“He wanted the baby?”
Halftime grinned, poked at something on the table. Raymond said. “He already buying it things. Toys and stuff. Bought one of them fuzzy baby basketballs, you know? It was gonna be a boy.”
“How was he planning to support a family?”
Raymond shrugged. “Some way. Ayisha, she bragging like he gonna get tapped to play for some big school and they gonna be rich, but she don’t believe it neither.”
“It wasn’t true?”
“Nah.” Raymond shook his head. “Only dude around here got that kind of chance be my man Tyrell. He gonna make us famous. Put us on the map.”
I turned to Tyrell, who was polishing off his second Coke in the corner of the booth. “I watched you play,” I told him. “You’re smart and fast. You have offers?”
Tyrell stared at me for a moment before he answered. “Coach say scouts coming this season.” His voice was deep, resonant, and slow. “He been talking to them.”
Halftime’s name rang out; he went to the counter for the pizza. I looked around at the others, at their hard faces and at their eyes. Seventeen, eighteen: They should have been on the verge of something, at the beginning. But these boys had no futures and they knew it; and I could see it, in their eyes.
I didn’t ask where the money was coming from to pay me. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t ask what would happen to Tyrell if he didn’t get a college offer, or whether the others, the ones who weren’t on the squad, were still in school. So what if they were? Where would it get them?
I asked a more practical question. “Who’d want to kill Lomax?”
Raymond shrugged, looked at his homeboys. “Everybody got enemies.”
“Who were his?”
“Nobody I know about,” he said. “Except the cops.”
“Cops?” I looked at Raymond, at the other grim faces. “That’s what this is about? You think this was a cop job?”
Halftime came back, with a pizza and a pile of paper plates. Everyone reached for a slice but me; Raymond made the offer but I shook my head.
Raymond didn’t answer my question, gave Tyrell a look. Tyrell’s deep voice picked it up. “C and me was in a little trouble last year. Gas-station holdup. It was bull. Charges was dropped.”
“But them mothers didn’t let up,” Raymond said impatiently. “Tyrell, nobody care, but С been a pain in the cops’ butt for years. You know, up in their face, trash-talking. I tell him, man, back off, you leave them alone and they leave you alone. But he don’t never stop. С like to win. Also he like to make sure you know you lose. Cops was all over him after he get out.”
“And?”
“And nothing. They couldn’t get nothing else on him.”
“And?” I said again, knowing what was coining.
“I figure they get tired waiting for him to make a mistake and make it for him.”
I pulled on my cigarette. There was nothing left; I stubbed it out. I wanted to tell them they were wrong, they were crazy, that kind of stuff doesn’t really go on. But that would be pointless. They might be wrong, in this case, but they weren’t crazy and we all knew it.
“Anyone in particular?” I asked.
Raymond shook his head. “Cops around here, they run in packs,” he said. “Could be anyone.”
Two slices were left on the tray. Without discussion, and seemingly by general consent, Raymond and Tyrell reached for them.
“Okay,” I said. “Tell me about her.”
Tyrell looked away, as though other things in the room were more interesting than I was.
“Ayisha?” Raymond asked. He seemed to think about my question as he ate. “He can’t get enough of her,” he finally said.
“But you didn’t like her?”
“Nah, she okay.” He flipped a piece of crust onto the tray, sat back, and popped the top of a Sprite. “She sorta — you know. She got a smart mouth. And she been around.”
A couple of the other guys snickered. I wondered whom she’d been around with.
“She have enemies?”
“I don’t know. But like I say, everybody got them. Can’t always tell what you done to get them, but everybody got them.”
I left, trading phone numbers with Raymond. I took the homies’ numbers too, though I was less than certain that getting in touch with any of them would be as easy as a phone call. But I might want to talk to some of them, separately, later. Now, I wanted to talk to a few other people.
The first, from a phone booth down the street, was Lewis Farlow, the basketball coach who’d found the bodies. I called him at the high school, to find a time he’d be available. Half an hour, he told me. He knew about me; he’d been expecting my call.
Next I called the Yonkers P.D., to find the detective on the Lomax case. Might as well get the party line.
He was a high-voiced Irish sergeant named Sweeney. He wasn’t impressed with my name or my mission, and he wasn’t helpful.
“What’s to investigate?” he wanted to know. “That case has already been investigated. By real detectives.”
“My client’s not sure it was suicide,” I said calmly.
“Yeah? Who are you working for?”
“Friend of the family.”
“Don’t be cute, Smith.”
“I’m just asking for the results of the official investigation, Sweeney.”
The grim pleasure in Sweeney’s voice was palpable. “The official results are, the kid killed the girlfriend. Blam! Then he blew his own brains out. Happy?”
Start out with an easy one. “Whose was the gun?”
“The Pope’s.”
“You couldn’t trace it?”
“No, Smith, we couldn’t trace it. Numbers were filed off, inside and out. That a new one on you?”
“Seems like a lot of trouble to go to for a suicide weapon.”
“Maybe suicide wasn’t on his mind when he got it.”
“Why’d he do it?”
“How the hell do I know why he did it? You suppose it had anything to do with her being pregnant?”
“And what, his reputation would be ruined? Anyway, his friends say he wanted the baby.”
“Yeah, sure. Da-da.” Sweeney made baby noises into the phone.
“Sweeney—”
“Yeah. So maybe he did. And then maybe he finds out it isn’t his. You like that for a motive? It’s yours.”
“You have any proof of that?”
“No. Matter of fact, I just thought it up. I’ll let you in on something, Smith. I got better things to do than bust my hump to prove a kid with his brains in the dirt and the gun in his hand pulled the trigger.”
“I understand you guys knew this kid.”
“We know them all. Most of them have been our guests for short stays in our spacious accommodations.”
“I hear you couldn’t hold on to this one.”
“What, for that gas-station job?” He didn’t rise to the bait. “Way I look at it, it’s just as well. If we could hold them all as long as they deserve, the streets would be clean and I’d be out of a job.”
“Come on, Sweeney. Didn’t it steam you just a little when the kid walked? I hear it wasn’t the first time.”
“Matter of fact, it wasn’t.”
“Matter of fact, I hear there were cops who had this kid on a special list. Was he on your list, Sweeney?”
“Now just hold it, Smith. What are you getting at? I killed him because I couldn’t keep his ass in jail where it belonged?”
I’d made him mad. Good; angry men make mistakes.
“Not necessarily you, Sweeney. It’s just that I’ll bet there weren’t a lot of tears in the department when Lomax bought it.”
“Oh,” he said slowly, his voice dangerously soft. “I get it. You’re looking for a lawsuit, right?”
“Wrong.”
“Crap. The family wants to milk it. You find a hole in the police work, they sue the department. The city settles out of court; it’s got no backbone with these people. You drive off in your Porsche and I get pushed out early on half my stinking pension. That’s it, right?”