This was where the prevision began, Raymond feeling the jab in his stomach, realizing he had forgotten to talk to Skender, to warn him, be careful…
Saying “Skender Lulgjaraj,” and feeling his stomach knotting.
Herzog saying, “Yeah, Skender. Art Blaney was over at Hutzel visiting his wife. He’s going past a room, sees a familiar face. It’s Toma. Art looks in, Skender’s in traction with a fractured leg. Art wants to know what happened and Toma says, ‘He fell down the stairs.’ ”
Raymond remembered feeling worn out, even with the thing in his stomach, and saying, “Oh, shit…”
And Herzog saying, “Let’s go in my office.”
It was while walking from the squadroom to the office with the view of the river and the highrise that Raymond had his vision.
“I was gonna call him,” Raymond said. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I know the guy’s being set up and I didn’t call him.”
“Toma says it was an accident,” Herzog said. “Maybe it was.”
Raymond shook his head. “No-I’m gonna find out what happened, but it wasn’t an accident.”
“Well, you have hunches,” Herzog said, “and most of them turn out to be nothing, so you don’t follow up on some.” Herzog looked over at a wallboard of newspaper clippings covering the Guy-Simpson murders. “Half those news stories are hunches, speculation. Who killed the judge?… Who gives a shit? You notice, there’s hardly any mention of Adele Simpson, she’s a minor figure. It’s all about the judge, what a prick he was. We give them a few facts and, for the most part, they’re satisfied, leave us alone and write interviews with people who say, ‘Oh, yes, I knew the judge intimately, it doesn’t surprise me at all.’ They don’t care if we ever solve it, they’ve got so much to write about.”
Raymond, reviewing his vision, seemed patient, attentive.
Herzog said, “That girl from the News, Sylvia Marcus, she’s the only one asks about Mansell. If he’s a suspect, where is he? Why isn’t he upstairs?”
“I haven’t seen her around,” Raymond said.
“She’s here every day. She picked up on him somehow, maybe getting a little here and there, sees a case folder open on somebody’s desk-Sylvia’s a very bright girl.”
“You think so?” Raymond said.
“Well, she asks good questions,” Herzog said. “I have a few myself I’ve been wondering about. Like the car, the Buick. We seem to be taking this one kinda leisurely.”
“I know what you mean,” Raymond said. “But you know how long we’ve been on it? Seventy-two hours. That’s all. Since Sandy got back from visiting Mr. Sweety the car hasn’t moved-till last night, we took it in, had it vacuumed, dusted. It’s like the car’s been driven twelve thousand miles with gloves on. Clement’s driving a ’76 Montego now. He went out last night, but nobody could find him. Didn’t come back this morning. Sandy went out, came back early this morning in a cab. We went in the apartment over there last night while they’re both out. No gun under the underwear or in the toilet tank. Nothing of the judge’s.”
“So he got rid of the gun,” Herzog said.
Raymond didn’t say anything.
“You’ve been holding back, not wanting to break down the doors too soon,” Herzog said. “Meanwhile the guy’s riding around in a Montego, you tell me, and might’ve broken somebody’s leg. If you can’t get Mansell with the gun, how’re you gonna get him?”
“Maybe the gun’s still around,” Raymond said. “But you’re right, I think I’ve been holding back, being a little too polite, expecting people-you might say-to be reasonable and forgetting a very important principle of police work.”
Herzog nodded. “When you got ’em by the balls…”
“Right,” Raymond said, “… the head and the heart soon follow.”
Someone in the family had died recently and that’s why the Albanians were in black. Coming down the hospital corridor and seeing the figures, Raymond thought at first they were priests. A nurse was trying to remove them from the room, with their packages and paper sacks, telling them only two at a time, please, and to wait in the visitor’s lounge. He saw Toma Sinistaj.
Then Toma said something as he saw Raymond Cruz and the delegation in black move down the hall.
Raymond thought of Toma as a face on a foreign coin. Or he thought of him as a Balkan diplomat or a distance runner. He wore a blue shirt with his narrow black suit and tie. He was about thirty-eight but seemed older; his full mustache was black; his eyes were almost black and never wandered when they looked at you. Raymond remembered this; he knew Toma from several times in the past when Albanians had tried to kill each other and sometimes succeeded. He remembered that Toma owned restaurants, that he carried a Beretta, with license, and a beeper.
Attached to the hospital bed was a frame with an elaborate system of wires that hoisted Skender’s plaster-covered leg in the air: like a white sculpture that would be entitled Leg. Skender’s eyes remained closed. When Raymond asked how he was, Toma said, “He’ll be like that a long time and then he’ll be a cripple. You know why? Because he wanted to marry a girl he met at a disco place. She tells him okay, but first he has to meet her brother.”
“He’s not her brother,” Raymond said.
“No, I don’t think so either. They planned this a long time.”
“How much did they get?”
“What difference does it make?” Toma said. “We don’t look at it, was it a misdemeanor or felony? You know that. He did it to Skender, he did it to me, it’s the same thing. I’m going to look at this Mansell in the eyes…”
“It’s not that simple,” Raymond said.
“Why not?” Toma said. “The only thing makes it difficult, you worried you have to arrest me.” He shrugged. “All right, if you prove I kill him. You do what you have to do, I do what I have to do.”
“No, it isn’t that simple, because I want him too,” Raymond said. “You’re gonna have to get in line. After we’re done you can have him charged with felonies, assault, but it isn’t gonna mean much if he’s doing life. You understand what I’m saying?”
“I understand you want him for killing the judge,” Toma said. “I spend some time up on that fifth floor, I talk to people, different ones I know. I understand why you want this man. But if you don’t care personally that he killed the judge, then why do you care who kills him? You see the way I look at it? You tell me to get in line. I tell you, you want him you better get him quick, or he’ll be dead.”
Raymond said, “You always look in their eyes?”
Toma seemed to smile. “If there’s time.”
“He’s killed nine people.”
Toma said, “Yes? If you know he kills people, why do you let him? Before I come to this coun-try when I was sixteen I have already kill nine people, maybe a few more-most of them Soviet, but some Albanian, Ghegs, my own people. Before the Soviets-before my time, were the Turks; but before the Turks, always, we have the Custom. If you don’t know about it you don’t know anything about me.”
“I think of us as friends,” Raymond said, wanting the man to know that he understood.
“Yes, you give your word and keep it,” Toma said. “I think you know about honor because it doesn’t seem to bother you to talk about it. It isn’t an old thing in books to you. But maybe honor goes so far with you and stops. Say a policeman is killed. Then I think you want to kill the person who killed him.”
“Yes,” Raymond said. Basically it was true.
“But you don’t understand the honor that even if a man who’s smoking my tobacco-he doesn’t have to be my brother, but a man I bring into my house-if he’s offended in some way then I’m offended. And if he’s killed then I kill the person who killed him, because this goes back to before policemen and courts of law. Now-wait, don’t say anything, please. A man breaks the leg of your cousin who is like a brother-a very trusting, very nice person-and steals his money. What does your honor tell you to do?”