Braxton gazed out the window, still pondering. ‘Danziger had it all figured out. This whole thing with Fasulo and Raul and Trudell. He figured it out.’
‘Jesus, why don’t you just tell me what’s going on-’
‘Because I don’t know!’ He snapped his head at me in a curt little nod: So there. ‘I don’t know.’
‘How do you know what Danziger was looking at?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
Now I groaned, frustrated.
‘I have sources, that’s all,’ Braxton told me. ‘I need to find things out.’
‘So you knew what Bobby Danziger was working on when he got killed.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I don’t give a shit what you believe.’
‘Harold, what were you doing in Maine? A witness saw you there right before Danziger got killed.’
‘I can’t talk about that.’
‘But you were there? You admit that?’
‘You want to read me my rights?’
‘Jesus,’ I sighed. ‘I need a glass of water.’
Braxton instructed, ‘Get it, cuz.’
‘Yo, what do I look like, room service? I’m not getting water for no popos. Why should I?’
I said, ‘Because I’m dry!’
‘So be dry, motherfucker.’
‘Just-!’ Braxton held up his hand and calmed himself. ‘Just get him the water.’
The giant lumbered into the bathroom and returned with the water in one hand, a pistol in the other. ‘The air in these hotels,’ I said, ‘it’s very dry.’ The guy grimaced at me and returned to his post at the door.
‘You should leave a glass by the bed,’ Braxton suggested.
‘Harold, even if I believed you about Fasulo being connected somehow, there isn’t much I can do about it without evidence. These guys aren’t exactly going to take your word for it. They’ve got you down for two cop killings.’
‘I never killed no cops.’
‘Come on, Harold.’
‘I said, I never killed no cops. Ever.’
‘You didn’t shoot Artie Trudell?’
‘Why would I? I didn’t even know who he was.’
‘Because you were trapped in the apartment. The cops showed up and started breaking down the door. You had to shoot your way out.’
‘How could I be trapped in there? I’d have to be crazy’
‘It was your apartment. You’d have to be crazy, why?’
‘Because I knew they were coming.’
‘What?’
‘I knew the motherfuckers was coming.’ He shrugged. There was a little boastfulness in his voice, but more than anything it was just a matter-of-fact assertion. ‘I told you, I hear shit. I make it my business to hear shit.’
‘You hear shit from who? From cops?’
‘That’s all I got to say.’
‘Are you saying someone tipped you off?’
‘I’m just saying I hear shit.’
‘Harold, who tipped you off?’
‘Hey, Chief True-Man, I just told you — I can’t say. I’ll tell you what, though: There was a lot of people that didn’t want to have a trial on that case, believe me, a lot of people.’
‘So who killed Trudell then, Harold?’
‘How should I know? Some crackhead, someone stupid enough to be in there when the cops came.’
‘But that crackhead wasn’t you.’
‘Wasn’t me.’
We stared awhile, each gauging the credibility of the other. There was no reason for me to believe Braxton, and no reason for him to expect he would be believed.
‘If I leave here, you going to try and arrest me, Chief True-Man?’
‘Yup. There’s a warrant on you.’
‘Even though you know that warrant is shit.’
‘I don’t know that.’
‘But you’ll look for my daughter?’
‘I said I would.’
Braxton sighed again. ‘Alright, tie him up,’ he ordered. ‘Sorry, dog. Just to slow you down a little, till we get out.’
The giant tucked the. 45 inside his coat and stepped toward me with a smirk, and it was that smirk more than anything else that grazed a raw nerve — the brazen disrespect of it — the presumption that I would submit, that I could be overpowered — that people and things and time could be taken away from me, and my own wishes weren’t worth a two-penny fart — all that I’d thought was lost when it seemed I would be accused of Danziger’s murder, and all that I’d lost before then — the pressure, the frustration, the worry — all of it, at this unlikely moment, brimmed over. With the belated resolve of the unassertive, I decided, I am not going to let this happen. I surged from the bed, took two steps, and threw the most glorious roundhouse into the giant’s eye. Under my fist I felt the boiled-egg softness of the eyeball and the delicate bones of the socket. The man lolled back against the door then slid to the floor.
Pain like electric current jumped from my knuckles up the back of my hand. I yelped and shook my fist.
Braxton racked a pistol — my own — to get my attention. ‘Motherfucker,’ he drawled. Motherfucker apparently could carry any number of meanings. In this context, spoken with innocent wonderment, it meant something like Jeez, would you look at that. Braxton held the gun on me while he prodded his man with little kicks. ‘Yo, TC, you alright, cuz?’
‘I can’t see,’ the guy groaned, both hands pressed to his eye.
‘Alright, just hold the gun.’
‘I just told you, I can’t see.’
‘Use your damn other eye.’ Braxton was exasperated. You can’t get good help anymore.
The guy got to his feet and took the gun, but it dangled at his side. Braxton handcuffed my arms behind my back, wrapping the chain through the slatted back of a chair.
‘You didn’t need to do that,’ he told me.
‘I’ve had a long day, Harold.’
They left me cuffed to the chair, my hand throbbing. Braxton made an ambiguous little gesture before he left. He pointed at me with both index fingers like six-shooters, which I took to mean I’m counting on you but could as easily have meant Watch out or I’ll shoot you, and with that he closed the door behind him.
43
I lingered over the evidence in the room, burned the details into memory — a smear of blood on the door, body odor, the ache in my fist — as if to convince myself of what had just happened. This blood, this odor, this pain was real and actual. This was the proof. Yet there was no fear, no thrumming nerves or pounding heart, no emotional evidence. Just this sense of unreality and draining mood. Plane-crash survivors seem to know this emotion. They do not celebrate their survival. They wander out of cornfields looking shocked and hung over and vaguely remorseful.
But I had given Braxton my word. So, after a period of staring into space, I rolled onto the bed with the chair
