr. Investigator. Gonna take me in?”
Stefanos closed his pad. He stood and zipped up his jacket. “Thanks for talking with me. If I have any more questions, I’ll give you a call.”
Stefanos went down the hall. Weston followed and put a hand around Stefanos’s arm. Stefanos stopped and turned.
“You gonna help my brother? ’Cause my brother can’t do no hard time.”
“I’m gonna try.”
“Look here,” said Weston. “I know Randy. My brother didn’t kill nobody, man, for real.”
“I believe you,” said Stefanos.
Outside the apartment building, Stefanos lit a cigarette and crossed the street to his Dodge.
FIFTEEN
DETECTIVE DAN BOYLE fired up a cigarette off the dash lighter, cracking his window as he drove his unmarked into Northeast. He dragged hard on his Marlboro and kept the smoke down in his lungs.
Talking to the Karras guy at the bar had naturally made him think of his own kids. How rough he was on them sometimes, and how much he loved them. Christ, if anything ever happened to them… How could Karras just sit there quietly like that, eating his lunch? He guessed that Karras had just learned to live with it and was keeping it buried someplace deep inside. But Boyle would be crazy if it were him. Maybe this Karras was crazy, and no one knew.
Talking with Karras, it had also reminded Boyle that his friend
Bill Jonas had called a couple of days earlier and asked that he drop by. Boyle had a witness to interview out in the Langdon Park area, and Jonas lived in Brookland, not far off the route. This would be a good day for Boyle to visit Jonas.
Boyle figured that Jonas wanted to talk about the case. That was what they usually discussed during Boyle’s visits. But Boyle had no new information since his last visit. The Pizza Parlor Murders had been transferred over to a newly formed cold-case squad, a unit created in part due to citizen outrage at published reports of the department’s extreme number of unsolved homicides. Now the Feds were involved, too, in an “advisory capacity.” From what Boyle heard, no additional progress had been made.
Boyle went down the commercial strip of 12th and found Hamlin, a block of well-kept middle-class homes aligned on a gently graded street. He parked in front of Jonas’s house, a brick split-level with forest green shutters, and popped a breath mint in his mouth to cover the smell of booze. He got out of his car, noticing a curtain part in the front window of Jonas’s home. Probably one of Bill’s boys, checking him out.
Boyle looked around as he approached the house. The relative quiet of the street was deceptive. You could be lulled into thinking you were safe here, but there was plenty of crime on these blocks, some of it of the more violent kind. Anytime you have a black neighborhood, reasoned Boyle, you’re gonna have crime.
“Hey, Dad,” said Christopher Jonas. “Here comes your redneck friend.”
“Boyle?” said William Jonas, looking up as his son peered through the parted curtains of the living-room window. “Yeah, I’m expecting him.”
“Looks like he slept in that raincoat of his, too.”
“Probably was just sitting on it on some bar stool. Listen, Boyle’s rough around the edges, but he’s all right.”
“All cops are all right to you.”
“He’s just a little ignorant is all it is.”
“That’s all, huh? Well I’ll bet you a Hamilton he asks about my game, like he always does.”
“Ten dollars? You’re on.” Bill Jonas grinned. “How is your game, by the way?”
“Mr. Magoo could play basketball better than me. I’m a scientist, not an athlete. Proud of it, too. But your buddy there, when he looks at me, he sees a young black man and all he can think of after that is basketball.”
“All right, Chris, all right. Remember, I asked him out here, so be polite.”
Boyle knocked on the front door.
“You need a push, Dad?”
“No, Chris, I got it.” William Jonas wheeled himself across the living-room floor. “You show Mr. Boyle inside.”
“Chris, right?”
“That’s right. Come on in.”
As Boyle passed him in the foyer, Christopher Jonas caught the stale stench of nicotine and whiskey. Boyle went up a small flight of stairs to the living room, where William Jonas sat in his wheelchair beside a flowery couch. Boyle shook his hand.
“Bill.”
“Dan.”
Boyle removed his raincoat and draped it over the arm of the couch. He had a look at Bill Jonas: gray hair, a gut that rested on his lap, thin, atrophied legs. Jonas had aged ten years in the last two.
“I’m out, Dad,” said Christopher Jonas, getting into a coat and slinging a leather book bag over his shoulder. “You need anything before I go?”
“No, I’m all right. Your mother will be home soon. Take care, son.”
Bill Jonas made a face at his boy, rubbed two fingers together to indicate he had won the bet. Christopher rolled his eyes and left the house.
Jonas said, “Would you like a cup of coffee, Danny? A beer, maybe?”
“I could stand a beer.”
“Help yourself to one in the kitchen.”
“Anything for you?”
“I don’t drink the stuff.” Jonas looked down at his ample belly. “Last thing I need now is to fall in love with alcohol.”
Boyle left the room and returned with a can of beer. He noticed that Jonas now held an envelope in his hand. Boyle popped the can, had a swig, and sat down on the couch.
“So how’s it going?” said Boyle.
“Not bad. Rehab’s taken me a mile.” Jonas pointed to an aluminum tripod cane leaning against the wall. “I can take steps with that. From my bedroom to the bathroom, that sort of thing, which is a big load off my wife. And with the walker I can go even farther.”
“You gonna improve much more, you think?”
“Doctors didn’t think I’d come this far. The slug that nicked my spine did a lot of damage. But I just have to keep working at it, Dan. I mean, what else can I do?”
“You’ll get it. How you fixed for money?”
“Between my disability pay and my pension, I’m fine. College is all taken care of; I’d already saved that. Christopher’s in school, and Ted is on his way next fall. So me and Dee are out of the woods as far as that goes. Lookin’ forward to enjoying some good years together now.”
“Good. I’m happy everything’s working out.”
Jonas watched Boyle take a slow sip of beer. He’d never be able to explain to his son Christopher how he could sit here with a guy like Boyle. Jonas knew all about Boyle, his problems and instabilities, his bigotries and hatreds. All of it. He knew, but right now he didn’t care.
“Anything going on?” asked Jonas.
“Not that I know of,” said Boyle. “The cold-casers are focusing on it again, I know that. And they won’t stop. A quadruple homicide, five if you count the kid, it never goes away in the public’s mind. So far not a thing, but, hey, you never know. I mean, they just now caught that guy who was killing all those women in Park View.”
“I heard that, yeah. Tell me again what they know about my case.”
“Christ, Bill. Again?”
Jonas nodded. “Start with the guns.”
“Okay.” Boyle squinted as he thought. “The weapons used in the kitchen: a twenty-two Woodsman and a forty-five.”
“A Woodsman’s an assassin’s weapon.”
“Maybe, or the guy who was using it had just been around enough to know that it works real good close in. Anyhow, they never found the guns.”
“What about motive?”
“Money, but not from the registers. Gambling money. May’s was a known bookie joint. Hell, the federal boys were surveilling it for months, from a beauty salon across Wisconsin Avenue. They had infrared cameras pointed into the bar area at night, for Christ’s sake. Our people think the shooters were knocking off the place
for book money. A couple of old employees came forward and told us as much. May’s was the last stop on a weekly bag run, and apparently the shooters knew it.”
“How would they know it?”
“Somebody tipped them off would be the obvious answer. Carl Lewin, the guy they called Mr. Carl, he had served federal time for gaming. Lewin was the bag man — and from what we got at the crime scene, it looks like he was armed. He made a play on the shooters, and they got the draw on him first. The other vics probably would have lived if Lewin hadn’t of made that play. It made them all witnesses to a murder. They got tied up and shot with their heads down on the tiles.”
“Should have been plenty of blood.”
“There was. And footprints tracking out of it. It’ll help to convict if we catch the guys.”
“How about fingerprints, hair samples, like that?”
“No prints. No hair that didn’t belong to the victims. Traces of powder, the kind they have on those examination gloves doctors put on when they jam their fingers up your ass.”
“Okay, they wore latex gloves.” Jonas nodded. “Now let’s take it outside. I killed the driver of the Ford in the street.”
“We don’t know that for sure.”
“I killed him.”
“But we can’t confirm that without a corpse.”
“The shooters, then,” said Jonas. “I got a pretty good look at them.”
“Right. And the witness from the apartment window pretty much duplicated your description. The likenesses have been out on the national networks for two years now. They’ve been cross-checked against wanted lists, lists of guys who have broken parole. Nothing.”
“What about the Ford?”
“The Ford was abandoned on Tennyson. Blood on the backseat, most likely the blood of the man you shot. Again, no prints. The tags were stolen locally. The vehicle was traced to an auction down South, bought under a phony name. The Ford was a sheriff’s car before it went to auction.”
“Funny joke.”
“Yeah. There must have been a drop car waiting on Tennyson, but it was a workday so there weren’t many people around. The ones who were around were seniors. And they didn’t see a thing.”