Part 7 (1/2)
I sat back and sighed heavily, wondering whether Leman had washed out of junior college somewhere.
Inge's place looked almost the same. Almost. Except now it had that low-level, greasy glare a room takes on when something awful has happened there. Like my place the night Charlie Conlin was killed. And, like my home that night, her place had become utterly unprivate. Strange people-cops-coming and going at will. Poking at things, being careless with their cigarettes, talking too loud.
A policewoman looked over at Sweet. ”Ready?” she asked.
”Yeah. Send him in.”
She hurried off. A slight young man no more than twenty with dark hair walked in a minute later. Eyes downcast, he stood next to the half-opened door, reluctant to enter the room. He might have been Latino, or Hawaiian, or Filipino. I couldn't get a clear look at his face. The boy's hair was cut very short and on one side of his scalp a pair of initials were incised. His big s.h.i.+rt and ballooning, low riding jeans completed the pathetic picture of a kid lamely trying to carry off the b-boy thing. Somebody should break it to him, I thought, that the happening look is now running to b.u.t.ton down s.h.i.+rts and Hush Puppies.
”Hey!”
Leman Sweet's ogre-like baritone snapped the kid to attention. He looked at Sweet and seemed to s.h.i.+ver.
”Your name's Diego, right?” Sweet demanded.
He nodded.
”Take a look at her.” He meant me. ”Take a good look.”
Diego stared at me, uncomprehending. I looked back into his dark, frightened eyes.
”You ever see her before?”
”No.”
I didn't bother to glance Sweet's way. I merely took a seat at the kitchen table while he began to question the boy who, he said, was born in the Dominican Republic.
”You told the officer you heard something going on in here the day the blind girl was murdered.”
”They killed her dog, too, didn't they?”
”That's right.”
”I liked that dog. She used to let him come in the shop sometime. Sometime I give him a bone to-”
Sweet cut him off. ”What did you hear that day?”
”Music.”
”What kind of music?”
”I don't know.”
”What do you mean, you don't know? It was her playing the sax, wasn't it?”
”No,” he said defiantly. ”Not that. I'm not talking about that. This was a man's voice, singing. Like he was here singing to her. It could have been a tape, I guess.”
”Ain't nothing in here to play a tape on, man.”
”Well, maybe the radio. But I don't think so. It didn't sound Like that.”
”What did it sound like?”
”I told you, I don't know! It coulda been that country stuff.”
”Country-you mean that C&W s.h.i.+t-like red neck, white socks, and Blue Ribbon Beer?”
Diego didn't get it.
”Why don't you just tell me what you heard,” Sweet said.
”He said his eyes was red from the road.”
”Come again?”
”His eyes are red in the song. He said something about the road and eyes lined red. It didn't sound like any music I heard before-more Like just talking. Except his voice was loud. And he kept saying it over. 'road ... eyes ... lined ... red ... road ... eyes ... lined ... red.' It wasn't like the way people talk, man. It was like a song.”
”s.h.i.+t, you telling me somebody was in here singing a stupida.s.s truckers' lullaby to that woman before they offed her?”
Again, Diego seemed to be having trouble following the thread of Leman's questions. I wondered if it had occurred to Sweet, as it just had to me, that Diego was a little stoned. Great. Just the complicating factor we needed.
Sweet kept at it with the boy, but it was no good. The kid had not seen who was ”singing” to Inge. Finally he was allowed to return to his work downstairs in the flower market.
Not me. Sweet was as good as his word. He dragged me to the station house, where I was questioned and deposed and warned and 'buked and scorned, whatever that means.
By the time Sweet released me, I was so tired I wasn't sure if I could stand on my feet and walk home. I got as far as the corner of the block where the station house was located before I broke down. I lay the sax in its case against the side of a building and cried for about ten minutes. n.o.body bothered me.
Then I dried my eyes, walked over to the payphone, and called Henry. My words came out in a torrent of fear and sorrow. I was telling the story this way and that, all out of order-Inge and the dog and Wild Bill and Sig and Kurt Weill and yellow roses and Leman Sweet.
He listened patiently and then, rather than trying to pa.r.s.e it out there, told me to wait at the phone booth, that he was coming to pick me up.
No, I said, No. I had to get out of there. I couldn't stand the thought of running into Leman Sweet again. I just wanted to get home.
Good idea, said Henry, almost as if he were speaking to a mental patient. And I couldn't blame him, really. I must've been hysterical. Go home directly, Nanette, he instructed. I'll meet you there-All right, darling?
My place is quite a switch from Henry's high-rise love nest. From the landing, I watched him as he climbed the stairs, each step bringing his mournful, befuddled little face into sharper focus.
”Are you all right?” he said, arms out.
I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing much came out. ”Oh,” was all I could say, ”Oh, O'Rooney.” I had taken to calling him by the nonsensical name that singer Slim Gaillard had invented for Charlie Parker during an impromptu recording session.
”Come inside, love. Let me see you.”
He sat me down at the kitchen table while he made a pot of tea for me. I drank it slowly, gradually calming down, and finally was able to relate the story coherently.
”Henry,” I said mournfully, ”what am I going to do? I got her killed. I got her killed, Henry.”
”But you did not, Nan. How could you know what would happen? You were only trying to give help to a blind girl. She said she couldn't even pay her rent.”
”I know, but, Christ! It's so awful. I'm like a wrecking crew, Rooney. Everything I touch seems to crumble and die. Maybe you better beat it back to that loft you once had on the rue Dauphine. I don't think my tentacles can reach as far as Paris.”