‘Your bop?’
‘My record, my Board of Probation record. Those guys have it, I’m sure.’ He nodded toward the mirror. ‘It’s alright, dog, I’ll tell you what’s on it. There’s some juvenile stuff, hot boxing mostly. Then I got two distributions, class B, all powder. Straight probation on both. Some other small shit. Otherwise I’m clean.’
‘Clean? What about Artie Trudell?’
Braxton’s eyebrows crushed downward.
‘The cop who got shot through the door, Harold.’
‘I didn’t have nothing to do with that. That case got dismissed.’
‘Why’d you get charged? Did they just pick your name out of the phone book?’
‘Ask your friend Raul.’
‘Who’s Raul?’ I said.
He smirked.
‘Maybe you’re Raul. That’s the rumor, isn’t it?’
No answer.
This was pointless. ‘Look, are you gonna answer any questions or not? You haven’t told me anything.’
Shrug. ‘Don’t know anything.’
‘Then what are you doing here, Harold?’
‘I got arrested.’
‘You went to the trouble of getting me down here just to tell me you don’t know anything?’
‘Do they really think you capped that DA?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think they know.’
‘Did you?’
‘No.’
‘On your mother’s grave?’
‘On my mother’s grave.’
‘Well I didn’t do it neither.’
‘So that’s it? You’re innocent?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why tell it to me?’
‘This is Boston, dog. B-town. Alabama of the North.’
‘You’re saying it’s a race thing?’
‘It’s always a race thing.’
‘I don’t think so, Harold, not this time. There’s plenty of proof.’
Another caustic smile. He leaned forward, dragging the handcuffs across the table, and rested on his forearms. ‘Let me tell you something,’ he confided. ‘These cops don’t need proof. They can always find proof after they solve the case.’ He stared at me a moment. A dusting of blackheads marred his nose. Otherwise he was handsome, with his brown eyes and monkish ponytail. ‘Go on, finish asking your questions.’
‘Have you ever been to Maine?’
‘Why would I go to some backward-ass-’
‘Is that a no?’
‘Fuck no.’
‘Did you know Robert Danziger?’
‘Course I did.’
‘How did you know him?’
‘He prosecuted me like fifty times.’
‘How did you feel about that?’
‘Oh, I was real thrilled about it.’
‘Answer the question. How did you feel about Danziger prosecuting you over and over?’
‘How would you feel?’
‘It would depend on the circumstances.’
‘That’s right. The man had a job to do. I had no problem with that. There wasn’t nothing between me and him.’
The questions were obtuse and Braxton knew it. There was something approaching friendliness in his tone, in the patronizing way he answered. Criminals often show a false bonhomie toward cops, a desire to connect, an appeal to their goodwill. But this was something worse — he was condescending to me.
‘Where were you Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, when Ray Ratleff was killed?’
‘Party in Grove Park. There were twenty or thirty people there. You want names?’
I got a yellow legal pad from a side table, and Braxton wrote out some names in neat block letters.
‘That all you got?’ he asked.
‘Is there anything else you want to tell me?’
‘I want to talk to you, Chief True-Man.’
‘It’s Ben. Why me?’
‘Because you and me need each other.’
‘Yeah? Why do I need you?’
‘You need to prove you didn’t do it, same as me. They’re going to put it on one of us, right? You can see that, can’t you? So if you figure it out, that helps us both. Now, do you want to go figure it out, for both of us?’
I hesitated.
Braxton looked over my shoulder at the mirror, then his eyes tripped from one corner of the room to another. At the time I thought he was looking for cameras; in fact what he was looking for was a microphone. He leaned forward, rested his chest on the edge of the table and whispered, ‘Come here.’
‘No.’
‘I ain’t gonna hurt you.’
I shook my head.
‘You think I’m gonna beat down some cop in a police station? With these on?’ He held up his handcuffed wrists. ‘You think I’m that stupid?’
‘Anything you tell me, Harold, I’m just going to tell them anyway’
‘That’s on you. I figure you’ll do the right thing.’
I leaned forward to listen, warily, like a lion tamer putting his head in the lion’s mouth.
The speed of what happened next shocked me.
Braxton’s hands snapped up over my head. He trapped my neck in the handcuffs and yanked me down against the table. I could not move. The handcuff chain cinched into the back of my neck.
There was shouting behind the mirror, muffled, ‘Hey hey!’
The plastic-wood tabletop was immediately in front of my eye. It was scratched, oily.
I felt Braxton’s mouth inches from my ear. It crossed my mind that he might bite it, gnaw it right off my head.
‘You helped me yesterday in the church. Why?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t want-’
‘They’re playing you.’ His breath was warm and humid in my ear.
‘What?’
‘They’re playing you, they’re setting you up. And me. Both of us.’
‘Alright, you’re innocent. I get it.’
‘No!’ He thumped me against the tabletop. I felt his frustration. Everybody claims to be innocent; he was telling me something more. ‘I need to tell you-’
A door slammed and feet clattered in the hallway.
Braxton pressed his face close so I could actually feel his lips brush my ear. ‘Find Raul.’
‘What?’
‘Find Raul. It’s got nothing to do with Ratleff. Follow Raul’
‘Okay’
‘Follow Raul. From Danziger to Trudell, maybe back further. To Fazulo. Watch-’
