“A few questions,” Something Else said, while Something smiled. The one talking was the black one, he had shiny white teeth. When the white one smiled he showed stained brown teeth. Like they was negatives of each other, Rex thought, and missed the question, didn’t even know they’d asked one until the room got quiet. Hell, he thought, and he said, “Say again?”
“Come on, Rex, it’s not hard. What did Tick Landry say to you this afternoon?”
“The Landry boy? He ain’t said nothing.”
“When you came in, he was going out. Running out, like he was doing something bad. He was, Rex. He ditched a gun that killed an old lady who wouldn’t give up her handbag. Where’s the gun, Rex?”
“How the hell I’m supposed to know?”
“Isn’t that what he told you?”
“Ain’t told me nothing. Just stood a minute, then went on down the steps. You telling me he killed a old lady?”
“We sure are.”
“No way he done that. He all right, that kid. Gotta have been one of his boys.”
“Well, you could be right, Rex. Have to say this, though: Doesn’t matter much to us. That whole crew’s garbage and we’re gonna sweep ’em up. Might be another one who shot the old lady, but Landry’s the one who was running scared that night. That’s what we call ‘suspicious behavior’ in our line of work. All we have to do now is connect him up with that gun. Only we don’t have the gun.”
“I sure as hell ain’t got it either.”
“But he told you where it was.”
“Fuck he did. Why would he do that?”
“Those boys, they look up to you. You did a dime at Greenhaven, Rex; that makes you someone on this block. Maybe you’re even running with them, in a fatherly way.”
“Me? Nuh-uh, man. I’m clean since I got out.” The sweat started on his lip again, and his back, too.
“Are you? You’d better be. Let me tell you something.” The cop stopped smiling. “I was new in this precinct when you went in. I’ve seen a lot of garbage like you go in and come out over the years, and I’m getting goddamn tired of it. In and out, in and out. I’m telling you: If you’re running with these boys, Rex, my man, you are fucked.”
That was the first day. The second day was pretty much the same. He found the pair of them waiting on the stoop when he got home from work.
“Where’s the gun, Rex?” This time it was Something, the white one, doing the talking. Rex preferred the black one, if they was gonna smile. All them brown teeth, shee-it.
“I don’t know.”
“Three people across the street swear you and the kid had a talk when he ran out of here. What did you talk about?
Not the gun, then what? The old lady, maybe, how it felt when he pulled the trigger?”
“Didn’t talk about nothing. Kid just move his mouth around, like he got words in there ain’t coming out. Then he go on down the stairs. Like I told you yesterday.”
“Yeah, that’s what you told us. We’re just having trouble believing you, is all.”
“Ain’t my fault.”
“Well, but see, what it is gonna be, it’s gonna be your problem, if you don’t start making sense soon. Like I told you, we have witnesses.”
“Across the street? What the hell kind of witnesses is that?”
The detective put his arm around Rex, like they was old pals. Rex felt the pressure building. He made himself not move.
“See, Rex,” the brown teeth said, “you’re on parole. Any trouble you get in now-like, say, assaulting an officer who’s just being friendly-that could be bad. What do you have, another eight left?” His free hand brushed dust from Rex’s jacket. “Rex, we want that gun. You say you don’t know where it is. We don’t believe you, but it could be. You might consider making it your business to know.”
“What the hell do that mean?”
The cop shrugged. “These boys. They look up to you. That’s all I’m saying.”
The third day they showed up at his job.
“Rex? You in trouble?” His boss came into the boiler room where Rex was laying down sawdust to soak up spilled oil.
“No,” he said, and added, “sir.”
Before he went in he was a carpenter. Used to build things, good solid things. Something real-something wouldn’t be, wasn’t for him. Coming out, world was different. Not easy for ex-cons to find work, and no chance of getting back in the union. But one of the contractors used to hire him from time to time, he had a cousin, super at a fancy East Side building. The cousin put Rex on the maintenance crew. Now he spread sawdust and hauled the garbage out.
“Because there’s two cops here,” his boss said. “They want to talk to you.”
Shit, Rex thought, but he didn’t say it, just went out to the service alley. “What you doing here?” he said into the two smiles.
“We want that gun, Rex.”
“I told you, I don’t know nothing about that gun.”
His boss was watching from the doorway.
“You shouldn’t of come here,” Rex told the cops. “I need this job.”
“And we need that gun. And funny, we find none of those boys seems interested in talking to us. Can you believe that? Good thing the Landry boy already talked to you.”
“He didn’t.”
“Well, then.” The white teeth smiled, the brown ones following like a shadow. “Then it’s a good thing he’s going to.” The two cops made a point to nod and wave to Rex’s frowning boss as they left.
That night Rex dreamed he was back inside. Not in his cell, but in one of them crooked, leaky passageways they got all over Greenhaven, connecting someplace you don’t want to be in to someplace you don’t want to go. The passageway was filled with garbage and he was digging through it, his heart pounding, fit to burst, things getting scarier and scarier as he went looking for something, he didn’t even know what. He could feel the pressure building, building. And before he got even close to finding anything, a bright white shape and its dark shadow came and swept all the garbage up, and him too, buried him in it.
He woke up all tangled in sweaty sheets. Shit, he thought.
Shit, and shit.
That day he didn’t get as far as work, not even as far as the corner, before Something and Something Else come swooping, one from the front and one from the back, surrounding him all by their two selves.
“Let’s take a ride downtown,” Something said through them damn brown teeth.
“What the hell for?”
“You’re a material witness, Rex. Maybe you remembered some details that might help us.”
“I ain’t remembered nothing because ain’t nothing for me to remember! The Landry boy never said nothing to me!”
“Not even lately?”
“I ain’t spoke to him lately.”
“Why not? I thought we agreed you would.”
“Didn’t agree about nothing! I ain’t spoke to the kid. Look, I can’t go downtown with you. I got to get to work.”
“That’s okay, Rex. We’ll call your boss. We’ll explain where you are.”
Rex looked at them, a matched set in different colors. Looked a couple of times. “Okay,” he said.
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, I tell you where the gun is.”
Because Rex had an idea, a great one, fucking genius.
Tell them a lie.
Why not? Say he seen someone, not the Landry boy and he wasn’t sure who, but someone, seen him drop a.45 in the basement. Make him up: tall kid, with one droopy eye. Not one of them rapper assholes from the corner. Someone he ain’t never seen before or since. Say, when he run into the Landry boy he’d been out to get some chips and beer, but when he come home from work earlier, he seen this tall kid then. Yeah. Yeah, that would work. Then he take them to the boiler room. They ain’t gonna find nothing, and he’d say, Well, shit, there’s where I seen him drop it. They’d be pissed, bust his balls that he ain’t told them before, but who gives a shit? After that, they’d go away, leave him alone.