“My honor tells me,” Raymond said, the word sounding strange to him, saying it out loud, “to take the guy’s head off.”
“You see?” Toma said. “Your honor stops. It tells you something, yes. But you can’t say, simply, ‘Kill him,’ and mean to do it. You say what you feel like doing, something more than killing him. But what you would actually do is… what?”
“Arrest him,” Raymond said.
“There,” Toma said. “Well, we’re able to talk about it even if we don’t see it the same. You don’t call me a crazy Albanian.”
Raymond said, “How’re you gonna find him?”
“We have people looking, some others helping, friends. Some of your own people, some with the Hamtramck police, they tell us a few things they hear. We know what kind of car he has, where the girl lives. We find him, all right.”
“What if he leaves town?”
Toma shrugged. “We wait. Why does he live here? He likes it? People are easy to rob? If he leaves we wait for him to come back, or, we go after him. Either way.”
Raymond looked at the man lying in traction. “How’d he break Skender’s leg?”
Toma hesitated, then said, “He broke it very deliberately. You see the Medical Service report?”
“It said he fell down the basement stairs and they found him on the floor. One of the tenants did and called EMS.”
“Yes, that was the girlfriend who called,” Toma said. “As soon as you came in here-see, I know you’re after this Mansell and you figure out he did this; so I’m not going to lie to you, say Skender fell down the stairs. You want that person for murder, but you don’t have him. So I know you don’t have evidence, and if you don’t find some he remains free, even though he’s killed two people-no, nine, you say.”
“It takes time,” Raymond said.
Toma shook his head. “No, it doesn’t. Tell me where to find him. It takes only a few minutes.”
Raymond didn’t say anything.
“For the sake of honor,” Toma said.
“Well, it would take care of yours,” Raymond said, “but it wouldn’t do much for mine, would it?”
Toma studied him with his direct gaze, curious now. “There’s more to it than I know about.” He paused and then said, “Maybe you would take his head off.”
“Maybe,” Raymond said.
Toma continued to stare, thoughtful. “If he resists, yes. I can see that. Or if they tell you, all right, you can shoot him on sight. But if he gives himself up, then what do you do?”
“Turn it around,” Raymond said. “You open the door and he’s just sitting there. What would you do?”
“I’d kill him,” Toma said. “What have we been talking about?”
“I know, but I mean if he was unarmed.”
“Yes, and I say I’d kill him. What does his being armed or not have to do with it? Are you saying there are certain conditions, rules, like a game?” Toma emphasized with his eyes, showing surprise, bewilderment, overacting a little but with style, letting his expression fade to a smile, that remained in his eyes. “This is a strange kind of honor, you only feel it if he has a gun. What if he shoots you first? Then you die with your honor?” Toma paused. “They call us the crazy Albanians…”
It was time to leave. Raymond got ready, looking at Skender again. “Tell me how the leg was broken.”
“He tried with a heavy object at first,” Toma said. “It was very painful, but it didn’t seem to injure him enough. So he raised Skender’s foot up on a case, a box, with Skender lying on the floor and struck the leg at the knee with a metal pipe until the leg was bent the other way. He says he remembers the sound of the girl crying out, saying something, then the sound of the ambulance as he was riding in it, going to Detroit General, and that’s all he remembers. This morning,” Toma said, “I had him brought here to a doctor I know.”
“You say he heard Sandy?”
“The girl? Yes, she cried out something.”
“He remember what she said?”
Toma looked at Skender, asleep, then back to Raymond and shrugged. “Does it make any difference?”
“I don’t know,” Raymond said. “It might.”
Hunter was in the blue Plymouth standing at the hospital entrance. He turned the key as Raymond got in… held the key, his foot pressing the accelerator, but the car wouldn’t start. It gave them an eager, relentless, annoying sound, as though it was trying, but the engine refused to fire.
“Toma was there. He wants to do Clement himself.”
“Who doesn’t?” Hunter said. “Fucking car…”
“He was talking about his code of honor. Says he’s gonna look Clement in the eye and blow him away.”
“Tell him, go ahead.”
“I said, what if he’s unarmed? He says, what’s that got to do with it?”
“Drive this piece of shit, you know why they’re fucking going out of business.” The engine caught and Hunter said, “I don’t believe it.”
“See, what he couldn’t understand, we’d only shoot him if he was resisting.”
“Yeah?… Where we going?”
“Sweety’s Lounge, over on Kercheval. But his point was…” Raymond paused. “Well, he didn’t understand.”
“He didn’t understand what?”
“I told him the guy’s killed nine people and very calmly he says, ‘Yes? If you know he kills people, why do you let him?’ ”
“What’d you tell him?”
“I don’t know-we started talking about honor then.”
“The Custom,” Hunter said. “Fucking Albanians are crazy.”
Raymond looked over at him. He said, “You sure?”
A young woman with a full Afro and worried eyes, a scowl, holding a floral housecoat tightly about her, opened the door and told them Mr. Sweety was working. Raymond said, “You mind if we just look in? I want to show him something. That picture over the couch.”
The woman said, “What picture?” half turning, and Raymond moved Hunter into the doorway. He waited as Hunter peered in and then came around to look at him as if expecting a punch line. They went down the steps to the sidewalk.
“You see it?”
“Yeah. Picture of some guy.”
“You know who it is?”
“I don’t know-some rock star? Leon Russell.”
“It’s Jesus.”
Hunter said, “Yeah?” Not very surprised.
“It’s a photograph.”
“Yeah, I don’t think it looks much like him.”
Walking next door to Sweety’s Lounge Raymond didn’t say anything else. He was wondering why things amazed him that didn’t amaze other people.
There were white voices in the black bar. Two women in serious, dramatic conversation.
It was dark in here in the afternoon. Mr. Sweety looked like a pirate in his black sportshirt hanging open and a nylon stocking knotted tightly over his hair, coming along the duckboards to the front bend in the bar. The place smelled of beer, an old place with a high ceiling made of tin. Two women and a man sat at the far end of the bar. They looked this way as Raymond and Hunter came in and took stools, then turned back to the voices coming from the television set mounted above the bar. A soap opera.
Raymond said, “I thought you worked nights.”
“I work all the time,” Mr. Sweety said. “What can I get you?”
“You want to talk here or at your house?” Raymond asked. him. “I don’t want to get into anything might embarrass you in front of your customers.”
“Don’t do it then,” Mr. Sweety said.
“No, it’s up to you,” Raymond said.
“How ’bout if I serve you something?”
“There’s only one thing you can give us we want,” Raymond said and held up his two index fingers about seven inches apart. “It’s this big. It’s blue steel. And it’s got P .38 stamped on the side.”
“Hey, shit, come on…”
“Sandy told me she gave it to you.”
Mr. Sweety leaned on his hands spaced wide apart on the bar so that he was eye-level with Raymond and Hunter seated on stools. Mr. Sweety looked down toward the end of the bar, seemed to wipe his mouth on his shoulder and looked back at Raymond again.