Drysdale paused in the questioning. “All right,” he said, “now we’re where the talk with Mr Medina has turned to the alleged Valenti/Raines assault on you. Is that correct?”
It wasn’t a question on the typed list, but it was so natural that Fred didn’t seem to notice.
“Yes.” True.
“And Mr Medina said he represented Mr Raines?”
Fred didn’t answer.
“Mr Treadwell?”
“That’s not one of the questions.”
Drysdale settled back in his seat, not pushing it yet. “Fred, we’re corroborating the events of last Friday night, right? You want to look at your own Statement of Facts? You mention Valenti and Raines.” He was all reason. “I’m not getting back to that case-I’m verifying the facts in this statement.”
“But it wasn’t one of the questions.”
Drysdale smiled. “Come on, Fred. So I missed one. I made a mistake, but if you want, we can stop now. If you don’t answer this question I don’t see where we can go from here.”
The sweat had come back to Treadwell’s forehead. “All right,” he said finally. “What was the question again?”
“Medina said he represented Raines, yes or no?”
“Yes.” True.
“But he told you he had no formal connection to that case.” Drysdale went from the questions to the Statement of Facts. “He said he wanted you to know about the damage that just accusing somebody can do to their life?”
“Yes.” True.
“And he wanted you to know that because he thought you were falsely accusing Valenti and Raines of beating you up?” Good, they were way off the question list now.
“Yes.”
“And then he grabbed your dog, Poppy, was it?”
Treadwell swallowed, off the list himself now, remembering. “Yes. He was just petting it…”
“And he broke its neck?”
“Yes. Yes. He just…” He hung his head, suffering through it again.
“He broke your dog’s neck because he thought you were falsely accusing Valenti and Raines?”
“No! I mean, yes!”
“Yes, he thought it, or yes, you had falsely accused them?”
Treadwell was looking around, panic setting in. “He did it to threaten me,” he said, “to threaten my life.”
“If you didn’t retract your story?”
“Yes.” True.
“Your story? Your true story about Valenti and Raines?”
“Yes, he just-”
“Your story about Valenti and Raines is true, then, is that correct?”
“Yes! Yes, it’s true. That part is true.”
False. False. False.
“They did beat you?”
“Yes.” False. “He killed Poppy, and they beat me.” False. “Why don’t you believe me? He killed my Poppy.” Fred was slumped on his arms over the table. He raised his head. “He killed my Poppy.”
Drysdale reached over and patted his hand. “I believe you, Fred. He killed your Poppy.”
Fred put his head back down on the table. Drysdale kept patting his hand, feeling dirty and sad. “I think we’re done here,” he said to the technician. “You can unhook him.”
A rust sky presaged an uneasy dusk.
Lace was wearing an army-surplus all-weather jacket and, collar up against the cold, walked the periphery of Holly Park alone. From time to time he’d nod at one or another of the small groups of younger men hanging on stoops or by their wheels, but no one asked him to join them, or offered much more than a cock of the head. Jumpup was over to Lorethra’s house, inside, with her and her mama and the little ones. Lace, he’d looked in at Baker’s Mama, but she had come back from the hospital with a bottle and it was way down already.
He passed Dido’s old cut-his old cut-crossing the street away from it, making clear he understood the new territory. He stopped, hands in his pockets, and was startled by a hand on his shoulder. He turned around.
“Easy, my man.”
Samson had backed three steps away. His dreadlocks hung like thick cobwebs around the obsidian, small-eyed, expressionless face. Lace’s heart was pumping pretty good.
As though they’d been having a conversation all this time, Samson said, “Three ways it can go.”
Lace shook his shoulders loose, the casual attitude. He knew how Samson was. Like an animal, you show any fear around him and he attacks. “What is?” Lace said.
“The Man be lookin’, askin’ around maybe, sometimes the wrong stories get out.”
“I got no stories.”
“No. See? That’s one way it can go. You got no story, maybe you hang in the cut, run with me.” Samson’s teeth showed yellow. “Same ol’. Back to it, right?”
He stepped closer. There was a brightness in the tiny eyes as though he’d been using his product. Dido didn’t go in for that when he was working. Well, Samson wasn’t Dido, and Lace had better get used to that.
“Other story,” Samson said, “is the con-be talkin’ about taking over the cut, how Dido best be movin’ on, like that. Come down to blood.”
Lace was thinking that if Louis Baker had wanted the cut, and killed Dido, wouldn’t he have stayed to hold the claim? But he said, “What’s three?”
A cold wind from behind Lace blew some leaves and papers up the street. Samson squinted into it at Lace, his eyes even smaller, glinting. “Be no three,” he said. “Only two stories. Be no one tellin’ any third stories is what I’m saying.”
Lace wondered if the gun that had been used on Dido, the one Lace had originally assumed had been Louis Baker’s, whether the gun-Samson’s-was still in the cut, if he could find it and get his hands on it. He clenched his fists inside the pockets of the jacket, released them, fighting the shivering that was threatening to take over. “I hear you,” he said. “Hey, I hear you. It’s casual.”
Chapter Nineteen
The picture of Eddie was still on Frannie’s dresser. She got home from work and, changing into a sweatshirt and some jeans, noticed for the first time that things weren’t fitting the same. She reached for a dab of perfume and saw the photograph of Eddie.
She stopped, her hand still outstretched. Something curled up inside her. Eddie had been caught climbing up into a friend’s pickup down by Dune Beach. One leg was up on the tailgate and he’d just been turning around to answer as Frannie had yelled something at him. He was smiling his two-hundred-watt smile and his hair was blown every which way, his jacket collar turned up. She’d enlarged the picture to eight by ten and it hadn’t been perfectly focused, so there was a graininess to it that for some reason added to its immediacy.
Forgetting the perfume, she watched her hand go to the frame, and she brought the picture back to the bed, where she sat holding it on her lap.
Eddie looked about eighteen in the picture, impossibly young. She closed her eyes.
It was hard to imagine that they’d been the same age. Eddie now stopped forever only eight months older than the photograph. Frannie felt she’d aged a lifetime.
But the pregnancy kept things in real time. The baby, Eddie’s baby, growing inside her so slowly that it had hardly changed her yet.
There he was-her man-waving back to her. Daring to claim back a little space, charming her so she’d let him back in.
The grief over Eddie’s death had affected her differently than she’d have thought. The only way she found she could cope without crying all the time was to put him, put their life together, out of her mind. Actively not to remember how it had been, how they’d been together. Move on. Look ahead.
Or, the few times she’d let down, allowed his memory back into her mind, the anger would overtake her. Why did he have to go meddle in things that weren’t his business? She thought she’d loved his idealism. But that’s what had gotten him killed, and she tried to convince herself that she even hated him for being that way, because it was what took him away from her. Why did she have to have met him in the first place? It wasn’t fair.