Sondra Bryant picked up the phone.
Thomas Flynn took the call. He listened intently, asked a few questions, and told the detective that his son, Chris, was the person closest to Ben. He mentioned Ali Carter and told her the name of the place where Ali worked and the nature of his business. He told her that Ben had a girlfriend named Renee. He agreed to meet with Sondra Bryant later that night and have Chris in attendance. Flynn would supply Renee’s full name and contact information, which he could get from Chris, when Bryant arrived. He was trying to be as cooperative as possible.
Amanda stood beside him, tears streaming down her face, when Flynn phoned Chris at his apartment. After he gave his son the news and told him the few details he knew, there was a long pause on the other end of the line. When he spoke, Chris’s voice was even.
“I’ll call Ali,” said Chris. “Me and Katherine will go over to Renee’s place. I think we should tell her in person. Then I’ll swing by your house and talk to the detective.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Chris, I need to ask you… I promise I’m only going to ask you this one time.”
“I don’t know anything, Dad. I don’t know why Ben was killed.”
“I’ll see you in a little while. Take care.”
When Flynn hung up, Amanda said, “How is he?”
“Same as ever,” said Flynn unhappily. “Tough.”
Flynn phoned his friend, the attorney Bob Moskowitz.
After Chris spoke with Ali and Katherine, they agreed to go together to Renee’s apartment on Queens Chapel Road, not far from the District line. Chris and Katherine met Ali in the parking lot, and they steeled themselves before going inside. Predictably, Renee became hysterical upon hearing the news of Ben’s violent death. Thankfully, her mother was there, so Chris, Ali, and Katherine were not entirely helpless in the face of the young woman’s loud outbursts of emotion. Her mother, a devoted churchgoer with a quiet manner, had sedatives in her purse for whatever reason, and gave one to Renee. Chris hugged her on the living-room couch for a long while, Renee sobbing and shaking in his arms. After a while her breathing evened out and she lay down there, her mother sitting by her side. Chris, Katherine, and Ali quietly left the apartment house.
“I gotta go speak to the homicide detective,” said Chris to Ali, standing by their cars in the lot. “Lady named Bryant. I expect she’s gonna get up with you, too.”
“She already called me,” said Ali. “I’m hooking up with her first thing in the morning.”
“You might want to put her up with Lawrence.”
“You think-”
“I don’t think anything. Lawrence was with Ben recently. That’s all.”
“Listen,” said Ali, “I’ve got to go to a funeral tomorrow in Northeast. Boy I was working with who didn’t make it. I figure you’re not going in… ”
“I’m not.”
“Come with me, Chris. I don’t feel like being alone tomorrow.”
“All right. Swing past when you’re done with the detective.”
They gave each other backward glances as they walked to their vehicles. Chris joined Katherine, waiting for him in the van.
Thomas and Chris Flynn sat in the living room of the Flynns’ home with Detective Sondra Bryant and Bob Moskowitz. Bryant had a small notebook in hand and was making notes in it with a Parker pen. Amanda and Katherine were in the kitchen, quietly talking. Django was asleep at Chris’s feet.
Bryant had remarked that it was unusual for an interviewee who was not a suspect to ask for the presence of a lawyer at this point in the process. Thomas Flynn was forthright and told her that his son and Ben had been incarcerated together as juveniles at Pine Ridge, that both had led straight and productive lives since, but that the scars of the experience made Chris extremely cautious about speaking with police.
“I get it,” said Bryant. “All right, Mr. Moskowitz. Is it okay for me to speak with your client?”
“Chris will answer any questions you have,” said Moskowitz, who had found diet religion and was now a slim bald man nearing fifty whose suit was too large for his frame.
Bryant asked Chris a series of questions. He answered a bit robotically and with little eye contact but did so to her satisfaction. He had a hard exterior, but she could see from his red-rimmed eyes that he had cried at some point in the evening and was grieving. He obviously came from a good family, or at least one that was intact. She believed that he had no direct involvement in his friend’s murder and felt, with a lesser degree of certainty, that he had no knowledge of the causes or circumstances surrounding Ben Braswell’s death. But she was unconvinced by Chris’s repeated claim that Ben had no enemies and had done nothing wrong.
“I had a look at Ben’s record,” said Sondra Bryant. “There was an incidence of violence at Pine Ridge that kept him incarcerated for a longer period time than was indicated by his original conviction.”
“That was an accident,” said Chris. “Ben was just defending someone. He wasn’t trying to hurt anybody. That kind of thing wasn’t in him.”
“Maybe the boy he hurt had relatives or friends who didn’t see it that way.”
“No,” said Chris. “This wasn’t a revenge thing. Everybody liked Ben.”
“Somebody didn’t.” Bryant had a sip of water and placed her glass back on the table. She looked at Thomas Flynn. “I know this is difficult. May I speak freely?”
“Go ahead,” said Flynn.
“We have a saying in our offices. A gun murder is often business. Killing by knife is almost always personal. This victim was stabbed, many, many times. He had been cuffed or had his hands tied. It’s possible he was tortured.”
“Ben didn’t do anything to anybody,” said Chris very quietly.
“I believe he’s answered the question, Detective Bryant,” said Moskowitz.
“Right.” Bryant closed her notebook and dropped it into her purse. “We’ll speak again. In the meantime, I’ll leave you good people and let you have some peace. Have a blessed evening.”
“You do the same,” said Thomas Flynn.
He and Moskowitz walked her outside. Moskowitz was seeking a few words with her away from Chris, and Flynn intended to ask about the procedure involved in the release of Ben’s body. He wanted to know how he could get authorization to gain possession of it.
Chris stayed in the living room, rubbing behind Django’s ear. Soon Katherine joined him, kissed his mouth, and sat close to him on the couch.
When Flynn reentered the house, he went to his bar cart in the dining room and poured himself several fingers of Jim Beam. He killed the drink quickly and poured another. He saw Amanda looking at him from the kitchen.
“What?”
“Easy with that,” said Amanda.
Flynn tipped his head back and drank.
Out on the street, far down Livingston from the Flynn home, two men sat in an old black Mercury. They were waiting for the man called Chris to emerge from the house that doubled as the business office for Flynn’s Floors. They intended to follow him. They wanted to see where he lived.
TWENTY-ONE
The funeral service for Royalle Foreman, nineteen, was held at a large Baptist church on Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue in Burrville, in the 50s in far Northeast. Ali and Chris arrived early, pulled into the parking lot, and sat in Juanita Carter’s black Saturn, letting the air conditioner run. They talked about Ali’s conversation with Detective Bryant earlier that morning, and they spoke fondly and bitterly about Ben. They were in no hurry to get out and stand in the summer heat by the front door of the church, where a line had already formed.
“Looks like it’s gonna be full,” said Chris.
“Royalle touched a lot of people,” said Ali. “He played football for Ballou before he dropped out, and he shined. That right there gets you some positive notoriety. He had a charming smile on him, and he was funny. People liked Royalle.”