The Philadelphia Quarry (22 page)

I identify myself and, before she can hang up, I tell her what I’ve spent much of last night reading.

After a long silence, one that I have to force myself not to break, knowing like any good reporter that the other party will eventually speak, she says, “Alicia told me, shortly before her death, that she was trying her hand at fiction.”

I tell Lewis that I don’t think so.

“I don’t really care what you think, Mr. Black. I suppose this is why my brother is limping around the house. He said he surprised an intruder at my parents’ home last night. It pleases me to think that I won’t have to worry about anonymous strangers disturbing our peace. Case closed, as they say. Expect a visit from the police. Soon.”

“Again, I don’t think so.”

Lewis is furious and trying not to show it.

“And why is that?” she says.

“Because I believe every word I read there. I was told that she was afraid. She told a friend days before that something might happen, and where she could find the manuscript.”

“Bitsy!”

Uh-oh. Me and my big mouth.

“I don’t reveal sources.”

I hear what sounds like a chuckle, albeit a mirthless one. “Oh, but you do, Mr. Black. You do.”

“At any rate,” I go on, “do you have any response to what I’ve just told you, before we write about it?”

“You won’t be writing about anything. And if somehow you do, I’ll own that goddamn newspaper. I’ll sue you so hard you’ll have to move back in with your white trash Oregon Hill mother. Hell, I’ll sue her, too, just for having you.”

“Somebody’s been doing her homework.”

“Mr. Black,” she says, “it pays to know your enemy.”

I try to protest that I’m not really her enemy, just an honest reporter trying to do his job, but she cuts me off.

“You want to talk? All right, we’ll talk. Come here tomorrow night, seven o’clock. Don’t be late. I’ll tell you a story, Mr. Black.”

I’m surprised that Lewis is willing to talk with me under any circumstances, but I’m a little concerned about my apparent good luck.

I ask if we can make it earlier, or somewhere else. No dice. Seven at her place it is.

She hangs up before I even have a chance to say goodbye.

Next call is to Kate. I fill her in, at least as far as telling her I have Alicia Simpson’s manuscript, diary, journal, whatever. I ask if we can have a chat with Richard Slade. She says she’ll check with Marcus. I have a feeling that she’s giving Green and Slade’s case as much time as she’s ever given BB&B.

She calls back in five minutes and says we can meet with Slade at two. It’s after noon, and I ask her if she’s eaten yet. She has a meeting at one and begs off.

“One other thing,” she says as I’m about to hang up. “Slade said he saw somebody.”

“Saw somebody when?”

“That night. Back in 1983. He said he told the cops at the time, but they didn’t really want to hear it, I’m sure, and his half-assed lawyer never brought it up at the trial. Just trying to keep him from frying, I guess.”

“He saw somebody, like at the Quarry?”

“Yeah. But I’ll let him tell you.”

She hangs up before I can ask her anything more.

I do a raid on the refrigerator and am uninspired by the two hot dogs that look to be past their due date, and one lonely egg and cheddar cheese that is turning a lovely color of blue-green. Custalow and I don’t so much shop as forage for groceries, going out for what we might need in the immediate future, and it’s obvious that neither of us has gone out lately.

Abe comes up while I’m staring into the abyss.

“How you doing?” he asks, and I’m touched that he came up here just to make sure I haven’t died. I tell him fine, better than our food supply.

I persuade him to take a slightly longer than usual lunch break and come with me to Perly’s. He can drive, saving me a walk I’d rather forgo. My head tells me it’s Advil time again. And then he can drop me off at the city jail.

“Sure,” he says.

On the way, I see Awesome Dude, ambling along Grace Street. It might be the eighties. The Dude is a perennial.

I tell Custalow to pull over, and I ask Awesome if he’d like to join us for lunch.

“Are you paying?”

When he hears the right answer, he hops in.

When we get to Perly’s, Abe asks me if I’m OK.

“Dude,” Awesome says, “you look like shit.”

I’m not offering Custalow any of the gory details of last night’s reading—not yet anyhow—and I appreciate that he doesn’t ask.

After lunch, Awesome heads for the homeless shelter on Grace. He likes to stay in touch with his old friends. Then Abe takes me to the city lockup. I assure him that I can get a ride back or take the bus.

Kate and Marcus are waiting out front. Kate compliments me for being on time “for a change,” then notices that I’m a little the worse for wear. I tell her it’s the price I pay for being a snoop.

“So I hear you’ve got some good news for our client,” Marcus says.

“Nothing that’s going to stand up in court.”

“I’m just looking for something that’ll make him feel like breathing again. He hasn’t eaten a damn thing in the last two days, or so they tell me.”

I assure him that this won’t make his client feel any worse, but I don’t want to get Richard Slade’s hopes up just to have them squashed like a bug. He’s had more than enough of that.

When we’re all seated, Richard there in shackles, I tell him that I’ve come across some information that gives us (meaning me) reason to believe someone else might have killed Alicia Parker Simpson.

Richard looks me in the eye. He seems like he’s lost about ten pounds he didn’t need to lose.

“Man,” he says, so quietly that I have to lean forward to hear him, “I thought you knew that. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“I mean,” I tell him, “I’ve got something that might make somebody other than your mother or us in this room believe it, but I’ve still got some work to do.”

I tell him about the diary, without revealing all the gory details.

“Now, you tell me something I don’t know. Tell me about that night. Back in 1983.”

He knows what I’m talking about.

“I told the cops that night, and I told my lawyer. Fat lot of good it did me. And it might have been nothing. All I know is, I remember, when we heard the cop car coming and we were scrambling and all, trying to get out of there, I saw something. Somebody.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. But there was footsteps, going fast, and I just got a glimpse of a guy running off into the dark. He wasn’t under the light but for a second or two, but I know somebody else was there. I told the cops that, but nobody listened. They had what they wanted already, I guess.”

“White guy?” I ask him.

He nods.

“None of this is going to prove anything about Alicia Simpson’s death,” I tell him. “It might even make some jury think, ‘Hell, if it was me, I’d’ve killed her too.’ But it’s something to build on. That plus the phone call might carry some weight.”

Richard Slade doesn’t say anything for what seems like a minute, and none of us do, either.

Then he clears his throat.

“All I can do,” he says, “is tell the truth. That’s what I’ve always done.”

He turns to me.

“Will you tell my mother? About all this? I think she might need a little cheering up.”

I promise him that I will and remind him that Philomena seems like she can handle a lot.

“She’s all I’ve had,” he says, “until you all.”

“Just do one more thing for me,” I tell Richard. “Look me in the eye, right now, and tell me you did not kill Alicia Simpson. I know your life is riding on this, but my livelihood is, too.”

He fixes me with an evil-eye stare. He makes it simple.

“I did not kill Alicia Simpson. I don’t know anything about who might’ve killed her. I was in my mother’s house when it happened.”

There’s not much else left to say. Marcus tells him to keep his chin up “and eat something, goddammit.”

On the way out, Marcus asks me if I really think I’m about to shake something loose, and I tell him that I’m going to give it my best shot.

“Are you going to tell me what’s in that diary of hers?”

All in good time, I assure him.

I walk with Kate to her car. She’s willing to drive me home, even if she is, as usual, steamed about my unwillingness to share my feelings, or Alicia Simpson’s revelations, with her.

“How are you fixed for time?” I ask her.

She tells me she has a little work back at the office. She’s doing some stuff for BB&B, even though she’s on leave.

“Doing pro bono work for a law firm?”

“I’m hoping they don’t make my little furlough permanent.”

I tell her I know how that feels, then ask her if she would like to meet Philomena Slade.

She surprises me by saying that, yes, she believes she would.

The ride out to Philomena’s takes maybe ten minutes. She’s keeping the twins, as usual. Jamal and Jeroy stop harassing a feral cat out in the front yard long enough to tell me that Momma Phil is inside. The boys know me by now, and Kate goes out of her way to make nice with them. She’s good with kids and ought to have some herself.

Philomena lets us in. I’m thankful she doesn’t mention that I look like shit. I introduce Kate, who within two minutes compliments her on her dress, the decor of her living room and the smells emanating from the kitchen.

“Chicken and pastry,” Philomena says. “The boys like it. It was Richard’s favorite. I was going to fix it for him, but . . .”

She turns away. Kate, who is somewhat more of a people person than me, is by her side with her arm around her as if Philomena were her own aunt.

“We’re going to make this right,” she says, and I add that when Kate decides she’s going to make something right, it usually turns out that way.

I tell Philomena about what Alicia wrote, or at least a lot of it. I also tell her that it very well could have some bearing on how and by whom Alicia was murdered. Kate is staring daggers, no doubt wondering why I’m sharing something with this woman that I didn’t deign to share with her and Marcus Green earlier.

“Well,” Philomena says, wiping her eyes, “I’m glad to hear you don’t think it was Richard. I’m glad somebody does.”

I assure her that I’ve never thought anything else, and I’m only lying a little.

Like any half-assed cops reporter, I’ve had to dodge flying bullshit on many occasions as criminals—convicted and otherwise—try to enlist me in their hopeless causes. And they are almost always lying.

I am convinced, though, that Richard Slade is not lying. And it has nothing to do with the fact that he’s my cousin. It’s just that all those heartrending pleas from con artists lying through their teeth have given me, or at least I think so, a feel for that rarest of gems: cold, hard truth.

Part of it is mannerisms—no blinking or nervous tics or hand gestures. Part of it is a dearth of b.s. preludes: “I’ll tell you the truth,” “truthfully,” “to be honest about it,” “true story,” and so on. But mostly it’s just a feeling you get when that rare wronged honest man looks you in the eye and says, “I did not do it.”

Philomena invites us to stay for supper, and I’m tempted. Peggy’s house never smelled this good. But Kate has to get back.

Before we can leave, the boys’ mother, Chanelle, drives up. She’s going to have dinner with her aunt tonight. I’ve never met Chanelle before. She’s a lovely young woman with a 100-watt smile, thin despite the boys, or maybe because of them. She works for the DMV and is taking courses at the community college. I tell her I hope we can get together again, when we can talk longer. She calls me “cousin” and says she hopes so, too.

As Philomena walks us to the door, Kate turns to me and says, “I wish you’d introduced me to this lady when we were married.”

Philomena stops.

“You two were married?”

I explain, as much as I can as quickly as I can, about our ill-fated union. I can feel that I’m blushing. Kate stands to one side wearing an amused half-smile.

“Well,” Philomena says, “you all ought to give it another try. You look good together.”

We both thank her for what seems to be a compliment.

In the car, Kate tells me that I might have shared my Cliffs-Notes version of Alicia Simpson’s diary with her and Marcus earlier.

I shrug.

“I thought Philomena might need a little encouragement.”

I ask Kate if she’d like to go somewhere for a bite.

She says she has to go home.

I ask her where exactly home is.

“Home is home,” she says.

It takes me a second or two.

“The home that also houses Mr. Ellis?”

“The same.”

There’s an awkward silence.

“Willie,” she says, putting her right hand on my arm while steering around an impressive pothole with her left, “I’ve been meaning to tell you. Greg and I are trying to make it work again. We’re trying to have . . . I don’t know why I’m telling you this . . . we’re trying to have a baby.”

I’m a little surprised and a little sad. Not just for me, although I have harbored hopes of late that Kate might somehow turn out to be my third AND fourth wife. But I feel a little twinge for her, too. She’s always trying, and it seems like she shouldn’t have to try so much. Trying to make her second marriage work. Trying to have a career and keep hubby happy at the same time. Trying to have a baby. I have this image of her the way she used to look when she was concentrating on some sleeping pill of a law book and didn’t know I was looking at her: eyes squinched up, chewing on her pen, her forehead creased with a frown line that I would try to make disappear with my fingers. Kate is always trying.

I wish her good luck when I get out.

She starts to say something, but then thinks better of it and drives off into the fading light.

Clara Westbrook is in the lobby when I walk in.

She, like just about everyone else today, asks about why my head looks like somebody used it for batting practice.

I tell her I fell. It probably would just depress her to know that her godson was the batter.

“Looks like you fell two or three times,” she says.

Upstairs, Custalow tells me I had a call. He hands me the name and number.