Clockers (49 page)

“Have you spoken to Victor yet?” Rocco addressed the house at large, squinting across the room at a wall unit covered with framed family photographs.

“Yeah.” ShaRon’s gaze shifted from the TV to the baby and the boy spread-eagled on the sofa bed.

“What’s his bail?”

“Fifty thousand.”

“No ten percent, hah?” Rocco tried to sound sympathetic.

“All cash,” said the older woman, snapping out a wet shirt.

Hearing a wheezy sound coming from the kitchen, Rocco wondered if something was boiling over on the stove.

“It’ll come down in about two weeks,” he said to the older woman’s back. “Who’s his lawyer?”

“Mister Newton,” she answered, and gave the shirt another snap. Her back was still turned, and now Rocco realized that the sound he heard came from the woman herself: it was her labored breathing.

“Jimmy Newton? Good man, good man, I went to high school with him.” Rocco locked eyes with Mazilli, then spoke to the room again. “Victor—did he say anything to you when you talked to him?”

No one answered.

“Did you know he had a gun?”

No answer again. Rocco watched ShaRon staring at the TV and thought, Fuck this, the kid is locked up, why am I even bothering? So fucking typical: the family of the do-er treating him like shit the day after the lockup, as if it was
his
fault their kid was a goddamn murderer.

“ShaRon, listen. I’m trying to help here. You got to understand, as far as the prosecutor’s office is concerned the case is closed. Victor came in, told us he did it, gave up the gun. But he didn’t tell us
why
he did it. He didn’t give us any reason. I’m sitting here and I see he’s got a nice home, nice kids, a wife. I know he works like a dog. Why would he throw that away? It doesn’t make any sense, a guy like that just … He had to have a good reason, and if I
knew
that good reason, it would help him.
I
would help him.”

Rocco looked from woman to woman, both of them treating this like a visit from the army of the occupation, which wasn’t too far wrong. The truth was, they were better off keeping their mouths shut, since Rocco was really asking them to help nail down the case on behalf of the prosecution.

The little boy sat up, rolled off the convertible, blinked a couple of times at Rocco and sat down on the floor between his mother’s feet.

Rocco turned to the older woman one last time. “Can you help me help him here?”

“He has a stomach condition,” she said.

“Yeah?” Rocco waited.

“They gonna give him his medication in there? He’s got to have his medication.”

“If he told them about it, I’m sure they’ll attend to it,” Rocco said reassuringly, thinking, They always bitch about the service.

Mazilli jerked his head toward the door but Rocco gave it another shot.

He turned to ShaRon again. “Did he have a drinking problem?”

She hissed at her son before answering, “He only drank at night.”

“Yeah? Me too. How about drugs, did he have a problem with drugs?”

“Unh-unh, he dint have nothing to do with that.”

“Did he seem different to you this last week? Did he behave differently, act any way unusual? Tense, agitated, different?”

ShaRon shrugged. The older woman seemed as if she was trying to iron a shirt right through the board and into the floor.

“Did he have any new friends recently—you know, hang out with new people?”

“He dint hang out. He just worked.” ShaRon plucked at her son’s hair.

Mazilli nodded to go again. Rocco held up a finger.

“Look, Victor’s claiming self-defense, and it’s not gonna wash the way he’s got it laid out. If I don’t get some help, if
he
don’t get some help, he’s looking at thirty years with no parole. That’s the law. Please, if there’s anything, any way you can help me help him, tell me now. Because we can fight the
truth
with the
truth,
but we can’t fight the truth with a
lie.
So is there anything you can help me help him with? Now’s the time.”

It was silent save for the TV. Fed up, Rocco groaned to his feet.

“He got to have his stomach medicine,” Victor’s mother said again.

She turned, finally, and Rocco was startled by her face, the flesh carved lean with exhaustion, the eyes bulging slightly.

“He got to have it or he’s gonna get sick.” Her mouth hung open and her chest gently heaved with her breathing.

“I’ll make a call tonight, check up on it,” Rocco lied, staring at her taut and lined face, those haunted protruding eyes.

As Rocco inched past the open sofa, he scanned the photos on the wall unit. His eye caught a color shot of a skinny teenager in a tuxedo.

“Can I ask you a favor? Can I borrow this picture? I got to go around to people where he hung out, the places he worked. I don’t want them looking at a mug shot of him. I’d rather show a nice picture if I can, you know what I mean? Keep people’s minds open.”

“Why you want
that
picture?” ShaRon cocked her head, a kind of half-dead amusement in her face.

“Because he looks good in it. He looks like the nice guy I know he is.”

”
Who
is? That ain’t Victor. That’s his brother.”

“His brother.” Rocco looked closer: it really wasn’t the kid after all. “Gee, looks a lot like him, don’t it? What’s this guy’s name?”

“Ronald.”

“Ronald Dunham?”

“Yeah,” ShaRon said. “They brothers.”

“Ronald Dunham.” Where had he heard that name?

“They call him Strike.”

“Strike. Is he around?” Rocco remembered now, from Bones at BCI.

“He don’t live here no more.”

“No? Strike Dunham, what’s he do?”

“He’s around,” ShaRon said. “You know where I can find him?”

“Just around.”

Mazilli leaned across Rocco to take a close look at the picture, then stepped back and gave Rocco’s arm a short tug toward the door.

Rocco took out two calling cards and dropped them on the top of the console TV.

“ShaRon, what do
you
think happened?”

She nodded slowly at the television. “He’s to himself. I don’t know.”

Rocco ignored a second tug from Mazilli. “Mrs. Dunham?”

”
Tag
amet. The doctor says he’s got to have that Tagamet.” She stared intently at Rocco, her terrible dried-out eyes pushing him out the door.

”
Tag
amet,” Rocco growled, still spooked by the older woman’s face, the pain in it. “I think she knows something. She’s got them uh-oh eyes.”

“Strike,” Mazilli said softly as he banged the back of his head against the elevator wall in time to the rhythmic knocking of the creaky gears and pulleys.

“What about him?”

“Strike.”

“You know the kid?”

“He’s a no-good arrogant dope-dealing piece of shit comes into my store all the time like he craps beige. He used to work in Rodney’s grocery, like a year ago? But he got promoted. Now he’s running that crew by where we left the car. He’s probably down there right now.”

“So he must have known this Darryl Adams kid, right? Wasn’t he working in the grocery too, back then?”

“Absolutely. I used to see the two of them in there all the time last year.”

“So if these guys are brothers—Victor, Strike—and one’s tied in with Rodney that we
know
of, used to work
with
the victim at Rodney’s…” Rocco whirled his hands. “So what do you think? Maybe this is a drug thing after all?”

“Yeah,” Mazilli said, “maybe this Victor kid’s a hit man. A quiet-storm hit man.”

“Double-oh-seven,” Rocco said.

They walked out into the night and headed back to the car.

“So, Maz, if you see this brother, what’s his name, Strike, you want to take him to the office? Talk to him?”

“Nah, not right now. Let me take another pass at Rodney first.”

When Rocco and Mazilli came up on the benches again, they saw a full-blown street scene. Big Chief was putting Futon in handcuffs, Slick and Crunch were on their knees shaking out discarded paper bags, looking for bottle stashes, and Thumper was in a red-faced shouting match with a fat lady in a housedress, both of them waving their arms and bellowing as a crowd surged around them.

Rocco and Mazilli stood off to one side, watching the show.

“That boy do nothin’ to nobody. He just a
boy.
“ The woman was heaving with outrage.

“Who the hell asked you?” Thumper squawked, leaning into her.

“Nobody ask me, I’m
tellin
‘ you!” The woman stabbed the air in front of his face, a tissue in her hammy fist.

“That’s
right,
“ Thumper said, giving her his back.

“That’s
right,
“ she said, following him.

Thumper turned back to her again. “You best get the fuck out of my face or I’ll fucking throw you in there with him.”

“You gonna
arrest
me? You gonna
arrest
me?”

“If I can find cuffs big enough.” Thumper began to walk away again, agitated and scowling, Rocco reading in his face a disgust both for the woman and for himself.

“What you say?” The woman started to go after him, but Big Chief blocked her charge and her friends stepped in, talking to her, walking her into one of the buildings as she bellowed back, “Who the fuck he think he is? What you gonna
arrest
me for, for having a
mind?
”

“For having a
mouth,
“ Thumper shouted back.

Big Chief took Thumper’s arm and said, “Cool out there.” He waved the crowd back, looked to Rocco and Mazilli and made a face.

“Fat fucking whale,” Thumper muttered, walking in small circles.

Mazilli went over to Futon, who was handcuffed and leaning against the fence. “What the hell you do?” he said, sounding amused.

“Check it out.” Big Chief held out the Gummi Bear jar, twisting off the false bottom to reveal four purple-stoppered bottles.

“Aah,” Mazilli grumbled in mock disappointment.

“I didn’t know about that,” Futon said. “Somebody just gave it to me like if I wanted some candy.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Thumper tossed in, still walking off the shouting match.

“Futonnn,” Big Chief growled mildly. He turned to Mazilli. “He says he was working for you.”

“Oh yeah?” Mazilli said. “Sure, he’s my undercover man.”

“I would’ve been gone,” Futon said, “but he said to stay here and watch his car. Then this guy come up, he says, ‘You want this jar of candy?’”

Rocco grinned. “See what you did, Mazilli?”

“It just baking soda,” Futon said halfheartedly. “It ain’t even mine.”

Big Chief pulled his troops and walked off with an arm around Futon’s neck like a paternal camp counselor.

“Call my aunt,” Futon said to his friends around the bench.

“Mikey,” Rocco said, walking alongside Thumper. “I want to ask you about something. Where you headed, BCI or Juvie?”

Big Chief appraised Futon, then said, “Juvie.”

“Where you going after, like late, the Pavonia?”

“Most likely,” Thumper said, steering Futon into the back of the Fury. “I’ll catch you later.”

As the Fury rolled, Rocco looked up and caught the eye of a heavyset middle-aged woman leaning on her meaty forearms out her third-floor window.

The woman smiled at Rocco, furtively mimed applauding the arrest, her palms not meeting. Rocco was struck by the secretiveness of the gesture: You come in, take away a dope dealer and one person
almost
claps. Locking up murderers, locking up dope dealers … well, that’s the thanks you get when you’re in the army of the occupation.

Unlocking the Chevy, Rocco noticed the boy who had spied on them in the elevator. He was perched on a low-slung garden chain and nursing a vanilla Yoo-Hoo. Rocco narrowed his eyes and pointed an accusatory finger. “Who’s Mister Big?”

The boy grinned and turned away in shy delight, Rocco thinking, Well, maybe not everybody hates us.

Back in the office, Rocco saw that someone had left a
Daily News
on his desk, the paper open to the People page, which featured a grainy photo of Sean Touhey and some woman all decked out for a benefit. Next to the picture was a drawing of Aquaman, standing spread-legged and arms akimbo in his fish-scale costume. Under the caption “Glub, Glub,” an accompanying squib reported that the actor had just gotten the go-ahead on
Aquaman
and quoted Touhey on how this movie wasn’t going to be just another superhero spinoff: “Think of all the ecological issues around the sea. Oil spills, whale hunting, toxic dumping, dolphin deaths. This will be no comic book.”

“Fucking asshole,” Rocco muttered, eyeing the bulletin board across the office and thinking, Well, Fm in the paper too.

He slowly turned to face Mazilli. “Aquaman … Did you put that on my desk?”

“Don’t look at me.” Mazilli stuck a cigarette in his mouth to mask a smile and reached for the phone.

Rocco studied the picture of Touhey again. He carefully scissored out the drawing of Aquaman, then taped it to his desk light as a reminder to himself that at forty-three you don’t make plans to dabble in different lives. At forty-three, what you are, what you know, is about as far as you’re going to go in this life; about the most you can hope for is a little fine tuning and a pay hike or two.

Rocco sat with his hands clasped in his lap now, staring at Touhey and rocking in his chair. Behind him, Mazilli whistled tunelessly through his teeth as he began writing up the report of their visit to Victor Dunham’s house. Mazilli was the better writer and usually took care of the reports. He was the better hunter too. Rocco was the glad-hander, the interrogation artist, the confession king. They had come to this honest division of labor a long time ago, and as Rocco gazed down at the waving, grinning movie star, he understood for the first time that whatever was jamming him up in his life right now would never be healed by any kind of glory or fame or recognition from others, that the healing would come from the life around him—his work, his partner, his family. It was just a matter of finding a few small gifts of connection. He had to have something to take home with him, something to bring into work, just get a little wheel of gifts going.