“No. Sweeney, that’s not it. I’m interested in what really happened to this kid. That’s what any good cop would be interested in, too.”
“You know what, Smith? You’re lucky I don’t know your face. Here’s some advice for free: Don’t let me see it.”
The phone slammed down; that was that.
Yonkers West High School filled the entire block, a sulking brick-and-concrete monster whose windows were covered with a tight wire mesh. I asked the security guard at the door the way to the gym. “I’m here to see Coach Farlow,” I said.
“You a scout?” he asked after me, as I started down the hall.
“No. You have something worth scouting?”
The guard grinned. “Come back tomorrow, at practice,” he said. “You’ll see.”
I found Lewis Farlow behind his desk in his Athletic Department office, a windowless, cramped, concrete-block space that smelled of liniment, mildew, and sweat. Dusty trophies shared the top of the filing cabinets with papers and old coffee cups. Here and there a towel huddled on the floor, as though too exhausted to make it back through the connecting door to the locker room.
I knocked, checked Farlow out while I waited for him to look up from his paperwork. He was a thin white man, smaller than his players, with deep creases in the sagging skin of his face and sparse, colorless hair that might once have been red.
“Yeah.” Farlow lifted his head, glanced over me swiftly with blue eyes that were bright and sharp.
“Smith.” I said.
“Oh, yeah. About Lomax, right? Sit down.” He gestured to a chair.
“The guard at the door asked me if I was a scout,” I said as I moved into the room, trying to avoid the boxes of ropes and balls that should have been somewhere else, if there’d been somewhere else for them to be. “He meant that big guy? Tyrell?”
Farlow nodded. “Tyrell Drum,” he said. “Best thing we’ve had here in years. Everybody’s just waiting for him to catch fire. You seen him play?” He looked at me quizzically.
“He was with Raymond Coe just now.” I explained. “You have scouts coming down?”
“I already had some stringers early last season. Liked what they saw, but the big guns didn’t get a chance to get here while Drum was still playing.”
“He didn’t play the whole season?”
“Sat it out.” One corner of Farlow’s mouth turned up in a smile that wasn’t a smile.
“Hurt?”
“In jail.”
“Oh,” I said. “The gas-station job?”
“You heard about that?”
“He told me. It was him and Lomax, right?”
“They say it wasn’t either of them. Charges were eventually dropped, but the season was over by then.”
“Did he do it?”
“Who the hell knows? If he didn’t, he will soon. Or something like it. Unless he gets an offer. Unless he gets out of here. Look, Smith: about this Lomax thing.”
Farlow stopped, turned a pencil over in his fingers as though looking for a way to say what he wanted. I waited.
“The guys are pretty upset,” Farlow said. “Especially Coe; he and Lomax were pretty tight. Coe’s got this half-assed idea that the cops killed Lomax. He’s sold it to the rest of them. They told me they were going to hire a private eye to prove it.”
“How come they told you?”
“I’m the coach. High school, that’s like a father confessor. Wasn’t it that way when you were there?”
“The high school I went to, all the kids were white.”
“You surprised they talk to me? They gotta talk to someone.” He shrugged. “I’m on their side and they know it. I go to bat for them when they’re in trouble. I bully them into staying in school. Coe wouldn’t be graduating if it weren’t for me.”
He threw the pencil down on the desk, slumped back in his chair. “Not that I know why I bother. They stay in school, so what? They end up fry cooks at McDonald’s.” Farlow paused, rubbed a hand across his square chin; I got the feeling he was only half talking to me. “Eighteen years in this hole,” he went on, “watching kids go down the drain. No way out. Except every now and then, a kid like Drum comes along. Someone you could actually do something for. Someone with a chance. And the stupid sonuvabitch spends half his junior year in jail.”
He looked at me. The half-grin came back. “Sorry, Smith. I get like this. The old coach, feeling sorry for himself. Let’s get back to Lomax. Where the hell was I?”
“The guys came to you,” I said. “They told you they wanted a P.I.”
“Yeah. So I told them to go ahead. Coe’s like Lomax was, a stubborn bastard. Easier to agree with than to cross. So I said go ahead, call you. He probably thinks I think he’s right, that there’s something fishy here. But I don’t.”
“What do you think?”
“I think the simple answer is the best. Sometimes it’s hard, but it’s the best. Lomax killed the girl and he killed himself.”
“Why?”
“Some beef, I don’t know. Old days, he’d have knocked her around, then gone someplace to cool off. Today, they all have guns. You get mad, someone’s dead before you know it. By the time he realizes what he’s done it’s over. Then? She’s dead, the baby’s dead, what’s he gonna do? He’s still got the gun.”
He reached for the pencil again, turned it in his hand, and watched it turn.
“A guy’s best friend turns up dead,” he said in a quiet voice, “he wants to do something. Hiring you makes them feel better. Okay.” He looked up. “So what I’m asking you is, go through the motions. You gotta do that; they’re gonna pay you for it. But try to wrap it up fast. The sooner they put this behind them the better off they’ll be.”
I had my own doubts about how easy it ever was to put a friend’s death behind you, but that didn’t make Farlow wrong.
“If there’s nothing to find, I’ll know that soon enough,” I said.
Farlow nodded, as though we’d reached an agreement. I asked him, “You found the bodies?”
“Yeah.” He threw the pencil down again.
“What did it look like?”
“Look like?”
“Tell me what you saw.”
Farlow’s bright eyes fixed me. He paused, but if he had a question he didn’t ask it.
“She’s lying on her back. Just this little spot of blood on her chest; but God, her eyes are open.” He stopped, licked his dry lips. “Him, he’s maybe six feet away. Side of his head blown off. Right side; gun’s in his right hand. What do you need this for?”
“It’s the motions,” I said. “What kind of gun?”
“Automatic. Didn’t the police report tell you?”
“They won’t let me see it.”
“Jesus, don’t tell Coe that. Is that normal?”
“Actually, yes. Usually you can get someone to tell you what’s in it, but I rubbed the detective on the case the wrong way.”
“Jim Sweeney? Everything rubs him the wrong way.”
“How about Lomax?”
“You mean, Coe’s theory? There’s not a cop in Yonkers who wouldn’t have thrown a party if they could make something stick to Lomax. Backing off wasn’t something he knew how to do. They all hated him. But I don’t think Sweeney any more than anyone else.”
“Tell me about Lomax. Was he good?”
“Good?” Farlow looked puzzled; then he caught on. “Basketball, you mean? He was okay. He could wear better guys out, is what he could do. He’d get up for balls he couldn’t reach and shoot shots he couldn’t make, even after the bell. He was everywhere, both ends of the floor. Bastard never gave up.”
“Did he have a future in the game?”
“Lomax? No.” There was no doubt in Farlow’s voice. “Eighteen years in this place. I’ve only seen two or three that could. Drum is the best. An NCAA school could make something out of him. Right school could get him to the NBA. Even the wrong school would get him out of here.” I thought back to the concrete playground, to the eyes of the boys around the pizza-parlor table. Here, I had to admit, was a good place to get out of. “But Lomax? No.”