Bad to the Bone (22 page)

“I haven’t spoken to anyone since Flo came to see me.”

“Flo Alamare came out to see you?”

“Some time ago. That’s why I sent my daughter back to Hanover House. Flo must have told you.”

Craddock shook his head. “Flo’s dead. She never came back to Hanover House after she saw you, Billy. I hope you didn’t kill her.”

“Are you crazy?” Billy spoke without thinking, but Craddock didn’t react to it. “I’ve never been violent. You used to tell me that I needed to be violent, but I could never even manage to get angry. How would I kill Flo?”

“Maybe you didn’t kill her out of anger. Maybe you killed her out of fear. She was found a few miles from this apartment. In a vacant lot.”

Wendell was in the kitchen, quietly emptying the cupboards and the drawers onto the floor. “He killed the bitch,” Wendell said. “I know he done it. He got guilty all over his face.”

“Look,” Billy said, “Flo came here and told me that I couldn’t keep my daughter.” His voice broke for the first time. He didn’t know what they wanted, but he knew they were going to hurt him. It was all so unjust. He’d worked as hard as anybody to establish Hanover House. Now he was being rewarded. “If I wanted to be defiant, I wouldn’t have sent Terry back to Hanover House. I mean Terry was with Flo when Flo came here. If I killed Flo, I would have had to do it in front of my daughter.”

“So, who’d you talk to?” Craddock seemed more relaxed. He was beginning to smile.

“Nobody.”

“Bullshit, I
know
you were talking to a lawyer and a writer.”

“I mean after Flo came to see me. I haven’t spoken to anyone since then.”

Craddock sighed. “I realize that you didn’t kill Flo. How could an asshole like you kill Flo Alamare? You gave up your own daughter because you were afraid. Because you were the same chicken-shit pussy who first walked into my office. Because you were, in fact, my greatest fucking failure.” He paused, waiting for a response, but Williams refused to look up. “So who’d you speak to, Billy?”

“Please…”

“You didn’t by any chance speak to a fat detective named Stanley Moodrow?”

“Oh, God…Yeah, a detective came out here asking about Flo, but I didn’t speak to him. As soon as he told me what he wanted, I sent him away. I swear it, Davis. I sent him away without another word.”

“This fat detective says he can prove that Flo Alamare was living at Hanover House right up until her death. Now you tell me how a fat detective could prove a thing like that if you didn’t speak to him?” Davis was lying. Moodrow had only said he could put Flo inside Hanover House within two years, but the good fisherman feels no conscience when he disguises the bait. Craddock wanted to get a feel for how much Moodrow knew.

Wendell broke in before Billy could reply. “What we oughta do is fuck this little bitch in his ass,
then
ask the questions.” He came back into the living room, pulling at his crotch while he stroked Billy Williams’ hair. “Lil bitch fall in love when he feel mah dick in his butt. Ain’ that right, lil bitch?”

Billy shuddered, but made no effort to pull away from the much larger Wendell Bogard. “I don’t know who told him,” Billy said to Craddock. “Anybody at Hanover House could have told him. There’s probably another ten people who’ve left within the last year. Suppose he visited all of them?”

“But they didn’t see her on the day of her death.”

Bogard playfully tugged Williams’ head into his lap. “C’mon, Billy, tell the man what he want to hear. He’s yo goddamn psychiatrist. He doin’ this shit for your own fuckin’ good. Ain’ that right, Davis?”

“Maybe we’re being too hard on Billy,” Craddock said.

“Did y’all say ‘hard-on’?”

Davis ignored his partner’s humor. “I mean we have to do what we have to do. Even if Billy didn’t snitch us out to the fat detective, he knows all about PURE. He’s the only one outside Hanover House who does.”

“Maybe I could go back into therapy,” Billy whispered. The black man holding him was incredibly strong. As strong as all the people he’d feared in his life. He felt like a child lying in the dark. Watching the closet door for the slightest movement.

“I don’t think so, Billy. I think we should take a little walk.”

Billy Williams didn’t resist Craddock’s gentle tug. He allowed himself to be led across the room to the front door of the apartment.

“All right, Billy,” Craddock said. “Far enough. Now turn around. That’s good. Just a little to the left and it’ll be perfect.”

Davis Craddock, anxious to impress his companion, put all his strength into the first blow, swinging the pry bar in a long arc from his knees to the top of Billy Williams’ head. Craddock had expected Billy to fall unconscious, but the slender, balding man only dropped to his knees. There was plenty of blood, though, which was encouraging, and Davis Craddock was too professional to let disappointment interfere with the pursuit of his declared intentions. He raised the hooked bar above his head and again brought it down on a whimpering Billy Williams. Still, the job wasn’t done.

“Lemme hit the bitch one time,” Bogard whined. “I can’t watch this ’thout gettin’ in mah shots.”

“No way,” Craddock said firmly. “You’re left-handed and I’m right-handed. All these wounds have to come from the same hand. Besides, you lost the coin toss.”

“Shi-i-i-it.”

Craddock decided to get it over with quickly. He began to work the top of Billy Williams’ now-unmoving head with short, chopping strokes. Davis was not a doctor and he’d been a little worried about whether he would know the moment when Billy Williams died. He’d feared he might continue pounding until he made himself a fool in Wendell’s eyes, but Billy Williams’ bladder and bowel untied at the moment of death and the stench left no doubt in either of the partners’ minds.

The man was motherfuckin’ amazin’. Goin’ through the door alone. Just the way they planned it. It was closin’ in on seven
AM
and there’d likely be people on the street. Black and white together looked wrong. White neighbors see that, they gon’ remember.

A few minutes later, Wendell followed Davis through the front door, closing it softly behind him. Then he slid the hooked end of the pry bar between the jamb and the lock and popped the door back open. Nobody around. Nobody to see that he was bustin’ out the lock
after
he was finished in the house.

The porter was in front, messin’ with the garbage cans, when Wendell pushed the door open and walked down the stoop. A nigger from the old school, shufflin’ his appreciation of the white man’s shitty job. Wendell gave the nigger his hardest badass look and the man turned away. But he’d remember. Which was the whole point.

A moment later and Wendell was around the corner where Craddock was waiting in the van with the engine running. Smilin’ his happy maggot smile. Crazy as crazy could be.

“What’d I tell you?” he asked. “Did I tell you he wouldn’t scream? Did I tell you he’d take it like a bitch takes cock?”

“Got to say for a fact that yo peoples go easy. He knew what we was gonna do to his ass, but he didn’t even
think
about fightin’ back. You white boys got some strange ways. Nigger don’t go out like that.”

“Yeah?” Craddock quickly outlined the realities of the Jonestown massacre, emphasizing the large number of blacks who drank the Kool-Aid. Then he told his partner about Poochie and his own theories. “The poochie,” he concluded, “stretches across all barriers. Race, religion, nationality. It may be that conditions for blacks are so harsh that most of the weak are eliminated, but there are always a few. In fact, if it wasn’t for the poochies, men like us would be in deep trouble.”

Kickin’ down the boulevard. There was about ten million cars all goin’ to work. Suckers for that nine-to-five bullshit. Wendell knew he could never have that. Couldn’t even goddamn read was the truth of it. But his partner coulda done it. Could still do it. Still turn back to the world. If he wasn’t so crazy.

“What do you say we celebrate?” Craddock said. “Seeing as we’re going to be a long time getting back downtown.” He waved his hand at the sea of cars, trucks and buses.

“What you wanna do?
Pusher Man
?”

“Let’s have a little
white
celebration for a change. Reach around in the back and get that box behind the seat. Got a little surprise in there.”

Surprise? Man had a whole ice chest in there. Had two glasses so thin they’d break if you spit on them. Wendell fumbled with the cork until it blew, bouncing off the windshield, then whistling past his ear. He peered at the label, puzzling out the letters, but unable to make sense of the words.
L
.
Roederer Cristal
.

“Don’t usually drink this shit,” he announced. “Too faggoty. Too maggoty. If you catch my meanin’.”

“Make an exception, Wendell. It’s been a good night.”

Drivin’ in silence. Crazy maggot and his crazy nigger partner sippin’ on French champagne. Wendell hadn’t ever had no best bro’. DTA was the motto on the street—Don’t Trust Anyone. But there was definitely times when he wanted to. When he sometimes
did
feel like he was in the presence of the twin brother he used to imagine when he was a kid.

B
ETTY HALUKA PUSHED OPEN
the door to her lover’s apartment, stepped inside, then deliberately slammed the door shut. The crash echoed through the tiny apartment, freezing Moodrow in his chair. Leaving him to wonder exactly what he might have done or said to merit such a greeting.

“You wanna write a letter?” Betty shouted. “You like letters? Well, take down this and address it to Davis Craddock: ‘Dear Motherfucking Piece-of-Dog-Shit Cocksucker…’ ”

Moodrow let the breath he’d been holding ease out of his lungs. Betty had just finished her first therapy session.

“Didn’t you get along with your shrink?” he asked, trying both to keep his voice innocent and to control the giggle that pushed against his lips.

Betty looked at him for a minute, daring him to make a smart remark. “Stanley, you have no idea what that bastard said to me.”

“You want a drink?”

“Yeah. And I’ll take that slop
you
drink. No water.”

Moodrow got up and Betty sat down. Neither spoke as Moodrow retrieved the bottle of Wild Turkey from a cabinet over the sink and poured two inches of bourbon into two glasses. He put Betty’s on the table in front of her and she drank it in a single gulp. The coughing fit that followed (not to mention the flame in her throat) did nothing to improve her mood. She continued to stare at Moodrow, fire in her eyes, until the firewater in her stomach began to have its pacifying effect.

“You won’t believe what that son of a bitch of a Therapist called me,” she said, her voice considerably softer.

“After seeing the way you came through that door, I’m ready to believe anything.”

Betty ignored him. “The first thing he does—his name is Jack Burke, by the way—is sit me down on a wooden chair in a small, dirty room. Then he lowers himself into a leather chair that’s almost a damn throne and we start talking. I tell him about my career and how, after all my years of work, the criminal justice system is more perverse than ever. I tell him that I have no relationships. No children or family. I feel like my whole life is over. I’m just a fat, middle-aged woman with no prospects. I realize I should be looking for a second career, but I can hardly get myself to leave my apartment.

“He lets me go on for about half the session, then breaks out laughing. Which is something
you
better not do.”

“The furthest thing from my mind,” Moodrow protested.

“Don’t interrupt.” She tossed Moodrow another hard look, then continued. “So we get halfway through the session—a session that
I’m
paying for—when he waves his hands and shakes his head. ‘Jesus,’ he says, you
are
a wimpy cunt. I see it all the time and I guess I should be used to it, but when it comes to me like this, it makes me feel like I have to puke.’

“Jack Burke is a little man. Like five-foot four and maybe a hundred twenty pounds. I wanted to jump off the chair and smack him in his smirking face, but…”

Moodrow poured another inch of bourbon into Betty’s glass, then refilled his own. “Ah, the woes of the undercover cop. You’re gonna have to get into the role. You’ve gotta
become
the wimpy…” He noted the look on Betty’s face and didn’t add the epithet. “You have to become the person your target expects you to be.”

“I managed not to bash the bastard,” Betty said. “I tried to tell him that if I was able to control my feelings, I wouldn’t be there.

“ ‘You want mood elevators?’ he says. ‘Placodil, Elevil, Melloril? Valiums, perhaps? You’re not gonna get that here, lady. All you’re gonna get from us is the opportunity
not
to be the whiney bitch sitting in that chair. When we finish with you, you’ll be a prosecutor instead of a public defender.’

“ ‘But I spent my whole life defending people.’

“ ‘And look where it’s gotten you.’

“At that point I decided to keep my mouth shut. Which only encouraged the prick. There’s all kinds of sick people out there. Schizos, psychopaths, deluded people of every shape and variety. But they never come to us. We get sad little misfits like you.
Oh
,
can you help me
?
I feel so sad and I’m such a good little bitch
.
I spent my whole life trying to help people and now everybody mistreats me
.
Boo-hoo-hoo-hoo
…Isn’t it about time you stopped being a baby and helped yourself up?’ ”

Moodrow sipped at his drink. Despite his best efforts, a grin began to pull at the corners of his mouth. “Did he expect an answer?”

“That’s just it, Stanley. He leaned back in his chair like he was goddamned Sigmund Freud directing a movie. Folded his arms across his chest and fixed me with a hard stare. I said, That’s why I came to therapy. Because I want to help myself.’

“He goes, ‘You came here because your friends won’t put up with your crybaby act anymore. In fact, I’ll bet your friends don’t even come around to visit.’

“By that time I’d gotten a little control back, although I was still steaming. ‘Nobody comes around,’ I admitted. ‘I feel so alone. Sometimes I start crying and I can’t stop. Sometimes I can’t get out of bed in the morning.’