Clockers (79 page)

“Because I don’t think you have it
in
you to kill someone.” Rocco almost gagged on that, the dumbness of that kind of observation. “I went back and talked to the reverend? Hey,
you
go to church, you believe in God, in heaven and hell, and I
know
that you know there’s a price to pay for murder both in this world
and
the next, right?”

Surprised by the bizarreness of his own opening gambit, Rocco told himself to calm down, to focus. “And I talked to your mother. Do you know what she told me? She says you’re the gentlest man in the world. She says if you don’t see your kids every day you completely fall apart, and / can’t believe that a man as moral as you, as utterly devoted to his family as you, would do something
so
reckless,
so
stupid and out of character, something that he had to know from the git-go would deny him access to his wife and children for thirty
years—
”

“Investigator,” Jimmy warned.

“Or even for five years. Let’s say you completely luck out on this, draw reckless manslaughter as opposed to aggravated manslaughter or purposeful homicide. Five years. Not see your kids
for five years.
Then you
still
got to worry about hell, and I don’t think there’s a deal element on that end of it, do you?”

Jimmy threw Rocco a begging look. “Hey…”

Victor covered his face with his hands, and Rocco held his palms out to signal that he was backing off. “Look, Victor. I’m just going to say something. It’s not even a question, so just listen, OK? I think someone else killed Darryl Adams, and I think you know who that person is, and I think out of some misguided sense of love, loyalty, responsibility, hero worship or I don’t know what, you’re taking the heat for this other person, because I think somewheres you believed that since you’ve never been in trouble before and you’re a family man and you hold down two jobs and you go to church and all that, that no jury would ever convict you of this crime.”

Rocco let his words hang for a minute. Still masking his eyes with his hands, Victor raised his chin so that his Adam’s apple projected like a wedge.

“Would you like to know who / think did it? Hear me out. Darryl Adams, most likely, was a drug dealer and, I don’t know, maybe he was selling on someone else’s turf, maybe he was skimming. But whatever it was, he must have pissed off the wrong people and / think—”

“Excuse me, Investigator Klein.” Jimmy made a show of flipping through the arrest report. “Where’s all this? I don’t have anything on this.”

“Well, this is just a theory right now.” Rocco gave him a dirty look, silently requesting that Jimmy wait until afterward to hang him on this.

Jimmy made a sour face but said nothing further.

“Like I was saying. I think Darryl Adams was screwing somebody, they found out about it and wanted him popped. And then … Well, your brother deals too, right? So they got your brother, they got Ronnie to kill him, and then Ronnie told you about it, and you knew that if he got convicted on it, with his jacket and his associations, he’d get thirty years or maybe even a lethal injection.”

Jimmy started to interrupt, jerking forward in his chair, but then let it go.

Victor dropped a pack of cigarettes on the floor and bent down under the table to retrieve it. Waiting for him to reappear, Rocco had the distinct impression that the kid was trying to hide.

“And I
know
you met with your brother in Rudy’s the night of the shooting. And I
know
you met with him on Saturday, the day before you turned yourself in. And I think that that Saturday your brother gave you the gun and told you if he ever got caught you should come forward and say, •Hey, I’m the one, here’s the gun.’ But you didn’t wait. I don’t know, maybe you just couldn’t stand it, waiting around with a gun in your home. Maybe you were afraid of your brother getting killed by one of his higher-ups who was nervous about him talking. Maybe you were afraid that your brother would get shot by some young hot-dog cop during an arrest. Maybe you didn’t want him taken in under any circumstances because you have such a great love and a sense of responsibility to your own flesh and blood. But whatever the reason, you couldn’t stand waiting around, so you figured the sooner you got this over with, the safer everybody would be and so last Sunday You walked up to Reverend Posse—”

“I told you before,” Victor said slowly, his hands over his face again.

Jimmy jumped in. “Victor…”

“It was self-defense.” Behind the mask of his hands Victor’s voice had a little tremolo in it. Rocco felt like he would give anything for the kid to show his eyes.

“Victor,” Jimmy said again. Rocco looked at the lawyer and clasped his hands in prayer, begging him to hang in. Jimmy tilted back on his chair’s hind legs, hissing his discomfort.

Rocco talked fast. “Self-defense, OK, self-defense. But I don’t know. I see how it is out there, all that blood money floating around, fifteen-year-old kids driving new cars, wearing gold—I mean, I don’t know how
you
feel about it, working like you do, but I swear, sometimes / see that? I feel like I’m some kind of asshole for punching a time clock, you know?”

Victor put his hands down but spoke to his knuckles, anger edging into his voice. “Me and you out there is two different things.”

“OK, you’re right, you’re right.” Rocco plowed through his own embarrassment. “Alls I’m saying is, I talked to Kiki, I talked to Hector, I know all about the shit you had to put up with on both jobs to get those paychecks every week. But you did it, week after week. I mean, talk about self-defense, you must’ve felt like you were up to your chin in shit out there, you know, feeling like some kind of horse’s ass for trying to do the decent thing. Not that I’ve ever thought you’d be the kind of guy to sell dope or anything like that, but”—Rocco put his hand in front of Jimmy’s face to stop any protest—“did your brother offer you money to come in on this? If he did, I would totally understand it.”

“Hey!” Jimmy snapped.

“No,” Victor said.

Rocco kept going. “No, hah? OK, then let me ask you this. Your brother’s out on the street. Is he doing the right thing by your wife and kids?”

“That’s not his responsibility,” Victor said calmly.

Rocco paused, the kid’s steadiness making him a little nervous. “I understand you got another bail hearing coming up soon. There’s a good chance with your background you’ll get the cash option. Alls you got to put up is five thousand bucks. But according to your mother, that’s like just about all you managed to save up for that co-op you wanted to move into. Unless, I mean, is your brother gonna at least help you out on the bail? I understand he’s making good money out there. Is he gonna take care of your bail? Is he gonna do anything for you?”

“That’s not his responsibility.”

Jimmy ran a thumb across his throat, then shook his head.

“Look, I got to tell you. I talked to him two, three times already, your brother, and you know what? He doesn’t seem to be too concerned with this whole situation. I get such a feeling of nonchalance off him that, ah, it’s like he’s resigned himself to the fact that you’re gonna serve thirty years and he’s not. I don’t know, maybe you think he’s gonna come in like at the last second, tell the truth, or maybe
he
thinks you’re gonna beat this thing. But I swear, whatever you guys got up your sleeve it ain’t gonna work.

It ain’t gonna work.” Victor shook his head, baring his teeth.

Jimmy hunched forward, the front legs of his chair hitting the floor with a bang. “OK, Investigator.”

Rocco raced on. “If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for your kids. They’re gonna be fatherless so long that by the time you come out of prison it’s not even gonna make a difference to them anymore
who
you are.”

“Enough!” Jimmy put a hand in Rocco’s face as a high-pitched noise escaped from Victor.

Sliding around Jimmy’s hand, Rocco finally got a good look at the kid’s face, saw those thick brows knotted in pain and the lashes starred with tears.

Rocco broke into a sweat: The kid is
crying?
Fuck the brother. What
gives
here?

Jimmy moved his hand away, fiddled aimlessly with his papers. “I think this interview is over.”

“Naw, I want to say something,” Victor announced, rising to a half-crouch.

“Victor, I’m advising—”

“Naw, I want to talk. I wanna
say
something.”

Victor sat down again, seemed to gather himself for one burst of words. “I understand what you’re doing here, working this thing on me with my brother not caring an’ setting me up. So OK, I’m just gonna tell you one more time. My brother was not there, / was. It was self-defense, OK? It was self-defense. I can
live
with that. I told
you
that.” He pointed at Rocco. “And I told
you
that.” He pointed at Jimmy.

“Yeah?” Rocco leaned forward. “Then why did you agree to talk to me like this? What did you want to say to me, Victor? Why am I here?”

“Hey, Rocco, that’s it.”

Rocco ignored Jimmy and stared at Victor.

“This interview is over, Rocco.”

Victor’s face vanished behind his hands again.

“It’s over, Jimmy? Good. Turn the tape off. Turn it off.”

Rocco made no effort to rise. Jimmy hesitated, then did as he was told.

“It’s over. Fine. I’m not even here now. But I got to ask you something, Victor, and I swear to both you and your lawyer that this is for myself and that I will
never
arrest your brother for anything that I hear the answer to right now. But if you don’t come clean with me, I swear to God I’ll hunt him down like a wild animal. Tell me the truth—and it’s like I never fucking heard it. Just for myself. You want to protect your brother? Good. So seal it up with what I just promised you. Tell me the truth—did your brother kill Darryl Adams?”

“Jesus
Christ,
Rocco!”

Victor briefly met Rocco’s eyes, shook his head sadly, stood up, collected all the individual cigarette packs and stashed them inside his T-shirt and down the legs of his sweatpants. Ignoring the magazines, he walked to the door and stood waiting as Jimmy phoned the guards to be let out of the conference room.

Rocco stared at the crystalline hill of cellophane, amazed at what had just come out of his mouth, at how he had just jumped off a cliff.

“OK, just tell me this,” he said softly, talking mostly to himself. “When did he give you the gun. Saturday, right? Was it Saturday?”

“What did I
tell
you, you stupid bastard,” Jimmy yelled at Rocco, the two of them standing in front of the jail-courthouse complex, the only people for blocks around. “Now look what you went and did. I got you by the
balls.
I got you on tape quacking like a duck, you dumb fuck. Tell me what I’m supposed to do now, Rocco.” Jimmy glared at him, his mouth open in a rectangle like a marionette.

“Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.” Rocco felt there but not there, as unreal as the deserted downtown Sunday afternoon street. “I came to you, right Jimmy? I’m a big boy. Every once in a while you got to go with your guts, you know? What’s the point of doing something, developing all these instincts, and then when the time comes you don’t go with your guts, like you never knew nothing but the rules. So … I went.”

“You went with your guts.”

“Exactly.”

“Nah, nah, come on, Rocco.”

“It wasn’t just, I mean, in my heart, twenty years says to me this kid didn’t do it. I fucked up today, but I
know…
”

Jimmy looked around, unzipped his pants and tucked in his shirt. “Rocco, Rocco.”

“Jimmy, you should talk to this kid’s people. I never—I mean, this kid’s been hanging fire all his life…” Rocco trailed off, thinking about something Victor had said. “Hey, Jimmy, ‘Self-defense. I can
live
with that’…‘I can
live
with that.’ What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Hey, Investigator, the interview’s over.” Jimmy rebuckled his belt, hoisted his briefcase and gave Rocco his back.

Rummaging around in the Homicide supply closet looking for a notepad, Rocco came across a few vodka miniatures from Shaft Deli-Liquors nesting behind the quart of stoop wine that was reserved for witnesses. Half an hour later he sat alone in the office, playing with the empties, musing that they were the exact shape and size of the .50-caliber bullets displayed by the gun nut three desks back. Rocco twirled a bottle, fantasizing about how he should have overpowered Jimmy Newton on the deserted street, taken his briefcase and ripped out the tape. His word against mine. Cracking the seal on the last bottle, he heard himself offer to protect Strike from arrest if Victor would only tell him the truth. Was he completely nuts?

Still, what did the kid mean by “Self-defense. I can live with that…” The words had sounded like the end result of a lot of internal juggling, but Rocco couldn’t decode their significance.

Rocco looked down at the phone log. Except for the mother’s house and Hambone’s, none of the numbers checked out. Rocco rolled the print-out into a ball, hooked it into the wastebasket and considered jumping in after it, soggily thinking that maybe he should retire before the trial, which wouldn’t be until next spring at the earliest. He’d be past his twenty by the fall, so he could retire from Homicide a few months from now and not worry about getting kicked off into a cruiser. He was planning on going out on his twenty anyhow, so what was the problem? And this way he would fuck up the state’s case at the trial, save an innocent kid with no damage to himself. So what if Jimmy Newton made a horse’s ass of him on the stand. Who cares?

Rocco scanned the calendar printed on his desk blotter, counting the weeks until September, October, and in a burst of warmhearted terror found himself dialing home.

“Patty, hey, listen, I don’t think I ever really
tell
you how much I love you, you and the baby. You’re the most important things in my life, people in my life, you know that?”