Trip Wire (5 page)

“What do you think?”

“So why don’t you come clean about this fella Zuni?”

I tried to second-guess the man. Why in hell was he so convinced Dan had something to do with the murders? What kind of cop tactic was he pulling?

“Did you hear me, Cass?”

“I heard you. But you’re not making sense.”

“So it’s news to you that Zuni and Mia Boone used to live together? You had no idea she was pregnant by him a couple of years ago? Had an abortion?”

I fell into a wordless stupor.

“Her parents even know about it. Mia Boone had a sister still living with her folks. Mia confided in her, made her swear not to tell anybody. But after the murder, the kid spilled the whole story to the parents. The way they told it to Norris, this Zuni was wrecked when Mia left him. Nobody can understand how he could have turned around and lived in the same house with her, watching her carry on with another guy. That’d be enough to make any man crazy jealous. Don’t you think?”

I went on staring at his mouth even after he stopped talking.

“See what I mean, Cass? Either you want to help with the investigation or you don’t. Holding out on us is not gonna cut it.”

“I didn’t know.”

He pursed his lips.

“Look, I told you. I didn’t know. But you know what? I’m not the one holding out here, trying to put something over on somebody. It’s you. You’re not helping me, you’re helping yourself. You’re acting like—”

“I’m just acting like a cop. That’s all. So okay. We cleared the air on that. If you say you didn’t know, then you didn’t know.”

Again he offered me the tray of sweet rolls, and again I said no. I was thinking about the one and only time I had been in Jack Klaus’s home—the evening when he had smuggled out the official police files on an old, unsolved murder to show Woody and me. Klaus was pushing Sara Lee pound cake at me all night. Like some kind of demonic old-maid aunt.

Head down now, he thumbed through the papers inside the manila folder on his desktop. “At least you’re in the clear,” he said a minute later. “You spent the whole night with a Nathaniel Joffrey, I believe.”

I said nothing.

“Jim Norris tells me you’ve got a lip on you but you’re real smart, observant. I told him he was damn right.”

“If Norris told me the sun was shining, I’d run out and buy a raincoat. Is that ox a friend of yours?”

“He does his job. And you’ll probably be speaking to him again, so get used to it. You don’t have to like him.”

“That’s a big load off my mind.”

He bent over the papers again. “Alibis checked for Cliff Tobin and Beth Riegel. This fella Barry Mayhew can account for his whereabouts, too. But maybe he’s bought himself a different kind of trouble. He was at some kind of LSD orgy. What’s the story on him?”

“Didn’t the police already get his story? They kept him at the station all that night, didn’t they?”

“Yeah. But you live in the same apartment as the guy. I wanted your impression.”

“I bet. Because I’m so smart and observant. You want me to snitch on Barry. Well, I’m not going to. Even if he is an asshole.”

“Let’s go over it again, Cass. If you’re going to help with the investigation, you have to tell what you know.”

“I’m not your snitch, man. I don’t care how much you’ve done for Woody.”

He sighed, exasperated. “Hey, Cass? I’m over thirty and I’m a cop; I’m the man, so you don’t trust me for nothing. But take some advice, okay? Learn how to control that temper of yours.”

“I’m going now.” I stood up.

“Just a couple more—”

“I don’t have to ask your permission to leave, right? I mean, you can’t make me stay?”

“I can’t make you do anything.”

“Fine. I’m going now.”

He sighed.

“By the way, Detective Klaus.”

“You know better than that. Call me Jack.”

“By the way, Detective Klaus. For future reference—it’s not cool for just any old honky to call a black person ‘brother.’ ”

I watched him turn scarlet before I ripped the plastic visitor’s badge from my coat and stalked out.

4

Everywhere I turned there was a building connected to the municipal bureaucracy. The courthouse. The county jail. Maybe even the chamber of commerce. I couldn’t wait to get away from all that fascist architecture. The thing was, I didn’t have the most highly developed sense of direction and after fifteen minutes I realized I was walking in circles. Trying to navigate my way to the subway, I somehow wound up in Chinatown.

Fucking Jack Klaus.

So, he thought I had a temper. He didn’t know the half of it.

Should I even believe what he said about Dan and Mia? I wanted not to, but something in me knew it was true. Had Wilt known about them, too? Why hadn’t he told me?

I stomped harder.

Every fear I’d had about the cops finding and surrounding poor Dan came back to me double strength now. It would be a horrible cowboys vs. the Indian scene. The death of Tonto, no kidding.

The sun was suddenly quite strong. That meant one thing: massive, flooding slush. My feet were soaking. When I spotted a bus with a number and destination that sounded the least bit familiar, I hopped on it. I figured I’d just take it to the South Side and maybe I’d be able to catch a jitney from wherever it let me out to Woody and Ivy’s place in Hyde Park.

Within fifteen minutes I knew I’d done the right thing. I spotted Skip’s Tavern, which wasn’t far from my grandmother’s Forest Street house. I got off the bus and started looking for a rogue cab. Across the street was Champ’s, a legendary ribs and chicken joint. Looked like they were still doing great business. Customers were pouring in.

I even recognized one of them, knew him by the leather coat he wore. Barry Mayhew. The insensitive roommate who had never once mopped the bathroom floor or defrosted the refrigerator.

It took a couple of seconds to convince myself I wasn’t dreaming. I even used the edge of my scarf to give a quick wipe to my eyeglasses. That was Barry all right. What the hell was he doing in what we reluctantly call the ghetto?

I couldn’t imagine the answer to that. Any more than I knew why I found his presence in the neighborhood not just puzzling but ominous. But I was being foolish, I told myself. Champ’s barbecue was probably the finest pork this side of Charleston. Barry was hardly the first white guy to trek across town for it. And besides that, I lived in the same apartment with him, for god’s sakes. There was every reason in the world for me to go over and join him.

Not a chance. I backed into Skip’s Tavern and went directly over to the window, keeping watch on the door at Champ’s. I asked for a Miller and resumed the vigil.

Barry came out presently carrying a shopping bag with a grease spot on the side of it. Soul food to go. He walked briskly up the block. I saw him struggle a bit with the door to a rusted Volvo I recognized as Dan Zuni’s heap.

I wasn’t dreaming that, either. It was most definitely Dan’s car. I’d been in it a dozen times.

Damn. Something was very wrong. There was a police dragnet out for Dan and his car. If they couldn’t find the Volvo, how had Barry ended up with it? Maybe Barry had known all along where Dan was. Maybe he was hiding him someplace. And now he was . . . what? Bringing him an order of ribs for lunch?

For all I knew, Dan himself was in the car. Hunched down under a blanket on the backseat. Maybe wearing a false beard.

I threw a buck down on the bar, tore outside. But too late. Barry had already driven away.

The confrontation with Woody would have to wait. I ran to the el stop at 43rd and Indiana, eager to get home.

The ride was a long one, what with the change of trains in the Loop. I used the time to try to piece together some rational explanations for what I’d seen. I was stumped.

What should I do? Should I tell Taylor and Cliff and Annabeth I’d seen Barry in the Volvo? Or would that endanger Dan? I guess it was possible the others already knew, that I was the only one not in on the secret.

No, I was being paranoid. Wasn’t I?

I hustled through the Jackson Street station, heading for the exit at Adams. I’d have to come above ground and then switch to the Ravenswood line. My thoughts were all over the place. I don’t know how many times the young black man walking beside me had spoken before I realized he was talking to me. But now he was shouting in my face. “
Goddamn.
I said, ‘Hello, sister.’ ”

I blinked at him.

“You sisters going up north are some stuck-up bitches,” he called as he turned around and headed in the other direction.

I stood there like a clown, watching him until he disappeared around the bend. I guess I’d gotten so good at antagonizing my people that I no longer even had to do anything; my existence was enough to piss them off.

I was talking to Wilton once, probably bellyaching about some long-ago humiliation I’d suffered on the playground at Champlain Elementary School. I don’t know, maybe the kids were goofing on my ugly brown shoes or the spastic way I was running after the volleyball. Anyway, when Wilt made fun of my misfortune, I gave him one of those
Et tu, Brute
looks.

“Cassandra,” he said, “niggers have it so hard. They need somebody to laugh at.”

“They have white people to laugh at, don’t they?”

“I mean, besides whitey. See, the part that assimilated Negroes like you and me play? We actually give them somebody to feel superior to. And they’re right, Sandy. They’re better than us.”

5

A black-and-white was parked near our building, a cop lolling behind the wheel. But I didn’t pay him any mind. I was heading for the apartment lobby like a guided missile: My bladder was about to burst.

But then I saw Nat, his kindly face full of concern for me. I suppose my move was to run into the shelter of his arms. But I wasn’t having any of it. I’d been dodging him ever since the murders. I put my hands up, palms out in a
halt!
gesture. “Get out of here, Nat,” I said.

“Cassandra, are you crazy? Why won’t you talk to me?”

“Go away.”

“Go away? What am I, a dog you trying to get rid of?”

I didn’t answer.

“Am I your fucking dog, Cassandra?” Not a trace of De Lawd’s paternal solicitude, only venom.

“Look, I don’t want to see you.”

“Why is that?”

Because Wilton’s dead and you’re alive.
But of course I couldn’t say that. I spoke quickly to push the ugly, unreasoning thought out of my head. “I’m not going to get into it, Nat. Just leave me be. I need to go upstairs now.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“No!” The cop was interested in us now. He rolled down the window on the passenger side of the front seat. I smiled his way in an attempt to assure him there was no trouble, then lowered my voice. “You’re not coming with me, Nat. Go home.”

He stepped toward me, oblivious to the cop. “You stupid little girl. You got no goddamn idea.” His voice was as far from the usual wheedling as it could get. Now it seemed to have a deadly black undertone.

“No idea about what?” I said.

He took another step forward, reached out. I took two steps back. He came at me again. I looked over at the cop, who was reaching for the door handle now. But before he could open the car door, and before Nat could lay hands on me, I turned and began to run. It didn’t much matter where.

From the way Nat was calling my name, it sounded like I was doing the smart thing. It sounded like he wanted to strangle me.

6

I leaned into the doorbell. Rang it so hard I may have broken the damn thing.
Please, Owen,
I prayed.
Please be there.

He had recently moved to the apartment on Menomonee, the upper floor of a townhouse with lots of black iron grillwork and a little balcony. It was nicer than his old place, and several blocks closer to the commune. However, he was now located on the fringes of Old Town, which was expensive, tourist centered, and noisy;
plastic
was the all-purpose word for the area.

I rang harder, longer.
I know you didn’t go home for Christmas break, Owen. You can’t stand your father.

Professor Owen Kittridge was one of the last reasons I had for staying in school. That was a real anomaly, because no other teacher missed so many days of classes. Half the time he was at home with a hangover. I suppose the chief reason the English department didn’t fire him was his pedigree. Not many top Yale scholars wound up on the teaching roster of a small-potatoes institution like Debs College. The regents must’ve licked their chops when he accepted the post. Another reason he still had his job: In a time when so many of the younger profs were defecting to our side of the student-teacher divide, he was one of a handful of holdouts.

He was a good man of good conscience, but he was more or less apolitical, or maybe
suprapolitical
was a better word for him. You didn’t find him at the Vietnam teach-ins, but he never failed to send in food and coffee to the forces occupying whatever official’s office. He didn’t picket, but he was always good for fifty bucks when the bail-raising committee knocked at his door.

He didn’t knock points off your grade for poor attendance, either. Nor did he sleep with his students. What he did do, regularly, was smoke dope with them—with one of them anyway. Me.

Owen, a well-to-do white Southerner raised at arm’s length by a patrician father and succored by a plump, live-in Negro nanny; classically educated and classically handsome; not as old as Nat but a good twelve years older than I; languid; traveled; easy in his body.

Me, a black Northerner; jumpy and seldom at rest; defensive; odd-looking; born into poverty in the prototype urban slum; never been much of anywhere; bitter about what I didn’t get; in the dark about so much of my past—all those family secrets—feeling haunted by it anyway.

But intense and unlikely friendships are a major theme in my life. Owen and I had been friends since I landed in his freshman comp class.

I heard footsteps—faint, Owen in those dumb Fred Astaire slippers of his—but yes, he was coming closer and closer to the front door. He was holding a newspaper when he opened up, his eyeglasses buried up in his hair.