Key Witness (29 page)

He didn’t see one single white face.

The street he was on, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard (he knew of at least three other cities with large black populations that had a King Boulevard), was the main artery of this part of the city. It ran for miles. He checked his directions to make sure he was going the right direction. He was—it was longer than he had realized it would be. It was a huge area, a city within a city.

The housing project comprised several six-story brick-and-concrete buildings. The project, Sullivan Houses, was named after the congressman who had gotten the funding. Thirty-some years old, it was built at the height of the Great Society and had been obsolete from the day it was finished.

Wyatt had done some research on the area. It had the highest incidence of violent crimes in the city, a statistic it had owned for over a decade. Less than twenty percent of the kids raised in the Sullivan Houses graduated from high school, and of that select group only a handful went to college. There was one player currently in the NBA, one in the NFL, and two playing big-league baseball from these projects. They must have had strong wills, Wyatt thought, to make it through here without succumbing to the endless temptations. He wondered if there had ever been a doctor, or an engineer. Or a lawyer.

Several blocks before Wyatt reached his destination he saw the buildings rising up out of the pink-tinted smog that was caused by smoke and chemical waste coming from the refineries across the river. Even with his car windows rolled up and the air-conditioning on, he could smell the air—acrid, tear-inducing.

Wyatt turned off King Boulevard and drove into Sullivan Houses. The interior of the project was more depressing than the outside world surrounding it. The streets were riddled with potholes, many the size of small craters. There had been no attempt to fill them in, even temporarily, the way the city customarily took care of the pothole problem. Large piles of trash lined the sidewalks, everything from discarded furniture to large plastic garbage bags that were ripped, overflowing the battered garbage cans. Rats the size of small cats darted in and out of the garbage piles. The sanitation department didn’t put a high priority on a maintenance schedule, he thought as he looked at the scene with repulsion. Or maybe they simply didn’t come in here until they absolutely had to.

He had been looking forward to this visit, from an outsider’s abstract point of view. Now that he was actually here, he hoped he hadn’t made a bad decision. There was danger on these streets—you could feel it exuding right out of the asphalt.

The streets in the project were lettered A to L, and the buildings were numbered from 100, each section a different hundred number. Jonnie Rae and her family lived on Avenue E, building 522, apartment 5G. Marvin had lived there, too, until a few weeks ago.

Jonnie Rae’s two youngest children were outside their building, waiting for him. As he slowly drove down the street toward them they spotted his car (which he had described earlier, over the phone) and waved their arms, jumping up and down and pointing excitedly to a parking place right in front that they had been saving for him.

He parked and got out, locking the door with the remote alarm. A crowd started gathering. Kids, teenagers, adults. It was dinnertime or later, people were in their homes and outside, watching some white man get out of his Jaguar.

He couldn’t help it—he felt nervous. He assumed that the people who lived here never saw a white face in their neighborhood, except for a cop or a welfare worker. He tried to act cool, nonchalant, but he didn’t feel it. In his entire life he had never set foot in a housing project, although there were dozens of them situated all over the poor sections of the city. The closest he’d come was driving by them on a freeway, looking down, with his windows up and the doors locked.

You wanted to try something new in your life, you’ve got it, he thought to himself.

“Don’t be using that alarm,” a man’s voice said behind him.

He turned. One of the young men who had been standing at the back of the courtroom during Marvin’s arraignment came out of the crowd and walked toward him.
Strutted
would be a more accurate description of the way he moved, Wyatt thought. Or
swaggered.
This was his territory and he walked the walk.

Wyatt looked at the man as he approached. He wasn’t the one who had worn the expensive Ralph Lauren threads. Instead of the fancy leather jacket he’d worn in the courtroom, he was now casual, in T-shirt, sagging pants, and new Air Jordans. He was wearing a hairnet over his head, and over that a bandanna signifying what Wyatt assumed were his gang colors. He looked about Marvin’s age, eighteen going on forever.

“Kids’ll set that off before you can turn your back,” the young man explained. “I’m Louis,” he said. “Friend of Marvin’s.” He didn’t offer to shake hands.

Despite Louis’s tough demeanor, Wyatt couldn’t help but think of him as a kid. His daughter wasn’t much younger, as he’d observed in contrasting her with Marvin, and he still thought of her as a kid—she had called him “Daddy” a few days ago. He’d have to watch that he didn’t say “kid” out loud.

“Kill that sucker,” Louis said, meaning the alarm. “Your wheels are safe here, man. You’re Marvin’s lawyer. Ain’t nobody gonna mess with your car.”

Wyatt did as he was told.

A beeper went off on Louis’s belt. Louis looked at it, took a cell phone out of his pocket, punched in some numbers. “Yeah?” He listened for a minute, his face scrunching into an angry frown. “Hey, fuck him. Let him buy—” He realized that Wyatt was standing right next to him, but disregarded him. “—his product some other place.” As he punched some new numbers into his phone he turned to Marvin. “Go with her,” he said dismissively, pointing to Marvin’s sister. He walked away, talking low on the cell phone.

Marvin’s sister and brother led him inside her building, which had a broken lock on the front door. There was an elevator off to the side with a Not Working sign taped to the front. It was an old sign.

He followed the little girl and boy up three flights of stairs. Cooking smells, predominantly the smell of grease frying, came from behind the closed doors. They mixed with the funky stench of urine and vomit, odors that had been soaking in for decades. Most of the lightbulbs in the stairway were out. Roaches as big as his thumb scurried along the floorboards, and there were rat holes and piles of rat droppings everywhere. He was careful to watch where he stepped, especially when he saw discarded drug paraphernalia—needles and crack vials—on a landing. Halfway up the stairs there were some discarded condoms. The kids walked by them as if they didn’t exist.

The small apartment was stuffed with mismatched furniture and bric-a-brac. Old copies of
Ebony
and
TV Guide
were piled in one corner. The television in front of the sofa was on to
Wheel of Fortune.
From off in the kitchen came the aroma of fried chicken.

Jonnie Rae came bustling out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. As he reached out to shake her hand, a horrible thought went through his mind:
Aunt Jemima pancake syrup.

You prick, he thought. You ugly bastard. Underneath it all you really are a latent bigot. That he had thought that almost made him sick to his stomach. And as all those feelings and emotions roiled inside him he understood with a wonderful clarity that what he had embarked on was going to be more than a change in the way he did his job. It was going to be a sea change in how he looked at the world, and dealt with it. No matter what else happened to him, he was going to make sure of that.

At the same time, he had to laugh at himself. Judge not, etc. He’d been coming down on Moira, judging her so moralistically. Who was he to judge anyone?

Jonnie Rae had no idea what was going on inside his head. “This is an honor,” she gushed, obviously nervous, “you driving all the way down here, a man with a busy schedule like you must have.”

“I was happy to do it,” he said, realizing that he actually was, and at the same time being washed with guilt from those spontaneous shitty thoughts he’d had. “I appreciate you inviting me into your home.”

“No trouble at all. Least I can do, you driving all the way down here this time of the night. You sit down and make yourself comfortable. You want something cold to drink?”

“Yes.” The apartment was hot and closed-in; he was already beginning to sweat under his arms. He sat on the center of the couch. The little boy plopped down next to him. On the screen, Vanna White was turning some letters.

“You like this show?” the boy asked.

“I’ve never seen it,” Wyatt replied. “I don’t watch much television,” he explained.

“It’s a bitchin’ show. You can win all kinds of shit, money and shit like that. I’d like to get on that show.”

The little girl brought him a green-colored drink with some ice cubes in a
Jurassic Park
glass. She sat on the other side of him. “You like this?” she asked him.

“What is it?”

“Kool-Aid. Lemon-lime, my favorite.”

He took a sip. It was sweet, almost to the point of gagging. “It’s good,” he said.

“I put in extra sugar.”

He took another sip, set the glass down.

“You gonna do good by my brother?” the girl asked.

“I’m going to try,” he answered.

“That’s good, ’cause he needs some smart man helping him. He’s too dumb to help his own self.”

The little girl, whose name was Toni (named after Toni Morrison, the famous writer, Jonnie Rae informed him proudly), turned to her mother. “Can I show him my drawings?” she asked.

“Ask him.”

“Can I show you my drawings?” she asked Wyatt.

“Sure,” he said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

Toni ran out of the room, coming back a moment later with a loose-leaf notebook, which she set on the sofa next to Wyatt. Slowly, she turned the pages.

The book was filled with colored-pencil, drawings, all taken from her everyday life. There were drawings of the street outside, drawings of her school (he knew it was a school because it said “school” in big block letters on top), drawings of her mother, her sister and brothers. There were several drawings of Marvin, looking like a fierce urban warrior.

“These are excellent,” Wyatt exclaimed as he looked at them. He meant it; and he was surprised. “I’ll bet you’re the best artist in your class.”

“We don’t have art in my school,” she said.

“They don’t have art in her school ’cause people were stealing the supplies,” Jonnie Rae said, her voice rich in anger. “They don’t have music or sports, either. They don’t have nothing for these kids. No after-school programs, either, then they complain that the kids get into trouble. They don’t have nothing to do but get in trouble.”

He nodded. This life was so far away from his as to be incomprehensible. “How did you learn to draw so well?” he asked the girl, changing the subject.

She shrugged and giggled. “I just did.”

“You know,” he said to Jonnie Rae, “there are art classes at the museum on Saturdays for children. They’re free,” he added. “I’m sure they would welcome Toni.”

“I work Saturdays. I don’t have time to cart them around.”

He sat alone with Jonnie Rae in the small living room. She had sent the kids outside to play in the warm evening air. “Don’t be leaving this block!” she yelled at them as they ran down the stairway. “You play where I can keep an eye on you out the window.” To Wyatt, she explained: “This whole place is crawling with drug dealers and gangbangers and they all carry guns. People get shot around here for no good reason.”

“Did you know Marvin carried a gun?” Wyatt asked, using her statement to get into the reason he had come down here.

“I never did see it on him, but I figured he probably might have,” she admitted. “Boy round here don’t think he’s a man if he ain’t packing.”

Wyatt nodded. “I need your help,” he said. This was why he had called and asked to come down and see her. He had wanted to see where Marvin came from, what his life was like. He felt, in his gut, that it would help him round out the picture.

“Whatever I can do.” She seemed flattered by his request.

“Let me ask the obvious question first. Do you think he did it?”

She looked away.

“Let me put it another way. Do you think he
could
have done these killings?”

“
Could have?
I don’t know, not for sure. I can’t see it, not with Marvin, but I couldn’t swear to that on a Bible. I used to know him, but anymore, I don’t think I do. Not the way he’s got into trouble like he has.”

“Here’s a for instance: before it happened, did you think he was capable of the robbery he tried? Holding a man up with a gun?”

“He did it, so he was capable of it,” she said flatly.

“But before it happened, did you think he could have done something like that?”

She sighed, a sigh from way deep in the pit of her gut. “I don’t know what to think about him anymore.” She looked at him. “I don’t think he could have done those things to those women, but how can I know for sure, after what he’s pulled? All he cares about anymore is wanting to be a drug dealer like his friends, make a bunch of money, ‘Mama, I’m gonna take you out of this place,’ as if I’d want to move somewhere better if it came from drug money.” Her face turned angry. “Damn that boy. He could’ve, I guess. He’s done enough bad things, it’s on his record, so maybe. Damn him to hell,” she exclaimed.

“Okay. I can understand why you’re angry with him. I would be, if he were my son. And you might even be ready to throw in the towel, think he’s getting what he deserves. But if he didn’t do these killings, then you have to help him.” He looked at her, silently beseeching her. “You have to help me help him. I can’t do this by myself.”

She looked away for a moment. “I don’t think he did,” she said, turning back.

“Good.”

“So what do you need from me?”

He retrieved an envelope from his inside jacket pocket, took out some folded-up sheets of paper, spread them on the couch between them. “These are the times and places when all the murders were committed, going back two years. I want you to look at this. I’m going to leave it with you because I want you to take your time.”