Attached to the hospital bed was a frame with an elaborate system of wires that hoisted Skender’s plaster-covered leg in the air: like a white sculpture that would be entitled Leg. Skender’s eyes remained closed. When Raymond asked how he was, Toma said, “He’ll be like that a long time and then he’ll be a cripple. You know why? Because he wanted to marry a girl he met at a disco place. She tells him okay, but first he has to meet her brother.”
“He’s not her brother,” Raymond said.
“No, I don’t think so either. They planned this a long time.”
“How much did they get?”
“What difference does it make?” Toma said. “We don’t look at it, was it a misdemeanor or felony? You know that. He did it to Skender, he did it to me, it’s the same thing. I’m going to look at this Mansell in the eyes…”
“It’s not that simple,” Raymond said.
“Why not?” Toma said. “The only thing makes it difficult, you worried you have to arrest me.” He shrugged. “All right, if you prove I kill him. You do what you have to do, I do what I have to do.”
“No, it isn’t that simple, because I want him too,” Raymond said. “You’re gonna have to get in line. After we’re done you can have him charged with felonies, assault, but it isn’t gonna mean much if he’s doing life. You understand what I’m saying?”
“I understand you want him for killing the judge,” Toma said. “I spend some time up on that fifth floor, I talk to people, different ones I know. I understand why you want this man. But if you don’t care personally that he killed the judge, then why do you care who kills him? You see the way I look at it? You tell me to get in line. I tell you, you want him you better get him quick, or he’ll be dead.”
Raymond said, “You always look in their eyes?”
Toma seemed to smile. “If there’s time.”
“He’s killed nine people.”
Toma said, “Yes? If you know he kills people, why do you let him? Before I come to this coun-try when I was sixteen I have already kill nine people, maybe a few more-most of them Soviet, but some Albanian, Ghegs, my own people. Before the Soviets-before my time, were the Turks; but before the Turks, always, we have the Custom. If you don’t know about it you don’t know anything about me.”
“I think of us as friends,” Raymond said, wanting the man to know that he understood.
“Yes, you give your word and keep it,” Toma said. “I think you know about honor because it doesn’t seem to bother you to talk about it. It isn’t an old thing in books to you. But maybe honor goes so far with you and stops. Say a policeman is killed. Then I think you want to kill the person who killed him.”
“Yes,” Raymond said. Basically it was true.
“But you don’t understand the honor that even if a man who’s smoking my tobacco-he doesn’t have to be my brother, but a man I bring into my house-if he’s offended in some way then I’m offended. And if he’s killed then I kill the person who killed him, because this goes back to before policemen and courts of law. Now-wait, don’t say anything, please. A man breaks the leg of your cousin who is like a brother-a very trusting, very nice person-and steals his money. What does your honor tell you to do?”
“My honor tells me,” Raymond said, the word sounding strange to him, saying it out loud, “to take the guy’s head off.”
“You see?” Toma said. “Your honor stops. It tells you something, yes. But you can’t say, simply, ‘Kill him,’ and mean to do it. You say what you feel like doing, something more than killing him. But what you would actually do is… what?”
“Arrest him,” Raymond said.
“There,” Toma said. “Well, we’re able to talk about it even if we don’t see it the same. You don’t call me a crazy Albanian.”
Raymond said, “How’re you gonna find him?”
“We have people looking, some others helping, friends. Some of your own people, some with the Hamtramck police, they tell us a few things they hear. We know what kind of car he has, where the girl lives. We find him, all right.”
“What if he leaves town?”
Toma shrugged. “We wait. Why does he live here? He likes it? People are easy to rob? If he leaves we wait for him to come back, or, we go after him. Either way.”
Raymond looked at the man lying in traction. “How’d he break Skender’s leg?”
Toma hesitated, then said, “He broke it very deliberately. You see the Medical Service report?”
“It said he fell down the basement stairs and they found him on the floor. One of the tenants did and called EMS.”
“Yes, that was the girlfriend who called,” Toma said. “As soon as you came in here-see, I know you’re after this Mansell and you figure out he did this; so I’m not going to lie to you, say Skender fell down the stairs. You want that person for murder, but you don’t have him. So I know you don’t have evidence, and if you don’t find some he remains free, even though he’s killed two people-no, nine, you say.”
“It takes time,” Raymond said.
Toma shook his head. “No, it doesn’t. Tell me where to find him. It takes only a few minutes.”
Raymond didn’t say anything.
“For the sake of honor,” Toma said.
“Well, it would take care of yours,” Raymond said, “but it wouldn’t do much for mine, would it?”
Toma studied him with his direct gaze, curious now. “There’s more to it than I know about.” He paused and then said, “Maybe you would take his head off.”
“Maybe,” Raymond said.
Toma continued to stare, thoughtful. “If he resists, yes. I can see that. Or if they tell you, all right, you can shoot him on sight. But if he gives himself up, then what do you do?”
“Turn it around,” Raymond said. “You open the door and he’s just sitting there. What would you do?”
“I’d kill him,” Toma said. “What have we been talking about?”
“I know, but I mean if he was unarmed.”
“Yes, and I say I’d kill him. What does his being armed or not have to do with it? Are you saying there are certain conditions, rules, like a game?” Toma emphasized with his eyes, showing surprise, bewilderment, overacting a little but with style, letting his expression fade to a smile, that remained in his eyes. “This is a strange kind of honor, you only feel it if he has a gun. What if he shoots you first? Then you die with your honor?” Toma paused. “They call us the crazy Albanians…”
It was time to leave. Raymond got ready, looking at Skender again. “Tell me how the leg was broken.”
“He tried with a heavy object at first,” Toma said. “It was very painful, but it didn’t seem to injure him enough. So he raised Skender’s foot up on a case, a box, with Skender lying on the floor and struck the leg at the knee with a metal pipe until the leg was bent the other way. He says he remembers the sound of the girl crying out, saying something, then the sound of the ambulance as he was riding in it, going to Detroit General, and that’s all he remembers. This morning,” Toma said, “I had him brought here to a doctor I know.”
“You say he heard Sandy?”
“The girl? Yes, she cried out something.”
“He remember what she said?”
Toma looked at Skender, asleep, then back to Raymond and shrugged. “Does it make any difference?”
“I don’t know,” Raymond said. “It might.”
Hunter was in the blue Plymouth standing at the hospital entrance. He turned the key as Raymond got in… held the key, his foot pressing the accelerator, but the car wouldn’t start. It gave them an eager, relentless, annoying sound, as though it was trying, but the engine refused to fire.