I turned on the TV. Nightly News with Peter Jennings came on, and I loaded the cassette. Peter Jennings vanished in a flash of static, and a grainy high-angle shot of the interior of the Premier Pawn Shop filled the screen. Black and white. A muscular black guy maybe in his late twenties sat in a swivel chair behind the counter, watching a tiny TV. He wore a white Arrow shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and his hair was cut close with a couple of racing stripes carved above each ear. Charles Lewis Washington. There was no one else in the shop.
As I watched, Mark Thurman came up behind me and drank deep on the beer. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, not fast like he had to pee, but enough to show he wasn't comfortable. He said, 'There's a lot of this kind of stuff at first.'
'Okay.'
'We could maybe fast forward it.'
'Let's just watch.'
He went to the machine and turned it off. 'Look, this isn't easy.'
'I know.'
'You don't have to treat me like a piece of shit.'
I stared at him for maybe ten seconds. 'It doesn't matter if I like you or not, and it doesn't matter how I treat you or not. Whatever it is that I'm doing, I'm doing for Jennifer. Not for you.'
Mark Thurman stared at me for another couple of seconds, then he said, 'Can I have another of those beers?'
I turned on the VCR and watched the rest of the tape. Mark Thurman went into the bathroom and drank.
The image was sort of overexposed and blurry, and not nearly as nice as your basic home video. From the angle the camera must've been maybe nine or ten feet up, and was mounted so that it framed the length of the shop.
The tape ran without incident for another couple of minutes before Floyd Riggens and Warren Pinkworth entered from the bottom of the frame. There was no sound. Charles Lewis got out of his chair and went to the counter, and the three of them spoke for a few minutes. Then Pinkworth took two cardboard boxes out of his pocket and put them on the counter. Each box was about the size of a bar of soap, but they weren't Ivory. Washington opened the top box and shook out twenty rounds of what looked to be 5.56mm rifle cartridges. Same kind of stuff you pop in an M-16. He examined the bullets, and then he put them back into the box and pushed both boxes toward Pinkworth. The three of them talked some more, and Riggens left the frame. In a couple of minutes he came back, only now Pete Garcia was with him, carrying a pretty good-sized pasteboard box. It looked heavy. Garcia put the larger box on the counter and Charles Lewis looked inside. Whatever was there, you couldn't see it, but it was probably more of the little cardboard ammo boxes. Washington nodded as if he were agreeing to something, and when he did Riggens and Garcia and Pinkworth were all screaming and pulling out badges and guns. Charles Lewis Washington jumped back so far that he fell over the swivel chair. Riggens went over the counter after him. Riggens raised his pistol twice and brought it down twice, and then he jerked Washington to his feet and moved to hit him again. Washington covered up and pulled away. The narrow aisle behind the counter opened into the shop, and Washington, still holding his arms over his head, stumbled from behind the counter and into Pete Garcia. Maybe you could say it looked like he was attacking Garcia, but it didn't look like that to me. It looked like Washington was trying to get away from Riggens. Garcia hit Washington on the upper back and the arms four times, and then pushed him down. Pinkworth was pointing his gun in a two-handed combat stance, and shouting, and he stomped at Washington's head and back. Riggens came from behind the counter and waded in beside Pinkworth. Garcia was pointing his gun at Washington's head. Washington seemed to reach for him and Garcia kicked at his arm. At the bottom of the screen, Mark Thurman ran in wearing a tee shirt that said POLICE on the front and back. He stopped beside Garcia and aimed his gun, also in the two-handed combat stance. Charles Lewis Washington pushed up to his knees and held out his right arm like maybe he was begging Riggens and Pinkworth to stop. They didn't. Washington rolled into sort of a ball, but Riggens continued to hit him. Thurman started forward, then stopped and said something to Garcia, but Garcia made a hand move telling him to stay back. Thurman lowered his gun and stepped back. He looked confused. Eric Dees ran in then, also wearing a POLICE tee shirt, and stopped midway between Garcia and Pink-worth to assess the situation. Garcia shouted and pointed at Washington, and Dees pulled Pinkworth back. He tried to train his gun on Washington, but Riggens kept getting in the way. Washington was on his stomach now, trying to crawl under a shelf. The white Arrow shirt was streaked with blood. He was moving slowly, the way you might if you were stunned and unable to think clearly. Thurman raised his gun, then lowered it. He looked like he wanted to move forward, maybe do something, but he didn't. Washington again raised his hand as if begging Riggens to stop. Riggens hit his hand. Dees grabbed Riggens's arm and pulled him back, but Washington started crawling away again. I guess if I was hurt bad, and confused, I'd try to crawl away, too. Riggens pointed at him and shouted, and went back to hitting him, and this time he was swinging for the head. Pinkworth moved in and swung for the legs, but he needn't have bothered. Charles Lewis Washington had already stopped moving. Dees pulled Riggens off again and Garcia moved in, gun first as if he thought maybe Washington was faking it and might suddenly jump up and mow them all down. He checked Washington's neck for a pulse, then shook his head. Garcia holstered his gun and said something to Dees, and now he checked Washington's wrist, but he didn't find a pulse there, either. Eric Dees came over and checked for himself. Mark Thurman holstered his gun, leaned against the counter, and threw up. Eric Dees went to him, said something, and then went back to the body. Mark Thurman moved out of the frame.
I let the tape play for another thirty seconds or so, and then I turned it off.
Mark Thurman said, 'Let it play and it shows us figuring out what to do. You can see Floyd planting a gun so we could say he was armed.'
I looked over at him. Thurman was in the bathroom door. I said, 'I've seen enough for now.'
'Yep.' He killed the rest of the beer. 'When I came into it everybody was screaming. I thought maybe the guy had a gun or something. It wasn't like I was scared, I just didn't know what to do.' He went to the little round motel table and took another beer. Twenty-five years old, looking for a friend, and there were no friends around. 'What could I have done?'
'You could have stopped them.'
He pulled at the warm beer and nodded. 'Yes. I'd say that's pretty clear. But I didn't, did I?'
'No. That's something you'll have to live with. You had an opportunity to behave well, but you behaved poorly. Had you behaved well, Charles Lewis Washington might still be alive.'
He sucked down the rest of the beer and you could tell that he was living with that, too.
