Big Silence (16 page)

Now, his arm swollen and the broken bone trying to crack through the purple skin, he sat waiting. Checking to see that the shotgun was loaded had been difficult, painful, but he and the gun were both ready. If Antoine was alive, he would come. Neither he nor Irwin had anyplace else to go.

Antoine Dodson had driven away cursing his pain, his failure, the stupid white idiot he worked with. He had watched Irwin standing there, one arm limp, the other holding the shotgun. He’d probably stand there till the police came and picked him up or shot him on the cracked concrete. Who gave a shit? Antoine had to think of himself.

He drove: At first it wasn’t so bad. He breathed deeply, thankful that it was his left leg in agony or he wouldn’t have been able to drive. He considered driving down Broadway back to uptown, back to the apartment where he would pick up his clothes and his money and get the hell out of town. Irwin might turn him in, especially after being left alone to face the cops, but it would take awhile. If Antoine moved fast, he could get to the room, gather his few things, and be gone long before Irwin said anything. That was if things went well. They didn’t. The pain grew. Antoine touched his leg and his hand came back bloody.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, fuck,” he said, slamming a fist against the dashboard.

He needed doctoring. No doubt. He needed it and needed it fast or he would pass out and might well bleed to death in the car.

He’d have to go to a hospital, tell a story, hope they didn’t match up the robbery with him. He had no choice. Bleeding to death wasn’t an option. He’d tell a story and stick to it. That woman would never be able to identify him positively. He had worn his mask. And Irwin? A good lawyer could tear Irwin to pieces. Worst case, the state attorney’s people would jump at a plea bargain. Antoine would have to give up on the idea of going to the apartment to pick up the cash there. He had a pocketful from the convenience store. He didn’t know how far it would take him, but wherever it was, that’s where he was going when he got his leg fixed up.

Antoine made it to Sheridan, cursed the traffic, groaned in pain, and kept driving, trying not to pass out. He turned onto the Outer Drive and almost missed the exit at Lawrence Avenue, but he caught it just in time and barely missed an oncoming car driven by a woman, a frightened black woman. He caught a glimpse of a couple of children in the backseat of the woman’s car. But he didn’t hit them.

He managed to make the next turn south, make it down the two blocks without hitting anything but the fender of a parked Buick, and turn into the emergency room driveway of Weiss Hospital. He tried to park the car reasonably close to the curb. The space was illegal, but he didn’t have a choice. Only then did he remember that he was still carrying his gun. He should have wiped it for prints and pitched it out the car, but he had forgotten. He knew he was passing out, but he managed to wipe his prints from the gun. No one seemed to be watching as he stepped out and almost fell. He looked around frantically and saw a garbage can near the entrance. He fished out a sheet of newspaper. He wiped the gun again and, using the newspaper, flung the weapon toward a clump of bushes planted in front of the emergency room door. Though he was losing both strength and consciousness quickly, he managed to get the weapon into the closest bushes.

Then Antoine turned and limped toward the entrance. He took four steps and fell. He crawled the rest of the way to the glass and steel doors that opened automatically. Then, eyes closed, he managed a few more feet to get inside, not knowing if anyone was watching, wondering where the hell the doctors and nurses were.

That was it. He passed out.

When Antoine opened his eyes, he tried to sit up. Confused, he didn’t recognize the room, the two men and the woman in white standing next to his bed. Then he remembered and lay back.

“Mr. Dodson.” The nurse was calm, very black, and old enough to be Antoine’s grandmother. “You are going to be fine. Eight pellets were removed from your leg. You’ve lost a lot of blood, but you are going to be fine. Are you up to talking to these men?”

“Who are they?” asked Antoine, mouth dry, leg throbbing, but the terrible pain gone.

“Police,” she said.

“Too weak,” said Antoine, closing his eyes.

“That’s unfortunate,” said one of the two men. “Without some answers soon, we’re going to have to consider booking you for murder, robbery, and twenty other counts including reckless driving and take you in as soon as you can get up.”

Antoine’s eyes opened. “Murder? I didn’t kill nobody. I got shot.”

The two men in front of him were an unlikely pair. One was old, small with white curly hair and a little mustache. The other man was big, as big as Irwin. He looked powerful and he looked sad.

“You want to talk?” the nurse said. “You are capable.”

“Maybe I’ll talk a little,” Antoine said in a whisper that sounded weaker than he was.

“I’ll be at my station or with a patient,” the nurse said, leaving the room.

“I’m Detective Lieberman. This is Detective Hanrahan. I’m going to read your rights and we’d like you to sign a statement that you’ve been read those rights and understand them.”

“Okay,” said Antoine. “But I didn’t kill nobody.”

Hanrahan began immediately to recite the Miranda warning, talking fast and not letting Antoine interrupt. Once Antoine asked for a lawyer, the questioning would stop. The trick was to keep him talking and any time it looked as if he might be about to ask for legal help to ask a new question.

“Let’s talk about murder,” Lieberman said, almost bored.

“Murder? I didn’t kill nobody. I got shot over on Gunnison a few hours back or whatever time it is. Just walkin’ down the street. Guy steps out, calls for my wallet, and shoots.”

“He didn’t get your wallet,” said Hanrahan. “It was with your clothes. Forty-two dollars in it.”

“I guess he got scared and ran,” said Antoine. “I didn’t kill anybody.”

In fact, he was quite right. The Pakistani woman who had gone screaming down the alley was perfectly fine and remarkably able to give details of what had happened. She was sure she could identify both of the men who had robbed her and tried to kill her.

“We’ve got the gun,” said Lieberman. “Found it in front of the hospital in the bushes.”

“I don’t know nothin’ about a gun,” he said. “I’m on parole. I don’t carry guns.”

“If you didn’t do it, who did?” asked the big cop.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t anywhere near that store.”

“What store?” asked Lieberman. “Who said anything about a store? Detective Hanrahan, did you mention a store?”

“No,” said Hanrahan. “And you didn’t either.”

“Someone did,” said Antoine. “Can I have some water?”

“I don’t know,” said Lieberman. “It might leak out of the holes in your leg and ruin the bandages.”

“You’ve got a partner,” said Hanrahan. “White guy, big. Maybe he knows about murder.”

“I’ve got no —” Antoine started.

“We’ve been after you for two months,” said Lieberman. “We’ve got store clerks lined up like opening day at Wrigley Field to identify the two of you. Now, if your partner knows about murder, maybe we can do something for you. We don’t want you for anything but the robberies if you didn’t kill anyone.”

Antoine turned his head to the side.

It was a tense few seconds for the policemen who knew that Dodson might now ask for that lawyer. Amazingly, like so many criminals, Antoine didn’t really know the law. Even if there had been a murder during the robbery and even if his partner had committed it, Antoine would still be eligible for a murder arrest as an accessory before the fact.

“Give us a hand,” Hanrahan said reasonably, “and we’ll give you one. All we want to do is clear this up, mark it solved, get our captain to say ‘Job well done,’ and go on with the next case.”

“How much time will I get?” Antoine said.

“Don’t know,” said Lieberman. “We can put in a good word for you. Maybe you’ll even walk if you turn in your partner.”

The odds on Antoine Dodson walking away from this were nonexistent, as both detectives knew, but lying in that bed, Antoine might be ready to kiss the detectives’ hands and believe anything they said.

“He left me in the parking lot,” Antoine said. “Left me bleeding. I drove away. He must have killed her.”

“Who is he?” asked Hanrahan.

“Where is he?” asked Lieberman.

“Irwin, maybe back at the room,” Antoine said softly. “He ain’t too bright. I don’t know.”

“Where’s the room?” asked Hanrahan.

Antoine gave the address. It was less than eight blocks away. He gave the room number and the name, Irwin Saviello.

“That’s all I got,” said Antoine.

“You did the right thing,” said Lieberman, believing, in fact, that Antoine Dodson had done the wrong thing if his goal had been to keep from going back to prison. “I think you should get a lawyer now. Want a public defender?”

Antoine shrugged and said, “I want some water.”

“We’ll tell the nurse on the way out,” said Hanrahan. “And we’ll call you a lawyer.”

In the hall, Hanrahan said, “Warrant?”

“No time,” said Lieberman. “We’ve got a felon with a lethal weapon who could flee at any second. I’ll get Dodson a lawyer and then we go to the apartment.”

Hanrahan nodded in agreement. He hoped Saviello was in the room. He hoped, though he would never tell anyone, not even Lieberman, that Saviello tried to shoot it out. Bill Hanrahan needed closure on something.

Lieberman used a hospital phone and called the public defenders’ office for Antoine Dodson. Whoever caught the case would be pissed as hell. With a stack on his or her desk, the lawyer would have little time to visit a defendant in the hospital. The hope was always for a plea bargain, quick, the best deal they could get. Their fear was a stubborn client who insisted he or she was innocent and wanted a trial.

Antoine Dodson would deal.

They had driven to the hospital in Lieberman’s car, so Lieberman drove to the address on Magnolia near Lawrence and Broadway. The call from Weiss Hospital security had not gone specifically to the Clark Street station, but a report on the man with a leg full of shotgun pellets had been sent to all the stations in the city and suburbs.

Tying it in to the convenience store robbery had been obvious. Since the Salt and Pepper robberies belonged to Hanrahan and Lieberman, they had been handed the report, talked to the woman who had been robbed, and headed for the hospital. Considering the fact that she had probably broken the arm of one of the robbers and had definitely shot the other, not to mention that one of the robbers had come close to killing her, the woman had been remarkably calm.

All of this had taken place after three o’clock, when the two detectives and the one-armed Kim had gone to the bench in Lunt Park to pick up Clark Mills. Mills wasn’t there. They tried other benches. They asked the few people they saw and the gas station attendant across the street if they had seen Mills, who was easy to spot and well known in the neighborhood. No one had seen him.

“Thought he’d show,” said Lieberman.

“Makes two of us.”

They had waited twenty minutes, then drove around the neighborhood. Nothing. Then they had taken Kim to the Greyhound station downtown and bought him a one-way ticket to San Francisco. Lieberman had also given him seventy-five dollars of his own money.

The bus was at five-fifteen.

“I suggest,” Lieberman had said, “that you see a doctor as soon as you get to San Francisco.”

Kim had said nothing.

“Remember,” said Lieberman, “you don’t come back to Chicago. You come back and I let El Perro have you.”

“I keep my word,” said Kim. “My honor, my word, are all I have remaining.”

“More than a lot of people have,” said Hanrahan.

They had helped Kim onto the bus, then watched it pull out.

“What you think?” Hanrahan had asked.

“Odds are even that he’ll come back,” said Lieberman. “He may decide that his honor requires revenge, retribution. And then again, he may find a job in San Francisco.”

Now, after the stop at Weiss Hospital to talk to Antoine Dodson and wondering what had happened to Clark Mills to make him change his mind, they headed for the uptown address.

The transient three-story brick apartment building had about twenty single studio and one-bedroom apartments. The building looked pretty much like the other buildings on the block. Some were dark brick. Some were dirty yellow brick. The small plots of dirt between the street and sidewalk had no vegetation and looked as if someone had emptied garbage cans on them at least a year earlier and no one had bothered to pick up the garbage. There were some families, particularly from the rural South, who lived in the neighborhood and were trying to make a go of it and get into a better neighborhood, and there were a lot of people like Dodson and Saviello with nowhere better to go.

The downstairs door was open, the lock long ago broken and not replaced. The same was true for the inner door beyond which the homeless probably gathered to sleep on the stairs where they would be kicked out by a building superintendent. The super might even feel sorry for them but fear the coming of the landlord. Bad job. The super probably was one of those poor whites from the South trying to make a living for his family. Such men, the detectives knew, sometimes found their lives unbearable and went violently mad.

Policy was to call for backup. Backup meant losing ten minutes or more. It meant marked cars that could be seen from a window. It meant possible noise from police or the curious. It was easier without help.

The routine was clear. The two detectives had been through it over a hundred times. Guns drawn, they stood one on each side of the door. Lieberman reached over and turned the doorknob slowly. It took only part of a turn for Lieberman to mouth across to his partner “Open.”

Lieberman went back against the wall and Hanrahan knocked twice.

The knock was answered by a gunshot blast that sent pellets exploding through the door, making a dozen or more little holes. The wall across from the door took the dying blows of the pellets.