years for me to discover that all I’d actually seen was what had managed to get into court. And by the time it had gotten to court, it had been prettied up.”
After another silence, Tom Kearney continued. “The stories were still pretty damn grim. But in court, they’d become just that… stories. Wasn’t until later that I realized there was a lot of very nasty stuff that never got to court. That stayed out in the streets.”
“Kate said it teaches a lot of people they can get away with murder.”
Tom Kearney took that in, then asked, “Ever hear of the Plimsoll line?”
“A railroad?”
“No. In heavy seas, a ship that rolls over past a certain point isn’t coming up again. Nothing you can do will bring it back. In the 1800s, a British member of Parliament, Samuel Plimsoll, demanded a safety limit, a load line marked on a ship to limit the weight of cargo.”
“So you shouldn’t go past the Plimsoll line?”
Tom Kearney nodded. “I’ve often wondered if our society doesn’t have its Plimsoll line.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning fifteen hundred murders. Fifteen hundred unsolved murders loaded onto a society that isn’t too stable in the best of times. How much more weight before we pass our own Plimsoll line? What if enough people- the people outside the courtrooms, the people in the streets-start believing the ship’s going down?”
At home, Frank put the box of marbles down beside the answering machine in the kitchen. One message on the machine.
“Frank, I’m at home.”
Frank checked his watch. Jose had called fifteen minutes earlier. His number rang twice before he answered. Sheresa Arrowsmith had called him from the Hospital Center. Pencil Crawfurd was groggy, but able to talk.
Don’t know.”
Frank stood on one side of the bed, Jose and Arrowsmith on the other. A mound of bandages covered Crawfurd’s left shoulder, and dried saliva crusted around his mouth. The ICU was overly warm, the air heavy with the smells of ammonia, alcohol, and antiseptic soap.
“Come on, Pencil,” Frank said in disbelief. “Somebody stood out in the street… right beside your car… opened up a shooting gallery… and you don’t know who did it?”
“Don’t know.”
“What were you and Skeeter doing?”
“Sittin’ there. Just sittin’.”
“So you and Skeeter were just sitting on Bayless Place and somebody just walked up and just started shooting? And you don’t know who and you don’t know why?”
“Tha’s it. Show me the muthafucka who did it, I take care a him.”
“You got any guesses who?” Jose asked.
Crawfurd rolled his head to look venomously at Jose, then Frank. “You cops hard-headed? Or hard-hearing? Tol’ you. Don’t… know. We’re sittin’ there. Skeeter talkin’ to me. All a sudden his face blows out. I don’t remember hearin’ anything. I don’t remember seein’ anything ’cept his face blowin’ out at me.”
“Come on,” Jose prodded, “guess.”
Crawfurd said nothing.
“You not a guessing man, Pencil? Nobody’s name comes to mind? Nobody who’d want to take over the business you and Skeeter built up?”
Again, nothing.
Jose bent closer, bringing his face inches from Crawfurd’s. “Let me ask it this way, Pencil… Who you gonna watch out for when you get out? Who you gonna worry’s out there, waiting for you?”
Crawfurd ran his tongue across cracked lips. “Take care a myself.”
“Unh-hunh,” Jose said, “like you and Skeeter took care of yourselves on Bayless Place. Somebody caught you two badasses like sittin’ ducks.”
Pencil Crawfurd’s eyelids closed, then opened, then fluttered. “I’m tired,” he murmured, and fell off the edge of consciousness.
In the hallway, Frank turned to Arrowsmith. “He still need to be in ICU?”
The doctor shook her head. “Not really. It’s a precaution I take with all gunshot cases.”
“You keep him there another couple of days?”
“I can… Why?”
“Visitors have to sign in, don’t they?”
Arrowsmith nodded. “And you want to know who?”
In the car, Jose settled into the passenger seat.
“Bad-nigga wannabe.” He sighed.
“Scared bad-nigga wannabe,” Frank amended.
“I could use some hash browns.”
Frank started the car.
“With a couple eggs on top, sausage sides,” Jose added.
“It’s Sunday night.”
Jose gave Frank his “So what?” look. “Get us a running start on the week’s cholesterol quota.”
NINE
Monday morning, Frank and Jose sat at their desks, facing each other, Eleanor’s printout between them. Beside the desks, a battered institutional-green rolling file cabinet the size of a refrigerator held stacks of thick reddish-brown case folders.
“Dreamed about that, last night,” Jose said. He stuck his lower lip out at the file cabinet. “Thing was suffocating me. Tried to get it off, but it was like a big octopus.”
Yesterday at the flea market came back to Frank. His father… the Plimsoll line. He looked at the cabinet and wondered how much its files weighed. How many more could it take before everything tilted over, never to come upright again?
He took a deep breath. “Get started?”
Reluctantly, Jose stood, reached into the cabinet, and pulled out two folders. He offered one to Frank. “You think we’ll know when we get to the last one?”
“The last one…?” Frank was drawing a blank. “When we get to the bottom of that stack,” he said, pointing to the cabinet.
“No,” Jose said, “will we know when the last case comes our way-‘This is it, we’re hanging it up’?”
Frank thought about cabinets of case folders. The cases stretching back went a long way. The ones ahead didn’t. Couldn’t. There was a first case. There had to be a last one. He and Jose were damn sure closer to dealing with the last than they were to the first.
“I don’t know,” he told Jose. “What do you think?”
Jose studied the folder on his desk, then looked back at Frank. “Yeah… yeah, I sort of think we will.”
“Why’s that?”
“I think we’re close.”
“How’s that?
Jose sat down and patted the folder. “We ever talk about it before? The last case? Our last case?”
“No.”
Jose pointed a thick index finger at Frank. “See? Never talked about it before. Now… now we are talking about it.”
Frank thought about that. A Kenny Rogers fragment ran through his head. Time to get out of the game? Time to walk? Not yet. Soon, maybe. But not yet.
He sat there, staring at the folder before him. Alfonzo Betters. Somewhere inside his memory, a relay tripped. A small door opened into a partially lit compartment. He and Jose had helped with the canvassing.
