Chapter 104
I WAS WITH CONKLIN in his private hospital room with its view of the parking lot. He looked pale, his hair lying damp across his forehead, but his smile was strong and he was cracking jokes, all very good signs.
I angled the reclining chair toward his bed.
“You’re not mad, are you, Rich?”
“Why? Because you cracked Pet Girl while I lay here like a sack of sand? Why would that make me mad? I mean, come on, Lindsay,” he said, turning his brown eyes on me. “Nailing that psycho, even if I wasn’t there at the triumphal moment — that’s what’s important. Nurse! I need a cyanide drip, stat.”
I laughed. Rich had stood up to frickin’ Pet Girl’s snake attack, and for that alone, he was a hero. He was alive — and both our shields, McCorkle’s, too, had been buffed to gleaming for teeing up Norma Johnson for the DA.
This was what we liked to call “a great day to be a cop.”
A nurse’s aide brought in an early-bird blue plate special for Conklin, and as he moved the mush around his dish, I told him about my return to Pet Girl’s apartment.
“Animal Rescue said that the place was clean, but seriously, how did they know they’d gotten every last snake? I walked on tiptoes, Rich, and I’m not even sure my tiptoes touched the ground.”
He grinned, said, “Yer a brave lass, Lindsay.”
“I grabbed that handbag, slammed the door behind me, found the keys. Fifty of the sixty-two were brass with a round top.”
“Did one of them fit the lock?”
“You in a hurry?” I asked him.
“No, no. Take your time.”
I laughed again, glad that Conklin would be out of this house of horrors as soon as Doc gave him the thumbs-up.
“I met McCorkle at Pet Girl’s storage unit,” I said. “He brought this big kid along with him from the lab.
“So we get the door open, and we’re staring at maybe ten yards of cardboard cartons. Big Kid starts taking the boxes down, and McCorkle and I flip through files for five hours looking for ‘Natajara,’ ” I said.
“Turns out Natajara is the name of an Indian god, wears a cobra around his shoulders. Natajara Exports sells poisonous reptiles.”
“Lindsay, you rock.”
“Yes, I do. I found the correspondence between a Mr. Radhakrishnan of Natajara Exports and Christopher Ross, CEO of Pacific Cargo Lines. And I found an invoice for a crate of kraits. Dated January nineteen eighty-two.”
“Asshole kept a record of his snake buy? But how do you figure he was the killer and also a victim?”
“McCorkle thinks his death was an accident, possibly a suicide. We’ll never know, but this is for sure: Norma Johnson is going away for six consecutive lifetimes — and McCorkle has stamped his cold case closed.”
I was high-fiving my partner when a curly-haired blond tornado blew into Conklin’s room with a gift-wrapped box and a bouquet of helium balloons.
“Hey, you,” Conklin said, clearly delighted.
“Hey, you, too.”
Grinning, Cindy said hi to me, kissed Conklin, hugged him, put the box on his stomach, and demanded he open it. “It’s a bathrobe,” she said. “I don’t want anyone seeing your buns but me.”
Conklin laughed, his face coloring. As he worked on the ribbon, I said, “Sounds like my cue to leave. Hope to see you at the Hall tomorrow, bud.”
I kissed Conklin on the cheek and hugged my irrepressible friend Cindy, and as I left the room, I had a thought: Cindy and Rich are good together.
They really are.
Chapter 105
THAT NIGHT, just as Claire, Yuki, and I came through the door to Susie’s, the power went out, instantly plunging the place into a dusky giddiness. Strangers bumped into one another, ordering beer while it was still cold, and the steel drummer carried on without a microphone, ramping up his mellow voice and singing out, “Salt, tea, rice, smoked fish, are nice and the rum is fine any time of year….”
We three pressed on toward the back room, took our usual table, saving Cindy’s seat until she finished taking Conklin home with his new bathrobe.
“She is coming, though?” Yuki asked.
Claire and I shrugged dramatically in unison. Yuki laughed, and Lorraine put candles on the table. She brought us a pitcher of draft, a big basket of chips, and a bowl of salsa, saying, “This is dinner until the power goes back on.”
I hijacked Cindy’s time, used it to tell Claire and Yuki about Pet Girl’s confession and the wrap-up of McCorkle’s old cold case.
Claire jumped in to report on her newly revised autopsy of McKenzie Oliver’s body, purring, “The bite mark was just above his shoulder blade. No one would have found those pinpricks unless they were purely looking for them.”
Just then, Cindy breezed in and found our table. She was out of breath but glowing as she slid in beside Yuki. Lorraine brought over another sweating pitcher of beer, saying, “We’re closing up, ladies. This is the last, and it’s on Susie.”
I filled Cindy’s glass, and she lifted it to all of us.
“To you guys, for saving Richie’s life.”
“What?” Claire sputtered.
“You, Claire, for telling Doc about the kraits. Otherwise he wouldn’t have put the aquarium on standby. And you, Linds, for getting that belt around his arm, telling him what to do.”
“Are you planning to thank the Academy now? What I did for Conklin, he’d do for me. That’s what it means to be partners.”
“True, but you did it.”
“Don’t mind her. She’s full of L-U-V,” Claire told me.
“She’s full of something.”
“And you,” Cindy said to Yuki.
“I’m innocent. I had nothing to do with saving Conklin’s life.”
“You found Doc.”
“Well,” Claire said, “I guess we should all be thanking you, too, Cindy.”
“Come on.”
“Conklin’s been pining for Lindsay for so long, and since she didn’t tumble, I guess it’s good of you to give that boy something to live for.”
Cindy lowered her lashes, put a hilarious spin on it when she said, “The pleasure is all mine.”
We all laughed, even me, even Cindy. And when we’d wiped away our tears, Yuki said she had something to tell us.
“I’m going away for a couple of weeks. My uncle Jack invited me, and I have vacation coming.”
“You’re going to Kyoto?” I asked.
“It’ll do me good to get away.”
“Are you going to see Doc again?”
“We’re going to, you know, ‘play it by ear.’ But my heart’s not in it, Lindsay. Or more accurately, my head’s not in it.”
Claire said, “You can’t fake it, sweetheart.”
“Can’t, couldn’t, won’t,” said Yuki.
Chapter 106
MORNING CAME, and Conklin was at his desk when I got there. He was scrubbed and shaven and looked like he’d won a million dollars. The day crew gathered around our desks wanting to shake Conklin’s hand and tell him how great it was to have him back.
Brenda had baked and was saying, “Nobody doesn’t like peanut-butter-chocolate cake,” and she was right, but we hadn’t gotten more than two bites into it when Conklin took a call from Skip Wilkinson, one of his buddies in Narcotics and Vice.
After Conklin announced his name, all he said was “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No kidding. Yeah. Yeah. We’ll be right there.”
He hung up, said to me, “Narcs busted a crack whore last night. She was carrying a twenty-two registered to Neil Pincus. They’re holding her for us.”
We drove to the nondescript station house, a former Roto- Rooter plant taking up a quarter of a block on Potrero at Eighteenth. We took the stairs to the third floor at a run.
Skip Wilkinson met us at the gate.
He walked us back to the observation room, where we could see the suspect through the one-way mirror. She was a young black female, bony, dressed in threadbare jeans and
a filthy pink baby-doll top. Her blond weave was coming loose, and judging from her fidgety stare and her shakes, I figured she’d had a bad night in lockup and was in need of a fix.
Wilkinson said, “That’s Lawanda Lewis, age seventeen. Here’s her sheet.”
I read, “Two arrests for prostitution. This is her first drug arrest. You’re looking at her for homicide?”
Anything was possible, but I didn’t see it.
“Did you catch her address?” Wilkinson asked me, stabbing the rap sheet with his finger. “It’s on Cole Street. That’s Bagman’s house.
“She lived there. Maybe she still does. Anyway, she was one of his girls. She could be your doer. Take your shot,” said Wilkinson.
It was one of those can’t-believe-it moments.
That do-gooder attorney Neil Pincus lied when he said he didn’t own a gun. Then he said it was stolen. I thought that was a lie, too, but I never expected his gun to turn up.
I was wrong.
Chapter 107
CONKLIN AND I walked into the interrogation room, Conklin pulling out a chair for me, showing what a gentleman he was. I sat and so did he, and the girl tried to get small in her chair as Conklin told her our names.
“Lawanda,” he said nicely, “is this right? You used to sell drugs for Bagman?”
The girl stared down at the table, picked polish off her nails, didn’t look up at all.
Conklin said, “Look, we don’t care about the drugs. We know what kind of life you were living with him. We know how he used you.”
“Bagman treated me fine.”
“Is that right? So you had no reason to kill him?”
“Kill him? Me? I didn’t kill him. No, no, no. Not me.”
We had no proof that Lawanda Lewis had used the gun or even that Neil Pincus’s weapon had killed Rodney Booker.
The slugs lodged inside Bagman’s head were so soft and so fragmented, they could never be matched to anything. But I was sure Lawanda Lewis couldn’t know that.
“I have to tell you, Lawanda,” I said, “you’re in very serious trouble. Your gun was used to kill Bagman. Unless you give us reason to think otherwise, you’re going down for his murder.”
Lawanda Lewis sprang up from the chair, squatted against the wall in the corner of the room, and covered her head with her hands. She was in withdrawal to the max. In a minute, she’d be screaming, foaming at the mouth.
“I didn’t do it! I didn’t kill anyone!”
“That gun says different,” Conklin said.
“I need something. I’m dying.”
“Talk first, then we’ll get you fixed up.”
As Lawanda crouched in the corner, rocking and wailing, I was running the crime in my head, trying to put it together.
Say the girl had needed a fix. Booker had told her to go out and work. She had Pincus’s gun. So she followed Bagman and held him up on the street, and when he didn’t give her the drugs, she shot and robbed him. But how could she have also beaten him? She was small. Certainly no match for Booker.
“You’ll get me a fix?” she asked Conklin.
“We’ll get you help,” Conklin said.
Lawanda was scratching at her skin, ripping at her hair. I was sure we’d lost her, that she’d fallen down a black hole of misery and didn’t know we were still there.
But she hung on. Still rocking, still staring at the floor, she shouted as if possessed, “Sammy Pincus gave me the gun so I could protect myself on the street!”
I got out of my chair, walked over to Lawanda, stooped down so I could look in her eyes. I asked her, “How did Sammy Pincus get that gun?”
The girl stared at me as if I were as dumb as a brick. “She took it from her father. Mr. Neil? He’s the one who killed Bagman Jesus.”
Chapter 108
MY HEART WAS banging against my chest like a hammer on a steel drum. Conklin was behind me as we pounded up the narrow stairs leading to the law offices above the soup kitchen called From the Heart.
A gaggle of girls from the nail salon tried to pass us, saw the determination on our faces, and backed right up and flattened themselves against the wall at the landing, one of them saying loudly to the rest of them, “Those are cops!”
I banged on the door to “Pincus and Pincus,” and when a voice said, “Who is it?” I said, “Mr. Pincus, this is the police.”
Al Pincus, the bigger, younger brother, came to the door.
“How can I help you?” he asked, barring our entrance with his body.
“For starters, you can let us in,” I said.
He sighed, opened the door wide, called over his shoulder, “Neil, the police.”
Neil Pincus stepped out of his office. He was dressed as he was the last time I saw him: gray pants, white shirt, cuffs rolled up, no tie.
I took the warrant out of my inside jacket pocket and showed it to “Mr. Neil.”
“You’re under arrest.”
He snatched the warrant out of my hand, unfolded it, scanned it fast, said, “Are you crazy? I didn’t murder anyone.”
“We have your gun, Mr. Pincus. Showed up in the hands of a witness who will testify that you shot and killed Rodney Booker.”
“That’s nuts,” said Neil Pincus, wandering back toward his office. “I’m calling my lawyer.”
“Stop right where you are!” Conklin shouted. “Hands up where we can see them. Do it now.”
I hadn’t expected resistance, but I was prepared for it. As Conklin held his Glock on Neil Pincus, I shoved him to the wall and cuffed his hands behind his back.
“You have the right to remain silent,” I said as I frisked him.
“Hey!” Al Pincus shouted. “Let my brother go. You’ve got it all wrong. I’m the one who killed Rodney Booker.”
“Al, no! Listen,” Neil Pincus said to me, “Al had nothing to do with it. I did it. I killed the bastard because of what he did to my daughter.”
“It was me, and I’m not sorry,” Alan Pincus insisted. “Booker was an evil bastard. What he did to Sammy — that kid once had all the promise in the world.
“Neil wanted to get him legally, but Booker was too slick. So I took my brother’s gun. I found that shit on the street corner, and I shot him in the head over and over and over.”
“Thanks,” I said. “There were enough bullets in Booker and he took enough of a beating that both of you could have killed him. In fact, that’s my theory. You two took him down together.”
I read Alan Pincus his rights and Conklin cuffed him, but a niggle of worry was starting at the back of my brain.
Neil Pincus said he did it.
Al Pincus said he did it.
What kind of case could be made based on the hearsay testimony of Lawanda Lewis, a drugged-out crack whore who might be dead before any of this came to trial?
I answered my own question. If each of the Pincus brothers took credit for killing Bagman, if each said he did it alone, that could give a juror reasonable doubt. One juror was all it took for a mistrial — and I doubted the city would stomach more than one trial for a lawless freak like Rodney Booker.
And then I got it.
The Pincus brothers had planned it this way.
Conklin and I marched the two men down the stairs, my mind racing ahead to separating them, interrogating them, trying to get one to flip the other. But when we got to the bottom of the stairs, my train of thought was derailed.
A crowd was waiting at the open doorway — and that’s when things got really crazy.
Chapter 109
A MOB OF PEOPLE had poured out of From the Heart onto the street. There were homeless people and there were volunteers, and in the thickening crowd I saw people who didn’t look like they belonged: businessmen and women from the surrounding area.
I shouted, “Stand back! Let us through!” But instead the crowd tightened around us, jostling us, threatening to turn ugly. I fumbled for my phone, pressed numbers without looking, and somehow managed to get the desk sergeant on the l
ine.
I gave him my badge number and location, said we needed crowd control. Forthwith.
A man wearing a good suit pushed toward us, calling out to me, “Sergeant, Sergeant, I’m Franklin Morris, a member of the Fifth Street Association. I can’t let you arrest these men because I shot Rodney Booker — and I can prove it. Neil tried to stop me from doing it, but I had to do what was right. Tell her, Neil.”
It was the beginning of a chain reaction, the likes of which I’d never seen before — and could have never imagined.
“I’m Luvie Jump,” said a black woman wearing purple frames and a dashiki over her tights, turning her thin body sideways, edging toward me as she talked. “Don’t listen to Mr. Morris, Sergeant. He’s Neil Pincus’s best friend. Listen to me.
“We called the police repeatedly, and they did nothing. Rodney Booker was a one-man plague. He sold drugs. He turned nice girls into druggies and whores. I shot him because he was the devil. Ask anyone. I did it with Neil Pincus’s dirty little gun and I’m ready to come in.”
I was getting dizzy and a little sick.
The car was only twenty yards away, but the crowd was so deep, I couldn’t see it. I listened for sirens, but I heard nothing save the uproar around me.
And yet another man confessed, grabbing at my sleeve, saying his name was Harry Bainbridge. He was black, with Rasta hair and gold teeth, looked homeless, said he beat Booker with a two-by-four after he blew the man’s brains out with Pincus’s Saturday night special.
“Those newspaper stories saying what a good man Bagman Jesus was? He was dog shit. Where was you people when we called you? Why I have to be the one to get blood on my hands? But I did it, lady cop. I stole Mr. Pincus’s gun, and I shot that mother. He was begging for his life, and I didn’t care because of what he did to my girl, Flora.”
A woman stepped forward, or maybe it was a man dressed as a woman, I couldn’t be sure. Said her name was Mercy.