Clockers (50 page)

As Rocco was trying to decide whether this curative scenario had even a glimmer of tangibility, Rodney Little walked into the office from the deserted reception area. Looking tentative, Rodney stood slightly hunched forward, his Jheri curls gleaming under the fluorescents. His opaque sunglasses caught the bars of overhead light in a double image.

“What’s up?” He stood in front of Mazilli’s desk, ignoring Rocco, unconsciously touching the beeper on his hip. “You called me, right?”

Mazilli leaned back, lit a cigarette and clasped his hands over his stomach. “So, you got anything for me?”

“I’m workin’ on it,” Rodney said. “I got my people. How about you? You talk to Jo-Jo yet?”

“I’m working on it,” Mazilli said.

Rocco sat silently two desks back from the play: Rodney was Mazilli’s action.

“Is that it?” Rodney seemed to unwind a little, and Rocco decided that the arrogant prick kind of liked strutting around a squad room without cuffs on.

“So, what do you hear from Victor Dunham?” Mazilli flicked his cigarette and missed the ashtray.

“Who?” Rodney hunched his neck. Rocco wished he wasn’t wearing shades. He wouldn’t have put it past Rodney to have slipped them on right before entering the office.

“Victor Dunham,” said Mazilli, staring at his reflection in Rodney’s glasses.

“What’s his name?” Rodney asked neutrally.

“Just that.”

Rodney made a face, shrugged.

“C’mon Rodney, Victor Dunham.”

“Show me a picture.”

Rocco pulled a glossy Polaroid from the homicide report and skimmed it to Mazilli’s desk.

Rodney pushed up his shades and held the photo a few inches from his nose, scrutinizing the face with myopic concentration before dropping it back on Mazilli’s desk. Rocco thought his blank reaction was genuine.

“You don’t know him?” Mazilli cocked his head and smiled as if he was being teased. “That’s Strike’s brother.”

“Well, I know
Strike.
You want to know something about Strike?” Mazilli jerked his shoulders indifferently.

“What this guy do?” Rodney ran a shiny gray fingernail across Victor’s face.

“We got him on the Ahab’s job.”

“Yeah?” Rodney’s voice went high. “Huh,” he said, picking up the picture again and shoving his glasses back up to his hairline. He looked directly at Mazilli. “Yeah, I wondered who did that, you know? ‘Cause nobody that I know
knew,
you know?” His eyes went back to the picture. “Wait a minute, I know this guy. What’s his name?”

“Victor Dunham.”

“I seen him at Hambone’s.”

“Not anymore.”

“Man, they got some nasty-tasting chicken there, you know, like they fry their shit in
hair
oil. Somebody once told me that they don’t even slaughter their chickens, they just wait for them to get sick and die their
own
selves.” Grinning, he dropped the picture back on Mazilli’s desk.

“You ever hear of anybody selling dope there?”

“Where.” Rodney blinked. “Hambone’s?”

“Ahab’s.”

“Shit. I wouldn’t misdoubt it. Goddamn, this city? You can’t go like two blocks without scoring something if you got a mind to.”

Mazilli smiled. “You should know, right?”

“Hey, Mazilli. Be nice now.”

Mazilli bobbed lazily in his chair, then sighed and skimmed the photo back to Rocco. “So what’s cooking out there, Rodney? What’s shakin’?”

Rodney pouted, pulled on his crotch. “Yeah, I got to talk to you about something.” He said this out the side of his mouth, implying it was for Mazilli’s ears only.

Rocco got up to leave, reasonably certain that Rodney had never had any dealings with Victor Dunham, or at least nothing involving a conspiracy to commit murder.

“Maz, I’m going over to BCI on something. Where you gonna be?”

Mazilli swirled his finger in a little circle. “Around.”

“I’m gonna want to go to that bar later, Rudy’s. You up for that?”

“Beep me. I’ll meet you there.”

Taking one last look at Rodney strolling around the office like he owned the place, Rocco slipped the Polaroid of Victor Dunham into the pocket of his sport jacket and headed for the door.

Outside in the parking lot Rocco pulled up short, the night so soft he lingered a moment before getting into his car. Above the coke-smelting plant and the arc of the skyway, stars hung crisp in a deep purple sky like a promise that all grief is temporary, and Rocco experienced a transcendent flush of well-being. Patty, Erin, Homicide—he had it all. It would be so easy to get that wheel of small gifts going, so easy to heal himself if he wanted to. The hell with Sean Touhey, the hell with any life that wasn’t truly connected to his own.

Rocco continued across the lot, then saw a battered Cadillac with Garfields suckered to the windows parked next to his car. A thirtyish but matronly black woman was half dozing in the front passenger seat. Rocco assumed she was Rodney’s wife.

He walked over to her side of the car. She rolled down her window, blinking and half smiling.

“How are you?” Rocco kicked at some loose gravel.

“With the Lord.” She gave a firm bob. “And yourself?”

“Holding my own. How about Rodney, he with the Lord too?”

“I’m trying, you best believe that.”

“Yeah?” Rocco grinned.

“I’m gonna
get
‘im, too,” she said.

“Yeah? Me too.” He rocked his head from shoulder to shoulder, then said, “Good night now,” and strolled off, thinking, One way or another no one gets away with anything in this life.

19

IT HAD
been two hours since the Homicides had left the projects, and Strike was still hiding in the lobby of 6 Weehawken, still brooding over the image of the heavyset detective who passed Tyrone on his chain perch, saying something that had made the kid smile, had made him turn his head and laugh. Two hours now and Strike was still pacing, thinking, What the hell is going on here?

Earlier in the evening, coming downstairs from the stash apartment, the books from his shopping trip with Andre under his arm, Strike had spotted the two Homicides just as they walked up to the benches. He recognized them both: one was the ballbreaker from Shaft Deli-Liquors, the other the heavyset cop from the night of the Ahab’s. Certain they had come to pick him up, Strike hunkered down by the mailboxes with the books at his feet and peeked out the door until he caught Tyrone’s eye. He beckoned the kid to the lobby, and when the Homicides began walking into the interior of the projects, Strike held Tyrone by his unmuscled arm and hissed, “See where they go,” the first words he had uttered to the boy since their return from New York on Saturday. Big-eyed with mission, the kid flew off after the cops, then jogged back to Strike ten minutes later and breathlessly whispered, “Forty-one Dumont, eleventh floor.” Strike had sent Tyrone back to his chain, and just as the kid took his seat, the benches exploded again—the Fury rolling up and grabbing Futon, Thumper and Futon’s aunt going in each other’s face, the Homicides returning to the scene just as it was cooling down.

Now, prowling the lobby like a tiger in a tight cage, Strike tried to think it through. The Homicides had gone to his mother’s house, Victor’s house, probably to ask his mother and ShaRon if they had any idea what happened at Ahab’s. But maybe they were looking for
him,
asking where they could find him.

He stared out at the benches. They were empty now, the crew temporarily scattered, Tyrone upstairs for the dinner hour. For a few minutes longer Strike watched the cars going by, hesitating, looking for clockers, the drivers put out, strung out, reluctantly moving off. When Tyrone finally came out of the building and resumed his position on the chain, Strike left his hideout and walked slowly toward him. They exchanged glances, then Strike turned and headed back to the lobby of 6 Weehawken.

After a minute or two Tyrone appeared in the doorway.

“What that cop say to you before?”

“Nothin’,” Tyrone said hoarsely.

Strike studied his profile, trying to decipher the tension he saw there. “Hey, don’t disrespect me by
lyin
‘ to me. I saw him sayin’ somethin’ to you and I saw you
laughin’.
”

Speechless, Tyrone gave a little shrug.

Strike sensed the kid’s fear and remembered Andre, his warning about dealing with Tyrone, Strike thinking, But I’m not asking the kid to
do
anything.

“C’mon, man.” Strike spoke more softly now, as if Andre was eavesdropping. “After all we done together? What’s up with you?”

Tyrone fought down a smile on the word “we,” and Strike knew he had him.

“He ast me, ‘Who’s Mister Big.’”

“He dint ask about me?”

“Unh-uh.”

“How about Ronald Dunham. Did he say, ‘Where’s Ronald Dunham?’”

“He just say, ‘Who’s Mister Big.’”

Mister Big? What the hell did that mean? “How come you ain’t wearing those sneakers?”

Tyrone shrugged, looking ashamed.

Strike read the story in the shrug and let it slide; the kid’s mother was supposed to be a third-degree artist, and new sneakers in the house probably wouldn’t have gone unchallenged.

“C’mere,” he said. Seeing Tyrone hesitate, he impatiently gestured for the kid to come close. “I ain’t gonna
bite
you. C’mere.”

Strike picked up the stack of books from under the mailboxes and pressed them to Tyrone’s midsection, moving the kid’s arms for him so that he had a firm two-handed grip on all eleven volumes.

“Here,” Strike said, trying to come off positive and strong. “You should learn about yourself, where you’re coming from.”

Tyrone stared at him, mute and solemn.

Strike stared back, then turned his head away in exasperation. “Goddamn, don’t you
ever
say thank you?”

About a half hour later, soon after Strike got up the nerve to resettle on the benches, Rodney drove by and honked his horn. He had his wife with him, dozing in the front passenger seat, her temple pressed flat against the window. She awoke with a start when Strike slid in the back and slammed the door after him. For the duration of the ride from the benches to her home, she hummed a gospel tune in a faint, high-pitched trill.

Rodney parked across the street from his house and watched in silence as Clover got out and then fumbled with her keys at the front door. When she disappeared inside, he turned to face Strike, who was still sitting in the back seat. “How come you didn’t tell me it was your brother did it?”

Strike stopped himself: he’d been about to say that Victor didn’t do it. But then Rodney would say, “Well, who did?” and the thought of telling Rodney about Buddha Hat filled Strike with terror.

Strike tried to keep his voice even. “You said you dint want to know nothin’.”

“Your brother best not say nothin’.”

“He-he don’t
know
nothin’.”

“Then what he do it for?”

Not knowing how to answer, Strike kept his mouth shut.

“You pay him?”

“Unh-uh.”

“What do you mean, he don’t know nothin’?”

“I told him some story.”

Rodney gave him a steady look, then turned around and drove off. After a few minutes of silence, he caught Strike’s eye in the rearview mirror. “How come he gave hisself up? He religious?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean, he go to-to church sometime, but he don’t talk about Je-Jesus or nothin’.”

Rodney chewed on that, then said, “I thought you told someone in a bar who was supposed to reach out, get somebody else.”

“I did. I told
him.
I don’t know what happened.” Strike leaned forward, feeling awkward riding alone in the back seat. “The Homicides come by to see my mother.”

“They just doing a follow-up. That’s their job.”

Strike was surprised that Rodney didn’t seem especially worried about any of this news; it was as if the murder was old business, not his concern. “You think they’ll come and talk to me?”

Rodney shrugged. “They might. I was them?
I
would. But Mazilli? The guy with the store? Once they got somebody, he don’t care too much on post-arrest follow-ups. He likes to move on, so I wouldn’t worry about it. By the time they get around to you? Shit, there’s gonna be another murder anyhow.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know who. I’m just sayin’, it’s over with, they got their arrest, that’s all I’m sayin’.”

Rodney waved a hand as if to declare the subject dead, and Strike felt overwhelmed with the urge to confess, the impulse stronger than any fear of what Rodney might do. This time he didn’t hold back: “I don’t think he did it, my brother.”

“What’s that?” Rodney glanced into the rearview again and the car slowed.

“I think my brother’s taking the weight for-for someone.” Strike floated off somewhere, watching himself speak as if in a trance. He distantly wondered if he could take it all the way and utter Buddha Hat’s name.

“Who’s he takin’ the weight for?” Rodney asked, that dangerous mildness creeping into his tone.

Strike hesitated, daring himself to give it up, but then said only, “I don’t know.”

“You sure?”

Strike said nothing.

“Well shit, you don’t know? Then that’s good, that’s good. Like I always say, what you don’t know don’t hurt you. Don’t I always say that?” Rodney studied Strike in the mirror, then eased to a dead stop in the middle of the street. “What you sittin’ back there for? I ain’t no fuckin’ chauffeur.”

Rodney patted Clover’s seat, and as Strike got out of the car, he was swamped by the return of that sweaty assessment of himself he had experienced skulking around Ahab’s—no plan, no heart. And then it occurred to him that Buddha Hat was getting away with a triple murder here: Papi, Darryl and his brother.

With Strike next to him, Rodney turned onto the boulevard and started waving at people again, all the clockers out in force now. Three blocks farther on, Rodney pulled up alongside an older, crook-backed pipehead, jerking the Caddy toward the sidewalk as if about to mow the guy down, making him scuttle for safety. Strike recognized Popeye from the benches.