Eye of the Cricket

by James Sallis

  Bartender/waifress/cook/enforcer, she stepped behind the bar again and announced: "Last call, ladies and gentlemen. Might want to order doubles. Cops be here soon enough."

  I knew just what she meant.

  All kinds of undesirables dropping by this afternoon.

  24

  "WHO'S THE CIVILIAN ?" an officer standing by the door wanted to know. Dressed like that, shiny, salmon-colored polyester suit, short-sleeve white shirt, narrow tie short enough to show the straining button just above his belt, nothing else he could be.

  Don looked at him and after a moment, shifting his gaze to the floor, shook his head.

  "You hear anyone else in here interrupting me, DeSalle?"

  DeSalle grunted.

  "You know why that is?"

  No responsethis time.

  "It's localise they've all acquired your basic manners, DeSalle. Civility. Even this shitbag."

  Don gestured towards Ranch.

  "Sticks screwdrivers in old men, knocks off a couple of friends, who knows what else he does in his spare time. But you'll notice he doesn't interrupt me.

  "As for Lew here, he's directly involved. He's also a guest of the senior officer, here by request. Don't guess you have your invitation there in your pocket, do you?"

  Again no response from DeSalle.

  "So. We straight on this?"

  After a moment the officer nodded.

  "Thing is," Don went on, talking now to Armantine Rauch, "we're willing to overlook a lot of things. Have to, all that goes on around here, limited manpower we have."

  Don shook his head and leaned closer over the table. Two men in the same business, you might as well say, comparing notes.

  "Bodies are different, Rauch. We don't get away with overlooking those for long. Mayor's office, citizens' groups, the paper, TV shows calling us America's murder capital and pushing for federal investigations. Everybody's got a list. And when those lists start getting too long they just naturally get louder and louder about it. Hey, you want some coffee or something? A cigarette?"

  Rauch shook his head.

  "You sure? Okay, just let me know if you change your mind. So what you think? You think you might be able to help me with this?"

  Rauch smiled.

  "Your men took my wallet."

  "Sony: regulations."

  "My lawyer's card is in there. Maybe he'W be able to help you."

  Don nodded. "You're probably right. Probably save me a lot of time and effort. Lawyers usually do, bless them. Officer DeSalle?"

  "Yessir."

  "Will you please go check and be sure this man's lawyer has been notified?"

  We all sat looking at one another until DeSalle returned.

  "Call's been made," he said.

  "Then we're just having a quiet talk while we wait, in the spirit of cooperation, am I right?" Don asked.

  "I don't believe my lawyer would want me to say anything until he arrives."

  "Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure you're right."

  There was a knock at the door. A uniform poked his head through to talk to DeSalle, then withdrew.

  DeSalle passed it along: "Counselor Silberman—that's Mr. Rauch's lawyer, Lieutenant—is currently unavailable. Seems he's on vacation in Barbados for a couple weeks."

  "Well," Don said. "That does present us with something of a problem, doesn't it, Rauch? We can petition for a court-appointed lawyer, some kid just out of law school or some bumed-out case carrying twice as many cases as anyone could possibly handle."

  "Or you can hold me over till such time as my own attorney becomes available."

  "Good take on the situation," Don said.

  "Thank you."

  "Listen, you mind waiting here a few minutes? Couple things I've gotta take care of."

  DeSalle and I followed Don out of the room.

  "We really tiy calling that shitbag's lawyer?" he asked.

  "This time, I didn't make it up. Didn't have to. Guy's really in Barbados."

  "Not much room to maneuver there, then."

  "Not much."

  "So now I guess we hit number two and hope he really does try harder, see if we can jump-start him."

  Shon Delany was in the next room, seated behind a high, desk-sized table. They'd put a canned Coke, a cellophane-shrouded sandwich from a vending machine, a pack of Salems and a Bic lighter on the table. Delany was drinking the Coke.

  Don introduced himself and asked if there was anything else he could get.

  "You want another Coke, maybe? some ice? a slice of pizza?

  "No?

  "Look, son, I'm not supposed to—my superiors find out, I'm in for a major ass-chewing—but I feel like I have to tell you this. Your buddy in there rolled over on you. Told us about the burglaries and all the rest. Names, dates, details. What you did with the take."

  "But I don't know about any of that."

  "Well. Sure you don't. But..."

  Don spread his hands imploringly as DeSalle stepped forward.

  "I'll but him," DeSalle said.

  Don smiled. "See what I mean? Day comes to an end, folks like yourself shoved in here, all this paperwork, I've just naturally got to have some kind of answers for the people upstairs."

  "But I don't know anything," Delany said. "I'd help you if I could."

  "I'm sure you would. So for a start why don't you tell us why you killed Daryl Anthony Payne."

  "What?"

  "Come on, Delany. Rauch told us all about it. How he begged you to stop, let it go, but you wouldn't. Out of control, he said. Totally OOC."

  "Wait a minute, okay? I didn't kill anyone."

  "You think that matters, Shon? The meter's ticking. I gotta draw a line at the bottom, add it all up, column A, column B. That's what the city and the citizens pay me for. And my wife's expecting me home for dinner.

  "You saw anything maybe you weren't supposed to see, something that could put this in a different light for us, now's your time to lay it on the table."

  "Only chance you'll get," DeSalle echoed.

  "He's right. I don't blow smoke, Shon. We're doing our best here, trying to be up front with you. Your cousin's going down. Up to you whether he drags you down with him or not."

  "You need paper and a pen?" DeSalle said. "Want to write it all down for us?"

  Shon Delany shook his head.

  "Okay, Shon," Don said. "Okay. I understand. DeSalle?"

  "Yessir?"

  "You want to drop the dime on this young man for me? Just tell County we've got a newfish for them, they want to bring the hooks, come get him."

  "Look, I do get to make a phone call, right?" Delany said.

  Don looked surprised.

  "Man hasn't had his call yet? How'd that happen?"

  "I'm not sure, sir. I'll look into it"

  "You do that, Detective. Butfirst you take Mr. Delany into my office, let him use my phone."

  "Yessir."

  "Then you call County. And me, at home, to let me know it's all been taken care of. Pot roast tonight. Should be coming out of the oven just about now. I don't want to miss it."

  DeSalle and Shon Delany left.

  "Pot roast, huh?" I said. "And a wife."

  "Not bad, huh? Maybe I should start writing novels. What can I say? Attitude's eveiything."

  Don looked up at the clock on the wall opposite the interrogation rooms.

  "Don't guess you want to grab some dinner this late?"

  "Why not. What the hell, I might even spring for it."

  "Whoa . . . Scary."

  Don glanced back at the clock. We both knew he didn't want to go home.

  "Give me a minute or two, okay, Lew? Meet you outside."

  "Sad thing is," he said half an hour later, as we settled back in a booth at a hole-in-the-wall named Tony's, one of Don's favorites, "the kid, Delany, he's probably gonna take a hit for this. A small hit, but a real one. Got a sheet now, carry it around for the rest of his life. Never did crapola, probably doesn't have even half a c
lue. While this other shit, just because he knows the system, he'll get all the breaks."

  A huge platter of oysters cruised into port before us.

  "Thanks, Tony," Don said.

  "You gonna work on these awhile?"

  "You better believe it."

  "Want another beer?"

  Don said yes. He got it instantly.

  "You want anything else, just let me know, right?"

  "Right."

  Tony disappeared into the kitchen. We heard rapid-fire chopping back there.

  "You still seeing this O'Neil person?" Don asked. He loaded horseradish onto an oyster, forked the whole thing into his mouth.

  I nodded.

  "Tilings going all right there?"

  Cocktail sauce this time. Another Rabelaisian swallow.

  And I nodded.

  "Good. That's good, Lew. Happy for you."

  Don drained off half his beer in a gulp.

  "Maybe we could get together, just the three of us, have dinner some night."

  "I'd like that."

  "Yeah. Yeah, I would too."

  He poured the rest of his beer down.

  "We'll work on that, then."

  Tony emerged from the kitchen to slide another beer into place before Don and to refill my glass of iced tea, pouring sideways from the pitcher, just as Don's beeper went off.

  He pulled it off his belt, put it on the table and stared at it.

  "Maybe I should just shoot the damned thing."

  "Probably go down okay, you put enough horseradish on it."

  "Yeah."

  Don stalked off towards the phone booth.

  "Ready for menus?" Tony asked.

  "Remains to be seen."

  "As usual. I'll just leave them here on the table then, check back with you."

  "Sounds good."

  "Today's soup is cream of artichoke. Specials are trout in garlic sauce and penne pasta alfredo with grilled shrimp. Either one's guaranteed to leave you drooling into next Tuesday."

  "Thanks, Tony. I'm drooling already."

  "No problem. Need an extra napkin?"

  "Not yet. But some more tea would be great, when you get a chance."

  "You got it."

  Don came back and sank heavily into the booth across from me.

  "Guess you have a big night planned, right, Lew? With your new girl and all."

  "Not really."

  "You mind coming with me, then? I could use the company."

  He stood and tucked a five under the saltshaker.

  "Sure. Where we going?"

  "It's Danny, Lew. They just found him. Place down on Dryades. Apparent suicide."

  25

  DANNY WAS HALF afloat, half submerged, in a tubful of tepid water. One of those old tubs, heavy as a kettle, up off the ground on a platfonu, with clawed feet. A garbage bag around his head was tied at the neck. His tongue, swollen and purple, protruded. Blood vessels in his eyes had burst, making them look like road maps with nothing but interstates. Bladder and bowels had let go in the water.

  DeSalle stepped up behind Don. He didn't speak till Don turned around.

  "Looks like an overdose, with the bag for insurance. One of the uniforms told me there's a society recommends this route."

  "Who took the call?" Don said.

  "Patrolman you mean?"

  "Yeah."

  "Martinez. Young guy. Pretty new, I guess, taking it hard the way we all do thefirst few times."

  "He out there?" Don gestured towards the front room.

  "Yeah. Thought you might want to talk to him yourself."

  "Anybody else around?"

  DeSalle shook his head. "Have been, though. Two, three people at least living here, looks like. Maybe more."

  "Note?"

  DeSalle handed it to him. Sheathed in a sleeve of clear plastic with DeSalle's initials scrawled across the seal. There was only one light in the room, a bare bulb above the sink. Don stood under it as he read the note. Then he passed the note to me.

  It all comes down to choice, doesn't it? The ones we have, the ones we don't have. Those we make and those we're never able to make. Temporary choices, inadvertent choices, final choices.

  Fuck them all. While I'm at it, fuck your goddamn houses out in Metairie and your kids in private schools, fuck your minimum-wage jobs, your sorry-ass unions.

  Fuck your cops most of all.

  Am I making myself clear here?

  Everything's water if you look long enough, right?

  "It's a strange one," DeSalle said.

  I handed the note back to Don. "No heading or salutation."

  "Right."

  "Left side's ragged. Tom out of a notebook, diary, something like that."

  DeSalle looked from Don to me and back.

  "Something I missed?"

  "Lew's just saying the note's not addressed to anyone."

  "Hell it's not."

  "Yeah," Don said after a moment. "Yeah, you're right Guess any list would have been too long. Boy had a lot of anger in him. Always thought it was other people fucked up his life."

  Don stepped into the front room to speak with Martinez.

  "You guys go back a way, huh?"

  I told DeSalle how Don and I met. Both of us little more than kids, each with his own reason to be searching for the sniper that killed all those people back in the sixties.

  "Damn, Griffin. That was you?"

  Don had been shot by the sniper. I'd come upon them in a downtown cul-de-sac and probably saved Don's life—at least he insisted I had. Since then he'd saved mine more times than I could count.

  "Not many like him on the force," DeSalle said.

  "Not many like him anywhere."

  "You know it. Has to be tough," looking at Danny there in the tub, "all this."

  "Can't imagine anything tougher. But I think he'd been getting ready for it, something like this."

  "Yeah. Lives with it every day. Has to know."

  "For a long time now."

  Then forensics was upon us.

  Tape measures chirred, whisk brooms and tiny vacuums whispered, bits of debris tumbled into baggies. Again and again our shadows struck huge on the walls as flashes went off.

  Don stood at the edge of it all, just outside the doorway, watching.

  Also there, wheezing like a bad accordion, sucking alternately at metered-dose inhalers of Atrovent or Albuterol and oxygen from the portable compressor hung like an oversize binocular case under one arm, directing auteurlike this too-real dramatic moment, stood Dr. Bijur.

  "Your boy, I understand."

  "Yeah."

  She shook her head. Squeezed off two hits of Ventolin then wheezed a long exhale.

  "Sure it's top of the list for you. For me it's just one more, pick a number, twelve, thirteen, in there. Wait your turn."

  "I say anything?"

  "You will."

  Her shoulders lifted with the effort to drag more air into faltering lungs.

  "Do the same myself in your position, Walsh. No way I wouldn't. King's horses couldn't stop me."

  "Special favors aren't an option here, Sonja. Okay. But I would appreciate anything you can give me quick."

  What she gave him was a fit of coughing. Sounded as though nails and planks were l>cing ripped out of her body's floor.

  Don waited for her to recover.

  "City lets me have half the personnel I need with twice the workload I can handle. Not a good match, Walsh."

  "I know something about that myself."

  "My department's response time is half that of LA., beats out New York, Boston, Baltimore, and D.C. by several wide miles. Our reports hit your desk within twenty-four hours. Thirty-six at the outside. You ever got your head out of this city's ass long enough to look around, you could probably work up some pride in that."

  Again, coughs racked her. She cranked up the O's from 2 L/M to 4.

  "You know what it'll take, right? Some young sport's gonna come in here once I'm gone. We
ar a tie to work every day, have nice letterhead, maybe an MBA. That's the new thing."

  "Yeah. Yeah, we got them coming up that way through the force now too. Straight off the streets and into offices with espresso machines."

  "Reports are gonna get slower and slower. They'll also get increasingly woilhless as the M-B-Assholes worry about covering their own butts above all, to hell with evidence, fact, inference, extrapolation."

  Dr. Bijur dosed herself with Atrovent, inhaling the puff and holding it like a hit of marijuana, talking around it.

  "We been. At this. A while now. Haven't we?"

  "We have indeed, Sonja."

  Another long exhalation.

  "Bumpy road. Lots of lows. A few highs."

  "Few enough."

  "Truly sony about this one, Walsh."

  Our shadows leapt on the walls again.

  "Never had a family myself. Doesn't mean I don't know what it's like."

  "Yeah."

  "You're a better cop than you ever were a father."

  "Being a cop's easy."

  "Yeah. I guess." Words came in a rush, breathless, high in her chest, barely heard the last few. "You—"

  Her mouth went on moving but no words came forth. Her face turned Jark.

  "Sonja? You okay? Want me to call the paramedics?"

  "No . . . no. I'm, okay. Give me. A minute."

  It took more than a minute, but gradually her breathing eased, her color improved.

  By then her technicians had finished and came to tell her so.

  She looked at Don.

  "Guess we're packing it up. Both have to get back to work now, huh? The real work."

  "Looks like it."

  "No more time for flirting."

  "Flirting. Now, there's a word I haven't heard in a while. My God, are we really that old, Sonja?"

  "How'd it happen, huh? I know. I wonder myself. Things goon, years pile up. All the lists get longer."

  He stood watching her go.

  "Lew," Don said.

  "Yeah."

  "Okay if I stay with you tonight?"

  "Absolutely."

  26

  "DAMN. ANOTHER MOUTH to feed," Zeke said. He'd passed by Don, asleep on the couch, on his way into the kitchen where I sat drinking coffee, wondering how early I could start making calls: Sam Delany to tell him I'd found his brother, Keith LeRoy to thank him for his help, Deborah.