Three pairs of questioning eyes turned on me, but I was under strict orders to keep my mouth shut. Tony Freeman had told me that when I heard the news I’d better be surprised, but I’ve never been known for my propensity for role play.
“Knows all about what?” I asked ingenuously. “Who’s dead?”
Harmon Weston’s smoldering eyes drilled into me. “My son’s killer, that’s who. They found him somewhere over in Bellevue.”
“Is he dead for real?” Junior asked. “Did the cops get him? Did somebody shoot him?”
Suddenly accusatory, Emma Jackson turned on me as well. “You knew about this, didn’t you?”
“No,” I said, trying for total innocence. “I had no idea.”
My acting ability will never win an Academy Award. Emma shot me a withering look. “You expect us to believe that you, one of the detectives on the case, didn’t know a thing about this?”
Emma turned from me to Harmon Weston. “What happened?”
“A drug overdose,” he answered. “They think he committed suicide.”
She looked back at me, shaking her head disparagingly. “So the police didn’t even catch him.” She turned away from me and stared out the window while an uneasy silence settled over the car. No one spoke for several minutes while Junior Weston looked questioningly from one adult face to another.
Finally he caught my eye. “I’m glad he’s dead,” the child said. “I wanted him to be dead.”
I nodded, but I didn’t say anything else. I figured I was better off keeping my mouth shut.
We arrived at the Mount Zion Baptist Church a full hour and fifteen minutes before the two o’clock funeral. Already the neighborhood was dogged with traffic, including an ever-growing contingent of law enforcement vehicles from all over the state. They lined one side of Nineteenth Avenue for three full blocks.
The limo stopped in the front courtyard of the church behind a collection of gray hearses. Emma, Harmon Weston, and Junior Weston were whisked away into the church by three solicitous funeral attendants. They probably would have let me come along too, if I had pushed it, but I felt I had intruded enough. Undecided as to what to do next, I started toward the street to join forces with some of the other police officers who were scattered here and there on the sidewalk, talking together in small groups.
Halfway across the courtyard, a young black male sidled up to me. Staggering drunkenly, he was dressed in ragged, disheveled clothing. A battered baseball cap, worn sideways, was pulled down low on his forehead.
“Hey, man,” he whimpered to me. “You gots a dollar for a cuppa coffee?”
Before I could answer, a formidable African-American man, much older and dressed in an impeccable black suit along with spotless white gloves, appeared from nowhere.
“You get out of here now,” he told the kid firmly. “These folks are here for a funeral. We don’t need the likes of you hanging around begging.”
“I ain’t beggin‘,” the boy whined. He caught my eye for a fraction of a second, then dropped his gaze and stared at my feet. “I’m jes axing my friend Beaumont here if he gots ’nuff money to buy me some coffee.”
The deacon frowned, looking hard from the kid to me. “You know this young man, mister?”
He did seem vaguely familiar, and although I couldn’t place him right off the bat, he obviously knew me. I don’t make a habit of giving money to bums on the street, but then most bums don’t know me by name either. I reached for my wallet. The deacon shrugged and shook his head.
“You get away from here now, boy,” the deacon said firmly as he walked away. “I don’t want to see your face around here anymore.”
I handed the kid a dollar bill. “Don’t spend it all in one place,” I told him.
He pocketed the money, staggered a little, and grinned, but the urgency in his voice belied the drunken leer.
“Ron Peters says for me to talk to you right away. Only to you, and away from here. Down the hill on Madison at the deli in ten minutes.”
He shambled off in the opposite direction, meandering unsteadily from side to side and heading for the corner of the building that would allow him to avoid the growing collection of cops. I was still watching his slow progress when Sue Danielson materialized beside me.
“Don’t you know better than to give money to bums?” she demanded.
Maybe it was the sound of her voice that jogged the memory department of my brain. I knew then where I had seen that face before-on a rap sheet. My drunken bum was none other than Knuckles Russell minus his trademark four-inch Afro.
With no advance warning, one of Ben Weston’s missing student loan cosigners had magically reappeared, found by none other than Ron Peters, who had directed him straight to me.
“I’ve gotta go,” I said to Sue, backing away, heading for the door of the church.
“Where? I thought we could sit together.”
By rights, I should have invited her along, but Knuckles Russell had been very specific about that, and so had Ron Peters.
“To see a man about a dog,” I told her. “Don’t go away, Sue. I’ll be back.”
CHAPTER 24
I went into the church itself. There I met another black-suited, white-gloved man-a deacon presumably. I asked him for directions to the nearest rest room. There, after allowing a suitable interval, I ducked out through a back door that opened on to another parking lot. Hurrying over to Madison, I half walked, half jogged down the hill, knowing that eventually my bone spurs would exact a terrible price for such rash folly.
As I approached the appointed place, I wondered if the whole thing might be some kind of trick or if Ron Peters really was behind the mysterious message delivered by Knuckles Russell. If the news was that important, surely Ron would have come to convey it himself, wouldn’t he? Why trust a street-toughened gang member or even ex-member to carry missives back and forth between us? The closer I got to the deli in the swale at the bottom of the hill, the dumber I felt and the more tempted I was to call a halt and go back the way I’d come, but then I spotted Ron Peters’s K-car with its distinctive wheelchair carrier perched on top. It was parked on the street directly in front of the deli.
Inside, I found Ron Peters and Knuckles Russell seated in the far corner. Ron, alert and keeping watch, had positioned himself facing out. Knuckles, with his disheveled clothing straightened and minus the baseball cap, sat with his face averted and shoulders hunched, nursing a cup of coffee. Ron waved and motioned for me to join them. I stopped by the counter and picked up my own cup of coffee along the way.
“What’s going on?” I asked Peters as I sat down at the table. “I don’t have much time. I don’t want to miss the funeral.”
“I know you two have met before,” Ron Peters said, “but I don’t believe you’ve been properly introduced. Beau, this is Ezra Russell. Ezra, this is Detective Beaumont.”
I held out my hand. Ezra “Knuckles” Russell looked at it for a long moment before taking it. He nodded and shook hands but said nothing.
“What seems to be the problem?” I asked.
“Go on,” Ron Peters urged. “Tell him.”
“My friend’s dead,” Knuckles blurted, “an‘ I can’t even go to the funeral ’cause if I do, they’ll smoke me too.”
“Who’ll kill you?” I asked.
He raised his eyes and looked at me, unveiled distrust written on his face. “You maybe? And maybe this dude too? Ben says for us not to come back, no matter what. He says this be…this is our one chance to get away. But this One-Time here”-he motioned to Ron-“he says I gotta help. That otherwise Ben’s killer walks.”
I knew Captain Freeman had warned me to keep quiet, but if Harmon Weston already knew about Sam Irwin’s death, why shouldn’t I?
“Word’s out on the street that Ben Weston’s killer’s dead,” I told them.
Ron’s jaw dropped in surprise. “Really?”
“Who?” Knuckles Russell demanded.
“His name’s Sam Irwin.”