I look to Augie. He’s frowning, and looking like he’s about to cry.
“What am I going to find, Augie?”
He digs his knuckles hard into his forehead.
“Fuck,” he says. “Fuck!”
I pull the baseboard back with my fingers, careful not to poke myself on any nails still attached to it. When I’ve got it all the way off the bottom of the wall, I can see into two little hidey-holes, roughly eight inches long and two inches high. Inside one is ten plastic baggies. Inside the other is a gun.
I pull my weapon and am gun-pointed on Augie. My heart thumps up in my chest as I go from zero to high-order violence. “Get the fuck down, now!”
Augie slides out of the chair and collapses onto the carpet face-first. He prones out and I cuff him hard. That’s what he gets for not telling me.
“You knew I was going to find that! Why the fuck didn’t you tell me it was there? You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you!”
I holster up. I take a few breaths to calm down. It doesn’t work.
I say to him, “You’re sitting on a sales case for that many baggies and a felon-in-possession charge. That’s definitely double-digit time.”
Augie doesn’t have an answer right away, and that’s okay. He doesn’t have to, but I need to call this in to the sheriffs. I cross the room to the phone, and I’m about to pick it up when he turns his head, opens his mouth to spit out some carpet twine, and says, “What if I knew something, man?”
I stop. I say, “Knew something about what, Clark?”
“A worse crime,” he says. “Some major shit.”
“That’s not something I deal with. Now let’s get you that ride and get you going.”
There’s a phone on the bedside table. I pick up the receiver.
“You know Wizard?”
When he says the name, I feel it in the base of my spine like somebody kicked me with a steel-toed boot, and then I feel a tingle. A tingle I know well.
I put the phone down. Everybody knows Wizard. You spend time in Lynwood, you hear the name, but there’s something else: he’s one of my original parolees since I transferred here a year ago, after my incident.
I say, “What about him?”
“I-I saw Wizard and another guy kill a girl last night,” he says, “with that pistol.”
I don’t hide my disbelief when I say, “You’re telling me you took a gun from a crime scene?”
“I was gonna sell it,” he says.
The second that’s out of his mouth, I laugh at the idiocy of it, but then something else grabs me: the thought of having something solid on Wizard, and after that, it’s all I can think about.
That little fucker, he’s lied to me more times than I can count, but the most maddening thing about it is that I’ve never been able to catch him in one, because down here in the ghetto, everybody covers for everybody else. They see everything, these neighborhood people, but they don’t say anything. It’s the opposite of a civil society, because these little gangsters run a tight ship. Neighborhood people never give statements on the record, never aid prosecution. These Hispanics, they don’t have values like we have values. They’ll lie like breathing. They’ll shoot you for nothing, too. They’ll shoot you because somebody told them to. It’s the law of the jungle out here. The only way anybody ever goes away for anything is—
An idea hits me then. It stops me cold, and it must make me pull a face, because Augie says, “You okay?”
“Shut it, Augie.”
Straightaway, I know it’s the best idea I’ve ever had. It could kill a few birds with one big stone. There’s no way anybody stands up about this shooting, not even Augie, unless I make him stand up, because the only way anybody goes down for this is if he points fingers.
Damn, it could be sweet. It could be the sweetest move that ever got pulled.
It could be justice (real justice, for once), and a whole lot more. There could even be something for me to take out of it. I could get the best kind of reward. Two things at the same time (something I’ve always wanted, and something I could punish them with), because if I can get those little criminals out of that house, it’ll be open season on Wizard’s cousin.
She’ll be vulnerable. She’ll be alone. She won’t have anybody to lean on close by. I’ve seen how she’s looked at me. I know she’s thought about me. It’s in her eyes. Those eyes always told me something else too: she’s the type of girl I can teach things to, and she’ll appreciate it.
Augie’s got his mouth open, and he’s staring at me, so I say, “Who was the other guy, Augie?”
Augie gulps. “What?”
Say Dreamer. I’m trying to send the word across the room to him. Dreamer. Please, God, just let him say that word. He’s not getting it, though. I have to say, “You said there were two guys. If Wizard was one, who was the other guy at the shooting?”
Dreamer. I’m practically saying it under my breath. Dreamer. Dreamer. Dreamer. C’mon, Augie, say it. Give me the name of a thuggish little gangster who everybody knows is into bad things but has never gotten a felony on his record. Say Dreamer. Give me the name of Angela’s boyfriend, the dipshit living in that house rent-free and getting pussy he never deserved, so I can take him off the board altogether, because whether he was there or not last night doesn’t matter. If he didn’t shoot somebody then, he’ll do it next week, or next month, with no guarantee he goes to prison for it. No, sir. This way, they both get what’s coming.
“Don’t know,” Augie says. He’s looking at the kicked-up chunk of carpet like it betrayed him.
This could mean he knows, but he’s not telling me. I decide to prompt him again, but all the way this time.
I say, “Was it Dreamer?”
“I-I don’t really know him, not to look at, and it was dark.”
I don’t say anything. I wait for Augie to bring his eyes back up to my face. It takes a few seconds, but it’s enough time for him to know that things might be shifting between us, that maybe he has options after all. My mouth goes dry. My throat, too. What I’m about to say is risky, so risky I’d never even take the chance on it if I weren’t telling somebody that nobody else would ever believe.
I say, “You’re going to tell them it was.”
He just leaves his mouth open. I nod to the plastic baggies.
“All of those bags but one go down the toilet. I only violate you for using. I take you in. You tell the sheriffs what you saw, which I’m sure will make things easier for you when it comes time for your discharge review. The only thing you add to your witness statement is: you tell them it was Wizard and Dreamer you saw last night. Both of them.”
He’s trying to get his head around it and failing. “But—”
I cut him off. “Get on the right side of the system, Augie. I’m your one shot. I want Wizard and Dreamer gone, and you want to stay out of prison. If we can agree on that, I will make sure this gun gets to the proper authorities so they can prosecute a couple of murderers.”
Augie blinks at me. “How you gonna tell them where you found it?”
“Who says I need to tell them anything?”