City Primeval

22

RAYMOND HAD A VISION. Or what he imagined a vision might be like. Herzog told him the Albanian was in the hospital and Raymond saw clearly, in the next few moments, what was happening and very possibly what was going to happen.

He saw the Albanians going after Clement.

He saw Clement running to get his gun, to defend himself.

He saw Mr. Sweety, yes, with the gun, the Walther P .38.

He saw Clement holding the gun, the Guy-Simpson murder weapon, and saw himself extending the Colt 9-mm in two hands and saw… the clarity of the vision began to fade. He wasn’t sure if visions were always accurate. He told himself to back up, look at it again, carefully, beginning at his desk in the squadroom. He remembered…

Wendell on the phone saying to someone, “What you know for a fact and what you believe, that could be two different things. I want to know what you know.”

Norb Bryl saying to a middle-aged woman sitting at his desk, “We can help her, I give you my word as a man.” And the woman saying something and Bryl saying, “Well, I hope somebody doesn’t kill her.”

Hunter saying to Maureen, imitating a voice out of Amos and Andy, “ ‘Yeah, she come up to me and says she wants to pet my puppy.’ I’m thinking, ah-ha, he got it on with her, before he killed her, right? Isn’t that what it sounds like?” Maureen grinning expectantly. “No, the guy’s got a dog in his car and she wants to pet the dog.”

Inspector Herzog coming in, approaching Raymond’s desk: “You mentioned, wasn’t Mansell’s girlfriend-what’s her name, Sandy Stanton-going with one of the Albanians?”

This was where the prevision began, Raymond feeling the jab in his stomach, realizing he had forgotten to talk to Skender, to warn him, be careful…

Saying “Skender Lulgjaraj,” and feeling his stomach knotting.

Herzog saying, “Yeah, Skender. Art Blaney was over at Hutzel visiting his wife. He’s going past a room, sees a familiar face. It’s Toma. Art looks in, Skender’s in traction with a fractured leg. Art wants to know what happened and Toma says, ‘He fell down the stairs.’ ”

Raymond remembered feeling worn out, even with the thing in his stomach, and saying, “Oh, shit…”

And Herzog saying, “Let’s go in my office.”

It was while walking from the squadroom to the office with the view of the river and the highrise that Raymond had his vision.

“I was gonna call him,” Raymond said. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I know the guy’s being set up and I didn’t call him.”

“Toma says it was an accident,” Herzog said. “Maybe it was.”

Raymond shook his head. “No-I’m gonna find out what happened, but it wasn’t an accident.”

“Well, you have hunches,” Herzog said, “and most of them turn out to be nothing, so you don’t follow up on some.” Herzog looked over at a wallboard of newspaper clippings covering the Guy-Simpson murders. “Half those news stories are hunches, speculation. Who killed the judge?… Who gives a shit? You notice, there’s hardly any mention of Adele Simpson, she’s a minor figure. It’s all about the judge, what a prick he was. We give them a few facts and, for the most part, they’re satisfied, leave us alone and write interviews with people who say, ‘Oh, yes, I knew the judge intimately, it doesn’t surprise me at all.’ They don’t care if we ever solve it, they’ve got so much to write about.”

Raymond, reviewing his vision, seemed patient, attentive.

Herzog said, “That girl from the News, Sylvia Marcus, she’s the only one asks about Mansell. If he’s a suspect, where is he? Why isn’t he upstairs?”

“I haven’t seen her around,” Raymond said.

“She’s here every day. She picked up on him somehow, maybe getting a little here and there, sees a case folder open on somebody’s desk-Sylvia’s a very bright girl.”

“You think so?” Raymond said.

“Well, she asks good questions,” Herzog said. “I have a few myself I’ve been wondering about. Like the car, the Buick. We seem to be taking this one kinda leisurely.”

“I know what you mean,” Raymond said. “But you know how long we’ve been on it? Seventy-two hours. That’s all. Since Sandy got back from visiting Mr. Sweety the car hasn’t moved-till last night, we took it in, had it vacuumed, dusted. It’s like the car’s been driven twelve thousand miles with gloves on. Clement’s driving a ’76 Montego now. He went out last night, but nobody could find him. Didn’t come back this morning. Sandy went out, came back early this morning in a cab. We went in the apartment over there last night while they’re both out. No gun under the underwear or in the toilet tank. Nothing of the judge’s.”

“So he got rid of the gun,” Herzog said.

Raymond didn’t say anything.

“You’ve been holding back, not wanting to break down the doors too soon,” Herzog said. “Meanwhile the guy’s riding around in a Montego, you tell me, and might’ve broken somebody’s leg. If you can’t get Mansell with the gun, how’re you gonna get him?”

“Maybe the gun’s still around,” Raymond said. “But you’re right, I think I’ve been holding back, being a little too polite, expecting people-you might say-to be reasonable and forgetting a very important principle of police work.”

Herzog nodded. “When you got ’em by the balls…”

“Right,” Raymond said, “… the head and the heart soon follow.”

Someone in the family had died recently and that’s why the Albanians were in black. Coming down the hospital corridor and seeing the figures, Raymond thought at first they were priests. A nurse was trying to remove them from the room, with their packages and paper sacks, telling them only two at a time, please, and to wait in the visitor’s lounge. He saw Toma Sinistaj.

Then Toma said something as he saw Raymond Cruz and the delegation in black move down the hall.

Raymond thought of Toma as a face on a foreign coin. Or he thought of him as a Balkan diplomat or a distance runner. He wore a blue shirt with his narrow black suit and tie. He was about thirty-eight but seemed older; his full mustache was black; his eyes were almost black and never wandered when they looked at you. Raymond remembered this; he knew Toma from several times in the past when Albanians had tried to kill each other and sometimes succeeded. He remembered that Toma owned restaurants, that he carried a Beretta, with license, and a beeper.

Attached to the hospital bed was a frame with an elaborate system of wires that hoisted Skender’s plaster-covered leg in the air: like a white sculpture that would be entitled Leg. Skender’s eyes remained closed. When Raymond asked how he was, Toma said, “He’ll be like that a long time and then he’ll be a cripple. You know why? Because he wanted to marry a girl he met at a disco place. She tells him okay, but first he has to meet her brother.”

“He’s not her brother,” Raymond said.

“No, I don’t think so either. They planned this a long time.”

“How much did they get?”

“What difference does it make?” Toma said. “We don’t look at it, was it a misdemeanor or felony? You know that. He did it to Skender, he did it to me, it’s the same thing. I’m going to look at this Mansell in the eyes…”

“It’s not that simple,” Raymond said.

“Why not?” Toma said. “The only thing makes it difficult, you worried you have to arrest me.” He shrugged. “All right, if you prove I kill him. You do what you have to do, I do what I have to do.”

“No, it isn’t that simple, because I want him too,” Raymond said. “You’re gonna have to get in line. After we’re done you can have him charged with felonies, assault, but it isn’t gonna mean much if he’s doing life. You understand what I’m saying?”

“I understand you want him for killing the judge,” Toma said. “I spend some time up on that fifth floor, I talk to people, different ones I know. I understand why you want this man. But if you don’t care personally that he killed the judge, then why do you care who kills him? You see the way I look at it? You tell me to get in line. I tell you, you want him you better get him quick, or he’ll be dead.”

Raymond said, “You always look in their eyes?”

Toma seemed to smile. “If there’s time.”

“He’s killed nine people.”

Toma said, “Yes? If you know he kills people, why do you let him? Before I come to this coun-try when I was sixteen I have already kill nine people, maybe a few more-most of them Soviet, but some Albanian, Ghegs, my own people. Before the Soviets-before my time, were the Turks; but before the Turks, always, we have the Custom. If you don’t know about it you don’t know anything about me.”

“I think of us as friends,” Raymond said, wanting the man to know that he understood.

“Yes, you give your word and keep it,” Toma said. “I think you know about honor because it doesn’t seem to bother you to talk about it. It isn’t an old thing in books to you. But maybe honor goes so far with you and stops. Say a policeman is killed. Then I think you want to kill the person who killed him.”

“Yes,” Raymond said. Basically it was true.

“But you don’t understand the honor that even if a man who’s smoking my tobacco-he doesn’t have to be my brother, but a man I bring into my house-if he’s offended in some way then I’m offended. And if he’s killed then I kill the person who killed him, because this goes back to before policemen and courts of law. Now-wait, don’t say anything, please. A man breaks the leg of your cousin who is like a brother-a very trusting, very nice person-and steals his money. What does your honor tell you to do?”

“My honor tells me,” Raymond said, the word sounding strange to him, saying it out loud, “to take the guy’s head off.”

“You see?” Toma said. “Your honor stops. It tells you something, yes. But you can’t say, simply, ‘Kill him,’ and mean to do it. You say what you feel like doing, something more than killing him. But what you would actually do is… what?”

“Arrest him,” Raymond said.

“There,” Toma said. “Well, we’re able to talk about it even if we don’t see it the same. You don’t call me a crazy Albanian.”

Raymond said, “How’re you gonna find him?”

“We have people looking, some others helping, friends. Some of your own people, some with the Hamtramck police, they tell us a few things they hear. We know what kind of car he has, where the girl lives. We find him, all right.”

“What if he leaves town?”

Toma shrugged. “We wait. Why does he live here? He likes it? People are easy to rob? If he leaves we wait for him to come back, or, we go after him. Either way.”

Raymond looked at the man lying in traction. “How’d he break Skender’s leg?”

Toma hesitated, then said, “He broke it very deliberately. You see the Medical Service report?”

“It said he fell down the basement stairs and they found him on the floor. One of the tenants did and called EMS.”

“Yes, that was the girlfriend who called,” Toma said. “As soon as you came in here-see, I know you’re after this Mansell and you figure out he did this; so I’m not going to lie to you, say Skender fell down the stairs. You want that person for murder, but you don’t have him. So I know you don’t have evidence, and if you don’t find some he remains free, even though he’s killed two people-no, nine, you say.”

“It takes time,” Raymond said.

Toma shook his head. “No, it doesn’t. Tell me where to find him. It takes only a few minutes.”

Raymond didn’t say anything.

“For the sake of honor,” Toma said.

“Well, it would take care of yours,” Raymond said, “but it wouldn’t do much for mine, would it?”

Toma studied him with his direct gaze, curious now. “There’s more to it than I know about.” He paused and then said, “Maybe you would take his head off.”

“Maybe,” Raymond said.

Toma continued to stare, thoughtful. “If he resists, yes. I can see that. Or if they tell you, all right, you can shoot him on sight. But if he gives himself up, then what do you do?”

“Turn it around,” Raymond said. “You open the door and he’s just sitting there. What would you do?”

“I’d kill him,” Toma said. “What have we been talking about?”

“I know, but I mean if he was unarmed.”

“Yes, and I say I’d kill him. What does his being armed or not have to do with it? Are you saying there are certain conditions, rules, like a game?” Toma emphasized with his eyes, showing surprise, bewilderment, overacting a little but with style, letting his expression fade to a smile, that remained in his eyes. “This is a strange kind of honor, you only feel it if he has a gun. What if he shoots you first? Then you die with your honor?” Toma paused. “They call us the crazy Albanians…”

It was time to leave. Raymond got ready, looking at Skender again. “Tell me how the leg was broken.”

“He tried with a heavy object at first,” Toma said. “It was very painful, but it didn’t seem to injure him enough. So he raised Skender’s foot up on a case, a box, with Skender lying on the floor and struck the leg at the knee with a metal pipe until the leg was bent the other way. He says he remembers the sound of the girl crying out, saying something, then the sound of the ambulance as he was riding in it, going to Detroit General, and that’s all he remembers. This morning,” Toma said, “I had him brought here to a doctor I know.”

“You say he heard Sandy?”

“The girl? Yes, she cried out something.”

“He remember what she said?”

Toma looked at Skender, asleep, then back to Raymond and shrugged. “Does it make any difference?”

“I don’t know,” Raymond said. “It might.”

Hunter was in the blue Plymouth standing at the hospital entrance. He turned the key as Raymond got in… held the key, his foot pressing the accelerator, but the car wouldn’t start. It gave them an eager, relentless, annoying sound, as though it was trying, but the engine refused to fire.

“Toma was there. He wants to do Clement himself.”

“Who doesn’t?” Hunter said. “Fucking car…”

“He was talking about his code of honor. Says he’s gonna look Clement in the eye and blow him away.”

“Tell him, go ahead.”

“I said, what if he’s unarmed? He says, what’s that got to do with it?”

“Drive this piece of shit, you know why they’re fucking going out of business.” The engine caught and Hunter said, “I don’t believe it.”

“See, what he couldn’t understand, we’d only shoot him if he was resisting.”

“Yeah?… Where we going?”

“Sweety’s Lounge, over on Kercheval. But his point was…” Raymond paused. “Well, he didn’t understand.”

“He didn’t understand what?”

“I told him the guy’s killed nine people and very calmly he says, ‘Yes? If you know he kills people, why do you let him?’ ”

“What’d you tell him?”

“I don’t know-we started talking about honor then.”

“The Custom,” Hunter said. “Fucking Albanians are crazy.”

Raymond looked over at him. He said, “You sure?”

A young woman with a full Afro and worried eyes, a scowl, holding a floral housecoat tightly about her, opened the door and told them Mr. Sweety was working. Raymond said, “You mind if we just look in? I want to show him something. That picture over the couch.”

The woman said, “What picture?” half turning, and Raymond moved Hunter into the doorway. He waited as Hunter peered in and then came around to look at him as if expecting a punch line. They went down the steps to the sidewalk.

“You see it?”

“Yeah. Picture of some guy.”

“You know who it is?”

“I don’t know-some rock star? Leon Russell.”

“It’s Jesus.”

Hunter said, “Yeah?” Not very surprised.

“It’s a photograph.”

“Yeah, I don’t think it looks much like him.”

Walking next door to Sweety’s Lounge Raymond didn’t say anything else. He was wondering why things amazed him that didn’t amaze other people.

There were white voices in the black bar. Two women in serious, dramatic conversation.

It was dark in here in the afternoon. Mr. Sweety looked like a pirate in his black sportshirt hanging open and a nylon stocking knotted tightly over his hair, coming along the duckboards to the front bend in the bar. The place smelled of beer, an old place with a high ceiling made of tin. Two women and a man sat at the far end of the bar. They looked this way as Raymond and Hunter came in and took stools, then turned back to the voices coming from the television set mounted above the bar. A soap opera.

Raymond said, “I thought you worked nights.”

“I work all the time,” Mr. Sweety said. “What can I get you?”

“You want to talk here or at your house?” Raymond asked. him. “I don’t want to get into anything might embarrass you in front of your customers.”

“Don’t do it then,” Mr. Sweety said.

“No, it’s up to you,” Raymond said.

“How ’bout if I serve you something?”

“There’s only one thing you can give us we want,” Raymond said and held up his two index fingers about seven inches apart. “It’s this big. It’s blue steel. And it’s got P .38 stamped on the side.”

“Hey, shit, come on…”

“Sandy told me she gave it to you.”

Mr. Sweety leaned on his hands spaced wide apart on the bar so that he was eye-level with Raymond and Hunter seated on stools. Mr. Sweety looked down toward the end of the bar, seemed to wipe his mouth on his shoulder and looked back at Raymond again.

“Sandy told you what?”

“She said she gave you a Walther P .38 that Clement wanted you to hold for him.”

“Wait,” Hunter said, “let me read him his rights.”

“Read me for what? I ain’t signing no rights.”

“You don’t have to,” Hunter said. “Those people down there’re witnesses. Then we’ll serve you with the search warrant.”

As he said this Raymond took a thick number ten envelope out of his inside coat pocket and placed it facedown on the bar. His hand remained on it, at rest.

Mr. Sweety turned his head back and forth as though he had a stiff neck. “Hey, come on now, man. I don’t know shit about nothing. I told him that last night.”

“I’ll tell you something,” Raymond said. “I believe you. I think you got caught in the middle of something and you’re naturally a little confused. I would be too.”

“I’m not talking to you,” Mr. Sweety said.

“I can understand your position,” Raymond said, “sitting on a hot gun and here we are coming down on you.” Raymond raised his hand from the envelope, palm up. “Wait now. I also see you’re still more confused than involved. Sandy laid this on you and you don’t know what’s going on. She comes in the other day, she tells you Clement wants you to hold the gun for him. But wait a minute. We come to find out Clement doesn’t know anything about it. That’s straight-listen to me. Hear the whole thing. I told you last night Sandy doesn’t want Clement to know she came here. And what do you do? You act very surprised. So I think about it-why would you be surprised? Well, because she said it was from Clement. But if Clement doesn’t know she was here then he doesn’t know she delivered anything. Right?… You with me?”

“You losing me on the turns,” Mr. Sweety said.

“I know you’ve got some questions,” Raymond said, “but how much do you really want to know? See, all we want is the gun. Now. Listen very carefully. If we have to look for the gun, then what we’re gonna find is a murder weapon in your possession. Then, you not only get your rights read, you get to see a warrant for your arrest on the charge of murder in the first degree, which carries mandatory life. On the other hand… you listening?”

“I’m listening,” Mr. Sweety said. “What’s the other hand?”

“If you tell us of your own free will some person gave you the gun but you don’t know anything about it, whose it is, how it was used, anything; then what we have here is still another example of citizen cooperation and alert police work combining their efforts to solve a brutal crime… You like it?”

Mr. Sweety was silent, thinking.

He said, “He don’t know she gave this piece to anybody. I mean Clement. That what you saying?”

“That’s correct.”

“Where does he think it is?”

“Well, I don’t think she lifted it off him,” Raymond said. “Do you?”

“No way.”

“So I think he gave it to her to get rid of and she laid it off on you. It isn’t as easy as it sounds, throwing a gun in the river. Maybe she was coming here anyway, you know? Or maybe she told you to get rid of it. I’m not gonna ask you that. But if she did, that puts a burden on you. You got to take it out in your car somewhere… somebody finds the gun, remembers seeing you… the way it always happens. You been around, you know these things. Who wants to be associated with a hot gun. No, I don’t blame you.” Raymond waited a moment. “You coming to a decision?”

Mr. Sweety didn’t answer.

“Where’s the gun, at your house?”

“Down the basement.”

“Let’s go get it.”

“I got to call Anita, have her come over here.”

Raymond and Hunter looked at each other but didn’t say anything. They waited for Mr. Sweety to come back from the phone that was halfway down the bar, by the cash register.

Raymond said, “You feel better now?”

Mr. Sweety said, “Shit…”

They got back into the blue Plymouth, Raymond carrying a brown paper bag. He said, “It’s work, you know it? It wears you out.”

Hunter said, “That’s why they pay you all that money. Now where?”

“Let’s go see Sandy. No, drop me off and get this to the lab. But don’t tag it yet, I mean with any names on it.”

Hunter held the key turned, his foot mashing the accelerator. “Fucking car…”

Raymond waited patiently. He thought back, reviewing the conversation with Mr. Sweety, pleased. Then said, “I think I left the envelope on the bar,” and patted his breast pocket. “Yeah, I did.”

“You need it?”

“From Oral Roberts,” Raymond said. “No, I’ll probably be hearing from him again.”