The Shadow Man (34 page)

here were no screens on the windows and the air-conditioning was out, so they were left wide open to the

day’s heat. While she was gone, the three-year-old had climbed out of the crib she’d placed him in, and managed

to get up to the windowsill, trying to catch some stray

breath of fresh air, or maybe just interested and curious in the street noises because that is the way children are. Perched high, he had lost his balance and tumbled out, head first from the third story of the apartment building, landing on the cement of the sidewalk just as his mother approached the building, so that she had had one horrible vision of her child whirling through the air, before landing with an unholy crunch almost at her feet.

She had screamed then, but since arriving at the homicide offices, had retreated into a wordlessness interrupted only by an occasional cry for Santa Maria, Madre del Dios, and tightly clutching her rosary beads.

Walter Robinson let out a long, slow sigh. The young woman doesn’t understand, he thought. She barely understands this death, and she doesn’t understand this country, and she probably wouldn’t understand much anyway because she is poor and uneducated and alone, and surely she doesn’t understand why the policia have taken her two other children away and are getting ready to charge her with criminal negligence. After all, she was going to the store to buy them milk with the few remaining dollars she had because she loves them.

He shook himself off the wall and let the young immigrant woman’s cries drift into the background realm of noise that is more or less commonplace in police stations, even modern ones with recessed lighting and industrial carpeting on the floors. It was sad, but sadness was the norm, and he knew that no one in uniform or carrying a badge ever allowed these sadnesses to accumulate within them, although he recognized that each one probably made some little scratch somewhere on the psyche. He started to walk down the corridor briskly, standing aside when another interview room door opened and two detectives emerged, struggling with a handcuffed teenager.

‘Come on, tough guy,’ one detective said, but the teenager, his face pockmarked with acne, framed by ringlets of long stringy hair, sporting a tattoo extolling the virtues of a heavy-metal rock band high on the considerable muscle of his arm, instead of following orders, slammed back into the detective. The three of them abruptly tangled up, teetered for a moment as they all lost balance and then fell to the floor.

As Robinson stepped quickly toward them, the three men struggled briefly. The teenager’s legs flailed out as he tried to kick at the detectives. They, in turn, rolled over on top of the suspect in a practiced fashion, immediately gaining the advantage. He stopped a few feet back from the fighting men. It reminded him, in an odd way, of contentious brothers, where the older ones sit on the youngest until he stops fighting back.

‘Need help?’ Robinson asked, almost offhandedly.

‘Ahh, no thanks, Walt, buddy,’ one of the detectives replied as he calmly reached down and grabbed a handful of long, stringy black hair, then slammed the teenager’s face hard against the floor.

‘Fucking asshole cop!’ the kid yelled.

The policeman slammed him again.

‘Motherfucker!’

The second detective maneuvered around, placed one knee square in the teenager’s back and twisted his arms savagely.

‘Got that right, at least,’ he said between clenched teeth, irritated more than angry.

‘You sure you don’t need a hand?’ Robinson asked again.

‘Not for this punk cocksucker,’ the detective replied.

‘Fuck you!’ the kid yelled. But his desire to continue ggling was fast diminishing, as his face was bashed into

the floor. ‘Fuck you both!’ the kid managed between slams.

‘What’s the deal?’ Robinson asked.

‘Fucking punk kid got burned in a drug deal. Fuck, some drug deal. Fifty bucks worth of rock. Goes home, gets a nine-millimeter out of his daddy’s bedside table, and goes and finds the kid who burned him. Shoots him right on the street, right in the head, right in front of Miami Beach High, just as school’s getting out. Sort of an unusual extracurricular activity, huh? Made a real pretty show. I mean, kinda like Miami Vice usta be, except no flashy clothes and trendy haircuts and no fast cars and no speedboats. But real live blood all over the fucking place. Over fifty fucking bucks, you dumb punk.’ The detective had slammed the kid’s head down with each word of the final sentence, keeping time with the sentiment.

‘And you don’t look like Don Johnson,’ Walter Robinson said.

The detective, a young man, smiled and shrugged. ‘But hey, I’m trying.’

The teenager went limp. The two detectives pulled him to his feet, and the kid snarled. ‘Fuck you, cop,’ he said again. He leaned his head back as a bright stream of blood ran down over his lips and chin. ‘You broke my fucking nose!’ he whined. ‘Motherfuckers!’

‘No, we didn’t,’ the younger detective answered calmly. ‘The floor did.’

‘Fuck you,’ the kid repeated as the older detective laughed at the younger’s disingenuous statement.

‘Can’t you come up with something original, asshole?’ the older of the detectives complained sarcastically. ‘I mean, punk, don’t you figure we’ve had enough people telling us to go fuck ourselves like almost every minute or at the very least every hour, on the hour, every fucking day,

like so much that it don’t mean a helluva lot to us anymore? I mean, it just doesn’t cut it, insultwise. Like sticks and stones can break my bones, you know, that sort of thing. So, how about something clever. Show off that intelligence of yours. Be original, punk. Say something that will really piss us off. Give us that satisfaction, at least.’

‘Fuck you,’ the surprised teenager replied.

The older detective turned to Walter Robinson. ‘Makes you wonder about the younger generation, doesn’t it, Walt?’ He grinned. ‘Too much television. Kills the mind. Too much loud music. Dulls the senses. Right, punk?’

‘Fuck you,’ the kid repeated sluggishly.

‘See what I mean?’ the detective said. He gave the teenager’s arms another jerk and twist.

‘Owww!’ the kid yelled. ‘Fuck you. I’m gonna do juvie time anyway, asshole.’

‘For first fucking degree murder? No way, punk,’ the detective said. He started to half shove, half pull the pect down the corridor, toward the elevator that would transport them to the lockup, where the teenager would stew for a few hours, while the inevitable stack of paperwork was completed.

The second detective paused next to Robinson and

dusted the residue from the small struggle off his suit. As

be swept his hands across the fabric, he whispered,

Tucking kid is probably right. The kid he shot is in a coma

but probably will pull through, although he ain’t gonna

have a real excellent life from now on, and we’ll have to

lower the charges to attempted homicide and assault with

a deadly. What a world, huh, Walt? Shoot somebody over

a measly fifty bucks worth of rock and end up with some

judge saying “Naughty, naughty, please don’t do it again

..” Ah, well, we’ll give it a shot. Try to persuade them to treat him like an adult. Except he’s just barely sixteen. Shit.

Sixteen going on twenty-six.’ Then, without waiting for a response, hurried after his partner and the suspect.

Walter Robinson watched the trio move out of his sight, and thought: This I understand. In his world, a baby left alone and falling from a windowsill, a teenager who attempts murder and expects to get away with it - these were the events of every day. There was nothing shocking, nothing unique, nothing even remotely exceptional about these crimes. They just happened. Tomorrow there would be other crimes, just like them. The detective’s eyes fastened on the door to the interview room, where the two old survivors and an ancient policeman waited for him to return with coffee so they could continue telling a tale of a hatred and evil so virulent that he was having trouble imagining it. He realized that there was not one word of what they had told him that he could grasp hold of with any familiarity. All he knew was that he’d been plunged into a system of murder that even unsettled him, and he wondered for a moment whether or not there wasn’t a Shadow Man that lurked on the edges of everyone’s history, somewhere.

He asked himself suddenly: How do you find a criminal who is not a criminal like any other?

Good question, he thought. He did not know that Simon Winter had posed the identical question of himself days earlier.

How do you find this man?

Find his mistake. He’s made one somewhere.

How do you find his mistake?

Figure him out. Understand the Shadow Man, and you’ll see where he made an error.

Understand? What sort of man hates the way he does?

This question made Walter Robinson breathe out sharply. He did not know the answer, but suspected the old

people waiting in the room could show him.

He shook his head. You’re thinking too much, he told himself. He tried to shrug it all off. He hurried toward his own desk. He knew there was a telephone call he very much wanted to make.

Espy Martinez grabbed the telephone receiver before the first ring had been completed. ‘Yes?’

‘Espy…’

‘Walter, Jesus, I’ve been trying to reach you.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. I was at a crime scene, and now I’ve got these people in an interview room.’

He stopped there, and both of them were silent for a moment.

‘I wanted to talk to you,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to talk.’

She laughed, relief in her voice. ‘That would be nice, you know. Just to talk about you and me. Us. Or maybe the weather…’

‘It’s goddamn hot…’

‘Or how about sports? Are the Dolphins going, to win the pennant?’

He grinned. ‘Good idea, but wrong sport.’

‘Okay, how about the future?’

‘Our future? Or Leroy Jefferson’s?’

‘Good question. Leroy fucking Jefferson.’

Walter Robinson smiled. ‘You’re beginning to sound like a cop. Maybe we should just call him Leroy F. Jefferson. Or F Leroy Jefferson, if you want to make it sound classier.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s inevitable, I guess. Business first. I went to see Alter and his delightful client. What a sweet guy, Mr Jefferson. Outgoing. Pleasant. Gives one a real sense of optimism about the world we live in.’

‘That bad, huh?’

‘Well guess what? You know what he is? Leroy fucking Jefferson, the eyewitness.’

‘He saw the murder? He was there?’

‘Yeah. And then like the good citizen he aspires to be, he immediately robbed poor Sophie Millstein. Her body wasn’t even cold.’

‘Jesus Christ what a—’

‘No kidding. The problem is, the killer was—’

‘An old white guy,’ Robinson blurted.

‘How did you—’

‘I think,’ Robinson said slowly, ‘that you better come over here and listen to the people I’ve got in the interview room.’

‘How did— I’m not sure I get it. But I’ll be right over.’

‘There was an old-timer at the scene that night. Sophie’s neighbor. He told me that she was scared. Scared of someone she knew fifty years ago. Fifty years and in another world. And I just goddamn ignored him then, instead of paying attention. So, after we got the lie detector report, I came back here and went over my notes and saw his name and, well, it’s pretty far out, but maybe, just maybe, she had reason to be scared. Damn it!’

‘What?’

‘It’s not the first damn rule of being a homicide detective, but it damn well ought to be.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Listen to everyone, and don’t discard anything, just because it doesn’t seem to fit right away, because maybe it will before everything is over.’

Martinez felt a surge of excitement. ‘Do you think maybe you have a lead. Something good? I’d love to tell Alter and Jefferson to get lost.’

‘Don’t get your hopes up, Espy. What we’ve got are some scared old people and maybe a killer like none I’ve

ever heard of. Like nobody’s ever heard of.’ He stopped there, hesitating, his mind churning. Then

he added, ‘But if Leroy fucking Jefferson saw him, damn,

that’s something. That’s something we can use.’ Espy Martinez rose at her desk. ‘All right, I’m on my

way.’

‘Great. Hurry. These old folks might start getting worn-out.’

‘And afterward …’

Walter Robinson smiled, and the tone of his voice lifted slightly. ‘Well, afterward, we can go discuss the case, or whatever you want. Although, I seem to recall that the last time we discussed the case, things were, well, pretty damn convivial. But if you want to talk about the weather, well, hell, let’s see where that leads us.’

Martinez flushed and grinned. She hung up the telephone, stuffed some papers in her briefcase, and hurried from her office. It was late, and there were only a few prosecutors and secretaries left about. She bounded down the stalled escalators in the Justice Building, passing empty, darkened courtrooms, waving at the guard by the front doors, who hardly looked up from his copy of Penthouse, so intent was he on the breasts and genitals exposed on the glossy pages that he looked for all the world like a student cramming for an exam. Outside, the night air was thick with heat, lustrous with city lights that delivered glowing illumination. Her eagerness overcame her usual unsettled fear; she rushed for her car with a determination and desire, feeling as if she was heading toward, if not solutions, at least the beginnings of some answers to a wide variety of questions.

Simon Winter kept his mouth shut and watched as the rabbi and Frieda Kroner patiently repeated their story for

the young woman from the prosecutor’s office. He noticed a glance or two, shared between Espy Martinez and Walter Robinson, and suspected there was more there than professional friendship, but he did not really concern himself with this, other than to note inwardly that Espy Martinez seemed every bit as beautiful as his landlord’s daughter, and this made him slightly envious. As for himself, he contributed as little as possible.

When Herman Stein’s death came up, both the old survivors turned to him, and he realized he was supposed to say something, so he did: ‘Stein was murdered.’