The Man Offside Read online

  On my left, a sluggish, hoarse voice from within a cell said, “This dude goin’ to see the Man, bruddas. He going to do some jive-talkin’.”

  Without thinking about it, I turned and said from the side of my mouth, “You talk like you been to see the Man yourself, you know right where I’m going. How many poor bastards you dropped a dime on?” Funny how quickly you get back into the swing.

  A coal black face with thick lips and white, piano-key teeth appeared in the window. The face said, “Fuck you ass, honky. You come see me we have a talk, huh?” I did a snappy eyes-front and kept walking.

  The guard halted and threw a lever. A panel in the wall clanged and slid on creaky steel rollers. The guard motioned like a traffic cop, and I went through the hole in the wall. The panel banged and echoed as it closed behind me.

  The feds call them interview rooms. The cities and counties have other names for them. Bare white walls, yellow and gray from lack of cleaning and stale cigarette smoke. A long conference table with bare wood showing through the paint in places, two straight, hard chairs on either side of the table. One entryway from the innards of the jail, an exit leading to the cops’ offices, a small window in the exit door in case the interviewer has to call for help. In the old days this was the room where the rubber hoses came out. I hadn’t seen any rubber hoses in my career as a prisoner, but I’d seen some of these interviews get pretty rough. I hoped fleetingly that this wasn’t going to be one of them.

  The city detective seated on one side of the table was as typecast as the room itself. Sharp features, a long, skinny nose over a pencil mustache. Thinning short brown hair parted on the left. A white long-sleeved shirt, cuffs a couple of inches above bony wrists, a narrow black tie, no coat. He was thumbing through the stack of porno shots I’d found in Catfish’s apartment. He really took his time with the photos featuring Connie Swarm, holding each one close to his nose and really going over the details. Solid police investigative procedure. I pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down.

  He didn’t look up. “Mr. Bannion.”

  I said, “Hiya.”

  “I’m Detective Willis. You ever been in trouble before?” His narrow eyebrows arched, and I wondered which of Connie’s poses was now capturing his attention. The tone of his voice said that he already knew the answer to his question.

  “Some,” I said.

  “Some. As in little some or big some?”

  “Look, you’ve already run me up on the computer. So you tell me.”

  Willis laid the pictures down and looked at me. The act seemed to take some effort. His eyes were slate gray and twinkled with about the same merriment as drilling mud. “I didn’t need the computer on you, Mr. Bannion. I’m an old football fan from way back. It’s just that this kind of murder doesn’t jive with dope smuggling, so I was wondering if you’d ever been in any trouble other than the drug charges that you did the federal time for. The computer doesn’t show any other trouble.”

  Great. Another fan. As I tugged on the sleeve of my jumpsuit, I wondered if I should offer the guy an autograph. I didn’t say anything.

  Willis showed me a tiny smirk as he opened a drawer. He came up with a compact Sony recorder and depressed a button. Seen through clear plastic, the reels began to turn slowly. Willis said to me, “Somebody’s already read your rights, haven’t they?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t remember. They might’ve.” The fact was that I’d already heard my rights, such as they were, two times: once from the cop at Catfish’s apartment and another time from a stuttering night magistrate at police headquarters. But I might as well hear them from Willis, too. Inspirational work, the Constitution.

  He told me I had the right to remain silent and that I could hire a lawyer and all of the other good stuff. When I told him I didn’t want an attorney—eight years earlier I’d demanded one, then learned in the long run that it didn’t make any difference whether you had a lawyer or not—he said, “Why’d you shoot the guy, Mr. Bannion?”

  I scratched my chin. “I beg your pardon?” The recorder was making a soft whirring noise.

  “Come on, Mr. Bannion, your partner’s already told us you shot Lund. Why, is all I’m trying to find out. You help us, we’ll help you.” I supposed that he was trying to look reassuring. I didn’t feel reassured.

  “I’m going to save you some time,” I said. “If you haven’t already, then run Breaux up on your computer. He didn’t do all that federal time because he told anybody anything. I didn’t, either. So if you’re figuring to make me think he told you I shot the guy, or make him think that I told you he did, then you’re farting in the wind.”

  Willis carefully lifted both ends of his tie, held them away from his shirt, and looked at them. There were a few greasy spots, like gravy stains. “We’re short-handed in homicide,” he said. “I can’t even go home long enough to change this dungy tie. So let’s both be reasonable. We’ve checked out the victim, too, and I don’t think anybody’s going to miss Mr. Lund very much. I doubt that the D.A. is going to go for your throat, not for killing that asshole. So talk to me.”

  “Tell all and it’ll go easy on me? That bullshit’s not going to work, either. Not on me. Not on Breaux.”

  There was a twitch of irritation at the corner of his mouth, and he tried to hide it by picking up the photos and thumbing through them again. I briefly wondered how he liked the one of Catfish and Candy.

  “Look,” I said, “there’s only one guy I’m giving any information to. Get him in here and save us all a lot of trouble.” I almost laughed out loud as I realized that what I’d just said was the cop’s line in reverse.

  Willis put the photos down. “I’m all ears.”

  “You know a Detective Atchley, down at the county?”

  He picked up the pictures again and gave Connie some more of his undivided attention. “Yeah, but he doesn’t work with us. He’s county, we’re city. Different jurisdictions.”

  I reached over and covered both of his hands with one of mine. He stiffened and blinked, shot a glance toward the exit, where reinforcements were if he needed them. I said, “Look, Willis, I don’t give a fuck what department gets the credit for this. I didn’t kill Lund. Breaux didn’t kill Lund. You ever want to find out who did, you get Atchley down here.”

  I tried to read something in Willis’s expression. I couldn’t. The way I was handling myself was apt to cost me a beating before this was over, but I had to see Atchley. If I’d been reading the county cop right, he didn’t like the feds much more than I did. It was the only chance that I had.

  Willis relaxed and firmly moved my hand away. “So okay,” he said, “I’ll call Atchley. What the hell, I got other things to do.”

  I leaned back and folded my arms. “That’s more like it,” I said.

  Detective Atchley told me that I could call him Roy. That was okay with me. He looked more like a Roy than he did a Detective Atchley. Good ole boy, short sandy hair, full cheeks, a big, probing nose like a St. Bernard’s. Not quite the cop look, until you noticed that his pale blue eyes didn’t twinkle when the corners of his mouth turned up in a smile.

  “You’re really putting me in the middle,” he said. “The city folks”—he jerked his head toward Detective Willis, he of the greasy stains on his tie—“have you dead to rights on a murder scene. The feds say you’re the prime suspect in the disappearance of a witness. You’re wanting me to interfere not with just one but two jurisdictions.”

  Atchley hadn’t mentioned my meeting with him and the feds at Whiterock Precinct. If he didn’t want to bring it up, I didn’t see any reason why I should. I said, “You’re the investigator on Jack Brendy’s killing, Roy, at least so I understand. That’s why I need to talk to you in private.”

  Atchley’s imperceptible nod told me I’d said the right thing. He turned to Willis. “Steve, if he’s got anything on the Brendy murder, I need it. How ‘bout if you leave us alone?”

  Willis quit studying his tie and looked dubio
us. “I don’t know, Roy, the apartment murder is our baby. At least it is so far.”

  “Come on, Steve, you know me,” Atchley said. “Anything the guy tells me that affects your case, you’re going to get it right off. This is Roy Atchley, not some FBI you’re talking to.” I studied Atchley’s expression and decided that he might make a pretty good political candidate.

  Willis didn’t look happy about it, but he stood and shrugged his shoulders. “I’m taking you at your word,” he said to Atchley, then gave me a look that said he’d be seeing me later. He went to the exit and knocked. A peephole opened and an eye stared at him. A key turned in the lock. Willis left.

  Atchley turned to me and said, “Bannion, you’re one dumb son of a bitch.”

  I ignored the compliment. “Donald Lund, street name Catfish. The dead guy. I’m pretty sure he was the shooter that killed Jack, or at least that he was one of the guys in the car.”

  Atchley leaned back and propped a knee against the edge of the table. “He’s got the record for it. That doesn’t make you any less of a dumb son of a bitch for killing him.”

  “Roy, why would I kill the guy? He was my way out of the trap.” It dawned on me that Atchley had known about Catfish, probably even before the meeting at Whiterock Precinct. And if he’d known about Catfish, Pierson and the feds had known about him, too. The bastards.

  Atchley took a piece of Doublemint gum from his breast pocket and unwrapped it. “He might be. Or if you’re the one that hired him, he might be your way in. To Hunstville. I don’t see anything tells me you’re not the guy that offed him.” He stuck one end of the gum in his mouth, folded the stick over with his tongue, and began to chew.

  I hesitated. If I was wrong, I could be cooking my goose. Finally I said, “Look, Roy, get me out of here. Breaux, too. I swear to God, forty-eight hours and I think I can find out who hired Catfish. You can’t. It’ll help you get the federals off your back.”

  The gum made a popping sound. He scratched his big nose. “This Breaux. Dope smuggler, isn’t he?”

  “He used to be.” I hadn’t actually seen Breaux making any marijuana deals lately, so I wasn’t lying. Maybe fibbing a little.

  Atchley stood and vigorously rubbed his upper arm. “Well, you’re a dumb son of a bitch. But I’m dumber. Bannion, if I go out on a limb and you saw it off, I’m promising you that you’ll be better off if the feds get you before I do.” His face softened. “But if you can help me, you won’t be sorry. Jesus Christ, I’ve got to get rid of those fucking FBI’s. I got indigestion so bad I can’t sleep at night.”

  I thought that the Dallas city cops should furnish me transportation back to the Bullrider Danceland so I could pick up the ‘Vette, and I said so. The desk sergeant, a chubby, bald guy with a snow white fringe, cupped a palm behind his ear and said, “I can’t hear you, pal.” Another funnyman. I picked up my brown personal property envelope, tore it open, and inventoried the contents—a wallet containing only my driver’s license, a cheap Timex watch that I’d dressed up with a gold webbed band from Sterling’s Wholesale, just under three thousand in cash that I had left over from the five that Donna had given me—as I went out the side exit from Dallas Government Center onto Ervay Street. The Timex was showing a couple of minutes after three in the morning. The air was still and hot, and the downtown buildings—Renaissance Tower, seventy-story Momentum Place with its roof in the shape of a parabola, along with ten or twelve other mirrored skyscrapers and assorted shorter tall buildings—had their silhouettes outlined in deep, hazy purple like sculptured Rocky Mountains. I was tired to the bone. My footsteps shuffled and dragged on the concrete.

  Breaux was leaning against a parking meter, his feet crossed at the ankles. His head was down, only his chin visible under the bill of his yellow cap.

  “They haul you downtown and then dump you out on the street,” I said. “What about your car?”

  “They towed the Jeep in. I got to go to the auto pound to get it. Coupla blocks.” He kept looking down at his crossed ankles, and there was something in his tone that I didn’t like.

  “Well, at least we’ve got wheels,” I said.

  Bodie uncrossed his ankles and stood away from the meter. A lone pickup truck, a rusty old Ford with a tail lamp burnt out, went by on Ervay going north. Bodie thrust his hands deep into his pockets. “Naw. I got wheels. You ain’t.” His gaze was on the pavement.

  I stared at him for a moment. Breaux wasn’t a moody guy. Finally I said, “What the hell is wrong?”

  He had a strange, wary expression that I’d seen on Breaux before, but couldn’t recall where. He said, “Ain’t much wrong. You been fucking Brendy’s old lady. Brendy gets his picture took fucking Connie Swarm. They haul us to jail like we was the Manson family or something, then poof, we’re back on the street. It don’t look good is all.”

  Now it dawned on me where I’d seen the look. It had been at El Reno, once when the hack had been grilling Bodie about where a half pound of Colombian gold had come from. I squared my shoulders. “Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “I got to spell it out?” he said. “Five, no, six times in my life I been to jail. Three of the times I never come out again till I’d done some time in the joint. The other times it took a pile of lawyers and a vote of Congress to get bond set for me. And them was all marijuana beefs, pissant charges. Now this time I’m busted standing there with a dead guy and holding a gun belongs to a nigger’s got a rap sheet long as the dictionary. And now, bim-bam, thank you, ma’am, I’m standing here breathing the free, no lawyers, no bond, no nothing. I ain’t seen nobody get out of jail that easy without somebody doing some snitching to the cops, FBI, some of them fuckheads. And I ain’t done no snitching, so that leaves just one guy that did. You.”

  Now I was doing a slow burn. “Hold on. I haven’t—”

  “Well, maybe you have and maybe you ain’t,” Breaux said. “But I ain’t chancing being seen around with you right now. I got a reputation. See you, Ricky, keep in touch.”

  He turned on his heel and walked away. I started to go after him, then changed my mind. There wasn’t any point in arguing, and I really couldn’t blame him. There was a crazy code among guys like Breaux, and I didn’t have time to try to prove him wrong. I had three days before D.A. Pierson put his grand jury together, and I had a lot to do. I walked north on Ervay Street into the heart of downtown.

  I waited about ten minutes on the corner of Ervay and Commerce. Just when I’d decided that the two guys—a short one in work clothes and a tall dude with a bandanna tied around his head—who were lounging against a building front across the street were going to roll me, a Yellow Cab came by. I flagged it down and rode out to the Bullrider Danceland, dozing some along the way. At the Bullrider I checked the ‘Vette over, and couldn’t see that anyone had bothered it. Then I got in, started the engine, and went home to get some rest. I was probably going to need it.

  “Hello?” Her voice was crackly and sleepy and sexy and made me want to crawl right through the telephone.

  “Hi. How was your trip?”

  There was a rustling noise over the line, and I pictured smooth brown legs moving under satin bedcovers. I turned my head and glanced at my patio door, remembering her outline as she’d stood with moonlight framing her slim bare shoulders and cascading dark hair. She said, “God, what time is it?”

  “A few minutes until four. Guess in Florida it’s almost five. Did I wake Jacqueline up?”

  “No. She’s dead to the world. Visions of sugar plums. You should see it, Rick, everything’s so green here. Tall, shady trees like a forest, almost like the Everglades. It’s hot as Hades but there’s so much to see. On top of all the Disney stuff there’s a Circus World and a Sea World. I swear we could stay a month and not see it all.”

  I shifted the princess phone’s receiver from one ear to the other. I’d as soon have bitten through my lip as bring her down, but I was going to have to. “I’ve got to ask you some questions, Don
na. About Jack.”

  “Oh.” The fun was suddenly gone from her voice. “Well, I probably won’t know the answers, but I’ll try.”

  “I’m going to name a few names. I want you to put your thinking cap on and try to remember if you’ve met any of these people, or if Jack ever talked about them. I know it’s late—or early, if you want to call it that—but try really hard. It could be important.”

  I listened to long-distance static as I fumbled on the nightstand and lit a Pall Mall. Finally she said, “Don’t you think you owe me an explanation for all of this?”

  She had me there. Sure, I owed her one, but I thought more of her than to give it to her. I decided that a half-truth was better than a whole lie. “I’m no detective, Donna, but I’ve got to try to find out who killed Jack. The police have me on their suspect list. As number one.”

  “Why, that’s absurd.”

  “Sure it is. It’s my record, I guess. They’ve got to pin it on somebody.” I thought about the photo that the grinning FBI agent had shoved under my nose, the one of Donna and me outside Turtle Creek North. And Pierson’s threat that he would indict her as well. I said, “You ready for the names?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Muhammed Double-X.”

  “Muhammed who?”

  “Never mind. Donald Lund. Or Catfish maybe, that’s the guy’s nickname.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “How about Norman Aycock?” I was grasping at straws.

  She sighed. “You must be kidding. He’s Jack’s prosecutor. Or was.”

  “Never mind him.” I felt really dumb. “Connie Swarm.”

  She suddenly laughed. “Sounds like a beehive. God.”