“Sandy told you what?”
“She said she gave you a Walther P .38 that Clement wanted you to hold for him.”
“Wait,” Hunter said, “let me read him his rights.”
“Read me for what? I ain’t signing no rights.”
“You don’t have to,” Hunter said. “Those people down there’re witnesses. Then we’ll serve you with the search warrant.”
As he said this Raymond took a thick number ten envelope out of his inside coat pocket and placed it facedown on the bar. His hand remained on it, at rest.
Mr. Sweety turned his head back and forth as though he had a stiff neck. “Hey, come on now, man. I don’t know shit about nothing. I told him that last night.”
“I’ll tell you something,” Raymond said. “I believe you. I think you got caught in the middle of something and you’re naturally a little confused. I would be too.”
“I’m not talking to you,” Mr. Sweety said.
“I can understand your position,” Raymond said, “sitting on a hot gun and here we are coming down on you.” Raymond raised his hand from the envelope, palm up. “Wait now. I also see you’re still more confused than involved. Sandy laid this on you and you don’t know what’s going on. She comes in the other day, she tells you Clement wants you to hold the gun for him. But wait a minute. We come to find out Clement doesn’t know anything about it. That’s straight-listen to me. Hear the whole thing. I told you last night Sandy doesn’t want Clement to know she came here. And what do you do? You act very surprised. So I think about it-why would you be surprised? Well, because she said it was from Clement. But if Clement doesn’t know she was here then he doesn’t know she delivered anything. Right?… You with me?”
“You losing me on the turns,” Mr. Sweety said.
“I know you’ve got some questions,” Raymond said, “but how much do you really want to know? See, all we want is the gun. Now. Listen very carefully. If we have to look for the gun, then what we’re gonna find is a murder weapon in your possession. Then, you not only get your rights read, you get to see a warrant for your arrest on the charge of murder in the first degree, which carries mandatory life. On the other hand… you listening?”
“I’m listening,” Mr. Sweety said. “What’s the other hand?”
“If you tell us of your own free will some person gave you the gun but you don’t know anything about it, whose it is, how it was used, anything; then what we have here is still another example of citizen cooperation and alert police work combining their efforts to solve a brutal crime… You like it?”
Mr. Sweety was silent, thinking.
He said, “He don’t know she gave this piece to anybody. I mean Clement. That what you saying?”
“That’s correct.”
“Where does he think it is?”
“Well, I don’t think she lifted it off him,” Raymond said. “Do you?”
“No way.”
“So I think he gave it to her to get rid of and she laid it off on you. It isn’t as easy as it sounds, throwing a gun in the river. Maybe she was coming here anyway, you know? Or maybe she told you to get rid of it. I’m not gonna ask you that. But if she did, that puts a burden on you. You got to take it out in your car somewhere… somebody finds the gun, remembers seeing you… the way it always happens. You been around, you know these things. Who wants to be associated with a hot gun. No, I don’t blame you.” Raymond waited a moment. “You coming to a decision?”
Mr. Sweety didn’t answer.
“Where’s the gun, at your house?”
“Down the basement.”
“Let’s go get it.”
“I got to call Anita, have her come over here.”
Raymond and Hunter looked at each other but didn’t say anything. They waited for Mr. Sweety to come back from the phone that was halfway down the bar, by the cash register.
Raymond said, “You feel better now?”
Mr. Sweety said, “Shit…”
They got back into the blue Plymouth, Raymond carrying a brown paper bag. He said, “It’s work, you know it? It wears you out.”
Hunter said, “That’s why they pay you all that money. Now where?”
“Let’s go see Sandy. No, drop me off and get this to the lab. But don’t tag it yet, I mean with any names on it.”
Hunter held the key turned, his foot mashing the accelerator. “Fucking car…”
Raymond waited patiently. He thought back, reviewing the conversation with Mr. Sweety, pleased. Then said, “I think I left the envelope on the bar,” and patted his breast pocket. “Yeah, I did.”
“You need it?”
“From Oral Roberts,” Raymond said. “No, I’ll probably be hearing from him again.”
A HAMTRAMCK POLICE DETECTIVE by the name of Frank Kochanski picked up his phone and said to Toma, “Where you been?”
“I’m still at the hospital.”
“This character you’re looking for’s at the Eagle. We saw his car by there and I give Harry a call. Harry says yeah, he’s in there having a few pops, making phone calls.”
“The Eagle?” Toma said, surprised that the man was still in the vicinity of Skender’s apartment, little more than a mile from it.
“The Eagle, on Campau,” Kochanski said. “How many Eagles you know?”
Toma called the bar. Harry said, “Yeah… no, wait a minute, he’s picking up his change…”
Toma walked down the hall to the third-floor visitor’s lounge where the male members of the Lulgjaraj family were waiting. They watched him unfold a city map, study it for a few moments, then place it on the coffeetable and draw a circle with his finger to take in, roughly, Hamtramck and the near east side of Detroit. He said, “He’s somewhere in here. But he stays most of the time downtown; I think he’ll go there. If he knows how, he’ll take the Chrysler. If he doesn’t, he may take McDougall.” Toma paused. His finger began tracing the line that indicated East Grand Boulevard. “But he could go this way, too, from Joseph Campau. We don’t know him, so we have to look for him all these places.”
About forty minutes later Skender opened his eyes to the beeping sound. It stopped and Toma was standing close to him, touching his face.
“Go back to sleep.”
At the public phone Toma called his service, was given a number and dialed it.
“Where is he?”
“In a house on Van Dyke Place. We’re at the corner of Van Dyke and Jefferson,” the voice said in Albanian.
“Wait for me,” Toma said.
“But if he comes out…” the voice began.
“Kill him,” Toma said.
“I think what happens to niggers is they come up here and find out they can talk back to you,” Clement said, “so all they do then’s argue. I tole your nigger woman I know she’s upstairs. I called her office enough times they finally told me she’s home. So what’re you arguing with me for?”
“I’m never home to clients,” Carolyn said. “I’ll see you in my office or, more likely, the Wayne County Jail, but not here. So, Clement, you’re going to have to leave.”
“All you’re doing’s reading. You sick? I see a person in their bathrobe the middle of the day I figure they work nights or they’re sick.”
Carolyn took off her glasses, brought her bare feet down from the hassock and placed the glasses inside the book as she closed it on her lap. “I’m going to argue with you, too, if you don’t leave,” Carolyn said, “and I promise you’ll lose.”
Clement didn’t seem to hear her. He was looking around the room, at the abstract paintings, at the bar, his gaze moving past Carolyn sitting in the bamboo chair in a beige and white striped caftan, to the beige couch that was covered with pillows in shades of blue. He walked over and let himself fall back into it, his boots levering up and then down, hitting hard on the Sarouk carpet. He pulled a pillow out from behind him, getting comfortable.
“Shit, I’m tired. You know it?”
Carolyn watched him, curiosity soothing impatience, calming her as she studied the man half-reclined on her couch, his head bent against the backrest cushion, fingers shoved into tight pockets now. The Oklahoma Wildman. Born somewhere between fifty and one hundred years too late.