Robert Andrews - A Murder of Justice

Marcus spoke for the first time. “You two finished?”

Frank and Jose exchanged glances.

“Take us back to Ms. Lipton, please,” Frank said.

Lipton hadn’t moved from her wicker chair.

“You find what you wanted to find?”

“Thank you for your help, Ms. Lipton,” Jose said.

“Didn’t leave anything behind, did you?” she asked, eyelids heavy.

Frank ignored her.

“Do you have any notion who killed my boy?”

“No,” Jose answered softly. “No, ma’am, we don’t.” He let the silence ripen, then asked, “Do you?”

Lipton sat back in her chair. Her face suddenly seemed to wilt. She shook her head. “Would it do me any good to tell you?”

“I don’t know, ma’am,” Jose said very deliberately, in a low voice. “I don’t know if it would do you any good or not.”

“How do you mean that… you don’t know if it would do me any good or not?”

Jose lowered his voice even more. “Nobody can tell you that except yourself.”

Lipton stared at Jose a long time, things going on behind her dark eyes. “How many times my boy hit?”

“We don’t know, Ms. Lipton,” Frank said, “not yet.”

“My boy dead, and that Pencil gonna live…” Lipton mused, trailing off as if she had banked something she had to think about later. She assumed a businesslike tone. “When we get his car?”

“Like I said, Ms. Lipton, it’s at impound. We’ll be going over it for evidence.”

“Evidence?” Lipton’s mouth tightened. “Evidence against who?”

“Just evidence,” Jose said evenly.

“How long?”

“Beg pardon?”

“How long before we get his car?” Lipton’s exasperation was growing.

Frank watched as Marcus, standing behind her, stirred restlessly, gunner’s eyes locked on the two detectives. Frank became aware of the weight of his own shoulder holster and the drape of his coat over his left armpit.

Him first. Then… then her?

“Can’t say, exactly,” Jose said.

“Can’t?… Or won’t?”

“Can’t, ma’am. I can’t say right now, and you know that. As soon’s we can, that’s all I can say.”

For several heartbeats the four remained motionless, trapped in amber.

Frank broke the silence. “Ms. Lipton. Your son’s killer… you have any idea… any guess?”

Lipton took a deep breath. She held it, then let it out, rocking ever so slightly in rhythm with music only she could hear.

“Idea?” she said in a hard-edged whisper. “I got an eye- dea. I got an idea that you folks did him in.” She paused as though listening to her own thinking coming back to her. “Yes,” she said with finality, “I think I’m looking at the people who did my boy in.”

Frank was unlocking the car when Jose’s cell phone chirped. Jose stood head thrust forward, phone pressed against his ear, massive body locked in place, as if the slightest movement might break a fragile connection. Then, almost imperceptibly, he nodded. His shoulders relaxed. He turned.

“Daddy,” Jose explained. “Wants me to drop by.”

“Want to skip coffee?”

Jose gave Frank an incredulous look. “Not with your turn to buy.”

Adair set the orders of hash browns in front of the two men. Steam rose, fragrant and seductive, heavy with oil and paprika. Frank reached down the counter and snagged a bottle of Tabasco. After dousing his potatoes, he passed the hot sauce to Jose.

Adair watched, then gave out his usual warning. “Stuff’ll rot your gut.”

Jose came back with his usual reply. “Hasn’t yet.”

Adair ran a rag over the already clean counter in front of them. “Word is, Skeeter Hodges got whacked tonight.”

Jose held up the Tabasco bottle. “Empty.”

Adair sighed, reached under the counter, and came up with another bottle. He held it just out of Jose’s reach. “And Pencil Crawfurd caught a few,” he added. He looked at Jose, then Frank.

Frank raised his empty mug for a refill, pointedly saying nothing.

Adair took the hint and gave up on the fishing. Sighing again, he handed Jose the Tabasco and collected both mugs. “Whoever zapped those shits,” he said, returning with the refills, “did us all a favor.”

“Isn’t hunting season for humans yet in the District,” Jose said.

“Too bad,” Adair replied over his shoulder as he walked away, down the length of the counter.

Jose and Frank picked at their hash browns. More out of needing something to do than being hungry. Leaving their plates half full, they drank their coffee without talking. Adair had gone to a booth at the back, where he sat working on the books.

Just the three of them in the place.

Night traffic sounds from outside joined with the gurgling of hot water in the coffee urns.

Jose looked around. “Lonesome is an empty diner at night.” He took another sip of his coffee.

“Skeeter was what… thirty-four, -five?”

“Six. Thirty-six.”

“Old to be living at home.”

Jose considered this, then shook his head. “Advantages… Pretty much come and go as he wanted. Besides, with Mama and Marcus there, he could tomcat around town all he wanted and come home to twenty-four/seven room service and security.”

“That, and a twenty-four/seven alibi,” Frank conceded.

“Sure was into high-tech.”

The flat-panel TVs, the circuit boards, the scanner, and the secure phone.

“Pac-Man generation,” Frank said, still putting a follow-on thought together. “You think about it, Hoser… how much Skeeter’s business depends on communication. He can get stuff at Radio Shack or off the Net… scanners, bugging equipment, scrambler phones… stuff that’s years ahead of anything we’ve got.”

“What’s more,” Jose said, “he doesn’t need a court order to use it. Something else…?”

“Yeah?”

“Notice how eager Mama Lipton was to get his car back? We oughta have R.C. take it apart.” Jose said, adding it to a mental checklist. “ ’Nother thing-Skeeter’s organization.”

“Who’s gonna inherit?”

“Yeah. Takeovers in that line of work get messy.”

“Might tell us who had the motive and the balls to go after him,” Frank said.

Jose scribbled a reminder in his notebook, then sat pensively as though something else was calling for his attention.

“Yeah,” he said finally. “The chair.”

“Chair?”

“Babba Lipton. The chair she was sitting in… with the big round back.”

“Yeah?”

“Remind you of something?”

It wasn’t until Jose asked that a memory flashed to Frank like a falling star. He struggled with it, trying to give it definition, time, place.

“Huey Newton,” Jose hinted.

Instant clarity: The Black Panther poster. Huey Newton. Black leather jacket. Black beret. Shotgun in one hand, spear in the other. Sitting in a thronelike wicker chair. Brooding hate and malevolence.

“When we came in,” Jose continued, “I knew she knew. The way she was waiting for us, sitting in that chair.”

Frank put down his mug. “Yeah. She had a hard time. She’s a tough lady.”

“Yes. No.”

“Yes? No?”

“Yes… she had a hard time. No… tough is raising a good kid. It’s easy to do what she did.”

“What’d she mean by that crap about her looking at Skeeter’s killers?”

Jose shook his head. “Partner, I done finished with my psychoanalysis for the night. We got to get back to detecting.”

Frank drank the last of his coffee. “Might not be too hard.”

“How?”

“Guy who did Skeeter’s out there somewhere”-Frank thumbed over his shoulder-“still on a high… pupils still dilated with excitement… king of the world. Absolutely…”