The man’s hands blurred over the gun, flipping small levers, tapping at the trigger, assembling parts, clicking them out again. He had seen cops do this in the courtroom when explaining how guns were discharged. “You pull the trigger and nothing happens. You could keep this one in a drawer with the chamber unloaded and the magazine dropped. And put the hammer on half-cock. And flip on this manual safety lever, like this. You gotta practice all this, though. This takes a while to get it straight. Otherwise the guy is gonna be in the bedroom and your wife is going to be messing around with this stuff and not be able to use the gun.”
The man looked up, expectantly.
“Let’s say I need something,” Peter asked, “like you mentioned earlier—that I just want to grab and fire.” He pictured somebody—Vinnie, Robinson’s brother—breaking into his house at night; he would hear them and stand in the dark and be ready, and no matter what happened next, he could say he’d been defending himself.
The man had produced another gun. “This is the ultimate .357 snubbie. Fires the 125-grain Remington semi-jacketed hollow-point. That’s a top load. Real man-stopper. There’s a vicious recoil and muzzle jump with this weapon—you’re gonna feel like you have a cannon in your hand. The kick comes more into the hand, see, less upward muzzle flip.”
“Why is that important?” Peter humored him. He had called Stein and was due to see him with Carothers that afternoon while Hoskins stuffed himself at lunch. The homicide chief, Peter had seen, ate with a vengeance, as if someone were about to yank away his plate.
“No matter how much your hand stings, the barrel comes back down faster, back on target. See? This magnum is spec’d for thirty-three thousand copper units of pressure, which means you can use this man-stopper SJHP ammo with confidence. Has a very nice single-action pull, can’t be thumb-cocked. You can put a guy in a body bag from a hundred yards with this mother,” the man breathed, the edge of excitement unmistakable in his voice, “so you can imagine what it does from ten feet.”
“How much is this?” Peter asked.
“That’ll run you about three hundred and fifty. You’ll need a couple of boxes of ammo, too. We can do the bill of sale and the permit and federal form simultaneously. Since you’re in law enforcement, I don’t anticipate any problem.”
The man sucked at his lips in concentration.
“Say! You’re the guy that’s been finding the killer of the Mayor’s kid? And the girlfriend or something? Sure! I seen you all over the news!” The helpful salesman tone and diction was gone, replaced by a dark enthusiasm. “I’m telling my wife, just the other night, I’m telling her, ‘This guy, he really knows how to handle them!’ I was watching you. Well, it’s a pleasure, a real pleasure. Name’s Sam.” The man stuck out his hand, as if the pleasure should be Peter’s. “Now, you ask me, just between the two of us, I don’t think the Mayor is worth the shit he craps every day but that don’t matter. I didn’t vote for him. What matters is you got another one of them killers off the street. Aaah, this used to be a great city! I’m glad to see the story on TV, even if the Mayor ain’t worth shit. We haven’t had a decent mayor since Rizzo! How many mayors ago was that? Three, four? So, I’m tellin’ the wife, I like this guy, informing them TV faggot newsman with the blowdry-blowjob haircut you ain’t telling him any more ‘at this present time.’ Half the city’s expecting to hang that guy. Yaaaah!”
The worst kind of gun nut. Who might brag to all his friends about to whom he’d sold a gun. Peter left without a weapon, offering no explanation. The snow was falling now, the storm coming.
THE KILLER ALSO KNEW ABOUT GUNS. Dressed in a new suit and shackled in back, Wayman Carothers silently bit the tip of his tongue as he and his attorney Stein emerged from the elevator, followed by two cops attached to escort the defendant. Carothers was taller and thinner than Peter had expected, looking almost as if he hadn’t eaten enough recently, or ever. He moved stiffly from his wounds, which were healing well. Peter led the men to the conference room. He put his hand on the cop’s shoulder.
“Unlock him and wait out here.”
“Yeah?” one of the policeman said.
“We’re okay.”
The cop clicked open the cuffs and sat down outside the door, which Peter then shut. It was a room with a long table, chairs, an ugly dropped ceiling, and a dead coffee machine.
Peter had seen many defendants in his time, all variety of men, from the most despicable to rather likable, talkative fellows; either type could be remorseless or weep with guilt. Carothers possessed a handsome, watchful face and the strong, loose-limbed build that conveyed, like a middleweight boxer, the ability to move fists quickly through air when angered. He stood rubbing wrists with the quiet detached cool meant to counterbalance his powerlessness in the situation.
“Have a seat, Wayman.” Peter nodded.
He was stepping into territory without rules. He would have preferred Berger had been there, but he didn’t trust him anymore. If Hoskins found out about the visit, Peter would have some explaining to do, and possibly would have to give up the case. With Hoskins and most everyone else at lunch, however, he could stray along the edges of whatever it was Stein had hinted at. Hoskins, feared and respected in the courtroom after over a decade in the office, would not tolerate ambiguities served up by the defense. Alternative arguments, conflicting information, countervailing statements by witnesses—these were impediments to the version of reality by which Hoskins guided his prosecution, flies buzzing around the buffalo logic that he used to pound out one conviction after another. It was true, moreover, that Hoskins often had been right to dismiss these attempts to have him reduce or withdraw charges, since defense attorneys could be amazingly unscrupulous and creative. But occasionally Hoskins missed the truth as it darted past him, and now Peter was glad to be free of the man.
“Okay,” Peter started. “I haven’t much time. What do you gentlemen want?”
Stein opened his file. “My client is prepared to offer important information in return for immunity from prosecution for the Whitlock homicide.”
“That’s bullshit,” Peter said automatically, “and you know it. We don’t trade down on homicide cases. Our evidence’s too good. Why should I do it?”
“Because my client’s not guilty of the girl’s death.”
“You’re trying to beat a death sentence by splitting off one of the homicides. We’ve got too much.” He would leverage Stein. “We have a witness who says she saw him outside in the hallway that evening. Now we have phone calls back and forth from the second apartment where the detectives found all the guns and stuff. We’ve got the bullets in Whitlock, which match perfectly. It looks like Wayman here strangled the girl, waited, then boom, hit the boy. Why in the world should I listen any further?”
“There’s a lot you don’t know, man,” Carothers muttered.
“Wayman,” Stein interjected quickly. “I’ll remind you that anything you say can be used against you. If you have a question, we can talk privately.”
Carothers shook his head. “Way I see it, Mr.—uh—Scattergood, is like this. You got me on both robberies and you pretty much got me on the shooting that night—”
“Hey, Stein,” Peter interrupted. “I don’t want you saying later that I coerced any of this. This came freely.”
Stein nodded, and smiled dutifully at Peter’s insistence that all be fair. They were playing by the rules in order to ignore them.
“Wayman,” Peter said, “I must ask you this: You understand that we’re making no deals here, that no agreements have been reached, that I am not promising to drop charges or reduce a charge—not a thing. Sometimes we work with defendants on a charge if they’re willing to make a plea, as I’m sure Mr. Stein knows, but we’re not there yet, and maybe we won’t get there. So I have to say this to you, out of respect for your rights, that I am making no promises and that anything you say here can and will be used against you. Understand that?”
The defendant nodded. And exhaled. Perhaps he was
finished with something, moving on, betrayed by his fellow bad actors, shot and narrowly missed being paralyzed, no doubt reading the papers that trumpeted his guilt, and finally, aware that the black community was in no way interested in his defense. Shorn of all constituencies, a man will make overtures in the ways he can. Peter checked the defendant’s face, searching for resolve, signs of decision. Chronologically, Carothers’s skin and tissue were young, but there existed within his countenance the grave look of a man who had found that life was nearly always a trial. This was just the latest face, however. Philadelphia was full of them, boys who received chaotic, minimal schooling, and who by the age of twelve or fourteen had been so damaged, it was unlikely they would ever read properly or be able to question their behavior in terms other than those they had learned on the street. These thousands upon thousands of poor ghetto boys were an army marching toward a cliff. The city’s social services agencies composed a fragile net. Many were rescued in other ways, some found decent jobs, some stayed in school. But the rest—those like Carothers—found themselves closer to the edge. The waste of life was immense, and nothing new.
“You’re saying this of your own accord?” Peter asked.
“Yeah.”
“All right.”
“Frankly, Counselor,” Stein began, trying to bring the conversation back to an amiable tone, “Wayman insisted we meet. We had the attack on him just the other day, and we need to start giving you a reason to want to see him healthy. Also, he says he knows the armed-robbery charge will result in a conviction, which I’m afraid is probably true, given everything, and, since he does have an extensive record—”
“Four charges for agg assault, twice arrested for armed robbery.” Peter referred to his file. “Plus the old murder charge he beat.”
“Yes, we’re looking at the same piece of paper—it’s all right there,” Stein went on. “And, uh, we’ve got the murder charges, too. Why don’t you say what you want to say, Wayman?” prompted the lawyer softly.
Carothers looked up at Peter, then down again. He’s scared, Peter thought, poor motherfucker. I’d be scared, too.
“I didn’t kill Johnetta,” Carothers exhaled. “It not like everybody be talkin’. They don’t understan’, you know what I’m sayin’?”
“What Wayman means—” Stein began.
“Wait a minute, I can say it. You just told me to say it.”
“Okay—right. I’m sorry, Wayman,” said Stein.
“I’m sayin’ I didn’t kill Johnetta. I loved Johnetta, man.”
“Did you kill Whitlock?” Peter shot back.
Carothers looked at Stein for direction.
“My client would like to explain some of the details of the homicide of Whitlock, with the understanding that the second murder count—”
“No deals, Stein! I can’t promise a thing. I won’t do it and the D.A. won’t back me up.” Peter looked at his watch. Had Hoskins ordered dessert? “I’ll listen to what you have to say, I’ll compare it to what I know. But no promises, no deals. Got it? You decide.”
Carothers looked at Stein, who nodded silently.
“All right,” Carothers responded, his voice catching. “This is the way it’s gonna be. I got somethin’ to say. I know what I got comin’. Maybe like you say this ain’t goin’ to help me. That’s all right. I understand that. I understand my prerogative, right? I’m sayin’ this on my own. I killed that dude Whitlock, he surprised me. I didn’t have no choice. But that ain’t what I want to say. I didn’t kill Johnetta, man, I loved that girl, we was tight, we was close to one another, you know what I’m sayin’? Maybe we had some problems, maybe I messed around, but she and I go way back. We grew up in North Philly together, man. That girl—she had somethin’ special I never saw before. No way I could kill her.”
“What were you doing over in that apartment?”
“I got back home—”
“After you held up the convenience store.”
“Yeah. We drove off and split up the money and I was goin’ to go out for some celebratin’. That’s when I went to that bar I was tellin’ them detectives about. We was thinkin’ about picking up some yellow tape—”
“Coke?” Peter asked. Sweat had gathered over Carothers’s brow in the exhilaration of telling what perhaps was the truth.
“Right, right. But I went home. I got a machine, and when I come home the little red light is blinkin’ and the counter say I got six messages. I played them and every one is Johnetta. She’s callin’ ‘cause she’s upset—”
“Where was she calling from?” Peter asked.
“A pay phone somewhere,” Carothers answered.
“That’s why the detectives haven’t turned it up,” Stein said, anticipating Peter’s thoughts. “If she had called from the apartment, then we’d be able to show that Wayman had been contacted.”
“That wouldn’t prove anything other than that they’d spoken,” Peter said. “In court I could argue that they were probably fighting and that’s why he came over.”
The room was quiet.
“Go on,” Peter said.
“Well, anyway, she in West Philly at her boyfriend’s apartment. Somebody had been tellin’ her she in trouble. Somebody say she been messin’ with the wrong people and she better leave good enough alone, all right? Now, I don’t know if that was on that same night, or if it be some other time. She starts explainin’ to me how they don’t like her and how somebody done already broke into her apartment once and messed her shit up. And she say she can’t call the police because she don’t know exactly what they goin’ to do when she does, like where all the connections is, you know that I’m sayin’? Like, she know the people you would normally trust she can’t trust. And she say she think somebody been followin’ her in a car that night when she walk home. It’s real late and she thinkin’ she see the same car outside on the street, and each time she on the phone she more upset with everythin’, like it’s comin’ at her, like she know even more than she sayin’, you know. Then the last call is maybe ten minutes before I got home and she say she’s scared to go into her apartment.”
“You have all this on your phone machine tape?”
“Fuck!” Carothers exploded, staring vehemently at Peter.
A cop knocked on the door.
“We’re okay!” Peter called.
Carothers glared at him. “Do I fuckin’ look like I got a fuckin’ tape? No, I ain’t got no tape, that’s why I’m tellin’ you this.” Carothers rubbed his temples. “I erased the motherfucker soon as I heard it, ‘cause it was proof I ain’t been home.” He shook his head dejectedly. “So I didn’t even call her, I just drove over to West Philly fast as I could.”
“You have a key to her apartment?”
“Yeah, she give me a key. We got a deal that maybe she be seein’ another guy, whatever, she always let me have a key to her apartment, you understand? We tight, we go way back.”
“How far back? You have any proof of this relationship?”
Carothers wagged his head back and forth unhappily.
“Oh, man, you bustin’ my chops over nothin’. I got—man, we had a baby together. Tyler lives with his great-grandma.”
“What’s her name?”
“Her name is, uh, Mrs. Banks.”
“We’ve been looking for her, hoping to get some kind of statement,” Stein interrupted. “We think she could shed some light on what was happening, but we’re told she’s down south somewhere with relatives. My investigator was told she left a day or two ago. That’s extremely convenient for somebody.”
“Go on, Wayman,” Peter directed.
“Johnetta and me, we was never married, just you know—”
“Yeah, okay,” Peter said. “So you go way back.”
“Yeah, so I get there—”
“You had the gun with you? You hung on to it?”
“In my coat. I go to the building. That woman saw me. She drunk, axed me for a dollar. I said, ‘Woman, get out of my face.’
”
“Wait,” Peter interrupted. “Where did you park?”
“They was some kind of delivery truck blockin’ the driveway, so I pulled in down the street. The buzzer was busted on the door. I just went in with the key and up. I got inside and it was quiet and I axed, ‘Baby, where are you?’ and I got no answer. Then I thought maybe she sleepin’, so I was real quiet. Then I go back into the bedroom and I saw the bathroom door.”
“Wait a minute,” Peter said. “Was her front door locked?”
“Yes.”
“What time was this?”
“Maybe three o’clock. She was dead, man. And naked. I saw her, she was dead. But she was still warm, still limp. I carried her over to the bed, thinkin’ maybe she all right. But somebody hit her on the head. She break easy, man. I just—” He bowed his head, shaking. “I couldn’t believe it—she was lyin’ there. I knew that it just happened. I touched her face. She my son’s mother. You know what I mean? I just sat there and was fucked up.”
“You get any of her blood on your coat?” Peter asked hopefully.
“No. I took that coat off before I moved her. There was a little blood on the shirt, but I threw that away. I seen a lot of homeboys messed up in my time, you know? Fucked up bad, shot. I’m not puttin’ on no attitude ‘bout that. But seein’ her was different. She help me keep it together through the years, somethin’ not right, my mind messed up about somethin’, and I’m havin’, like, problems with somebody, or get depressed about how bad everythin’ is, then I called her and she axed me what was the matter. I’m always connected to her, you know? No matter what happen, we connected to each other. In the hospital and all, back before I went to jail the first time. And I’m thinkin’ about how I want to say this to her. I want to tell her and I can’t. She always knew me and now she in front of me dead and I can’t do nothin’ about it. I just robbed a fuckin’ store and got seven hundred in my pocket and then I’m here and I can’t do nothin’. Then I’m mad at the motherfucker who did this and my anger is in effect, word, and I know why it was done. The boy’s family didn’t care for her. They thought she dirty. She no good for this boy. She from the ghetto, not upwardly mobile. I can understan’ that, my brother works for the post office and he think I’m just a goddamn homeboy. He won’t talk to me. Soon as I saw her there I know why she killed. In my heart! An’ I’m mad, real mad. They thought she was goin’ to fuck up their boy.”
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