“Toma was there. He wants to do Clement himself.”
“Who doesn’t?” Hunter said. “Fucking car…”
“He was talking about his code of honor. Says he’s gonna look Clement in the eye and blow him away.”
“Tell him, go ahead.”
“I said, what if he’s unarmed? He says, what’s that got to do with it?”
“Drive this piece of shit, you know why they’re fucking going out of business.” The engine caught and Hunter said, “I don’t believe it.”
“See, what he couldn’t understand, we’d only shoot him if he was resisting.”
“Yeah?… Where we going?”
“Sweety’s Lounge, over on Kercheval. But his point was…” Raymond paused. “Well, he didn’t understand.”
“He didn’t understand what?”
“I told him the guy’s killed nine people and very calmly he says, ‘Yes? If you know he kills people, why do you let him?’ ”
“What’d you tell him?”
“I don’t know-we started talking about honor then.”
“The Custom,” Hunter said. “Fucking Albanians are crazy.”
Raymond looked over at him. He said, “You sure?”
A young woman with a full Afro and worried eyes, a scowl, holding a floral housecoat tightly about her, opened the door and told them Mr. Sweety was working. Raymond said, “You mind if we just look in? I want to show him something. That picture over the couch.”
The woman said, “What picture?” half turning, and Raymond moved Hunter into the doorway. He waited as Hunter peered in and then came around to look at him as if expecting a punch line. They went down the steps to the sidewalk.
“You see it?”
“Yeah. Picture of some guy.”
“You know who it is?”
“I don’t know-some rock star? Leon Russell.”
“It’s Jesus.”
Hunter said, “Yeah?” Not very surprised.
“It’s a photograph.”
“Yeah, I don’t think it looks much like him.”
Walking next door to Sweety’s Lounge Raymond didn’t say anything else. He was wondering why things amazed him that didn’t amaze other people.
There were white voices in the black bar. Two women in serious, dramatic conversation.
It was dark in here in the afternoon. Mr. Sweety looked like a pirate in his black sportshirt hanging open and a nylon stocking knotted tightly over his hair, coming along the duckboards to the front bend in the bar. The place smelled of beer, an old place with a high ceiling made of tin. Two women and a man sat at the far end of the bar. They looked this way as Raymond and Hunter came in and took stools, then turned back to the voices coming from the television set mounted above the bar. A soap opera.
Raymond said, “I thought you worked nights.”
“I work all the time,” Mr. Sweety said. “What can I get you?”
“You want to talk here or at your house?” Raymond asked. him. “I don’t want to get into anything might embarrass you in front of your customers.”
“Don’t do it then,” Mr. Sweety said.
“No, it’s up to you,” Raymond said.
“How ’bout if I serve you something?”
“There’s only one thing you can give us we want,” Raymond said and held up his two index fingers about seven inches apart. “It’s this big. It’s blue steel. And it’s got P .38 stamped on the side.”
“Hey, shit, come on…”
“Sandy told me she gave it to you.”
Mr. Sweety leaned on his hands spaced wide apart on the bar so that he was eye-level with Raymond and Hunter seated on stools. Mr. Sweety looked down toward the end of the bar, seemed to wipe his mouth on his shoulder and looked back at Raymond again.
“Sandy told you what?”
“She said she gave you a Walther P .38 that Clement wanted you to hold for him.”
“Wait,” Hunter said, “let me read him his rights.”
“Read me for what? I ain’t signing no rights.”
“You don’t have to,” Hunter said. “Those people down there’re witnesses. Then we’ll serve you with the search warrant.”
As he said this Raymond took a thick number ten envelope out of his inside coat pocket and placed it facedown on the bar. His hand remained on it, at rest.
Mr. Sweety turned his head back and forth as though he had a stiff neck. “Hey, come on now, man. I don’t know shit about nothing. I told him that last night.”
“I’ll tell you something,” Raymond said. “I believe you. I think you got caught in the middle of something and you’re naturally a little confused. I would be too.”
“I’m not talking to you,” Mr. Sweety said.
“I can understand your position,” Raymond said, “sitting on a hot gun and here we are coming down on you.” Raymond raised his hand from the envelope, palm up. “Wait now. I also see you’re still more confused than involved. Sandy laid this on you and you don’t know what’s going on. She comes in the other day, she tells you Clement wants you to hold the gun for him. But wait a minute. We come to find out Clement doesn’t know anything about it. That’s straight-listen to me. Hear the whole thing. I told you last night Sandy doesn’t want Clement to know she came here. And what do you do? You act very surprised. So I think about it-why would you be surprised? Well, because she said it was from Clement. But if Clement doesn’t know she was here then he doesn’t know she delivered anything. Right?… You with me?”
“You losing me on the turns,” Mr. Sweety said.
“I know you’ve got some questions,” Raymond said, “but how much do you really want to know? See, all we want is the gun. Now. Listen very carefully. If we have to look for the gun, then what we’re gonna find is a murder weapon in your possession. Then, you not only get your rights read, you get to see a warrant for your arrest on the charge of murder in the first degree, which carries mandatory life. On the other hand… you listening?”
“I’m listening,” Mr. Sweety said. “What’s the other hand?”
“If you tell us of your own free will some person gave you the gun but you don’t know anything about it, whose it is, how it was used, anything; then what we have here is still another example of citizen cooperation and alert police work combining their efforts to solve a brutal crime… You like it?”
Mr. Sweety was silent, thinking.
He said, “He don’t know she gave this piece to anybody. I mean Clement. That what you saying?”
“That’s correct.”
“Where does he think it is?”
“Well, I don’t think she lifted it off him,” Raymond said. “Do you?”
“No way.”
“So I think he gave it to her to get rid of and she laid it off on you. It isn’t as easy as it sounds, throwing a gun in the river. Maybe she was coming here anyway, you know? Or maybe she told you to get rid of it. I’m not gonna ask you that. But if she did, that puts a burden on you. You got to take it out in your car somewhere… somebody finds the gun, remembers seeing you… the way it always happens. You been around, you know these things. Who wants to be associated with a hot gun. No, I don’t blame you.” Raymond waited a moment. “You coming to a decision?”
Mr. Sweety didn’t answer.
“Where’s the gun, at your house?”
“Down the basement.”
“Let’s go get it.”
“I got to call Anita, have her come over here.”
Raymond and Hunter looked at each other but didn’t say anything. They waited for Mr. Sweety to come back from the phone that was halfway down the bar, by the cash register.
Raymond said, “You feel better now?”
Mr. Sweety said, “Shit…”
They got back into the blue Plymouth, Raymond carrying a brown paper bag. He said, “It’s work, you know it? It wears you out.”
Hunter said, “That’s why they pay you all that money. Now where?”
“Let’s go see Sandy. No, drop me off and get this to the lab. But don’t tag it yet, I mean with any names on it.”