A State cop from the Norfolk DA’s office patted Hawk and me down and ushered us into the conference room on the thirty-ninth floor at Cone, Oakes and Baldwin. A couple of guys from the Bureau of Corrections brought Ellis Alves wearing leg irons and handcuffs into the room and sat him in a chair with a great view out the picture window of places he might never visit. They took off the handcuffs and left and it was just Hawk and me and Ellis.
Ellis was tall and bony with high cheekbones and his hair cut short. There were prison gang tattoos on his forearms. He sat straight up in the chair and stared straight at me.
“My name’s Spenser,” I said.
“So what you gonna do?” he said to me.
“Find out if you did what you’re in jail for.”
“Sure,” Ellis said. He looked at Hawk. “Who this? Your butler?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He followed me in.”
Hawk looked thoughtfully at Ellis.
“We know you bad, Ellis,” Hawk said. “Don’t have to keep showing us.”
“You ever been inside, bro?”
“Been almost everywhere, Ellis.”
“You be inside, bro, you know there’s black and there’s white and you got to choose.”
“Damn,” Hawk said. “I been trying to pass.”
“What’s your name, bro? Your name Tom, maybe?”
“My name’s Hawk.”
Ellis was too full of jailhouse self-control to look startled. But he was silent for a moment staring at Hawk. Then he nodded slightly and looked back at me.
“So what you want from me, Spenser?”
“Tell me your story,” I said.
“I got no story, I’m just another nigger framed by the man.”
“Sure,” I said. “How’d it happen?”
“How you think?”
“I figure they kidnapped you from church,” I said.
“Naw. They come busting in, about eight of them, while I was still in bed. Ten o’clock in the morning. I had a bad hangover. State cops, I think. I never did know for sure. And they haul my ass out to Pemberton. And stick me in a cell in the back by myself. You know, man, my whole life I never been in Pemberton? ’Cept for doing time, I ain’t been five miles from Seaver Street.”
“You didn’t kill this girl.”
“No. I tole them that and every time I tole them that the one cop doing all the investigating, State cop, I think, big tall guy, blond hair, real pink cheeks, he talk a lot of trash, ’bout how they know how to handle a buck nigger goes around raping their girls.”
Ellis paused a moment thinking about it and shrugged.
“After a while couple of people I never heard of pick me out of a lineup,” he said. “And then they gimme some preppy bitch probably never been laid, to be my lawyer, and you know she walks me right into the joint.”
“You got a theory?” I said.
“Sure, same old honky shit. Something goes down, find a nigger and clear the case.”
“How’d they pick you?”
“They want to get me off the street anyway.”
“Who they?” Hawk said.
“You ought to know that, bro.”
“Yeah, but they a lot of white folks, Ellis. Which one want to get you off the streets?”
“What’s the difference?” Ellis said. “They ain’t going to help you get me out.”
“We’re not looking for help,” I said. “We’re looking for information.”
“Well, I already give you all I got,” Ellis said.
I looked at Hawk. Hawk shrugged.
“He got no reason to hold back,” Hawk said.
I nodded, and looked at Alves.
“You got anything else to say?”
“The cop doing all the talking, out in Pemberton, cop name of Olson? Maybe he know something.”
“We’ll talk with him,” I said.
Ellis looked at Hawk again.
“I heard about you,” Ellis said.
“Un huh.”
“You willing to work with him?” Ellis nodded toward me.
“Un huh.”
“You trust him?”
“Un huh.”
Ellis, still sitting rigidly erect in the chair, looked at me like I was a specimen. He shook his head.
“You ain’t got no prayer. They gonna land on you like a truck-load of sludge. You gonna get buried. Like me.”
“Probably not,” I said.
“They want it buried — they gonna bury it. Even if you white, you helping a nigger, you ain’t white no more.”
I didn’t see anywhere to go with that so I let it pass.
“You got no idea how they happened to pick you to take the fall?” I said.
“None.”
“Okay,” I said.
I got up and went to the door. I opened it and nodded at one of the guards. They came in, put the cuffs back on Alves, patted him down, and led him out. He stood absolutely straight as they did this, and when they took him out he didn’t look back.
“You in for life,” Hawk said after Alves was gone, “hope will kill you. You going to survive, you got to keep your mind steady.”
“I know.”
“Ain’t much else in there but hate and power.”
“Better than nothing,” I said.