Mission Flats (34 page)

‘Alright, then I would ask the court to inquire of Ms Kelly whether there is any real chance this case will ever be indicted. If not, the charge should be dismissed and my client should be released forthwith.’

‘Forthwith,’ the judge repeated to himself. ‘What about it, Ms Kelly? You still have a case?’

Caroline stood. ‘There is some blood,’ she answered halfheartedly. ‘It was on the defendant’s shoes. It’s at the crime lab now.’

‘Just blood? Nothing else? No way to determine when or how the blood got there, even assuming it is the victim’s?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want to be heard on the motion?’

Caroline shook her head. ‘No.’ It was the only time I ever saw her give up.

Judge Bell massaged his chin in a pantomime of deep thought. In truth, the decision was a no-brainer. With Ray Rat dead, G-Mac was entitled to a free pass. But it was all so distasteful, such a ham-handed sort of treason. The judge fancied himself a gentleman jurist, a Holmes born out of his time. This was all well beneath him. So he turned his nose up at G-Mac’s manipulations and hesitated. But in the end there was nothing to be done about it. ‘The motion is allowed,’ he sniffed.

McNeese whooped loudly. A woman seated near us in the back of the courtroom did too.

‘Mr Beck!’ the judge reprimanded. ‘Instruct your client—’ He didn’t bother to finish. What difference did it make if G-Mac whooped it up a little? The damage was done.

A court officer unlocked the handcuffs and leg irons, and Beck led G-Mac past us out of the courtroom.

The woman, a very beautiful Hispanic woman who appeared to be in her early twenties, jumped up and down with girlish excitement then followed G-Mac into the hall where she whooped again.

At that moment, something in Kurth snapped. He stalked out after them. At the courtroom door, Kelly put out a hand to stop him – ’Ed, don’t’ – but Kurth brushed it aside. He pushed through the two sets of swinging doors out to the lobby, where McNeese was standing by the elevators.

Kelly followed behind Kurth. I was right behind Kelly.

Beck, who had been instructing McNeese on something or other, and McNeese’s girlfriend, who had been stroking his shoulder, both looked up with puzzled expressions.
Who’s that? A cop? The scary-looking one with the bad skin? He’s coming toward us. Does he want to tell us something? Did we forget something?

Kurth kept moving, disregarding Kelly’s plea to ‘slow down, slow down.’

Beck, probably forgetting that he was holding a yellow legal pad, raised his hand to stop Kurth.

Kurth slapped the pad out of the lawyer’s hand. He stood inches from McNeese, who was a good deal taller but leaned backward anyway, turning his face to the side. Kurth poked McNeese’s chest with his finger. ‘You think this is over? You think this is over?’

Kelly attempted to calm him: ‘Ed, not here, son, this isn’t the time.’

I put a hand on Kurth’s back, hoping to quiet him the way you would a coughing child. There was an animal hardness to his back, a suggestion of strength that I had no wish to test.

‘Answer me. You think this is a fuckin’ game?’

‘Yo, get this crazy motherfucker away from me.’

People began to drift out of the courtroom, following the noise.

Caroline squeezed to the front of the gathering crowd. ‘Oh, Jesus, Ed.’

At this moment, right beside us the elevator door opened. Inside was a lovely old woman in a red overcoat. Kurth glared at her, G-Mac glared at her. The lady’s eyes bulged. The elevator door closed again.

John Kelly stepped in front of Kurth, squeezing between the two men, and ordered him to ‘back off.’

Kurth pointed his finger at the old man, then he caught himself and stepped back.

‘That’s right,’ McNeese threw in, ‘back off, crazy motherfucker.’

‘Shut up,’ Kelly told him.

McNeese fell silent.

‘Ben,’ Kelly said, ‘take Mr Beck and his client out of here.’

Kurth hissed, ‘Hey, shithead, tell Braxton this was a big mistake. Tell him this isn’t over.’

‘You can’t touch him.’ McNeese smirked.

‘Ben!’ Kelly said. ‘I said get them out of here.’

The elevator door opened again and the silver-haired lady peered out. ‘Excuse me,’ she said tentatively, ‘where would I find the Probate Court Clerk’s office?’

Caroline held up four fingers.

‘Four,’ I informed her.

‘Thank you, Officer.’

On the windswept plaza in front of the courthouse, I pulled Max Beck aside. ‘I need you to give a message to Braxton.’ Leaves and candy wrappers eddied around us. ‘Tell him I want to see him. I need more information.’

‘Are you joking? I’m not going to tell Harold any such thing. Have you even heard of the Constitution?’

‘Counselor, just give him the message.’ I squeezed his arm at the biceps.

McNeese objected on his lawyer’s behalf: ‘Hey.’

‘Shut up,’ I said, as Kelly had just a few minutes earlier. And again McNeese did shut up, which surprised me as much as anyone.

I told Beck, ‘I need Harold’s help.’

‘You want to tell me what this is all about?’

‘I can’t. Sorry. If I told you, you’d have to use it.’

The lawyer regarded me a moment. ‘Are you alright, Officer Truman?’

‘No, I’m not. Just tell Harold.’

‘Alright. I’ll give him the message. Then I’m going to tell him to ignore it.’

37

While Kelly chatted with one of the old-timers in the courthouse, I called Versailles from a pay phone to check in.

Dick Ginoux answered. I could imagine him at the station, feet up on an open drawer, eyeglasses propped on his bald forehead,
USA Today
spread out on the desk. ‘Hello?’

‘Dick? Is that how you answer the phone?’

‘Hey, Chief Truman. Yeah.’

‘What happened to ‘Versailles Police Department’?’

‘Well, Ben, I expect people know who they just called.’

‘That’s not the point. The point is to sound professional.’

‘For whom?’

I had to give Dick credit for that
whom,
which he threw in for my benefit as the brainy college boy. But he was as stubborn as he was grammatical.

‘Dick, just answer the phone the right way, will you?’

‘Righty-o, Chief.’

Dick skipped the Versailles gossip this time. He was burning to tell me something more important. ‘Jimmy Lownes – you know Jimmy – called just t’other day and he says, “I heard you been asking around about a white Lexus.” I hadn’t got ahold of Jimmy before that. He was off to the lakes or somewhere for the weekend. So when he got back, somebody told him I’d been asking about it. Anyway Jimmy says he seen the kid out on Three Mile Road. Said they both come to those stop signs there, where it crosses over 2A, and they slowed down and kind of looked at each other. He says he saw the kid. He couldn’t remember the face too well, but he says the kid had this weirdo haircut, kind of shaved along the sides with a little Japanesey-type ponytail. You know, like a samurai? So I had him come in and showed him the mug shot of that Braxton character. And Jimmy says he thinks that’s the kid. He was almost positive. It was your man Braxton, just like those guys said.’

I was stunned. Both at the ID and at the fact it was Dick who discovered it. ‘Dick, you did all that?’

‘Yessir.’

‘That’s great.’

‘I figured you’d be happy to hear it.’

We were talking about different things, but it was okay.

‘Hold on, Ben, there’s someone here wants to say hello.’

There was a series of clicks and muffled voices. Dick had his palm over the phone, but I heard him say, ‘Go on, just say hello.’

‘Hi, Ben.’ A big basso boomed out of the tiny speaker in the earpiece.

‘Hey, Dad.’

‘How’s everything going down there?’

‘Just alright, Dad.’

He fell silent.

Another conversation was audible on the line. Women’s voices, faint, the words indistinct but the tone cheerful. Two women unaware of Claude and Benjamin Truman and all our history. There must have been millions – billions – of voices out there murmuring in the network.

‘What does that mean, “just alright”? Is something wrong, Ben?’

‘Yeah, you could say that.’

‘What is it?’

What could I tell him? That his son was a murder suspect? What would he have done about it? And what would the news have done to him?

‘It’s nothing, Dad. Don’t worry about it.’

‘You say it’s nothing like maybe it’s something.’

‘No. It’s really nothing. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home. Just don’t worry. And don’t drink anything.’

‘Don’t – I’m not—’ I could hear his breath huffing in and out in big greedy nostrilfuls as he composed himself. He cleared his throat. ‘I’m not drinking.’

‘Good.’

‘You want me to come down there, Ben?’

‘No, Dad. Don’t do that.’

‘I feel like I should be there with you. I feel like I’m letting you—’

‘No. You stay put. There’s nothing to worry about. It’s nothing.’

‘Everything’s nothing with you.’

‘Dad, you got to do what I tell you, just this one time. Don’t come down here. You understand?’

‘I can come down just to see you, make sure you’re alright.’

‘No. You can’t. I’m alright, I promise.’

I could see him in the little stationhouse, holding the base of the phone in one hand and the handset in the other, as was his habit.

‘It’s not something you can help with, Dad. I’ve got to do it myself. It’s gonna be alright.’

I wanted to tell him more. I wanted to tell him everything. And I wanted to hear him say nobody was getting to me without going through Claude Truman – and nobody was getting through Claude Truman. But this was one problem he could not fix. He could not twist its arm or bully it into submission. He couldn’t make it come out right. I was on my own.

Now, looking back, I’m glad I did not tell him more. Just a few hours later the case would be broken and I would be cleared of all suspicion. There was no need to worry the old man.

Around two that afternoon, Gittens called me personally to say it was over. ‘You can breathe again,’ he told me. I was no longer Danziger’s killer.

Turned out, Gerald McNeese was wrong – the cops could touch Braxton after all.

38

Bullshit
was John Kelly’s favorite word, shorthand for anything he did not respect. The Kennedys, the designated-hitter rule, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, National Public Radio – all these were bullshit. There was quite a lot of bullshit in the world, Kelly believed. It wasn’t always clear what this Wrong Stuff was, but Kelly could spot it readily enough to divide the world into the bullshit and the not bullshit. It was all pretty simple to him, just ones and zeroes. I did not yet have the knack of distinguishing the bullshit from the non-, especially in the nonbinary world that cops inhabit. So it came as a surprise to me when Kelly pronounced Gittens’s behavior that afternoon
bullshit.

True, when we met him at the Homicide office around two o’clock, there was an exuberant, cocky swagger to the detective. ‘Ben Truman!’ Gittens beamed at me. ‘Looks like I just saved your sorry ass!’ He hugged me, welcoming me back to the fold. No hard feelings. All a big misunderstanding.

And it wasn’t just Gittens. In the Homicide office, cops sat on desks and smiled and laughed over their paper coffee cups. The corked-up anxiety of a stalled investigation had finally been released.

Gittens announced to the room, ‘I’m getting tired of carrying you all on my back!’

‘Bullshit,’ Kelly whispered to me.

I was not so sure. Didn’t Gittens have a right to be exuberant? He had plunged into Mission Flats like a pearl diver with a knife clenched in his teeth and emerged with the solution. It was a tour de force. And the fact that – by finding Danziger’s killer and maybe Trudell’s too – Gittens had cleared my own name only magnified his accomplishment. So I wrote off Kelly’s comment to old-fartism and, inside at least, joined in the general celebration.

The cause for all the self-congratulations sat in an interview room, a doughy, caramel-skinned kid squirming with a case of phantom hemorrhoids. Andre James struck me as one of those boys who radiate vulnerability, sensitive boys at the edge of the playground whose victimhood is so inevitable it evokes both pity and its opposite, a desire to distance oneself, to avoid the oncoming crash. How on earth did such a kid get tangled up with a roughhouse crew like Braxton’s? The boy’s father sat beside him, earnest, slight, a churchgoer in tortoiseshell glasses.

Gittens swept past us and, in the high spirit that pervaded the office, invited us to ‘come check out this kid’s story. It’s fuckin’ dynamite.’

I shook the kid’s damp hand, then his father’s. Gittens introduced Kelly and me as ‘the officers leading the investigation’ and instructed Andre to tell us the story ‘just the way you told me.’

Andre squirmed until his father chastised him, ‘Do what the officer told you.’ The father assured us, ‘He wants to help.’

Clearly the kid wanted anything but. He spoke only after another bout of fidgeting and a sharp look from his father. ‘It’s like I told ‘Tective Gittens. I seen Harold like a couple weeks ago. His mother lives in this apartment next to us in Grove Park. That’s like the project. Harold doesn’t live there no more, but his mother still does. I don’t really know him. I know his mother. She’s a nice lady. I used to know Harold a little, back in the day, like before he blew up. He still comes around sometimes, he helps out people in the neighborhood, like he gives money to people sometimes if they can’t get groceries and stuff, like old people, you know?’

Gittens rolled his finger in a circular motion.
Get on with it.

‘Anyway I’m coming out of the elevator and I see Harold coming out the stairs. So I say like, “Yo, Brax, wuzzup?” Like, “Why you taking the stairs?,” cuz we live on the eighth floor, right? So he doesn’t really say anything. Or maybe he just says like, “Hey, Dre” or something like that. And he goes in his mother’s apartment and I just figured, like,
whatever,
and I go into my apartment.’