2 in the Hat (14 page)

Then it happened. It was a Saturday, a beautiful day. He and Ronald were setting up a new display when Natalie walked in. She was angry, accusing him of watching her, following her, stalking her. He still remembered her words. “You’re creeping me out,” she had said. “We grew up together. Why are you doing this to me? We used to be friends.”
Used to be?
She acted like she didn’t remember how she had come to the house after his father died. How she sat with him and Momma, making them all tea. That even if they weren’t together, that special bond was there. She was quiet for a second and then she mentioned a restraining order
.

Ronald and their client heard every word. “I don’t know what she’s talking about,” he told them after she’d stormed out. He was scared he’d lose his job, but Ronald understood. He said he knew that women sometimes overreacted to things. “Let’s get back to work,” Ronald said. “We have a busy night ahead of us.” They were scheduled to change displays in a couple of stores, getting them ready for summer sales starting on Sunday morning
.

Ronald picked up some Chinese food for supper, but Sleep wasn’t hungry. He was too upset by what Natalie had said. He didn’t particularly like Chinese food, either. The brown rice tasted like cardboard. He managed to force some noodles and rice down after
Ronald showed him how to smother the rice in lobster sauce. When he finished, Sleep tucked his fortune cookie, dessert, in his back pocket. He wanted to be alone when he read his fortune. As they started back to work, Ronald asked about Natalie. How he knew her. Why she thought he was following her
.

It was none of Ronald’s business
.

Ronald told him to loosen up. He put his hand on Sleep’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze
.

“What the hell are you doing?” Sleep bent away from his touch. It felt fiery hot, and heavy like a big machine
.

Ronald stepped back, startled. “I was trying to help you talk things out.”

“Don’t touch me. What are you, half-a-fag?” He didn’t really know what that meant except that his father used to say it when Sleep played in the attic
.

Ronald’s face went rigid. “I’m sorry you feel that way. Maybe that girl was telling the truth. We can’t keep stalkers working in boutiques.”

Sleep was stunned. “You mean…?”

Ronald gestured toward the door
.

Sleep walked out onto the sidewalk, feeling alone and scared. In one night he had lost the woman and the job he loved
.

He still had one thing. Sleep had his gun. It wasn’t really his gun. He had found it in his father’s belongings, and he’d been carrying it around for months. When he first found it, he took it and hid it in the trunk in the attic. As he got used to it—the way it felt in his hand, a comfortable fit—he started to carry it around. He wasn’t sure why. It just felt cool, tucked into his waist, held up by the makeshift holster his father had made from a piece of heavy gauge wire, one end looped around his belt, the other stuck in the barrel of the gun. He felt invincible when he had his piece with him. No one could mess with him. He was a big man when he had the gun
.

After Ronald fired him, Sleep walked to the Fens. The sun was setting. When he sat on a bench, he heard the crunch of the fortune cookie in his back pocket. He didn’t know if he should laugh or cry. He couldn’t do anything right. He reached back and held the cellophane wrapper with the crumbled mess in his hand. With all that had happened in one day, he needed some good news. Maybe this was his real fortune. He hoped it would be a good one. There was no rule that said the fortune wouldn’t come true just because the cookie was crumbled was there? Maybe the broken cookie had broken his bad luck. He tore the cellophane with his teeth, dumped the shards of cookie onto the ground. The pigeons could have them. He removed the strip of paper and read “STOP SEARCHING FOREVER, HAPPINESS IS RIGHT NEXT TO YOU.”

He closed his eyes tight. Maybe this was his fortune
.

He opened his eyes. There was a young woman at the other end of his bench. She had long dark hair like Natalie. Maybe she was his true love. She was looking straight ahead
.
He never had the nerve to introduce himself to pretty girls. He just needed to talk to her
.
His fortune said that happiness was right next to him. There was no one else around
.

“What’s your name?”

She said nothing
.

“You come here often?” That was a really stupid thing to say
.

Nothing
.

“I think you’re pretty.”

She looked away
.

“My name is—”

“Okay, Babe, you ready to get going?” A man stepped out from behind a bush, adjusting his fly. He was tall and muscular like Ronald
.

“I’ve been ready to go since we got here. If you can believe it, this guy’s been hitting on me.” She laughed
.

“Look, pal,” the guy said. “Snow White doesn’t date any of the seven dwarfs.” They both laughed
.

“That’s not funny.”

“You’re right it’s not.” She tried to control her laughter
.

“Tell him to apologize,” Sleep said
.

“You should be the one apologizing to her for being a creep,” Ronald said. He put his arm around Natalie’s waist. She buried her cheek in his chest
.

Sleep reached into his waistband and wrapped his fingers around the handle of the gun
.

They were turned away, starting to move down the street. Sleep sprang up and moved in front of them. As he pressed the gun into Ronald’s chest, he pulled the trigger. Sleep was stunned by the force of the cool metal in his hands. Instantly, it seemed to stutter and fire again. Ronald’s eyes stopped laughing. Bright red crept over his shirt like a seeping stain. His legs crumpled, like a ruined paper doll. Natalie didn’t move. Like a mannequin, she stood with her arms reaching out to Ronald. Her mouth opened, and before she could make a sound, Sleep pounced on her. He had to keep her throat from making a sound
.

When they were both quiet, not laughing anymore, he felt better
.

The broken cookie was right. He had found happiness right next to him
.

HE WENT TO THE
mudroom in the back of the house and grabbed the mop and the metal pail. He had to get back to work. Enough time spent daydreaming. The kitchen needed to be cleaned or Momma would be disappointed. He couldn’t have that. And if he had time enough later, he’d walk around his favorite spot. The Victory Gardens in the Fens.

C
onnie took a seat near the back of the room. The second gang
meeting since Ellis Thomas’s death. The superintendent broke up a huddle of cops in the corner and directed them to take seats. Connie balanced the stack of papers on his knees. The analysts from the BRIC had given him a packet of information on what the superintendent called the major “impact players,” the bad guys who they believed were the most likely to be involved in a shooting. Connie’s packet included their criminal records, police reports from recent arrests, and FIOs showing where they’d been hanging around and who they’d been hanging with.

“It’s a little after five, let’s get started,” the superintendent checked her watch and shouted over the noise of the crowd of probation officers, youth workers, prosecutors—all outsiders that the cops didn’t trust—and cops from the Homicide Unit, the specialized units like the Drug Control Unit and the Youth Violence Strike Force, aka the Gang Unit.

The goal was for them to come together and share information. It sounded reasonable enough, but the competition between units was fierce. The din slowly faded.

Even though Connie had a grasp of what was going on in Roxbury, District B-2, these bimonthly meetings were a way for him to get intelligence
from around the city, to find out who the players were in the other districts. The bad guys didn’t care about district borders.

“I want to start with the homicide from last night. Shawn Tinsley,” the super said. She was standing next to a podium. To her right were half a dozen analysts from the BRIC. The meeting was a way for them to disseminate intelligence, but it also gave them the opportunity to confirm, through the cops on the street, that their intel was accurate. The superintendent nodded to one of the analysts, a young guy sitting in front of a laptop. He clicked the mouse and the blue screen with the BPD shield at the front of the room faded into a mug shot of a young black kid with corn rows and a small, scruffy beard.

Connie knew the face.

The superintendent continued, “This is Shawn Tinsley. We’re hearing that he might have been associated with Castlegate. A shooter. But we haven’t been able to corroborate that info. He was the main suspect in the Ellis Thomas homicide a little over two weeks ago on Magnolia Street. He may have shot a kid by the name of Tracy Ward, too. Looks like he was definitely one of our top impact players.”

She loved using sports terminology. Bad guys were “impact players.” High crime areas were “hot spots” or “red zones.”

“Tinsley didn’t really have much of a record. No guns or drugs, just larcenies and Chapter Ninety violations. Then he turns up dead last night. Sergeant Detective Figgs is here from Homicide. He’s looking for help.” She motioned for Ray Figgs to step forward.

Figgs got up from his seat in the front row. He looked a little banged up, in his wrinkled suit, stained shirt, top button undone, and a cheap tie. He had the ashy-gray skin of someone who didn’t spend much time outside. Figgs made his way to the podium, probably needing it to balance himself.

“Mr. Tinsley was discovered around sunrise this morning,” Figgs said, “by a woman walking her dog on Tenean Beach in Dorchester. ME said he was dead six to seven hours before we found him. No calls for shots fired last night.”

“Any hits on the Shot Spotter?” someone at the front of the room asked.

The superintendent stepped in. “Many of you know about the system of sensors strategically placed in different spots in the city. These sensors are so sophisticated they can tell the difference between a back-fire,
a firecracker, or gunfire. The Shot Spotter can triangulate the location of the shots within five seconds and the closest cameras will zip to that spot. To answer your question, Tenean Beach isn’t exactly one of our hot spots,” she said. “We don’t have any sensors or cameras set up there.”

The system hadn’t helped much in Ellis Thomas’s case either, Connie thought.

Figgs continued, “Tinsley was shot three times in the back. Looks like he was trying to get away from the shooter. Ballistics made a match to a forty-caliber semi that’s been involved in a bunch of shootings over the last six months. Could be a stash gun. Last time we had a hit on this gun was the George Wheeler homicide, almost three weeks ago.”

“I don’t think it’s a stash gun,” a voice called out from the back of the room, one of the guys from the Strike Force. “A few months ago that gun was involved in shots fired at some kids who are feuding with Castlegate. It doesn’t make sense for one of the Castlegate shooters to get killed by the same gun, unless he was killed by one of his own.”

Figgs signaled to the young man sitting at the computer and another image appeared on the screen, a map of the city broken down into police districts. There were red dots and blue dots with names and dates written next to them, and black lines with arrows connecting all the dots. “Let me clarify. It’s a stash gun that’s getting passed around to different groups all over the city. The red dots are homicides. The blue dots are shots fired. Ballistics recovered, no one hit, probably kids doing drive-bys, shooting wildly, missing their targets.”

Connie was surprised by Figgs’s presentation. As bad as he looked, he was able to pull himself together for this meeting in front of the superintendent. Too bad he was heading right back to the bottle as soon as the meeting was over.

“What do you need from us, detective?” the superintendent asked.

“Any information you have on Tinsley or Wheeler. Anything linking Tinsley to the Ellis Thomas murder would be helpful. I’d like to know how the .40’s getting passed around and who’s doing the passing.” Figgs stood for a few seconds to see if anyone was going to offer help, but the cops were a tough crowd. No one did any talking. “Give me a call if you think of anything.”

The computer geek hit a key and Figgs’s contact information filled the blue screen.

Figgs straightened his rumpled jacket and took a seat.

The superintendent took the podium again. “There’s been a lot of misinformation about the Shot Spotter. I’m going to turn the microphone over to the Deputy from Operations to explain the system in more detail. He’ll speak about what this technology can and can’t do for our cases.”

F
iggs walked toward the exit of Police Headquarters. That had been
one long meeting. It was already getting dark. He needed a cigarette.

“Sergeant Figgs.” He heard his name as he reached the glass door. Behind him in the cavernous lobby he saw two familiar faces. “Hi, Sergeant.” The ADA stuck out his hand. “Connie Darget. I was at the Ellis Thomas murder scene.”

Figgs nodded.

“You remember Detective Mark Greene from District Two. We’re investigating the Tracy Ward shooting. Whatever started that beef has led to your two homicides. Ward told us that Tinsley shot him. He named Ellis Thomas as a witness. The next day we had Thomas and his mother up the grand jury. A few hours later, he turns up dead. Seems obvious that Tinsley or someone in his crew was responsible for killing Thomas.”

“I know that,” Figgs said. “But I don’t have any witnesses putting Tinsley anywhere near Thomas. No one’s talking about what happened.”

“Tinsley wasn’t too cooperative with us,” Darget said. “We served him with a grand jury subpoena. He blew it off. I went to see the judge in the first session and get a Capias for him. Detective Greene scooped him up the next night. We had him up the grand jury a few days after Thomas was killed.”