Concourse, p.18
Concourse, page 18
part #2 of Bill Smith & Lydia Chin Series
“Oh, my God, Bill,” she said softly. “Are you okay?”
“If I had a drink I’d be better. But I’m all right.”
“Dr. Reynolds.” Her voice was low. “He was the one who showed me around this morning.”
“At the Home?”
“Uh-huh. I wanted to tell you about it. I was waiting for you to call.”
“You found something?”
“I don’t know. Do you really want to talk about that now?”
I want you to keep talking to me, I thought. I want you to talk about anything, just stay with me. “Tell me. It might help.”
I think she knew what I meant. Her voice took on a very normal tone, just a report, one investigator to another. “It was all pretty standard,” she said. “It seemed like a good place, as those places go, but God, how awful to be stuck there the rest of your life. I can’t believe that’s good for anybody.”
“I don’t think it is. It’s a bad answer to a bad problem.”
“Ummm,” she said, agreeing. “Anyway, the only peculiar thing was after the tour, when we were talking in Reynolds’s office for a few minutes.”
I heard her voice quaver slightly at the doctor’s name.
“What happened?”
“He asked how soon my mother would need to be accommodated at the Home. It seems they have a long waiting list. I said I hoped it could be soon, and was there anything that could be done about shortening her wait.”
“And?”
“Then he asked if my mother had any assets.”
“What did you say?”
“I said she had about seventy-five thousand dollars in the bank.”
“You’re kidding. Your mother does?”
“Chinese people are big savers.”
“Maybe I’ll marry you for your money.” I was sorry as soon as I said it. I’d forgotten I wasn’t supposed to talk that way to Lydia anymore. I expected anger; but she laughed.
“That would be a motive she’d understand from you.”
“Would she respect me for it?”
“She’d hate you. So: then I said that of course my brothers and I would expect to be paying for my mother’s care, and he didn’t have to worry about that.”
“Had he been worried about that?”
“No. This is the part that’s peculiar. He smiled and said that wasn’t the way it works. ‘Medicaid,’ he said. ‘Medicaid pays most medical costs directly related to resident’s needs. Once your mother moves in that won’t be a problem. Of course, sometimes relatives give gifts, out of gratitude or whatever—’ he smiled again then—’and we never turn them down. That’s how we got our piano, for example. But,’ he told me, ‘the system is peculiar. Medicaid doesn’t kick in until the patient’s assets are exhausted. Then the patient is considered medically indigent.’ He was apologetic about that—he didn’t want me to think he really thought the Chin family was indigent.”
“Considerate of him.”
“Very delicate. Anyway, then he got a little gloomy. ‘Well, Miss Chin, I’d love to tell you we could take your mother right away, because I know what a burden this must be to you and your brothers—’ ”
“Good thing your mother didn’t hear that.”
“No kidding! Anyway, he said, ‘But there is the waiting list. Now, unfortunately, we have an entire wing of empty rooms on the third floor that need to be renovated. We could accommodate a good number of new residents up there; but we haven’t got the funds to do the work.’ ”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Oh, let me guess. They estimate the cost of the renovation at seventy-five thousand dollars.”
“Uh-huh,” Lydia said. “Yes.”
We were both silent for a few moments. Then she said, “Bill? What was Dr. Reynolds doing in Howe’s apartment? Do you think he was looking for what you found?”
“If he was, it was altruistic of him. Unless he’s mixed up in whatever Madsen’s doing.”
“Which is what? Selling drugs to the Cobras?”
“That’s what it looks like,” I agreed.
“Have you told Mr. Moran?”
“No.”
She said nothing, waited.
“I want to sit on it for a little,” I told her. “I don’t know why.”
“A hunch? Like you tell me to play?”
“Not even. But I want to sort some things out. I want to find out what the card means. I want to go over with you what else I did today, see if we can put some things together.”
“I … I have people coming over,” she said. “To eat my scallions. Should I cancel that?”
“No.” A gust of wind raced across the parking lot, chasing leaves and trash. “The cops are on their way over to Howe’s now, but it’s way out of the Home’s precinct. It’ll take them until morning to make the connection. I’ll call you later. Do you think you can look into the card in the morning?”
“You mean, try to find out who Margaret O’Connor is?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. Go on back to your scallions. I’ll call you.”
Maybe it was a bad idea. Maybe we should have gotten together, tried to make something out of the pieces we had. I would have liked that. I was tired, cold, alone in a street-lit parking lot in a place I didn’t know. I would have liked to be with Lydia.
But Lydia was young, in a bright, crowded kitchen. She was cooking for other young people, who would bring wine and laugh and talk about their careers, their friends, their plans. I thought of Paul Kao, the photographer, the friend of her brother Andrew’s. I wondered if he was coming to dinner.
I would have liked to be with Lydia, but Lydia had another life in which I had no part.
And even now I think it wouldn’t have mattered. It would have made me feel better, talking with Lydia that night; but it wouldn’t have helped us find our way out of the swamp this case had become. The paths were too dark, too shadowed, not blind but serpentine, twisting back on themselves, always leading to where you’d been. Finding the answer at the center would not have been enough, any longer, to lead us to the way out.
TWENTY-EIGHT
When the telephone rang the next morning I was at the piano. It was just past seven. In the loading dock across the street, trucks idled, revved, pulled in or out, beginning their day’s business. It was too early for me to begin mine—the questioning, the following, the breaking or bluffing or bullying my way into lives and places where I didn’t belong.
The night before, exhausted, I’d had a drink and a burger at Shorty’s, trudged upstairs and fallen into bed. Toward morning I had a dream. I was fighting my way uphill on a twisting street shaded by huge chestnut trees. I was late, maybe too late; my heart raced but my legs were leaden, my steps agonizingly slow. On either side were grand villas, mansions, their twilight gates locked. I was looking for the white frame house with the black walnut tree in the front yard, but I was lost; I couldn’t find it.
The unease from the dream stayed with me at the piano, got in my way at the beginning, until the focused ray of my concentration burned it off like mist. Total attention on each moment, every touch. No thinking about next, only now: where to pedal, how long to hold a phrase, how to move through it, when to end it. No distractions, no logic, and no words. Just the music.
I worked on the Schubert, on the places that were still rough, trying changes of color, tempo, stress. Mostly I knew what I wanted and was trying to make it happen; in some places, though, I wasn’t yet ready to try for an answer, because I wasn’t sure of the question. I worked them through, patient, probing, trying to understand.
The ringing phone jarred me, shattered my work. I grabbed for it, more to shut it up than because I wanted to talk to whomever it was.
“Kid? Did I wake you?” Bobby’s voice was strange, unsure.
I wiped my sweaty face. “No, I’m up. Something wrong?”
Bobby hesitated. “I just got a call from Bruno. The cops called him as a courtesy, now he’s in charge over there. They picked up a guy for Howe’s murder. Bruno thinks they’re looking at him for Mike, too.”
“Who?” He didn’t answer. “Come on, Bobby, who?”
“Your friend, kid. Martin Carter.”
The station house was a new brick building with arched windows, a sawtooth overhang to walk under in bad weather, and a plaza planted with callery pears. Callery pears are always first to flower in the spring, last to lose their leaves in fall. They don’t grow too big and they put up with a lot. A good value-for-money tree, a good tree for the city.
Inside, the building still looked new, tile and terrazzo and a high, coffered ceiling; but behind the rail of the raised-platform desk the duty sergeant’s eyes had that old, weary look that even young cops get.
“Help you?” he asked, sizing me up automatically, calculating whether he could take me or if he’d need help, and if so, how much.
“Lieutenant Robinson,” I said. “Or Detective Lindfors.”
“You are?” He spoke from the side of his mouth, as though around a toothpick or a cigarette, though he had neither.
“Bill Smith.”
“Gianetti!” He barely raised his voice, but its tone changed completely. His eyes had never left me; but a patrolman who’d been lounging against a wall out of the sergeant’s sight straightened up and came over.
“Sarge?”
“Go find Robinson. Tell him his guy is here.”
The patrolman headed upstairs, and the desk sergeant went back to his paperwork. He ignored me; but I knew that if I took a step he’d give you the length of my stride and if I reached for a cigarette he could tell you what brand.
For a while I watched cops come and go; then I heard my name, turned, and saw Robinson heading my way. His well-cut gray suit and striped tie said he was a cop to whom appearances mattered, a cop with ambitions; but the dullness in his black skin and the bags under his eyes told me he was also a cop who’d been up most of the night, a cop who did his job.
Robinson took me upstairs to an interrogation room, by a route that didn’t pass the lockup. Every police station has two routes like that: one for the perps, one for the citizens. Usually it’s so the accused doesn’t get a look at the witnesses; this time it seemed clear that they didn’t want Carter to know I was here until some deal was cut.
As Robinson opened the interrogation-room door, motioned me in, I asked, “Why is he still here?”
“You’re lucky he is.” Robinson flipped on the light. “If we’d sent him downtown already you’d’ve missed your chance.” Then he went out, next door, and turned on the light in the viewing room too. When that room was dark and this one was lighted, the window between was one-way glass, and cops stood around in there watching other cops question you in here. With its light on I could see that that room was empty; Robinson and I were alone.
He came back, sat across the table from me, laced his fingers. “What’s your relationship with Martin Carter?”
“I told you on the phone. He’s a friend of mine.”
Bobby had been pretty sure Carter hadn’t made it as far as Central Booking, which meant he was still being held at the precinct where he’d been arrested. I’d called, asked to see him. Surprisingly, Robinson had agreed.
Now he looked at me with guarded disbelief. “I don’t often hear of Cobras having white friends.”
“Maybe he didn’t notice. Besides, he’s not a Cobra anymore.”
“Don’t go naive on me, Smith. You don’t leave a gang like that. First of all, why? Second, you don’t get the chance. Like a family. You don’t like your father, you don’t get to say, ‘You’re not my old man anymore.’ You don’t say it to Snake LeMoyne, either.”
“You can walk out,” I said. “He’s still your father, but you don’t have to stay. Carter’s got a family of his own. Two little kids. He doesn’t hang with the Cobras now.”
“If that’s true it’s because Snake ditched him.”
My mind went back to the chilly playground, leaves scraping on the asphalt, Carter answering Snake without turning to face him.
“No,” I said. Then, “What’s the difference? Can I see him, or are you just jerking me around?”
Robinson leaned back in his chair, slipped his hands in his pockets. “Why do you want to see him?”
“I want to tell him his kids are okay. I want to see if you guys beat the shit out of him. I want to find out what the hell is going on around here!”
“Nothing’s going on. We arrested a guy on a homicide charge.”
“Nine hours ago, and you haven’t sent him downtown yet.”
“Bus was crowded.”
I didn’t bother with that.
“What is it you want from him, Robinson?”
Robinson’s pale blue eyes met mine. “Snake LeMoyne.”
“Uh-huh.” I took out a cigarette. Robinson didn’t stop me, so I lit it. There was no place for the match. I shook it out, dropped it. From the scorch marks on the vinyl tile, I wasn’t the first.
“And what makes you think,” I said, “that Carter can give him to you?”
“The Rev and Snake used to be real tight. Cold chillin’ home-boys. Watched each other’s backs, laid the same girls.”
“That was before.”
“Before the Rev went upstate. You know what that was for?”
“Manslaughter. That’s all I know.”
“That was a plea bargain. An Arab shopkeeper over there thought he could get away without making his protection payments. He had a gun, see, that made him somebody. So he pulled it on the Cobras when they came to collect. They laughed at him. One of them got the gun. The guy turned and ran. The Cobras were laughing when they shot him in the back.”
“How do you know?” I asked. “That that’s how it went?”
“Oh, he lived two days. Long enough to talk to us and for his family to say good-bye.”
“And he identified Carter as the shooter?”
“No. No, he didn’t do that. He identified the Rev as being there, but he didn’t know who shot him.”
“So why’d Carter get stuck with it?”
“The Rev was there. The Rev was a Cobra. He got elected.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning he did the time, but Snake did the crime.”
I pulled on my cigarette. “Says who?”
“Lindfors.”
“How come he knows?”
Robinson shrugged. “It’s the Cobras. He knows.”
“Okay,” I said. “What if it’s true?”
“Word is Snake did this one too. The Rev might be getting sick of this by now.”
“Did you ask him?”
“He tol’ me he don’t be ’roun’ dere no more.” Robinson’s parodied street talk startled me with its vicious edge. I wondered whether I’d have been surprised to hear it that way from a white cop.
“So you want me to persuade him to roll over?”
“Can you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you try?”
“What’s the offer?”
“We get Snake, we forget about Carter.”
“Carter says Snake says he didn’t do it.”
“I can sweeten the deal.”
“How?”
“Get me Snake for anything. Anything the D.A. can prove. What Carter went up for, Downey, anything. It doesn’t have to be this one. If the grand jury indicts Snake, Carter walks.”
“Christ. I thought Lindfors was the one with the Snake fixation.”
Robinson stood abruptly, paced the room. He spoke from behind me. “Lindfors was a damn fine cop, Smith. He gave the job a hundred and ten percent, but it wasn’t enough. Those bastards burned him out. Now he drinks, now I’ve got to watch him. If I can’t get LeMoyne, I’m going to get each damn Cobra one by one for whatever I can.”
I finished my cigarette, ground it under my heel. “Let me see him.”
They brought Carter to me in the interrogation room. They must not have told him it was me he was going to see; when the door opened, his eyes widened a little, in surprise. Then a tight, wary suspicion covered his face like a mask.
“Ten minutes,” Robinson said, and left.
We looked at each other for a few moments, across the formica-topped table.
“Man,” Carter said, “what the fuck you doing here?”
“I like it here,” I said. “I come here whenever I can. What happened?”
“What you mean, what happen? Cocksuckers come ’round my house, middle of the night, right with Granny and the kids—shit!” He broke off, shook his head. I could see his rage in the corded tendons of his neck.
I gave him a cigarette, took one for myself. He leaned back against his chair, rubbed his eyes. He gestured with the cigarette at the one-way window, now a mirror showing us only ourselves.
“How many them fuckers in there?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “How many fit?”
He snorted. “Why you here?”
“To help.”
“Help me? Or help them?”
“You.”
“Yeah? What you proposin’ to do?”
“They made you an offer.”
“Fuck the damn offer!” He slammed his fist on the table. The sound boomed against the hard surfaces of the room.
“Relax,” I said. “I broke my hand that way once. Hurt like hell. You have a lawyer?”
Carter glared. “Do I look like a guy got a fucking lawyer?”
“I have a good one. Nathan Cohen. I’ll send him down.”
“Forget it.”
“Carter, let me help.”
“Fuck that shit! You wouldn’t be here, you wasn’t with them.” His eyes sent a wave of hate at the unresponding mirror.
“I called them. I asked to see you.”
“They letting you.”
“They want me to point out that if you don’t take their offer they’ll throw your ass in prison.”
“They done that before.”
“You like it?”
He dragged on his cigarette. “No, I ain’t liked it. It sucks, baby. But I ain’t about to roll on Snake. I ain’t living like that.”
