Prime Suspect

by A. W. Gray

  “Ain’t no law, bro,” Frank said. “All you need to know about him. Ain’t no law and got money, and wants something did to somebody. Wants you to set something up.”

  “Let the man talk,” Dick said. He turned his face toward Lackey. “I seen you someplace?” Dick said.

  “I don’t know where it’d be,” Lackey said. “Around somewhere, maybe, you don’t look familiar. “He was thinking about his picture on TV and in the papers, and was wondering if the photos had been a good likeness. Personally, Lackey didn’t think so.

  Dick shook the hair away from his forehead, girl-fashion. “If I know you it’ll come to me. Guy wanting something like you’re wanting, if I think it over most times I can make „em. I tell you something up front. Frank Nichols says you’re cool, anybody knows Frank’s going to buy that. But if it turns out you ain’t cool you got real problems. Something else, too. This ain’t the kind of deal you can crawfish on. Once you do it, it’s done. So you better be talking about somebody you don’t like very much, not some broad you been fucking and tomorrow you fall back in love with her and change your mind.”

  Only his lips move, Lackey thought, while his nose stays wrinkled. Maybe the guy’s got sinus trouble. “Are you the one we’re talking about?” Lackey said.

  Dick’s lips turned up in a grin. His teeth were rotten. “Where you get this guy at, Frank?” His grin disappeared at once, like a scene in a movie with some frames missing. He said to Lackey, “I’m nothing but a bar owner, friend, and as a bar owner I happen to know a few people. If I put you together with somebody I know, I don’t want to hear nothing about your business. Understand?”

  Lackey had never understood longhairs, had always thought most of them were kind of wimpy, but this guy Dick talked like somebody used to giving orders. Must have a lot of people backing him up, Lackey thought, unless he’s a whole lot stronger than he looks. “It would probably be better that way,” Lackey said. “That way I could talk it over with the person.”

  “That’s my very point,” Dick said. “This middleman shit don’t work, either somebody gets ripped off, or somebody don’t pay, which puts the middle man in the position of being responsible for somebody’s money. I guarantee nobody’s credit, all I do is put people together.”

  “How about the other end of it?” Lackey said. “You guarantee if somebody pays somebody, something’s going to get done?”

  Dick snugged his sunglasses up on his nose with his middle finger. “I don’t guess you’re getting it. I’m going to get in touch with Frank and tell him when and where you can meet this person. That’s fucking all. Then I’m through with it. People come in here wanting what you want, they got no fucking guts or they’d be doing it themselves. I can tell you, yeah, this person’s always done what he said he was going to, but if it don’t work out nothing comes back on me.”

  Lackey’s neck muscles had bunched when Dick had talked about somebody not having any guts, but he decided that Dick was only stating fact, not making a personal remark. “If that’s the way it’s going to be,” Lackey said, “then that’s the way it’s going to be.”

  Dick’s chin moved up and down. “That’s the way it’s going to be,” he said, then turned to Frank. “You still in the same spot?”

  “Mostly,” Frank said. “You still on parole, huh?”

  “Yeah. Going to be on it awhile.”

  “The last time you went down,” Dick said. “I heard about that. Sounded like a bad beef to me.”

  “Sounded like one to me, too,” Frank said. “But I got a rap sheet, they offer me three years which I can do standing on my head. Them D. A.’s know just what to offer a dude, if they case is bullshit.”

  “I had one like that,” Dick said. “Three grams of coke. Grams, not ounces, but they offer me a year county time. With good time I’m on the street in what, ninety days? You got to figure the odds, you know?”

  Lackey was losing interest, the two guys talking about what D.A.’s were offering everybody, so he scanned the barroom. The thick-necked man hadn’t moved, as though he was a prop in a TV serial, just sitting there watching the back mirror. Lackey’s eyes were now used to the dimness; he made out clusters of dust and gum wrappers and wadded cigarette packs on the floor. He decided to interrupt the guys. “How long are we talking about?” Lackey said.

  Dick paused in midsentence, telling Frank about the time that he’d done in the county, and swiveled his head to say to Lackey, “Couple of days. No more than that.”

  “Okay,” Lackey said. “Look, we better be going. This makes me a little bit nervous, sitting here.”

  “No worry,” Dick said. “Everybody’s nervous. You just be thinking about what you’re wanting to do and making sure you’re wanting to do it. You ain’t talking about hiring somebody to mow your yard, you know.”

  Dick stood in the doorway and watched Frank and the bearded man leave, watched them walk side by side over to the beatup Buick in front of the washateria. The bearded guy was different, not like the run-of-the-mill nervous asshole looking for somebody to do his wife or, more often, do the guy who was fucking his wife. Dick thought personally that they should leave the bitch and forget about it, but who was he to say? The bearded guy, though, looked like somebody who could take care of himself, shoulder muscles rippling under the fabric of the blue T-shirt, ridged triceps and long lean legs like a running back. Looked like somebody that if he wanted something done he’d take care of his own business. But Dick only arranged things, and why the bearded man wanted to talk to somebody was something Dick didn’t want to get into. The bearded guy climbed easily into the front seat of the Buick beside Frank the black guy. The starter chugged; the engine coughed and backfired, and the Buick moseyed a half-block down the street, made a U-turn through the slot in the island, and disappeared going west on Lancaster Avenue. Dick let the doors close behind him as he went back to the bar. He moved his hair from his forehead with his fingers as he thought it over. He’d seen the bearded guy someplace. He’d have to think about it.

  He went behind the bar, walking on raised wooden pallets lined up on the floor, and moved down to stand across from the thick-necked man. Dick felt of the thick-necked man’s beer. The bottle was half-full but warm. Dick emptied the bottle in the sink, dropped the longneck into the trash, and dug into the cooler for a fresh one. He opened the beer with a tiny hiss of air and let the cap drop into a metal bin. Then he set the cold one up on the bar. The thick-necked man shoved over a couple of bills and some change, but Dick pushed them back. “On the house,” Dick said. “You catch any of that?”

  The thick-necked man frowned. He had thinning hair, a sloping weak chin, and arms the length of an orangutan’s. “The white guy, I know who he is,” Everett Wilson said. “But who’s the nigger?”

  15

  Nancy Cuellar had been expecting the two detectives to come calling all day—going through the motions at her desk, glad for once that her boss was out of town, wincing mentally every time her intercom buzzed, rehearsing in her mind the response she was going to make when Helen Taylor smirked her way in with the news that the law was once again in the reception room—and when four-thirty rolled around and still no Morrison and Henley or anyone else from the sheriff’s department, Nancy was just a little bit confused. As the clickety-clack of typewriters ceased up and down the corridor, followed by the rattling of paper, the rolling noise of file drawers closing, and the muted hubbub of going-home conversation, Nancy called the desk at the county jail. No Lackey X. Ferguson in custody at present. Well, that was a relief. She put her things away and joined the other office people in front of the elevators, avoided one car when she noticed Helen Taylor climbing aboard, and finally took a milk run with Trudy and two of the girls from the file department. The car stopped at nearly every floor to let more tired workers trudge aboard and arrived at lobby level with Nancy jammed to the rear behind an overweight woman whose shopping bag kept bumping Nancy’s arm. She exited last, taking quick clackety-clack s
teps in her high heels through the lobby, and made it halfway to the parking garage elevators before she came to a halt that made her shoesoles squeal like tires. So, at last, there they were.

  The two detectives were lounging around in front of the first-floor gift shop. Henley was coatless, in shirtsleeves and tie, and wearing sunglasses. The bald top of his head was visible as he smoked a cigarette and thumped ashes into a receptacle filled with white sand. Morrison wore a powder blue sport coat and was leaning against the wall with his ankles crossed, chewing gum as he read a People magazine that had a picture of Madonna on the cover. The big blond cop had gotten a haircut, a burr. Henley nudged Morrison, who looked up from his reading to regard Nancy with a pinch-lipped smirk.

  Nancy held her breath and quickened her pace, sweeping past the two cops as though she hadn’t seen them, clutching her purse firmly under her arm. She was wearing a white pleated thigh-length skirt and a green cotton pullover sweater. As she passed by, Morrison took a step in her direction. “Nancy. Hey, Nancy.”

  She felt the warmth coursing up the back of her neck and almost paused, but strode firmly on.

  “If you want, we can arrest you,” Morrison said loudly. “You want that?”

  She stopped, lowered her head while she swallowed hard, then turned. “Arrest me for what?”

  Morrison fished two letter-sized folded papers from his inside breast pocket and held them up for her to see. “Come on, Nancy, we’re not out to get you. Not much to this little charge here, just obstructing our investigation is all. Hell, we’d even tear it up. You know what we want.”

  Nancy blinked. There was a knot behind her breastbone the size of a grapefruit. She hadn’t counted on this. “Can I see that?” she said softly.

  Morrison came forward and handed her one of the papers while Henley walked forward as well and stood beside his partner. Henley’s hands were on his hips, his fingers near the pistol holstered on his belt. He was chewing gum, his expression masked, his eyes hidden behind dark lenses.

  AGAINST THE PEACE AND DIGNITY OF THE STATE OF TEXAS

  Nancy unfolded the paper and scanned it, feeling slightly faint, her vision blurring. The paper was a form, some fill-in-the-blanks starting with THE GRAND JURY CHARGES and ending with the printed words,and in between her own name—God, she thought, Nancy Patricia Cuellar, that’s me, it is me— followed by some typewritten sentences stating that she’d knowingly and willingly interfered with two officers of the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department in their investigation of one Lackey X. Ferguson, suspected of the crime of Capital Murder. Capital Murder, Nancy thought, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. She let the warrant hang at her side and looked fearfully at the two detectives.

  “Hey, Nancy,” Morrison said, “we understand that you got a thing for this old boy. Now let’s get him in so we can clear all this up. That’s all we’re trying to do.” Nancy’s gaze was frozen on the remaining paper in Morrison’s hand. Morrison glanced down, then said to her, “It’s his. It’s the one we got for your old man.”

  “My . . . fiancé,” Nancy said.

  Henley clasped his hands palms-out, stretched his arms, and turned his eyes toward the ceiling.

  “Well, hey,” Morrison said, grinning. “Well, hey, you can’t get married „til you clear this up, can you? Come on, you just tell us where to find old Lackey and we can forget about this little old warrant for you. Charges don’t amount to a hill of beans. The D.A.’s done told us, you tell that nice little Nancy Cuellar girl that all she’s got to do is lead us to her old man, and she’s home free. Now don’t make no problems for yourself, Nancy. Come on, where is he?”

  They’re just doing their job, Nancy told herself. Just doing their job and . . . No. No, they’re not just doing their job, either. It’s more than that. Just look at that blond guy grinning. God, she hated that man. “I don’t know,” she said.

  Henley took his gaze from the ceiling and rubbed his bald head with his palm. “That won’t do, Nancy.”

  As part of Nancy’s job at the law firm, she’d had to go down to the county jail a few times, sometimes to research records and other times to post bond for Mr. Brantley’s criminal clients. It was the only part of the job which Nancy absolutely despised. She pictured the helpless look on the female prisoners as they waited in line, handcuffed, wearing light green shapeless smocks, going in one at a time to answer the in-processing questions. Ever been arrested before? Are you lesbian? Any special medical problems we should know about? Different images jumped suddenly into Nancy’s mind, a picture of herself in line with those women, and a clear impression of what would happen to her once they locked her in the innards of the jail, in the same cell along with all those Rosedale Avenue whores. Nancy swallowed bile. “I told you,” she said. “I just don’t know where he is.”

  The two cops exchanged glances, the blond smirker and the bald deadpan, the two guys appointed to make life miserable for Nancy Cuellar. Morrison sighed. “Tell you what, Nancy.” He put Lackey’s warrant away in his pocket and rolled the People magazine into a cylinder. “Tell you what. We really ought to book you, but putting a nice girl like you in that nasty jail would stay on our conscience. What we’re willing to do is—and this is up to you, if you want to go to jail we can take you there—but what we’re willing to do is, we’ll take you downtown and let you talk to the D.A. Deputy District Attorney, Favor’s his name, and he ain’t a bad guy like me and Roscoe here. Now if you can convince Mr. Favor what you’re telling us, that you don’t know where your old man is at, then maybe we can do away with this warrant altogether.” He smiled like he’d just shown Nancy a used car he had for sale. “Come on, whaddya say?”

  Uptight as she was, Nancy didn’t believe Morrison for a minute. She’d seen enough of the law firm’s criminal clients handled by the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department to know better. The plan was to get her downtown in the D.A.’s office, grill her with the Assistant District Attorney in on the questioning, and if she didn’t have anything to tell them—or, rather, if she didn’t say what they wanted her to say—they’d whisk her away up the street to county lockup. Don’t pass go. Still, she’d rather have that than . . . She folded her arms and firmly planted her feet. “Can I drive myself?”

  Henley shifted his wad of gum from one cheek to the other. “Well, you got to understand that we can’t really go for that. Officially we’re supposed to put you under arrest. But we’ll stretch it this far. You can drive, as long as Mr. Morrison here rides in the car with you. I’ll follow in the county vehicle. That way, if Mr. Favor gives the word, you can drive yourself on home once we’re through. How’ll that be?”

  Through her fear, Nancy was beginning to get just a little bit mad. The way that Morrison was leering, Nancy would as soon go downtown in the paddy wagon as ride in the car with him. It wouldn’t surprise her if the grinning blond cop decided to cop a feel from the Mexican girl on the way. Wouldn’t surprise her at all. It would be her word against his. And the only reason they were willing to let her drive her own car downtown was to save them the trouble of sending a tow truck for it later. This Mexican girl’s not as dumb as she looks, Detective Morrison, Nancy thought. You’re a cabron, detective, I’ll bet you’ve heard that before. “My car’s on the seventh floor, over in the parking garage,” Nancy said.

  “Hey, that’s good, we’ll walk with you,” Morrison said. He took a couple of steps toward the garage elevators, then stopped and looked at Nancy over his shoulder.

  Nancy kept her gaze on the floor as she went along with them, walking beside Morrison with Henley a couple of steps behind her, seeing passersby in the lobby in the periphery of her vision. They’re not really staring, she thought, it’s just the old imagination churning. To prove to herself that people weren’t staring, Nancy lifted her gaze. Two men in tailored suits passed going in the opposite direction. Both men glanced at Nancy, then in turn at Henley and Morrison, then stopped and did double-takes. Nancy’s cheeks flushed and she lowered her gaze once m
ore to the tiled floor.

  Just as always at this time of day, there was a noisy crowd in front of the elevators, Nancy stood between the detectives while the two chatted casually over the top of her head. She wasn’t a tall girl to begin with, and standing between the two cops made her feel about two feet high. Not under arrest, she told herself. Not under arrest? Well, what in the name of Jesus am I, then? The center elevator door rumbled open. Henley stepped quickly forward, holding a small black wallet open over his head, flashing his badge. “Stand back,” he told the crowd. “Stand back please. Sheriff’s Department, stand away.” The crowd parted like the Red Sea as Morrison took Nancy by the arm and escorted her aboard the elevator. Morrison and Nancy stood to the rear of the car while Henley got on and held his finger poised over the button panel. “Seven, huh?” Henley said. Nancy shot the detective a look that would wilt flowers and nodded her head. Morrison laughed softly beside her as the doors closed. Sudden increased gravity sank Nancy’s feet deeper into the carpet.

  After the hubbub of the lobby, the silence on the seventh floor of the garage pressed on Nancy’s eardrums. Cars, minivans, and small pickups stood in rows in slanted parking spaces. Henley paused outside the elevator and said, “Which one, Nancy?”

  “Up there, the . . . green Mustang. The little green . . . the green one.” Nancy’s feet were numb and there was a tingling sensation in her calves. Morrison used his palm in the center of her back to nudge her gently out of the elevator car as though he was escorting her to the prom. At his touch, her insides twisted.

  Henley led the way to the Mustang, his footsteps echoing from uninsulated concrete. Three sides of the garage were open air, and a warm spring breeze blew on Nancy’s cheeks. Inside, she was cold as ice. She couldn’t let this happen. Couldn’t. In the fifteen seconds it took to cross the floor to the Mustang, she made up her mind.