“I want to talk with you, if you’re Tanzi Franklin,” Paz said.
“How you know my name?”
He showed her his badge. “I’m the police. I know everything.” Big smile, not returned. “Could we go inside?”
After an instant’s hesitation, the girl backed away from the door and let him in.
“Where’s your grandma?”
“She out, shopping or whatever. What you want to talk to me about?”
“Let’s go back to your bedroom and I’ll show you.”
The bedroom was a ten-foot square, walls painted powder pink, much grimed, and divided by a hanging brown plaid curtain to the right of the doorway. The girl’s side of the room contained a white-painted bed, neatly made up with a yellow chintz cover, and a low dresser in battered brown wood, with a mirror over it. A poster of Ice-T hip-hopping and one of Michael Jordan leaping were taped to the walls. Paz looked through the half-window allotted the girl by the room divider. Over the low roofs of the intervening street he could see directly into Deandra Wallace’s kitchen, now a dark rectangle.
“Nice view,” said Paz, pulling back and facing the girl, who stood nervously in the doorway. “You ever look out the window? At that apartment building?”
A dull nod. He pointed out the window at the Wallace building. “Maybe you can tell me about some of the people who live over there.”
“My friend Amy live there.” She indicated a first-floor window.
“That must be fun. You could wave to her. How about that apartment above where Amy lives and a little to the right. It’s dark now. Do you know who lives there?”
“Lady got killed.”
“That’s right. Did you ever look in there before she got killed?” Paz felt a little excited now, a tingle of detective instinct. Strictly speaking, the regs prohibited him from questioning a child without an adult guardian present, but he did not want to break this off just yet. This kid must spend a lot of time in this room looking out the window. It was like having real-life cable, with continuous soaps and no PG-13 ratings. She had a wary look, however, and so he asked if he could sit on her bed and wait for her grandmother to return. Would she mind sitting next to him so they could talk? She sat on the very corner of the bed, as far from him as she could.
“Tanzi, you could really be a big help to us and do yourself some good here. Did you know that the police pay money for people to help them?”
A spark of interest. “Yeah? Like, how much?”
“Depends on what they tell us.” He pulled a clip of currency out of his pocket. “Let’s try me asking some questions and see how much you can earn. Okay, first question. Did you ever see anyone in that apartment besides the lady who lived there?”
Nodding. “Yeah, her boyfriend.”
Paz peeled a couple of singles off the roll and dropped them on the bed. “Very good. Now let’s talk about last Saturday. Did you watch TV?”
“Uh-huh. I watched Saturday Night Live. ‘Cause my gran went to sleep before. She don’t let me watch it usually.”
“Okay, and after the show, did you look out the window, maybe wave to Amy?”
A nod, a looking-away.
“And, so, Tanzi, did you see anything that went on in that apartment?”
“He slap her.”
“Who?”
“Her boyfriend. They was running back and forth and he was throwing stuff around and out the window and she trying to stop him and he slap her in the head. And then he run out.”
Paz stripped a five from the roll and placed it on the other bills. “And after that, what happened?”
Shrug. “Nothing. I went to sleep.”
“Uh-huh,” Paz replied, and then, carefully, “You went to sleep right after the other man came in, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Her eyes were on the pile of money.
“What did the other man look like?”
The girl took a breath, as if to answer, and then without any warning she sucked in two more whooping breaths and then collapsed on the bed, her face screwed into a knot, howling.
Paz made a feeble attempt to comfort her, but she shrank from him, curled into a ball, and continued her noise, a horrible high-pitched yowl, like a cat. He heard footsteps. The bedroom door flung open and there stood Mrs. Meagher and a little boy. The woman rushed to her granddaughter, crying, “Oh, honey, what did he do to you?”
“I didn’t do anything to her,” said Paz. But she glared at him and pointed to the door. “Get out, you! I’ll tend to you later.”
He paced in the living room, wanting a smoke, a drink, baffled as to what to do next. The girl had clearly seen something, an event so terrifying that the mere mention of another man in the Wallace apartment had sent her over some psychic edge. After some minutes, the little boy came into the room and sat on a worn upholstered rocker. Paz recognized him as the landing urinator.
“How come you beat on my sister?”
“I didn’t beat on your sister. Do I look like someone who beats on little girls?”
“You the po — lice,” said the boy, as if in explanation. “How come she crying, then?”
“I don’t know. We were just talking normal, and then I asked her a question and she went bananas.”
“What you ax her?”
“The window of you guys’ room looks out on a window where a woman was murdered last weekend. I wanted to know if she saw anything.” He paused. “Did you see anything?”
“I saw a ho naked.”
“That’s nice. Tell me something … what’s your name, by the way?”
“Randolph P. Franklin. Show me your piece.”
“Later. Randolph, tell me something. How come if you live right here you were pissing on the landing?”
“‘Cause my gran, if she be there, she make me stay in after school, and I got to hang with my homes.”
“What you got to do is do your homework and mind your granma.”
The boy shook his head in disgust. “You so lame, man. Now can I see your piece?”
Paz flipped his jacket aside to reveal the.38 in its belt holster.
The boy said, “Oh, man, that a pussy gun. You should get you a nine, man.” He adopted a crouched shooting stance and made the appropriate noises. “That’s what I’m gonna get me, a nine, a Smith or a Glock. I got a friend got a two-five.”
“You don’t need friends like that,” said Paz. Mrs. Meagher came in.
“How is she?” Paz asked.
“She’s sleeping, no thanks to you. I got a good mind to call your boss and complain. And you a colored man, too.” The woman was only somewhat over five feet in height, but she was crackling with outrage, and formidable.
“Ma’am, I didn’t do anything to your grandchild. I didn’t yell at her or threaten her or touch her. In fact, all I was doing was giving her money and asking if she saw anything to do with the crime I’m investigating. And she did. I think she did see the actual killer, through that window. But as soon as I asked her to describe the man, she went into this screaming fit.”
Mrs. Meagher narrowed her eyes. “Why would she go and do that?”
“You know, ma’am, I’ve been asking myself the same thing, and the only thing I can come up with is that Tanzi saw something so awful that it somehow hurt her mind, so that whenever she has to think about it she goes off like she just did. And let me tell you something, Mrs. Meagher. I’ve been a homicide detective for six years now, and this murder we’re talking about was the worst thing I ever saw. I’m not talking about some hyped-up kid who shot a clerk in the 7-Eleven store. This guy’s a monster. And what if he does it again?”
“Sweet Jesus!”
“Yeah. And besides that, what about Tanzi? She could be messed up for life behind this, end up in an institution.”
