Done for a Dime

by David Corbett

  She reached out to rearrange the folds of her robe across her legs. A slight twitch in her cheek betrayed an effort to control an old emotion.

  “Reginald was not one of the mutineers who refused to go back to work afterward—demanding to be assigned to combat instead, for which they were humiliated and court-martialed. And Reginald wasn’t one of the ones who returned to loading ammunition. He was one of the ones they never found. He was on the dock at the time, doing his duty. Like everyone and everything around him, he was annihilated.” She twisted her small, thin hands in her lap. “This happened, Detective, for the sake of your freedom and mine. Our freedom to sit here and ask and answer disgraceful questions. The freedom of your men to run roughshod through my home without notice, laughing like thugs. Enlighten me, please, Detective, enlighten an old woman, how exactly do you presume to honor my fiancé’s sacrifice?”

  If Murchison felt grateful before that Stluka wasn’t in the room, it was nothing compared to how he felt now. He himself felt torn, resentful of the lecture—there’s a body bag in my background, too, he thought. You want to traipse out the dead, use them as some sort of moral collateral, I’m wise to you. And yet he felt stung by her words, too.

  “Miss Grimes—”

  “No, sir, I am not through, not yet.” There was a halt in her voice. The sound of fury almost spent. “You have asked about my great-nephew, and so I am obliged to respond. Francis has already paid handsomely any debt to society honestly owed for mistakes he made. And they were mistakes, Detective, not crimes. He has put that all behind him, moved on, and done well. For others as well as himself. For me. He has been my friend, my companion, my helper. Any further attempt to punish him is nothing short of sadistic. That is not to say, however, that it is surprising.” She adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her nose, her hand trembling. “There is nothing worthy of us as a people, as a society,” the word drawn out, so-sigh-a-tee, “to be gained from incarcerating a young man like Francis. Suspecting a young man like Toby Marchand. It is an outrage, the fact you are wasting your time on these two young men, instead of spending it wisely in pursuit of a killer.”

  Leaning toward him, for emphasis, she repeated, “A killer.”

  Murchison waited a moment, to be sure she was finished. His stomach felt sour and knotted, all the bad coffee through the night, now this. “I can’t remark on what may have happened to Francis before. The law at times, I agree, can seem perverse.”

  “Perverse? If it were only perverse, I could understand. Do you know, Detective, of a journalist named George Washington Cable?”

  Not another history lesson. “I don’t, Miss Grimes, but—”

  “He investigated prisons in the Reconstruction South. Freed slaves, denied work, got snared in police sweeps and charged with vagrancy, petty theft, drunkenness. Black prisoners outnumbered white by eleven-to-one in Georgia, sixteen-to-one in South Carolina. A larceny conviction could earn you twenty, sometimes forty years in prison, during which you’d be rented out for work by the warden—slavery in everything but the name, it was said even then—building turnpikes and levees and railroads, or sent back into the cotton fields, down into coal shafts, shackled, dressed in burlap. Which is more malicious, Detective? For a starving man to steal a hog, or for twelve jurors to send him to the coal mines for twenty years for doing it?”

  Murchison knew better than to say things had changed. “Too little,” she’d reply, and he’d have no answer for that.

  “Francis told me a little about prison, Detective. He had a cellmate who severed an artery in his wrist with a sharpened comb, did you know that? The blood just exploded from his arm. He went into seizures. Francis shouted and screamed for twenty minutes before anyone responded. The young man was dead by then, of course. Suicide, they called it. Negligent homicide—murder—is what it was.”

  “You’re telling me that Francis will do anything rather than go back to prison.” His tone was a little harder than he wanted. He was tired.

  “Why should he go back? He’s done nothing wrong.”

  “That’s not entirely true, Miss Grimes. There are rules, to make probation meaningful.”

  “Meaningful?” She seemed startled by her own outrage.

  “They may seem artificial. Or overly severe. But they’re rules nonetheless.”

  Miss Grimes leaned forward. “There is a sadness about you, Detective. Are you aware of that?” Her hands were trembling more noticeably now. “A sadness—in your eyes, in your voice—a weariness that seems almost a kind of, if you’ll forgive me, a kind of desperation.” She took a deep breath, her chin lifting. “You might benefit from reflection on the cause of that.”

  She struggled from the recliner, took a second to secure her balance and adjust her glasses, then headed with short careful steps toward the front door. At the living room archway she stopped, turned back to Murchison, who remained planted on the couch. “I’m an old woman. I have seen many things in my time. I do not fool easily.”

  Three sudden loud hand slaps hammered the wall of the house. From the porch, Stluka shouted, “Murch, up and at ’em. Like now.”

  Outside, Murchison found Stluka folding up his cell phone. “Bag this. Let’s head downtown. Hennessey’s got something.”

  Fielding’s Liquors sat on the same side of the block as an African braid-and-bead parlor, the Odd Fellows lodge, Downtown Tattoo & Piercing, and an adult video arcade with a banner in the window reading YOUR VALENTINE’S DAY HEADQUARTERS. Across the street, you had the jewelry and loan outfits, one of three SROs in the area, plus discount furniture and mattress stores and one of the town’s two gay bars. Two buildings were boarded up, renovations on hold; the owners were waiting for things to change down here.

  Somebody’d shattered the window of Fielding’s Liquors. A maw of jagged glass gave way to the magazine racks, beyond which the beer coolers glowed. Another light glimmered behind the cash register where the liquor and cigarettes were kept.

  Hennessey waited on the corner as they walked up. His eyes, bloodshot, darted a little in their sockets. “Alarm went off about an hour after you guys left the Carlisle scene. Get this—they threw a boat anchor, I kid you not, a boat anchor, through the window.”

  “Pirates!” Stluka said.

  “Better yet, could be we got us a tie-in to the shooting.”

  Murchison and Stluka glanced at each other.

  “Tie-in how?”

  “Holmes sent Gilroy down to canvas the liquor stores, see if any of the clerks remembered the vic. This guy, one who owns this store, he did. This is where the old guy bought his bottle, maybe half an hour, max, before he takes it in the back up the hill.”

  Stluka shrugged. “That a tie-in?”

  “I’m not done.” It came out hard. Hennessey looked edgy, beat. “Owner says there were slingers working this corner earlier in the night. One of them got into it with the vic.”

  Stluka rolled his eyes. “There anybody that old man didn’t get into it with last night?”

  “Gilroy was taking all the info down when, finally some luck, same kid waltzes in. Guess who?”

  Murchison reached into his pocket, pulled out the Polaroid gone over with Marcellyne Pathon, now with the handwritten names on the back. “One of these guys?”

  Hennessey waved him off. “You already got the name. I gave it to you. He was up there prowling the street outside the Carlisle house.”

  “Arlie Thigpen.”

  “One and only.”

  Murchison felt a pressure that had been building inside him give now, just a little. He’d not confided it to Stluka, but even before the harangue he’d endured at the hands of Miss Carvela Grimes he’d come out of the room with Toby Marchand thinking, Where’s the fit? He’d lied, sure; he had at least one bad companion. And yeah, there was heat between him and the vic. But from everything he’d heard, a guy like Strong Carlisle, he made it his daily business to stir up heat.

  On top of that, Toby’s eyes weren’t blank; you co
uld see through them to who he was. A little too smart for his own good but also the kind who, if he’d done it, would have caved with less pressure than he’d taken. He hadn’t messed with his face or hair, hadn’t sat there guarding his breadbasket. His anger built during the interview, instead of going off first thing—all of which pointed more toward innocence than guilt. God only knew what the father-and-son story was or how long it would take to winnow it out. Regardless, it seemed irrelevant now.

  “Gilroy have the sense to detain this Thigpen kid?”

  “Oh well, now here’s where it gets vivid.” Hennessey shook his head, a story coming. “Kid strolls in. Owner nods to Gilroy, like, It’s him. Gilroy goes hands-on, says, ‘A word outside,’ and the kid streaks. Being J. P. Stupid—I mean, they worked this same fucking corner tonight, you’d think he’d know—he tries to scoot down the alley just beyond Price Town, the sofa joint? It don’t go nowhere. Even a box of rocks like Gilroy can handle him trapped like that.”

  “This Thigpen kid, he’s in custody?”

  “And Gilroy’s at ER. Goofed up his wrist or something.”

  “Hot pursuit.” Stluka’s contribution.

  “The owner, he around?”

  Hennessey pointed inside. A small, miserable-looking man sat in the dimness behind the cash register. Murchison gestured for Stluka to follow him inside, but before he reached the door a faint sound caught his ear. Glancing up at the corner lamppost, he spotted the source—a small speaker, from which emanated a tinny rendering of what he believed was Mozart, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. The broadcast came to them courtesy of the city council. It was a recent brainchild, offering a nightly assortment of classical favorites at key downtown gathering spots. The purpose was not aesthetic; the music was meant to discourage loitering, stave off drug deals, irritate the hookers.

  The liquor store owner, like most in town, was known to the police. This one’s name was Abdul Hussein, but he went by “Tony.” He was a Fijian Muslim, bony and small, with a graying shock of matted hair. He wore horn-rimmed glasses, tube socks, and sandals, with a trench coat draped over flannel pajamas. A stocking cap rested so high and loose on his head it looked like someone else had perched it there without his knowing.

  As soon as Murchison and Stluka were inside the door, Tony Hussein snarled, “Try to be good citizen. Tell what I see. Tell what I know. Look!” He shook his head, wincing in disgust at the rusty twenty-five-pound anchor on the floor, bedded in shattered glass. “Little shitfucks. You guys really scare ’em, huh?”

  At the West County Med Center ER, Murchison heard Gilroy’s voice from behind the last blue curtain.

  “I’ve chased him into this blind alley, okay? He’s figured it out finally, the cluck. No place to go. I start shouting into my radio—this thing here, on my shoulder—pretending the cavalry’s on the way. Truth is, there’s nobody but me. This kid, he don’t know that. He jumps on top of a Dumpster, tries to snag a fire escape ladder. I grab for his ankle, he stomps on my arm, little prick, which is how the wrist got like this.”

  “Yeah,” a second voice said. Breathy, young. Female. “Swole up bad.”

  “It’s nothing. Line of duty. Any event, this kid hits the fire escape, he’s gone. So I lean down, grab the backup piece from my ankle rig, lay it on the ground. I call up, ‘Break yourself, skinnybone—see this? It’s called a toss down. That’s the weapon you pulled on me, you worthless piece of shit. Now climb your scrawny black ass down off that Dumpster or I’ll defend myself, hear me?’”

  The young woman chuckled and mewed, awestruck.

  “The rest was routine. Used what we call the kneel down, pat down, and cuff technique. Here, I’ll show you.”

  Murchison went to pull back the screen, but Stluka stopped him—finger to his lips, that wicked glee in the eye. Fifteen, twenty seconds, Stluka nodded okay. Murchison cleared his throat.

  “Officer?”

  Stluka drew back the curtain. A nurse’s aide—maybe twenty years old, blond hair and baby fat, dressed in blue scrubs—knelt on the floor, hands cuffed behind her. She had bloodred nails, big teeth, hair pulled back tight with ringlets at the temples. Gilroy, left wrist bandaged, was patting her down with his good hand. He was big—square, muscular—with a chestnut-colored flattop and huge ears. The ears, they’d earned him the nickname Dumbo; due to other qualities, the nickname had stuck.

  He was leaning close behind the girl. Her cheeks were flushed.

  Stluka said, “Confirm all wants prior to arrest.”

  They froze, the girl and Gilroy, looking like some randy statuette at a novelty store.

  “That thing on your belt. You know that’s a baton, right? Not a marital aid.”

  They gave Gilroy time to undo the girl’s cuffs, help her up. She fled. He couldn’t wipe away the bad boy grin.

  “You took a suspect into custody,” Murchison said. Given recent activity, he felt the need to add, “Downtown.”

  “Thigpen kid. Yeah. In the raghead’s store. I hear somebody bitched up his window after, too.”

  “This Thigpen kid, he’s where?”

  “Holding, waiting for transport to County. That’s where I left him, anyway.”

  “You written anything up?”

  “Not yet.” He lifted his bandaged wrist, waved it a little side to side. Queen of the Rose Parade.

  “What was your reasonable suspicion?”

  Gilroy looked stunned at being asked such a thing. “Hennessey didn’t—”

  “Let’s hear it from you.”

  “Store owner IDed him as a potential suspect, the Carlisle thing. Him and the vic got into it, rough stuff, less than half an hour before the shooting. Outside the liquor store, which is just down the hill from the old man’s house.”

  “But you decided to detain him. This Thigpen kid. Not just give him a Beheler and invite him down to the station for a chat.”

  “He got itchy feet. I went in pursuit. In the course of pursuit, we got in a toss. Plus this.” He held his breast pocket open with the bad hand, reached in with the good, and pulled out a popper vial of brownish liquid, holding it top and bottom, index finger and thumb. Murchison took it from him, careful not to touch the sides, shook it, watched the fluid darken.

  Stluka said, “Imagine that. Best drugs in town. And they’re free.”

  Murchison followed up: “You open this?”

  “No.”

  “No secret sniffs?”

  “No.” Pissed now.

  “You found it where?”

  “Dropsie. Right there at his feet, in the alley where I made the arrest.”

  Stluka groaned. “If only life were as simple as you, Dumbo.”

  Gilroy crossed his arms, get that bulge thing going. “Excuse me?”

  “First, don’t feed us dropsie stories.” Murchison shook the bottle again, watched the fluid cloud, a little lava lamp. “Second, the Thigpen kid, he’s not young enough. This is Long Walk Mooney’s crew. He’s got kids to handle product. You tell me you found a wad of cash, I’d believe you.”

  “Cash,” Stluka said. “You know, it’s fungible.”

  “You accusing me of taking this kid off?”

  Neither Murchison nor Stluka answered.

  “Look, I’ll run this down again, though I guess you heard it the first time.”

  “Sure,” Stluka said, “practice makes perfect. Except it didn’t happen that way. You had the kid cuffed, your wrist is goofed up, God knows how—and don’t tell me he stomped you, I don’t wanna hear it—regardless, you’re pissed. You plant him in the car, see some juvies sending the fuck-you eye from up the street. You charge, they book, and either you find their stash spot or they get sloppy, leave that bottle behind. Either way, you can’t tie it to your collar without being a hell of a lot more clever than you’ve been so far.”

  “What is this?” Gilroy did the shoulder thing, the one lifters do. “You guys think you’re IA now?”

  “If we were IA, Dumbo, one of us would be teamed up with
that pudge you just cuffed.”

  Murchison dug an evidence bag from his pocket and dropped the popper vial inside.

  “Hey.” Gilroy puffed up, red in the face. “What the hell is with you two?”

  “Some advice.” Murchison pocketed the bagged vial. “You write something up, make sure it can pass the smell test. And back to the subject of cash, you’ll be logging into evidence every single cent you found on that kid when you apprehended him. So how much was there?”

  Gilroy’s eyes flitted from one face to the other.

  Stluka said, “Tick tock.”

  “Two hundred.”

  Murchison looked at the floor. Stluka said, “You wanna lie about how much you stole off a suspect, don’t pick a round number.”

  “I was guessing.”

  “Yeah?”

  Murchison looked up and held out his hand. “Empty your pockets.”

  The blood left Gilroy’s face. “I don’t have to do that.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Murchison said.

  “Five.” Gilroy licked his lips. Glancing at Stluka, he added, “Five-twenty.”

  “He didn’t say pick a number, Dumbo. He said empty your pockets.”

  Gilroy froze, nothing moving but his eyelids as he blinked. He stuck his hand in his pocket, withdrew a money roll with a hundred showing on the outside, bound tight with a rubber band. Murchison took it from him as Stluka said, “Unless that’s a sucker roll, I’d say it’s a grand easy.”

  Murchison counted it, rolled it back into a wad, and fastened it tight with the rubber band, then took out his notepad and jotted down the amount, saying it aloud as he wrote. “One thousand three hundred and forty dollars.”

  Stluka let go with a soft whistle. “Viva Las Vegas.”

  Murchison handed the roll back to Gilroy. Gilroy took it, put it away, then nodded toward Murchison’s pocket. “The bottle?”

  Murchison thought it through. Can’t save the world, choose your fights. “Sure.” He grabbed it from his pocket and handed it back to Gilroy. “I’ll be following up. Remember.”

  Stluka turned back toward the intake desk. “I’ll go track down where they’ve stuck our witness.” He started to walk away, singing under his breath: