The Philadelphia Quarry

by Howard Owen

It’s a blessedly slow night. I call Andi to find out which restaurant she’s waitressing at this week, and also try to find out something about her social life with my usual lack of success.

  “With this economy,” she says, when I wonder aloud how long it’ll take her to graduate taking two courses a semester, “why hurry?”

  It’s hard to argue with that, much as I want to.

  About nine thirty, I get a call from Marcus Green.

  “Hey,” he says. “You still interested in interviewing my client?”

  I tell him I’ll call him back in thirty seconds.

  In the smokers’ gulag, I use my cellphone. I explain that I’ve been taken off the story.

  “Man,” he says, “those guys take care of their own, don’t they?”

  Marcus doesn’t have to check ESPN to know what the score is. He’s been watching game film of West End power brokers for a very long time, looking for tendencies and weaknesses.

  I tell him that Mark Baer is going to be covering whatever else happens to Richard Slade.

  “My client doesn’t want to talk to Mark Baer. He wants to talk to you.”

  “That’s flattering, Marcus.”

  “Flattering doesn’t have shit to do with it. His momma told him about you maybe being his cousin and all.”

  I opine that maybe I’m making some inroads with Philomena Slade after all.

  Marcus Green laughs.

  “Well, she’s got a pretty good hard-on against all you scoundrels down there. That’s what she called y’all the other day, after she threw you out of the car.

  “But maybe she thinks you’re the best of a bad lot. You being family and all. That still tickles me, by the way. You’re about as African-American as Donald Trump.”

  “Hurts coming from you. You’ve probably got a butler and a maid.”

  Green lives along River Road. I’ve seen his place. He even had a lawn jockey out front for a while. All the white folks out there painted theirs white, about as far as most of them were willing to ride on the tolerance train, so Marcus painted his black, in some kind of twisted attempt at sardonic humor that went over like a fart in a phone booth. He finally gave up after the jockey got stolen three times. The last time, somebody put a love note in his mailbox, calling him a racist cracker and promising more personal and heartfelt retribution.

  Marcus harrumphs.

  “I’m just a proud black man who’s pulled himself up by his bootstraps, overcoming oppression every step on the way.”

  We both laugh. If the Grand Wizard—or whatever the hell he is—of the Ku Klux Klan offered Marcus Green a nice payday, Marcus would be right there, with that same aggrieved look, fuming over the injustice that awaited his client if a fair and balanced jury didn’t save the day.

  Still, Marcus Green has helped me, and vice versa. Sometimes, we are aiming in the same direction. Often, neither of us is pure of heart, but sometimes you have to be saved by a scoundrel.

  “Yeah,” I say, “I’d like very much to talk to your client. Tell him that, if there’s some truth to be had, we will get at it.”

  And I promise him something else. I promise that I’ll find a way to get that truth, whatever it might be, into the paper.

  It’s a promise I hope I can keep.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Thursday

  Peachy Love succeeded me in my first incarnation on night cops.

  Then, she decided she liked the police end of things better than the newspaper end. She’s been a flack for them now for about twelve years. We have an agreement. She’s never seen talking to me, except maybe at a group press conference. I never mention her name. But, when either of us knows it’s necessary, we talk.

  Usually, like today, it’s over the phone, although I have been known to make an after-hours house call to Peachy’s place in Ginter Park.

  “Thought I’d give you a heads-up,” she says. I’m still two-thirds asleep. Her voice tells me I’d better wake up fast.

  “Yeah?”

  “The guy you’re checking on? He’s going to be a TV star today.”

  Richard Slade, it turns out, did not sleep tight in his old bed at his mother’s house last Friday night. Either that, or his identical twin was in the Kwik-Mart two miles away at three thirty A.M., buying a carton of cigarettes.

  “Trust me,” Peachy says, “it’s him. I saw the tape.”

  And so, it seems, will everyone in Richmond before the day is out.

  I ask her how the surveillance tape got into the hands of one of our local network affiliates.

  “Hell if I know. Might have been one of the investigators, might have been the guy at the Kwik-Mart. Doesn’t much matter, right now, does it? It’ll be on the noon news, though. You can count on that. They’ve already called the chief, asking for a comment on it.”

  I thank her and hang up. It’s nine thirty. I’d planned to sleep for another hour. I’m supposed to meet Marcus Green at the city jail at one thirty. Now, I’m wondering if I should even bother to go.

  Richard Slade might as well be wearing a toe tag already. This just plants him about six feet deeper. I have been accused of having a soft spot in the head for the underdog. But I do expect the underdog not to bite me on the ass with lies and bullshit while I’m trying to help him. A guy who says he slept all night like a baby at his momma’s house should not be videotaped at three thirty A.M. buying cigarettes at the Kwik-Mart. It sends the wrong message.

  But, there’s nothing much to do until I show up for work. Assuming Green doesn’t drop the guy like bad meat, I’ll be there. It should be entertaining, at least.

  There is time, though, before noon, to run a fool’s errand.

  The guess here is that our local TV news pups didn’t bother to call Philomena Slade. Somebody ought to tell her before she hears about it on the news, or from Mark Baer or somebody else calling her for a comment.

  By the time I shower, shave and wash down two Krispy Kremes with some of the coffee Custalow kindly left for me, it’s ten forty-five, and it’s after eleven when I get to Philomena’s.

  She doesn’t seem that glad to see me, our little truce notwithstanding. In the background, I can hear Jamal and Jeroy playing.

  “There’s something you need to know,” I tell her, and she goes silent but leaves the door open about four inches.

  When she hears about the surveillance tape, the door opens the rest of the way. She doesn’t invite me in, just turns and walks away, defeated.

  She sits down at the kitchen table. One of its leaves sags as she puts her elbows on it.

  “Not now, Jamal,” she tells the twin who wants her to play a child’s card game with him.

  “Why did he do that?” she says, not really asking me but just the world in general, or maybe God.

  I’m thinking the most obvious answer usually is the right one. He went out in the middle of the night because he knew, somehow, that Alicia Parker Simpson always came down a certain street at a certain time every day of the week, and he had some issues that all the forgiveness in the world couldn’t wash away.

  “I wondered,” she says, and now she is talking to me. “I wondered about those cigarettes.”

  She’d found most of a carton of Kools in his bedroom, and it crossed her mind briefly that she hadn’t seen them before Saturday afternoon and didn’t remember Richard going out that day.

  “A friend came by that morning, a fella he’d known in prison who got out before he did, and I guess I just thought he brought the cigarettes. Richard didn’t smoke before he went to jail. I’m hoping he’s going to try to quit.”

  Then she goes silent, perhaps realizing that nicotine is not her son’s biggest problem right now.

  I tell her I just wanted to let her know, because somebody might be calling her, asking questions.

  She looks up, tired-eyed, like she needs to sleep.

  “Isn’t that what you do?”

  I explain that I’m not on the story anymore.

  “So what are
you doing here?”

  I can’t come up with a better answer than the one that comes out:

  “Because you’re family.”

  She seems to accept this, and I feel certain she’s being honest when she says that she never heard anything the night her son took his soon-to-be-infamous ride.

  “Guess I sleep more soundly than I realized. Those Ambiens really knock me out.”

  When I get to the door, she stops me with a slight pressure on my elbow.

  “I don’t know what kind of evidence they’re coming up with,” she says, “but I know, just as sure as I’m standing here, that he did not kill that woman. I know that.”

  I nod and tell her I’ll do what I can to find out more. When I wave to her through the screen, the twins are clinging to her dress.

  I get to the jail at one fifteen. I am kind of surprised when Marcus Green shows up five minutes later. Kate’s not with him.

  “Well,” he says to me, not appearing the least bit daunted, “we’ve got some work to do.”

  I suggest that all the work in the world might not save his client.

  “Aw,” he says, “I’ve had worse cases than this.”

  “That you won?”

  “Let’s just wait and see,” he says.

  Maybe it’s my imagination, but the jailer who escorts us to the interview room seems to be smirking. Half of Richmond must know by now about Richard Slade’s little after-hours run.

  Slade, when we get to the room, doesn’t look that much different than he did when he went free ten days ago, but I’m thinking he’s going to be a little hard to read. He’s had most of his life so far to work on keeping his true self hidden.

  I can’t tell, until he speaks, that he knows.

  “I heard about the tape,” is all he says.

  “Would’ve been nice if I’d heard about all this somewhere other than the TV,” Marcus says.

  “I didn’t know . . .” he says, then stops and looks off, focusing on some point beyond the wall behind us.

  “Well,” Marcus says, “you better start truthin’ right now, or get yourself another lawyer.”

  This gets Slade’s attention. He looks, for a fraction of a second, like I imagine that scared teenager did back in 1983. Other than his mother, he knows Marcus Green is all he’s got. He might not know, as I do, that his lawyer would dump him like a box of cat litter if it begins to look like Marcus Green’s best interests aren’t being served. I’ve seen him do it.

  I’ve been mostly a fly on the wall so far, waiting to pick up what shit I can out of this.

  Slade seems to notice me for the first time.

  “So you’re the white sheep of the family,” he says.

  I explain it all as quick as I can, including the part about how I’m not really on the story anymore. Richard Slade might or might not believe me, but he and I both know he’s not in a position to alienate anyone who has a better than twenty-to-one shot at saving his ass. He probably knows that a distant cousin who might or might not ever write anything else about the mess he’s in might be the best shot he has.

  “Anyhow,” Marcus says, getting the conversation back to where it might do someone some good, “tell it.”

  Slade grimaces.

  “Bump came by, and he wanted me and him to go for a ride.”

  “He came by when?”

  “It was about two in the morning.”

  “He just knocked on your momma’s door at two A.M.?”

  Slade is quiet for a few seconds, and I can hear the gears shifting, like he’s doing a little self-editing. Marcus and I exchange a glance.

  “Well,” he says, “it wasn’t quite like that.”

  “What I’m here for,” Marcus says, raising his voice the way he might pounce on a vulnerable witness who’s just identified his client, “is the truth. T-R-U-T-H. Not a bunch of bullshit. The truth.”

  “OK, OK.” Slade holds his cuffed hands up. “I ran into him that afternoon. I was just out walking, and he sees me and pulls over. He said he was going to work, wouldn’t get off till one in the morning, but he’d come by and get me. We’d go down to the docks, drink a couple of beers, catch up, you know?”

  “I don’t know anything,” Marcus Green says, his arms crossed. “Educate me. Start off by telling me who Bump is.”

  Bump Freeman, Slade explains, was his friend when they were growing up.

  “Hadn’t seen him in twenty-eight years,” he says, which makes me wonder why Mr. Freeman never visited him, but sometimes friends can be fickle. If anybody understands that, it’s Richard Slade.

  “He was with me that night.”

  At first, I don’t understand, and then I do.

  “At the Quarry?”

  He nods his head.

  “I think he wanted to try to tell me about, you know, what happened.”

  “What happened,” Marcus says, “is he and your other so-called friends sold your ass out.”

  Slade shrugs.

  “We were kids. Cops came after me like they did him, I’d have done the same thing.”

  I can tell that Marcus, who is the type to redress old wrongs instead of forgiving them, isn’t exactly buying this.

  Slade says the plan was for his old buddy Bump Freeman, whom he hadn’t seen since Bump was helping send him to prison, to come by, and they’d go catch up.

  “I knew he’d be by about two, so I just set the alarm for one thirty. Then I sat on the front steps and waited.”

  According to Slade, Bump had picked up a couple of 40s, and they went down to the dock. They sat in the car, sipping malt liquor and looking out at the river with the car’s heat going, and they caught up.

  “Did anybody see you?” Marcus asks him.

  “Naw. Man, it was freezing out there. Nobody to see us.”

  “Bump never visited your ass in prison?”

  Slade shakes his head.

  “He said he was too ashamed.”

  “Hell,” Marcus mutters, “he should’ve been.”

  On the way back, Slade wanted some cigarettes. He went in and Bump stayed in the car.

  “We were back to my momma’s house by four thirty, at the latest. I swear.”

  Swear all you want, I’m thinking.

  “Did anybody see you get out of Bump’s car and go inside?” Marcus asks him.

  Slade shakes his head again.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Alicia Parker Simpson was shot around five fifteen. That time of morning, you could get there from Philomena’s house in fifteen minutes, maybe ten. Even if Richard Slade did what he said he did, up to the time he came back with his Kools from the Kwik-Mart, he had time to go out again, either by himself or with the ever-helpful Bump, and wait for his accuser. Maybe Bump had visited him in prison after all. Maybe he was helping to settle an old score, make up for not being there twenty-eight years ago.

  And about the only person who can even begin to vouch for Slade, it appears, is the redoubtable Bump Freeman.

  Where, Marcus asks him, does Bump live?

  Slade tells him that he lives “somewhere over by the school,” which turns out to be about two blocks away.

  “So you went back inside when you got back?”

  “Yeah. I was beat. I went straight to bed.”

  I’ve got a question of my own.

  “What about the guy who came by to see you that morning? Your momma said some guy who was at Greensville with you stopped by.”

  He looks surprised.

  “Oh,” he says, “you mean Shooter Sheets. Yeah, he wanted to wish me good luck, on getting out and all.”

  Shooter Sheets, Slade explains, had gotten out of prison a couple of years ago and was working as an auto mechanic now.

  I ask him why he was called Shooter, and he just looks at me like I’m the biggest dumb-ass in the world.

  “So,” Marcus says, “you went out in the middle of the night and got yourself a screen test at the Kwik-Mart, and nobody saw you come or go, other t
han some damn Indian clerk, and you spent time earlier in the day with an ex-con named Shooter.”

  “I know how it looks,” Slade says. “But can’t you find Bump? He’ll vouch for what I said.”

  I know what Marcus Green is thinking. Even if the upstanding Mr. Freeman is willing to go against form and step up for his old friend, who’s going to believe him? I’m hoping that, when Bump Freeman got home at the alleged hour of four thirty or so, he woke somebody up.

  And what was to keep Richard Slade from heading back out again, or getting into somebody else’s car? Maybe he just let Bump do it, or maybe this guy Shooter.

  Any way you look at it, there’s not a lot of positive takeaway from having the whole world find out that you lied about where you were on the night that the woman you had every reason to hate was murdered.

  I’ve listened to a lot of con jobs by cons, ex- and otherwise. If you’re on the cops beat, sometimes they fixate on the guy who wrote all those bad things about them. And then, when they’re convicted, they try to stay in touch, as if a few bylines have bonded our asses for life.

  It’s funny, but they don’t ever seem resentful. In most cases, they just seem to want to convince you that they didn’t do it, even after the police and the judge and jury and everyone else, myself included, is sure of the opposite.

  It is always, I learned early on, wise not to respond to the eight-page, handwritten jailhouse letters. These guys have a lot of time on their hands, and they’re looking for a Best Friend Forever on the outside. Then, when they get out, they can look you up, which is not a thing you might necessarily want to happen.

  Richard Slade never did that. Other than the occasional letter from his mother, he was out of sight, out of mind. And yet, he kind of won me over in the ten days since he was released. Until today, he seemed like the closest thing to an innocent victim I’ve seen go through our penal system—a guy who was locked away for damn near half his life and then harbored no grudges when he got out, just wanted to sit on a front porch with no bars on it and savor freedom.

  Well, I’ve been done in by gut feelings before.

  As we’re leaving, Slade puts his hand on my arm.

  “Help me,” is all he says.

  I tell him I’ll see what I can do. The way he looks at me, I can tell that he sees what a lost cause I think he is. I look away.