“He’s got hypertension,” said Mrs. Lloyd from the dining room. “These two are good boys.”
I stood by the door and watched him get into a green Plymouth with wide wheels and the rear jacked. He sat in the car with the door open and played soul music on the car radio. It was loud. Honey rolled up her window.
“Are you Mr. Lloyd?” asked Rocco.
“Yea-yah,” said the man.
The younger boy sat on a blue crushed-velvet chair directly across from his father. He looked more like his mother than the older boy.
“I know you,” said Tony Landis to Mr. Lloyd. “You got a numbers bank on Jessup Street. They call you Tramp.”
“Bust me. Search me. But please don’t bore me,” said Mr. Lloyd. “Not in my own home.”
I took a step toward Tramp Lloyd, but DiGiacomo stepped into my path with his back to me.
“Somebody’s gotta come upstairs with me,” said DiGiacomo quickly. “You mind coming, Mr. Lloyd? We’ve got a search warrant for your son Harrison’s rifle. It seems he bought a rifle after he was a convicted felon. You gotta witness what we do.”
“It ain’t here. I got a rifle, but it ain’t his. I’ll show you mine.”
Tramp Lloyd got up and led the way upstairs. Landis sat at the kitchen table and began to question Mrs. Lloyd in a conversational way. Augrine came up from downstairs.
“Nothing down there,” said Augrine, and he headed upstairs. “Not a thing.”
I sat next to the young boy who looked like his mother.
“How old are you?” I asked. “About sixteen?”
“Thirteen,” he said without looking at me.
“Harrison a good brother to you? He treat you right?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, but the tension in his cheeks and forehead showed that he had something more against his oldest brother than sibling rivalry.
“You know what first-degree murder is?”
“Yea-yah. What you sayin’? Harrison kilt somebody? I ain’t got nothin’ to do with him.”
“His rifle upstairs?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“I seen him take it out the attic round about yesterday. He had it in a suitcase in two and he carried it right out of here and he ain’t been back. I don’t know nothing about no first-degree murder.”
“Who was he with, that shorter dude, what’s-his-name?” I figured most dudes would be shorter to the Lloyd family.
“Yea-yah, Jack Stiggs.”
“The one with the green CPO jacket?” I figured Stiggs to be the one running without the rifle, the one in the jacket.
“If you be knowin’, why do you be axin’?”
“What time they leave?” I asked quickly and firmly.
“In the mornin’.”
“Where were they goin’?”
“I don’t be knowin’ his business and he don’t be knowin’ mine.”
“You’ve seen him use that rifle. I know that, and you know I know that.”
“One’st. That time he shot the black dog in the throat. With some white fur on his throat. With it over by the lots. One time, maybe ’bout last week.”
“Where does he keep the bullets?”
“With his shavin’ cream and stuff. What you axin’ me all this for?” He got up and walked out to join his brother.
I went upstairs. DiGiacomo, standing next to Tramp Lloyd, was holding a .30-.30 army surplus carbine rifle. They both watched Augrine pick through drawers in a small bedroom.
“Harrison’s room?” I asked.
DiGiacomo nodded.
On a bureau was a black vinyl shaving bag. I walked past DiGiacomo, picked up the bag, and emptied the contents on the bureau. Along with deodorant, shaving cream, and loose change, there was one .22 long-rifle round with an S stamped on it. I picked it up and held it near Mr. Lloyd’s eyes for emphasis.
“Where’s the attic?” I asked.
Mr. Lloyd pointed with his thumb to a spot above the bureau. Augrine climbed onto the bureau and pushed aside the wooden hatch.
“Is there a light switch up there?” Augrine asked. “Any light?”
“Over your head there’s a string,” said Tramp Lloyd.
Augrine hoisted himself into the darkness and in a few seconds had the light on. Papers rustled.
“I got the Sears bag and the sales slip,” he said, “but I don’t see a weapon up here.”
“I ain’t never seen no gun in this house e’cept mine. The one he’s holdin’,” said Tramp Lloyd.
Augrine jumped to the bureau and then the floor, and we all went downstairs. Landis had searched the entire downstairs and had finished questioning Mrs. Lloyd, and they were standing, shaking hands.
Landis said, “I got possible places he could be. He doesn’t own a green CPO jacket.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd,” said DiGiacomo, “the best thing Harrison can do is turn himself in. He’s a convicted felon and he’s got no business buying a gun at Sears. Understand? Besides, he’s in enough trouble missing sentencing. Understand that?”
Tramp scowled.
“I do,” said Mrs. Lloyd.
DiGiacomo gave Mrs. Lloyd a business card. “Call me,” he said, “if he contacts you.” DiGiacomo turned and left, with Landis and Augrine following.
I stayed in the doorway. “Hear about that cop getting shot and killed at the train station tonight?” I asked.
Mrs. Lloyd didn’t answer. There was a sudden hardness to her look now. She raised her eyebrows as if I had shortchanged her at the grocery store.
“A Wilmington police officer was shot in his brain tonight,” I said. “There’s a very large army of armed and dangerous policemen on the street. They’re what you’d call enraged. Harrison’s a prime suspect and their tempers are boiling over. A lot of the cops on the street were good friends of the one who was killed. See that woman in the police car with the red hair? She’s a deputy attorney general, a lawyer with the state. We’ve been assigned to work for her tonight to find Harrison before anybody else does. The safest place your son could be tonight is at the police station in responsible care. We don’t want anything ugly to happen. If he shows up, for God’s sake get him to us. For his own good.”
I walked out to the car before she could ask questions or respond. All eyes in the car were on me.
19
I got in the backseat. The cacophonous blare of the rock music from the green Plymouth was distracting. Instead of ordering the boys into the house or threatening to arrest them for breach of peace, DiGiacomo drove two blocks away from the noise and parked. I told him what I’d learned from little brother.
“Lloyd’s probably thrown the rifle away by now,” said Honey.
“Kids never throw guns away,” said Landis. “They maybe threw their clothes away. It’s been a few hours. But not the rifle. Let’s go see if Jack Stiggs is at his mother’s house. I know where they live. If we catch him off guard he might talk to us.”
“What do you think?” DiGiacomo asked me just the way he always used to. “What’s our next move?”
“I think you drop Honey and me off at the division, and the three of you go see Jack Stiggs’s mother and lay it on thick about cops full of vengeance roaming the streets. Maybe mama will bring her little lamb in so that we can talk to him about his friend Harrison Lloyd. Is that legal, Honey?”
“It sounds okay to me, but if Stiggs does come in on his own, don’t detain him or restrict his freedom, and the safest bet is to give him his warnings.”
“We understand,” said Landis.
DiGiacomo switched the ignition and it wouldn’t start. He tried and tried again. He cursed the mayor for buying economy cars and radioed for two black-and-white patrol cars. The first one came in less than five minutes, and the three detectives went off in it. Fifte
en minutes later our ride showed up, and Honey and I were driven to the Public Building by a uniformed man, a boy. He couldn’t have been seven in 1961.
The Public Building was practically empty. All the men called in were out chasing other leads or had been sent home to save on overtime pay.
Once we got upstairs to the hallway with my old locker in it leading to dicks, I saw Mr. and Mrs. Tramp Lloyd sitting on the oak bench that Figaro, Janasek, and the Darvi girl had been cuffed to. Between them sat a young black male bent forward at the waist, with his face in his hands. He was skinny, but he wasn’t tall like his father and brothers, and he didn’t wear eyeglasses. The black sheep. He was wearing a white nylon T-shirt, army fatigue pants, and high-top black sneakers. Converse All-Stars. He smelled like a sewer.
“Harrison,” I said.
He looked up lazily.
“Stand up,” I said.
He did so.
“You’re a lot shorter than your little brothers,” I said.
I walked up to him and patted him down. He came prepared for jail. Empty pockets. I thought about checking his underwear for hundred-dollar counterfeits.
“You’ve done the right thing, Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd. I’m going to take your son in the other room. Kindly wait here. Let’s go, Harrison.”
When we got into the main room I led him straight into the interrogation room, my favorite room in the whole world since I’ve been alive, if I ever start to rate rooms. It looked the same. Even the old manual typewriter looked as if it hadn’t been replaced. The only thing new I spotted was a Sony cassette recorder near the typewriter on the gray table. Metal folding chairs surrounded the table. The see-through mirror on the wall next to the polygraph room was in place just as I remembered it, fooling no one.
The sight of it all gave me a feeling I couldn’t suppress. It had a life of its own and it made my heart race. I was excited the second I walked toward that room with my prisoner in front of me. Just my prisoner and me and Honey makes three in a little room the way it was supposed to be.
“Harrison, I just hate you,” I said affably. He had that look of bewilderment when you first throw them off balance. “I hate your friends, too. And I think that tonight you are going to find out that you have one less friend in life than you think you have. Tonight you are about to find out that it’s every man for himself in this dog-eat-dog world. Which reminds me, Harrison, please don’t let me forget to ask you about a little incident involving a dog. It’s such a minor thing I could forget to ask you about it. Would you remind me about it, Miss Gold?”
“Excuse me,” said Honey as she followed us into the room. She positioned herself between Lloyd and me.
“Sure, go ahead,” I said. “She’s going to tell you your rights, boy. Listen up. And then I’m gonna tell you some things.”
“Harrison Lloyd,” said Honey, “you are under arrest for possession of a deadly weapon by a person prohibited and for failure to appear at sentencing. Do you understand that? Well, do you?”
“Yea-yah.”
“You are also a suspect in another crime, murder in the first degree of a police officer. Do you understand that?”
“Yea-yah,” but a little tighter in the larynx.
“Mr. Lloyd, you have the right to remain silent. Do you understand that?”
“Yea-yah.”
“Anything you do say to us can and will later be used against you in a court of law. Do you understand that?”
“Yea-yah.”
“You have the right to the presence of an attorney during questioning. Do you understand that?”
“Yea-yah.”
“If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you by the state free of charge to you. Do you understand that?”
“Yea-yah.”
“Understanding all of the above, will you freely and voluntarily answer our questions?”
No answer. He peeked up at me out of the side of his face. His lower lip hung down.
I waited. She waited. He said nothing.
“Harrison, my friend,” I said slowly and smiled and tried to look halfway amused. “What kind of bullet do you think we found in the dead dog in the lot? You know, the black dog with the white fur on its neck in the lot? Well, what do you think, buckaroo? Do you think we’re matching it with another bullet we found inside somebody’s head? Maybe you think another dog came along and ate that dead dog all up and that bullet, too?”
“Excuse me,” interrupted Honey with her patented edge to the voice. “We need a waiver. Understanding all of the above, will you freely and voluntarily answer our questions?”
He looked at me trying to size up the situation. I pressed to regain possession of my prisoner. “Harrison,” I said firmly, “if you’ve got nothing to hide from me, you better understand all of the above and begin answering my questions right quick.”
“Wrong!” Honey bellowed. “Lou, just be quiet. You can’t do that. There’s case law on it. He’s got to freely and voluntarily waive his rights. Mr. Lloyd, do you want a lawyer or not?”
He looked at me as if he had just found out that while I had four hearts showing, all I had in the hole was a diamond, and a low one at that.
“I ain’t saying nothin’. I want a lawyer.”
“What for?” I demanded. “Your lawyer going to hold your hand? What are you, a little Mary? Harrison, asking for a lawyer is the first, absolute first, sign of guilt. You’ve told me all I need to know, young man. Now, I’m giving you five seconds to change your mind and give your side of this. After that, I’m taking Jack Stiggs’s side. You know Stiggs, the one who wears a green CPO jacket. Don’t ever trust a man who wears a green CPO jacket. You know we hang murderers in this state. You get five seconds or I’m going with Stiggs, and that puts your neck in a world of trouble.”
“What that chump be knowing about me?” Lloyd jumped at the bait. “He think he be knowin’ my business, but he don’t be knowin’ my business, not my business.”
“Excuse me,” Honey said calmly, yet deliberately. “We absolutely must step outside, Lou. Please.”
I followed her out of the room and she shut the door behind us.
“You can’t ask him another thing. He’s asked for a lawyer. That’s the law, Lou. Period. The only thing left to do is book him on the weapons charge and for missing sentencing. Try talking to his parents. He might have confessed to them, like Gandry.”
“I’ll try, Honey Gold,” I said, “but look at ‘Tramp’ Lloyd. He wouldn’t tell us this place was on fire.”
She sighed. I patted her shoulder and then dropped my hand.
I took Harrison Lloyd to the basement lockup and, with help from a uniformed man, put him in the first cell. I went upstairs to the Lloyds, but my heart wasn’t in it; and while Mrs. Lloyd was subdued, Mr. Lloyd treated me like a hired hand. “It was her bright idea to bring him in here,” Tramp Lloyd said coldly. “What’s the difference you burn him on the street, or you give him a trial and then you burn him? He ain’t gonna get justice.”
I got DiGiacomo on the radio and told him what was what. He had nothing on his end. They had found Stiggs, but he refused to come in for questioning. He wanted a lawyer. DiGiacomo said he was coming in to handle the reports on Lloyd and to douse Lloyd’s body with benzidine to see if he had any of Shy’s blood on his body from when they stole Shy’s weapon. If he had any blood it would turn blue. I said I’d never heard of the stuff. He said it was a giant long shot, but maybe Lloyd would get cancer from the chemical. He told me to turn in and get some sleep. He’d see me in the morning.
When I finished talking to DiGiacomo, I went upstairs and looked for Honey. She was in the captain’s office sleeping in his big chair. I awakened her by walking in.
“Go on back to the hotel,” I said and put my room key in her hand, “please.”
“What are you going to do
here? You can’t go back in on Lloyd.”
“I get the message. Ernesto Miranda. I’m catching on. I just want to talk to Rocco about something I thought of when I looked at you all curled up in the captain’s chair. We should try to find the dead dog with the white patch on his throat.”
“Very funny. Is this another one of your stand-up insult routines?”
“No. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I’m very tired. I just thought of it when I saw you. Besides, you don’t have a white spot on your throat.”
“Oh boy, you mention my throat and I want you to hold me again. This is confusing. I guess I’m uneasy about coming between you and Lloyd. I want you to solve Shy’s murder, and I don’t want to have to be the one to stand in your way, but what can I do? Anyway, there are other ways to solve this crime, and that happens to be a great idea about finding the dead dog. If the bullet in the dog matches up with the bullet in Whitney, that could do it.”
“Right. If the bullet didn’t pass through the dog into forever, or if neither bullet fragmented on a bone, or if the dog’s carcass hasn’t already been picked up by the SPCA and burned, or if Harrison’s brother wants to identify the empty lot.”
“That’s all true, but it’s worth a shot and you know it, or you wouldn’t be waiting to tell Rocco. I think Lloyd’s brother would show you where Lloyd shot the dog if you got him alone. You’re very good at that sort of thing. I’ll see you later, Lou. I’m tired, too. Dinner at the Green Room feels like two weeks ago. Wake me if you break the case, or whatever.”
She left, and I decided I could just as easily leave a note for Rocco and follow close behind Honey, or whatever. I sat at the typewriter and started rambling in a note about how we could call the SPCA in the morning to see if they’d picked up a murdered dog’s carcass, and I fell asleep in the captain’s chair.
20
Digiacomo woke me. It was 4:00 A.M.
“I seen your note,” he said. “Good idea. Landis and Augrine took a coupl’a uniform men out looking for the dead dog. I let you sleep a little bit while I figured something out. Come on down with me to the lockup.”
The Right to Remain Silent Page 12
