Robert Tanenbaum - Absolute rage

Click.

He stopped, startled. Something had struck the sliding glass doors.

Clack.

Someone throwing pebbles against the glass. He slipped behind the curtains and looked out. Beyond the little concrete apron and its plastic chairs a sloping lawn dropped to a line of bushes. In front of the bushes stood a slim figure, glowing like marble in the light of a gibbous moon. Karp slid the door aside and stepped out on the apron. The figure made a beckoning motion, silently. Karp felt a chill; it was like something out of a fairy tale. A scatter of rubber zori lay at his feet, his family's, one large, two medium, two small. An extra pair of zori? Image of giving away little clothes. No, don't think about that now. He slipped into the largest ones and headed toward the figure.

As he came closer, he saw it was a boy, an incredibly pale, wheathaired boy, dressed in bib overalls and a white T-shirt.

"You're Darryl," Karp said. "You talked to my wife one time."

"Uhn-huh. You foller me, now. He wants to say sompin' to you."

Karp followed the boy down a dark pebbled path through the bushes, to a picnic area: a lawn, some tables and grills, a duck pond. Seated at one of the tables was an old man.

Karp sat down. The boy stood behind the old man.

"I'm Amos Jonson," said the man.

"I guessed you were. You spoke to my wife."

"Yessir, that was me. I wanted to talk to you. Startin' off, I want to say I'm sorry for your trouble. I hope your son's all right. I lost two of mine, so I know what that's like."

"We have hopes for a recovery, but he's not out of the woods yet."

The man nodded. "Since I heard, I been considerin' what to do, and I come up with this. I been hiding for a long time, with Darryl here. In an old shaller mine on Belo. Afeared every minute the Cades were gonna send someone to get me, or Darryl. And I got to thinkin', here's this feller comes from away, to help get those Cades, all legal, like nobody ever tried to do before, not since eighteen and fity-six anyways. And then they shoot down his little boy. I considered and I contemplated and I said to myself, 'Amos Jonson, are you still a man, or are you a slug worm crawlin' in the dark?' It got so I couldn't hardly stand myself. So I come here tonight."

"What have you got to tell me, Mr. Jonson?" said Karp out of a cracker-dry throat.

"I seen it all. Me and Darryl here. We was frog-jiggin' under the green bridge. Two cars come over the bridge and stop on the crown of it. We hid oursels. I seen it was George Floyd's big Chrysler car and a Ford pickup. George gets out of the car and goes over to the pickup. He has words with a man in the pickup. The man gets out. I see it's Wayne Cade. They have more words, cussin' and arguin'. Finally, I seen Wade give George a pistol. Then George goes over to the winder of the pickup and talks some to whoever's in there. I couldn't see that feller at all. But the feller passes out a pair of yeller boots. George throws the boots and the pistol into the river. The pistol goes in the water, but the boots land on a little spit that's there when it's low water. Well, sir, then they go off. Me and Darryl look at the boots, but we don't touch 'em, 'cause we can see they're covered in blood. Then Darryl goes in and feels around with his bar feet and fishes out the pistol. We seen where it fell by the splash. Then I thought, well, George dropped his gun in the river, we ought to do him the favor of giving it back to him."

"So you hid it under the birdbath."

"Darryl done it," said the man. "Tell him, Darryl."

Darryl bobbed his head. "Uhn-huh. Next night I went down to his house. I got me a Bi-Lo bag from the trash and put the gun in it, and then I calculated, where should I lay it? I saw that old birdbath he got there, and I said, that's the place, 'cause I'd alus know where it was, do you see? And then I stopped and said, I should ought to have a memorial in it."

"A memorial?"

"Yessir. So no man could say, no, that ain't the gun he throwed in the river, it was some other gun look jest the same. So, I took my clasp knife and screwed the handle plate off'n it, and I took this small piece of paper that was in the bag, like the Bi-Lo gives out when you trade?"

"A receipt."

"Uhn-huh. Well, sir, I wrote it with a pencil on that little small piece of paper: 'This gun throwed in the river at the green bridge by George Floyd and I pulled it out,' and under I put my name, Darryl Mark Jonson, and what the date was, which I got from a newspaper that was in the trash, too, and then I screed it up small as small and put it in the handle and screwed the plate back on. And then I buried it under the birdbath."

Karp said, "Darryl, would you like me to give you a great big kiss?"

"Nosir," said Darryl coolly, "but thank you kindly anyhow."

"Tell me again why this isn't an entrapment," said Stan Hawes.

"Because we're not entrapping him into the commission of a crime," said Karp. "We have no legal interest in any crimes he may be contemplating or conspiring to commit. We're only using the contemplated crime as a predicate to get him to admit to our agent the details of a crime that he actually did arrange, to wit, the murders of the Heeney family."

"I don't know. It sounds kind of complicated. I especially don't like using my office to engage in a… I guess it's a fraud, isn't it?"

"It's no different from what we did to bring the Cades into town."

"Yes," snapped Hawes, "and look at how great that turned out!"

Then Hawes recalled what had happened to Karp's son and his face colored. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean… okay, let's start over here. You say we have a much better case against Floyd now, with the gun and the Jonson testimony, and I agree. Seward and Floyd will want to deal, but you don't want me to make a formal offer."

"No, no deal with Floyd. I want him to take the full hit. We won't need his testimony against Weames if this works. That's the whole point, Stan. But Lester has to believe that a deal is imminent, which is why you have to leak it to him and spread it widely around the courthouse."

"And then Lester calls George, and George says, 'What deal? Ain't no deal, Lester.' "

"And will Lester believe him? Why should he? Do you really think that there's so much love and loyalty between these two crook bastards that Lester Weames will credit that Floyd would be willing to spend his whole life in prison to keep his dear friend Lester safe from harm?"

"Okay, okay, let's say you're right. Lester now believes he's going to get the shaft from his good buddy. Why should he go to New York City and hire a killer, like you say? Why should he go and try to hire your killer?"

"He's not my killer, Stan," said Karp, trying for patience. "But I have it on reliable information that there are very few people at the top of this profession. A number of these people based in New York have been questioned by people you don't want to know who they are: Did a guy answering Lester's description come by last June, July, and ask about doing a hit and backed out when he heard the price?"

"Why would a professional hit man give out that kind of information?"

"He might if the people who asked him were good and regular customers." Karp's statement hung in the air for several long seconds.

"Oh," said Hawes, his face wrinkling with distaste. "And you think that explains why Lester went to New York then and pulled ten grand out of the union account and put it back in again?"

"It's the only explanation that makes sense. He went to hire a pro. It was too expensive, so he figured he'd save some dough and get it done locally. So he brings George into it. George, get someone to whack Heeney. George says, okay, boss, but we got to be careful with the payoff. We'll use the giveback money. Lester didn't think of that himself when he pulled out the ten grand. George is the moneyman, after all. Now Lester needs to get rid of George."