Clockers (44 page)

Rocco nodded sympathetically and kept his mouth shut, deciding to stand back and let Victor take off, see where he landed.

“That’s a terrible feeling, man, when you can’t stand the sound of your own damn kids? I try to tell her that, she says, ‘So quit a job, you
got
two.’ See, she don’t understand. You know, like … I’m tryin’ to get out of the projects, and where you gonna go if you don’t got it saved up? I mean, you got to make it while you
can,
you know? Make it while you
able,
because you never know what’s gonna happen tomorrow, like, I got us on this waiting list for these co-op apartments over in Bayonne? There’s this complex, Evergreen Village, and it’s
nice,
man, and they’re taking black families now because there’s this big rent strike going on, so like for
revenge
or something on the whites, I don’t know, alls I know is that it’s nice but You got to have eight thousand dollars down and like the maintenance : for a two bedroom is eight hundred and fifty a month, and it’s hard to get a loan because I can only put down but one job because the other’s under the table and that makes me a twenty-thousand-dollar-a-year black man walking into a bank asking for money, you know what I’m sayin’?”

Victor paused, his eyes’hungry for Rocco’s commiseration. Rocco made a sympathetic noise but withheld any comment.

“So like I got to make it myself right now ‘cause I don’t
know
when my name’s coming up in the list, and like what happens if I get shot by some crackhead while I’m coming home from work? Or I get sick or something? Then I got
no
income,
no
job. I mean, right now it’s like, you know what I make? I bring home three hundred ninety-five dollars twenty-seven cents after taxes from the Hambone’s and a clean two eighty from the security in New York, but then you take away fifty a week in gas out-of-pocket and path fare, OK? But still, I’m bringing home six hundred twenty-five dollars a week right now, so why she rattling my cage about it? I’m doing it for
her.
For the
kids.
I mean, I don’t know, maybe she
likes
living in, in Roosevelt with all the crime and shit.
I
don’t. My
mother
don’t. You know, when I was a kid there? It wasn’t
like
that, Roosevelt. There wasn’t dope like that. There wasn’t — you know, people was working. I mean, it wasn’t rich or nothing but it was
proud,
or prouder.” Victor paused, winded. He rubbed his knees anxiously. “I don’t know, man, I don’t know.”

Rocco had to think hard to recall the question or comment that had triggered all this—something about if he ever took his kids to Ahab’s for a soda. Rocco felt sorry for the guy: the poor bastard had ranted and raved like he still had all those jobs, as if confessing to a murder was just a temporary time-loss thing, a tangle he’d be out of soon.

Rocco wondered where to take it. The wife: it didn’t sound like he had the happiest of marriages. “What’s your wife’s name again? ShaRon? How you get along with her?”

“When I see her, it’s OK. She always running off to her church, though. At night, you know, and on the weekend.”

“What church?”

“Some lady’s house. I don’t know the name of it.”

“Some lady’s house? You ever go with her?”

“Yeah, I went once. I dint like it. They were all speakin’ in
tongues.
That ain’t, you know…”

“You got a girlfriend?”

“Nope.” Victor fought down a smile, looking embarrassed. “You’re not dating any girls from Hambone’s? All those girls working under you?”

“They just young kids.”

Victor blushed and Rocco felt another twinge of sympathy.

“How about anybody else? You seeing anybody else?”

The smile left Victor’s face and he looked Rocco in the eye again.

“Hey, I don’t even have time to make love with the woman I’m
supposed
to make love wi h. How’m I gonna make love with somebody else?”

Touched by his innocence, Rocco couldn’t help smiling. “Hey, you know how guys are. Where there’s a will—”

“I don’t even have time to see my damn kids, play with my damn kids.”

“OK, OK, Victor. Calm down, calm down. Look, it’s just … Look.” Rocco slid in close, resting his fingers on Victor’s crossed knee, thinking that the kid was as open as he’d ever be in here. “Victor. Put yourself in my place. You get a guy comes in tells you he murdered somebody. This guy, he was born and raised in this town, knows the streets, the people, he’s holding down two jobs, killing himself to improve his family’s situation, a guy who’s got his income organized down to the penny, who’s proud, selfsacrificing, hard-working, and for
my
money, about as close to an unsung hero as you can get around here.”

Victor was sitting hunched over, elbows on knees, eyes on the floor, but Rocco could tell that he was listening. “OK, so this guy tells you he’s walking home one night through the parking lot of a popular restaurant and he’s probably walked this route every night on his way home
for years.
He’s approached by the assistant manager of that restaurant in that parking lot, who jumps at him with
no
weapon, and all of a sudden this guy panics, steps back, fishes around in a gym bag he uses for carrying around a nine-millimeter gun—which he
found
under a chair—shoots the manager
four times
and runs off.”

Rocco gave it a long silence, his face inches from Victor’s. “Now, you tell me … What would
you
think after
you
heard that story? Wouldn’t
you
think there was something else to it?”

Victor exhaled heavily, then spoke in a dejected murmur. “I don’t know what you would think.”

“Ex
cuse
me?” Rocco put his ear near the kid’s mouth, wincing in showy concentration.

Victor didn’t repeat himself.

Rocco leaned back, giving him some air. “OK, look, I know you’re frightened and I know you’re thinking all you got to do is come in here, say what you say, and that’s the end of it. But that’s just not the way it works, so now listen to me, Victor. You’re a good, decent, hard-working guy, and if you did it you must have had a damn good reason other than that man jumping out at you unexpectedly, because I have to ask myself
why—why
did that man jump out at you like that? It wasn’t to rob you—why would the manager of a restaurant try to rob someone in his own parking lot? So I have to think that it was something
per
sonal that went down. I have to think that you guys had a
prob
lem with each other. I have to think—”

Victor cut him off. “I never seen the guy before in my life.” His eyes were burning a hole in the floor, but his voice rose to a shout. “He just
jumped
me.”

Rocco returned the heat, hoping the kid’s anger would make him slip. “He just
jumped
you. And you
shot
him. He didn’t threaten you, he didn’t talk to you, and I
know
he didn’t wave no weapon at you. He just—”

“I don’t want to talk to you no more.” Victor’s voice went flat and sullen, a slight shakiness there too. He glanced quickly at Rocco and then went back to studying the carpet. “I dint
know
the guy. I said that. I told you what happened.”

Rocco smiled and shook his head. “Victor…”

“I gave you the gun. Now I don’t want to talk to you no more. So like just, do with me what I got coming. I don’t want to talk to you no more.”

Rocco held his hands up. “Wait a minute, wait a minute, don’t, let’s not … Don’t get all angry now. I’m not calling you a liar or anything. It’s just I think there’s something deeper here, and for some reason, you’re not telling me.”

The kid breathed through his mouth. “Ah!” he gasped.

Rocco spoke softly. “Hey look, I’m on
your
side. I’m not trying to screw you here. Believe it or not, I’m doing what I’m not supposed to be doing. I’m helping you organize your defense, I’m allowing you to put your justifications on record in your recorded confession.” Rocco boxed Victor’s knees with his own, put a hand on his bony shoulder, talking to him as if
he
was the victim. “If this man
did
something to you, to your
fam
ily, if he threatened you, if he in any way made your life miserable, this all helps
you.
“ Rocco put both hands on the kid’s shoulders. “You could have been beside yourself with rage, you could have been unable to sleep, to eat. This all helps you. In
court.
C’mon, Victor, I can’t do it alone. Help me help you. What did that fucker do to you?”

For a long, agonized moment Victor looked like a fish flopping on a deck. Rocco thought he finally had him, but then gradually the kid seemed to calm down and refocus. He was still avoiding Rocco’s eyes, but Rocco could sense there was something new working in him. Thinking it could go either way now, Rocco waited, his hands still draped on Victor’s slumped shoulders.

“It was self-defense.”

“Nah.” Rocco sat up, disappointed. “Nah nah nah, that’s not gonna hold water. The guy didn’t have a weapon—
you
did. You didn’t even perceive him as having a weapon. You just told me that. You didn’t make any attempt to run, which you also just told me. In fact, to tell you the truth”—Rocco tried to drop this little bomb delicately—“we have a witness who says that they saw you waiting for the guy, who says that they saw the guy back away from
you.
I mean, if you ran, if he had you cornered, which you also just told me he didn’t—I mean, Victor, they have legal definitions of things like self-defense. There’s requirements. We got
no
gun on the victim,
no
physical entrapment of the shooter,
no
effort to flee on the part of the shooter,
no
forensic signs of a struggle,
no
bruises,
no
skin or hair under the fingernails,
no
powder burns, it was a distant shot, so … Nah, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Rocco waited for a sign, hoping he had overwhelmed the kid with logic, but Victor was gone, off somewhere, shut down. Rocco was amazed at how still he could become, so totally withdrawn as to appear weightless.

Then Victor seemed to rise within himself, vacating his own mind and body, leapfrogging over Rocco’s little logic boxes, sailing past hard reasoning and bald truth to a safer place.

“Yeah.” Victor nodded, as if settling an argument that Rocco was not privy to. “It was self-defense.”

“Victor, look,” Rocco said, almost pleading. “Put yourself in my place …”

But Rocco saw the faraway look in Victor’s eyes and stopped: This kid was gone.

Rocco hammered away at Victor for another forty-five minutes, but the kid placidly held to his line, becoming more and more distant as time went on. Musing on how someone could be so vaporous and unmovable at the same time, Rocco eventually tired of hearing himself talk. He flipped through his notes and, yawning, stretched his arms in a seated crucifixion.

“All right,” he said regretfully. “I don’t think you’re being fair to yourself, but I’m gonna go out, get a tape recorder, my partner’s gonna come back in with me, I’m gonna tell you what you’re charged with, give you your Mirandas and then, you know, basically I’m just gonna ask you, once again, in your own words, what happened that night. Anything I ask you you don’t want to answer, just say so, OK?” Rocco rose. “So I’ll be right back. Can I get you something?”

“I’d like to go to the bathroom.” The kid was looking right at him now.

“Hey, no problem.” Rocco extended an arm.

When Victor got up, he lost his balance and fell back into his seat, looking slightly surprised.

“You OK?” Rocco had seen that before, after long sessions like this one, guys going dizzy and light-headed, spooking themselves when they first tried to use their legs.

“I’m good.” Victor tried it again, this time holding on to both the table and his chair.

“There you go.” Rocco held out his arm, the kid blinking and smiling with disorientation.

He walked Victor through the Homicide office to the bathrooms in the rear. Mazilli was the only detective in the room now, talking into the phone in a low voice to his wife or his bookie.

“Maz, you want to set up the tape in there?”

Mazilli held up his hand and signaled that he needed two more minutes. Continuing his murmured conversation, he blindly fished around in his drawer and came up with a six-pack of blank cassettes.

Rocco stood right outside the open bathroom door, fiddling with a file cabinet, trying not to be too obvious about keeping an eye on Victor but needing to make sure he didn’t dive through the window or something. He felt a stab of depression: he had just spent an entire Sunday afternoon in a windowless office extracting a confession that would read like the bullshit it was, giving the prosecutor absolutely no way to assess how hard to push the charges or how much egg on his face he’d be risking by taking this kid to trial, where the truth of what happened could finally come out.

Brooding about the ass-chewing he’d probably get from his boss the minute the guy read the transcripts, Rocco looked into the bathroom and saw Victor move to the sink to wash his hands. Rocco was mildly taken aback: usually murderers, like detectives, just went in there, pissed, whacked their Johnson against the shower stall partition a few times and marched out, still zipping up.

He felt a mixture of sympathy and resentment toward Victor, with his sad-sack face, his neat cheap clothes, his common-law wife and two kids, probably up to his neck in grease and heat six days a week at that ptomaine palace—walking around town carrying a pistol in a gym bag.

Victor came out of the bathroom, his damp hands curled to his chest, a spray of tap water spotting the front of his gray slacks. He looked directly at Rocco as if waiting for instruction.

Rocco reached for a fistful of tissues on an unoccupied desk and gestured to the kid’s pants. ”
I
don’t care, but…”