Split Images (1981) (2 page)

"What about the Colt Python?"

"Cost him four and a half. I told him I could have got him a deal in Detroit."

"I mean is it registered?"

"Jesus Christ, get out of here, will you."

"Okay, but can I ask one more thing?"

"What?"

"Robbie Daniels--he isn't a movie star, is he?"

The detective said, "Jesus Christ, the man owns companies. He's got a big plant in Detroit supplies the auto industry with something or other. Has a development company owns land in seven states and down in the Caribbean islands. Resort hotels, condos, all that development shit. He's worth like in the neighborhood of a hundred million bucks- you want to know he's a fucking movie star."

The detective, wearing a light blue wash-and-wear suit over a dark blue sport shirt and a creamcolored tie, the open suit coat tight around his arms and shoulders, waited for the young squad-car officer to drive off before he buzzed for somebody to open the gate.

Mr. Daniels wanted to talk.

The detective had not been told this. He knew it the way he would know from a woman's glance in a bar there it was if he wanted any. The only difference here, he didn't know what Mr. Daniels had in mind. The detective had already gone down the list.

He isn't gonna ask you want to play tennis or fucking polo, anything like that. Ask you you want to join the Seminole Club.

He isn't gonna ask you who your stockbroker is.

He isn't gonna waste his time, chitchat about this and that. Though it would start that way.

What can you do he can't--outside of pressing two hundred ninety-five pounds straight up over your head? He thought about this following the drive that was lined with royal palms, but couldn't think of a good reason why the man would want to talk to him.

The detective's name was Walter Kouza.

"What's going to happen, not much at all," Walter Kouza said. "They'll run it past a grand jury, Palm Beach County Criminal Court. They have to do that in the case of a homicide. The jury will practically be instructed to call it justifiable and that's it."

"I have to appear, though," Robbie Daniels said.

"Yes, you have to appear, tell what happened.

You're the only one knows, right? I take the stand, describe what the crime-scene people found- evidence of forcible entry, your gold cigarette lighter in the guy's pocket, Exhibit A, the machete--you'll be out in about twenty minutes."

There would be a silence and Mr. Daniels would nod to himself, getting it straight in his mind. The detective was surprised Mr. Daniels didn't act bored or like he was better than anybody else. He seemed like a nice down-to-earth fellow. Sat with a leg hooked over his chair. White cashmere today against his tan; faded jeans, gray and white Nike tennis shoes with the strings untied. The detective bet the guy never picked up his room when he was little or combed his hair. He still didn't.

He did kind of look like a movie star.

Or a cheerleader.

That was it. And the detective was the football coach. Big Ten. The two of them sitting around shooting the shit after the game. Only the coach called the cheerleader mister and maintained a pleasant expression.

Silence didn't bother the detective. He liked silence, waiting for the other fellow to speak. He liked the afternoon sunlight, the way it filtered through palm trees and filled the living-roomwindow wall twenty feet high. Sunlight made a silence seem longer because there was no way to hurry sunlight. You couldn't turn it off. He liked the cheerleader-coach idea too and thought of Woody Hayes. Woody Hayes had probably never spoken to a cheerleader in his life outside of get the fuck out of the way. But this coach would talk to this cheerleader, yes sir, and wait until spoken to.

What he didn't like was not seeing an ashtray around anywhere; he was dying for a cigarette.

"Will there be any problem with the gun?"

"The one you used? No, I don't see a problem. I assume, Mr. Daniels, the gun's registered."

The cheerleader nodded again, thoughtful.

"Yeah, that one is."

That one. The guy still nodding as the detective waited, in no hurry.

"Hey, listen, why don't we have a drink?"

"Fine," the detective said, "if you're going to have one."

He thought a servant would appear and they'd have to wait around for the servant to appear again with his silver tray. But the cheerleader jumped up--let's go--and led the detective through a back hall, up a narrow spiral stairway to an oval-shaped castle door Mr. Daniels had to unlock. Not the wrought-iron crap, Walter noticed, but Kwikset deadbolt double locks. The door creaked. Walter saw shafts of light in narrow casement windows, an oriental carpet, bigger than any he'd seen off a church altar, books from floor to ceiling, inlaid cabinets. Spooky, except for the oak bar and art posters that didn't make sense.

Walter said, "You must read a lot."

Robbie Daniels said, "When I'm not busy."

They drank Russian vodka on the rocks, Walter perched on a stool with arms, Daniels behind the bar--long-legged guy--one tennis shoe up on the stainless-steel sink. Hardly any sunlight now: track lighting, a soft beam directly above them and the rest of the room dim. Walter wanted a cigarette more than ever. There was a silver dish on the bar, but he didn't know if it was an ashtray.

He said, "Detroit, I had a bar down in the rec room, all knotty pine, had these ashtrays from different hotels, you know, different places."

"That's right," Robbie said. "I forgot, you're from Detroit."

"As a matter of fact born and raised in Hamtramck," Walter said. "Twenty-three sixteen Geimer.

Went to St. Florian's, Kowalski Sausages right down the street if you know that area, or you happen to like kielbasa. Yeah, my old man worked at Dodge Main thirty-two years. You know they're tearing it down. GM's putting up a Cadillac assembly plant, buying all that land around there from the city. The city tells the residents, a lot of them these old people, what they're gonna give them for their houses, that's it, take a hike. Ralph Nader, you say GM to him he gets a hard-on, he's mixed up in it now . . . Yeah, technically I was born in Hamtramck, been a Polack all my life." Walter Kouza paused. His eyes, deep beneath his brows, showed a glimmer of anticipation.

"You know who lived not too far away? John Wojtylo." He waited. "The pope's cousin. Yeah, you know. John Paul the Second?"

"Is that right?" The cheerleader gave him an interested little grin.

"Yeah, the cousin use to work over to Chrysler Lynch Road. He was a sandblaster. Only the pope spells it different. Wojtyla. With a a on the end 'stead of a o. He's a Polack too. Hey, and how about that other Polack, Lech Walesa? He something? Doesn't take any shit from the communists."

Walter's blunt fingers brought a pack of Camels and a green Bic lighter from his shirt pocket. "And you live, your residence is in Grosse Pointe, if I'm not mistaken." He looked again at the silver dish on the bar; it was within reach.

The cheerleader was nodding, very agreeable.

"Right, Grosse Pointe Farms."

"I could never keep those different Grosse Pointes straight. You live anywhere near Hank the Deuce?"

"Not far."

"There Fords all around there, uh?"

"A few. Henry, Bill, young Edsel now."

"They got, in the barber college right there on Campau near Holbrook? Heart of Hamtramck, they got a chair Henry Ford sat in once, got his haircut. I don't mean at the barber college, when the chair was someplace else."

"That's interesting," Robbie said. He took a drink and said, "You mentioned the other day you were with the Detroit Police."

"Nineteen years," Walter said. "Started out in the Eleventh Precinct. Yeah, then I moved downtown, worked Vice, Sex Crimes, Robbery . . ."

Walter lighted his Camel and pulled the silver dish over in front of him. Fuck it. "It was never boring, I'll say that."

"You ever shoot anybody?"

"As a matter of fact I have," Walter said.

"How many?"

"I shot nine people," Walter said. "Eight colored guys, one Caucasian. I never shot a woman."

"How many you kill?"

"I shot nine, I killed nine." Walter let himself grin when he saw the cheerleader begin to smile, eating it up.

"They were all DOA except this one guy, a jig, hung on three hundred sixty-seven days, if you can believe it. So technically his death wasn't scored as a hit. I mean he didn't die of gunshot, he died of like kidney failure or some fucking thing. But it was a nine-millimeter hollow nose, couple of them, put him in the hospital, so . . . you be the judge."

"How about down here?" Robbie said.

"The guy was a quadriplegic, I mean when he died."

"Have you shot anyone down here?"

"In Palm Beach? I don't know if I tried to draw my piece it would even come out. No, I haven't, but the way things are going, all these fucking Cubans and Haitians coming in here . . ." Walter stopped.

"I got to watch my language."

Robbie gave him a lazy shrug, relaxed.

Walter said, "Anyway, with the refugees coming in, lot of them jerked out of prison down there in Cuba . . . I know a gun shop in Miami I mentioned to you, guy's got three outlets, he's selling five hundred thousand bucks worth of handguns a month.

Guy's making a fortune. He's got a range, he's teaching all these housewives come in how to fire threefifty-sevens, forty-fives . . . Can you see it? Broad's making cookies, she's got this big fucking Mag stuck in her apron. But that's what it's coming to. It didn't surprise me at all a man of your position would have that Python. It's a very beautiful weapon."

The cheerleader was pouring them a couple more. "What do you carry?"

"Now? A Browning nine-millimeter." Walter laid his cigarette on the silver dish, raised his hip from the stool as he went in under his suit coat, pulled the weapon from the clip-on holster that rode above his right cheek and placed it on the bar, nickel plate and pearl grip sparkling in the cone of overhead light.

"Nice," the cheerleader said.

"Detroit I packed a forty-four Mag and a thirty- eight Smith Airweight with a two-inch barrel. But that's when I was working STRESS. As a matter of fact, eight of the guys I took out it was when I was with STRESS."

"I sorta remember that," Robbie said.

"Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets."

"I'm not sure I ever knew what it meant."

"Yeah, Stop the Robberies . . . and so on. That was . . . let me see, I was on it back in '72,'73. We'd go in teams in a hot street-crime area, inner city.

Dress like you live around there. One guy's the decoy, the target. Stroll down the street maybe act like you're drunk or you're a john looking for some quiff. The other guys lay back, see if you attract anything. See, we used teams of four. That would be your decoy, your backup, he'd be like another bum or civilian of some kind, then you'd have two more guys in the car, they covered you. We cut street crime way down, confiscated something like over four hundred guns. We had to shoot some people to do it but, well, it's up to them."

The cheerleader seemed to smile as he frowned, liking the idea but with reservations. "Isn't that entrapment?"

Walter said, "Hey, they named the game. All we did, we played it with 'em."

Robbie said, "May I?"

Walter said, "Sure." If the guy owned a Python he could handle a Browning. He watched Daniels heft the nickel-plated automatic, extending it now to take a practice sight. But then looked up, lowering the gun.

A woman's voice said, "Don't shoot. I'll leave quietly."

Walter made a quarter turn on his stool.

The houseguest, Angela Nolan, stood in the oval doorway. She was wearing a long navy blue coat with her jeans, over what looked like a workshirt and a red neckerchief. She said, "I'm on my way."

Robbie raised his eyebrows. "You're finished with me?"

"No, but . . ." the girl paused. "Could I talk to you for a minute?"

Robbie said, "Maybe some other time."

"I've got a plane. I just want to ask you something."

"Yeah . . . Go ahead."

"Could you come downstairs?"

"Not right now," Robbie said.

It was the girl's turn. Walter Kouza waited, feeling something now, a tension that surprised him: the two of them trying to sound polite, but with an edge, Mr. Daniels's edge just a hint sharper than the girl's.

She said, "Thanks, Robbie, I'll see you."

He said, "Angie? Don't go away mad."

The doorway was empty. Walter swiveled back to the bar as Robbie added, "As long as you go," and shook his head, patient but weary.

Walter said, "Gee, she walks out--I thought you extended her every courtesy. She's a writer, uh?"

Robbie was fixing up their drinks.

"Suppose to be doing a piece for Esquire, part of a book. At least that's what she told me. Like, 'The Quaint Customs of the Rich' or some goddamn thing. She tells me go ahead, do whatever I do, she'll observe, take some pictures and we can talk later. Fine. I'm on the phone most of the time I'm down here."