Prime Suspect

by A. W. Gray

  “Hey, Frank,” Lackey said. “Where’s Junior?”

  The black man who was driving the nails paused with the hammer in midair. He took four nails out of his mouth long enough to say, “Parole officer,” then stuck three of the nails between his lips, steadied the fourth on the board, and raised the hammer and brought it down with a long bang. He had a square chocolate-colored face and a broad flat nose. A burlap bag bulging with nails rode the curve of his hip.

  “Wait a minute,” Lackey said. “That was last week. Junior’s parole meeting was last Thursday.”

  Frank rested the hammer on the board as he glanced first at Ricky Jackson, who was holding the other end of the board, then at Ramon Gomez, who was sitting on his ass, then finally back to Lackey. “Yeah,” Frank said. “Last week he saw him, this morning, too. Then this Thursday. Twice a week from now on.”

  Lackey turned so that he was sitting upright and hugged his knees. “That dude getting in trouble?”

  The three ex-cons exchanged looks. One thing all parolees had in common, Lackey had noticed, was that none of them liked to talk about another guy’s business. One thing, Lackey thought, that people who’d never been to prison could take a lesson from.

  Finally Lackey said, “Look, I don’t give a shit what Junior’s problem is. It’s none of my business. But we got crews to run. A man off once a week, that’s a problem we’re living with „cause we know the guy’s on parole. But twice a week’s a double problem. What’s the deal?” A ball of sweat ran from under his hard hat and down his forehead. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.

  “We all got problems, boss,” Ramon Gomez said. “Twice a week from now on this fucker’s having us come. Tomorrow I got to be off, next day Frank and Ricky plus Junior. Ain’t none of us done shit, but we got a new parole officer.” Gomez couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and thirty pounds, small and wiry with a Fu Manchu mustache. He lay on his side, propped up on one elbow.

  “What happened to the old guy?” Lackey said.

  “Ain’t no old guy,” Frank said, laying his hammer aside. “Ain’t none of „em stay around long enough to get old. The guy that just left, we had him for two months. This new guy’s about twenty-five, got a hard-on for everybody. Way he talk we lucky we ain’t reporting every day.”

  “Well, we can’t put up with this,” Lackey said. “We got work to do.”

  “That’s what we told him,” Frank said. “That he fuck with us, he’s fucking with our job. But I tell you, boss. You go over there you better carry papers prove you ain’t on parole yourself. This dude, you give him one word of bullshit, he’s going to try to put your ass in jail.”

  Ronnie Ferias was around to the side of the addition when Lackey found him. Ronnie looked up, then used a trowel to spread mortar on top of a row of bricks. “Don’t say a word,” Ronnie said.

  “I got to say a word,” Lackey said. “Otherwise you won’t know you’re not any bricklayer.”

  “Well I’m better’n nothing,” Ronnie said. “Fucking parole officer’s got these guys trotting back and forth twice a week we won’t never get anything finished. Cabron, They get rid of one asshole they get another pindejo. That’s a prick to you gringo fuckers.”

  “Well I’m going over to see the parole guy,” Lackey said. “This kind of shit can break us.”

  “I thought that westside bathhouse job going to make us rich,” Ronnie said. “How we going to get rich if we broke first?” He dipped in the wheelbarrow and brought the trowel up dripping with mortar. Ronnie was around five-ten, a couple of inches shorter than Lackey, with narrow shoulders and the beginnings of a belly. He wore a paint-stained T-shirt, khaki pants, and an apron with pockets. “Them Rangers blow another one last night,” he said.

  “I watched it at Big Ed’s. They leave too many runners stranded.”

  “It’s no different than construction,” Ronnie said. “Pay „em all that money they going to sit on they ass.”

  “The bathhouse job might be a problem,” Lackey said.

  Ronnie concentrated on the brick in his hand as he set it carefully in place and then dabbed on more mortar. The row on which Ronnie was working was chest high and ran about half the length of the wall. A pile of cleaned brick lay on the ground beside the wheelbarrow. “Woman’s check bounce or something?” Ronnie said.

  Lackey patted his own rump, feeling the thick wad of bills through the fabric. “No problem with that, I got the cash right here. But that woman got murdered sometime after I left.”

  “No shit?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t you see they interrupted the ball game to show that news break?”

  “No shit? That was her, huh? I was thinking when I saw that, bet her old man did it. All them westside people, Cullen Davis and all that shit.”

  “He was gone playing golf,” Lackey said. “I carried his clubs out to the car for him.”

  “Nice of you.” The trowel went back to the wheelbarrow, scraped the leftover mortar off, dipped in for more. “Maybe after the funeral we talk to him. With his old lady gone maybe a new bathhouse take his mind off of it.”

  “Not this guy I don’t think,” Lackey said. “It was her wanted the bathhouse, not him. I don’t think they were getting along too good, tell you the truth.”

  Ronnie brushed dirt from his arm with the hand that held the trowel; a couple of drops of mortar fell onto his sleeve. “Why? She give you some pussy while you was over there?”

  “Naw. Naw, man, I don’t screw around on Nancy.”

  “Come on, bro.”

  “Hey, Ronnie, what everybody else does is their own business. I just don’t believe in it.”

  “You believed in it back in high school you was going steady with Edie Farr.”

  “That was different.”

  “Bullshit,” Ronnie said. “What’s different about it?”

  “It’s different, that’s all,” Lackey said. “I’m not sure what to do about this money I got.”

  “The fifteen thousand?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well,” Ronnie said, “maybe we go ahead and take a crew out there tomorrow. Show up like we never heard of no murder. Then if the guy tells us he changed his mind we got something to argue about giving back the money.”

  Lackey considered it. Ronnie was always thinking, Lackey liked that about his partner, but sometimes Ronnie’s thinking was just a little bit haywire. “We’d be screwing the guy,” Lackey said.

  “So? Everybody screws everybody. You think that rich dude wouldn’t screw us, he had the chance?”

  “Well we’re not,” Lackey said. “Not on this deal, the guy’s wife just got murdered. What kind of shape we in for crews?”

  “Oh, we got plenty on the payroll. This job here, we’re fifty percent complete and it’s the only big project we got right now. All we got besides this is three kitchen remodelings and that new bathroom out in Keller. All our supplier invoices paid except for this brick I’m laying here, and I ain’t sure about that. I think he give us B-grade brick or something, this shit don’t lay too good. I’m going to have a talk with him before I pay the guy. We in pretty good shape except for this parole officer fucking with our people.” Ronnie adjusted his hard hat back with his forearm.

  “That’s where I’m going right now,” Lackey said. “Out to the Board of Pardons and Paroles. What’s this new guy’s name?”

  “Lincoln, the guys say,” Ronnie said. “Probably a black dude, got a chip on his shoulder.”

  Lackey said, “See you in a couple of hours,” then started to walk away over a little hill of dirt left over from when they’d excavated for the foundation on the addition.

  “You watch your ass out there,” Ronnie said. “They say this guy, he’d as soon put you in jail as one of them parolees.”

  Lackey drove past the parole office on Meadowbrook Drive without even noticing the place, even though he was keeping his eyes peeled. Meadowbrook was a two-lane asphalt street with big leafy trees lining both cur
bs, and the parole office was in a one-story white building set back from the road behind a small parking lot. Lackey was a full block past the building when the sign reflected in his rearview mirror; he cussed under his breath, wheeled into the lot of a MacDonald’s to turn around, then went back to the parole office and parked nose-on to the building beside a ten-year-old Buick. In the front seat of the Buick a black girl was nursing a baby. She favored Lackey with a bored stare. Lackey got out of his pickup and entered the building.

  In the lobby, parolees waited on imitation leather couches and chairs which lined both sides of the room. One guy—a boy, really, in his early twenties, wearing a T-shirt that featured a cartoon of six girls with their pants down, showing their asses, below the caption, “We Be Crack Free”—was handcuffed, seated beside a uniformed Tarrant County Sheriff’s Deputy. On a couch to Lackey’s left, a black man with a beard and a white pregnant girl with a grimy T-shirt stretched over her belly were asleep. The guy was snoring. Lackey went up to a sliding window and asked to see Mr. Lincoln. A sleepy-looking woman in her forties reached through the opening to hand him a form. “Sign the register,” she said. “Then have a seat and fill this out.”

  “Excuse me,” Lackey said, “but this is business.”

  “It’s all business,” the woman said. “And as soon as you fill out the form and give it back to me I’ll take it to Mr. Lincoln. No form, no visit. That’s the rules. Pencils are right there on the table beside the register. Mr. Lincoln’s got two people already waiting, so he’ll be a while.”

  Lackey shrugged and went over to the table, where a register on a clipboard lay beside a pile of stubby yellow pencils. He picked up five pencils before he found one whose point wasn’t broken off, then filled in the columns on the register with his name, the time—he checked the wall clock; 9:42—and Lincoln’s name. The only empty seat was beside the kid in the handcuffs. Lackey sat down and studied the form the woman had given him.

  The form wanted to know Lackey’s full name, address, phone number (or message phone if he didn’t have a number of his own), who he was living with, where he was working, and whether or not he’d been questioned by the law in the past month. He almost went back to the window and told the woman that this was ridiculous, then he changed his mind. If he rocked the boat he might never get to see the guy. He scratched his beard, thought, and began to write.

  At 11:04, Lackey was the only one still waiting. About an hour earlier, the deputy had led the handcuffed guy through a swinging door, then five minutes later had emerged with the guy not only handcuffed but with his feet shackled as well. The boy had been crying. The deputy had taken him out into the parking lot, locked him into the rear of a van, and had driven away. The black man and the pregnant white girl had gone in to see their parole officer together, stayed less than a minute, and had left giggling with their arms around each other. Visible through the glass inserts on the door, they’d gotten into the Buick with the black girl who was nursing the baby. The Buick wouldn’t start. The man had come back inside and used the phone, and now sat on the Buick’s trunklid, apparently waiting for a tow truck while the girl with the baby and the pregnant girl slept in the front seat.

  Lackey’s joints were stiff; he stretched his arms and legs and yawned. Jesus, how could somebody on parole keep a job if they had to go through this all the time? Just as he was about to go to the window and ask the woman—for the fourth or fifth time—how much longer until Lincoln was free, the inner door opened and a young black man marched into the waiting room. He was tall, thin, and clean-shaven, with skin the color of a chocolate malt. He wore navy slacks, a white shirt and a dark tie. “Ferguson?” he said. “That you?”

  Lackey sat up and looked around. “Well, I’m the only one left. Yeah, I guess so.”

  “I’m Lincoln. Follow me.” He turned on his heel and marched back into the inner office.

  Lackey followed down a corridor past open doors of cubbyhole offices with men and women inside hunched over telephones, through a small open area with secretaries typing and file clerks filing, into a small conference room with a scarred wooden table. Lincoln walked at a fast clip, like a man in a hurry to get things over with. On the wall of the conference room was a sign reading, “Need a job? See the Texas Employment Commission.” Lincoln sat down at the table and looked up expectantly. Lackey hesitated, then had a seat and handed his form to Lincoln. As Lincoln studied the page he said, “I don’t find your file. You just get out of the joint? Sometimes it takes a week or two for your records to catch up.”

  Lackey propped his knee against the edge of the table and smoothed his hair back with his palm. “You won’t find any file on me. I’m not on parole.”

  Lincoln’s narrow jaw dropped. The form drifted out of his grasp, swooped slightly in a current of air, and came to rest face-up on the table. “Then why you filling the form out?” Lincoln said.

  Lackey wondered if a mustache might make the parole officer appear any older. He doubted it. Recent college grad, Lackey thought. He said, “The woman told me to, the woman out front. I just follow orders when I’m not sure what’s going on. Besides, it was kind of fun. I couldn’t remember my license number, had to go out to the parking lot.”

  “You know, we’re pretty busy,” Lincoln said, “without people coming in here because they think it’s funny. Somebody dare you or something?”

  “No, I’ve got legitimate business. I came to see you about why you’re having all these guys report twice a week.”

  “Oh. You’ve got a brother on parole. Cousin or something,” Lincoln said.

  Lackey folded his arms. His hard hat was outside, on the front seat of the pickup, and he felt slightly lightheaded without the hat. He hadn’t had anything to eat, and his stomach was grumbling. “I’m an employer,” he said. “And tell you the truth, having my people gone all the time is putting me in a bind.”

  “Well that’s part of the deal,” Lincoln said. “When you hire a parolee, there’s consequences.”

  “It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just one,” Lackey said. “But my whole company is parolees, except for my partner. And sometimes I wonder about him.” He smiled at his own joke. Lincoln didn’t look as though he thought anything was funny. Lackey coughed into his own cupped hand.

  “Damn. Your whole company?” Lincoln folded his hands. “Ferguson, Ferguson. I don’t remember hearing that name.”

  “It’s F&F Construction. My partner’s Ronnie Ferias.”

  Lincoln snapped his fingers and pointed. “Sure. F&F, I got some . . .” He got up, circled the table and stopped by the door. “Don’t move a muscle, I’ll be right back, I’ve got some things to talk over with you.” He disappeared down the hall.

  Lackey got up and squinted at the Texas Employment Commission sign. The sign pictured a hungry-looking man shaking hands with a grinning man who was seated behind a desk. A couple of Lackey’s bricklayers had tried the Texas Employment Commission before they’d come to F&F. One of the bricklayers had gone on interviews set up by TEC for six months without any luck; the other guy had gotten part-time work on a garbage truck. Lincoln came back in with a stack of bulging file folders and dropped them on the table. Lackey sat down. So did Lincoln.

  “We’ve been wondering about that company of yours,” Lincoln said. “I’m going to need your social security number. Your partner’s, too.”

  “Whoa, hold it.” Lackey held up a hand, palm out. “I’m not looking for a job. I got work.”

  “That’s not the point,” Lincoln said. “Guy’s hiring all these ex-convicts it makes us wonder. Most people wouldn’t hire one of the bastards on a bet, but here’s you with nothing but ex-cons. Makes us wonder if you got a record yourself. If you do, all these guys got to find another job.”

  “You can do that?” Lackey was getting a little warm around the collar, and it took some doing for him not to raise his voice. “You can tell a guy where he can work?”

  Lincoln didn’t bat an eye. “We can tel
l „em whatever we want to tell „em. We got the power of God where parolees are concerned. Now. What’s that social security number?” He took a ballpoint from his breast pocket, a small pad from his hip pocket, and got ready to write.

  Lackey decided he’d better not risk any trouble with this guy. He gave his social security number—Lincoln tucked his tongue into the corner of his mouth as he wrote it down—then said to Lincoln, “I don’t know Ronnie’s offhand. I’ll have to check.”

  “Yeah, well you do that. By Friday, huh? That’s as long as we can wait.” Lincoln put the pen and pad away.

  “Wait for what?” Lackey said. “Suppose you don’t get it by Friday?”

  “Suppose you show up Monday without any employees,” Lincoln said. “That’s what to suppose.”

  “Well okay, then. I’ll get it.” Lackey showed a smile which he hoped looked as though he was dying to help this bastard. “But hey, Mr. Lincoln. You got no reason to be so tough on our people.”

  Lincoln twisted his lips into a smirk. “We don’t?”

  “No. No, you sure as hell don’t. These guys are making damn good workers for us.”

  “Yeah, I bet,” Lincoln said. He reached over for one of the folders, opened it, leafed through a stack of papers and came up with a mug shot which had a lot of printing underneath the picture. “Here’s one of your people right here. Frank Nichols, you know this guy?” He turned the photo so that Lackey could see it.

  Lackey thought that Frank in the picture was thinner than he’d looked that morning, nailing up roof boards. “Sure,” Lackey said. “Guy’s never missed a day of work. Except when you people are dragging him down here for parole meetings.”