Sandy was saying into the phone, “Hi, we’re gonna need an ambulance. I mean we do need one, right now…”
Clement walked back to the furnace, reached up, flicked the switch on again and watched the wall moving in again, touching Skender’s leg now and pushing it up against the stationary section of wall-Skender staring, not believing it was happening to him-and Clement pulled the switch down. As the hum of the motor stopped, Skender looked around, eyes wide with fright and perhaps a little hope.
Clement said, “I want to impress something on you, partner. I’m disappointed, but I ain’t really mad at you, else I’d be pulling the trigger by now. See, but when you’re laying in the hospital with your leg in a cast, I don’t want you to have any bad thoughts like wanting to tell the police or the FBI or anybody. You do, I’ll come visit you again and stick your head in there ‘stead of your leg. You hear me? Nod your head.”
Sandy was saying, “No, the person didn’t have a heart attack…”
Clement flicked up the switch and let his hand come down.
Sandy was saying, “Course it’s serious…”
With the hum of the motor Skender began to cry out. He sucked in his breath, holding it, his face straining, then let the sound come out, his eyes closed tightly now and his face upturned, the sound rising, building to a prolonged scream.
Sandy said into the phone, “Hey, does that sound serious enough for you? You dumb shit…”
RAYMOND HAD A VISION. Or what he imagined a vision might be like. Herzog told him the Albanian was in the hospital and Raymond saw clearly, in the next few moments, what was happening and very possibly what was going to happen.
He saw the Albanians going after Clement.
He saw Clement running to get his gun, to defend himself.
He saw Mr. Sweety, yes, with the gun, the Walther P .38.
He saw Clement holding the gun, the Guy-Simpson murder weapon, and saw himself extending the Colt 9-mm in two hands and saw… the clarity of the vision began to fade. He wasn’t sure if visions were always accurate. He told himself to back up, look at it again, carefully, beginning at his desk in the squadroom. He remembered…
Wendell on the phone saying to someone, “What you know for a fact and what you believe, that could be two different things. I want to know what you know.”
Norb Bryl saying to a middle-aged woman sitting at his desk, “We can help her, I give you my word as a man.” And the woman saying something and Bryl saying, “Well, I hope somebody doesn’t kill her.”
Hunter saying to Maureen, imitating a voice out of Amos and Andy, “ ‘Yeah, she come up to me and says she wants to pet my puppy.’ I’m thinking, ah-ha, he got it on with her, before he killed her, right? Isn’t that what it sounds like?” Maureen grinning expectantly. “No, the guy’s got a dog in his car and she wants to pet the dog.”
Inspector Herzog coming in, approaching Raymond’s desk: “You mentioned, wasn’t Mansell’s girlfriend-what’s her name, Sandy Stanton-going with one of the Albanians?”
This was where the prevision began, Raymond feeling the jab in his stomach, realizing he had forgotten to talk to Skender, to warn him, be careful…
Saying “Skender Lulgjaraj,” and feeling his stomach knotting.
Herzog saying, “Yeah, Skender. Art Blaney was over at Hutzel visiting his wife. He’s going past a room, sees a familiar face. It’s Toma. Art looks in, Skender’s in traction with a fractured leg. Art wants to know what happened and Toma says, ‘He fell down the stairs.’ ”
Raymond remembered feeling worn out, even with the thing in his stomach, and saying, “Oh, shit…”
And Herzog saying, “Let’s go in my office.”
It was while walking from the squadroom to the office with the view of the river and the highrise that Raymond had his vision.
“I was gonna call him,” Raymond said. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I know the guy’s being set up and I didn’t call him.”
“Toma says it was an accident,” Herzog said. “Maybe it was.”
Raymond shook his head. “No-I’m gonna find out what happened, but it wasn’t an accident.”
“Well, you have hunches,” Herzog said, “and most of them turn out to be nothing, so you don’t follow up on some.” Herzog looked over at a wallboard of newspaper clippings covering the Guy-Simpson murders. “Half those news stories are hunches, speculation. Who killed the judge?… Who gives a shit? You notice, there’s hardly any mention of Adele Simpson, she’s a minor figure. It’s all about the judge, what a prick he was. We give them a few facts and, for the most part, they’re satisfied, leave us alone and write interviews with people who say, ‘Oh, yes, I knew the judge intimately, it doesn’t surprise me at all.’ They don’t care if we ever solve it, they’ve got so much to write about.”
Raymond, reviewing his vision, seemed patient, attentive.
Herzog said, “That girl from the News, Sylvia Marcus, she’s the only one asks about Mansell. If he’s a suspect, where is he? Why isn’t he upstairs?”
“I haven’t seen her around,” Raymond said.
“She’s here every day. She picked up on him somehow, maybe getting a little here and there, sees a case folder open on somebody’s desk-Sylvia’s a very bright girl.”
“You think so?” Raymond said.
“Well, she asks good questions,” Herzog said. “I have a few myself I’ve been wondering about. Like the car, the Buick. We seem to be taking this one kinda leisurely.”
“I know what you mean,” Raymond said. “But you know how long we’ve been on it? Seventy-two hours. That’s all. Since Sandy got back from visiting Mr. Sweety the car hasn’t moved-till last night, we took it in, had it vacuumed, dusted. It’s like the car’s been driven twelve thousand miles with gloves on. Clement’s driving a ’76 Montego now. He went out last night, but nobody could find him. Didn’t come back this morning. Sandy went out, came back early this morning in a cab. We went in the apartment over there last night while they’re both out. No gun under the underwear or in the toilet tank. Nothing of the judge’s.”
“So he got rid of the gun,” Herzog said.
Raymond didn’t say anything.
“You’ve been holding back, not wanting to break down the doors too soon,” Herzog said. “Meanwhile the guy’s riding around in a Montego, you tell me, and might’ve broken somebody’s leg. If you can’t get Mansell with the gun, how’re you gonna get him?”
“Maybe the gun’s still around,” Raymond said. “But you’re right, I think I’ve been holding back, being a little too polite, expecting people-you might say-to be reasonable and forgetting a very important principle of police work.”
Herzog nodded. “When you got ’em by the balls…”
“Right,” Raymond said, “… the head and the heart soon follow.”
Someone in the family had died recently and that’s why the Albanians were in black. Coming down the hospital corridor and seeing the figures, Raymond thought at first they were priests. A nurse was trying to remove them from the room, with their packages and paper sacks, telling them only two at a time, please, and to wait in the visitor’s lounge. He saw Toma Sinistaj.
Then Toma said something as he saw Raymond Cruz and the delegation in black move down the hall.
Raymond thought of Toma as a face on a foreign coin. Or he thought of him as a Balkan diplomat or a distance runner. He wore a blue shirt with his narrow black suit and tie. He was about thirty-eight but seemed older; his full mustache was black; his eyes were almost black and never wandered when they looked at you. Raymond remembered this; he knew Toma from several times in the past when Albanians had tried to kill each other and sometimes succeeded. He remembered that Toma owned restaurants, that he carried a Beretta, with license, and a beeper.