“Alta Rae what?” Jose asked.
She frowned. “Walsh.”
Frank anted first. “Pencil Crawfurd.”
Walsh frowned again. “Tobias,” she corrected. “What do you want to know?”
“Where he is.”
“You been by his place.”
“He hadn’t been there since he left the hospital. You got any ideas?”
“Don’t know,” Walsh said. “Don’t care.”
“Well,” Frank said, “I guess what we want to know is what you want to tell us.”
“We were… we lived together for seven years.” The telephone uncertainty crept back into Walsh’s voice.
“Tell us about it,” Jose said gently. “We’re not in a hurry.”
Walsh glanced at her watch.
“Met him,” she began, “I’d just graduated… 1992. I knew he’d been in jail. Knew he and Skeeter were into dealing. But he treated me respectful. Mama warned me, but…” Walsh shrugged.
“Him and Skeeter,” Jose said, “how’d that work?”
“They were close. Almost like brothers. I asked Tobias once, how it was Skeeter, being younger, Tobias went along. Tobias said Skeeter did the thinking, he did the doing.”
“What kind of doing?” Jose asked.
Walsh sipped at her water. “He called it persuadin’.”
Jose exchanged a glance with Frank. Frank eyed a no, so Jose followed up.
“But it wasn’t persuading, was it?” Jose said.
“No.” Walsh’s voice came in low and slow.
“Tobias killed people.”
Walsh looked around the park with a trapped expression, and Frank was certain she was going to bug out.
“He did, didn’t he?” Jose asked, quietly but firmly. “Kill people?”
Walsh nodded. She didn’t say anything for a while. Then, “Skeeter did too,” she whispered defiantly.
Very carefully, Frank probed. “He… Tobias… ever talk about it…? Details?”
“I didn’t want to know,” she said. She hugged herself, bending forward as though in pain. The words came out in a rush. “I was goin’ to have his baby, we needed money, and I didn’t ask.”
Jose waited a moment, then took over. “The dealing… Tobias talk about that? What he was doing and all?”
“Some.” Walsh ran her hand over her hair, captured a strand and twisted it nervously with her fingertips. “He’d come in all excited. Tell me how he and Skeeter took over somebody’s territory… how many street dealers he had workin’ for him… his travelin’.”
“Travel? Where to?”
“South America. Skeeter and him.”
“You know where in South America?”
Walsh shook her head. “I told you, I didn’t want to know. He’d come back, tell me how he was gonna take me with him down there.” She paused. Her lips pulled into a thin disapproving line. “Never did, though. Shuckin’ and jivin’. Just shuckin’ and jivin’.”
Jose backtracked. “You said you didn’t want to know about Tobias killing anybody.”
“Yes.”
“How’d you know that was going on?”
“He’d brag on it. Like the travelin’. I’d tell him I didn’t want to hear. He’d brag anyway. Like it got him a rush.”
Jose’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Tobias say any names?”
Walsh closed her eyes so tightly that her mouth pursed. Her face put Frank in mind of a child squenching up its face to shut out something scary.
“Zelmer Austin?” Jose tried.
“I don’t remember,” she said without hesitation, and Frank knew she was lying.
“You don’t remember if Tobias said any names?” Jose persisted. “Or you don’t remember the names?”
Eyes still closed, Walsh shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said in a rising tone, “and I don’t want to talk any more about it.”
The three sat without speaking.
Walsh opened her eyes. “He left me and Samuel. He left his boy. Just… walked out.” She said it to no one else, just to herself.
Frank had to strain to hear, and he realized that what she’d come to tell was a story about a woman and a man and love and betrayal.
He led her on. “When was that?”
“Two years ago.”
“He helping out?” Jose asked.
Walsh lost her wistfulness. “I don’t need his money,” she said sharply to Jose. “I used to think money was important. Don’t want it. Not what Samuel needs… he needs a father. Boy growing up needs a man around. Money…” She curled her lip in contempt.
“Did you ever worry about him going back to jail?” Frank asked.
“All the time. ’Specially after I had Samuel. First time I said something, he laughed at me. Told me not to worry. I couldn’t help but worry. Tobias and Skeeter… all the money. I knew they had to be dealin’ bigger. I kept worryin’. We’d fight about my worryin’.”
“He ever tell you why not to worry?” Jose asked.
Walsh nodded. “He said he and Skeeter had insurance. That nobody’d come down on them.”
“He tell you why?”
Frank listened as Jose asked the question. He was holding his breath as Walsh took it in and thought about it.
“He said he saw a meeting Skeeter had.”
Jose hesitated, then asked, “A meeting?”
“Unh-hunh.”
“What’d he say about the meeting?”
“He said one day Skeeter told him he had a meeting. A big deal. He wanted Tobias to make sure he wasn’t bein’ set up.”
“How’d Tobias do that?”
“He said he went out before… to watch the meetin’ place. He watched to make sure it wasn’t a setup… you know, a trap or something. Then he call Skeeter on his cell. Tell him it was clear.”
“Where was the meeting place?” Jose asked.
“Golf course.”
Jose did a slow take. “Golf… course?”
“That one down at Hains Point.”
“Skeeter played golf?”
For the first time, she smiled. “No. The man Skeeter was to meet parked in the lot and waited. When Skeeter came, the man got in Skeeter’s car.”
Jose did the eye-exchange again with Frank. This time Frank gave him a nod. Jose sat back as Frank leaned forward ever so slightly.
“When was this, Alta Rae?” Frank said.
“The same time he and I… Tobias and I… same time we met.”
“That’d be June 1992?”
“Yes.”
“He say who it was, Skeeter met?”
Walsh shook her head.
