Night Raider (8 page)

“It was pretty easy to get in,” Williams said a few minutes later, drinking coffee at the table made from some instant that Wulff kept near the hotplate. “I said I was a friend of yours and just wanted to camp outside and he even used the key to let me in. Escorted me up. You’ve got a trusting super here, man.”

“Terrific,” Wulff said, looking at the rookie. But Williams was no kid. He was a black man in his early twenties of medium height, compactly built and as Wulff had had occasion to know from their one patrol together, this man was no fool. Inexperience, Williams would have said, was something for whites to worry about; blacks came out of their cribs old. This one, if he made it and Wulff supposed that he would, was going to be a murderous cop. Even now, he was probably overpowering people.

“I want to talk to you,” Williams said, “because I think we can do business together.”

“I figured you’d get to that. But I’m dead-tired, I’ve had a big day.”

Wulff took the gun from his jacket then, put it carefully on the cracked dresser top. He added the two wallets, not caring what Williams’s reaction would be. Nothing to conceal here. Williams was not the enemy either, he supposed, but if he wanted to be Wulff would play it that way. At length he turned back toward Williams, took off his shirt.

“You look like you’ve been in a fire,” Williams said impassively.

“Something like that.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

“Listen here,” Wulff said, “you’re the one who came. You got business on your mind? Say it. Otherwise, get going. I can’t start fucking around now.”

“Fair enough,” Williams said. “Suits me.” He nodded once, a grave inclination of the head. He knew where everything was. “That’s good. You know that I’m the only guy in or out of headquarters or probably anywhere in the department who knows where you are now, don’t you?”

“Just keep it that way.”

“And now I’m an off-duty cop so
no
one knows. Lots of people looking for you, man.”

“I’m sure.”

“I mean, a lot of people are looking for you. They’re having trouble with the equipment rosters.”

“That’s not my problem. We’re getting nowhere, Williams.”

“All right,” the black said. He clasped his hands, meditated over the coffee cup. “I’ve been considering your problem and putting the pieces together and I think we can do business.”

“Yes? How?”

“You’re outside the system, I’m in it. You can work your side, I can work mine. We’ll build up a pressure point.”

“Get out of the system,” Wulff said.

“Now what I want to get out of the system for?” Williams said, his jaw going slack, switching in mood and dialect in that frightening way which intelligent blacks had. “The system’s shit-rotten but at least it’s keeping a roof over my head. Without the system we’d still be picking cotton and you’d be a dead man, Wulff.”

“No. Not necessarily.”

“
Absolutely.
The system is shit but on the other hand it pays off. It even pays off the losers,” Williams said. “Everybody gets his piece of the action and those that miss out altogether, well they’re dead. Nothing wrong with being dead, is there? That’s an even bet. But you’re all right, Wulff. From your point of view the system sucks.”

“Right,” Wulff said, “I’m privileged.”

“Well of course you’re privileged,” Williams said, picking up the cup and looking over it solemnly, the cup covering the lip-movements, “everybody your color is privileged, Wulff, the system was set up for color.” He put down the cup with a crash. “But that’s okay too,” he said, “I’m not bitter, I’m not giving you any of that militant shit because that’s another hustle. The point is that I’ve got a little piece of it and now it’s going to work for
me
and for my wife and our nice little two-family in Queens. But I can play it two levels. You want to rip down, that’s fine; I can give you a little help on that end.”

“I wouldn’t know about help,” Wulff said. He flexed his hands, investigated the damages of the day in the battered mirror propped on the shelf over the bed. Marasco, Davis, Jessup. Dead as they were they had exacted their penalty. He looked like a man of forty. The face was dented; his body bore the markings of the fire.

Wulff took a towel and some clean underwear out of the dresser. “I can’t discuss system strategy,” he said, “I’m going to take a shower.”

“Hold up,” Williams said with that deadly grin, “I can’t stay long. Midnight shift coming up. Got to look beautiful to represent the finest.”

“You mean you were just leaving when I woke up the systems man.”

“I’m no systems man,” Williams said, “but I was waiting. Patience I’ve got.” He looked at his watch. “My wife gets nervous about a black man walking around in uniform, you know?”

“That’s touching,” Wulff said. “You put that uniform on; don’t blame me.”

“You better believe it,” Williams said. “I love that uniform; that uniform is like a sheet kids wear when they play ghost. I put that on, I’m a different man. People don’t see the face, just the blue and that means that no one gets near me. Let me tell you how we can do business though, Wulff. You see, I think I can use you and God knows you can use me.”

“How?”

“I’m your man in the mainstream,” Williams said and gave him a deadly smile. “I’m even a man of good will, I’ll help you. I
want
you to succeed, Wulff. But the way you’re going at it, vigilante, you could use an invisible man in blue poking around behind the net.”

“Vigilante?” Wulff said, “you’re thinking about someone else here in this room. I’m retired. I’m semi-retired, I’m beating the bushes in the park for birds and someday I’ll write a book about it. My fucking memoirs. Listen, I just want to take a shower and get lost if it’s all the same with you. Nothing personal of course.”

“Never personal between a black man and a white man,” Williams said wryly. “But that’s all right. I respect you, you’ve got your reasons for this just like the rest of us do.”

“That’s nice. I’ve won your respect and admiration.”

“A vigilante has the best reasons in the world even if he has no control. The boys in the Klan, they are convinced of their righteousness Wulff and so are you.”

“I’m not in any Klan.”

“In a way,” Williams said vaguely, standing, “in a way, but let’s not get into that. I figure the girl was mixed up in this somehow,” he said after a pause. “No one else knows but I figured that out on my own. You figure they got her, huh?”

“The girl is out of it,” Wulff said quietly. He moved toward Williams, looked at the man in level fashion and such force must have come from him then that even Williams blinked, gave an inch. Looked downwards, back-pedalling slightly.

“I don’t want you to mention the girl,” Wulff said, “ever. You dig that?”

“That’s all right, man,” Williams said, “the girl can stay out of it. She’s got nothing to do with it if you want it that way.”

“That’s all,” Wulff said. He did not move. “I ever hear that mentioned again and I’m going to kill you, Williams. Let it go this one time.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“This one time. Because you’re a cop and I have nothing against you. But after the one for free, no more.”

“All right,” Williams said. His cool was intact but there were a few absent dribbles of sweat on his forehead, “Have it your way on the girl issue. I won’t bring that up again here.”

“Anyone mentions the girl gets himself killed,” Wulff said. He moved away then. “I don’t see anything more to say now,” he said, “I’m not negotiating for ransom or a partnership and I need my rest.”

“Just take it easy,” Williams said, raising a hand which did not tremble at all. “I still haven’t said what brought me here in the first place.”

“You’re not getting any closer.”

“We can make it Wulff,” Williams said quietly, “the in man and the out man. I think that I can give you some help.”

Wulff paused for a while, looked at the empty spots of the ceiling of the room. “I don’t work with anyone,” he said finally.

“Yes you can.”

“This is a death trip.”

“I figured you’d see it that way. But you don’t have to die if you don’t want to. Life comes too cheap if you don’t know what death is. I do.”

“How do you know what I’m doing? I told you, I’m a retired man.”

“Bullshit,” Williams said, his voice very low. He could have been working over a suspect at this moment, toying with the meat, playing him in for the collapse. “Whatever you’re up to, you’re not retired.”

“Prove it.”

“I’m not out to hurt you baby,” Williams said, “paranoia, that’s supposed to be
my
game. I’m here to make myself useful to you. Man, I
love
the system; I’d be dead without it. But that doesn’t mean I can’t do a little prying from the outside.”

I’m not accepting any help.”

“I didn’t think that you’d be begging for it, that’s for sure.”

“So what brought you up here?”

“You know,” Williams said. He moved toward the door, adjusted the table. “You know you can’t do this all alone, you’re going to need something along the way from someone. You’re a crazy, overprivileged white if you think this thing is rigged for you.”

“It’s not.”

“You’re going to make it all the way on your own? You became a nigger the minute you quit the force. You’ll
be
a nigger until they drill you full of holes.”

“I’m still waiting for it,” Wulff said.

“I could help you, Wulff,” Williams said. “Whatever you’re doing can’t be all on your own. It doesn’t work that way.”

“Sometimes it can.”

“Besides, you amuse me. I’d like to see how you feel when
you
find what it’s like to go up against the system. I want to be there when it all comes clear, right at that moment. You’ll see why I’ve learned to love it baby.”

“It can be smashed.”

“I’ve got the blue,” Williams said. I’m not like you, I’m playing it by the book. Hating it from the inside. I’m in for the big hitch, I’ve got a wife and the wife is going to have a kid soon. Know that? Congratulate me. We hope. But that doesn’t mean that this isn’t all a big game to me too. That’s all it is.”

“You wouldn’t want to touch it.”

“I’m in it too deep already. I’m in your room.”

“Why,” Wulff said then, pausing at the door, looking at the man, “why would you want to get involved in something like this anyway?”

“Williams? Why would he get involved?” The eyes swung in the black’s head, he tipped a hand. “I think you know that,” he said.

“No I don’t.”

“Because I want to see some shaking and some making. The roofs over my head; let’s see how it is if the house comes down in sections.”

“Maybe it’ll all come down.”

“And maybe it won’t,” Williams said intensely, “maybe it’s a prefabricated house and I’m the man in the right room.” He put out a hand. “Far enough,” he said. “You think about it and let me know.”

“Quit the force,” Wulff said savagely, backing away from the hand, “turn in your badge and pistol and wife and fucking Queens and get yourself a furnished room in this nice section of town.”

“I can’t do that, Wulff,” Williams said, again with that amused tint to the eyes, “I owe the system everything. But if I can see a man working around the edges like you are and it isn’t flaming my territory then why not? Why not do something like that?”

“You want to make
me
a tool.”

“How say that?” Williams said, “how can you say that? Now you know they’ve got me hooked in. I’ve got the mortgage and the wife. I bought their lies all the way down the line and I even have a nice college degree from Fordham too to hang on the wall, it helped me get this civil-service job. I love them. I love them so much I hate them. You want me on those terms?”

“I don’t think I want you on any terms.”

“You’re going to need help, Wulff. You can’t do it all alone, you can’t even think that you could. Don’t tell me that, man.”

“You don’t even know what I’m doing.”

“No,” Williams said, over this, “no I guess that you just don’t understand. It’s easy not to understand when you’re a white man and that’s all you are.”

He took his hat off the bed, knocked it against a knee, put it on and walked toward the door. There weren’t many around who would wear a hat like this in dead summer, let alone with that kind of style. Why did the blacks, just about all of them, have style?

“I’m through negotiating,” Williams said flatly, “I’ve put it on the table and that’s enough.”

“Were these negotiations?”

“I don’t know,” Williams said. He grasped the knob. “I think you thought they were begging but that’s your mistake. It was a simple business deal you were being offered.”

“Call it a misunderstanding.”

“What a hostile man,” Williams said, “you are one angry son of a bitch. You even sound black.”

Wulff shook his head. There was just nothing to say about that. Nothing at all. He had somehow managed to think about everything else in his life but never the so-called race issue. It had never entered one way or the other. If the blacks wanted to think of themselves as a race apart that was, as far as he was concerned, their problem. Except that it was becoming
his
problem. That was what Williams was bringing home to him now. Quickly. “Shit,” he said under his breath.

“You know where to reach me,” Williams said, “you’ve got anything to say, you need some help, you just give me a call. This is my first and my last offer, man and it’s on terms of mutual respect. I’m going to stay clear.”

“You lay around here for ten hours just to tell me you wanted to
help?
”

Williams smiled. “It’s a little more complicated than that, Burt Wulff,” he said, “because there’s no such thing as help in this world.” He patted his pocket where the gun was hidden. “That’s what it comes down to,” he said, “and that’s why I’ll take the system my way, because I’ve got the equalizer right here. Power over power and nothing else matters, not to them, not even to people like you.”

He opened the door, stepped outside. “You need help from one solemn black rookie cop with good access to the files, you just give me a call,” he said, “and then again if you don’t need help you just don’t bother. One thing is sure, Wulff wouldn’t call to socialize.”