"You remember Skip?"
"Which one was he?"
"Kind of a biker type with a ponytail."
"Look like a bum. Huey P. Newton's lawyer had a ponytail and that man was wealthy. Yeah, I remember Skip. He's the one done the bombs, huh?"
Robin gave him a nod. "What happened to the one today?"
"We'll get to that. First I want to know about Skippy. Where's he at, hiding someplace?"
"We'll have to get to that, too," Robin said. "After I called this morning, did you present my demands to Woody?"
Donnell smiled a little. "Yeah, I presented your demands. I'm trying to think of what Mr. Woody said. I think he said, 'Oh, really?' Something like that."
He watched Robin draw on her cigarette and blow the smoke out hard and then flick ash.
She said, "Well, obviously the bomb didn't go off."
Donnell didn't say anything.
"If it did it would've been on the news." She drew on her cigarette again. "We have to trust each other. Look, I know you're cool, okay? So don't overdo it."
"Girl, you the one called the meeting."
"I want to hear you say something, that's all. I want to be sure."
Donnell said, "Wait now. You blow up the man's car knowing I could've been in it, but not caring shit whether I was or not."
She was shaking her head saying, "No, uh-unh," even before he finished. "I never thought that for a minute."
"You didn't have to think it, you knew it. You send me a bag of dynamite, leave it by the door, and you want to know can you trust me. I have to think on that one, see if it makes any sense."
He listened to Robin say his name, "Donnell?" with a nice tone, slowing up and looking him in the eye, like to let him know this was from her soul. "We haven't seen each other in sixteen years. That's a long time, isn't it?"
Donnell said, "Let me get the McKinneys to play something bluesy."
That jerked her line.
"Don't do that. Don't fuck with me, okay? I'm saying it's been a long time, I wasn't thinking of you one way or the other. I wasn't even sure you worked for him. I saw you only once and thought, Is that Donnell? But when I was talking to you on the phone, this morning, I knew. I felt some awfully nice vibes. I wanted to call you right back, really, and say, Hey, let's do this together."
"Except there was a bomb gonna explode. You said to me I'd hear it in about two minutes. Oh, you were angry, I could hear that too."
Robin waited a moment, staring at him. "It didn't go off, did it?"
"Let me tell you what I feel about this, kind of vibes I get," Donnell said. "A person that sends bombs, they into heavy shit. What I see you doing, you're thinking how you can use me, being on the inside. See, I understand that. You're not thinking to favor me none 'less it helps you."
"We both make out," Robin said. "You've been with Woody how long, three years? And you're still driving him around. What else--cleaning up after him? You need somebody on the outside."
"I'm looking at that," Donnell said, "as it happens to fit into my plan. But do I need somebody outside known for making bombs? That's the question I ask myself. What happens the police want to talk to you?"
"They already have. It was all show, nothing to it."
The woman wanting him to think it was nothing. Donnell eased back against the cushion, watching her smoke her cigarette like she was enjoying it.
"They got on you quick, didn't they?"
She said to him, "They use computers now, Donnell."
He didn't care for that shitty tone of voice.
"They feed in names and if you know either one of the Ricks brothers and you happen to have a sheet, there it is. The cops talked to you, didn't they? What's the difference?"
"Man, we cool, huh?"
She said, "I'm not worried. Are you?"
Donnell put his arms on the table again. "They talk to Skippy?"
"Skippy's well hidden."
"Bet you thought you were, too, but they come knocking at your door." Donnell leaned on his arms, getting closer to her. "I'm gonna tell you something. There's a dude knows what you're doing. The dude even guessed close to what I'm doing. I mean it was barely in my head what I'm doing and the dude knew it."
She wasn't cool now, unh-unh, staring at him.
"You hear what I'm saying? This dude is on us."
"Who is he?"
"Name Mankowski."
That poked her.
She said, "I know him--he's a cop." And stubbed her cigarette out, hard.
"Used to be. They suspended his ass, threw him out. But he keeps coming around like this." Donnell reached across the table, laying the palm of his hand in front of her. "You know what I'm saying? Comes by with his hand out. The dude's looking to score."
She was still on the edge of her seat.
"But I met him. He was one of the cops."
"He show you I.D.?"
"I don't remember."
" 'Cause he don't have none."
Confusing the poor woman.
"Then what's he up to?"
"What I'm telling you, girl, the dude's Mr. Shakedown. Was on their rape squad when they threw him out. And before that, guess what he was?"
"You know, at first," Greta said, "he doesn't seem like a bad guy. I mean getting arrested for creating an improper diversion. . . . But here's something else." She turned her head on the pillow to look at Chris. "You awake?"
"Yeah, I'm reading."
"Anything good?"
"I think I've found it. The part Robin doesn't want anybody to read."
"Go ahead, I'll wait."
"No, tell me about Donnell."
"Well, he and some other Black Panthers . . ." Greta looked at the sheet resting against her raised knees. "Here it is . . . were arrested and charged with kidnapping and beating a fellow member of the party. Young guy, eighteen years old. He said they beat him with, quote, blunt instruments and then burned him with cigarette lighters and poured scalding water on him mixed with grease. The victim admitted himself to New Grace and the hospital called the police. Upon being questioned he told them the names of his assailants, including Donnell, saying they had accused him of breaking rule number eight of the Black Panther Party. But then in court, at the pretrial examination, he changed his mind. He said he couldn't identify his assailants and that the police coerced him into signing the complaint. So Donnell and his buddies were released. He was picked up right after that on a federal gun charge, convicted and sent to prison."
Chris said, "What's rule number eight?"
Greta looked at the sheet again.
"It's written out. 'No party member will commit any crimes against other party members or black people at all, and cannot steal or take from the people, not even a needle or a piece of thread.' "
They looked at each other, heads turned on their pillows.
"I learn interesting facts in bed with you," Greta said. "When I was little, Camille and Robert Taylor and I would get in bed with our dad and he'd read the Bobbsey Twins to us."
Chris said, "Now you get the Ricks brothers and other crazies." He pushed his glasses up on his nose and looked at Robin's journal. "Here's the part about Mark, her opinion of him. Robin says, 'Mark digs the sound, the cant, the beat of revolution. He wants to be part of it, but political-science-wise knows next to nothing, zilch. He asks if I believe in the Movement, if I'm a member of the Communist Party. Why sure, Mark. He's either dumb or naive, but, man, is he loaded! I tell him to come by my tent tonight and I'll lay it out for him. So to speak.' "
"Her tent?"
"This is when they were at Goose Lake. The Ricks boys slept in the limo they rented and Robin had her own tent. She says in case she met somebody interesting."
"Mark wasn't interesting enough?"
"She was using him. Listen." Chris looked at the journal. "She finishes with Mark by saying, 'This guy is so impressionable. He's dying to be a star. If you want him, take him.' Then she has written in capital letters, 'TAKE HIM FOR
EVERYTHING HE'S GOT!' "
Chris imagined Robin looking through old journals, this one, reliving those days, coming to this page and the words reaching out to grab her. It was worthless as evidence, but it let you look into her head. Chris closed the journal. It was quiet, Greta not saying a word. He was thinking she'd fallen asleep as he turned his head on the pillow, expecting to see her eyes closed.
She was staring at him. She said, "Is that what I'm doing? With Woody?"
Robin had become the ice woman, blowing her smoke out slow, stroking her braid, a thoughtful act, stroking in time to "Little Girl Blue" in the background, Robin looking at Donnell with quiet eyes, saying, "Man, it's been a long time coming."
"What has?"
"Getting on track and feeling good about it. Yeah, now, finally I can see where we're going." Saying the words with a slight nod of the head, moving with the mellow beat.
Donnell liked how she did that. The woman was in time and looking good, for her age.
"I'm not saying we don't have a problem," Robin said. "If this Polack, Mankowski, is acting officially, and that was the impression I got, then it's a major problem. Not because he's especially bright--I don't think he is. The way he tried to set me up, get me to talk, didn't show a lot of finesse. But if he's got the whole fucking police force behind him--"
"He was kicked off the police," Donnell said. "I've told you that, and he don't like it one bit."
"You think he doesn't like it or you know it?"
"I know it. I talked to the dude."
"Well, if all he wants is money. . . ." She gave a little shrug with the beat.
"He's working for himself, nobody else."
"He told you that?"
This woman could be irritating.
"It was he didn't tell me. He had, I might suspect him. Look, the dude bumped me up to twenty-five thousand to get your bomb out of the swimming pool. He's in it for bread, nothing else, and he'll keep coming back. I know, I've seen the kind." Donnell hunched over the table on his arms. "Listen to me. The dude will come back and he'll come back. He'll leave the police if he hasn't done it already. The man smells a score. But that's only the one problem. I see another one. I see too many people."
"You mean Skip," Robin said.
"Exactly. Your friend Skippy. What do we need him for? See, he's the kind of problem you can tell goodbye and it's gone. Like you say to him you not interested in the deal no more, you give up on it, he leaves."
"I don't think it would be quite that easy," Robin said.
"Sit on it till he goes away. That's easy. What I'm saying to you, I don't see cutting it three ways when we don't need to. I'm looking now at the economics of it. This kind of deal come along, you do it one time, understand? You pick a number, the most of what you can get, and that's all."
"If that's what you're worried about," Robin said, "there's no problem. You get half of a two-way split."
"I'm thinking more than half, and your number depends on my number."
"Okay, what's your number?"
"One million. I like the sound of it, I like the idea of it. One million, a one and six oughts."
"Take off and spend it, huh?"
"Stay right where I am. It's none of your business what I do with it."
Donnell watched Robin get out another cigarette saying, "Okay, if you're satisfied with a mil let's go for two and Skip and I split the other one."
Donnell shook his head. "I get more than you."
"Why?"
"It's my idea."
"Gee, I thought it was mine," Robin said.
Giving him that shitty tone again.
"I mean since I'm the one who called in the first place."
"Yeah, and how'd you expect the man to pay you? Cash? He suppose to leave it some place you tell him?"
He watched her shrug, being cool.
"That's one way."
"You dumb as shit," Donnell said. "Can you see the man go in the bank for the money? Drunk as usual, everybody looking at him? Everybody knowing his business? What did I say to you on the phone? I said, 'That gonna be cash or you take a check?' And you got mad, commence to threaten me, saying, 'Oh, you want to play, huh?' Giving me all this shit on the phone. You remember? Was only this morning."
Still being cool. Look at her blow the smoke, sip the wine, getting her head straight, what she wanted to say. Smiling at him now, just a speck of smile showing.
"What I get from that," Robin said, "you were serious. We could actually get paid by check?"
"There's a way."
"He could stop payment."
"I said there's a way to do it."
"This is wild," Robin said. "Far out."
She turned her head to gaze off at the piano, listening but not moving, Donnell watching her, remembering the woman in the bathroom a long, long time ago. Pants on the floor, her sweater pushed up, seeing the back of her head in the mirror, all that long hair, seeing a nice dreamy smile in her eyes when he looked at her. . . . Her eyes came back to him from the piano.
"Skip killed a guy one time."
"You mean little Markie?"
"Before. He did it for money. What I'm saying is, you can count on him."
"I admire that kind," Donnell said, "but it don't mean we need him."
"I was thinking he could get rid of our problem, the guy with his hand out."
Donnell hesitated. The idea stopped him, hit him cold. He didn't want to think about it, but said, "He'd do that?"
"If I asked him to."
"That's all?"
"If you say he's in."
Donnell shrugged, not saying yes or no, maybe not minding the guy being in if you could count on him and take his word. There were things to work out in this deal. It wasn't entirely set in his mind. Though it seemed to be in Robin's, the way she was smiling for real now, letting it come. . . .
Robin saying, "The extortion corporation, we accept checks. Hey, but we write Woody's driver's license I.D. on the back, right? In case he tries to stiff us."
Chapter 22.
Chris played scenes, lying in bed in that early morning half-light.
He heard himself tell Jerry Baker, "I go in the guy's swimming pool, remove an explosive device and he gives me twenty-five grand." Jerry says, "You take the device with you?" He tells Jerry, "I left it there but told him not to touch it, and I know he won't." Jerry says, "You should've taken it with you." Jerry's right; he should've. Jerry says, "But you did take the check." "Of course I took the check, for Christ sake." Jerry, thinking of all that money, thinking fast, says, "Well, there's a gray area there." He hears himself say to Jerry, "What's gray about it? It's withholding evidence, isn't it?" Jerry, with his many years of experience on the police, says, "That's a matter of interpretation. There's withholding evidence and there's holding evidence. It may be needed in the investigation, it may not be." He hears himself say to Jerry, "You don't see it as a rip?" Jerry says, "Where's the rip? The guy agreed to the price and you did the job, performed a service." Chris says, "But in receiving the check for removing evidence, isn't it evidence too?" Jerry says, "Not necessarily. The explosive device, yeah, is evidence. But now the check, that's definitely a gray area."
Chris pictured doing the scene with Wendell. "Hey, Wendell? I'd like to ask you something?" The dude lieutenant looks up from his desk. "Yeah? What?" And that was as far as the scene got. Chris asked himself why he hadn't thought of these questions yesterday, last night. He wondered if it was to avoid even thinking about it. Finally he asked himself what he believed was a key question: When does holding evidence become withholding evidence?
The answer came unexpectedly, flooding him with a sense of relief: Monday. He had the weekend to think about it, study that gray area.
Chris got up on an elbow to flip his pillow over to the cool side and paused in the half-light as he heard Greta say, "Oh, my Lord." She was lying with her eyes open, staring at the ceiling.
"What's wrong?"
"I don't think my car w
as stolen."
Greta said it must have been her concussion of the brain that made her forget where she parked it. The thing was, twice before when she'd gone to the Playhouse Theater she'd parked in the same aisle on the ground floor of the building, almost in the same exact space both times. But then last Tuesday, or whenever it was, the place was jammed. She ended up parking on the third level, ran out of there with a lot on her mind having been raped and all and wanting to have Woody arrested, and then so much happened right after, ending up in the hospital. . . . She felt really dumb.
Chris said, Yeah, all that going on. He said he'd drive her to get her car. But then didn't talk much while they were having breakfast. Greta said, "I think about my car and then I think about Woody. I don't know what to do." Drinking her coffee she said, "And you're no help." She said, "You think I'm a flake, don't you?" He told her it was no big deal, people forgot where they parked their cars all the time. She said, "But what should I do about Woody?" Chris told her it was a gray area; it depended on how you looked at it. Giving her that much understanding. . . .
While thinking about the weekend, the two days giving him hope, seeing time enough in there to believe the investigation could all of a sudden be closed when he wasn't looking and he wouldn't be withholding anything. Would he?
In the Cadillac driving downtown Greta said, "Oh, God, I have to tell that guy at the precinct my car wasn't stolen. I know exactly what he's gonna say."
It gave Chris an idea. Stop by 1300 to see Wendell. Only you forgot it's Saturday, he isn't there. But whoever's on duty verifies it later on. Yeah, Mankowski was here, he was looking for Wendell.
So he told Greta he'd stop at the precinct desk and tell them the car had been returned, that's all; it just showed up. They didn't have to know she forgot where she put it. Greta said, "Thanks," without much life in it.
On the third level of the parking structure they pulled up next to her blue Ford Escort; Saturday morning not another car near it. Greta said, "Thanks for a nice time."
Chris said, "I'll see you later."
Greta held the door open. "I'm going home."
"You're coming back, aren't you?"
"I'll have to think about it."
"What's wrong?"
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