Irish Eyes (5 page)

“I think that’s what she said. ‘They.’ I went in there, found Bucky lying facedown on the floor. The smashed six-pack of beer was on the floor beside him. I turned him over and started CPR. The girl was still screaming. She said she’d hit the panic button. Is that what I think it is?”

“Yeah.” Washington chewed some. “Silent alarm, wired direct to police dispatch. The button’s mounted under the counter. Lot of liquor stores and check-cashing outfits got ‘em.”

“The girl was so whacked out, I had to go over to the counter, get her to dial nine-one-one so I could tell them to send an ambulance,” I said.

“And you didn’t see anybody inside the store.”

“Just the girl. Deecie, she said her name was. And the baby. Faheem. He was screaming like a stuck pig.”

“Was the door to the back room open at that point?”

I had to think about that. “I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t notice it, so maybe it was closed.”

“What did the girl say happened?”

“She said Bucky was talking to her. She was holding the baby up for him to see and the dude ran in from the back room. She said he didn’t say anything to them, just put the gun to Bucky’s head and fired. Then he ran out the way he came. She said he was wearing a ski mask, with holes for the eyes and mouth. And she said she didn’t know if he was black or white.”

“Detective Washington?”

We both looked up. Mackey was standing in the doorway, grim-faced, his hat pushed to the back of his head. “Could I speak to you for a moment?”

Washington turned the tape recorder off and went out into the hallway. I sat with my hands folded, waiting.

Five minutes later, Washington came in again. He leaned back in his chair, looked up at the ceiling, shaking his head, muttering.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

He kept staring at the ceiling.

“Was it about Bucky? Did the hospital call? How is he?”

Washington sat back up. “It wasn’t the hospital. It was about the girl.”

Now I was confused. “What girl?”

“The cashier from the liquor store. Deecie Styles.”

“What about her?”

Washington opened a desk drawer, got out a piece of paper, took the gum out of his mouth, folded the paper around it, and placed it on the top of his desk.

“She’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

“We don’t know. Parini thought she was in the back room, changing the baby or something. The crime scene was a zoo. You saw how many people were there. Sixty or seventy, probably. Parini got ready to transport her back here for questioning, but she was gone. Vamoose. Adios, amigo. Her and the baby.”

“Where could she go? She had that baby. How about her car? The white Buick parked out front?”

“The car’s still there,” Washington said. “But Deecie Styles booked it out of there. We called the store owner, got her address, sent a unit over there. She lives with her aunt in some apartments over on Memorial Drive. The aunt says she hasn’t seen her.”

“Where could she go?” It was unbelievable. A hundred cops on the scene, and the only witness to Bucky Deavers’s shooting had disappeared. “She couldn’t have gotten very far,” I said. “She was carrying her baby. Faheem.”

“That’s not the only thing she was carrying,” Washington said. He reached in the desk drawer, got a pack of Juicy Fruit gum, took out a piece, held it up to me, an offering.

“No thanks,” I said. “What else did she have?”

“The videotape. From the security camera. And all the money from the store safe.”

W
ashington pulled the sedan over to the curb at the corner of Decatur and Butler streets, right in front of the hospital.

He took a business card from his shirt pocket, wrote a number on it. “That’s my beeper,” he said. “The major wants me back over at the Bottle Shop. I’d appreciate it if you’d call, give me a heads-up on Deavers … if, you know … either way.”

His deep brown eyes were already weary. He’d have a long night ahead of him.

“I’ll call,” I promised. “Either way.” I hesitated before getting out of the car. “Detective? That girl—Deecie Styles. How do you know she took the money from the store? Isn’t it possible the shooter took it?”

“She took it,” Washington said. “The owner says he was at the store around eight P.M. He cleaned all the big bills out of the register. Put it in the safe in his office. The shooter couldn’t have known about that. Only the girl knew. And that’s why she ran.”

Why not run as soon as the shooter left? I wondered. Why hit the panic button and wait around for the cops if you’re going to steal from your employer? But I didn’t ask those questions. I thanked him for the ride and got out.

The rain was little more than a soft mist now, but it had left deep puddles on the sidewalk as I splashed my way toward the emergency room entrance.

In the past four years, the hospital authority that runs Grady Memorial has spent hundreds of millions of dollars expanding and remodeling the old yellow brick complex that has for decades cared for the city’s desperately ill and hopelessly indigent.

Now Grady has a new façade of taupe and green marble, with soaring cast-iron arches and two-story windows along the Butler and Gilmer Street entrances. At first glance, it looks more like a luxury hotel than a hospital.

But if you looked closer, it was the same old Grady. Winos were scrunched up on the cast-iron benches where they’d always slept, covered with newspapers or sleeping bags. It was a tighter fit now that the city had installed armrests at three-foot intervals on the benches, but I suppose alcohol dims the idea of discomfort.

More homeless people huddled together under the parapet jutting out in front of the hospital entry. Young girls barely in their teens paraded by with babies in strollers, tugging wailing toddlers by the hand, and at least a dozen hospital workers in pink and green scrubs stood in a knot, puffing furtively at the cigarettes they were no longer allowed to smoke inside the hospital, pointedly ignoring signs that politely requested “Please Refrain from Smoking in the Plaza.”

I pushed the big double doors open and walked into the lobby, and followed the red “Emergency Clinic” signs and arrows. I walked hurriedly past an elevator lobby with signs directing patients to Tower A and Tower B, briefly amused at their designations. In the bad old days of segregation and Jim Crow, Atlanta locals called their hospital The Gradys, because at one time the hospital was an H-shape, with one half dedicated to white patients, the other dedicated to “coloreds.”

The green marble corridor wound through the heart of the hospital until it dumped me out into a sour-smelling area designated as the “Emergency Room Reception Area.”

Semantics aside, it was a waiting room, and it smelled and looked only slightly better than the familiar old one.

It was packed, stuffy, and overheated, with people lolling on
the vinyl benches and leaning against walls, waiting their turn for treatment. The bad weather had flushed out an unusually large and motley contingent of street people, gnomes, so-called because they lived under the overpasses along the nearby Downtown Connector, whores, and GOMERs, whose name was an acronym for Get Out of My Emergency Room. But the gnomes and GOMERs were vastly outnumbered by the cops.

They were from everywhere, transit cops who worked for the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, Fulton County Sheriff, City of Atlanta, DeKalb County, Georgia State Patrol. At least fifty uniforms were packed into the room.

Over near the triage area, the city’s police brass had staked out their turf. The police chief was there, standing in back of a podium decorated with the APD insignia. She was speaking into a bank of microphones, her smooth mocha face calm and implacable, her hair braided into her usual tight coronet, her elaborate uniform resembling that of a generalissimo of a small banana republic. I recognized three deputy police chiefs standing around her and, off to the side, looking disturbed, was the mayor, with three uniformed police bodyguards at his side.

A dozen reporters, mostly from the local television and radio stations, stood around the chief, shouting questions at her.

Most of the chief’s answers seemed to consist of stock phrases such as “That’s under investigation” or “The department’s full cooperation.”

Lloyd Mackey stood at the chief’s side. I edged around the group and caught his eye. He stepped toward me and touched my elbow, guiding me into a corner where we could talk without being overheard.

“How is he?” I asked.

“He’s upstairs in surgery,” Mackey said. “The docs haven’t told us anything yet. We’re still trying to reach his family.”

I pushed a strand of wet hair out of my eyes. “His parents are dead. His mother died several years ago. Anyway, the cops were pretty much his family.”

“Personnel is going through his records to be sure,” Mackey said. “We don’t want any relatives finding out about this when they turn on the news tomorrow morning.”

“I can’t believe any of this is happening. Detective Washington
told me the clerk took off with the videotape from the security camera. And the money from the safe. I don’t get it. I really don’t. I was there. The girl was scared witless. She couldn’t even dial nine-one-one. I don’t see how she had the presence of mind to go in that back office, take the tape, and empty out the safe—with all those dozens of cops milling around, and then take off carrying a screaming baby. On foot.”

Mackey frowned. “Washington should have kept his mouth shut. That stuff about the clerk isn’t for public consumption. You got me?”

I looked around at the rows of cameras that were setting up for the chief’s press conference. “Fine. I’m not the one who alerted the media about all this.”

“The clerk’s name isn’t going to be released,” Mackey said. “Not yet anyway.”

“I understand.” A thought occurred to me. “You don’t suspect the girl had something to do with shooting Bucky, do you?”

Mackey was watching the chief conferring with her assistants. “Our investigation is in the preliminary stage. That’s all I can tell you. You know the rules, Garrity.”

“I know Deavers is in this hospital with a bullet in his head,” I said fiercely. “What I want to know is how it got there, that’s all. You seem to forget, Major, that I was there, too. The shooter could have taken me out, too. I need to understand what happened. I’m not some lowlife ambulance-chasing reporter, you know. You asked about Deavers’s family. I’m his family. He was closer to me than my own brothers. And I have a right to know what’s going on with your investigation.”

Mackey was stone-faced. “You’ll be informed as we see fit. That’s the best I can do. Tomorrow, you can call Captain Dugan. I’ll authorize her to release any information that’s pertinent to you.”

“Dugan,” I said. “Bucky’s new girlfriend?”

“Captain Dugan,” Mackey repeated. “She’s at the scene right now.”

A tall, white-haired man pushed his way through the cops and the reporters. The chief frowned when she saw him, but reached out and shook the hand he offered anyway. A wave of reporters pressed forward when they saw the newcomer.

“Pete,” one of them called out. “Can you tell us what happened tonight?”

“Christ,” Mackey muttered.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Pete Viatkos. Owns the Budget Bottle Shop. I thought everybody knew Viatkos.”

“Not me,” I said. “He some kind of celebrity?”

“He’s a legend in his own mind,” Mackey said. “Kind of a cop groupie, I guess you’d say. He sponsors a golf tournament in May, as a benefit for the Police Benevolent Association. Hires a lot of our guys to work security, sponsors a couple of APD softball teams.”

Viatkos stepped up to the bank of microphones, glanced at the chief for permission to speak. She nodded.

He cleared his throat. “Uh, I’d just like to say that me and my family are praying for the recovery of the officer who was shot in our store tonight. As a lot of you know, we at the Budget Bottle Shop regard this city’s police officers as the finest in the country.” His speech had a formal tone to it, and a slight accent. “Our officers are heroes, all of them. And I want to put the scum who shot this officer on notice: ‘Whoever you are, don’t think you can get away with this cowardly act. You can run, but you can’t hide.’”

The chief nodded her agreement. “Thank you, Mr. Viatkos. I’d like to announce at this time that Mr. Viatkos just informed me that he is offering a ten-thousand-dollar reward for the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for this shooting.”

Now it was the mayor’s turn to get into the act. Not surprising, since he rarely misses a photo opportunity.

“And Chief,” the mayor said, gliding toward the microphones, turning his chosen profile toward the camera, “the city will add ten thousand dollars to that reward money. Our office also just contacted the governor’s office, and Governor Barnes has said that the state will match our reward money, bringing the total reward for this cowardly dog who attacks our law enforcement officers to thirty thousand dollars.”

The cops in the room started clapping their hands and stomping their feet in approval.

“About damn time,” someone called from the back of the room.

“Any other questions?” the chief asked crisply, retaking command of the podium.

“I got one.” A uniformed officer, short and balding with a craggy face and beaky nose, stepped out of the circle of reporters.

The assistant chiefs looked startled. The chief looked pissed. “Yes, Officer?”

“Officer Rakoczy,” the questioner said. “Ignatius R. Rakoczy. Chief, since you seem to be so concerned about this officer who was shot at his off-duty security job, I wondered if you could tell us why the city doesn’t pay our officers enough of a living wage that they wouldn’t have to work two and three other jobs just to make ends meet.”

The chief’s jaw dropped. Her eyes narrowed.

“Yeah,” somebody from the back called. “Ask her why we ain’t getting a raise again this year.”

“Ask her how many jobs most of our guys work,” somebody else called. “Ask her how many jobs she has to work.”

I looked over at Mackey, thought I saw a ghost of a smile flit across his lips.