SURPRISE
CHICKEN FAT!!!
Raymond would replay the scene, what happened next, and at first believe the guy was right outside because the timing was that good… sitting there looking at the typed words, wondering…
And the front window and the lamp exploded, the glass shattering and he was in darkness, instinctively rolling off the couch, catching a knee on the coffeetable, trying to yank the snub-nosed .38 out of his waistband that was tight on his hip, crawling toward the window now, the flat sound of reports reaching him, erupting through fragments of glass, thudding into the wall, six, seven shots-he got his legs under him, turned and ran for the door… down the hall, out the front entrance. Cars were going by on the park drive, headlights on, making faint humming sounds. He crossed Covington to the island, kept going, heard a car horn and brakes squeal and he was into the trees, in darkness, with no sense of purpose or direction now, no sounds except for the cars going past on the park drive.
In the apartment again he picked up the phone, began to punch buttons. He stopped, replaced the receiver. If Sandy was home with the Buick, what was Clement driving? Could it have been someone else? No. He sat in semidarkness, a light showing in the open doorway to the hall.
Raymond picked up the phone again and punched a number.
“Mary Alice, I just want to ask you a question, okay?… No, I don’t have time to get into that. Somebody called and you gave him my address. Did the guy have kind of a southern accent?… I know you didn’t know who it was. Mary Alice, that’s why you’re not supposed to give out… No, you just tell them you don’t know. Last night, did a lady call?…”
Jesus Christ, Raymond said. He put the phone, in both of his hands, in his lap and could hear her talking. He saw streetlight reflections in the jagged pieces of windowpane. Raising the phone again he heard her pause and said, quickly, “Mary Alice? Nice talking to you.”
He called Squad Seven. Maureen answered and he asked her to look in his book and give him Carolyn Wilder’s phone number. Maureen came back and said, “Six-four-five…”
And Raymond said, “No, that’s her office. Give me her home number. And the address.” He got out his pen and wrote on the back of the Oral Roberts envelope as Maureen dictated. Maureen said, “Why would she have an office in Birmingham if she lives on the east side?”
Raymond said, “You want me to I’ll ask her. But I got a few other questions first.”
He dialed Carolyn Wilder’s home number. Following the first ring her voice came on. “Yes?”
“You were waiting for me to call,” Raymond said.
“Who is this?”
He told her and said, “I’d like to talk to the Oklahoma Wildman, but I don’t know where he is.”
“He isn’t here.”
It stopped Raymond. “I didn’t expect him to be.”
There was a pause. “He was here,” Carolyn Wilder said. “He left a few minutes ago.”
Raymond said, “Carolyn, don’t move. You just stepped in a deep pile of something.”
CAROLYN WILDER’S HOME on Van Dyke Place, off Jefferson, had been built in 1912 along the formal lines of a Paris townhouse. During the 1920s and ‘30s it had changed from residence to speakeasy to restaurant and was serving a limited but selective menu-for the most part to Grosse Pointe residents who knew about the place and were willing to reserve one of ten tables a week in advance-when Carolyn Wilder bought it as an investment, hired a decorator and, in the midst of restoring a past splendor, decided to move in and make it her home.
Standing in the front hall, facing the rose-carpeted stairway that turned twice on its way to the second-floor hall, Raymond said, “It looks familiar.”
The young black woman didn’t say anything. She stood with arms folded in an off-white housedress, letting him look around, the lamplight from side fixtures reflecting on mirrored walls and giving a yellow cast to the massive chandelier that hung above them.
“You look familiar too,” Raymond said. “You’re not Angela Davis.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re… Marcie Coleman. About two years ago?”
“Two years in January.”
“And Mrs. Wilder defended you.”
“That’s right.”
“We offered you, I believe, manslaughter and you turned it down. Stood trial for first degree.”
“That’s right.”
“I’ll tell you something. I’m glad you got off.”
“Thank you.”
“How long ago was Clement Mansell here?”
There was a pause, silence. “Ms. Wilder’s waiting for you upstairs.”
“I was just telling Marcie,” Raymond said, “your house seems familiar, the downstairs part.” Though not this room with its look of a century later, plexiglass tables, strange shapes and colors on the wall, small areas softly illuminated by track lighting. “You do these?”
“Some of them.”
The room was like a dim gallery. He was sure that most of the paintings, not just some, were hers. “What’s this one?”
“Whatever you want it to be.”
“Were you mad when you painted it?”
Carolyn Wilder stared at him with a look that was curious but guarded.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I get the feeling you were upset.”
“I think I was when I started.”
She sat in a bamboo chair with deep cushions of some dark silky material, a wall of books next to her, Carolyn half in, half out of a dimmed beam of light. She had not asked him to sit down; she had not offered him a drink, though a cordial glass of clear liquid sat on the glass table close to her chair and a tea-table bar of whiskeys and liqueurs stood only a few feet from Raymond.
“Marcie married again?”
“She’s thinking about it.”
“I bet the guy’s giving it some serious thought too. She live here?”
“Downstairs. She has rooms. Most of it’s closed off though.”
He turned from the abstract painting over the fireplace to look at her: legs crossed in a brown caftan-some kind of loose cover-her feet hidden by a hassock that matched the chair.
“Are you somebody else when you’re home?”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“You go out much?”
“When I want to.”
“I have a hard question coming up.”
“Why don’t you ask it?”
“Are you working at being a mystery woman?”
“Is that the question?”
“No.” He paused.
He was aware that he had no trouble talking to her, saying whatever came to mind without wondering what her reaction would be or even caring. He felt a small hook of irritation, standing before the woman in shadow, but the irritation was all right because he could control it. He didn’t want to rush the reason he was here. He would hit her with it in time; but first he wanted to jab a little. She intrigued him. Or she challenged him. One or the other, or both.
He said, “Do you still paint?”
“Not really. Once in a while.”
“You switch from fine art to law… On impulse?”
“I suppose,” Carolyn said. “But it wasn’t that difficult.”
“You were divorced first-is that where the impulse comes in? The way the divorce was handled?”
She continued to stare at him, but with something more in her eyes, creeping in now, something more than ordinary interest. She said, “You don’t seem old enough to be a lieutenant; unless you have an M.B.A. and you’re somewhere in administration. But you’re homicide.”
“I’m older than you are,” Raymond said. He walked toward her chair, moved the hassock with his foot and sat down on it, somewhat half-turned from her but with their legs almost touching. She seemed to draw back against the cushion as he made the move, but he wasn’t sure. He could see her face clearly now, her eyes staring, expectant.