Key Witness (31 page)

Dexter was listening intently.

“Talk to everyone who knows him,” Wyatt continued. “His gang friends, lady friends, anyone.”

Dexter nodded. “You got it, Mr. Matthews. We’ll alibi him for every one of those killings.”

“They have to be legitimate. Every one would be fine, but I only need one, two at the most. But they have to be legitimate,” he said again for emphasis. “No bullshit, no fairy tales.”

“Don’t worry,” Dexter reassured him. “Any alibi me or the brothers come up with, it will be for legit. You got my word. But you check out that lady with Marvin. That could be the answer.”

“It’s going to the top of my agenda.” He took a card out of his wallet. “Call me if you have any information.”

“Definitely.” Dexter removed his billfold from his inside breast pocket and put the card in. Alligator, Wyatt noticed, from Gucci. Billfolds like this ran upwards of three hundred dollars. Young Dexter was doing well for himself.

Dexter shook Wyatt’s hand. “Hey, can I see that Rolex watch you’re wearing?” he asked as he caught a glimpse of Wyatt’s watch under his left cuff.

Wyatt held his arm out so that his watch extended past his cuff. Dexter looked at it—then he shot his cuff, showing his own watch. “Same kind,” he said. “Exactly.” He smiled. “You are definitely the right lawyer for Marvin.”

It was almost midnight by the time he got home. He was beat, but there was a rush coursing through his system. He knew he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep right away, probably not for hours. Two months ago his work had taken him to New York, where he stayed in a suite at the Peninsula and had dinner at Lutece and Montrachet. Tonight his work had taken him to the Sullivan Houses project, the worst slum in the city, where he had drunk Kool-Aid in a murder defendant’s apartment and driven around with a drug dealer who did his business right in Wyatt’s face.

From the penthouse to the outhouse. What he was learning, almost daily, was that there were rewards to be found in both places. He was certain now that he had made the right decision in taking on this new job, and then fighting to keep Marvin White. He was almost fifty years old, and he was getting a fresh perspective on life. It was an exhilarating feeling.

As he pulled into his driveway he saw the light on upstairs, in his bedroom. Was Moira still up, waiting for him? He took the light to be a hopeful sign. Unless she was sleeping in the guest room again.

He had a quick steadying cognac, leafed through his mail. Nothing that couldn’t wait until tomorrow. Hoping that things were okay, he climbed the stairs.

Moira was awake, in their bed. When he entered the room she put her book aside—
The Recognitions,
by William Gaddis. Her book group had been working their way through it for four months.

He kissed her lightly on the lips. She accepted it. “How is that?” he asked, sitting on the edge of the bed on his side. It was a huge novel—he had always wanted to read it, but he’d never started it because he knew he’d never have the time to finish.

“Great. I’m sure I’m not getting half of it, but it’s fascinating writing.” She took off her reading glasses and laid them aside. “Where were you so late?” she asked.

“Interviewing people who might be able to help out on the case. I left a message; didn’t you get it?”

She nodded. “I didn’t know you’d be this late.”

“Working people. I had to see them after dinner. It was all the way on the other side of the city.” He took off his shoes, shirt, tie and walked into his closet, where he took off his pants and hung them up with his jacket. “How was your day?”

“Nothing special. Wyatt.” She paused. “I don’t want us to fight anymore. I can’t handle it. I stayed up to tell you that.”

He felt awful, hearing her say that. “I’m truly sorry for what’s been happening, Moira. I didn’t want to do anything that’s going to upset you, you know that.” He had a strong need to apologize. It would make her feel better, he hoped.

“You already have. I have to figure out how to deal with it, that’s all.”

He slipped into bed under the sheets, opening his arm, an invitation for her to slide over and cuddle. She didn’t move toward him. Instead she asked: “On the other side of town where?”

He propped himself up, turning to her. “A place called Sullivan Houses. It’s a housing project on the south side.”

He could feel her stiffening, as if a key had turned inside her heart.

“Moira?”

She lay motionless for a moment. “You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

“No.” He shouldn’t have told her. He should have lied.

“That’s the worst part of town,” she said, still not moving. “People get killed down there all the time.”

“It’s where his mother lives. And all his friends.”

“Couldn’t you have seen them in your office? Isn’t that where people normally meet with their lawyers?”

“I wanted to see how he lives. It’s important for me, to get a complete picture of this. I don’t know anything about people like Marvin White. I can do a better job defending him if I can learn something about him, about his family, something other than the crimes he’s accused of.”

“So now you’re becoming a sociologist as well.”

He fell back onto his pillow. In their entire life together, twenty-five years almost, he had always told her everything about what he was doing, and she had pretty much accepted everything. But starting tonight, that was going to have to change.

A sob came from her throat. She had been trying to hold it back, but she wasn’t able to. “Wyatt,” she said. “What you’re doing …” She took a deep breath to compose herself. “Taking a new direction like you have, you know I’m not in favor of it. I’m a conservative person, I’m not comfortable with change, I like the tried-and-true, as you’ve pointed out to me: That’s who I am and I don’t apologize for it. And I’m trying as hard as I can to accept this. But what you did tonight, what you just told me you did, that’s crossing my line. Look at me,” she beseeched him.

He turned his face to hers.

“You have a wife and a child. We love you and depend on you. You’re our rock, Wyatt. That’s one of your roles in this family, the main one. I cannot go on with you if you’re going to put yourself in danger like you did tonight. Are you listening to me?”

“Yes, Moira.”

“If anything happened to you, it would destroy this family.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” he said, flashing back to the moment when he had come out of Jonnie Rae’s apartment building and there were a hundred people on the street, all with skin a different color from his, and he’d had a panic attack “I’m very careful,” he said, trying to assure her.

Which, of course, was another lie, a biggie. Riding around with a crack dealer isn’t being careful. Dexter could have rivals all over town, waiting for the opportunity to take him out.

“I’m going to ask something from you,” Moira said. “As your wife.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t want you to go into the projects anymore. If you’re with the police and it’s absolutely a life-and-death situation, then all right. But never alone. Will you promise me that?”

He turned to her. Oh baby, he thought with anguish, what you are asking of me is impossible.

“I promise,” he told her. “I won’t go into that part of town again.”

Her body slid next to his, her head snuggling protectively on his shoulder. “I love you,” she told him. “If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t care.”

I love you, too, he said silently. And from this moment on I’m going to have to deceive you.

D
ORIS BLAKE, REDOLENT OF
sexual desire and White Shoulders, let herself into the infirmary before dawn, making doubly sure that no one spotted her. She had master keys to every cellblock and cubbyhole in the place. She and the other high-ranking officers had these keys so that they could get in anywhere in case of an emergency. In practical terms, the keys were rarely used. Mostly it was when an officer needed to be in a section he or she wasn’t normally assigned to, and didn’t want to go through official channels. The procedure usually involved seeing a prisoner you didn’t want to be on the books as having seen. There had been occasions when a prisoner wound up in County General Hospital after one of these visits, as the result of an unfortunate accident, like tripping and falling down a long flight of concrete stairs.

Dwayne, wearing a jail-issue T-shirt and loose-fitting boxer shorts, was sleeping on one of the beds in the back. As Blake snuck toward him on tiptoes, having removed her size 12 oxfords, she could see that he was in the middle of a dream. He was twitching, his body jerking spasmodically, and under his closed eyelids the pupils were moving rapidly. What are you dreaming about, my darling? Blake thought. Are you dreaming about me, about my pussy wet with desire for you? Your hands on my ass, your mouth on my nipples? She was already wet between her legs.

Dwayne’s dreams were nothing so common and unprovocative as her thumb-sized nipples and Pillsbury doughboy ass. He had indulged in several prison cocktails the night before, drinking solitarily and aggressively, the pure alcohol going straight to his brain like a heat-guided missile. When he woke up he’d be in a clammy sweat and his mouth would be dry as cotton from all that alcohol and crap, he wouldn’t have clear memories of what he’d been dreaming of, but he’d know he’d been on a triple-E ride to hell and back and he would savor the unconscious rush he’d had.

When he was awake he was straight, straight as an arrow to the heart. He had to be, to control his destiny. That’s why he occasionally let himself go when he slept. He needed that liberation, that freedom.

They were almost over, the dreams. Soon it would be morning and he would be back in the small world of the jail infirmary: the world he would be living in until the Marvin White trial, and his final, absolute trip out.

Before he had fallen asleep, when the rush was coming on, the euphoria mixed with energy, he had played with himself, nothing cataclysmic, just good feeling, the hardness and the feeling of ejaculation on the horizon. He didn’t actually come, he backed off when he felt he was about to explode—he wanted the sensation of anticipation rather than the actual eruption, and after bringing himself to the brink two or three times with visions of Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt and Michelle Pfeiffer and Keanu Reeves all jumbled up together in one sexual cocktail the hallucinogenic sleep had grabbed him and taken hold, and he was out of the physical-sexual world.

Which is why his limp cock was lying exposed out the fly of his boxer shorts.

Doris started tingling with excitement and anticipation, seeing Dwayne’s manhood perched there so innocently. His penis was of average size, neither particularly large nor small, but to her it was perfect, God’s creation. This was the real snake that got Adam and Eve kicked out of heaven, she thought, not some biblical horseshit about an apple—the snake that bound men and women to each other and drove them crazy, so crazy they thought God lived between their legs. Which for all intents and purposes, he did. At least in the most important ways.

She knelt down at the altar and took the snake between her lips.

Dwayne came out of his sleep like he had been shot out of a cannon. Out of pure jailhouse instinct and paranoid psychology he lunged forward, grabbed her by the throat, and slammed her to the ground, his hand tight on her throat, ready to break it.

She screamed at the unexpected, violent reaction.

“Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed, once he realized who had been touching him. “Don’t ever do that!” He backed away from her, his body shaking with fury. “I could’ve killed you, you dumb fucking bitch!”

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered, coming up on her knees. “I didn’t think …” She had thought he would love it, is what she had thought.

He had scared the shit out of her. He was capable of killing, of that she had no doubts. Her, or anyone.

What Dwayne had thought, felt, dreamed in the last throes of sleep, coming out of his nightmare, was that he was having sex with a man. Not that that was something he didn’t do; he’d had sex with scores of men during his life in prison, pitching and catching both—sex with men was more common to him, over the past fifteen years, than sex with women. But in that last moment of sleep his dream was that he was having sex with a man he despised, a man who terrorized him, and he wasn’t the one who was the dominant, the butch; he was the sissy, the fuckee.

In the real world, this dark, empty jailhouse infirmary, where he was alone but for his corpulent, feverishly horny big-woman lover, he was being administered to as the lord of the manor; but in the nightmare world he was being fucked and fucked royally, a public tormenting and humiliation. He was taking it in the ass and everyone in the prison, hundreds of men, inmates and guards both, were watching. And laughing.

For Dwayne, his manhood, his macho, was the most important thing he had. It was everything to him, almost all the time, the only thing that kept him going. And the fear of having it taken away, of being violated, was ever at the edge of his mind, his conscious fear.

It was only Doris. She was giving him head, something she did well. He was safe.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, her voice almost breaking into tears. “I thought you’d like it.”

“I do. You took me by surprise, that’s all. This is a jail, Doris, there’s all kinds of vicious predators in here, you know that.”

Like you, she thought. You’re one of the worst.

He looked around. It was dark; all the lights were off, and there was no daylight coming in yet through the high-barred slits of windows. “What time is it?” he asked, swinging his feet over the edge of the bunk and sliding his pecker into his shorts.

She glanced at her watch. “Five-fifteen.”

“Jesus. What’re you doing here so early?”

“I wanted to see you. I mean … be with you. Like … you know.” She felt girlish, stupid. She didn’t know how to deal with these emotions because she never had them. She was the toughest woman she knew, tougher than most men. Except around him.

He owned her. About eighty percent of her hated that, hated the feeling of powerlessness; but the other twenty percent that liked it was overwhelming. This was what it must be like to be in thrall to a man, blinded by love. All her life she had dreamed of being a normal woman, a normal-sized female being, blinded by love. And now she was.