True Crime

3

I have a superstition about disaster. Disaster, I believe, always takes you by surprise. It follows from this that if you can imagine every possible form that disaster might take, you’ll be protected. If you expect disaster, every possible kind of disaster, there’s no room for surprise, so disaster will stay away. This method has proved effective many times and the many times it has not proved effective I’ve blamed it on myself or mitigating circumstances and gone on believing it anyway. I put it into practice as I drove out to Knight Street to meet the man who had killed Amy Wilson.

Night had fallen now-or the long summer dusk, at least, with the crystal sky growing so dark, so deep above the low buildings of the county that it seemed you could almost taste the first stars waiting to break through. The edge was off the heat at last and with all the Tempo’s windows rolled down the air blew over me pleasantly, drying my shirt, drying my face, helping me breathe easily again. I stank-after the steambath of Michelle’s apartment-and a crust of grime seemed to cling to my skin. But the breeze felt fine and it eased my headache a little, even calmed my stomach, and began to clear my mind.

I drove past the brick cafes, the tree-lined sidewalks of the broad boulevard-of the same boulevard Michelle had been driving on that very morning before she crashed. With one part of my mind, I monitored the news station on the radio, listening for information about Frank Beachum. With the rest of my mind, I imagined possible scenarios of disaster in the hope that I might avoid surprise.

He would not be there, I told myself. That was the most likely prospect. Warren Russel-my prime suspect-would have moved away and left no forwarding address. Or no one would tell me where he was. Or he would be there and would refuse to talk to me. Or he would talk to me and, at my first pertinent question, would draw an AK-47 from his belt and stitch a seam of bullets from my forehead to my navel, sending me reeling down his front stoop to lie dead in the street below me. Then-and I added this just for the sake of drama-he would spit on my carcass and sneer before he slammed the door.

Or he’d be innocent. There was another possibility. He’d tell me whatever he’d told the police six years ago and it would be clear to me as it had been clear to them that he had simply driven into Pocum’s parking lot that day to buy a Coke, and that’s all.

Oh yes, I thought, approaching the intersection with the highway, I had this situation covered, all right. I’d figured it from every angle now. Disaster would have to wake up pretty early in the old A.M. to get the drop on Mr. Steven Everett.

I arrived at Knight Street, a long and ancient lane on the border of the highway. It seemed, in fact, the last crumbling remnant of a neighborhood that the highway had plowed under. A street on the edge of a pit, it seemed, and its miserable boxes of red brick looked like headstones for the community buried beneath the six-lane blacktop. Windows darkened by grime and exhaust peered dolefully down at the rush of cars. Faces at the window openings peered down; old faces, black faces, never moving. The laundry, drooping on lines between the buildings, hung motionless too, because there was no wind. And below it, around scruffy yards littered with old beer cans and broken glass, white picket fences listed over as if drawn inexorably toward the earth.

I parked the Tempo in the gutter trash and stepped out. A couple of boys bouncing a basketball between them on the sidewalk turned to watch me as I crossed the street. Number 4331 was like the other buildings beside it: five stories; red brick blackened by dirt. A chipped, decaying stoop up to a wooden door with a cracked glass panel.

I climbed the stairs and read the row of names on the mailboxes. My nerves-my aching head, my stomach-all flared up again when I saw it there: Russel, painfully printed in blue ink, half covered by a stroke of the brown paint with which someone had swashed graffiti over the whole row.

There would be no answer, I thought, still trying to outsmart disaster. It would be a different Russel. Or someone had forgotten to change the name when he moved away. I almost wanted it to be like that. That would end the tension, the suspense. I would have an excuse to call off this ill-augured game of Beat the Clock. I pressed the buzzer, and waited.

A moment later, I heard a woman’s voice above my head.

“Who’s there?”

I had to move back, move a few steps down the stoop before I could see her. Her heavy-jowled brown face was poking out at me from a third-floor window, probing the semidarkness below her with large, slightly protuberant eyes. She frowned when she got a look at me: a buttoned-down white man shuffling hapless in the dusk. The whap of the basketball on the sidewalk had stopped and I could feel the two kids watching me too.

“Yes?” the woman above me said.

“Mrs. Russel?”

“Ye-es?” she repeated more warily.

“Mrs. Russel, my name is Steve Everett. I’m a reporter with the St. Louis News. I’m looking for Warren Russel.” She seemed to rear back a little. “Warren?”

“Yes, ma’am, is he around?”

She didn’t answer, not right away. Somewhere behind me, the basketball hit the sidewalk once-whap-then stopped.

“Just a minute,” the woman said. “I’ll come down.”

She pulled her head in and was gone.

Stuffing my hands in my pockets, I turned as casually as I could to make a quick check on the two kids behind me. They had moved toward me a little and were standing near the base of the stoop. They made no bones about it: they were staring up at me, coolly contemplating every inch of me. Two kids in baggy shorts and T-shirts, they were. Nine years old maybe, maybe ten. The one on the right was holding the basketball against his hip. It was the one on the left who had the gun. I couldn’t be sure, but I didn’t like the way his hand rested against the pocket of his baggy shorts, the barely perceptible cant of his body to one side as if to put an extra spring in his draw action. I’d spent the entire weekend covering gunshot victims and I told myself it had gone to my brain. All the same, if he asked me for candy change, I was going to give it to him without an argument.

Behind me, the door opened, and I turned again to look up the stoop at Mrs. Russel. She was a heavyset woman-in her fifties, I’d guess, though I find it hard to tell sometimes with blacks. She had big powerful arms and legs like pillars, both bare. In fact, there seemed something almost naked-frighteningly large and naked-about her altogether. She wore a shapeless floral housedress which ended at the shoulders and the knees: slippers on her feet, no rings on her fingers, her only adornment a gold heart pendant around her neck-and her hair tied back so severely behind her head that her face appeared enormous and seemed to jut down at me. She was a formidable sight, still frowning, with storms and flashes of anger deep behind those bulging eyes. All the same, I sensed a sort of brusque, muscular decency in her. I hoped I did. I hoped I could count on it. “Go home,” she said.

I opened my mouth to answer, then realized she was talking to the boys behind me.

“Don’t stand there gawking at the man, it’s your dinner time, go on home.”

I dared a glance back over my shoulder. The two boys were already edging away along the sidewalk with many a sulking glower back in my direction. I climbed up the stoop to stand in front of the woman at the door. I was surprised to find she was half a head shorter than I.

“You are Mrs. Russel?” I asked.

“Angela Russel,” she said quietly.

“And Warren …”

“My grandson. What does a newspaper want with him now?”

“Mrs. Russel, it’s very important that I talk to him,” I said. “It’s urgent. I need to see him tonight.”

She pulled up and snorted once through a broad, flat nose. “What could be so urgent about you talking to Warren?”

I hesitated. Those turbulent, bulging eyes thundered at me. Her big arm held the door open and her big body blocked the way and I suspected that getting past her was going to be a lot tougher than merely browbeating a confession out of her gunman grandson.

“I think,” I said slowly, “I think he would want me to say it to him directly.”

The wide face went back and forth as she shook her head. “You’re gonna have to talk to me.”

“Mrs. Russel …”

“You’re gonna have to talk to me, mister.” I lifted a hand in protest. “I just think …”

“Warren’s dead,” the woman said flatly. “Warren’s been in his grave now going on three years.”