Key Witness

by J. F. Freedman

  They hadn’t gone to a jazz club together for decades.

  Wyatt had always had an affinity for the black world. It came from his love of jazz, that was obvious. That love had led him to look at things with an open eye, which turned out to be a good thing, he’d always thought. Integration for him wasn’t cerebral and abstract, it was essential and visceral. In a closed-off society, the way things were going today, he would have been denied that which he loved the most—the music. When he was young, in college and law school, he would go to jazz bars in black neighborhoods. Sometimes he’d be the only white person in the club, but he never felt uncomfortable or threatened.

  He hadn’t been to that kind of jazz club in years. He wasn’t sure he’d be comfortable doing that anymore.

  He picked up his trombone and sprayed some water on the slide. “Blue Bells of Scotland” was on the music stand, but he didn’t feel like playing that kind of music tonight. Instead, he put a CD on the player, the Thelonius Monk quintet, an old Blue Note recording. As the master and his group swung into “Straight, No Chaser” he joined in, for the moment leaving the cares of the world behind.

  THE JAILHOUSE DOCTOR, A genial hack, made his rounds in the morning. He was a private physician who couldn’t sustain a normal practice if it was handed to him on a silver platter, so he worked on contract to the city and various insurance companies, drank his lunch, and was useless for the rest of the day.

  He peeled Marvin’s bandages off and peered at his backside. “You’re healing up fine,” he pronounced after giving the wounds a cursory glance. “We’ll be able to send you into the general population tomorrow.” He took Marvin’s temperature, pulse, and blood pressure, scribbled some indecipherable notes on the chart at the foot of the bed, and promptly left, leaving the rebandaging to the staff, which was Dwayne again.

  The tattooed man applied fresh unguent to Marvin’s pitted flesh, laid gauze strips over it, and secured them with adhesive bandages. The overhead television was tuned to a local news and talk show, talking heads droning on, the sound turned down to where it was barely audible. He glanced up at the TV as he worked. They were talking about the murder from two nights ago. The city really has a wild hare up their ass about this shit, he thought. So some fucking cooze got offed—big fucking deal. So she was another victim of some crazy serial killer. So what? Serial killers had been around forever.

  Then he had another thought. Leaving the bandaging unfinished for a moment, he turned the TV up loud enough to hear. A remote shot of the alley—the murder site—came on the screen.

  “You were there, were you?” Dwayne inquired of Marvin, pointing up to the set.

  “Yeah. I was there.”

  He didn’t like the way this dude was bandaging his behind. The way his hands moved, it was too friendly; you don’t bandage someone and try to stroke their ass at the same time.

  “Where is that, anyway?” Dwayne continued.

  “It’s back behind this bar, dance hall kind of place. The Happy Joker, it’s called. Half a block off the corner of Braverly and Farraguet, over on the west side. Lot of hookers hang out in that neighborhood.”

  Dwayne paused. There hadn’t been any mention of those streets on the news. The bar hadn’t been identified, either. He was sure of that—it was the kind of specific detail he’d remember. He had a near-photographic memory for particulars like those: he used them when he took the stand in his testimonies at the various trials. Judges and juries were impressed with crap like that. He had spent years honing his mind that way, to advance his interests.

  He fitted the last strip of bandage over the corner of a gauze pad. “You’re all set,” he told Marvin.

  Marvin rolled over and sat up. “Thanks, man.”

  “You don’t want to go into the population with a red ass,” Dwayne told Marvin. “Might give some of them fellows the wrong idea ’bout you. Some of those clowns up there don’t have any scruples whatsoever.”

  Marvin nodded. That was exactly what he was afraid of.

  “One of the guards is a friend of mine, from prison,” Dwayne said. “I’ll put in a word for you.”

  Marvin regarded him with suspicion. “What do you want to do that for?”

  “You’ve never been in jail before, have you? For real, in a regular jail, not in juvie or some such petty shit.”

  A glib, jive, tough answer started to roll off Marvin’s tongue: he stopped it before it got out of his mouth. You don’t bullshit this kind of heavy-duty character, he knew that much.

  “Nah, I ain’t,” he admitted. “That’s ’cause I ain’t never been caught yet. As a adult,” he clarified. “I have done some evil shit as a youth, but they can’t use none of it against you in regular court.”

  “Which is lucky for you, I bet,” Dwayne said. He glanced up at the TV again. “They’re making one big stink about that.”

  “Seven women murdered. I guess so.”

  “And you were there.”

  “Yeah, I was.” He looked up at the screen, where Dwayne was pointing. “Shit, man, I’ve been all over that part of town. I’ve been where every one of them bitches been killed,” he bragged, trying to build up his stature, to give Dwayne a better feeling about him—that he wasn’t just some young inexperienced punk, but closer to an equal, a force to be reckoned with. Not that anything he had ever done or could embellish would come close to someone who was doing his time for committing murder; but a force nonetheless.

  “Oh?”

  “I had this delivery route?”

  Marvin knew that he was going to lie, that the words were going to come sliding out of his mouth like syrup from a bottle, smooth and easy, that he shouldn’t be talking trash to this man, because no matter what he said, this one sitting here with him had done it and bettered it, a thousand times. But he couldn’t help it, he had to brag on himself, status is everything, if you don’t have some you’re dead.

  “This delivery route,” he repeated. “It was all over the west side, from the river clear on out to the Jefferson Freeway.”

  “That’s a lot of territory. How’d you get around—you have your own wheels?”

  “Drove a delivery truck,” he mumbled. Wearing a uniform that made him look like a damn UPS delivery man. He hated that fucking uniform, he always changed out of it before going home. Quickly changing the subject: “I know shit about those killings that nobody except the cops know. Shit you didn’t never see on TV or newspapers.”

  “I’d keep that under my hat if I were you,” Dwayne counseled. “You don’t want the wrong people hearing you say things like that.”

  “Hey, I hear you.” Marvin looked around to make sure no one was watching them. No one was—they were alone. “The deal was, this delivery route was just so I could have a legitimate reason to be there in those places, you hear what I’m saying? ’Cause I needed something to shield me from what I was really doing, you dig?”

  Dwayne shook his head. “Doing what?”

  “Dealin’, man. What do you think?”

  “Ah!” Dwayne waggled a “naughty-naughty” finger at Marvin.

  “See, this delivery gig, that was chump change, man. I was making more damn coin in one minute dealing than in a whole week of delivering.” His voice was rising in pitch as he got into his dream. “Thousands, man. I couldn’t spend it fast enough. I got me a Rolex watch, the Navigator model, you ever seen it? It’s pressurized down to a hundred and fifty fathoms.”

  “Must be pretty.”

  “It is, man, it truly is. And just last week I walked into this car dealer, Jeeps, ordered me up a Grand Cherokee, the Orvis model, leather on leather, car phone, CD, every damn thing. It’s supposed to be coming in two weeks. I hope I’m out by then,” he added forlornly.

  “You’d better hope you’ve got a good lawyer.”

  “He seems good,” Marvin said, recalling Wyatt. The lawyer had looked good; he was wearing an expensive suit, an expensive watch. “I only have met him one time so far.”

&nbs
p; Dwayne nodded. “Do you mind if I ask you a question that’s kind of personal?”

  “Like what?” Marvin said suspiciously.

  “What’s a major drug dealer who’s pulling down thousands of dollars a week doing robbing a mom-and-pop convenience store?”

  “Shit, man.” Marvin came on indignant. “That wasn’t no damn little store. That was a Mafia store. The Thai Mafia used that store as a numbers drop, there was over fifty thousand dollars in that store,” he bragged, wildly inflating the illegal take. “You think I was going to rob some nickel-and-dime joint? Fuck no! This was major!”

  A numbers drop, Dwayne thought. Could be—stranger things have happened. Look at what had happened for him, coming across Doris Blake like that. This was getting interesting. “You’d better hope the Thai Mafia doesn’t have any members in here,” he warned Marvin.

  Marvin had had that very thought himself, ever since he’d awakened to find himself in the jail infirmary.

  “This delivery route you had,” Dwayne said, steering the conversation back to their earlier topic. “How long did you say you had that job? A year and a half?”

  “Almost two. Started it right after I turned sixteen. I didn’t want to have to go to my mama for spending money no more. That was before I got into making real money,” he added hastily.

  “Right,” Dwayne agreed, massaging Marvin’s ego. “It sounds like right after you started working those women started getting dead, in the same general area.”

  “This is true,” Marvin said with a touch of braggadocio. “Actually,” he added, dropping his voice conspiratorially, “I was right where some of those killings happened, right when they happened.”

  Egging the kid on: “You serious?”

  “Shit yes, I’m serious!”

  “Name one,” Dwayne challenged him. “Unless you’re bullshitting me, ace.”

  Marvin bristled. “You want to hear about one?” he asked, rising to the bait as Dwayne had known he would. “The third woman that was killed? I’ll tell you something about her that wasn’t in no newspapers, or on the TV, either. She was a he.”

  “A cross-dresser?” Dwayne was taken by surprise. This was a fresh twist.

  “Full-blown transvestite, titties and everything. But she still had a cock. She was saving up to go in for the sex-change operation thing.”

  “How did you find out about that?” Dwayne asked.

  “I heard some cops talking about it. Joking.”

  There was more Marvin knew—a lot more. It never ceased to amaze Dwayne how much people on the street knew that was never reported. Cops were always talking to people, trying to get information, dropping their own tidbits in return.

  They talked for quite a while: Marvin did the talking; Dwayne listened and asked questions. He didn’t have to probe much—the kid wanted to talk, to show off. He had good ears, and a strong memory for details.

  “I wouldn’t let these jailer folks in on how much of that stuff you know,” Dwayne counseled Marvin. “Between what you’ve told me, and your being near that alley where this last one was done, you could be in for some serious grief.”

  “Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna. Besides, I wasn’t around for most of them killings. I was with my friends—they’d stand up for me if anyone ever wanted to fuck me over about that shit.”

  “Well, you’re clean then.”

  “Clean as a baby’s ass.”

  Marvin lay back on his pillow. Between having a private lawyer who wore an expensive watch, and this badass in his corner, he was beginning to feel better.

  WYATT DROVE BY HIMSELF to the scene of the crime. Josephine had been set to accompany him, but at the last minute she’d gotten bogged down with one of the other lawyers she serviced. The ratio in the Public Defender’s office was one paralegal to fifteen lawyers—a 180-degree turnaround from his own firm, where the split was two assistants to each lawyer.

  Normally an investigator would have done this kind of basic legwork. There were cases his firm handled—corporate espionage, allegations of massive fraud or money laundering, for example—in which the fees from the detective agencies alone would run over a million dollars. There were six investigators assigned to the Public Defender’s office in total, not nearly enough to handle the massive caseload, and cuts in the city’s budget were about to reduce that number to four.

  Besides, he needed to get his hands dirty. Feel things firsthand.

  He found a parking spot half a block from the store and locked his car with the remote. He was driving the Mercedes. Except for a couple of Japanese compacts it was the only foreign car on the block—everything else was solid working-class American sedans.

  As he walked along the street he checked out the dingy little storefronts, at least a third of them boarded up and vacant. At one time a cozy old ethnic middle European neighborhood, the German, Yiddish, and Italian voices that rang through the streets with such authority and verve had long since given way to Spanish, Korean, Cantonese, and other tongues foreign to his experience.

  Wyatt had grown up in the city. He didn’t remember this particular street, but he most likely had been on it before, when he was a boy.

  A bell over the door rang when he stepped inside the doorway, heralding his arrival. Anything you could buy here could be purchased cheaper at a supermarket, but the nearest supermarket was eight blocks away. For people who didn’t have a car—a large percentage in this kind of neighborhood—or were older, eight blocks was too far away. Even people who did their big shopping at the large markets would stop in here when they needed four or five quick items—a loaf of bread, a quart of milk, a box of Tide—because it was fast and easy.

  There were half a dozen customers in the store. All women, most of them Asian of one ethnicity or another. Wyatt meandered around, taking mental inventory.

  As his roving eye looked up at the water-stained ceiling he noticed a video surveillance camera high on the back wall, tucked away in a corner. There was no light on to signify that it was recording, but it looked like the lens was contracting and expanding.

  “Help you?” the Korean man behind the counter asked as Wyatt finally made his way to the register. Wyatt noticed that his accent was very strong.

  “Do you have … Chap Stick?” Wyatt asked. He had to buy something, otherwise he’d be suspicious.

  The man pointed to a bin nearby, where lip balms of various flavors were displayed. Wyatt picked up a strawberry-flavored tube.

  “Anything else you want?”

  Wyatt shook his head, dug into his pocket for his money clip. “This is a nice store,” he commented pleasantly. “Are you the owner?”

  The man grunted something unintelligible. “One eight-five,” he quoted the price.

  He was the owner, the one who had fired the shotgun. The description fit.

  He handed the man a couple of singles. “Is this the store that was robbed the other night?” he asked offhandedly as he waited for the man to make change.

  The owner looked up suspiciously. “Why you ask that?”

  Wyatt shrugged. “It was on the late-night news. I was curious.”

  “Store not robbed,” the man said, puffing out his chest. “I shoot robber.”

  “That took guts,” Wyatt said admiringly.

  “Not guts,” the owner corrected him. “Brain.” He pointed a finger to his temple. “No nigger boy rob me of my money.”

  “Good for you,” Wyatt commended the man. It was time to go—he’d seen what he needed to see, and hearing this confirmed the suspicions that had come up when he had read the police reports. He glanced up at the video camera again—unless someone happened to see it by accident, as he had, it was almost impossible to notice. “Too bad your camera isn’t working,” he said. “You could’ve sold the footage to one of those reality shows on TV. You’d be a hero.”

  “No hero,” the man shook his head. “No want to be on television.” For a fast part of a second his lips cracked, almost in smile. “But camera w
ork fine. Keep it where robber not know it there. Keep record if anyone else try to rob me and I can’t stop them.”

  He turned away from Wyatt dismissively, giving his attention to a customer who had approached the counter with her shopping items.

  “THERE’S A SURVEILLANCE CAMERA?” Walcott asked. “That isn’t in any of the police notes, is it?”

  “No,” Wyatt answered. “Which means the police don’t know about it.”

  “Or they’ve seen it and there’s nothing on it that serves their cause. In either case, it’s good work.” Walcott chucked Wyatt on the shoulder.

  “I’m sure it would be exculpatory.” Wyatt laid a rudimentary hand-drawn layout of the store on Walcott’s desk. “Take a look at this floor plan I made.” He traced his finger along the path from the front door to the counter. “I counted the steps from here to here. Eleven paces—that’s over ten yards. A cannon couldn’t blow someone Marvin’s size that far, let alone a shotgun firing bird-shot pellets.”

  “The kid was running away when he was shot,” Walcott said, getting the implication.

  Wyatt nodded. “And here’s the backup for that theory: there were no bloodstains anywhere inside the store. Not on the floor or on any of the counters. The only blood was outside, from where the kid landed on the sidewalk.”

  “Might be a good idea to subpoena those tapes,” Walcott mused. “You don’t think there’s anything on them that could backfire on us, do you?”

  “What difference would it make? He’s going to be found guilty as things stand now; if these make us look bad we haven’t lost anything, and if they help, they help.”

  Walcott turned to Josephine. “Type up a subpoena for the tapes from that evening, if there are any.”

  “Instead of just that evening, why don’t we ask for a week of tapes?” Wyatt suggested. “If this really is a numbers drop, like our client claims it to be, that could be a nice negotiating chip.”