Pea raises a delicately incredulous eyebrow. “The bullets from his gun weren’t enough to convince you he was shooting at us? And something tells me that they are the same bullets that got Craver. That’s an unusual gun. So what are you proposing, that we somehow provoked Junior into shooting Craver and then finishing us off?”
Finn grimaces. “The boy, Alvin Spalding, was reportedly at your house as well.”
Pea’s face gives nothing away. She breathes just as easily. But she’s afraid. “We took him back home. I don’t know where he’s gone.”
“We think he’s run. Innocent men don’t do that, Miss LeBlanc.”
“Scared men do. You can’t think he shot Mayor Bell.”
“We—the investigation is ongoing.”
So they aren’t sure. There is something peculiar about the case that he isn’t telling us. Walter leans forward and taps his fingers lightly on his knee.
“That man was shot point-blank, wasn’t he, Phyllis?”
Pea smiles. “I’d say so, Walter.”
“He was a big man, Mayor Bell. It’d be hard for such a small boy to get close enough to a big man like that. And it was an even shot. No signs of struggle, am I right?”
I finally see where he’s leading us. “But he wasn’t asleep,” I say. “Which means someone he trusted enough to get close.”
“Which is not,” Pea says, “Alvin Spalding.”
I stand. “Officer Finn, can I have a word?”
Finn jerks. He’s gotten thinner since the second divorce. His salt-and-pepper beard is now pure snow. He looks at me like he’d rather slug me. The feeling is mutual. But he nods silently and leads me out into the hallway and another interrogation room.
“You bastard,” he yells as soon as he closes the door. He pushes me against the table. “You goddamn bastard! You want to announce to that pair of killers that you’re a cop? That we know each other? Want to put a bull’s-eye on my forehead?”
I grab Finn’s wrists and swing him into the wall. Harder than I need to—it punches the breath from him. His eyes widen.
“Should have guessed…” He gasps. “… when Valentine didn’t hear from you. Never would have pegged you to turn dirty, kid. Not back then.”
“Life changes you, Finn.”
I release him. He sags against the wall. “That it does, kid.”
“I just can’t—not to Walter. I don’t expect you to understand. But he doesn’t know a thing about you. I can still do the job.”
“Too damn well. You could double-agent for the devil.”
It would have been a compliment, ten years ago. Now it’s thickened to shame. Not only to have committed evil, but to have done it so well.
Finn nods. “I won’t arrest you all now—”
“You wouldn’t dare. Not Walter. And you don’t think we did it anyway.”
“Not with your own hands.”
“Finn. What aren’t you telling me?”
He’s still breathing hard. His face is flushed. He squints like he’s in pain, and I regret how hard I threw him.
“Are you even an officer anymore, Patil? Or are you one of Red Man’s gang?”
A familiar hand clamps my heart and then, suddenly, lets go. I say it. “Both.”
He shakes his head. But he puts his hands on the table and meets my eyes. “The gun, Officer Patil,” he says. “The gun that Bobby Junior used on you and Ben Craver also killed Mayor Bell.”
The pieces slide into place. “The boy,” I say.
“The boy,” he agrees. “Access to the house. Sneaky hands like yours. Either that or we believe that Junior killed his own father.”
“You’ll let us go?”
“If they have anything to do with this, I know you won’t tell me. And Dewey wants Red Man. One last trophy before he makes his run on Albany.”
“He won’t get him. You have to know that.”
Finn smiles thinly. “You aren’t the only good agent on the city beat, Patil. We might just surprise you.”
Walter goes back to the city.
“I’ll call when I’ve taken care of that letter,” he says.
“You’re a real friend.”
“Vice has someone else at the Pelican. High, I suspect. I’ll need you to find out who it is.”
I make myself swallow. “You can’t yourself?”
“I could.”
He waits for me. Red Man stillness, its faint whiff of ironic detachment. I could refuse. And he could let the draft swallow me whole.
“Give me—until things calm down here,” I say. He just nods and closes the Packard door.
Tamara stays the week.
Alvin stays gone.
Bobby Junior comes to and claims self-defense. He blames Alvin for murdering Bobby Senior. Says that the boy told him Craver had hired Pea to kill him and his father. When he found Senior dead, he went after us without asking more questions.
“Sounds more like revenge than self-defense,” is Pea’s dry response. But they only charge him with one count of attempted manslaughter. Craver might still die. Pea and I, of course, don’t count.
Alvin is their prime suspect, mostly because it costs them nothing to accuse a runaway Negro boy. It would cost them a great deal to investigate a man like Bobby Bell, with the powerful enemies he had accrued in a lifetime of politics. Still, Alvin had plenty of reasons to hate the Bells. Even more to fear them. His scheme, then, had been to position us as a barrier between himself and the anger of the two most powerful men in town. And maybe we were even meant to be his fall guys. Pea doesn’t believe he killed Mayor Bell. Me? I think Alvin is just as capable of evil as the two of us. I just don’t know why he would have left Junior alive.
I think Pea has seen him. I think she has fed him a few evenings when she claimed to go shopping in town. She hasn’t told me for the same reason I haven’t told her about my letter from the president. We are holding our trouble close, hoping it goes away. But we hold each other closer.
Tamara helps Pea cook extravagant dishes and touches me too much when Pea can see, and not at all when we’re alone. It’s her way of being fair. She doesn’t mention
