Coleman’s brow lowers and his cheeks puff up. He remembers.
“Looked to me like you knew him pretty good,” I say. “Where’s he stay, huh?”
He smiles at the question, shakes his head. “Hey, send that other cop back in here, man. At least she’s pretty to look at.”
“I would, but she’s sensitive. I don’t think she appreciated what you said.”
“It was a compliment, man.” He gives a one-handed shrug, jiggling the handcuff again. “You can’t lock a man up like this and expect him not to say nothing when a piece of that walks through the door.”
“Oh, I’m sure she was flattered.”
It’s been five minutes since Cavallo walked out, either feigning offense or really feeling it. Either way, we’d been getting nowhere and he was using her presence as an excuse. Things needed a little shaking up.
“The way it’s supposed to work,” he says, “is I have something you want, so you give me something I want in return. Like a trade, man. Why I gotta explain all this?”
“I thought I had something you want. Revenge. You told Rios he’d be dead, so as long as he’s out there enjoying life, he’s making a fool of you. Now, if I knew where he stays, then he’d be in here, too, and maybe the two of you could work out your issues.”
“Our issues? You mean, like therapy?”
“Something like that.”
“So let me get this straight. The trade you’re offering is, I tell you where to find him, and you’ll send him to jail so I can shank him? They gettin’ all this on tape, man?” He laughs at his joke. “Here’s what I don’t get, though. When they made it a crime to snitch out your homeboys? You ain’t gonna send a man to jail for that. So what he done, man? You at least gotta tell me that.”
“You want to know what he did?”
“Man, how many times I gotta say it? Yeah, I wanna know.”
“You want me to tell you?”
He throws up his free hand, slumping back in his chair. “Mr. March, you didn’t used to be this slow. What happened, you have a stroke or something? Can’t you understand plain English no more?”
“Murder,” I say.
He sits forward, eyes narrowing. “Who he killed?”
“Nobody you know.”
“That boy Octavio? I heard about that.”
“No, not him.”
“Who then?”
“A girl, Coleman. He killed a teenage girl.”
His eyebrows raise. “He killed her? You talking literal or metaphorical? ’Cause I don’t think literally he killed nobody. It’s Little Evey you talking about, right? The one always followin’ him around.” He shakes his head. “I mean, what he done, it’s bad, but it ain’t the same as killin’.”
The hair on the back of my neck stands up. I want to pounce on him, dragging out everything he knows, reaching down his throat with my fist if I have to, but the worst thing I can do is let on that I’m excited, or even interested.
“So you’re sticking up for him now, Coleman?”
“I ain’t stickin’ up for nobody, but if you was in the same kind of bind, you might see it different. You say he didn’t kill Octavio, but if anybody had a reason, it’s him. Man, he loved that girl for real. Drove all the way to New Orleans to get her back, that’s how much. Somebody take your woman like that, like she just another installment on the payment plan, what you gonna do then? Yeah, he killed him.”
“He didn’t,” I say.
Now he looks confused. “He told me he was gonna. I talked to him right after he left Octavio. He said he gave over the money – not all he owed, but a nice chunk he got from moving some product – and Octavio, he goes, ‘That’s a pretty little thing. She can stay here and work some debt off, too.’ And I go, ‘What you gonna do?’ I thought maybe he was wanting me to back his play, only that’s not my thing, right? But he’s all like, ‘I got it handled already. I got it taken care of.’ ”
“You thought he meant he was going to kill Octavio?”
He looks at me like I’m wearing a dunce cap. “What else you think he meant? Like I said, you’d do the same thing.”
“Where’s he stay, Coleman?”
“Listen,” he says. “Since I been in here, I been thinking. So what if he’s snitching to the police, huh? He’s all right. What I said, that was words spoken in anger, without due consideration. I don’t wish nobody no ill. There ain’t no hate in me at all, not no more. It’s wrong to be a snitch, and it’s for sure wrong to leave that girl behind instead of throwin’ down right there, but what’s he gonna do? Answer me that. He said there’s, like, four or five of ’em, and they got guns.”
“Coleman, I’m going to tell you something and I want you to listen good. I’m not talking about Octavio Morales, and I’m not talking about Little Evey, either. The girl he killed was somebody else, a friend of hers. He shot her. He shot her three times with a.22. Right here” – I mark the spot on my own body with a fingertip – “and right here. And then he put the barrel against her temple and put the last one right here. In cold blood, Coleman. Now, are you going to sit here and try to defend that, or are you going to tell me where he stays?”
But he’s not ready to roll over yet. “Why he done it?”
“Does it matter why?”
He clamps a hand over his mouth, looking down at the table through slitted eyelids. I sit there and let him stew. Whatever I can say, I’ve said it already. The rest is up to him. If Cavallo were back at the table, she could try to work on his sympathies. She could whip out that cross of hers and tell him if he wants to get right with Jesus, it’s time to talk. But all I can do is level with him man to man and hope it’s enough. Part of me wishes she would walk back in so the burden wouldn’t rest on me alone. But she’s not going to sit here and be spoken to like that any more than I could sit through Hannah Mayhew’s funeral, thinking of my own girl in the casket the whole time.
“Listen,” he says, then lets out that sweet long sigh every interrogator will tell you is music to the ears, the sound that means he’s about to give it all up. “The thing is, there ain’t no one place he stays. But I know a couple you can check. He’s got this cousin named Tito – ”
“We know about that. He isn’t there.”
“All right. Did that cousin tell you he’s gotta van? Frank borrows it sometimes, and when they was looking for him that’s what he’d do, just pull over somewhere and sleep in the van.”
“We’ve got the van,” I say.”
He nods. “Before he start paying him again. That’s why he went, to get clear of the man. He was like, ‘I’ll pay you, but you gotta leave me be.’ Only that ain’t how it worked out, I guess.”
“Besides the van, where would he stay?”
“There’s some motels he’d go when he had money. And a couple of people he might stay with sometimes – including me, before this happened.” He jerks the cuffs again. “Give me that notepad and I’ll write some things down.”
I slide the legal pad across to him along with a pen. He hunches over and starts writing. I should feel relief, even optimism, but the longer it takes the less likely it is that Rios will be holed up at any of the locations. I was hoping he’d have a fixed abode, some kind of hideout known only to him and Coleman where we were sure to find him.
He hands the pad back.
“Now, Mr. March, on account of all this cooperation here, you gotta do something for me, right?”
I stand and head for the door. “I can put in a good word – ”
He laughs. “Whatever. That ain’t what I mean. Listen here. My grandma, every Saturday morning she walks over to Emancipation Park and sits on a bench there. She reads her psalm and she prays, probably for me. She can’t come up here, and me… well, I don’t like to call from here, neither. But you could tell her a message for me.”
“What message?”
“That everything’s all right,” he says. “Tell her it’s okay. Tell her I go to church every Sunday and sing in the choir.”