Clockers (86 page)

The kid had started to nod his head a little, but not enough.

“See, but you got to play your cards right. Because Rodney can still win and you can go down in flames, because I’ll tell you something. I don’t care that we got a confession from your brother—I’m not ever gonna let go of this. It’s what we call having a mission. I know guys been on particular jobs
ten years,
they don’t care, and this one’s
mine,
I’m keeping it open because both me and you, we know Victor’s innocent, we already discussed that, but here’s the thing. On an active investigation like this? The person who’s believed most is the first person who talks, because after that first person talks, we start hauling
everybody
in, and then all of a sudden everybody’s talking. All of a sudden we got a real cluster fuck on our hands—information, alibis, bullshit—everybody saying, Yeah, I was there but I didn’t
do
nothing. All of it horseshit at that point, because everybody’s all jammed up, blaming everybody else, and nobody believes that second, third, fourth player like they do that first guy. And if that first guy comes in voluntarily like you are now? Ho shit that guy’s sold that guy’s in the catbird seat See what I’m saying?”’

Rocco paused, gathering himself for the final rush. “But, say you sit here with me now, I ask you what happened, and you don’t say shit. You walk out the door? Fine. What can I do? But Rodney? He’s out on bail now but he’s got this drug charge hanging over his head. They caught him”—Rocco winged it—“with a kilo of coke. He goes to trial, shit, he’s looking at some serious years. And what do you think he’s gonna do about that? Just take it? Hell no, he knows how to play the game around here. He’s gonna say, Hey let’s make a deal, you cut me some slack here, I’ll give you the
real
shooter on that Ahab’s job. You got the wrong man in jail. And then he’s gonna give
you
up in a snap. And when we come to get you, what are you gonna say? ‘It wasn’t me, it was him’? Or ‘He
made
me do it’? Who the fuck’s gonna believe you then? So Ronnie … now’s the time. Get your brother out and Rodney in. Alls you got to do is tell me the truth. And don’t tell me Rodney pulled the trigger if he really didn’t. Because if I grab him wrong, it’s not gonna play out the way we want, you understand? It doesn’t make a difference who physically pulled the trigger here, I hope I made that clear to you. OK? So let’s lock that motherfucker up. You ready?”

Strike nodded, rubbing his knee. Rocco’s hands felt like ice, his breath coming in flutters.

“OK, so, let me just ask you, just to get it out of the way. Did you shoot Darryl Adams?”

Strike looked right at him. “Unh-uh. No.”

Rocco curdled inside, suddenly feeling all the hours since he’d slept in his own bed. He took a slow breath. “OK, who did?”

Strike began to tremble with a furious case of head-whip and lip-tremble, a riot of tics and squeaks. “Buh-buh-boo…”

Rocco dug a thumbnail trench along his brow as Strike’s voice floated off into clicks and a sigh.

The kid tried again, failed again. Then the name escaped: “Buddha Hat.”

Strike nodded once, hard, then exhaled through pursed lips, exhausted as if he had just given birth. “Buddha Hat,” he said again.

Rocco blinked. “Who the
fuck
is Buddha Hat?”

“He-he that guy that got arrested last week for the other murder, in the tunnel.”

Rocco let his hands flop flat on the table, furious at being fed such predictable bullshit. It never failed: You grab a new murderer, and for about two weeks his name comes up a hundred times, on everything from overdue library books to infanticide.

“How do you
know
it was Buddha Hat?” Rocco said, the anger edging into his voice.

“He-he knows my brother, because my brother once drove his grandmother from church this one time.” Strike looked up expectantly. Realizing that this might not be enough, he added, “He-he killed
lots
of people.”

“Like who?”

“Well, like one time he took me to New York? He says to me, ‘I got lots of buh-bodies and I ain’t never been in jail.’”

Rocco stared at Strike, waiting. The kid began to twist in his seat, the rest of his face turning as dark as his broken nose.

“He says he never did no time.”

Rocco settled deeper into his chair, watching the uncertainty creep into the kid’s eyes as he absorbed the scantiness of his own evidence.

“Did you
see
him kill Darryl Adams?”

“Unh-uh,” Strike said, retreating, his body slumping as if it had sprung a leak.

“Did he
tell
you he killed Darryl Adams?”

“No.”

“Did anybody
else
see him kill Darryl Adams?”

“No … I don’t know.”

“Did he
tell
anybody else he killed Darryl Adams?”

The kid said nothing, looking stunned by his own answers.

“And if he
did
shoot Darryl Adams, why did your brother confess?”

“Well, he knew my brother,” Strike said unsteadily. “I told you that.”

“What are you trying to tell me? This guy Buddha Hat shoots somebody, then says to himself, ‘Hmm, who could I get to confess for me. Hey, I know! How about that guy that gave my grandmother a ride from church that one time.’ You mean like that? Is that what you’re saying?”

Strike stared at the table.

“So I’ll ask you again,” Rocco said. “Who … killed … Darryl … Adams.”

His eyes blank, Strike took a short breath. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.” Rocco nodded, biting his lip. “You don’t know,” he repeated, still nodding, his body rocking gently back and forth.

Rocco shot to his feet. “Get the fuck up. C’mon, let’s go.”

“What do you mean?” Strike grabbed his injured knee.

“I’m wasting my time with you. Just get the fuck out of here, OK? G’head, go on out to the lot and talk to your
pal
out there. I’m sure he’s waiting for you.”

“Whoa, no wait, man,
wait.
I mean, I’ll tell you everything I know.
Please.
”

Rocco stood above him, fuming, staring down at the kid’s terrified face.

“I’ll tuh-tell you everything I know, I
swear.
”

Rocco eased back down. “You fuckin’ better.”

***

“OK, we’re gonna do this one last time.”

Relieved to see the cop drop back into his chair, Strike felt as if his life had been extended by a few minutes.

The Homicide seemed calmer now. “Tell me everything you know. But I swear to God, the first time I hear you start giving me that shit about Buddha Hat or Mojo Nose or One Love or any of that ‘well I guess if my brother said he did it then he did it’ nonsense, or
anything…
The first time I hear you blowing smoke at me in any way, shape or form, I’ll fucking hand feed you to Rodney out there myself. We understand each other?”

Strike nodded, but he avoided the Homicide’s eyes, his gaze drawn to the cop’s fingers thrumming the table. But what could he say? He’d been so sure about Buddha Hat, and now all he had left to offer was himself and Rodney. But he couldn’t. Rodney would kill him, but if … Strike touched his nose, his knee, itemizing the pain, weighing his options.

“Start at the beginning. What do you know?”

“Yeah, like…” Strike’s words faded into a sigh. He felt almost ashamed of himself now: the cop must think he was really stupid. Maybe the Buddha Hat idea
was
stupid, but the Homicide just didn’t understand power. The power of a Rodney, a Champ, a Buddha Hat; the grip that power had over his heart and imagination. Besides, just because he couldn’t
prove
it was Buddha Hat … But it had died in him, the Buddha Hat idea. This cop had killed it with a few simple questions. Well, this cop had power too—they all did.

“I don’t
hear
nothing.” The Homicide made a big show of leaning forward and cupping his ear.

“Yeah OK, OK.” Strike surrendered: Just do what the man says.

“OK, well, Ra-Rodney said to me—”

“When?”

“Like ten days ago. I’m not sure, but like maybe the day or two before it happened.”

“G’head.”

“Ra-Rodney said that that guy—”

“What guy?”

“Darryl. Darryl, he-he was selling dope for Rodney, but he was also selling dope for somebody else out of there.”

“Where?”

“Ahab’s. Rodney come to me, he says, ‘You want to take over?’”

“Take over?”

“Take that guy’s place.”

“In Ahab’s, selling dope.”

“Yeah, uh-huh, selling ounces. But he says, ‘You got to get rid of him. You-you want the spot, you got to
take
it.’”

“Meaning what…”

“You know, he-he says, ‘You got to do what you got to do.’”

The cop stared at the ceiling.

“Get him ah-out of there.”

“Get him out of there,” the Homicide repeated. Strike saw that the man was getting red in the face.

“Yeah, you know.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, he didn’t say exact, buh-but I thought…” Strike realized he was rocking in his chair, massaging his kneecap, touching his nose. Rocking, practically begging for mercy.

“Thought
what?
”

“I thought he meant, well, Rodney was real mad about it, you know, this guy ripping him off, and he said, he said, ‘He guh-got to be got.’”

“Look, you’re fucking Morse-coding me to
death
here. And I’m—”

”
Shoot
him. I thought he meant shu-shoot him.” The words startled Strike, and he instantly wanted to say them again. Shoot him.

“G’head,” the cop said.

And then Strike let it all go, the words flying out of him in clear flowing speech about that night at Rodney’s house, bottling dope and getting the pitch, about Darryl’s two-timing dealings, about casing out Ahab’s the night of the murder and running into that baby-fat girl from Roosevelt, about casing out the parking lot of the Royal Motel and getting harassed by that gold-plated motel-squad cop. He talked about how he had felt torn between his relief at having bumped into too many potential witnesses to go through with it and his agony at discovering that he just didn’t have the stomach, the heart, to kill anybody. He even confessed his worry that he’d wind up looking like a punk in Rodney’s eyes.

And within the confines of relaying who did what, who said what, Strike tried to think of some way to describe how Rodney was propelling him, tried to find the words to describe Rodney’s power, his effortless hold over him. If he could only capture Rodney with this tale, he thought, maybe the cop wouldn’t think he was so stupid for having believed that the killer was Buddha Hat or that Buddha Hat could simply order Victor to take the weight. But the language eluded him. Maybe he just didn’t understand that end of things himself.

Strike watched the Homicide lace his fingers across his belly, then realized that the cop was waiting for him to continue.

“So there you were for the second time that night in the Ahab’s lot.”

Strike nodded. “Yeah, so I figure, Shit,
now
what? So I go across the street to Rudy’s, because my perforated ulcer is killing me. I figure I go in there, get something sweet for it. And you know it’s nice and dark in there, maybe I can think. So I go in there…”

Strike hesitated, not wanting to take this cop into Rudy’s with him, introduce him to Victor that night. But he really had no choice, so he talked on, told the cop about his surprise at seeing his brother there; how they had small-talked about their mother and Victor’s kids; how Strike in his frustration had badmouthed Darryl, made up a story about him abusing some girl and then repeated Rodney’s “got to be got” line; how Victor had startled him by saying, “Yeah, I hear he’s a dope dealer too,” mocking his “got to be got” and then bragging about some mysterious My Man character; how this My Man would do the job for nothing as a favor to Victor; how Strike had ultimately decided that his brother was just talking trash.

Strike paused, realizing that he was about to bury his brother, but then went ahead anyway, telling the cop about how when he got word of the murder only two or three hours later, he realized that this My Man was for real after all, then figured that Victor must have misunderstood something back in the bar and reached out for him, the guy then turning around and making Victor take the fall.

“I mean, talk about
me
being scared of Rodney? It must be like the same way with Victor and this other guy, you know?” Strike clucked his tongue, relieved to be at the end of his story. “It’s some sad shit, you know?”

The Homicide sat motionless, staring at him like a stuffed hawk. Strike had no idea what to do with his hands, where to train his eyes, how to keep his mouth shut. To cover the unbearable silence, he began to talk again.

“You know, I told you from the gitty-up I wanted to help if I could. But ha-how can I help? If I told you what I know, alls I know is that this guy name My Man did it. Or even if I said Buddha Hat did it, what you gonna do with that? You gonna spring Victor on that? No, the first thing you gonna do on that is throw me in there with Victor, be-because once I told you about
my
thing in this, that’s like a, a, incrimination, right?”

The Homicide said nothing, his gaze both blank and penetrating, and Strike plowed on, word-dancing now, saying whatever came to mind.

“I mean, it was like this time when we was kids living on the second floor? I dared him to stand outside like on the windowsill, so he climbs out and he falls. You know what I did? I felt so buhbad I jumped out after him. He broke his arm, and I like sprained my ankle, but sprainin’
my
ankle didn’t make him break
his
arm any less, you see what I’m sayin’? Alls it did was make me fuck up my ankle for nothin’.”

Strike startled himself: he hadn’t thought about that day in years. His brother’s excited face came back to him now, Victor staring at him nervously through the panes, then vanishing, dropping straight down out of the window frame. Putting Victor up to it…