Clockers (42 page)

The sanctuary was empty save for the detective, the reverend and the shooter, who were clumped together in the front row, waiting. Rocco hadn’t been in a black church since an elderly woman had died of a heart attack during a storefront service fifteen years before, and that place had been cramped, sweaty and hysterical. This time he felt as if he had walked into the center of a cloud.

The reverend and the detective were both overweight and middle-aged. Between them sat a kid in his late teens or early twenties, bony and sad, scrunched up and staring at the floor, his shoulders pulled forward as if he was being crushed by the bodies on either side of him.

“Hiya. Rocco Klein, prosecutor’s office.” Rocco held his hand out to the detective. Mazilli trailed behind, hands in his pockets, looking around the place.

“Bill Walker.” The detective, looking a little dressy for church, wore a three-piece cream suit, cream tie and cream chest hankie, and his iron-gray mustache and sideburns were clipped with topiary precision. “And this is the Reverend George Posse.”

The reverend, a dumpy, dark-skinned man, rose from the bench in a cautious crouch, a clipped bow tie hanging off one side of his open shirt collar. He remained in his crouch throughout the introductions, then settled back down, his arm protectively behind the shooter’s head, his mouth twisting with unspoken anxieties.

Rocco turned to the shooter, who sat slouched in the pew, the side of his face pushed up into his eye by the heel of his hand. He wore a blue crewneck sweater, the collar bulging slightly over the knot of his tie, and a cheap but pressed pair of gray slacks.

“How ya doin’?” Rocco said cheerfully.

The kid looked at him with one eye but otherwise remained immobile on the bench, his legs crossed, a shiny patch of shin visible above a collapsed sock.

“This is Victor Dunham.” The reverend squeezed the kid’s shoulder. “He’s in my congregation.”

“Good.” Rocco nodded, dancing on tiptoes, beaming down at the kid as if he had just won first prize but was too shy to accept.

Ready to start things rolling, Rocco opened his mouth to speak but then stopped, distracted by Victor’s thick eyebrows. He looked over at Mazilli, then gave the kid a closer look. “Don’t I know you?”

“Victor’s a good individual.” The reverend’s voice was husky and pained, but Rocco noticed that the detective’s face stayed neutral.

“Great.” Rocco came back to himself, flashed a smile and extended his hand for Victor to rise, eager to get him out of there and away from the reverend before the guy started talking about civil rights and lawyers and screwing up what should be a quick, simple confession.

As Victor got to his feet, the detective handed over a wedge of tinfoil. At first Rocco thought the guy was passing him a slice of leftover cake for some reason, but the package was too heavy, its heft that of a handgun.

The reverend moved between Rocco and Victor, as if to shield him from arrest. “What happens now?”

Rocco took a breath. “Well, if he
did
do this, he’s gonna have to, you know, I’m sure he had a reason and, ah, that’s what I’d like to talk to him about.”

Victor dropped down to the edge of the pew, then slid back into a comma of despair, his thick eyebrows arched over barely open lids.

”
Then
what?” said the reverend, sounding more concerned than hostile.

Mazilli muttered something and did a little stroll.

Rocco looked to the detective for help but he just nodded for Rocco to keep stroking the reverend. At least the guy was on Rocco’s side; he hadn’t mentioned lawyers either.

“Can I talk to you in private?” Rocco put a hand on the reverend’s arm and led him in a slow walk around the church.

“Look, I’ll tell you anything you want to know, but I don’t want the kid to panic,” Rocco said quietly. “He’s got to be charged with unlawful possession for the gun, that’s for starters, but what
my
hunch is, just from talking a little to Detective Walker on the phone, is that he’s probably who we’re looking for on the homicide and, ah, I don’t want to go into all of this in front of
him
because he probably doesn’t realize that in a few hours he’s got to go to County, you know, the jail, and if it’s a murder charge the bail’s gonna be high, so he’s probably gonna be in there for a while, and I don’t want him thinking about that right now and all of a sudden jumping up and trying to run out of here.”

Rocco took a fast breath, wanting to keep talking, keep the reverend off balance and prevent him from asking questions. “Look, obviously he’s been raised to know right from wrong, his conscience is bothering him, he must have been going through
hell
these last few days, so if you don’t mind, let me take him to my office and get to the bottom of this, because from what I see, here’s a kid who should
not
be in this predicament, so he must have a damn good reason for what happened, and the sooner I can
get
to that damn good reason, the better prepared I can be to speak out for him at the arraignment, OK?”

The reverend stopped walking and absently picked up a paper fan from a pew. He sighed heavily and shook his head. “But this don’t make any sense…”

Rocco let the silence hang for a few seconds, gathering his strength. “Look, I’m gonna take him down to the office, charge him with the gun. I’m gonna send it out to be tested. If it comes back the murder weapon, we’ll charge him with the homicide. If it’s not the murder weapon, the kid’s obviously in need of professional counseling, so I promise that he’ll walk on the gun charge, I’ll turn him back over to you so you can get him some help and…” Enough. Rocco was tired of blowing smoke, and there was really nothing more to say. He turned the reverend around and began walking him toward Victor Dunham. “So let me get it rolling, OK?”

“I don’t know.” The reverend sounded anguished.

“You don’t know
what?
“ Rocco felt his face getting hot.

“It just don’t make no sense at all, none of it.”

Rocco was tempted to say, “It doesn’t have to make sense, it’s the law,” but he saw that the reverend was ready to give it up and knew that the best thing to do now was remain silent, just
be
the law in all its unstoppable officiousness.

“Ready to go?” Mazilli smiled tightly at the reverend.

“Let’s go, Victor.” Rocco gently hooked his elbow, and as the kid rose from the bench, Rocco was struck by his floppy passivity, a lack of resistance so absolute it seemed that he had been taken away days ago and what Rocco now had at the end of his arm was an after-image. Compared to the rude heft of the foil-wrapped gun, this kid Victor seemed weightless.

With Mazilli walking ahead of him, Rocco began the promenade down the aisle to the door, supporting Victor like the father to a groom but feeling knotted inside, bracing for the reverend to open his mouth, say the word “lawyer” and scotch everything.

“Are you gonna tell his wife?” the reverend called out.

“How old are you?” Rocco asked Victor.

“Twenty, twenty-one,” Victor whispered hoarsely.

Rocco wheeled around and walked backwards toward the door without breaking stride. “Why don’t
you
do that,” he replied. “I’m not supposed to make notifications, the guy’s over eighteen. But I think that could be the best thing for
you
to do right now.”

The reverend nodded, looking heartsick. The black detective stood next to him, watching Rocco go, hurrying him along with furtive waves of his hand.

Rocco got in the back seat with Victor, Mazilli the silent chauffeur. Arching up to slide his gun off his hipbone, Rocco launched into his usual rap.

“Normally I’m supposed to cuff you, there, brother, but you look like the type of guy I can trust.”

Victor leaned his temple against the window and stared with mournful eyes at the front seat headrest.

“Listen, when we get to the office, what do you feel like eating? Pizza, burgers, we can send out for anything. Sandwiches, there’s a great deli that delivers, you want a sandwich?”

Victor dug a finger into the corner of his eye, and Rocco heard him breathe through his nose. Mazilli pulled out onto I-9.

“That reverend, he throw a good sermon?”

Victor grunted softly but Rocco couldn’t tell whether he meant yes or no. Shrugging it off, Rocco launched into an inane patter, as if trying to entertain a dull guest of honor. He had to engage the kid, keep his mind off what he was about to do, which was send himself off to jail. And Rocco needed the kid to think of him, the expeditor of his doom, as his friend.

“Let me ask you something,” Rocco said, keeping his voice light. “When was the last time you were arrested?”

“It was thrown out,” Victor said, talking into his wrist.

“What was?” Rocco was relieved to hear him finally say something.

“My case.”

“Oh yeah? What was the original charge?”

”
Eye
contact.” The kid twisted his mouth into a private smirk.

“Eye contact. Hah, that’s a new one.” Rocco caught Mazilli’s glance in the rearview.

“It’s an
old
one. Happen all the time.”

“What do you mean?” Rocco tried to draw him out but the kid wouldn’t say any more about it and Rocco didn’t push. “So Victor, what do you do for a living?”

“I work.”

“Doing what?”

“I’m a manager of a restaurant.”

“Oh yeah? No shit. In Dempsy? Maybe I ate there. Which one?”

“Hambone’s.”

Rocco snapped his fingers. ”
That’s
where I know you. I polygraphed you about nine months ago. You remember me? Somebody was stealing meat—or bread, that’s right—and they called me in, you know, I used to do that back then. Make a little extra money. Yeah, I was the one who polygraphed everybody. I remember you. You were the guy that was pissed because you had just gotten some kind of achievement plaque and now there you were being polygraphed. Yeah, yeah.” Rocco recalled setting up his portable kit in a clamorous nook of the kitchen, conducting the tests in all that noise and humidity.

“I was the one who suggested that they call the police,” Victor said.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t go in as police. I was moonlighting doing security, but yeah, I really felt bad for you. I remember thinking that. They ever catch that guy?”

“Unh-uh.” Victor smiled, his eyes almost shut.

Ever since being introduced, Victor had barely opened his eyes, peeking out at the world from under his lids like a child pretending he was asleep. Rocco had seen this before; murderers often adopted the attitudes of sleepwalkers in order to cope with the ordeal of confession and incarceration, although Rocco thought that for some, this shut-eye routine also had a lot to do with feelings of shame.

“So, they still working you sixty hours?”

“Fifty, but I got another job too.”

“Yeah? Doing what?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“OK.” Rocco shrugged cheerfully. “You married?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Kids?”

“Two.”

”
Two
… Good.”

Rocco trailed off, thinking, Jesus, two jobs, two kids, a wife, surrenders to his minister instead of his lawyer. Rocco realized that he had completely misunderstood what the reverend meant when he said, “This don’t make sense.” The comment wasn’t about the arrest procedure; it was about the improbability that Victor had killed someone in the first place. But the kid
did
confess, so he probably did shoot Darryl Adams. Rocco recalled the reverend’s dismay, figured that this kid must have had one hell of a good reason for capping the other guy. And then Rocco started thinking about the victim as if
he
was the perpetrator: What the hell did Darryl Adams do to this poor mope to push him over the edge like that? Maybe the guy was banging Victor’s wife, or his girlfriend. The cash on the body, the loose word of mouth about drugs—was he selling dope to Victor’s kids?

“Victor, how old are your kids?”

“Three, one.”

Something else, then. Rocco began consolidating his attack plan for the interview to come: blame the victim, probe for the outrage, isolate the flashpoint. He was pretty confident they’d get down to the motive without too much trouble, because all his instincts and experience told him that this Darryl Adams kid must have had it coming.

“You sure you’re not hungry now?” Chin to chest, Rocco stared at the kid as if this was the toughest question he would ask in here.

Victor tightened his mouth and shook his head, his gaze roaming the bare walls of the interrogation room, settling on the only distraction, last year’s calendar, sporting a picture of two kittens playing with a ball of yarn above the month of October.

Mazilli coughed from the hallway where he was standing out of sight, listening in on the preliminary interview, a corroborating witness in case the kid confessed but then balked when it came time for the formal taping. He was also there to swear in court, if need be, that he had heard Rocco read the interviewee his rights, including his right to counsel—which Rocco always put off doing for as long as possible at this stage of the game.

“OK, anytime you want to stop and get a pizza, cup of coffee, you got it, OK?”

Victor didn’t answer, his gaze now on the yellow pad on Rocco’s thigh.

“First I’m gonna ask you some boring stuff, you know, just for the records, so bear with me.”

Rocco ran through the background questions, the kid answering each in a resigned monotone, never offering two words where one would do. Victor Dunham was two months shy of his twenty-first birthday, had lived all his life in the Roosevelt Houses, worked at the same place since he was sixteen, had not married the mother of his children but lived with her and their two kids like man and wife, had a social security number, a car and a NOW account. Rocco shook his head as he took it all down. He hadn’t had a shooter as upright as this since the time a bus driver killed a priest who had made sexual overtures to his son.

“And what’s your phone number, Victor?”