“The arresting officer, Samuel D. Culpepper, who is, off the record, a regular old-time red-neck cracker, gets the printout and goes and does an almost authentic imitation of a southern sheriff. ‘You in a heap o’ trouble, boy.’ … Has anyone ever considered forbidding peace officers watching TV? … According to Culpepper, the prisoner began to plead, making biblical references to the weakness of the flesh. The suspect offered to trade ‘important information’ for his release. Culpepper doubted that someone so old and ignorant could know anything useful and expressed those doubts forcefully. At which point Johnson says, ‘How ’bout that rich ol’ white man done got his head turned to grits and gravy?’ Even Culpepper seemed to be aware that this is an important case. ‘Stay right there,’ he instructed Johnson, redundant to a man in a cell, and ran to Deltchev. Deltchev, much to Culpepper’s discomfort, sent him to me. I had to compliment him on excellent police work.
“Apparently Mrs. Althea Johns is not only an extremely moral and churchgoing woman, but a physically powerful one as well. Johnson would rather do time man be sent back. We went back and forth a bit, and he finally told me that he had been approached by two men, two days before the murder. They had a photo of Wood and asked Johnson if he had ever seen the man.
“Johnson claims that at first he denied any knowledge, but they pressed him physically, and he felt that he had no choice but to identify Wood for them.”
“You sound,” I said, “like you don’t entirely believe Mr. Johnson.”
“No. Not entirely. Maybe they did threaten him, but I know that ten dollars would have done the job. I don’t think he was reluctant at all.”
“Any names?”
“Afraid not,” he said.
“Description?”
“Some, but I don’t know how accurate. Johnson started with a simple black, big and young. ‘How big?’ was my first question. He started with big enough for the Redskins’ offensive line. After some coaxing we got down to one six-footer, one a couple of inches taller. The six-footer is a little heavyset. The taller one is thinner, has a big scar on his right cheek, or maybe his left. They’re both brown, right down the middle between African blue-black and octoroon. Age, out of their teens, early thirties at the top end. In Johnson’s words, ‘young but not childrens.’ Hair, medium short and natural, except the shorter one might have had corn rows or something. … Johnson is not a wonderful witness. Oh yeah, the skinny one, he seemed a little high.”
“On what?” I asked.
“Johnson couldn’t say, just a little high.”
“Hyped up, finger-poppin’ high, stoned out, spaced out? What flavor high?”
“Just high was all I could get from him.”
“Is that all of it, Bill?”
“I was under the impression I was giving you a detailed report. In fact, I was afraid you would complain I was too loquacious.”
“How can I complain about something I can’t spell?”
“Why not? We got officers here, can’t spell larceny, perpetrator, even homicide.”
“How is the war on dumb going?” I asked.
“Deltchev will have his twenty in about eighteen months. He could try to stay on for twenty-five or even thirty, but it’s looking good for twenty. There is also talk afoot that if he stays, the Chief will find him something very administrative. Astral file work or something.” A trace of a smile appeared on Tillman’s bland face.
“Where is Johnson now?” I asked.
“Isn’t it slick how you reminded me of the favor that you did me, then slipped in the key question, like I wouldn’t notice it,” Tillman said, his face returning to his unflappable look. I think I actually blushed. He gave me time to do it, then continued blandly, “We let him go and told Texas he skipped. Right now, I need him more than they do. Mrs. Althea Johns can have him when I’m done, but I did not explain that to him.”
“Are you or are you not going to tell me?”
“Or course I am. And you will approach him without Miranda, which is OK because you don’t have to make a case that the courts will buy. I am certain you will even be rude to him. And you may be able to get something from him that I couldn’t. All I ask is that you do not commit any chargeable offense. These southern cops can get ugly.”
“Thank you,” was appropriate.
Johnson’s place of residence was a trailer, resting slightly askew on concrete blocks just off a country road with an RD address. There was a patch of black-eyed Susans out front; sunflowers, pole beans and tomatoes grew on the side.
He worked late, toting plates and bearing abuse. So Franco and I arrived at dawn. I had made Franco resurrect the silk suit and the Dirty Harry cannon for the visit.
There was a rosy glow over the hills, promising a lovely day, as we kicked the door in.
Johnson rolled over on his narrow bunk and looked at us with gummy eyes. His teeth were in a glass on a table afflicted with rickets. There was a gooseneck lamp on the same surface. I flipped it on and pointed it at his face. Franco pointed the gun.
“LeRoy,” I said, “you have been fucking with the wrong people.”
He rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“In March you fingered a dude called Wood, down the restaurant where you work.”
“No suh, no suh, I don’ know what you talking ‘bout.”
“LeRoy, don’t do that ignorant-darkie routine with me. I don’t buy it.”
“I would tell you, sho nuff, but I don’ know nuffin.”
“LeRoy, that’s not true. You even spoke to the police. You spoke to policeman Culpepper, and to Detective Tillman.”
“Then you knows what I said.”
“There’s more, tell me.”
“Let me put in my teef …”
Franco slashed out with his gun and smashed glass and teeth to the floor. Then he grabbed the thin mattress and yanked it. The old man tumbled to the floor of the trailer; the mattress was flung to the opposite wall.
“How much did they pay you to finger Wood? How much?” I screamed at him.
“Nuffin, nuffin, they done scairt me.”
I took my .45 out, cocked it, put it to his head. “Pray, LeRoy, pray. ’Cause you gonna die now.”
“Onny twenny dollars, tha’s all.”
“They paid you twenty, just because you said the man in the picture ate at your restaurant.”
“Tha’s right, tha’s right,” he said immediately and emphatically. Truth is so complicated; lies are simple.
“No. That’s wrong. Do you really want to die, you stupid motherfucker?”
“Tha’s all I done. Tha’s all. Please don’ shoot this po’ o’ man.”
“Last chance to live, po’ o’ man. Where did you call them?”
“How d’you know I calls them, how d’you know?”
“Where did you call them?” I pulled a hundred-dollar bill from my pocket and dangled it in front of his eyes. “When you tell me where you called them, this is yours. When I get tired of waiting, you’re a dead man.”
“I disremember the number,” he said, close to tears.
I fired a shot through the wall.
“I think mebbe it’s in my wallet,” he answered.
“Take a look, Franco, take a look.”
Franco found the wallet in the shiny pants hanging over the back of the one chair. He dumped the contents out on the floor. LeRoy had all of three dollars, a driver’s license and various scraps of paper. Franco scanned the scraps and came up with a torn piece of napkin with numbers on it.
“Tha’s the one,” LeRoy cried with revivalist fervor. “That do be the one. The Lord is with me. He done saved the number that done saved my life.”
“Names, I want names,” I said.
“God’s honest truff, I don’ know. If I done knowed I would tell you.”
“Mr. Johnson,” I said, dropping the one hundred dollars on the floor, “it’s been a pleasure doing business with you.”
Back in my rental car, Franco said, “You
ain’t bad for a kid. How’d you know the old man called them?”
He answered too simple, too easy. But mostly, there was something missing. How did the perps know to be in that lot at that time? Did they wait there three, four days? I don’t think they had that kind of patience. So someone had to finger Wood.
“You know what else,” I said, feeling sick about abusing senior citizens, even one who was a grandfather forty or fifty times over, “I’m an asshole. Likewise Tillman, you, Deltchev. We’re all assholes.”
“Howzzat?”
I held out a scrap of paper. He looked away from the road and glanced at it. He shrugged, not seeing anything in it.
“It’s a two-oh-two number.”
“So?”
“So it’s a long-distance call. There’s a record, probably from the pay phone, maybe from the restaurant phone, but I’ll bet on the pay phone. A traceable record made during the one or two hours before Wood died. The police could have had that way back in March. I could have had it my first trip down; all anybody had to do was think, fucking think, instead of terrorizing an old man.”
“Old don’t mean good. He fingered a guy for murder, for twenty bucks. As far as I’m concerned,” Franco said, “he’s part of the slime.”
“You have phone company contacts?”
“I got department contacts. I’ll get you a name and address to go with the number.”
“Thanks.”
“No sweat,” he said, then added grudgingly, “You must’ve been a pretty good cop.”
“I wasn’t a cop. Corrections, I was with the corrections department.”
“Oh,” he said in recognition, and unease. “That Tony Cassella.”
“Yeah, that Tony Cassella.”
“There must be a lotta people don’t like you.”
“That’s OK,” I said. “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”
That was no joke. That was a pretty tough thing you did … If you ask me …”
“I didn’t.”
“You did the right thing. You had your job. You did it. That’s the way the game is played. If somebody gets hurt, that’s their problem. They didn’t have to play.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“That’s just me way of it. … You know. I should never have retired. I’m only fifty-six, two years off the force and going nuts. You get your thirty and that pension, you figure with the pension and a job you make half again as much as what you were making, without me aggravation and dealing with a better class of people. That’s what you gotta figure, but I shoulda stayed a cop.”
I checked out of the Colonel Culpepper Holiday Inn and called me Watergate, but they were full. The Best Western on U.S. 1 in D.C. had a vacancy sign up. I let Franco go to check with his P.D. contacts while I admired my room.
I called Glenda. She told me to be careful. I heard the inaudible bite of her lip while she held in whatever comment her insecurity and lurking jealousy wanted to prompt.
I called Choate Haven. I let him know I had a serious lead, the phone number of me probable perp.
I called Christina. She called me “Angel.” The woman was clearly besotted. That made two of us.
Franco came in with his satchel and a thick old leather-covered notepad, the kind that cops carry, stuck in an oversize back pocket.
“The phone is registered to James Carlton Alexander, Jr.; he’s on Franklin, just off New Jersey … according to Motor Vehicle, he drives an ’83 Pontiac Firebird, black, license, R,U,S,H, One—Rush 1.”
“Well done,” I said. “I’m gonna call Tillman.”
“You think you should do that?”
“Yeah,” I said, dialing. “In the first place, he’s playing straight with me; he gave me Johnson, remember. In the second place, let’s say I do something on my own …” the phone was answered. I asked for Tillman. He wasn’t in. I left a message. “… I am now on record as having tried to contact the authorities.”
“What were you thinking of doing?” he asked.
“The problem is, let’s say the cops haul him in. They put him in a lineup. If LeRoy has the balls to ID him, then I’m not a devout heterosexual. On the other hand, I don’t know that I want to brace him myself, at least until I know more about him.”
“That is very intelligent, ’cause—” he flipped open to another page “—Mr. Alexander, Jr., is not your sweetheart type. Priors include a conviction—’77, armed robbery. Plus four arrests, no convictions: narcotics ’78, assault ’78, assault with a deadly weapon ’82, and a possession of stolen property. He’s twenty-seven.”
“I’m gonna go take a cautious look at the man.”
“See, that won’t work. Soon’s you go into that neighborhood, they’re gonna make you. The thing to do is make that work for you. We run a two-man stakeout. You let him see the first guy, and you hope he cuts and runs. Then you do a tag-team tail. You let the suspect lose the first tail, then when he thinks he’s clean, the second man picks him up.”
“That only works with some technology. …”
With infinite smugness, Franco reached into his bag and pulled a couple of walkie-talkies out of his satchel. I grimaced.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “Walkie-talkies are mostly more trouble than they’re worth, more show man talk … but these are pretty good. And …” he tossed another item on the bed “… a beeper, magnet keeps it on the suspect’s car, and here’s the directional finder goes with it.” Things kept coming out of the bag like clowns from a midget car. “And finally, I got Rabbi Begin with me, and some spare clips.”
“All right,” I said, feeling armed and dangerous.
I followed him down Rhode Island, left on New Jersey, then a couple of blocks down to Franklin. Franco was right about the neighborhood. My white face was a full moon in a midnight sky.
RUSH 1, freshly polished and gleaming black, sat in the middle of the block, two doors down from Alexander’s address. Franco rolled on past. I pulled up next to the Firebird and got out of my rental Dodge. Together the two cars looked like beauty and the basset hound. I looked the Firebird over, with no attempt to be inconspicuous, twirling my own keys in my hand. The keys slipped. When I bent down to pick them up, I slapped the little transmitter up inside the back bumper.
There was an open space, four cars back, and I rolled into it.
Every person who passed gave me a lookover. It ran the gamut from the ill-disguised corner of the eye squint to the confrontational strut. I could feel eyes in the windows as well. The topper was a cute-as-a-button six-year-old on a chopped bike with a bright blue-and-red-striped banana seat, who circled me twice, popped a wheelie, came down at my open window and said, “I know who you is, man.”
Several citizens entered Alexander’s building and came right back out. They were either quick-stop shopping or dropping in to mention that “the man” was on the block. Or both. I saw a face at what I thought was his window.
When he came out, he came out in a rush. To my surprise, LeRoy’s description was reasonably accurate. He was six two, light brown, about 170, with a scar that slashed the right side of his face from his yellow eye to his heavy upper lip.
He banged his rear bumper backing up, cursed, slammed the automatic into drive, crunched the accelerator and burned rubber out.
He tore right on Fifth and up to Florida as the light was changing. I almost lost my rear bumper but stayed with him, not wanting him to lose me too easily. I called Franco and, to my surprise, got through.
“Don’t worry, kid, the directional is working, we ain’t gonna lose him.”
I stayed with the Firebird, heading north on Georgia. He cut left across traffic onto Farragut, gaining a beat. I thought I saw his tail lights making another quick left onto Arkansas, but when I got there he was gone.
“He just made a circle,” Franco said. “I got him. North on Georgia.”
I got back on the avenue, trying to catch up. I caught a glimpse of him bearing right onto Piney Branch, but it
was just evasive tactics. He made about six turns just to get back onto Georgia, but when I got there, heading north again, I didn’t see him. Franco’s directional had him heading southwest and away.
I headed in that general direction until Franco said he had stopped moving. “Stay put while I find him,” he said. I did.
“Come on up to Kalmia and Myrtle,” he told me. It took a couple of minutes to find on my map. When I saw Franco I parked behind him, got out of my car and into his. It was a beautiful area, bordering Rock Creek Park, hilly, full-grown trees, lots of landscaping with big, expensive, one-of-a-kind homes. Very expensive.
“Well, well, well,” Franco said with immense satisfaction, “pigeons coming home to roost. … See that house, last one you can see on the curve?” It was two stories, twelve rooms, stone, set back deep, with a large garage set off to the side.
“I don’t see the car,” I said.
“I got it figured for the garage. … You ever hear of Mark Wellby?” I shrugged in reply and he continued, “He is to the District what Nicky Barnes or Ricky Sams used to be in New York. He is the heavyweight. They call him the Doctor.”
“I remember something about him, the name from somewhere,” I said, “something very odd.”
“He wanted to put a statue in one of the parks, but the city wouldn’t let him,” Franco said.
“That’s it,” and I remembered that it had been a memorial for Rashaan Roland Kirk. Wellby had commissioned a design—with Kirk possessed by jazz, tenor sax in one side of his mouth, clarinet in the other—was ready to have it cast, offered to pay for installation in any public place and for its maintenance in perpetuity. Nobody seemed upset when he was turned down, but I for one thought it was a great idea. I had seen Roland Kirk play.
20
THE LATE SHOW
No One Rides for Free Page 13
