The Exiled

by Christopher Charles

  “You mean when he learned that Jonathan was gay?” Raney said.

  She nodded.

  “And how did Oscar react when Jonathan died?” Raney asked.

  “Like he’d lost the world. I’d hear him wailing at all hours. He put himself through every kind of self-flagellation imaginable, treated himself worse than he’d ever treated Jonathan. I came down before sunup one morning to check on Tommy because I thought I’d heard him moaning. But it wasn’t Tommy—it was Oscar running up and down the street, barefoot, carrying an enormous rifle across his back. It scared me senseless. I almost called the police.”

  “What about the drugs?” Raney asked. “Did you ever know Jonathan to have a problem?”

  “No, never. That was so out of character.”

  “Can you say more about his character? What kind of things did Jonathan like to do? Who did he want to be?”

  “He was an artist. A brilliant artist, I think. He loved cameras the way his father loves guns. He knew how to take them apart and put them back together. He knew what lens to use when. He wanted to be a photojournalist. Possibly a filmmaker. And it’s not just me saying he was talented. More than one school offered him a full ride.”

  “Do you have any of his photos here?” Raney asked.

  The question seemed to startle her.

  “I do,” she said. “He took a whole series of me and Tommy.”

  “Would you mind showing them to us?”

  “It would be easier if you came upstairs. They’re hanging on a wall in my room. Just don’t mind the mess.”

  The loft, a hundred years younger than the rest of the house, featured glowing bamboo floors and double-insulated windows. There was a large, unmade bed facing the stairs, a drafting table littered with magazines in one corner, an ornate harp in another. Bay seemed taken with the harp.

  “You play?” he asked.

  “Ever since I was little. It’s an heirloom from my great-grandmother. I play as a hobby, but it’s also more than that.”

  “Are these Jonathan’s photos here?” Raney asked, pointing to the wall beside the stairs.

  “Yes. Jonathan made a little installation for me. That included painting the wall. He thought the black and white showed up nicely against blue-gray.”

  “He was thorough,” Bay said.

  “He cared about his work,” she said.

  The photos were candid, visceral. Raney wondered if Lund had seen them. There was one of the old man in a bathtub, eyes shut, lather covering his torso. He looked very much like a man at peace with his age and fate, as though he enjoyed this sensual pleasure because he knew death was coming. Other photos featured Molly as caretaker: giving Mr. Lund a massage, wiping drool from his chin with a napkin, combing his slim ring of hair. Collectively, the photos revealed her heroism. It was as though Molly absorbed Lund’s fear so that the old man could live his final moments more fully. There was a sense, too, that something of Lund would live on in her after he had died. Almost every photo seemed to foreshadow her grief. Raney had no doubt: this was the same photographer who took the portrait hanging in Vignola’s bedroom.

  “Do you see now what I mean?” Molly asked. “He was seventeen when he shot those. How many seventeen-year-olds see the world with that kind of maturity?”

  “None,” Raney said. “And not many adults.”

  “He was extraordinary.”

  Extraordinary enough, Raney thought, to have captured the affection of a fifty-year-old art teacher. Oscar knew. The relationship was part of the boy’s revelation. Molly seemed to read Raney’s mind.

  “Oscar killed Mr. Vignola, didn’t he?”

  Bay stepped closer to her, made slow and deliberate eye contact.

  “Jonathan was damn lucky to find you,” he said. “Mr. Lund, too.”

  She nodded, pressed her palms to her eyes. It was what she needed to hear—the kind of thing Raney would never have thought to say.

  They were cutting across Grant’s lawn when Raney’s phone rang, a number he didn’t recognize.

  “Is this Detective Wes Raney?”

  “Yes. Who’s this?”

  “Oscar Grant.”

  Raney broke stride, grabbed Bay’s arm, switched the phone to speaker.

  “Mr. Grant,” he said. “We’re standing in front of your house right now.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Bay whispered.

  “You can stop looking for me,” Grant said. “There’s no more point. I’m done now.”

  Bay climbed onto the hood of a car, searched the street.

  “Is that why you’re calling? To tell us to stop?”

  “I wanted to answer the questions you left for Mr. Adler. I killed Mavis, but then you know that by now. You also know her name wasn’t Mavis, and you know she did things in her life to deserve a slower death than the one I gave her. As for what happened to her supply, be sure to watch the news this evening.”

  “Why not give me a hint?”

  “People will take notice. They won’t be able to walk around blind any longer.”

  “So you’re a hero?”

  “Call me what you like. There’s no need for you to waste any more effort, Detective. You’re too late. Everything you wanted to stop from happening has already happened. The world sided with me.”

  “But not with your son.”

  “Unlike most people, his death had a purpose. I made sure of that.”

  “What have you done? Tell me what you did.”

  Oscar hung up.

  “The son of a bitch drove right past us,” Bay said.

  “I know it,” Raney said.

  “What now?”

  “Let’s go find a television.”

  Brooklyn, July 1984

  35

  They were in the alley behind the club, drinking pilsners and playing horseshoes, betting five dollars a throw. Pierre stuck his head out the back door, shouted for Dunham to come to the phone.

  “I’m unavailable,” Dunham said.

  “It’s your uncle.”

  Raney took a long pull from his bottle.

  “Son of a bitch,” Dunham said.

  To Raney: “Don’t touch anything while I’m gone. I know where it all goes.”

  Raney waited until Dunham was inside, then slipped two benzos from his pocket and washed them down with the last of his beer. Dunham came back out, cursing, knocking the heels of his palms together.

  “We’ve got one more job for Uncle Meno,” Dunham said. “The dickhead says it has to be tonight. I’ve got a topflight vocalist coming in. Took me three months to book her. Has a voice and tits like a young Lena Horne.”

  “What’s the job?” Raney asked.

  “Another house sweep.”

  Raney looked at his watch.

  “Does it have to be tonight?”

  “Maybe if I ask him nice…”

  “I mean, why not do it now? We could be there and back before the first set.”

  “There’s this thing called broad daylight,” Dunham said.

  “Skels aren’t on a clock. And that isn’t a neighborhood where people witness shit.”

  “You have plans or something?”

  “I’m just saying. If you want to see your singer with the nice tits…”

  He could feel Dunham giving in. Meno had done Raney a favor by calling early. There’d be time to set up a play.

  “In and out,” Dunham said. “No shots fired unless things go sideways.”

  An hour later they were in Jersey, hunting down the address Meno had given.

  “It’s amazing how these alleys all look exactly the fucking same,” Dunham said.

  “You said three sixty-six, right?”

  Dunham pointed.

  “Yeah. That’s it right there,” he said.

  “The yard is empty.”

  “The shopping-cart brigade must be out trawling. I told you we should have waited.”

  “Are you sure we’ve got the right place? The windows are still boarded up, but when�
�s the last time you saw a crack house with a security door?”

  “This day is really starting to irritate the fuck out of me,” Dunham said. “Let’s go borrow a phone from the corner boys.”

  He let the car roll forward.

  “Wait,” Raney said.

  He couldn’t tip his hand, but he couldn’t let the moment pass, either.

  “What now?”

  “There’s another possibility,” Raney said.

  “What possibility?”

  “It’s the right address.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning maybe we got here first.”

  Dunham punched the brakes.

  “So now this is a fucking hit?”

  “I’m saying it’s a possibility.”

  “It’s a fucking possibility every minute of my life, but why today? I’m earning. I’m doing every goddamn thing he asks.”

  “Maybe he heard you were branching out.”

  “Heard from who?” Dunham said. “We were careful. Maine’s a thousand miles from here. There’s no way he caught wind.”

  “There’s always a way.”

  “Name one.”

  “Spike left the warehouse cameras on.”

  “Bullshit,” Dunham said. “Spike’s too smart to pull that on me. Besides, I checked.”

  “Maybe he guessed. How much would Meno pay to know you were earning behind his back? Enough to turn a guy who works a factory job?”

  “Even if Meno knows, that don’t mean it was Spike. There’s that fat fuck Farlow with his room-over-a-dry-cleaner bullshit. He was too fucking smooth. I should have made him straight off.”

  “It wasn’t Farlow,” Raney said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he’s sick. He isn’t looking to make waves.”

  “Sick how?”

  “Cancer.”

  “What brand?”

  Raney grabbed his crotch.

  “Fuck,” Dunham said. “You sure he’s not bullshitting you? I thought guys with cancer looked like skels.”

  “He’s not there yet. But when he says he doesn’t want to die in a prison cell, he’s talking short term.”

  “Whoever the fuck it was,” Dunham said, “the question is what do we do right now?”

  “Let’s go in and have a look. Maybe the skels snuck back through a window.”

  “And if they didn’t?”

  “We could drive away. Regroup.”

  Dunham locked his arms against the steering wheel.

  “No,” he said. “If I don’t show, he’ll know that I know.”

  “Then it’s good we came early,” Raney said.

  “Yeah, but they’ll have numbers.”

  “How many?”

  “Four, maybe five guys. However many he can fit in one car. He won’t want to draw attention.”

  “What about the driver?”

  “He’ll keep the motor running.”

  “Do you know who he’ll use?”

  “There’s a time it would have been me. Now he’s got these twin apes that never leave his side. It’ll take a clip each to bring them down. I don’t know who does his driving. That used to be me, too.”

  “And you’re sure Meno will come himself?”

  “He has to. We’re family. Blood or not, it doesn’t matter. It has to be him who pulls the trigger. It’s his own fucking rule.”

  “You’ll be leaving his army intact.”

  “We got no choice now. It’s either a quick ambush or a long war. The apes are the heart of his muscle, so if we take them out the rest of the crew should fall in line. You up for it, Deadly? I’ve seen you beat the shit out of guys, but I’ve never seen you point a gun at a man and squeeze the trigger.”

  “I’m up for it.”

  “There can’t be any hesitation. We do it right, and we’ll be the only ones shooting. We do it wrong, and we start something we won’t finish.”

  “Then we’ll do it right,” Raney said.

  “Like you said, let’s have a look first. If the skels are already gone, then we’ll hide the car and wait for my uncle to show.”

  He backed up to the house, reached under his seat, pulled out a box of latex gloves and handed a pair to Raney.

  “Might be a future crime scene,” he said.

  They waded through the backyard weeds, tried the door just in case.

  “Broad fucking daylight,” Dunham said.

  “Good thing no one has a window to look through.”

  Raney hoisted Dunham piggyback. Dunham used a switchblade to dig out the staples around a sheet of plywood, then pulled the sheet free and tossed it to the ground. Raney boosted him inside. A few minutes later the security door opened, and Dunham stood on the back steps.

  “They’ve started rehabbing,” he said. “They’ve got sanders and tarps laid out in the living room.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking those tarps aren’t so much for construction.”

  “So how do you want to play it?” Raney asked.

  “Let’s get that board back up. Then you hide the car. No more than a block or two away. And be careful walking back. You can get stopped around here just for being white.”

  36

  They drove to the closest precinct house, started up the steps, found themselves walking against a rush of uniforms and plainclothesmen. They made their way to the desk sergeant, waited for him to finish barking orders into his headset.

  “What’s happening?” Bay asked.

  “Looks like we got some bad coke to go with our habitually bad meth,” the sergeant replied.

  “How bad?” Raney asked.

  “Cut with rat poison.”

  “Shit,” Bay said.

  “Fatalities?” Raney asked.

  “All over the city. It’s like this shit hit every street in Albuquerque all at the same time.”

  “Who’s in charge?” Bay asked.

  “Depends on the precinct. We’ve got at least a dozen different primaries.”

  “But who has oversight?” Raney asked. “This might be related to a case we’re working.”

  “That’d be Captain Redmond.”

  “Where can we find him?”

  “He headed over to the Courtside projects. Didn’t want to be seen favoring the fair-skinned.”

  “Courtside projects?”

  “About as north as you can go and still be in the city.”

  The Courtside Apartments looked like a thousand other projects across the country: a maze of squat, two-story brick buildings lined with closely spaced doors. Their badges got them past the front line of uniforms. There were locals watching from every window, breezeway, rooftop. The drug crews had scattered. Detectives canvassed the apartments; medical examiners and their assistants loaded bodies into white vans while relatives begged to see their sons, daughters, sisters, brothers. Frantic cops tried to clear a path through the news vans and squad cars. Captain Redmond—a short man with an uneven mustache and medals dangling from his lapels—stood addressing the media, saying nothing, affirming his right to “protect the integrity of the investigation.” He moved away from the microphones, turned his back on the reporters. Raney held out his shield, squeezed his way through a chain of uniformed officers. Bay followed.

  “Captain Redmond,” Raney called.

  The captain huddled with his lieutenants, pretended not to hear.

  “I’m county Homicide,” Raney said. “I know who did this.”

  Redmond spun around.

  “Then we better talk,” he said.

  They sat in an unmarked SUV with tinted windows, the captain in the passenger seat, Raney and Bay in back. Redmond stank of garlic and continued to sweat despite the air-conditioning.

  “How did the bastard get the poison out that fast to that many people?”

  “We don’t know,” Raney said. “We just know where it came from and who he killed to get it.”

  “Is this some kind of drug war takeover?�
��

  “More like vengeance,” Bay said.

  “Vengeance? On the entire fucking city?”

  “His son OD’d,” Raney said. “About a year ago. He thinks the city’s sitting on its hands, ignoring an epidemic.”

  “So he staged scenes like this one all over Albuquerque just to give the department a black eye?”

  “In his mind, he’s bringing the drug crisis to a head, making the problem so visible someone has to do something about it.”

  “Sounds like you’re on his side.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Here’s what I want. I want every goddamn scrap of paper you’ve got on Oscar Grant. I want them yesterday. If you’d caught him when you had the chance, my clerk wouldn’t be requisitioning more body bags. And my head wouldn’t be on the chopping block because of a psychopath I knew nothing about an hour ago.”

  “He’s been all over the news,” Bay said.

  Redmond glared.

  “Spoken like a man who’s about to retire,” he said. “I don’t want to see or hear from either of you again until I have this guy in custody. If you want any kind of future in law enforcement, you damn well better make it happen quick. I’ll release his photo to the media tonight.”

  “Are you sure, sir?” Raney said. “He’s dangerous.”

  “I’ll stress that. We want information, not vigilantes. If some paramilitary moron wants to pounce, then there’s nothing we can do about it. Now get moving.”

  There were women comforting one another all along the yellow tape, men standing back, gawking, mugging tough. Raney and Bay passed through them, walked the long road to the main avenue where they’d parked.