by Lee Lamothe
“It was nothing, really. Ansel was always trying to push us into buying some guns off him, guns he’d bought and needed the money back for. Corey said he didn’t ask Ansel to get any guns. Ansel said something like, ‘Well, we’re gonna need guns to tear it down, you guys agreed, and I went out and spent nine hundred bucks to get these things and you don’t want them? What am I gonna do with all these guns?’ And Corey said, he was a little pissed off and trying to stand up to Ansel, he said, ‘Take ’em up to the projects, sell ’em to the gangbangers.’ Ansel didn’t like that much, arming the enemy. He said, ‘Well, maybe I can take ’em down to Smoketown, I got a pal spends a lot of time down there, hunting up black cooz. Can’t remember the race traitors’ name but it’ll come to me.’ Next day Corey sold a snowmobile he had just bought last winter and we had a bunch of guns.”
“You think Corey went beyond the porn? That he was into black women, sexually, like, physically? Down in Smoketown? And Ansel worked him off that?”
“I don’t know, Miss. I’m just sayin’. If Corey had that … kind of stuff going on, there’s no way he’d kill them, after. Corey was no killer. And Ansel, well, if the women were killed and not … had things done … then maybe Ansel. But no way is he gonna … do stuff to them.”
“Well, Joe, we weren’t exactly square with you. The black ladies were beaten to death, but there was no sexual assault. No rape. We made that up to move you. It had to be done, you know? It hurt me to lie, seeing what it did to you, to make you worry for your family. But I have to speak for those poor dead ladies. That’s my job, my calling. If you want, I can call your wife and explain it to her. So she doesn’t have bad thoughts about it. Women can take that kind of stuff hard.”
“No, no, it’s all right. She knows me. She knows I’d never —” He went silent. Then, “I’m glad they didn’t suffer all that before they died. Those women.”
It was time to move him again. He’d ramble all day with her to avoid going back inside the isolation cell. “So, you remove the rape part of the attacks on the ladies, what do you think? Ansel? Someone else in the group?”
“Like I said, I don’t know what’s in other folks’ hearts. But if, like you said, the … women were killed and not … had stuff done on them, then maybe Ansel. Ansel could kill anyone. He told us stories about things he did. How he stone-cold capped asses, he called it, for America.”
In her mind, she organized all that he’d said. She wanted to leave him, but she wanted to leave on good terms. “Okay, Joe. I was glad to hear from you, so I could come in and clear up that sex stuff. I was going to come in, see how you’re doing, but we got really busy. The people in Chinatown, I guess you heard, were pretty upset about what you guys did. They did a lot of damage over in Stonetown. That’s sorting out, but we still haven’t conclusively put the dead ladies on Corey or any of your people.” She leaned forward gently. “Anything else, before I head out.”
“Yeah, yes, maybe. I was thinking. You said one of the … the ladies was killed by the river? The night we were patrolling?”
“Yes. We don’t have a timeline, that last poor lady is still in a coma. She was just a girl, Joe, about as big as a kid. A girl out for a walk. He grabbed her up and just …” She shook her head as if she couldn’t comprehend it.
“Well, Miss, I was thinking. We was out on the water, about ten o’clock to after midnight. Having a few beers. Nothing came over from Canada, so we packed it in. Just about midnight. There was me and Corey and Peter.”
“No Ansel?”
“No, not that night. He said he had another action to do, he’d hook up with us later. But we didn’t see him for a day or two.”
He wanted to please her, to give her something. She wondered if, in his life, he’d had any exposure to black people, had had a coffee with one, or a meal, or even a chat on a street corner. Or with a Chinese person. Or any person unlike himself. Somehow his life had become ghettoized. He’d barricaded himself from the people of America, people who weren’t much different from himself. Frustrated sometimes. Happy sometimes. Exhausted and worrisome about their children and elderly parents and finances. He had access to all of America and he’d limited himself, or been limited to, a narrow, hateful slice. Cops did it too. They cut themselves off from their own human nature, made themselves separate and different. They barricaded themselves. The thought of Barcelona with her poet was becoming attractive, even urgent, for the survival of her sanity.
“If that’s true, Joe, that means Peter, and especially Corey, aren’t who we’re looking for. You’re sure, right? This is the truth, just between us?”
“Me, Peter, and Corey. We was on the water, we beached the boat on the shore, we went back to Corey’s.”
She waited a minute. Her instinct was to lay back, but to give him something. She couldn’t give him approval. That would be too much, even for her. “Maybe, Joe, maybe you’re making up for all that other stuff, now with this. There might be some strange roundabout reason, man. If you hadn’t gone into Chinatown that night we wouldn’t have met. If we hadn’t have met, I wouldn’t be getting this information for the poor dead ladies.”
He looked over her shoulder and seemed to be thinking about it. “Yeah. I’m gonna have to go to school on that. But maybe it sounds about right.” He mulled and nodded to himself. “Did this help? With those … poor dead ladies?”
“I think so, Joe. If you and Peter and Corey were in the boat, then maybe Ansel is the guy. Did he ever mention any place? A restaurant? A bar? Where he worked? Girlfriend? A car or truck you might have seen him in?”
“Nothing. He always showed up with Corey and he left with Corey. He never talked about nothing except actions. Actions, actions, actions.”
“This is good. You’ve done well for me and I appreciate it.” She looked at her watch. “Joe I have to take off, follow this stuff up, find the justice.”
Then he said why he really wanted her to visit. He’d rehearsed it to get it right, to let her know clearly, she could see. He spoke almost formally. “You know, Miss, if I had someone like you, black or white, in my family, talking like this together, I think I’d’a done okay, wouldn’t be in this mess.” He awkwardly half-stood, bent at the waist. “I just wanted you to know that.”
Martinique Frost looked at the Plexiglas window, made a thumbs-up motion, and raised her eyebrows. The custodian nodded. Slowly she rose and came around the table and gave Joseph Carr, held hunched over in his restraints, an awkward hug. “Good luck to you, Joe.”
“You’re a good person,” he said, “and I think I might’a been a good person too, if things was different.” He sat back down as the custodian came in, a tiny can of pepper spray subtly hidden in his hand. “Would you tell those Chinese folks I’m sorry? If they’d’a stayed over there we could’a been friends. I really like their food.”
“I’ll tell them, Joe.”
“Head down on the table, Joe. Relax.”
He put his head down with the custodian’s hand on his head, but he kept his eyes cut up into hers. “If I see them in heaven, things’ll be different. I promise you.”
She couldn’t think of anything to say to that and left him being re-shackled.
Chapter 21
Samual Darius Evans, with the worn black bible in his hand, sat silently with his daughter for the five minutes until the nurse came in. She checked the monitors, made some notes, and said they could have five minutes more.
The moment she stepped out of the room, Samual Darius Evans excused himself to Djuna Brown. “I know when you’re a police officer, it’s hard to believe, with all you see, I know that. But I’d like to pray, here, with my girl. I don’t want to embarrass you, Miss, if you’d like to leave.”
He was goodness. He was her father. He was what Ray Tate had in mind when he said to keep your heart for the victims. She said, “Even police pray. May I stay? And pray? With you, for her?”
He laboriously got on his knees with a heavy sigh and the crackle of car
tilage. She stood behind him, erect with her head bent, and folded her hands at her waist. Feeling like a bit of a fake, she was surprised to hear Evans’s voice in her ear: “Pretend to believe when you don’t believe, and you’ll be ready to believe when you do.” That was the essence of his faith.
The room was quiet. Machines beeped. A car engine roared outside the window.
She closed her eyes.
And then there was a convergence inside her, a gathering. Maybe because she was exhausted and her posture allowed her to finally relax. Maybe it was some osmosis of the tensile strength of Bronstein or Samual Darius Evans, strong fathers both. But there was something happening. It wasn’t a vision of God, but it was a diverse confusion of elements, not unpleasant, not demanding to be calmed, but only to be recognized, endured. It was the smell of sweat-lodge smoke, the caw of a raven, it was the flash of Ray Tate’s face in the instant before she’d been handed the email calling for help down in the city, it was the sound of the curving bullet taking her earring off with a buzz and a clink.
She was warmed, flushed, as she listened to the rhythm of Samual Darius Evans’s voice and while she couldn’t hear the words, she recognized the pacing of The Lord’s Prayer.
There was a pause after he said a strong, loud, “Amen.”
Then he starting singing what sounded like a lullaby.
Then he stopped.
Then he cried, “Evening.”
Alarmed, Djuna Brown reached out to comfort him, to restrain him if necessary although she couldn’t imagine anyone with enough strength.
Evening Evans’s uncovered eye was open, flickering toward the sound of his voice.
Djuna Brown felt pretty good. Maybe her little portion of the praying had paid off in the God scheme of things. She left Samual Evans with his daughter, left the hospital to stand in the sunshine. She called Ray Tate.
“She’s awake, Ray. We were … we were just in the room and Mr. Evans was praying and she just woke up. She can’t talk yet, but the doctor, Bronstein, remember him from Stonetown? Doctor Tire Iron? He’s her doctor. He said maybe later this evening we can take a really soft run at her. Simple yes or no stuff. Nothing too confusing.”
“Great, good, that’s good news, Djun’.”
“And that Harris thing? We thought was a dog? It was Horace, a gun, named after Horace Smith, Smith & Wesson. She had it with her. Looks like the doer took it. I told Marty.”
“A mystery solved. What are you up to? Now?”
“Nothing. You, ah, want to meet? At the Whistler? Have lunch?”
“Marty and Brian are on their way here. They’ve got stuff. I’m at the Bottomless on Ontario Road. Why don’t you come over here? We can strategize, maybe ... ah, I dunno, head to the hotel after for lunch?”
She didn’t have a car, and asked for directions. He said to take a cab, it was easier.
But she didn’t. She asked a passerby for directions to the Bottomless on Ontario and in her little slippers started a twenty-five-block hike. Her path took her through Stonetown. It still reeked of smoke. There was a lot of damage. Every window had been shattered. Shopkeepers and restaurateurs consulted with insurance-claim adjusters waving clipboards, or listlessly swept the glass and debris from their storefronts into the gutter. Some buildings had been burned. She stopped and watched and bummed a cigarette from a passing woman.
She smoked, remembering her wild night there. How she smelled on herself terror, how the burning gasoline burned at her eyes. This is the place where everything that was me evaporated, she thought. I got caught up and found myself to be a stranger to me. I was afraid and was almost killed in front of Ray, breaking his heart, and …
And then in front of her in Stonetown there was a moment, a moment of validation she needed.
A dozen Chinese youths in black kung fu pants, work boots, and white T-shirts came up the block, two by two, followed by two creeping car-loads of chargers. The Chinese teens wore work gloves. They stopped in front of a narrow bistro where a woman in a white chef’s jerkin, black-and-white checkered pants, and wooden clogs stood surveying the damage, shaking her head.
One of the Chinese kids went up to speak to her. She hugged him and Djuna Brown heard her say, “I’m so, so very sorry.” And the crew moved into the restaurant. Four chargers in their black leather gloves disembarked their ghoster and followed them in.
A battered U.S. mailbox was carried out by two Chinese kids and stood upright at the curb. One of the chargers moved to the broken window and, with his baton, scraped the shards of glass remaining in the frame. Two chargers came out carrying a newspaper box; they set it up near the mailbox. One kid came out with a broom and swept the patio meticulously. Two others carried out broken chairs and tables. The woman in her chef’s outfit set up four tables on her patio and went inside. She came out with a tray covered in foil and a case of beer.
Snapping caps, she saw Djuna Brown smoking at the edge of the railing. “Are you okay? You’re crying.”
“So are you.”
“Sometimes, sometimes … this really is America.” The chef laughed and sniffed. “Go figure.”
Djuna Brown moved on, thumbing at her eyes. Reconstruction efforts were everywhere. She saw Willard Wong in pressed blue jeans and a white buttoned-down shirt with a thin cardigan over his shoulders, like a cape, directing a crew of workers at a furniture store. He aristocratically smoked a cigarette, holding it near his mouth as he inhaled and exhaled. From inside came the rip of a power saw, the hammering of nails. As she passed, he spotted her and wagged his finger at her with a smile. She waved gaily and paused at the foot of Parson’s Lane. There’d be bullet pockmarks in the brick walls, a shattered earring on the ground, and there’d be the cobblestones where she’d curled up and was afraid to look at Ray Tate, fearing the bullets meant for him hadn’t curved in magic. Where, when she heard his voice talking to the old Road, she’d started giggling and proceeded to fall apart.
She moved on, avoiding Parson’s Lane. She carried a melancholic feeling of hope with her. Not wanting to spoil it, she added five blocks to her trip to the Bottomless and avoided Chinatown, not wanting to push her luck. Chinatown would still be forensics teams and flower shrines.
The blue Mercury and a black Chrysler were parked illegally in front of the Bottomless, curb-side wheels up on the sidewalk. Through the window she could see Marty Frost and Brian Comartin sitting close together at a wire metal table. They looked, she thought, like a middle-aged couple planning their day, maybe discussing going to a movie, maybe planning a late dinner. Ray Tate was at the serving counter. When she walked in he looked and gave her the old sly Ray Tate smile, and then told the barista to blow up another cappuccino, his simple sister was here, on leave from the asylum. The barista laughed aloud.
When they were settled in around the table, Djuna Brown went first, relating the miraculous reviving of Evening Evans, leaving out her own effort at prayer. In barely concealed wonder, she spoke at length about Samual Darius Evans and his strength of character. She spent some time on Bronstein, his easy command of his staff, the collecting of the bag of garbage, the rearrangement of the nursing station into a hospital ward. She detailed her walk through Stonetown, told of the Chinese kids and the chargers working on the bistro, the owner weeping. “Amazing how in the light of day everybody’s humanity comes back, how we all recognize each other again,” she said, speaking of the neighbourhood and, maybe, about herself.
Essentially, she added nothing to the dead ladies’ case, except that Harris was Horace and Horace was a gun, and Marty Frost and Brian Comartin looked at each other in amusement as if Djuna Brown were indeed a slightly simple-minded sister in her little spangled slippers.
“Cool.” Ray Tate appreciated all of it. He could tell she was back. “Now, about last night at the Jank.” He told them about the suspicion he and Djuna Brown had that Sally Greaves, the head of the SPA, wasn’t being straight with them. “She seemed to be more interested in putting the hat for the l
adies on a sex deviant. They want us to look elsewhere. We got the sense that the whole discussion was a set-up, maybe by her, maybe by her and Hambone Hogarth. They don’t want us jumping into the Volunteers’ shit. We didn’t know why, then.” He sipped his coffee and said, “But I think Marty might know why. Ansel Partridge. Marty?”
Martinique Frost went over her conversation with Joseph Carr. He’d made alibis for himself, Corey Garnett, and Peter van Meister. “The only player we know wasn’t there is Ansel Partridge. Mystery man. He comes, he goes. Picked up with the firebombers in Chinatown but not in custody, not anywhere in the system. I checked.” She looked around at each of them. “Ansel Partridge. Cop or informant, living the cartoon life. And maybe, in his spare time, killer of the ladies.”
“Not something Sally Greaves would want out there in the press.” Ray Tate nodded appreciatively. “Nicely done. We can use this. It answers a lot of questions. Sally Greaves wouldn’t want us uncovering that Ansel Partridge might be a rogue, working undercover on the Volunteers by day, killing innocent women by night. All on the city payroll. Hambone wouldn’t really care. At any time he can hang it on Corey Garnett, solve the whole thing without a messy trial. And he gets a favour from Sally, in case he needs it down the road. Neat. Sweet.”
They figured Ansel Partridge wasn’t his name, but back at the Jank Martinique Frost put him through Google and several search engines. There were no hits. The media drag came up negative except for Ansel Adams, the photographer, and the Partridge Family. She did a search on the Aryan Nations and several other white power groups. “No hits for Partridge, Brian. But when in doubt, go to the chat rooms. People will say anything about anyone.”
“Do you want me to do a driver’s licence on him? Put him through the computer for a criminal record?”
“Nope. We hold off on that. Once we do that, we’re gonna hear about it, fast, if he’s a cop. If he’s on the job, or an agent for the job, there’ll be a red notify on his working name in case he got burned or someone is checking him out. Someone’ll come at us, asking why we put him in. We hold until we’re ready to tell them.” She peered at the screen then rubbed her eyes. “We get everything we can, then we make an official move.” She took her glasses from her purse and put them on.
