Стив Хокенсмит - Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 6, June 2006

But what Jayzee said was, “Why you wanna know that?”

The way he said it, it didn’t sound mean or angry. It didn’t even sound like a question. It sounded like advice.

“Well, what... what if—?”

Jayzee cut Scottie off with a sigh. “What am I askin’ you to do, C? Look a little. Talk a little. Well, lookin’ and talkin’ don’t hurt nobody, right? Whatever else happens—” Jayzee shrugged. “That ain’t you.”

Scottie hesitated, thinking it over.

“B-but what if—”

“You afraid somebody might get hurt?” Jayzee snapped. He did sound angry now. He was losing his patience.

Still, Scottie nodded.

“Well, stop worryin’ about people you don’t even know. You oughta be worried about Keesha .” Jayzee’s gaze flicked over to Freak for a split second. Freak’s eyes brightened. “You oughta be worried about your aunt. They could get hurt. You hear what I’m sayin’, retard?” He pushed the phone into Scottie’s belly like a knife. “I ain’t gonna explain anymore. You gonna do this thing.”

Scottie took the phone.

Jayzee put another grin on his face, and Scottie saw for the first time how stiff and unnatural Jayzee’s smile really was, like a plastic mask strapped to his face with a rubber band.

“That’s my man,” Jayzee said. “Don’t worry, C. This is the last time I’ll ask you to help me.” His eyes connected with Freak’s again, flashing some silent message. “The last time. I promise. Now go.”

He sent Scottie on his way with a pat on the back. Jayzee’s guys joined in as Scottie shuffled away, each of them slapping him between the shoulder blades as they giggled at some private joke.

“Thanks, Crackhead.”

“You can do it, Crackhead.”

“Yeah, go get ’em, Crackhead.”

And the last words, from Freak.

“See ya’ later, Crackhead.”

It took Scottie ten minutes to walk to Antoine Miller’s corner. Houses and apartment buildings and cars and people slid past unseen as he shambled along. He was thinking about what was going to happen to Antoine — and anyone standing nearby when it happened. He thought about how he’d never meant to hurt anybody, and how that didn’t matter. You could hurt someone by doing practically nothing at all. He thought about the people he would hurt if he did nothing now — Keesha and Aunt Nichelle, maybe even himself. And when he saw Antoine Miller, he knew what he had to do.

“He’s on the west side of Eb-Eb... Eberhart Avenue,” Scottie told Jayzee over the phone. “There’s another guy wi-with him who goes up to the cars and talks to the dr-dr... drivers. Then he calls Antoine over and Antoine g-g-gives him something in a bag.”

“Antoine comes to the car with the stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“And it’s just him and one other guy there now?”

“Yeah.”

A muffled rumble came over the line, the sound of Jayzee putting his hand over the phone and saying something to his guys. Then the rumbling stopped, and Jayzee was back, his voice clear and bright.

“Go home. Right now. Stay there.”

“Okay.”

“We shouldn’t be seen talkin’ to each other today. Freak’ll give you your money tonight. Meet him in the alley behind your building at midnight.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t tell anybody you’re goin’ to see him. It’s a secret, right? Just between us.”

“Okay.”

There was a long pause, and just as Scottie began to think Jayzee was gone, Jayzee spoke again.

“Good-bye, C,” he said.

“Bye, Jayzee.”

Jayzee hung up then, so Scottie turned the phone off and put it back in his pocket.

“S-see?” he said to the burly man who’d been leaning in close, his ear just inches from the phone while Scottie and Jayzee spoke.

“How do I know that was really Jayzee Clements?” Antoine Miller asked. He was glaring at Scottie skeptically, like someone might look at a unicorn or an angel — something too good to be true. It was the same expression he’d been wearing ever since Scottie crossed the street and walked up to him and his guys and said, “I g-got to tell you s-somethin’.”

“I d-don’t know. It just... is,” Scottie said with a shrug. “He’ll send Tommy and... B-Boost. They’re probably on their way now. Jayzee’ll stay on his corner a-a... alone with Freak.”

“If this is some kinda trick, retard, I swear I’ll hunt you down and mess you up,” Antoine growled.

“I ain’t l-lyin’.”

Antoine went on staring at Scottie for a long time, his guys gathered silently around him, waiting for his signal, ready to sneer, laugh, kill.

“Naw,” Antoine finally said, “you’re too dumb to lie this good, ain’t you?”

Then he turned away and started barking out orders.

“T.T., Ray — go get Tonio and have him drive you down to Jayzee’s corner. You know what to do — just like we done with Jon-Jon and McNeil. Monk and me’ll take care of things here. Monk, when that car pulls up, you go around behind it and...”

They were ignoring Scottie, too absorbed in their war plans to waste any more time on the “retard.” So he left.

Scottie took his time walking home. He was hoping he’d miss it all — return to find a quiet street, a deserted corner. Whatever he’d brought into his neighborhood, he didn’t want to see it.

Not that he should feel guilty. None of it would be his fault. Jayzee said it himself: Lookin’ don’t hurt nobody. Talkin’ don’t hurt nobody. Whatever else happens, that ain’t you, right? Right?

When Scottie got back to his block, he saw the flashing lights of police cars and ambulances. A woman — someone’s mom or aunt or sister — was out by Jayzee’s corner, screaming. A crowd was gathered around, people pulled from in front of their televisions by the drama outside their doors. Some were trying to comfort the hysterical woman. Most simply stood nearby, watching.

Scottie didn’t join them. Instead he went upstairs and switched on the TV and the Nintendo.

He turned the volume up loud.

My secretary-receptionist-fiancée Beverly Wayne, leaned entrancingly against the doorjamb between my office and her waiting room, arched her eyebrows, and tossed her red tresses at me. “She is here, Michael, my boy. But before I show Miss Moneybags in, please be reminded that we are firmly engaged and that she is a murder suspect.”

“She must be very pretty,” I said.

Beverly smiled and raised one hand up to her throat. “Gorgeous she is, upstairs, but from here on down, gangbusters! Watch your step, Dr. Karlins. I shall be lurking just outside this thin door.”

Clinical psychologists deserve a little fun, and since most of my clients in my West L.A. practice are about as exciting to observe as a dish of boiled spinach, this one was bound to be interesting, gorgeous or not. I had never had a client worth several millions and suspected of murdering the source of the money.

Rising, I moved the chair by my desk out a bit when Elizabeth Anderson arrived. She was, indeed, a lovely girl, the kind who wins beauty contests. Her face, bearing, and figure would give her a sporting chance at the movies or television after winning the contests, but I’d read that she had taken a different course. After becoming Miss Nevada of 1970, she had become engaged to the young owner of several forests, lumber mills, and paper factories, and had withdrawn abruptly from the Miss America contest. He had rewritten his will to make her his sole heiress, in happy anticipation of a February wedding, but someone shot him in January and the latest tabloid word was that all the money was going to her, provided she did not get convicted of his murder.