The Cat Dancers

13

At 9:15 the next morning, Kenny Cox, Steven Klein, and Cam entered one of the homicide squad’s interview rooms. The room was built like a small conference room, with a plain rectangular table, eight chairs, four on a side, and a large television screen mounted just above head height on one end wall. There was no one-way mirrored window. In its place was a microcam mounted just underneath the television monitor, and there were four microphones mounted flush in the ceiling. One place at the table had eyebolts to which a prisoner’s handcuffs could be secured. Flash was sitting at that place, although he was not handcuffed.

“They were callin’ him ‘Splash’ last night down in the tank,” the escorting officer said as he let them into the room. Cam wondered if Butts would be up to what he was about to see, given his appearance. His normally dark brown face had a grayish tinge and his eyes were bloodshot and jumpy. The skin on his face was tight across protruding cheekbones, and his county jail jumpsuit hung loosely on his wire-thin frame. He was sniffing hard every thirty seconds or so, and shifting around in his seat almost continuously, as if his butt bones hurt. Cam thought he looked old, even though his record said he was only thirty. He froze when they trooped in, looking from one to another as if trying to determine which one of them was going to start beating on him. He settled on Kenny, who obliged him with a withering glare.

“Mr. Butts,” Klein began. “Relax, okay? You’re not in any trouble with the law, and you’re going to get out of here this morning. You need a cigarette?”

Flash blinked as he tried to process this unexpected information, and then he focused on the offer of a cigarette. Flash lit the cigarette with trembling fingers and sucked half its length into his lungs in one go. He was well and truly wired.

“Mr. Butts, I’m Steven Klein, the district attorney. Let me say at the outset that you’re here because we’re actually concerned about your safety.”

Flash spoke for the first time. “Say what?” he said after a second deep drag on the cigarette. He inhaled every molecule of the smoke, then didn’t exhale for almost thirty seconds. Cam found himself holding his own breath. They’d agreed that Klein would do the talking. Kenny continued to look at Flash the way one would look at a rat who’d appeared next to the family picnic hamper. Cam stared into the middle distance and pretended he wasn’t very interested in what was going on.

“Mr. Butts,” Klein continued in his most sincere voice, “do you by any chance know where Mr. Simmonds is? That guy they call K-Dog?”

That guy whom you helped to kill three people, Cam thought, but he kept his silence. He exchanged looks with Kenny, who, he could see, had the same thought. Butts was shaking his head.

“Me’n K-Dog, we split, man,” he said. “Muhfukah’s crazy.”

“When was the last time that you did see him?”

Butts shook his head again and finished the cigarette in one final intense drag.

“Mr. Butts?”

Butts was thinking about the question, and it was painful to watch. “In the courtroom,” he said. “You know, when the bitch let us go.” He glanced over at the cops for the first time, a faint spark of defiance in his eyes until he saw the expression on Kenny’s face. His eyes bounced off Kenny’s venomous stare like a moth hitting a hot lightbulb. Cam tried hard to keep his own expression neutral. The man’s a halfwit, a crackhead, he told himself. K-Dog’s the one, not this cocaine-soaked idiot.

“Well,” said Klein, nodding at Kenny. “Mr. Butts, we have something to show you.” He explained what a Web video was, then said that what Butts was about to see might or might not be real. He might as well be speaking in Greek, Cam thought, but then Kenny turned the television on. Butts turned in his chair to look at the television, his thin body making jerky little contortions in the chair. Cam could actually see the man’s pelvic bones outlined against the back of his jumpsuit. Crack, he thought. For all too many impoverished black Americans, it was the new slavery, just like crystal meth was becoming for impoverished white Americans.

They all watched Butts’s face intently as the drama played out. They saw his head jerk backward with a spark of recognition when K-Dog appeared in the chair, and his rising apprehension as the hooded figure rose from behind the chair and began to speak in that voice-of-doom tone. His mouth dropped right open when the electrocution began, and he unconsciously began to push his chair back, as if to get away from the television as the scene played out. He actually cried out when the second jolt hit. When it was over, he had backed his chair all the way against the wall and was gripping the armrests as if he was about to flee, his eyes flitting from them to the now-darkened television.

“Whutdafuck, man, whutda fuck! ” he shouted, his eyes huge and his voice rising to a falsetto. “Y’all do that shit?”

“No, Mr. Butts, we did not,” Klein said, speaking quietly, trying to calm the man down. Butts was looking over at the door again, obviously ready to bolt. “Like I said, we don’t even know if that was real. That’s why we wanted to know if you’d physically seen Simmonds and, if so, when.”

Butts clearly didn’t get it.

“We want to see if that execution happened or not,” Klein said patiently. “If we find Simmonds, then that has to be a fake, okay?”

“Looked fuckin’ real to me,” Butts said, licking his lips but calming down a little bit.

“You agree that was Simmonds in the chair?” Klein asked.

Butts nodded. “Whut you want with me?”

“Did you hear what the man in the hood said at the very end?” Klein asked.

“Uh-uh. Heard that cookin’ sound, thass all. That dude on fire an’ shit.”

Kenny leaned forward. “He said, ‘That’s one,’ Flash. Know what that means?”

Butts shook his head, unwilling to look directly at Kenny. “I don’t know nuthin ’bout this shit, man,” he protested. “Whut you want with me? I ain’t done nuthin.”

“Whoever the man in the hood was, he electrocuted Simmonds in retaliation for what happened at that minimart,” Kenny said. “At the end there, the man says, ‘That’s one.’ But there were two dudes did that minimart, right?”

“Uh-uh,” Flash said. “That was all K-Dog. He done the shootin’, done all the crazy shit. This nigger wuz on his fuckin’ hands and knees, man, jus tryin’ to get the fuck outta there, man.” Then it finally penetrated. His voice went back up to falsetto again. “You meanin’ me? You sayin’ that hood muhfukah be comin’ for me?”

“That’s what we think, Mr. Butts,” Klein said. “He put K-Dog in the chair because of what happened that night. When he says, ‘That’s one,’ he’s clearly implying there’s going to be a number two.”

“And that would be you,” Kenny said helpfully. Cam wanted to kick him under the table.

Flash’s head looked like that of a string puppet as he looked at all three of them in quick succession. “You gotta stop this muhfukah,” he shouted, tears appearing in his eyes. “I didn’t do that nasty shit, man. K-Dog, he’s the one who done it. I was along for the fuckin’ ride, man. Hands and knees, man. That’s what I was doin’ that night. Shit, man. Fuck! ”

“Calm down, Mr. Butts,” Klein said. “Just calm down for a minute. We’re not here to talk about the minimart.”

But Flash was gone now, blathering away, protesting his innocence about what happened at the minimart, laying it all on K-Dog, who’d planned the whole thing-got the gun, got the ride, picked that station, everything. He became progressively more hysterical, until Kenny slapped a meaty palm down on the table. A paper coffee cup jumped clean off the table and startled Butts into sudden silence.

“Mr. Butts,” Klein said. “Look at me. Look at me.”

Butts had his head in his hands, and he peered out between splayed fingers at Klein.

“Mr. Butts, like I said before, we don’t know yet if what you saw there was real. For the last time, do you have any idea where we can find him?”

Butts groaned and shook his head. “He gots this crib, over in a trailer patch. Said he had him two wimmens. Braggin’ on it, havin’ two. I seen one-that night we got out? Ain’t nothin’ to be braggin’ about. Know what I’m sayin’?” He banged his own hands on the table. “Shit!” he said.

“Mr. Butts,” said Klein. “If you want, we can place you in protective custody until we find out whether this whole deal is genuine or not.”

Butts eyed Klein suspiciously. “You talkin’ jail?”

“Yes, but-”

“Uh-uh. I ain’t volunteerin’ for no damn jail, no fuckin’ way, man.”

Klein explained that he wouldn’t be hassled in the protective-custody area. He’d have three squares a day, a clean bed, television, no crap from the main-pop prisoners. “We think you’d be a whole lot safer in custody than you’ll be out there on the street. Remember, out there, you’re the prime candidate to become number two.”

But Flash was no longer listening. He’d heard the word jail, and there was simply no way. He shook his head again. “Uh-uh. Y’all ain’t been in jail. I have. I got me some places to hide. Know what I’m sayin’? Ain’t nobody find me, I want to stay hid.”

Klein looked at the two of them and raised his eyebrows.

Cam shrugged and got up, as did Kenny. “We’ll turn him loose,” he said. “Let him find out for us if this guy’s real or not.”

“Y’all know who’s doin’ that shit?” Butts asked Klein, but the DA had opened a flip phone and was making a call.

Cam answered him. “Nope,” he said. “And like Mr. Klein here’s been saying, that video may be bullshit.” He pushed one of his cards across the table to Butts. “I suggest you keep this. You feel someone’s setting up on you, you call us, hear?”

Butts frowned and then pocketed the card without looking at it. Cam knew it would remain in the jail jumpsuit when they let him go. Butts’s shakes had returned, and he was licking his lips almost continuously. “I can go now?” he asked.

Kenny stepped outside and signaled the escort officer, who took Butts downstairs to be outprocessed. Klein joined them in the hallway. “Well, we tried,” he said.

“Real shame he didn’t take us up on it,” Kenny said. “ Real shame.”

“You think he knows where K-Dog is?” Klein asked.

Cam shook his head. “I think he knows his own name, and maybe where his next rock is coming from. We did tape that entire session, in case you were wondering.”

Klein made a so-what face. “Lot of good that’ll do us. Me? I’m betting on the hooded guy. You people any closer to locating Marlor?”

Cam shook his head. “We’re initiating an E-sweep, but so far, we got zilch.”

“How about Simmonds?” Kenny asked Klein. “Should we keep looking for him, too?”

“Truly?” Klein said, looking both ways down the hallway. “I don’t give a shit. Suits me if they both fry; they fucking deserve it.”

Kenny tried to suppress a grin as Klein walked away. “Took all that personal, you think?” he asked.

“Must have,” Cam said, remembering what Annie had said about judicial vacancies. “But we’ll keep looking for both of them anyway.”

“Shame to waste the hooded guy, like Steven was saying.”

“He was just venting,” Cam said. “I mean, here’s my real problem: What do we do if the next time he does the Mongolian barbecue, say with Brother Flash there, and then at the end he goes, ‘That’s two’?”

“Don’t understand,” Kenny said.

“What if he wants to make it a hat trick? Do the judge. Are we really up for that?”

“You’ll have to speak for yourself on that one, boss,” Kenny said with a rueful smile.