“Yes…”
“Do you see any reason to tell him anything else? Maybe get him excited, as you say, picky and irritated? No, just say, ‘Honey, I think I ought to tell you something. I was afraid to throw the gun in the river, so I gave it to your friend Mr. Sweety.’ You can say, you know, looking at him very innocently, ‘Was that all right, honey?’ And he’ll say sure, fine. See, keep it simple. But you’re gonna have to do it pretty quick. Next time you see him, or if he calls.”
“God, I don’t know,” Sandy said, “I got a feeling I’m in awful deep trouble.”
“Well, you go with a guy like Clement you’re gonna have some close ones,” Raymond said. “What I’d do, if you want my advice, I’d tell him and then split. Go find you a young Gregory Peck somewhere. Twenty-three, Sandy, you’re not getting any younger.”
“Thanks a lot,” Sandy said.
“On the other hand you stick with Clement, you have a good chance of not getting any older,” Raymond said. “So there you are.”
RAYMOND SAID, “What’re we having, a telethon or something?”
Hunter was on the phone. He raised his eyes and one hand, motioning to Raymond, but didn’t catch him in time. Raymond was moving from the squadroom door to the coffeemaker.
Norb Bryl was on the phone. He was saying it wasn’t the tires, it was the wheel alignment; he said you pay thirty-four hundred dollars for an automobile you expect it to go in a straight line, was that right or wrong?
Wendell Robinson was on the phone, sounding pleasant but in mild pain, saying he had been taking cold showers to keep himself civil; but if someone’s old man didn’t go back on nights pretty soon, then maybe it wasn’t meant to be.
Maureen Downey was on the phone, saying okay, fine, swivelling around from her desk as she hung up to watch Raymond pour a cup of coffee.
“There was a shooting, three o’clock this afternoon. On Van Dyke Place.”
Raymond stopped pouring.
“MCMU told us about it, so I called the precinct, just now,” Maureen said, “and the sergeant read me the PCR. Three unidentified males, all in dark clothes, dark hair, shooting at an unidentified male driving a light blue older-model car that might be a big Ford or a Lincoln.”
“Or a Mercury Montego,” Raymond said. “Did he shoot back?”
“They think so, but no reported injuries or fatalities. MCMU’s checking the hospitals.”
“How was it reported?”
“The call came from the woman next door to two-oh-one, where the shooting took place-in the driveway and out on the street-and we know who lives at two-oh-one, don’t we?”
“They talk to Carolyn Wilder?”
“They said they talked to the maid. She said Ms. Wilder wasn’t home. But then-”
Hunter, off the phone, said, “We got him by the ass!” and Raymond looked over. “It’s the gun, man. Absolutely no question. I’m gonna go pick it up.”
Maureen waited for Raymond to turn back to her. He said, “I’m sorry. What?”
“Carolyn Wilder phoned almost an hour ago. She wants you to call.”
“Okay.” He picked up his coffee mug and started to move away.
“At home,” Maureen said.
Raymond stopped and looked at Maureen again, appreciating her timing. “You ask her if she heard the shots?”
“No, but I’ll bet you she did.”
Raymond went to the unofficial lieutenant’s desk beneath the window and dialed Carolyn’s number.
“I hear you had some excitement.”
“I’d like to see you,” Carolyn said.
“Fine. I’ll be leaving here pretty soon. You sound different.”
“I’ll bet I do.”
Now he was puzzled. Her voice was low, yet colder than he had ever heard it. “Marcie see what happened?”
“No, but I did.”
Raymond didn’t say anything.
“Who are they?” Carolyn said.
And now he wasn’t sure how much to tell her. “Clement picked on the wrong one this time and it snapped back at him. Why, you want to file his complaint?”
“I would like to laugh,” Carolyn said, “but my mouth hurts. Before this sounds even more like farce, why don’t we save it until you get here.”
Raymond hung up, still puzzled. He said to Norb Bryl, who was standing now, clipping several pens into his shirt pocket, “What exactly is farce?”
“It’s a used car that’s supposed to drive in a straight line,” Bryl said, “but pulls to the left. If you don’t need me I’ve got something to do.”
The door closed behind Bryl, then opened again as Hunter came in with a brown paper bag that was grease-stained and could be a bag of doughnuts. He placed it on the lieutenant’s desk, pleased. “No prints, but this is the little mother that did it. Absolutely no question.”
Raymond looked across the squadroom. He said, “Maureen, if you want to go, you can, it’s pretty late; but if you want to stay, lock the door. Okay?”
Wendell said, “How ’bout me?”
“Same thing. You want to leave, go ahead.”
Hunter said, “Shit, you got his interest now. Afraid he might miss something.”
Maureen came over, hesitantly, and sat at Bryl’s desk.
Hunter said, “How come you don’t ask me if I want to leave?”
“You’re already in it,” Raymond said. He looked at Maureen and then Wendell. “We took the gun off this guy Sweety without a search warrant. I’m not worrying it’s gonna kick back at us, that’s not what I’m getting to. I wanted to find out, you know, without typing up all the papers and pleading with some judge, if this is really the gun or not. All right, we find out it is. No question about it-our friend up in the lab checks it out without entering any names and numbers in the book-we have a murder weapon. Now… if we take it to the prosecutor at this point he says, fine, but how do we prove it’s Mansell’s gun? We say, well, if we’re very persuasive we can get this guy by the name of Sweety to cop. The prosecutor says, who’s Sweety? We tell him he’s a guy that used to run with Mansell, he’s done time and now he’s dealing drugs. The prosecutor says, Jesus Christ, that’s my witness? We say, well, we can’t help the kind of people we have to associate with in this business; he’s all we got.”
“Sandy,” Maureen said.
“Right, we’ve also got Sandy,” Raymond said, “but you can pull all her fingernails out, which she hasn’t got much of anyway, and she’ll still never say a word. Not out of loyalty, but because Clement scares the shit out of her.”
“How about if I talked to her?” Maureen said.
“Sure, why not? I’m open to suggestions. But let me review what we’ve got. An arm that could be Clement’s sticking out of a car at Hazel Park. Possibly the same car at the scene, which Sandy has the keys to and we say she gave to Clement. Clement’s lawyer, Miss Wilder, looks at us and says, ‘Yeah? Prove it.’ We can put Clement at another scene, three years ago, where slugs were dug out of a wall from a Walther P .38”-Raymond picked up the paper bag-“right here, our murder weapon. But how do we show it belongs to Clement?”
There was a silence.
Maureen said, “Wow. I think I know what you’re gonna do.”
Again a silence. Raymond was aware of the four of them sitting in an old-fashioned police office under fluorescent lights, plotting.
Hunter said, “I don’t see no other way.”
Wendell said, “You want me to talk to the brother, Mr. Sweety?”
“No, it’s my responsibility if anybody gets blamed. I’m gonna do it,” Raymond said. “At least try to arrange it. Wendell, you know Toma pretty well, the Albanians. Have a talk with him, like we’re thinking about busting him for the attempt, we’re watching him, you know, so he better not do anything dumb for the next couple days… Maureen, you want to take a shot at Sandy, go ahead. I think she wants somebody to talk to and, who knows…”