sergeant, dead five years. His mother lived on the pension. He was a student at Miami-Dade. His sister had wanted to be a hairdresser and was studying for her license. The father of the baby was Julius Youghans, an older man, resident in Overtown. Youghans had a pickup truck and did light hauling and odd jobs. No, his mother had not approved of the relationship, but only because Youghans was not a member of their church, not a churchgoing man at all.
Paz and Barlow exchanged a look. Barlow said, “Mr. Wallace, was your sister a churchgoing woman?”
“Well, we was both raised in the church. My momma’s a amen-corner lady, you know? But, you know, you get older, sometimes you tend to drift away. I went. Dee, she didn’t always make it.”
“This was from when she started going with Mr. Youghans?”
“Well, yeah, but she been kicking back at it for some years now. Then she got pregnant, you know, and like, that set Momma off on her, and she didn’t like coming around. I got to be like one of those UN guys going back and forth.”
“Uh-huh. Did you have any idea that your sister or her boyfriend was involved in another kind of religion?”
Wallace knotted his brows. “What you mean, like Catholic?”
“No, sir, I mean like a cult.”
A startled expression crossed Wallace’s face. “Like that Cuban shit?”
“Well, anything out of the ordinary, something new she might’ve just got into. Or him.”
The young man thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Not that she ever told me. Of course, since she been going with Julius, we ain’t been that close. But … nah, I kind of doubt it. Dee’s like more of a down-to-earth sort of girl. Was.” A pause here. “There was that fortune-telling thing, if that’s what you mean by something new.”
“And what was that about?”
“Oh, well, she told us, it must’ve been two, three weeks back, she found this fortune-teller dude, and she used to go to him for like, what d’you call ‘em, readings? And anyway, he gave her a number and it hit. That’s how she got that couch and TV and shit. So she was pretty pumped on him for a while.”
“Do you know this man’s name or where we can get ahold of him?”
“Nah, it was some African name. Like Mandela: Mandoobu, Mandola? I can’t remember. She didn’t say much about him. Look, could I just call my mom now? I already told you everything I know, and if I don’t get back to my car there ain’t gonna be nothing but wheels left …”
The two detectives agreed with a glance and sent Raymond Wallace off with a uniform for a drive back to his car, with the cop given private instructions to take his time. Paz drove to Opa-Locka with Barlow beside him, keeping under the speed limit, as Barlow preferred, wishing he could smoke a cigar, something Barlow deplored. Paz imagined he put up with Barlow because the man was a superb detective and because Barlow’s tolerance of Paz gave Paz a certain standing in a department that by and large disliked him. Kissing Barlow’s ass (if that’s what this was) obviated the necessity of bestowing such kissing elsewhere.
The interview with Mrs. Wallace went as these things always did. The Wallaces had imagined that by staying straight, and getting married, and remaining so, and going to church, and pursuing a respectable and honorable life in the military, and moving at last to a reasonably stable lower-middle-class community they could avoid the current Kindermord of the black people, but no. Paz sat in his cool and watched Barlow handle the hysterics. Mrs. Wallace was a hefty woman and took some handling. Peace restored, calls made, neighbor ladies flocking inward, in a ritual of comfort lamentably too well oiled, the two cops got to ask some questions. They learned that Deandra had left home after an argument, had used her survivor’s benefits to pay for the apartment in “that awful neighborhood,” had started to take courses in beauty school. The detectives learned that beauty school had not been the summit of the Wallaces’ dreams for their girl, but kids today … what could you do? Mrs. Wallace had never been in her daughter’s apartment, and she confirmed her son’s story of their estrangement over her affair with Julius Youghans. Julius Youghans was high on Mrs. Wallace’s list of suspects.
“Did he ever threaten your daughter, Mrs. Wallace?” Paz asked.
“He didn’t want her baby, that was for sure,” said the woman. “Julius, he just wanted the one thing.”
By this time, Mrs. Wallace was surrounded by neighbor ladies fanning her with palm fans and paper church fans, and comforting her with the homilies of their desperate, bone-hard religion. After some routine questions confirming the whereabouts of her and her son on the previous night, the detectives left their cards and departed.
Driving back south, Paz ventured, “You starting to like Youghans?”
“Could you do that to a woman you been with? You saw the baby. Could you do that to your own flesh and blood?”
“If I was drunk, or zonked behind angel dust or crank, and if she just told me the baby wasn’t mine? And I had a knife handy? Yeah, I could. Anybody could. It explains how the killer got into the apartment; the vic let him in. And the missing picture fits there, too. It was Julius’s picture up there, and he snatched it off the wall when he left.”
“That wasn’t the only thing he took out of there,” said Barlow pointedly.
“There’s that, yeah, but if we assume he’s crazed …”
“And your crazed jealous killer takes the time to drug his lady friend before he slits her open? And to do what looks to me like a neat little operation on that baby?” He looked at Paz sideways, out of the long white eyes. “You’re about to fall in love, you’re not careful, son.”
That was the first rule of Barlow. Don’t fall in love with a suspect until you know all the other girls.
“Okay, point taken,” said Paz, not at all offended. He had no problem admitting that Barlow had more experience than he did, was at present a better detective. After a brief silence, Barlow said, “I’ll be real interested in what the doc says about those cuts.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I seen some hogs butchered, and deer, and calves, and done it myself a time or two. I seen it done by people knew what they were doing and by people didn’t have an idea in the world how to go about it, and you can tell. What I mean to say, the man that did that, what we saw up there in that apartment, knew what he was doing. He done it before.”
This last remark hung in the air like a smear of greasy smoke.
“I don’t want to hear that, Cletis.”
“No, and I don’t particularly care to say it, neither, but there it is. The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made both of them, Proverbs 20:14. We got to follow the ear and the eye wheresoever they may lead.”
“Cletis, all I’m saying, can’t we just hope it’s a regular domestic? Because if it’s a serial, a loony, well, it’s going to tie us up forever and have the politicians on our necks and the guy is probably in Pensacola anyway …” Paz gave up. He was conscious of the faint blips in his communication, little subvocal hiccups where, had he been speaking to a regular person, he would have inserted the verbal lubricants fucking, hell, goddamn. He also sensed that Barlow knew this and was enjoying it, to the extent that Barlow could ever be said to enjoy something. Barlow said, low-voiced, almost to himself, “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No one.”
There seemed to Paz no good comeback to this, and the two men drove the rest of the way to their station in silence. There they found that Julius Youghans had a modest sheet on him, some drunk driving and two counts of receiving stolen property. Paz was ready to go out and pick him up for a conversation, but Barlow said, “He’ll keep. If he ain’t run yet, he’ll set. I want to go see the autopsy.”
This was fine with Paz. Barlow had taken the call and was, by rule, the primary detective on the investigation. They’ll probably eliminate suicide right off, he thought, but kept the thought to himself. After Barlow retired he was going to get a partner with a sense of humor.
“You want me there?” Paz could live without autopsies.
“No, no point the two of us going up to Jackson. Why don’t you find out what that nut thing is, and I’ll meet you back here around five and we’ll both of us go see Mr. Youghans.”
Also fine. Paz went back to his car and took I-95, going south this time. He lit one of the unbanded maduro seconds he bought in bundles of fifty from a guy on Coral Way. Paz had been smoking cigars since he was fourteen, and was amused by the recently renewed fashionableness of the vice among downtown big shots. You were not supposed to smoke in police vehicles, which Paz thought was another indication of the end of civilization. Man
