James Patterson - The 8th Confession

“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.

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 line.

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.

“That bastard turned my little sister into a whore. He pumped her full of meth and she died on the street. Right over there. I had to kill that fucker, you see? I’m already certified as crazy – so I wasn’t worried about no jury.”

“Mercy! Shut up. Don’t admit to nothing. I did it,” said a man who looked like a young prizefighter.

His nose was smashed to one side, and he had the look of a person whose brain had been rattled against his skull too many times.

“I shot Bagman six times with the lawyer’s gun. Bam-bam, bam-bam, bam-bam, and when Bagman dropped, I kicked him. I hit him with these,” he said, shaking his fists. “I terminated that piece of crap for what he did to our neighborhood.”

A familiar blond-haired girl, gaunt-faced, pretty as a cheerleader on meth, came forward.

“My father, my uncle Al, they’re not guilty of anything but trying to save me,” said Sammy. “I said I loved Bagman, but that was a lie. After I killed him, we all lied so the police wouldn’t suspect any of us. But he was a tyrant. He enslaved me. That’s why I took my father’s gun -”

It was clear to me now, clear as glass. This chaos had been organized. Had the Pincus brothers planned this since the day they – or someone – killed Bagman Jesus?

Cruisers and police vans, all with sirens whooping, flew up Fifth Street and braked on the sidewalk, scattering the crowd. Cops jumped out, swinging their bats, shoving the crowd back.

“Take these two in,” I said to the cops standing closest to me. I handed the Pincus brothers over, and as they were escorted to the van, the crowd surged forward again.

Neil Pincus turned his head as the officer was folding him into the back of the van. He said, “One second, Officer. Sergeant Boxer?” he shouted. “Don’t you see? Either all of us did it or none of us did.

“And even if you get anyone to trial, you’ll never get a conviction. Rodney Booker’s killer is a frickin’ hero.”

WITH THE HELP of the mob squad, Conklin and I flattened six people against the wall and frisked them. We made sure we had their names, then we had them loaded into cars and vans so they could come to the Hall for questioning.

I wanted to hear all eight of them tell us the story of killing Bagman, how they did it, and why.

I was behind the wheel, still sweating as Conklin and I drove back to the Hall of Justice. That mob scene had shot my heart rate into the stratosphere, and it was still well above my normal sixty-eight beats per minute. But I was happy. Make that exhilarated.

I glanced into the rearview mirror and saw Franklin Morris and “Mercy” behind the grille at my back, chatting as if we were driving them to lunch.

Why should they worry?

The Pincus brothers might be disbarred for confessing to homicide, but someone else would step in to defend this group of conspirators, one or all of whom were guilty of Rodney Booker’s murder. But I thought Neil Pincus’s prediction was right.

If these people stuck to their stories, no jury would convict. Eight confessions were eight times worse than one, each contradicting the other, so reasonable doubt would rule. I wondered if there’d even be a trial.

I said to Conklin, “Cindy’s going to get a movie deal out of this one. ‘From folk hero to mass killer, a drug dealer is brought down by a conspiracy of street vigilantes.’ You should call her.”

“No, you do it. I don’t want to mess with the chain of command.”