Simple Justice (8 page)

Billy come in sometime after eleven,” Jefferson Bellworthy said. “Sat at the bar, like usual.”

We faced each other on metal folding chairs in The Out Crowd’s office, which occupied a corner of the storage room in the back.

I noticed a gym bag resting atop stacked cases of Bud Light and, next to it, a popular self-help book on anger management.

Bellworthy leaned slightly forward, placing his big hands on the knotted muscles that ran like a network of iron cord through his upper legs. His hands were dark on top, with palms the color of cooked salmon.

“Did you know him very well?”

“So-so,” Bellworthy said.

“What was he like?”

“Pretty-boy type. The kind you see more of in Boy’s Town. You know, real taken with hisself. Always lookin’ around, makin’ sure people are lookin’ at him.”

“Were you attracted to him?”

It wasn’t hard to see he didn’t like the question.

“He wasn’t my type,” Bellworthy said, tersely. “Not even close.”

“You said he sat at the bar.”

“Yeah. Near the light, like always, where everybody could get a good look at him. Only this time, he kept lookin’ at his watch.”

“Was that unusual?”

“I’d say it was. Billy was more interested in lookin’ at other dudes and havin’ fun. I don’t think time meant a whole lot to Billy.”

“Maybe he had an appointment. Or a date.”

“Maybe.”

“Did he hustle, sell drugs?”

“If he did, he didn’t do it here. We don’t allow that shit.”

“You see him talk to anybody in the bar?”

“Sure. He knew people, he was a regular. And guys were always hittin’ on him, he liked that. You know, a tease, a regular little heartbreaker. But you never saw Billy leave the bar with nobody. He was funny that way. He liked to keep his affairs private-like.”

“According to the police, he got a phone call right around midnight and left the bar shortly after that.”

“That’s what Randy told ’em.”

“Who’s Randy?”

“The night bartender.”

“You weren’t working that night?”

“I was on the door. That’s my usual job. They like a big dude at the door, ’case there’s trouble. Not so much from the customers, but from the street.”

“They let you tend bar during the day?”

“Right, to learn my drinks. Sometimes I help Randy out at night, if it’s busy. But Monday’s our slowest night.”

“So you work double shifts?”

“Pretty much. I can use the bread.”

“And you work out at the gym, too?”

He ran one of his hands over a bicep the size of a healthy cantaloupe.

“That’s where I’d be now if I wasn’t talkin’ to you.”

“You must be pretty tired when midnight rolls around, maybe not as sharp as you might be otherwise.”

“I can handle it,” he said, bristling. “I know what I heard and saw that night.”

“OK, after Billy got the phone call, what then?”

“I took a break while he was still on the phone. Passed by him on my way to take a leak.”

“That was a few minutes after midnight.”

“Must have been.”

“What next?”

“So I’m standin’ at the urinal, shootin’ a bunny. And I hear the gunshot.”

“How did you know it was a gunshot and not a car backfiring? Or a firecracker?”

He snorted a little, faintly derisive. “Where I grew up, you learn the difference real quick.”

“And you could hear the gunshot over the loud music?”

“The music ain’t so loud back there, especially if the door’s closed.”

“If the door was closed, how were you able to hear the gunshot?”

He suddenly stood up, glaring down at me.

“What is this, man? The fuckin’ third degree?”

“Just questions, Jefferson.”

His eyes flickered furtively toward the book next to his gym bag. He drew in a deep breath, followed by another, as if he’d practiced it.

He sat back down and took one more deep breath, exhaling slowly.

“OK, ask your questions. Whatever you want.”

“Do you have a problem controlling your temper, Jefferson? A history of violence, maybe?”

He tensed, though not as visibly as before. “You could say I’ve had some problems in that area. I’m workin’ on it.”

“You feel any special animosity toward Latinos?”

He glared this time.

“No.”

“You sure about that?”

His next words formed a question that provided an answer but also carried a warning.

“I said so, didn’t I?”

“OK. So tell me how you were able to hear the gunshot clearly from the closed restroom.”

“There’s a little window in there. It opens right onto the place where Billy got wasted.”

“What happened after you heard the shot?”

“I shook my dick a couple times and zipped up and ran out the back door to check it out. When I got outside, I saw the Mexican kid, whatshisname…”

“Gonzalo Albundo.”

“Yeah, Albundo. I saw him down on one knee, bent over Billy, with his back to me.”

“Was he on his left knee or his right knee?”

“His left knee, the one they found the blood on.”

“How did you know that?”

His body coiled, and I saw his meaty hands tighten into lethal-looking fists.

“I read it in your newspaper. OK?”

“Glad to see somebody’s reading it.”

He didn’t smile.

“You got any more questions? ’Cuz I got things to do.”

“Just before the gunshot, did you hear anything? Something that sticks out in your mind?”

He hesitated, his eyes restless with uncertainty. “Yeah, sort of.”

“What was that?”

“I heard Billy, at least I think it was Billy, cry out somethin’.”

“Cry out what?”

“It was like, ‘Hey, what are you doin’? Come on, man, I wasn’t serious, man!’ Somethin’ like that. You know, real scared. Begging, like.”

I sat forward on my chair.

“Did it sound like he knew the other person?”

Bellworthy cocked his head, surprised.

“Yeah, sort of. Like he was…”

He broke off, unsure of himself.

“Like he was what, Jefferson?”

“I don’t know. Like he was…”

“Take yourself back to that moment. Listen to Billy’s exact words in your head.”

He closed his eyes.

“Like he was what, Jefferson?”

A half minute passed.

Then he opened his eyes and said, “Like he was tryin’ to talk his way out of somethin’. Somethin’ he’d maybe got hisself into. Maybe too deep.”

“Did you tell the police that?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged his huge shoulders.

“They didn’t ask.”

I followed the undulating motion of Jefferson Bellworthy’s muscular buttocks through the rear door of The Out Crowd and back into the relentless heat.

It radiated off the asphalt, even in the building’s shade, and even as the sun was going down.

As we stepped out, my nose caught the sweet aroma from floral bouquets placed by friends and relatives near the spot where Billy Lusk had died.

On the back wall of the restroom was a tiny window right where Bellworthy had said it would be.

“That’s where Billy got it,” he said, pointing to the powdery white outline of a human form.

At the edge of the chalked head was a bloodstain the size of a basketball, barely visible after seeping into the gritty blacktop.

“He took it right in the face, straight on,” Bellworthy said. “Lookin’ right at death when it came at him. He shit his pants, he was so scared. The cops told me that.”

I asked a few more questions, and he provided additional details about the night of the murder, but nothing that got me too excited.

“There’s one more question I have to ask,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Do you own a gun?”

He looked at me hard, more with contempt, I sensed, than anger.

“You think every dude who’s black owns a gun?”

“No. Just asking.”

“I don’t own no gun.”

I went back inside and talked to Randy, the night bartender, as he dumped ice into a small sink behind the bar.

He was a lean, well-chiseled 501 clone pushing forty, with short-clipped reddish-brown hair and a trim, thick mustache. He didn’t tell me anything new at first, except that Billy had seemed tense, even upset when he’d talked on the phone shortly before he was killed.

I asked about the caller’s voice on the other end of the line. “Muffled” was the only description Randy could give me, like the caller might have been talking through a handkerchief.

I thanked him and started to leave.

“There was one more thing,” he said.

I came back, opening my notebook.

“When Billy split that night, he left an unfinished whiskey sour on the bar.”

“Is there something unusual in that?”

“Not for most guys. But for Billy, it’s, what do you call it, outta character.”

“How so?”

“Billy never left a drink unfinished, not once in all the times I saw him in here. We used to kid him about it. See, when he was ready to split, he’d always raise his glass and say, ‘Waste not, want not.’ We figured he did it so people would take one last look at his pretty face. You know, that cute little nose of his raised up in the air while he emptied his glass.

“Anyway, I just thought I’d mention it. Seems kinda funny, if he was takin’ off for the night, that he’d leave behind his drink, barely half-finished.”

“You think maybe he planned to be gone only a short time.”

“Yeah, maybe. You know, maybe to meet somebody outside.”

“Somebody who was on the other end of that phone, who might have called to lure him out.”

“I’ll leave that kind of speculation to the cops.” He raised his heavy red eyebrows. “Or you media guys.”

I went out the back way and ran into Bellworthy doing the same, with his gym bag slung over one shoulder.

“Thanks for your help,” I said.

“Some of your questions I didn’t dig too much.”

“I noticed.”

“I almost popped you one.”

“Thanks for sparing me.”

He grinned, embarrassed. “Yeah. OK.”

“What you told me could be important.”

“Yeah?”

“You’ve got a good mind for observation and detail. Maybe you should have been a reporter.”

“Maybe I shoulda been a lot of things.”

We crossed the parking lot toward the street, leaving behind the chalk outline of Billy Lusk’s body and the fetid smell of cut flowers going bad in the heat.

Bellworthy crowded me with his massive body, and searched my face with his active eyes.

“You don’t think somebody else killed Billy, do you? I mean, somebody besides that Mexican kid?”

“I’m not sure, Jefferson.”

“But the dude said he did it, right?”

“Stranger things have happened in matters of the law.”

He laughed a little.

“You got that right.”

As we approached the curb, he looked my body up and down.

“You ain’t built too bad, man. You ever in athletics?”

“I wrestled.”

“College?”

“Some. You?”

“Football.”

“College?”

“Yeah.” Then, almost reluctantly: “And a little pro.”

“How little?”

“Half a season.”

“What happened?”

“Life.”

He squeezed my bicep, which was thick but going soft, and pinched me here and there for body fat. “You need to get under some iron, man. Do some aerobics. Get the fat outta your diet. A few months in the gym, you could be an OK-lookin’ dude.”

“I’ll consider that a compliment, Jefferson.”

He laughed.

“No, really. I do some personal training. I’d give you a discount.” He grinned. “Sort of as a favor to society.”

I laughed for the second time that day and told him I’d think it over. I started across the street, while he headed another way.

As I climbed into the Mustang, I noticed a pay phone on the corner.

It was less than fifty yards away, with a clear sight line to The Out Crowd. If someone had called from that booth, they could have hung up and been across the bar’s parking lot within seconds.

Then I noticed a familiar figure huddled in the phone booth’s shadow, looking in my direction.

Jim Lee lurched from the shadow toward the car. He clenched a paper bag wrapped around a stubby bottle in one hand, and gripped his coat in the other; half his shirt was untucked at the waist and his tie was loose.

As he staggered up to the car, he tried to pull himself together, which made him look even more inebriated than he was.

“I think maybe you want some company with me.”

He slurred his words badly but invested his voice with a sexual frankness I hadn’t expected.

I reached across and opened the door.