Raymond walked across the room, picked up the phone and dialed a number. He waited and then said, “Jerry? You gonna meet me downtown?… I’ll see you.” And hung up, wondering as he turned from the desk if they heard Hunter’s voice, Hunter saying, “Fuck you, I’m not leaving here, man, this is the place.”
Clement was saying something to Carolyn Wilder, both standing now, Clement with his hand on her arm, and Carolyn frowning as she stared at him, as though trying to understand what he was telling her-twenty feet from Raymond Cruz-and now she pulled her arm away abruptly, amazed or shocked, and said, “What!” and Clement was shrugging, saying a few parting words as he turned and walked out of the office.
There was a silence. Raymond moved toward her. He said, “What’s the matter?”
But she was still in her mind and didn’t answer. She was not the woman lawyer he had watched in court, but a woman caught off balance, a girl now, vulnerable, a girl who had just been grossly insulted or told a terrible secret. Raymond wanted to touch her and the words came out easily.
“Can I help you, Carolyn?”
It surprised him, using her first name, and yet it sounded natural and seemed to touch an awareness in her. She looked at him in a different way now, not with suspicion as much as caution, wanting to be sure of his tone, his intention.
“Did you happen to hear what he said?”
Raymond shook his head. “No.”
“Any part of it?”
“No, I didn’t.”
He watched her pick up the file from the coffeetable and come past him to her desk, saying, “He’s a beauty.” Sounding tired.
“He kills people,” Raymond said.
She looked at him now. “Tell me about it. You’ve been a downtown cop long enough-I know I’ve seen you around-so you know what my job is and I know what yours is.”
“But can I help you?” Raymond said.
She hesitated, staring at him again and seemed about to tell him something. But she hesitated too long. He saw her gaze move and come back and move again and now she was sitting down at her desk, looking up at him with a bland expression.
“I think you mean well…”
“But it’s none of my business,” Raymond said. He picked a Squad Seven card out of his coat pocket and laid it on her desk. “Unless he scares you again, huh? And you admit it.”
“Good night, lieutenant.”
He said, “Good night, Carolyn,” and left, feeling pretty good that he hadn’t said too much, but then wondering if he shouldn’t have insisted on helping and maybe said a lot more.
Hunter used the phone next to the men’s room, staring at the slim girl in the fur vest and wide leather belt as he called MCMU directly, the Major Crime Mobile Unit. He told them a tan ’79 Chevy Impala, Tango Fox Baker 781, was heading south on Woodward and would cross the overpass at Eight Mile in about twelve minutes. He told them to check the sheet on the car, apprehend the driver and take him down to 1300, Room 527. MCMU asked Hunter on what charge and Hunter said, “Driving without an operator’s license.”
He returned to the bar, worked his way in next to the stylish girl in the fur vest and said to her up-raised profile, “If we can’t fall in love in the next twelve minutes, you want to give me your number and we’ll try later?”
The girl looked over her shoulder to stare at him with a mildly wistful expression. She said, “I’m not against falling in love, sport; but I’m sure as hell not gonna hustle a cop. I mean even if I thought you’d pay.”
THEY LET CLEMENT SIT ALONE in the interrogation/file room for about forty minutes before Wendell Robinson went in to talk to him.
It was close to 10:00 P.M. Raymond Cruz crossed his feet on the corner of his desk and closed his eyes to the fluorescent lights… while Hunter made coffee and told about Pamela and the rough time Pamela was having trying to make it with all the goddamn amateurs out there giving it away, selling themselves for Amaretto on the rocks, Kahlua and cream… Raymond half listening, catching glimpses of the Carolyn Wilder he had never seen before this evening, wondering what Clement had said to her, wondering if-at another time, the right time-she’d be easy to talk to.
The windowless file room, about seven-by-eleven, held three folding chairs, an old office table and a wall of built-in shelves where closed case-records were stored. On the wall directly behind Clement was a stain, a formless smudge, where several thousand heads had rested, off and on, during interrogations.
Wendell said, “How well you know Edison?”
Clement grinned. “Detroit Edison?”
“Thomas Edison.”
“I never did understand nigger humor,” Clement said.
“Man whose car you were driving this evening.”
“That’s his name? I just call him Tom. Only nigger I ever knew owned a Chevy. He loaned it to me.”
“He a friend of yours?”
“Friend of a friend.”
“I understand he’s a doorman. Works over at 1300 Lafayette. That where your friend live?”
“I forget which friend it was’s a friend of old Tom’s.”
“Sandy Stanton lives over there,” Wendell said. “She’s a pretty good friend, isn’t she?”
“You know everything, what’re you asking me for?”
“She a friend of yours?”
“I know her.”
“She loan you the Buick last night?”
“It tickles me,” Clement said, “you people trying to act like you know something. You don’t have shit, else I’d be over’n the Wayne County jail waiting on my exam.”
“We want to be ugly, we could get you some time over there right now,” Wendell said. “Driving after your license was revoked on a D.U.I.L., that’s a pretty heavy charge.”
“What, the drunk-driving thing? Jesus Christ,” Clement said, “you trying to threaten me with a fucking traffic violation?”
“No, the violation’s nothing to a man of your experience,” Wendell said. “I was thinking of how you’d be over there with all them niggers.”
“Why is that?” Clement said. “Are niggers the only ones fuck up in this town? Or they picking on you? I was a nigger I wouldn’t put up with it.”
“Yeah, what would you do?”
“Move. All this town is is one big Niggerville with a few whites sprinkled in, some of ’em going with each other. You’d think you’d see more mongrelization, except I guess they’re just fucking each other and not making any kids like they did back in the plantation days… You want to know something?”
“What’s that?”
“One of my best friend’s a nigger.”
“Yeah, what’s his name?”
“You don’t know him.”
“I might. You know us niggers sticks together.”
“Bullshit. Saturday night you kill each other.”
“I’m curious. What’s the man’s name?”
“Alvin Guy.” Clement grinned.
“Is that right? You knew him?”
Clement said, “Shit, I could tell you anything, couldn’t I?”
“There was a window in there I’d have thought seriously about throwing him out,” Wendell said, and Raymond nodded.
“I know what you mean.”
“Man doesn’t give you anything to hook onto. You understand what I’m saying? He jive you around with all this bullshit, you don’t know who’s asking who the question. See, he does the judge, then goes home to his bed. We been up two days and a night.”
“Go on home,” Raymond said.
“I’ll stay on it, you want me to.”
“We’ll let the old pro take a shot,” Raymond said, looking over at Hunter. “The old reddish-gray wolf. What do you say? If we can’t shake him tonight we’ll turn him loose, try some other time.”
Hunter got up from his desk. He said, “You want to watch, see how it’s done?”
There was no clear reason why Hunter was the squad’s star interrogator: why suspects so often confided in him and why the confessions he elicited almost always stood up in court. Maureen said it was because the bad guys got the feeling he was one of them. Hunter said it was because he was patient, understanding, sympathetic, alert, never raised his voice… and would cite as an example the time last winter he questioned the suspect, young guy, who admitted “sort of strangling” two women while “overcome with cocaine.” The young guy said he thought this belt one of them had was a snake and wanted to see what it would look like around their necks; that’s how the whole thing had come about, while they were sitting on the floor tooting and having a few drinks. But he refused to tell what he did with their bodies. Hunter said, well, the bodies would show up by spring, when the snow melted, and added, “Unless you’re some kind of animal and you stored them away for the winter.” Hunter noticed the suspect appeared visibly agitated by this off-hand remark and quickly followed up on it, asking the suspect if he liked animals or if he was afraid of them or if he related to animals in some way. The suspect insisted he hated animals, rats especially, and that when he went out to the abandoned farmhouse a few days after and saw that rats had been “nibbling” on the two women he immediately took measures to prevent them from being “all eaten up.” He cut the bodies up with a hacksaw and burned them in the coal furnace. He was no animal…