“One of them died,” Raymond said.
“Well, some more of ’em are gonna if I hang around, so tell ’em it’s just as well I’m leaving. I just don’t want them thinking they run me off, cause they haven’t. But shit, I get mixed up with those people-I got no incentive. You understand?” He looked up as the waitress took his glass. “Same way, hon.” As she turned to Raymond, Clement said, “No, he don’t want nothing. That’s Jack Armstrong, the all-American Boy.” Clement smiled at her and looked at Raymond again. “She don’t know shit who I’m talking about, does she?”
“Sandy going with you?”
“I don’t know, I suppose. She’s cute, isn’t she? ‘Cept when she gets stoned. I tell her quit smoking that queer shit and drink liquor like a normal person.”
“Some people,” Raymond said, “you can’t tell ’em anything.”
“That’s the truth.”
“But long as they don’t tell on you …” Raymond shrugged and let the words hang.
Clement stared at him.
Raymond was aware of the noise level in Piper’s Alley. It surprised him that when he purposely listened to the sound of the place it was so loud. Everybody working at having fun. He said, “Well, I got to get going.”
Clement stared at him. “You want me to think you know something I don’t.”
“You’re nervous this evening,” Raymond said. “But long as you trust your friends, what’re you worried about?”
Clement stared at him. His head turned a little and he stared at the paper sack. He said, “That ain’t your lunch, is it?”
“No, it isn’t my lunch. Isn’t a bag of fry cakes, either,” Raymond said. “You want it?”
“Oh, my,” Clement said, beginning to grin just a little. “We getting tricky, are we? Want to hand me somebody else’s murder gun?” His eyes raised, his expression changing abruptly as Raymond got up from the table. “Where you going? I ain’t done yet.”
Raymond said, “Yes, you are,” and walked out with the sack. He used the telephone in the kitchen, noise all around him, to call Hunter, told him not to move, he’d be right there.
A few minutes later Raymond walked into the squadroom.
“Maureen leave yet?”
“Right after you did. I put MCMU on Sweety’s place, told ’em to get somebody in the bar and the rest out of sight.”
“Good.” Raymond opened his address book to “S” and began dialing a number. “Clement made an announcement. He’s leaving town tomorrow.”
Hunter said, “We better have the party tonight then.”
Raymond nodded. “I think we should try.” He said into the phone then, “Sandy? This is Lieutenant Cruz. How you doing?… Yeah, I know, some are better than others. You having a nice talk with Maureen?… Yeah, well, let me speak to her a minute.” He put his hand over the phone as he looked at Hunter. “She says it isn’t her day.” Taking his hand away, Raymond said, “Maureen?… listen, tell her Clement’ll probably call or be over in a little while. In fact, any time now, so you better get out of there. Explain to her-she can say we questioned her about the gun, even leaned on her a little, tried to scare her, if she wants. But tell her to keep it simple. She took the gun over to Sweety’s, period. That’s all she knows. Was she crying?… Uh-huh, well, tell her if she feels like she’s going to save it for Clement, just in case… Hey, Maureen? Tell her you wish you were twenty-three again.”
“You’re all heart,” Hunter said.
“I can sympathize with Sandy a little,” Raymond said, “I can. But I’m not too worried about her. I mean, if she can hang around with Clement three, four years and she’s still in one piece…”
“She knows how to cover her ass,” Hunter said.
“If anything’s bothering me at the moment, that I feel a certain responsibility…” Raymond paused, thoughtful, and looked over at Hunter. “You got Sweety’s number?”
Hunter dialed it and stayed on the phone. Raymond picked up his phone and sat back, crossing his loafers on the corner of the gray metal desk. He said, “Mr. Sweety, how you doing? This is Lieutenant Cruz… What I was wondering, has Clement called you yet?”
“Has Clement called me!”
Both Raymond and Hunter moved the receivers away from their ears, looking at each other with expressions of pain.
“Where are you?” Raymond asked. “You at home or at work?”
“I’m home. What you mean has Clement called me?”
“Anita working?”
“Yeah, she’s over there.”
“Why don’t you go help her,” Raymond said.
“Why?”
“I think you’re gonna be busy tonight.”
There was a silence before Mr. Sweety said, “Why is Clement gonna call me?”
“When he does,” Raymond said, “tell him you’re glad he called, you’ve been wanting to get in touch with him. In fact, you want to see him.”
“I want to see him? For what?”
“To give him back his gun.”
“You took the gun!… I gave it to you!”
Hunter had his eyes and mouth open wide, miming Mr. Sweety’s emotional state.
“No, you told us it’s in the basement,” Raymond said, solemn, straight-faced. “We assume it’s still there.”
There was a silence again. Mr. Sweety said, “I don’t want no parts of that man. I’m getting dumped on-whole big load of shit coming down on me.”
“No, you’re all right. You have my word,” Raymond said. “He comes for the gun, tell him where it is. In fact, how about this? Tell him he’ll have to go get it himself, you’re busy.”
Silence. “I’d have to let him in the house.”
“Not if you put the key under the mat,” Raymond said and had to smile now, looking at Hunter. A couple of kids getting away with something.
There were tales of heroics and tales of tricky nonprocedural moves, old-pro stunts, told in the Athens Bar on Monroe in Greektown, two short blocks from 1300 Beaubien. Raymond wondered if, not so much the heroes, the tricky movers ever looked ahead and saw replays, recountings: a twenty-year pro, an insider, telling appreciative someday pros that it wasn’t to go beyond this table: “So he cons the guy into handing over the gun, has ballistics fire it to make sure it’s the murder weapon, then-here’s the part-he puts it back in the guy’s basement, inside the furnace where it was, and has the guy tell the shooter to come get his gun, he doesn’t want any part of it. You follow? He’s got to make the shooter with the gun or he doesn’t make him. He’s got to set him up…” And the someday pros at the table wait with expectant grins, gleams in their eyes. Yeah?…
Then what? Raymond was thinking, riding in the blue Plymouth police car with Hunter.
Go on…
Well, the way it should happen: With Mr. Sweety’s place under surveillance Mansell walks in, comes out with the gun in his pocket and they shine lights on him and that’s it. If he stays inside they ask him to come out and eventually he does, after trying to hide the gun again or pound it apart with a hammer; but they would still have him with the gun, be able to make a case.
But maybe another way it could happen and be told about later in the Athens Bar: For some reason the surveillance is called off… There could be a reason.
Clement comes out with the gun, the gun loaded, the way it was found. He comes out on the porch and stops dead as he hears, “That’s far enough-” He sees Cruz on the sidewalk beneath the streetlight. Cruz with his sportcoat open, hands at his sides…
You’re weird, Raymond said to himself.