A Dead Man Speaks Page 11

  I turned back to the man on the podium. Funny, for someone who had supposedly just lost his best friend, business partner and the rest of that crap, he didn’t look too upset. In fact, nobody in this whole church looked upset, except the woman in black. I put a little star by her name.

  “Clive, my brother, we’ll miss you.”

  The organ swelled up from the back of the church as the business partner left the podium. I checked my list of names—Andrew Haven.

  My eyes roamed around the church taking in the most non-sad looking group of folks I’d ever seen. Another man walked up to the podium. Cleared his throat. Must think he’s something. Ten years being a detective you get to know the little signals folks send out. Clearing their throat. Sure sign every time of somebody who thinks they’re something.

  “Clive was more than a son-in-law to me. He was like the son I never had. He provided a good home for my daughter and my granddaughter, and for that I am thankful.” He cleared his throat again and looked over toward the open casket. “May you accomplish in death all of the dreams that you could not in life.”

  At that point in any other funeral, the wife should’ve broken down. But not this one. She had that Jackie O look. And everybody knows what a fuck up as a husband JFK was. I put another note in my pad, next to Wife.

  The music had started again, my cue to slip out.

  * * *

  “So, didya figure it out, super cop?”

  I didn’t even have to look up. Captain. And his unfunny sense of humor. “Yeah, I figured it out. The wife did it. Isn’t it always the wife?”

  Captain was the kind of black guy I was used to. He reminded me of the kids I grew up with: a little rough, liked to crack on you, joke around. But basically, a good guy. Least that’s what I used to think ’til he turned on me. Him and all the rest of ’em.

  I looked around the precinct at the sneers and underhanded looks. For a minute, I froze, back to then. When my life changed for good. I heard the question, “Detective Greene, did you see Officer McCarthy shoot the suspect after the suspect had fallen on the ground?”

  Trying to be a good cop, a fair cop—the memory still fresh—I hesitated: seeing this black kid who couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve, fall on the ground, crying, begging McCarthy not to shoot him. I could see McCarthy laughing as he took out his gun, walk around the kid, and shot him point blank in the back…and I said, “Yes, sir, I saw him shoot the suspect after the suspect had fallen.”

  From that point on, I’m a traitor, an enemy in the camp. Worse than a scab. A cop who turns on another cop. I’d be better off dead myself. The ironic shit was that the black cops hated me worse than the white cops, said I shoulda stopped McCarthy, shoulda held him back. Like there was a damn thing I coulda done to stop him. When the black ministers got in the act, they damn near crucified me. You woulda thought I’d killed the kid.

  “Greene’s a racist cop. Greene’s a racist cop!” Sometimes I still hear the chants when I close my eyes. Still see the flashbulbs in my face.

  “Detective Greene, do you think that there was anything you could’ve done to stop your partner from killing Leon Williams?”

  “Detective Greene, the court records show that you were aware of your partner’s emotional instability.”

  “Detective Greene, shouldn’t you have reported that to Internal Affairs so that he could have been removed from the force before this tragedy occurred?

  “Detective Greene, do you have a comment for the black press?”

  “Yeah, fuck you! Fuck alla you!” I yelled in the glowing lights of the camera. They bleeped it out on the evening news. But it didn’t matter. The next day the headlines screamed, “WHITE COP SAYS FUCK BLACKS!”

  Dad was right, you couldn’t trust any of ’em. I tried to be fair and do the right thing, and that’s the thanks I got. Well fuck all of you! Black press! Black people! All of you!

  Maybe I should’ve just resigned. But what else could I do? Where else could I go after twenty years on the force? That was two years ago, and now nobody will lift a finger to help me, all just wishing I’d fall on my ass one time too many and be outta here. So I just keep my distance, joke around like it’s still the way it used to be, but Captain knows and I know and every other asshole in that precinct knows that it’s never gonna be the way it used to be no more.

  I turned back to the Captain, trying to get back to now, trying to sound casual, like the shit was no big deal. “You know what, Captain, you people sure don’t get too upset at funerals.”

  “What the fuck is he talking about? Will somebody tell me what this fool is mouthin’ off about?” He threw up his hands. But he wasn’t pissed. Captain was always throwing up his hands or cursing somebody out for no particular reason.

  “There wasn’t a wet eye in the place.”

  “Don’t you mean dry eye, Greene?”

  “Not there I don’t. Nobody, and I mean no fuckin’ body except for this one woman who didn’t really look like she belonged there, was cryin’. No sniffles. No wet eyes. Nothin’. Now that ain’t normal. With all the funerals I been to since I started at homicide, this is the only one where nobody cried.”

  “Well, I hear he was a regular son-of-a-bitch anyway.”

  “Yeah, well tell me somethin’ I ain’t figured out already.”

  “So then I repeat my question, Greene, or are you deaf and stupid?”

  “Fuck you, Captain.”

  “Who did it?”

  I grabbed the thick file off my desk marked CLIVE JANUARY HOMICIDE and waved it up in the air. “I don’t know, but I’ll find out. Don’t I always?”

  “Whoooo, thinks he’s hot shit, don’t he?”

  I smiled defiantly. I liked to fuck with the guys. “Yeah, and what of it?”

  The captain got up and started walking into his office. “Just find out, ’cause word on the street is that some heads might roll on this one.”

  I looked at him curiously. This was getting interesting. I liked my cases interesting. “What do you mean?”

  The captain motioned me into his office. I followed him and plopped down in one of the chairs.

  “Close the door.”

  I glided it shut with my foot. “So shoot, what’s up on this one. What do I need to know that’s not in the file?”

  Captain raised his thick eyebrows. His bald head wrinkling up at the same time. “Well, it seems like our man was knee deep in shit. All kinds of shit.”

  “What, drugs, women?”

  “We don’t know. He was coked up when he died, but we’re just not sure.” Captain got up and paced around his desk. I could tell he was thinking. That was his thinking mode. Walking back and forth, wrinkling his bald head. “The other thing was his business. There’s some question as to whether he was trying to sell it from under his partner before he was killed, or if somebody with big money was trying to force him out because he knew too much.”

  “About what?”

  “We don’t know. That, Detective Bob, is for you to find out. And real quick. We’re getting pressure to close this one up neatly.” Captain sat down. He didn’t seem to want to say the next thing, but he did anyway. “Another piece of advice.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t dig too deeply on this one. We don’t want to upset the apple cart if you know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Shit, Greene, just play it cool on this one, okay. Don’t go off half cocked, ’cause you might be squeezing your own balls if you do.”

  I wandered back to my desk. Thinking. The captain is a fast one. Must have been something for him to tell me to cool it. He was usually gung ho. On everything. I picked up Clive January’s file. January and Associates Annual Report dropped out. Newspaper clippings, copies of school records. A man’s life reduced to an 8 x 12 file. I hoped to God when I went, I got more of a send-off than his.

  * * *

  clive

  so i’m a son-of-a-bitch n
ow. assholes. all of them. if they only knew, the half. but now i’m dead. not even in heaven or hell. god didn’t do me the dignity of kicking me either upstairs or down. i’m just nowhere. floating. pulled by forces that i don’t understand. one minute i’m looking at my own body in the casket. dressed up like i’m stepping out. except that i’m not going anywhere. except six feet under.

  now i’m in a police station. probably smells like stale cigarette smoke. except that i can’t smell anything. and for some reason, i’m drawn to this white guy. this racist cop who’s looking through my life, making judgments about me. but i know, i don’t know how, but the same force that came to me when i died is telling me through some means that this guy is the key. he’ll find out who did it.

  questions. nothing but unanswered questions. why him. why this guy. but no answers. if i have to depend on someone to put together the pieces of my life, why not someone like me? someone who’s felt the pain that i have, who’s lived the hell that i lived. someone who would understand.

  it’s the same journey. i keep hearing that echoing in my head. the same journey. you have the same journey. you chose him, they’re telling me. i look down on him, sitting at his desk going through my life, asking questions about me and i don’t see it. nothing. no connection. just a dumpy middle aged white guy who probably thinks he’s better than me just because he’s white.

  they’re telling me that he’ll help me find peace. because they tell me that if i don’t find out i’ll never have peace. our lives are locked together. somehow. a pact we made. to find the same thing. what is this thing? this something that will free me from this void.

  because god knows no man deserves to be killed like i was. but worse no man deserves to live in this nether existence this world of neither good nor bad, happy or sad. just nothing, loneliness and nothiness.

  i have to let him know. i’ve got to find a way to talk to him. to tell him my story, and then maybe if he knows my story, he’ll find out the rest. and i’ll know. and the world will know the truth.

  * * *

  Shit!

  I woke up in a sweat. I’d been having this dream about him. That dead black guy. Clive January. Don’t ask me why. But I kept seeing his face in my dream. He was trying to say something. But no sounds were coming out of his mouth. It was weird as shit. I lay back down, half expecting to feel Margie’s warm body. But she’d been gone. How many months now. Five, or maybe six. I’d lost track. After our last big blow up, she’d just left. This time I knew it was for good. Cop’s intuition or whatever. We were never married, but it felt like it. When you’re with somebody for ten years, you’re married. Don’t matter whether you got the paper or not.

  I turned back over, still kinda spooked me to sleep on her side. ’Cause it’ll always be her side, even if she never comes back to claim it. Closing my eyes, I saw his face again. Clive January. Only clearer than before. Shit, if he wasn’t dead, I’d swear he was right there in the room with me. Sometimes a case sticks to me like that. ’Till I figure it out, it gets under my skin, and I can’t get rid of it until I close it out. Clive January was gonna be one of those cases.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Shit, will you look at this place?” I wandered around the house. It was like nothing I’d ever been in before: ultra modern, slick, windows that reached from the floor to the ceiling, with the ocean covering every inch of glass. Blue water, tan sands. Sailboats in the distance. And everything else high tech. Couches you could sink into and get lost, art work, that expensive-looking abstract mess, long stemmed champagne glasses, a wet bar, and everything white, white. Except for the dark bloodstain on the chair and on the thick, white carpet.

  “What did this guy do again?”

  The Long Island cop shrugged his shoulders. “Had a company on Wall Street’s all I know. Hadn’t had the house two years…then boom. Dead.” He leaned against the window. Staring at the waves that crashed against the sand. “Some people seem to have all the luck.”

  I kneeled, looking carefully at the bloodstain on the carpet. “Yeah. if you call getting shot in the back lucky.”

  “You know what I mean: the money, the house…I wouldn’t mind it.”

  “Not me. I gotta be able to sleep at night.”

  “And how do you know he couldn’t?”

  “I don’t, but with this much cash and dying the way he did, something wasn’t right.” I took out my notebook, flipping to the page where I’d written the notes at the funeral…Wife…then snapped it shut. “Like I said, I gotta be able to sleep at night.”

  The Long Island cop wasn’t really listening. I figured it was time to get back to business.

  “So what’dya guys got for me?”

  “On the case?”

  “I didn’t haul my ass out here from Manhattan to look at seagulls.”

  “Yeah, well not much.” He handed me a plastic bag. “Bullet shell, standard garden variety 45, coulda picked the piece up on any corner. We’re doing a test on it now, but my guess is we’re not gonna find the owner, ’cause it was probably hot, not registered under anybody’s name.”

  I rolled the shell between my thumb and forefinger.

  “We also found a second set of prints in the place. Ran it against the wife’s and the maid’s, neither of ’em matched up. We sent it to central FBI files, but so far no match.”

  “Well it looks like you Long Island boys hit the jackpot on this one. Shell, but not a clue whose it could be. Fingerprints from the invisible man. Yeah, I’d say you really did your homework on this one.”

  He glared at me. I guess he didn’t think I was too funny.

  “Yeah, well now that the Manhattan DA has taken over, let’s see how much you find. ’Cause me personally, I think it was some jealous lover or something. This guy had a rep a mile long. He used to have all kinds of women in here. I think either the wife found out and did it, or one of them mistresses.”

  “Just like in the movies, huh? The wife did it, or is it the butler?”

  The cop just kept looking at the ocean. And I thought I was kinda funny. Nobody ever did appreciate my jokes. I think that’s when I knew it was quits between Margie and me. She stopped laughing at my jokes. Just a matter of time, and sure enough, she was gone.

  The cop turned back to me, interrupting my thoughts. “So you got everything you need?”

  “Just about, but you go on. I want to stick around here for a little while longer.”

  “Okay. Lock up.” He left and I was alone. In another’s man’s house. I sat down on the couch and closed my eyes. Whenever I had a case that threw me like this one, I’d do this. Close my eyes and try and get in the head of the victim. Try and think his thoughts, live his life, for a minute. Maybe understand why and who did it to him. Same as the game I used to play as a kid. Except that now it wasn’t a game no more. I could control it. At least most of the time. Sometimes I felt like it would take over. That my life was becoming the feelings I had about other people’s lives, but then I’d pull back and take my own life back.

  I’d been doing this as long as I could remember. Having feelings, that is, about things before they happened or being able to see things that nobody else could. When I was a kid, I could yell out the answers before the teacher asked the question. Used to call me a smart ass. But it wasn’t like that. I just knew. Didn’t know how I knew, but I did.

  I think it came from my mother. She’d been in a concentration camp in Poland. She used to tell me how she knew before the Nazis came to get her and her parents that she’d had feelings to get out of Poland. Her father was a famous violinist. She told me people would come from all over to hear him play. He never wanted to believe that people could be so vicious. He used to say it would never happen. But my mother, she knew what was going to happen. She had dreams months before the Nazi’s invaded Poland. Her mother had the feelings, too. So my grandmother sold all her jewelry and helped her neighbors escape to Switzerland before the Nazis came. Only thing is, my grandfather wouldn�
�t leave, so when the Nazis came, it was too late for my mother, grandmother, and grandfather to escape.

  I remember my mother tellin’ me how after the Nazis took all their silver, art and books, they set fire to their beautiful house. She said that her and her parents looked out from the cart they’d been loaded onto as everything they’d had went up in the flames. She told me that she and her mother cried, but that her father had just sat and looked in silence as the cart took them from their home to the concentration camp.

  My grandfather died in the concentration camp. They broke all his fingers before they murdered him. See, they knew who he was, Abraham Vlidensky. Everybody knew him. They said his music would heal you, no matter what was wrong. My mother said that people would leave his concerts, and they’d be different, somehow. He was famous, and they hated him because he was Jewish and he was brilliant. They wanted to take away the thing that meant the most to him, his music. His hands had made the music come alive.

  So after the war, my mother and grandmother came to New York. She met my father. He wasn’t sophisticated with books and everything like her father. He wasn’t Jewish either. Dad was Irish, Irish Catholic, but he had a steady job and kept a roof over her head. After everything she’d been through, I’m guessing that’s all she really wanted. As a kid, I never really understood him and Mama’s relationship. I’d watch other folks’ moms and dads, and they’d be laughin’ together and sometimes holdin’ hands or seeming like they had special jokes together. But not my dad. Sometimes I wondered if he even liked Mama. I remember one day they didn’t know I was lookin’. I was in the kitchen, and the door was open into the living room. I could see Mama and Dad in there…

  “Callie, how do I look?”

  Mama had on a new dress and hat, and she was walking around the living room twirling in front of Dad, only he wasn’t paying much attention to her.