Done for a Dime

by David Corbett

  “You willing to bet your son’s life on that?”

  “Your son’s friends,” Murchison pressed, “they get brought in—and like I said, that’s already in play, Mrs. Thigpen—you really think they’re gonna be looking out for your son?”

  Tears welled in Sarina’s eyes. She sat transfixed.

  “No taint to snitching like there used to be, Mrs. Thigpen. Now it’s just one more way to look out for number one. They don’t even call it snitching anymore. They call it getting down first. Your son’s friends—maybe one, maybe more—somebody’s gonna have his ass in a jam and he won’t think twice. He’s gonna get down first. To hell with the snitch jacket. Man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do. Get himself some juice and walk on out into the light of day. And your son will be what’s left behind.”

  Sarina reached for the door handle. “Let me see Arlie.” She wiped her face with one hand, fumbled to get the door open with the other. “I want to see my son.”

  Murchison got out, hurried to open her door. “I’m sorry if all this upsets you, Mrs. Thigpen, but I’m just trying to lay it out for you. Murder two? Manslaughter? Forget about it. Not with this set of facts. Not unless your son wants to plead out.”

  “And if he’s innocent? Do you even care?”

  Stluka glanced around, to see if anyone was watching. The parking lot was empty. Beyond it, the station house glowed in the early morning haze.

  “Your son wants to plead,” Murchison said, “there’s always room to maneuver.”

  Sarina took a trembling breath. Murchison waited. Just beyond him, Stluka stood there with arms crossed, wearing an expression that betrayed his thoughts, which were: Go ahead. Cry. Feel fucking sorry for yourself.

  “I’d bet good money, Mrs. Thigpen, it wasn’t even Arlie’s idea.”

  It took a second, but Sarina glanced up. She’d caught on. A way out?

  “There’s somebody else,” Murchison continued, edging closer to her. “Let’s suppose. Somebody else on that corner, somebody who saw Arlie and Mr. Carlisle. They argued, Mrs. Thigpen. Nasty. Loud. Physical. Arlie got tired of Mr. Carlisle’s abuse and shoved him off the corner, told him to go home. Then this somebody else, the one whose name we don’t know, he stayed behind with Arlie and started to push. Mess with Arlie’s manhood. ‘You ain’t gonna put up with that? Settle the score. Shut him up.’ And this somebody else, he takes out the gun.”

  Murchison reached into his jacket, removed a ballpoint pen, took Sarina’s wrist, and pressed it into her hand.

  “And he says, ‘Are you a man or not?’ And all your son’s so-called friends are there, waiting. Like they’re banging him in. But we need Arlie to tell us that.”

  He let go of Sarina’s wrist, but her arm remained fixed in mid-air, as though hung there by wire. She looked at the pen, then let it drop to the ground, lifting her eyes to Murchison. He stepped back, extending his arm as though to say, It’s time.

  “A name, Mrs. Thigpen. Tell your son what we need is a name.”

  Murchison delivered Sarina into the interview room with her son. He and Stluka then went around and listened in from the monitoring box in the corridor between interview rooms. What they heard was twelve minutes of motherly pleas on one end, on the other angry protestations of innocence. They watched as, on the video screen, mother and son clutched hands, they wept, the mother prayed out loud as her son begged her not to.

  Murchison took heart that most of what he’d told Sarina Thigpen had sunk in. She begged Arlie to give them a name, pass the blame to someone who deserved it, spare himself, but Arlie’s defiance was absolute. He had nothing to do with Strong Carlisle’s death and knew no one who did. Watching him, Murchison wondered at the young man’s seamless air of conviction, unable to tell if it came from the heart or just practice. Finally Arlie got up, faced the corner where the camera hung, and slapped his hands against the wall, shouting, “Take her home! Hey! Take her home!”

  Once outside the interview room, Sarina turned on Murchison. “What on God’s earth have we done,” she said, “to make you hate us so?”

  “Nobody hates your son, Mrs. Thigpen. I want to help him. But I can’t do that as long—”

  “As long as he won’t confess to what—”

  Stluka cut her off. “Your son, those scars around his eye, how’d he get those?”

  Sarina recoiled from him. “What are you trying—”

  “Face get pushed through a window? And where were you when that happened?”

  The rest was garbled screaming, conducted while those in earshot prairie-dogged, heads bobbing out from doorways to watch. Holmes bolted out from the squad room, took one look, then stepped forward to steer Sarina away as Murchison tried to do the same with Stluka, pressing his hands to his shoulders to ease him toward the detective bureau doorway. Stluka was having none of it, not yet. Before Murchison could talk him down, though, an officer called out from the doorway leading out to the lobby.

  “Detective Murchison? Someone up front. Said urgent.”

  Stluka used the distraction as an excuse, finally, to collect himself. “Go on,” he muttered. “It’s over here.” He straightened his tie, shook his head in one last show of triumphant disgust, then headed into the detective bureau. Around the corner, Holmes pinned Sarina Thigpen against the wall, collecting her between his arms, his face in close as he soothed her with an onslaught of consoling words: “I understand … I know … I realize …”

  Murchison turned away, headed out toward the lobby. His mind rattled with things he wished he’d said, other things he regretted saying, botched questions, bad guesses, assumptions gone wrong. That was a killing for you—one man lies dead and everyone else gets stupid or goes nuts. You really did have to wonder sometimes who had it worse.

  Past the final door, he greeted two women, both middle-aged. One white, one Black. It took a moment, but he realized he knew who the Black woman was.

  Murchison guessed she was forty-five, fifty tops, but she could pass for mid-thirties. Cinnamon skin, high cheekbones, almond eyes. No more than a hint of crow’s-feet edging those eyes, same at the lips. Her long hair, coarse and straight, was a coppery brown, slightly darker than her skin, swept back and tied into a high ponytail that emphasized her brow. On a white woman, the ponytail would have looked too cute, phony young. On this woman, the effect was simple and prim, like her clothes: white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, navy cardigan, gray wool skirt, modest black flats.

  Felicia Marchand. Toby’s mother. Strong Carlisle’s secret sweetheart.

  It was the white woman, though, who stepped forward. She was a little zaftig, but voluptuous, not matronly. Murchison felt embarrassed by his arousal. No makeup, but her skin was flushed and her eyes didn’t need it—they were a stark clear blue with thick lashes. She carried a briefcase but wore sweats and her black hair was finger-combed with renegade strands everywhere. She’d shot up from a deep sleep at the sound of the phone, he guessed, dragged herself out from under the covers, thrown on whatever lay tangled beside the bed (he pictured her hopping one-legged as she pulled on her socks). Strangely, the dishevelment made her more attractive; you could almost smell the sleep on her skin, and the next picture that came to mind was her crawling right back into bed. Luxuriant, happy, naked. The Queen of Naps.

  She held out a business card.

  “My name is Tina Navigato. I’m a lawyer. I’ve been hired by Toby Marchand’s family to represent him. Could I see him?”

  Murchison took the card and read it. Her office was local, but he’d never heard of her. The areas of specialty listed beneath her name were estate planning and probate litigation.

  “Come on back.”

  He gestured for the desk officer to buzz them through, then led the two women down the long hall past dark offices into the squad room and, beyond it, the interview room in which Toby Marchand waited. Murchison opened the door and stepped back, letting the two women pass. He waited in the doorway, watching as the young man—rumpled, stiff
, bleary—glanced up and spotted his mother. His eyes knotted, then his whole face caved in. She rushed toward him, wrapped his head in her arms, and pressed it tight to her midriff, stroking his hair, weeping herself now as she murmured, “Oh, child, my Lord, dear God …” Toby’s hands clung to her back, squeezing the white wool of her cardigan. Tina Navigato glanced away, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as she drew back toward the door and gestured that she wanted to speak with Murchison alone.

  “If you’re not going to charge him, I’d appreciate it if you’d let him go home with his mother.”

  “He can’t leave town.” Murchison pulled the door shut. Cops in the squad room were peering out at them.

  “His mother lives in Oakland.”

  “I’ll be clearing the scene in a bit. He can go back there.”

  “That’s not his home.”

  “He lives with his mother?”

  “No. No. She just thinks it would be best—”

  “What about the white girl? Ms. Lazarenko.”

  Her eyelids narrowed. “I don’t know who you mean.”

  “Your client’s girlfriend? Discovered at the scene. She’s at the hospital now, not doing so great.”

  She glanced away, puffed her cheeks, then let out little spurts of air. A pensive, self-effacing gesture, childlike, strangely charming.

  “I need to speak with my client, obviously.”

  “Obviously.”

  Her eyes didn’t seem quite as lovely now. The blue in them, the cold came out. “Are we getting off to a bad start here, Detective?”

  “Came out wrong. Sorry.”

  “As for the house, his father’s, I mean. After what happened, good God. Could you stay there?”

  “We keep a list of local motels. Hotels.”

  “These people aren’t made of money.” Even her voice was frosty. “You do intend to release him.”

  “With the understanding he doesn’t leave town. He skips, I’ll swear out the warrant myself.”

  She looked away again, shaking her head. “You can’t honestly believe he had anything to do with his father’s murder.”

  Murchison smiled. Father, he thought. Came right out, like the honest-to-God truth. Probate lawyer. “The investigation,” he said, “is continuing.”

  He opened the door for her again and, without comment, she slipped past him. Closing the door, he turned to find Stluka coming up from behind. He’d calmed down, and a familiar wickedness lit his eyes. His old self.

  “That broad in the sweats—she a dyke, or just trying it on for size?”

  Across the room, Holmes draped a willowy arm across the shoulders of Sarina Thigpen, soothing her as, with the gentlest pressure, he bent down to ease her along the corridor toward the lobby. Another officer brought Arlie out for his return to the isolation of the holding cells downstairs. Sarina, feet pointing one way, head spinning back, spotted her son and then her whole body pivoted. She reached out across the intervening space as Holmes collected her short, strong body in those arms of his, leaning down still farther to console her in whispers.

  Murchison handed Tina Navigato’s card to Stluka. “She’s a lawyer.”

  Stluka took it, read, then his jaw dropped. “Probate litigation?”

  Arlie Thigpen, hands cuffed behind his back, bristled at Stluka’s voice and glared back over his shoulder, one last look of defiance before passing through the doorway to the stairs.

  “I need to work on the murder book.” Murchison turned toward the detective bureau. “Lot to sort through. Don’t want to overlook anything.”

  Stluka was right behind him. “This kid’s already angling for what he’s gonna inherit?”

  “I think his mother’s the one who hired her.”

  “No,” Stluka said. “No. This means something.”

  “I didn’t say it didn’t. I said—”

  “Our instincts were solid the first time, Murch. Inside the house?” He tapped the business card against his knuckles. “Fuck me. We spent the last couple hours looking at the wrong son. So-called son. Whatever.”

  Part II

  Rip, Rig, and Panic

  10

  Richard Ferry had a sense of humor, but he seldom laughed. Too many times, he’d seen men use a laugh as a kind of bluster, a way to pretend they weren’t scared. Even men who knew they were about to die. He sometimes wondered if that wasn’t why jokes were invented in the first place—as a device, a probe, a way to expose a man’s defenses. Make him laugh.

  He sat in the rearward employee lounge of an empty suite of offices in an industrial park just off the Napa Highway, a mile north of Rio Mirada. The room was painted in earth tones and furnished with a table, two swivel chairs, a sink, a small fridge, and a microwave, plus a portable TV Ferry had bought himself. He’d lived there secretly for nearly two months, sleeping on the carpeted floor, sponge-bathing before dawn in the Men’s down the hall. He’d been given access by the real estate outfit that leased the offices—in the present case, leased to the phony plumbing company Ferry would identify as his employer if anyone bothered to ask.

  Presently, he sat with a young man named Manny, whom he’d found and recruited for this particular job, exerting no small effort doing so. Given recent events, the kid resembled nothing so much as the most regrettable mistake Ferry had ever made.

  “Look on the bright side, I guess,” Ferry said, shooting the boy one of his mirthless smiles. “Get sent back to stir, you won’t be just the big tubby firebug everybody lines up to punk. You’ll be a bona fide killa.”

  “That’s not funny.” Manny pressed an ice pack against his eye. “And no way I’m going back to stir.”

  He was a tall, soft, hulking boy—a man actually, but his mind had never quite made the passage—part white, part Black, the rest Filipino, a walking-talking totem of the U.S. Navy presence at Subic. It gave him one of those go-figure ethnic looks.

  “I like that. Power of positive thinking.”

  “Stop with the jokes already. This is serious.”

  “Gee, you think?” Ferry checked the gun Manny wanted him to get rid of. The “weapon,” as it would now be known. A Smithy .357, two live rounds, four spent. Casings still in the cylinder. Plus a box of hollow-points to dispose of. “Some poor old fool, doesn’t haven’t jack to do with why we’re here, takes four in the back. Every cop in town looking for the guy responsible. What’s so serious?”

  “It wasn’t my fault.”

  Ferry slammed the cylinder shut. “You need some original material.”

  “I’m asking for your help.”

  “No, you’re making excuses.”

  “Motherfucker hit me.”

  Ferry shook his head in dismay. “See what I mean?”

  Withdrawing the ice pack, Manny fingered the cold, wet skin left behind. “Yeah, well, I don’t make the fries.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “You’re Mr. Fix-it.” He pressed the ice pack to his face again. “Fix it.”

  “Come again?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You sure?”

  Manny made a whimpering sigh and leaned over to check his reflection in the chrome of the sink. The eye had swollen shut. Bruising rimmed the socket.

  Ferry said, “Think you’ve iced that thing enough?”

  “Still all swollen.”

  “Yeah, well, you apply cold right off, might’ve had a shot at that. How many hours has it been?”

  Manny shrugged and turned back to the portable TV. It was tuned to a Mexican channel, Televisión Azteca. This particular program was part of a genre known as Los Mascarados, which Manny loved. The heroes were masked wrestlers who served as vigilante avengers. The drama tended toward juvenile, the plots spectacularly stupid—almost as contrived as the wrestling scenes interspersed with the action. If one of the mascarados lost in the ring, he was obliged to remove his mask forever. It was considered a great disgrace, being unmasked.

  The kid was born Manuel Turpin an
d by his eighteenth birthday had accomplished even less than your average blubbery, broken-home American teen. One night, that all changed. Using nothing more ambitious than gasoline in five-gallon cans and standard matchbook fuses, he set fire to seven houses under construction on the outskirts of Portland, in a suburban-sprawl subdivision near where his mother’s latest excuse for a boyfriend lived.

  Manny was hard pressed to explain even to himself why he’d torched the buildings—only the framing and roof and subfloor were in place, but that meant exposed wood and plenty of cross-draft. Basically, he just liked watching them burn. He felt happy for once, freed of his shame as he stood there in the night, listening as the wood shuddered and screamed like an animal, the flames rippling up the four-by-fours with a palpable hunger—the fury of it, the quivering rays of heat, the mysterious sense of life—all set against the vast dark backdrop of Mount Hood.

  It took six weeks to trace it back to him, by which time half the local papers, abetted by the wise use crowd and nameless law enforcement sources, had all but convicted a local cabal of militants, radical anarchist ecotage types. Manny, luxuriating in the wrong headedness of the blame, nonetheless came to find the rhetoric alluring. Especially that one word, repeated like a drumbeat: terror. It appealed to him in a way he could explain no better than he could the erotic rush he’d felt, standing out there in the darkness, eye-to-eye with the fire.

  I am an instrument of terror.

  It gave substance to the emotions roiling inside, a sense of himself as one of a kind. That new sense of calling, it gave him something solid to hold on to when two special agents—tough-talking Mormons wearing flannel suits and clip-on ties—showed up at the house. His mother and her boyfriend had headed off for an impromptu weekend alone on the Columbia River. The FBI claimed an anonymous neighbor had called in the tip, but Manny would always suspect it was his mother’s boyfriend who’d dropped the dime.

  Virtually the first thing asked was, “Do you, Manuel—can we call you Manuel?—do you have or have you ever had any affiliations with the environmental underground?”