Elmore Leonard: City Primeval

BECAUSE OF THE LIGHTSRaymond Cruz thought of a movie set. The overhead burglar spot and the headlights illuminating the scene. He thought of an actor in a television commercial saying, “The victim’s suit is light blue, the blood dark red and the gravel a grayish white.” He thought of a movie running backward in a projector, seeing the uniformed officers sucked into the blue and white Plymouths and the squad cars and the EMS van and the morgue wagon yanked out of the picture. Stop there-leaving the silver Continental and the murder victim. He heard Jerry Hunter say, “Well, somebody finally did in the little fucker.”

It was difficult to think of Alvin Guy as victim.

“When I talked to Herzog,” Raymond said, “the first thing I thought was how come it hasn’t happened before this?” He stood at the edge of the scene with Hunter and his executive sergeant, Norbert Bryl. “Who found him?”

“Car from the 11th,” Bryl said. “The judge’d called nine-eleven on his car phone, but the operator couldn’t get the location. Then a few minutes later a woman on the next street over there, 20413 Coventry, she calls at one-thirty-five to report gunshots.”

“How about witnesses?”

“Nothing yet. Wendell’s talking to the woman. Maureen’s around someplace. American La France doesn’t have a night number, but I don’t think Judge Guy was here buying fire equipment.”

“The squad-car guys make him?”

“Yeah. They couldn’t tell by looking at him, but his wallet was lying there.”

Raymond said, quietly but earnestly, “If they knew it’s Guy then why didn’t they pick him up and dump him in Hazel Park? It’s two blocks away.”

“Lieutenants aren’t supposed to talk like that,” Bryl said. “It’s a nice idea though. Their body, their case. The squad-car guys didn’t know for sure he’s dead, so they call EMS. EMS comes, they take one look, call the meat wagon.”

Hunter said, “They don’t know he’s dead ? He took about three in the mouth, two more in the chest, through and through, big fucking exit wounds-they don’t know he’s dead.”

Uniformed evidence technicians were taking Polaroid shots of the body and the Mark VI, measuring distances, drawing a plan of the scene, picking up betting ticket stubs, credit cards, cigarette butts; they would haul the judge’s car to the police garage on Jefferson and go over it for prints, poke around in all its crevices. One of the morgue attendants, in khaki shirt and pants, stood watching with a plastic body bag over his shoulder. Bryl began making notes for his Case Assigned Report.

It was 2:50 A.M. Alvin Guy had been dead little more than an hour and Raymond Cruz, the acting lieutenant in the navy-blue suit he had put on because he was meeting the girl from the News , felt time running out. He said, “Well, let’s knock on some doors. We’re not gonna do this one without a witness. We start dipping in the well something like this we’ll have people copping to everything but the killing of Jesus. I don’t want suspects out of the file. I want a direction we can move on. I want to bust in the door while the guy’s still in bed, opens his eyes he can’t fucking believe it. Otherwise-we’re all retired down in Florida working for the Coconuts Police Department, the case still open. I don’t want that to happen.”

Norbert Bryl, the executive sergeant of Squad Seven, Detroit Police Homicide Section, had his graying hair razor-cut and styled at “J” Roberts on East Seven Mile once a month. He liked dark shirts and light-colored ties, beige on maroon, wore wire-frame tinted glasses and carried a flashlight that was nearly two feet long. Bryl plotted a course before he moved.

He said, “You don’t want to rule out robbery as the only motive.”

“Fires through the windshield and hits Guy in the mouth,” Raymond said. “I want to meet this robber before he gets into something heavy.”

The acting lieutenant left a few minutes later to find a telephone and report to Inspector Herzog. They did not talk about murder over radios.

Wendell Robinson, in a three-piece light-gray suit, came out of the darkness holding a small brown-paper sack. He said, “You doing any good?… I talk to the woman on Coventry call the nine-eleven? I say, I believe you heard some gunshots. The woman say yeah, and I saw the man done it. Earlier he was out in the alley and I saw him with this gun. I ask her which man is this and she told me he lives down the street, twenty-two five-eleven. I go down there, get the man out of his bed and ask him about a gun he has. Man frowns and squints like he’s trying to get his memory working. Says no, I don’t recall no gun. I say well, the lady down the street saw you with a gun, out’n the alley. You come on downtown we’ll have a witness lineup, see if she can pick you out. The man say oh, that gun. Yeah, old thing I was looking to shoot rats with. Yeah, I found that gun yesterday, right in the same alley.” Wendell held up the bag. “Little froze-up Saturday night piece, blow the man’s hand off he ever fire it.”

“They lie to you,” Hunter said. “They fucking lie right to your face.”

Another man sitting in a car had been shot to death in front of the Soup Kitchen, corner of Franklin and Orleans, and the shooter-they learned later-had waited around to see the police cars and the EMS van arrive before he hopped on a Jefferson Avenue bus and went home.

There were people here, hanging around the unmarked blue Plymouth sedans, who had thrown on clothes or a bathrobe to come out and watch. Most of them seemed to be black people. Women holding their arms like they were cold. Figures silhouetted by the street light on the corner. It was a clear night, temperature in the mid-60s, warm for October.

Hunter, running a finger beneath his sandy mustache, stared openly at the watchers, studying them. When he turned to Bryl he said, “If it’s robbery, why’d the judge pull in here?”

“To take a leak,” Bryl said. “How do I know why he pulled in. But he was robbed and that’s all we got so far.”

“It was a hit,” Hunter said. “Two guys. They set him up-see him at the track, arrange a meet. Maybe sell him some dope. One of ’em gets in the car with the judge, like he’s gonna make the deal, the other guy-he’s not gonna shoot through the window, his partner’s in the line of fire. So he hits him through the windshield. With a .45.”

“Now you have the weapon,” Bryl said. “Where’d you get the .45?”

“Same place you got the piss he had to take,” Hunter said. “Any way you put the judge here, for whatever reason, it’s still a hit.”

“This other man in the car,” Wendell Robinson said, “he sitting there while the judge’s calling the nine-eleven?”

“You guys’re hung up on details,” Hunter said. “We’re talking about motive. Did the shooter have a motive other’n robbery?”

“Okay, I’m gonna give you the job, make up the list of suspects,” Bryl said, “if you have enough paper and pencils and you have about a month with nothing to do, because you know how many names you’re talking about? Every lawyer ever had a case in front of Judge Guy. Every guy he ever sent away. Everybody in the Wayne County Prosecutor’s office. Every police officer-I’ll be conservative-half the police officers in the city. Put down about twenty-six hundred names right there. Anybody even knew the prick, it’s gone through their mind.”

Wendell Robinson said to Hunter, “Idea upsets him.”

“Yeah, he don’t want to think about it,” Hunter said, “but it was a fucking hit and he knows it.”

Maureen Downey appeared out of the dark now and stood listening, holding a notebook and purse to her breast the way young girls carry school books. When Hunter noticed her she said, “If it was a hit, why’d he drive in here?”