“Skender says, ‘If someone kills my brother and I do nothing, then I am nothing. I can never’-how’d he say it?-‘put my face out among my people.’ ”
“That’s the way he talks?”
“Listen, they’re very serious. They get into one of these blood feuds, they have to hide out to stay alive. That’s why Skender has the secret room. He built it himself four years ago.”
“I think he’s giving you a bunch of shit,” Clement said, digging into his dressing.
“Really.” Sandy was wide-eyed. “I saw the room again. It’s hidden down in the basement behind a cinderblock wall that doesn’t even have a door.”
“Yeah? How you get into it?”
“He turns this switch that’s like part of the furnace, up above it, and the wall-you hear this motor hum-and part of the wall comes open, real slow. That’s where the safe is… with forty thousand dollars inside.”
“He show it to you?”
“He told me it’s in there.”
“Uh-huh,” Clement said. “Well, if it’s a secret room, what’d he even let you in there for?”
Sandy got up and went into the kitchen. She came back with her purse. “I’ve been trying to tell you I went out with him last night, but you were into your thinking time. Who am I? I’m not important. Well, take a look at this, buddy.” Sandy brought a small blue-felt box out of her purse, opened it and placed it next to Clement’s beer glass-where the overhead light would reflect off the diamond in tiny glints of color.
“Skender wants to marry me.”
Clement chewed, swallowed, took a sip of beer and sat back with the ring pinched between his fingers.
“What’s it worth?”
“Almost four thousand.”
“Bullshit.”
“You a diamond expert now? I had it appraised over at the RenCen. That’s where I went while you were thinking. It’s worth three thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. Plus tax.”
“He proposed to you?… What’d you tell him?”
“I said I’d have to ask my brother.”
Before he left the apartment Clement went into Del Weems’ closet and picked out one of his sports jackets, the pink and yellow and green Lily Pulitzer model. He took it down to the lobby with him, handed it across the desk to Thomas Edison, the doorman, and said, “Hey, Tom, this is for you. Case I don’t see you again.”
The doorman, who had seen the coat on Del Weems throughout the past summer, said, “You leaving us?”
“Yeah, time to move on. Feel like I’m living in a fish bowl-people watching every move I make.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t know as I can take this coat.”
“Don’t be bashful,” Clement said. “It’s for letting me use your car… shit, for being a good guy. I’ll tell you something. I know white people that’ve been personal friends of mine for years I couldn’t count on like I have you. You wear it and watch all the colored girls’ eyes light up.”
It was nearly eight o’clock and Thomas Edison was going off duty. The night man was standing with him at the desk. They watched Clement walk over to the bank of elevators and get in, going down to the garage. As the door closed, Thomas Edison said to the night man, “What did he say to me?”
“What you think he said,” the night man answered. “It was mighty white of you, boy.”
Thomas Edison took the card out of his pocket that the black detective-Wendell Robinson was the name-had given him, picked up the phone and dialed the number on the card for Homicide, Squad Seven.
He said, “That redneck motherfucker you looking for’s driving a ’76 Mercury Montego, light blue, old beat up piece of shit… What?… Wait now, I’ll tell you what. You ask me one question at a time, my man, and I’ll see if I can give you the answers. How that be?”
RAYMOND CAME OUT of Sweety’s Lounge and walked up to the house next door, 2925, the lower flat. Dull light showed in the windows; the porch was dark. He rang the bell. The black man in the velour bathrobe who opened the door said, “How you doing?” stepping aside. “Come on in.”
Raymond wondered if the guy thought he was someone else. He walked in, smelled incense and turning saw clear plastic covers on the furniture, heard Motown music he couldn’t identify coming from somewhere in back, saw a photograph in an illuminated frame of a young man with long light-brown hair parted in the middle and a full beard. Raymond came all the way around to face the black man, Mr. Sweety, standing now with the door closed behind him, Mr. Sweety raising a hand to rub his face thoughtfully and giving Raymond a flash of gold rings.
“You’re not working tonight,” Raymond said.
“Yeah, I’m working. I just ain’t working yet.” He was studying Raymond, eye to eye with him, though Mr. Sweety was much heavier and when Raymond looked at the dark velour robe trimmed in beige and red he thought of draperies. Mr. Sweety said, “We ain’t gonna bullshit each other, are we? You look like you might chew some plug, officer, but I doubt if you smoke what I got.”
Raymond was showing his I.D. now. As he said his name his beeper went off.
Mr. Sweety said, “I like that. Got sound effects. You want to use the phone it’s in the hall there.”
When Raymond came back in the room Mr. Sweety was sitting at one end of the couch with his legs crossed, smoking a cigarette. He said, “I didn’t think you was the dope squad. They come in, you should see the outfits, shirt open down to here, earrings, some of ’em…”
Raymond sat down across from him. He looked at the photo in the illuminated frame again.
“What kind of car you drive?”
“Eldorado. You want the license? S-W-E-E-T-Y.”
“You own a ’76 Montego?”
“No, never did.”
“You know anybody who does?”
“Not offhand.”
“How’s your buddy Clement Mansell doing?”
“Oh, shit,” Mr. Sweety said, tired, shaking his head. “I knew it.”
“What’s that?”
“I mean I was afraid we gonna get to him. I haven’t seen the wildman in, I believe a year or so. Man runs too fast. I settle down, give up that craziness.”
“You saw his girlfriend the other day.”
“Oh, yeah, Sandy come in, Sandy like her weed. She come in time to time.”
“Sandy tell you why he did the judge?”
“Sandy don’t tell me nothing. Little jive chick run in run out.”
“We can close you down,” Raymond said.
“Man, I know that.”
“Send you out to DeHoCo for a year. I thought you might want to trade.”
“What am I gonna trade you? I don’t have nothing to give’s what I’m saying.”
“The little jive chick ran in,” Raymond said, “but she didn’t run right out again, she stayed a while. Didn’t she?”
“Sampling the goods. You know women, they like to shop.”
Raymond hesitated, then took a chance. “How come she doesn’t want Clement to know she was here?”
The question caught Sweety unprepared. Raymond saw it, the startled look in the man’s eyes, there and then gone.
“You seem confused. What’s the problem?”
“Ain’t any problem.”
“Why would Clement care if she came here?”
“I wouldn’t know if he does or he don’t, where his head’s at these days.”
Get off of it, Raymond thought. His gaze moved to the Scandinavian-looking guy in the photo and back to Mr. Sweety. “Why do you think he killed the judge?”
“I don’t know as he did.”
“Yeah, he did,” Raymond said. “But he didn’t have anybody driving for him. That make sense to you?”
“Man, come on, I don’t know nothing, I don’t want to know nothing.”
“What reason would he have?”
Mr. Sweety sighed. “You have to ask him that.”
“I did,” Raymond said.
“Yeah?… What’d he say?”