Looking straight into Guido’s lens, and without much prompting, this is the story Gloria Griffin told:
“Me and Hanna been partying at a rock house on Hickory Street. We were there, off and on, for three days. She said someone was looking for her and she was laying low, you know, staying off the streets a while.”
“Did she say who was looking for her?”
Gloria shook her head. “I figure she owe some dealer. Around midnight, one o’clock, somewhere around there, she went out on the street to make some money, to buy her some more crystal. I went out with her. She walk up one side of Wilmington, I walk up the other, you know, going in opposite directions, but close enough so we could holler back and forth. I got me a date first and drove away with him.
“I was gone fifteen, twenty minutes when my date left me off again. I saw Hanna was talkin’ to some dude in a blue car. Then she started to run away. She come down here by the school, lookin’ for a way to get through the fence into the school yard. The blue car followed her. I see the dude get out of the car. I hear him lettin’ two off, I see the flames shoot outta the end of his gun. Hanna don’t say nothin’, she just fall right down. This man, he revved up some and then he was gone. Then I see Hanna get up and start runnin’ again. Come here across the street. That’s all I saw.”
I was close enough to Gloria Griffin to smell something like ether on her breath, the sharp doctor’s-office smell of the cocaine freebaser. I asked, “Did you see the driver of the car?”
“Not close,” she said, gazing across the street where the shooting had occurred before she turned her attention back to me. “When Hanna start runnin’, I don’t want to get too close. I’m thinkin’ maybe this guy she owe money to has come collectin’. Somethin’ like that.”
The detective gave me the evil eye that meant she was in charge. She resumed the interview. “What did you do when you realized Hanna Rhodes had been shot?”
“Girlfriend was scared. I run back to the house on Hickory Street. I had me some money then, so I got me some rock and smoked it.”
“How do you feel right now?” I asked her.
“Mellow,” she said, smiling. I hoped that it wasn’t so dark that the tape wouldn’t pick up the unfocused look she gave me. “I feel okay.”
The detective asked, “Can you describe the car? Make? Model? Age?”
“That’s the one.” Gloria turned and pointed to Mike’s blue Blazer.
I knew where Mike was at the time of the shooting, snoring beside my ear. Still, I felt very uneasy about Gloria pointing out his car. I felt very uneasy about anything that tended to tie Mike to this mess of a situation. Gloria was bombed, kept snapping her head up to hang in with us. The Blazer was the only civilian car within her range of vision: how easy to tag it when she didn’t have another answer. I said, “Late model, American-made, four-wheel-drive car.”
“Whatever you say,” she said. “It was that one.”
As Guido turned the camera toward Mike’s car, I put up my hand and stopped him. He gave me a funny look, but he turned back around.
“Thank you, Miss Griffin,” the detective said. “I know it’s unpleasant, but we need you to identify the body.”
The officers who had brought Gloria walked her up on the porch and had her look at Hanna’s face. I stayed back because I didn’t want to see it. Guido went right in with Gloria, his lens following her point of view, then pulling back to catch her reaction. I was still worried about the lighting. Guido and his techno friends at UCLA could do some computer enhancement, but low light punched up electronically always came out looking artificial. Flat.
Hanna must not have looked like a party under that sheet, because Gloria Griffin was nearly overcome when she took her look. With her hand over her mouth, she fled the porch. The roots of an old sycamore tree pushing up through the sidewalk tripped her, made her fall against the trunk of the tree. I heard her swear, and I saw her take something from the pocket of her shorts and put it into her mouth. Could have been anything, but it seemed to make her feel better.
Hector Melendez had seen her take it, too. When I sort of ambled in her direction, Hector Melendez sort of ambled along with me.
Gloria’s hand shook too much for her to connect the match in her hand with the cigarette she put between her lips. I took the matchbook from her and lit the cigarette.
“Pretty bad?” I asked.
“Shit,” she exhaled, leaning against the tree for support. “How well did you know Hanna?”
“I know her my whole damn life. We grow up in the same neighborhood.”
I caught Guido’s eye and motioned for him to come over. When he was ready with his camera, I said, “You grew up with Hanna Rhodes?”
Gloria nodded. “Know her my whole life. She was my play sister. Our kids is friends, too.”
“Tell me about her children.”
“She have just one little girl. Yoandra. She’s about ten now. Live with her grandmother.”
“How old was Hanna?”
“Twenty-five, about. Same as me. We used to go to that school over across the street. But they never used to lock the gate all the way, you know. They let us go in and play. Guess Hanna didn’t know they was locking things up these days so she couldn’t get through.”
“What a shame,” I said. Hector’s touch was warm through my sleeve. “I was wondering, Gloria,” I said. “This date you had, he must have seen the shooting.”
“He didn’t see nothin’,” she said, adamant. She lit a new cigarette from the glowing stub between her fingers.
“I’d still like to talk to him. Men notice cars better than we do.”
She took a long drag. “I don’t know nothin’ about him. He just a date, you know?”
“A regular date?” Hector asked. “You’re very pretty, Miss Griffin. You must have regulars.”
She smiled in spite of herself, flipped her hair up off her neck, flirting with him. “Maybe I do.”
“Was he a regular?” I asked. “Do you know where I might find him?”
“Maybe.” She gave the three of us a keen appraisal. Then she looked down, dropped her cigarette, and stubbed it out with her toe. She took so long doing this, I thought she had forgotten about us. Finally, she said, “What I know will cost you two dead presidents.”
The only dead presidents in my pocket were some George Washington. I looked up at Hector. “Two dead presidents, is that two hundred dollars?”
“That’s what I say,” she said. “Two of ‘em.”
Hector had glanced away, seemed to be smiling at something. Mike tells me a lot of war stories about things that go down on the job. I remembered one he had told me about Hector and dead presidents. I took hold of Hector’s sleeve and said, “Hey, Gloria, you ever play Monopoly?”
“Maybe I did,” she said, wary, as if she was afraid I was making fun of her.
“In Monopoly they have something called a get-out-of-jail-free card. In the game, the card’s worth two hundred dollars,” I said. Hector, on cue, took out one of his business cards with its big silver detective shield and his office phone number on it, and handed it to me. I passed it to Gloria. “Here’s your getout-of-jail-free card. Next time you get picked up on the street, you give this card to the officer, tell him to call Detective Melendez. It’s a whole lot better than dead presidents.”
She studied the card before she tucked it into the front of her halter top. Then she looked up and said, “His name’s Tiny and he hangs up at the Bayou Barbeque. I see him there all the time.”
“Thanks, Gloria,” I said. The androgynous officers were walking toward us. “Thank you very much. If we want to talk to you again, where can we reach you?”
She smiled, coming on to Hector again. “You know where my office is. Up on that corner. You want to talk to me, just call my pager number.”
She walked off to meet her escorts, swaying her narrow hips for Hector’s benefit.