Authors: John Katzenbach
“Is that right?’ Robinson replied softly, very coldly.
‘That’s right.’
I’m told you keep pretty late hours.’
‘Sometimes in this neighborhood, people got a need to make a transaction at night. I got plenty of competition, or maybe you ain’t noticed. Just trying to serve the clientele, Detective.’
“I’ll bet. How about Tuesday last?’
What about Tuesday?’
You open late?’
Maybe. Probably.’
‘Anyone come in late? Maybe midnight.’
‘I don’t know if I recall nobody.’
‘Try harder.’
‘I’m trying real hard, and I don’t just recollect nobody.’
‘You lying to me?’
Johnson scowled. ‘You finished hassling me, or do I got to call my lawyer?’
The two men continued to stare at each other, before Walter Robinson said: ‘Fifteen to life, Reg. That’s for starters.’
‘What you talking about fifteen years?’
‘I’m talking accessory to first-degree murder, Reg. Maybe you want to think about that a bit before you try to recall last Tuesday and who may or may not have been in your store here late that night.’
‘Don’t scare me. Don’t know nothing about no murder. I think maybe I’m calling my attorney right now. Maybe he’ll be looking to file a harassment suit.’
Reginald Johnson seemed inordinately proud of the word harassment. He repeated it two or three times for Walter Robinson’s benefit.
The detective glanced down into the shelf of jewelry again and wished he had pictures of the stolen items, rather than simple descriptions. Every piece looked more or less the same to him, and he thought this was the inevitable result of being single, and not paying much attention to the subtleties that attracted women’s eyes. He tried not to let discouragement show in his face.
‘I think maybe you’d better be showing up here with a warrant, you want to look closer,’ Johnson said confidently.
As he spoke, Yolanda emerged from the office area, buzzing herself through the locked steel grating, carrying a sheaf of papers.
‘I got all that stuff for the guns, you want to see it,’ she said. She approached Reginald Johnson. The two uniformed sergeants came over to where the pawnshop owner was standing.
Yolanda spread the papers out on the counter. ‘We got it all,’ she said. ‘Ain’t no illegal guns in there, Sergeant.’ Her voice seemed to combine pleasure and disappointment simultaneously. ‘Like that big old thirty-eight right there,’ she said, leaning over the countertop. ‘We got the license and registration right here.’
None of the policemen looked at the weapon that had Yolanda’s attention. Instead, each had occupied his eyes with a generous inspection of her breasts as she bent over the glass display.
‘I do believe you on that one, honey,’ Lionel Anderson said quietly, appreciatively.
‘Yolanda!’ Johnson blurted out once again, still angry.
The young woman stood up, straightening coquettishly. She smiled at the police sergeant, then over at Walter Robinson.
Robinson, however, was no longer watching the young woman’s cleavage, his eyes centered instead on the light brown skin of her throat. The fluorescent lights of the pawnshop made the single gold strand she wore flash brightly.
Robinson turned to Reginald Johnson. He leaned forward, narrowing his eyes, letting harsh, barely controlled fury slide into his voice, so that each word carried a promise of ferocity.
‘Your niece sure has a pretty name,’ he said. Johnson didn’t reply.
Yolanda looked around suddenly, as if the detective’s tone had frightened her.
‘Why, thank you,’ she said hesitantly.
‘A very pretty name,’ Robinson repeated.
The room grew quiet. Lionel Anderson and Juan Rodriguez moved to either side of him, and he heard both men unsnap the leather flaps that held their service weapons in their holsters. At the same moment, Robinson abruptly jackknifed his body across the countertop, seizing Johnson’s arms and pulling them forward, throwing the burly pawnshop owner off balance. His chest slammed against the countertop with a thudding sound and he cried out ‘Hey!’ in surprise.
Robinson grabbed Johnson’s neck with one hand and forced the man’s head down while he twisted his arm. He realized that Rodriguez had seized the pawnshop owner’s free hand and was pinning it to the case.
‘I want my attorney!’ the man cried out. ‘What you be doing? I ain’t done nothing! Let me be!’
‘No, you ain’t done nothing,’ Walter Robinson whispered.
He was breathing hard and he placed his face right down next to the pawnshop owner’s.
‘Yolanda’s such a pretty name,’ he continued harshly, softly. ‘So, you tell me, you low-life scumbag motherfucker, why she’s wearing a gold necklace with the name Sophie on it?’
Robinson lifted his eyes toward the young woman, who gasped and put her hand to her throat in sudden memory. She looked over at Lionel Anderson and protested, ‘But it was real pretty…’
Reginald Johnson groaned, and Robinson heard Juan Rodriguez reach for his handcuffs, which made a won-drously satisfying, musical, jangling sound.
Espy Martinez flashed her identification to the desk sergeant, who directed her toward the bank of elevators
with a cryptic, ‘Third floor. They’re expecting you___’
before turning back to a paperback novel resting on top of a stack of paperwork. The book sported a voluptuous, barely clothed woman wielding an antique pistol on the jacket, and instantly gathered the desk sergeant’s total attention. She hurried past him, her shoes making a flat, eager sound against the polished linoleum floor.
The elevator rose silently through the center of the building. She stepped out as the doors rattled open, looking for Walter Robinson, but spotted instead a detective from the robbery division who had been her lead witness in a case several months back. He looked up from a notepad and smiled. ‘Hey, Espy! Moving up into the big time, huh?’ She shrugged her reply, and he added: ‘The show’s down there. Squeeze time.’
It wasn’t hard for her to guess what he meant by that, and she grinned in anticipation. She followed the detective’s finger down a narrow corridor, beneath fluorescent lights, into the core of the police headquarters, giving her the impression that she was somehow being sealed away from the unforgiving heat and sunlight outside. The air-conditioning ducts poured ice air into the small space, and she shivered involuntarily. She realized her footsteps had disappeared into an industrial gray carpet; all she could hear was the rasp of her own breathing. For a moment she felt completely alone, and she realized this was precisely the sensation that suspects were supposed to have as well.
Midway down the hallway there were a pair of doors facing across from each other. A small plastic sign on each said: interrogation 1 and interrogation 2. There were windows in the corridor, so that a person could stand in the hallway and stare in at the subjects in each room. Espy Martinez realized this was one-way glass; that she could see in, but the people inside could not see out. She noticed a small intercom system next to the window.
She hesitated and saw Walter Robinson sitting in one room, across from a young, strikingly attractive black woman, who had obviously been crying. She turned and saw a stocky black man sitting at a table in the opposite room. He was drumming his fingers against the plastic surface, glaring at a pair of uniformed City of Miami policemen, who studiously ignored him. She watched the man light a cigarette, angrily tossing the spent match into an ashtray filled with discarded butts. The man swiveled about in his seat impatiently, a movement that caused both policemen to raise their eyes momentarily and stare pointedly at him until he settled back into his chair. Then they went back to ignoring him. She saw his mouth form an obscenity, which she suspected he spat into the stale room air. It had no effect on the policemen.
She turned and entered the room where Robinson sat.
As she came through the door, he quickly rose. ‘Ah, Miss Martinez, glad you could make it.’
‘Detective,’ she replied, with a false formality.
Walter Robinson, smiling, but not particularly pleasantly,
turned to the young black woman. ‘Yolanda, take a long look at this woman here.’
The young woman raised her reddened eyes toward Espy Martinez.
‘You see the nice suit, Yolanda? Take a look at those shoes, Yolanda. Check out the heels. Pretty sharp, huh? See the briefcase? That’s real leather. Nothing cheap. You see all that, Yolanda?’
‘I see,’ Yolanda replied sullenly.
‘You can tell right away that she ain’t a cop, right, Yolanda? You can see that, can’t you?’ ‘She don’t look like no police.’
‘That’s right, Yolanda. This is Assistant State Attorney Esperanza Martinez. Miss Martinez, Yolanda Wilson.’
Espy Martinez nodded at the young woman, whose eyes reflected nothing but fear.
‘Yolanda,’ Robinson continued, in a low voice that contained equal parts threat and seduction, ‘you try to make a real good impression. You try to make the best impression you can, because Miss Martinez, well, Yolanda, you know what she does for a living? You know what she does each and every day? Every hour that the sun is up, Yolanda? You know what she does?’
‘No,’ the young woman replied, looking toward Espy Martinez then back at the detective. She dabbed at her eyes with a ragged piece of tissue paper.
‘She puts people like you in jail,’ Robinson said harshly. He rose and gestured to Espy Martinez. ‘Think about that, Yolanda.’
The young woman looked as if she’d been slapped. ‘I don’t want to go to no jail, Mr Robinson.’
‘I know that, Yolanda. But you got to help me keep you out. You got to tell me what you know.’ ‘I’m trying. I told you everything.’
‘No, Yolanda, I don’t think so. And I haven’t learned what I need to learn. A name, Yolanda. I want the name.’
‘I don’t know,’ the young woman pleaded. Her voice rose into a whine. ‘I don’t know. Reggie, he never told me no names.’
‘Smart girl like you? Yolanda, I just don’t believe you.’ The young woman dropped her head into her hands, shaking back and forth. Her shoulders heaved. Robinson let a momentary silence slide around her, deepening Yolanda’s fear, then she said:
‘I didn’t know about no murder, Detective. Please, you got to believe me. I didn’t know there was no harm involved. Where’s Sergeant Lion-man? He’ll tell you. Please.’
‘Sergeant Lion-man can’t help you, Yolanda. This woman can. You think about that. We’ll be back.’
He led Espy Martinez back into the corridor, slamming the door hard on Yolanda’s helpless sniffling.
‘This is the part I like,’ Robinson said, although Martinez had the impression that he actually liked all the parts of the job.
‘What is it that you found’ she started to ask, but Robinson anticipated her question and produced a small plastic bag containing a gold necklace. He handed it to Espy Martinez, who saw the name Sophie and the pair of small diamonds that adorned the S.
‘That’s what Yolanda was wearing.’
‘You sure …’
‘You think it belonged to some other Sophie?’
‘No. But…’
‘Well, we’ll get a positive from forensics later. Maybe the son or the neighbors can ID it. But it was hers. Trust me.’
‘Okay, Walter. What’s the procedure?’
Walter Robinson smiled. ‘Well, you’ve already met Little
Miss Tears and Contrition. The problem is, she’s telling the truth. She really doesn’t know all that much, although she might know the name. I’m not sure yet. Yolanda’s smarter than you might think. Some of those tears might have come from the proverbial crocodile. But, hey, when she got a long look at that briefcase … well, we’ll see. Cops are one thing. A real live prosecutor, well, that’s bound to be a novel experience for her, and I’d bet she’s thinking hard right now. On the other hand, over there, behind door number two…’ Robinson was grinning as he spoke, and Espy Martinez was forced to smile at the game-show host persona the detective mocked,’… is Mr Hardcase I Want My Lawyer. Now, I know he’s got the information we want. The procedure is simple. Play one against the other.’
‘If he’s asked for his lawyer, then we’re required’
Robinson made a face. ‘Espy, come on. Sure he’s asked for his lawyer. He was shouting about his lawyer as soon as I walked into his pawnshop. I just need to make sure he understands the, uh, ramifications of his reluctance. Give him a chance to see the light. The opportunity to do the right thing. He ain’t even been asked any real tough questions yet.’
‘Well
‘Espy, this is the way it all works. You watch.’
‘Walter, I’m not sure I get it.’
‘It’ll be pretty clear pretty quick. And I’ll bet you’re a real fast study.’
‘We’ll see about that. What is it you want me to do?’
Walter Robinson grinned. ‘I want you to scare the hell out of him.’
Before Espy Martinez had a chance to reply that she wasn’t sure she could scare anyone, Robinson tapped on the glass window to the interrogation room. The two
police officers inside immediately rose, and the pawnshop owner called out, ‘Hey, where you going?’ as they exited, slamming the door shut behind them. Robinson made quick introductions in the hallway.
‘Espy Martinez, this is Juan Rodriguez and Lionel Anderson.’
‘Sergeant Lion-man?’
‘In the flesh.’ The sergeant’s huge paw enveloped her own hand, pumping it up and down. ‘Aren’t you the one who put those kids away? The home invasions?’ ‘My claim to fame,’ Martinez replied. ‘That was a nice piece of work,’ Juan Rodriguez interjected. ‘Those kids, they were gonna kill somebody for sure.’
‘Not now,’ she said.
Both sergeants grinned. ‘For sure,’ Rodriguez said. ‘At least not until they get out.’
Lionel Anderson turned to Walter Robinson. ‘Next step?’
‘Look, guys,’ Robinson whispered swiftly. ‘You go in and make Yolanda feel a whole lot better about her chances as long as she cooperates with us. Make her think that just everything’s gonna be okay, as long as she keeps her mouth moving. No lies. Got it?’
‘Gonna be a pleasure, Walt, old buddy’ ‘If there’s one thing Lionel here knows,’ Juan Rodriguez said to Espy Martinez, ‘it’s how to make young women feel better about their delicate situations….’ He punched his partner on the arm as he spoke, and he drew out the word feel, adding a profusion of e’s to its center.