“Mr. Grimshaw,” she said as we reached the man, “this is my husband, Dr. Grossman.”
“Doctor,” I said.
He took my hand, and shook it. “You are the lead detective on my son’s case?”
“Actually, no,” I said, deciding not to lie to these good people more than I had to. “Apparently your son’s shooting is related to three others in the city. I’m working on all four, hoping to find a link.”
“Three other shootings,” Dr. Grossman said. “Did the victims live through them?”
“So far,” I said. “Although the young lady shot on Friday has had a rough time of it.”
“Her poor parents,” Mrs. Grossman said. “Are they holding up?”
“I haven’t met them yet, ma’am,” I said. “She had just finished her second emergency surgery when I arrived yesterday, and no one was up to talking with me.”
“Understandable,” Dr. Grossman said. “Were they in the park when they were shot as well?”
“Actually, no,” I said. “One of the shootings was in Central Park, another in a different section of the Village, and the last near Battery Park.”
“So different,” Mrs. Grossman said. “Why do you think they’re related to my Joel?”
“Because they all took place during a protest, ma’am, and all of the victims are friends of your son.”
“We taught him to be active in his community,” Dr. Grossman said, “but the world is a different place than it was when I was a young man. Active now has another meaning. I am not in favor.”
“I’m not sure I am either,” I said.
“Papa,” Mrs. Grossman said to her husband, “Mr. Grimshaw came for Joel. We should let him conduct his business.”
“Yes,” Dr. Grossman said. “This way.”
He led me down a dark corridor. The narrowness of the hallways surprised me. I was used to Laura’s apartment, filled with light and floor-to-ceiling windows. I glanced into the living room as I passed it here — there were large windows, but they were covered by heavy brocade curtains. All the doors in the hallway were shut, adding to the closed-in feeling.
Dr. Grossman opened a door at the end of the hall. A sharp odor of camphor and stale sweat wafted toward me.
I peered in. A small man lay in the center of a large bed. Nearly a dozen pillows rested around and behind him. An IV stood to one side, unused, and there were more medical supplies on a nearby table.
His neighbor had said he couldn’t be alone, but I hadn’t realized he was hurt this badly.
The young man looked at me from his bed, his face gray in the artificial light. “You’re the detective?” he asked, and I could hear the same disbelief I had heard in his mother’s tones.
“Yes,” I said.
He shook his head slightly, then sighed. I went deeper into the room.
“Do you want me to stay, son?” Dr. Grossman asked.
“No, Dad,” the young man responded. “It’s okay. I can ring if I need you.”
His hand moved tiredly toward a bell pull that hung down the wall beside the bed. I hadn’t seen anything that old-fashioned outside of the movies.
“All right,” Dr. Grossman said. Then he gave me a pointed look. “Go easy on him. He’s still frail.”
“I will.” I went deeper into the room. Someone had moved an upholstered chair close to the bed. A book rested on the cushion. I picked it up and looked at it as I sat down. It was about the upcoming Apollo mission to the Moon.
“Think they’re gonna make it?” I asked, holding up the book.
“I think it’s one of the riskier things we’ve done,” the young man said.
“Me, too,” I said. “And I’m not sure the expense is justified. I’m Bill, by the way.”
“Joel.” He glanced at the door, then back to me. “My folks told me you were coming. You’re really investigating the shooting, huh?”
“There’s been a few others,” I said. “I’m investigating all of them.”
He nodded. “I don’t remember much. I already told somebody that.”
“I know,” I said. “But tell me what you can.”
“The Lower Manhattan Expressway.” He pushed himself up on the pillows, then winced. “People have been fighting it for years. I’d gotten my own place nearby, and it had become home. There were meetings about it, and I finally decided to go to one, in the park. I show up early, talk to a few friends, and then suddenly — nothing. I can’t remember any more.”
“You were there for the expressway meeting,” I said.
He nodded.
“Not for the War at Home Brigade?”
His eyes narrowed. They were as dark and arresting as his mother’s. “Who told you that?”
“That you were part of the group?”
“No, that I was there for WHB.”
“One of the detectives said you were involved in it.”
Joel pursed his lips. “I stopped being part of that group when they changed their name. When someone actually brought a copy of the military’s bomb-making pamphlet to a meeting and started demanding that we take stuff out of it for future use. Feh. I told Daniel that I would have nothing to do with him.”
“Daniel Kirkland?” I asked.
Joel nodded.
“What was his response?”
“He doesn’t understand smaller goals. The expressway doesn’t matter, he says to me, because the city doesn’t matter. It’s part of the capitalist system that oppresses all of us. And so on and so on. I am not a rhetorician. I am a man who gives to his community. I am against the war — who isn’t? — but I am not going to kill for peace. There is no logic in that.”
He wheezed, then closed his eyes again, taking shallow breaths.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
He nodded, but didn’t open his eyes. “Just give me a minute.”
I did. He breathed slowly, evenly, until the breaths got deeper. His face had gone even paler.
When he opened his eyes, I asked, “Is all of this from the gunshot?”
“Didn’t even have to go to Vietnam to get my war wound.” He said it lightly, but he didn’t mean it that way.
“When did you drop out of the group?” I asked.
“I didn’t drop out,” he said. “I left. A number of us did. The ones who are left have come for the spectacle, for the fight, not for any real cause. Or maybe they’re slightly crazy, I don’t know. It’s not for me to know.”
“You left the group to Daniel,” I said.
“No,” Joel said. “Groups change. They follow the strongest personality. And I am not that. Daniel has a charisma, a gift. I call it a gift for lies, but that could be because I seem immune to him. I have a lot of friends — I had a lot of friends — in that group who saw nothing wrong with him, who believed what he had to saw, even though it doesn’t hold up to rational thought. They tell me that sometimes rational thought isn’t enough. Sometimes emotion will turn the tide. Do you believe that?”
“The best leaders I’ve known have combined both,” I said.
He gave me a sideways look. “But we shoot all of those people, don’t we?”
Was that how he justified his own shooting? That he had spoken a truth, and the truth had somehow angered someone enough to shoot him?
“Did you think your shooting had political overtones?” I asked.
“One of the cops said that it might’ve been related to my political activities,” he said. “Or it might have been random. They found some shell casings on a rooftop that came from the same kind of gun that fired my bullet, but that’s all I know. You tell me. You’ve read the file.”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” I said. “First Ned Jones gets shot, then you, and then Victor McCleary —”
“Vic?” Joel shifted on the pillow. “When?”
“Last weekend,” I said.
“Then it’s definitely not connected. We left at the same time. Right after the refrigerator incident.”
“The refrigerator incident?” I asked.
Joel rubbed his hand over his face. Then he shook his head slightly.
Feeling like I was about to lose the opening, I said, “I’m not here for any reason except the shooting. Everything else stays in this room.”
Joel moved his hand away from his face. I didn’t think I’d ever seen anyone whose skin was so white. The veins were outlined in blue, like a river of little bruises running through him.
“Promise?” he whispered.
“Promise,” I said.
He glanced at the door. I did, too, but I didn’t see either of his parents. Still, I got up and closed the door just enough to give us a little more privacy.
“We were at Daniel’s girlfriend’s apartment, and we were talking — arguing maybe — me and Vic. We’re so damn naïve. We thought if we talked to Daniel, he might see reason. But he wasn’t having any of it, although he gave a good argument. He’s smart.”
“Yes,” I said, “he is.”
“Sometimes I think that’s part of the problem. He’s so used to being the smart one. Then he went to Yale, and he wasn’t the smart one anymore, so he had to be the radical one.” Joel gave a small laugh. “Then I think I’m so full of it. What do I know?”
“Something radicalized him,” I said, more to keep Joel talking than anything else.
“Anyway, we were having this argument, and I wanted a beer. So I walk over to the fridge and pull it open. It’s full. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a full fridge outside of this place — you know. My folks don’t believe in ordering in. Which is beside the point. The point is the fridge was full, but it didn’t have food. It had boxes. I crouch down and look at the side of them, and Daniel’s yelling at me to close the door, and Vic’s going ‘What’s going on?’ and he comes over and Daniel yanks him away, then grabs me and throws me back, but not before I see the EXPLOSIVES written on the side, and the name of a construction company.”
Had I looked inside the fridge at the row house? I wouldn’t have thought of it. Keeping dynamite inside a fridge was a good idea, though, especially if the dynamite was older and the nitroglycerin unstable.
“Do you remember the name of the company?” I asked.
“Tucker,” Joel said. “Tucker Construction.”
Had I seen that name in New Haven? I couldn’t remember.
“They’re doing a bunch of projects around town,” Joel was saying. “I think they’re one of the crew working on World Trade, even. I know they got part of the Washington Square job, and they want to do the State Office Building in Harlem, but you know how that’s going.”
“Is that the protest on 125th?” I had seen it as I walked by.
“Yeah. No one wants that building finished any more than they want all this other stuff built. All we seem to be doing is tearing stuff down — important stuff — to build stupid stuff.”
I had gotten him onto his soapbox, and I hadn’t meant to. But I had been thinking of Tucker Construction. Maybe the name was familiar because I had seen its signs all over the city.
“The dynamite,” I prompted.
“Daniel tells me that he’s storing it for a friend. Vic says ‘What friend?’ and Daniel says his dad, which sounded really fishy to me because I distinctly remember Daniel telling me he barely remembered his dad and hadn’t seen him since he was like three.”
“He said his dad worked at Tucker?”
“And he said that his dad was on the crew working in the Village, and they needed extra storage space for the dynamite so they put it in the fridge. Which, I know, sounds really stupid, but Daniel was saying this, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but when Daniel talks, things that are really stupid make a lot more sense.”
I had noticed that Daniel had a gift for lying. I had fallen for some of his lies in New Haven, and I’d only heard them second-hand.
“What happened after you found the dynamite?” I asked.
“Vic and me, we hustle it out of there. I’m thinking we should call Tucker and ask for Daniel’s dad, but Vic reminded me that Daniel’s folks are divorced and his last name might be different. Then I got to thinking about it, and I wondered if maybe someone did ask Daniel to hold the stuff, but not his dad. So I was going to ask June, but I never got the chance. I had the Lower Manhattan Expressway meeting first, and that’s it.”
“You weren’t going to call the police?” I asked.
“I should’ve. I’ve been thinking that ever since the drugs started clearing out of my system. I should’ve called. I should’ve reported it. I just hope Vic did. But you say he was shot, too.”
“Do you think Daniel was involved in the shooting?”
“Daniel?” Joel slumped against his pillow. “Two weeks ago, I’d’ve said no. But with the military pamphlet and the dynamite, and me and Vic getting shot, I just don’t know. What happened to Vic exactly?”
“I don’t know exactly,” I said. “He was shot last Friday night. I’ve been trying to track him down, too.”
“Daniel didn’t like Ned either.” Joel sighed. “But Daniel was sitting right there when Ned got shot.”
He looked at me as if I had answered. I shrugged. “Do you have other enemies?”
“Other enemies,” he repeated. “I wouldn’t’ve thought I had one. Weird. You know, my folks keep thinking that someone else fired the shot, you know, trying to hurt the meeting, not me.”
“What do you think?”
He shook his head. His eyes were bright with tears. “I think my life is all fucked up. I think nothing’s ever going to be the same again.”
I couldn’t say much to that. He was right.
I talked to him a little longer and got nothing more out of him. I felt guilty for tiring him, and for bringing his mood down even farther. I apologized, but he waved me off.
“What can I do?” he said. “What’s past is past.”
His words were resigned, but he wasn’t. I told his parents on the way out that I had distressed him.
“We thought you might,” his mother said, “but he needs to get this resolved.”
“He’s a smart boy,” his father said as if his son were twelve. “He just has to pick his friends more carefully.”
I wished it were as simple as that.
I thanked his parents for letting me disturb their day. I had probably disturbed more than the day. I wasn’t sure what Joel would do, but I had a hunch his time of lying quietly in that room had ended.
FORTY-SEVEN
When I left the building, I blinked in light. The heat of the day had grown, but the air was filled with moisture, making everything look shimmery and vague.
Now I had more pieces than the police. I had seen the map drawn in New Haven of New York targets. I knew that Daniel and maybe a few others had stolen dynamite, probably from a construction company named Tucker Construction, around Memorial Day. I knew that they had stored the dynamite in the refrigerator at the row house, and I guessed that the dynamite had been moved, or Daniel wouldn’t have let me search the apartment.
Maybe June knew, if she was awake. Or maybe the other victim, McCleary, knew. If I could talk to one of them, I might get the last piece of the puzzle.
They were in the Village, so that was where I went.
St. Vincent’s was filled with people, most of whom had suffered some sort of holiday injury. Most of those injuries had involved fireworks. I overheard one man at the information desk telling the woman behind the desk that it wasn’t his fault his son had nearly lost his hand; he wasn’t home when the boy had been lighting a cherry bomb to see how big a bang it made.
I shook my head, happy that Jimmy was content with sparklers.
This time no detectives haunted June’s floor. Her room was dark and marked “private.” I wasn’t able to see anyone inside. I had to find a nurse, and have her check to see if June had been moved.
She hadn’t. But she was still in a coma, and the doctors were beginning to get worried that this wasn’t a heali
ng coma, so they had taken her to X-ray to see if they could find something they might have missed.
From the hospital, I walked to Perry Street. My legs were getting tired and I had a blister on the side of one foot. I didn’t walk this much in Chicago.
When I finally reached Perry Street, I found it filled with people. Most of them sat on lawn chairs on the sidewalk, several of them beneath oversized umbrellas. At the end of the block, several men wearing nothing more than tight swim trunks barbecued on five different grills. Smoke covered that end of the block. The smell of charred hamburger made my stomach growl.
An ice cream cooler filled with dry ice gave off more steam. Several women, all of them wearing bikinis, poured lemonade into tall glasses. A couple women another table over would add a dash of vodka if the drinker wanted some alcohol in his refreshment.
A hi-fi sat on top of a wide banister, and a small man sat beside it, his lap filled with albums. He thumbed through them, looking for the next one. The current album, blaring out of two cheap speakers, was some kind of salsa music, adding to the festive air.
The entire scene, which looked almost impromptu, made me smile. I wandered in, then leaned next to one of the men, asking if he knew Victor McCleary.
The man pointed to a person sitting on one of the stoops. He had long curly hair pulled back in a ponytail. He wore cut-offs and a midriff top, and he was daintily eating corn on the cob, balancing a plate across his knees.
I thanked the man I’d been talking to and walked over to the stoop. Several women moved so that I could climb the stairs.
I sat down next to McCleary. He smiled at me, his mouth greasy with butter. He grabbed a napkin and wiped his lips.
“Victor?” I asked.
His green eyes were clear, and framed by long, black lashes. His nose was small and straight.
“Have we met?” His voice was soft. He had a slight Carolina accent that I suspected could become thick if he wanted it to.
“No,” I said, and stuck out my hand. “Bill Grimshaw. I’m investigating some shootings.”
“What are you, IAD?” He set the half-eaten cob on his plate and wiped his fingers, pointedly ignoring my outstretched hand.
War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel Page 29