The Judgment (44 page)

“This is not the day I would have chosen to make this visit,” said Ismail. “But come to think of it, it wasn’t me who chose it but His Royal Highness.”

Then he lapsed into a long silence, his face turned toward the window, taking in all that the rain streaks permitted, looking out from time to time through the windshield for a better view. Once, as he looked forward, I saw a tear on his cheek. He wiped it away.

“This was a great city, Charley. You remember it during the war?”

“Yeah, but I was just a kid.”

“There wasn’t anything couldn’t be done here. I’ve heard it said the whole war was won right here on those assembly lines. But then they took the assembly lines away, and the city’s tax base went with them. The Big Three made this town, and now they got it just about unmade.”

“I agree,” the limo driver called back, tossing in his two cents like a New York cab driver. “You said it in a nutshell, my friend.”

Ismail turned to me with a grin. “There. You see?”

But then we fell back into silence, an even longer silence this time. Downtown—Cadillac Square, Grand Circus with its empty buildings and deserted hotels. They made Ismail’s point so well he had no need to comment, no need at all.

He was angry, and he was sad. It occurred to me that this might indeed be his last look at the city he had served long and conscientiously in his left-handed way.

“We better head for Manoogian now,” he said to the driver. “Can’t keep the man waiting.”

Then to me he whispered, “Could you give me that can of oxygen, Charley? I’m in need of a hit.”

I dug it out of my coat pocket and handed it over to him. He did the rest, fixing the mouthpiece, rationing two
generous doses to himself, nodding afterward in satisfaction. “Good stuff, take it from me.”

He didn’t say another word until we were back on Jefferson headed for Dwight and the mayor’s residence. As it turned out, he’d put the bad news off to the end.

“You aren’t going to like this, Charley, but I’m going in there to talk to him all by myself, solo. You got that?”

“I don’t think I understand that at all, Ismail. I’ve got a client. I’m here to represent his interests.”

He waved me to silence.

“There’s things going to be discussed in there you probably shouldn’t hear. I want to keep it so those things can be discussed, and I’ve decided that the presence of a third party, any third party, might just make it impossible to get down and dirty. I’m for your boy. It’s for him I’ll be talkin’, but I can’t do it with you listenin’ in. Now, is that clear?”

There really wasn’t much I could say.

“My way or no way,” said Ismail.

The driver turned off Jefferson and onto Dwight. There was no mistaking our destination; two police cars were parked in front.

“Your way, of course.”

“Thank you, Charley. I knew you were a gentleman.”

The limo pulled up at the entrance. A uniformed policeman opened the car door. “Councilman Carter? The mayor thought you might need some assistance. We have a wheelchair for you.”

“How very thoughtful of him,” said Ismail.

A
fter stopping at the office, I headed back to my apartment, satisfied that nothing had come in that couldn’t be handled the next day. The next day? No, Friday would have to do. Tomorrow was Thanksgiving, and I had that burdensome dinner with Sue and her parents in Southfield. She’d made it an obligation and was going to make sure I honored it, despite the uneasy terms we’d been on for the past few weeks. At this point I saw little future for us. Even though we’d had a good run of it for a while, I wondered why I had ever speculated, even briefly, that a policewoman and a defense lawyer just might manage something permanent together. Our interests were opposite. Our minds worked differently. We were natural adversaries. The sooner Sue admitted that, the sooner we’d be on our separate ways. All this made me question what had kept us together for so long. Loneliness, I suppose. There was so much of it in places like Pickeral Point.

For the second time in recent memory, I contemplated leaving town. Living someplace farther out in Oakland County might be possible. There was a good, active court in Pontiac, and I’d tried a couple of minor cases there. But the difficulties involved in opening up an office and establishing a new practice seemed, at this point, just insurmountable. I was still known in Detroit, of course. I tried a case in Recorder’s Court nearly every month. Yet returning
there seemed out of the question. Had I any friends there? No, just colleagues, other lawyers—and most of them lived out in the suburbs someplace and commuted to offices in town. I couldn’t quite picture myself as a suburban resident. No, professionally, Pickeral Point was just right for me. But like a lot of men my age, I’d lost the knack of making friends. Bob Williams was about the only one I had, a “best friend,” as the phrase goes. He knew all my secrets and liked me anyway.

On an impulse, I went to the phone and gave Bob a call. As usual, I got his answering machine. At the beep I told him I was just checking in and he could call me if he wanted, nothing urgent. Bob was so often involved in AA business, even on those nights he didn’t have a meeting to lead, and probably was on this night. Or maybe he’d gone to the movies. It was a thought, getting together with him, a reason to get out of the house.

I didn’t-have to dig too deep to discover what had put me in this frame of mind. It was the time I had spent with Ismail Carter. He hadn’t been far out of my thoughts since I’d left him back at the Parkview Convalescent Hospital in the care of that fierce floor superintendent, now my enemy for life. Ismail had seemed satisfied and none the worse for his excursion in the rain. All he had said about his hour-long meeting with the mayor came on the drive back to the Parkview. “We had a lot to talk about,” he told me. “I told him some things he hadn’t heard before. He’s thinking it over.”

I didn’t ask him to be more specific, didn’t ply him with questions. “You’ll let me know?” I said.

“Sure, Charley. Course I will.”

And that was that.

Whatever he had had to say to the mayor, he judged it to be of considerable importance. First of all, he had sought me out. Interestingly enough, I hadn’t heard from LeMoyne Tolliver since I’d first seen Ismail. He had wanted to know the details of the case against Mark Conroy and would not have allowed me to withhold anything
from him. And finally, he had not only sought the appointment with the mayor, he had also ventured out to keep it on a day that would have kept any other man in his condition safe and warm inside his room. The floor superintendent was absolutely right to object as she had. He was frail and might indeed be near death.

It was that—his own knowledge of his approaching death—that had given dignity and tragedy to the day’s whole adventure. Whatever happened in the matter of the
State of Michigan v. Mark Convoy
, it was certain that one old-time politician named Ismail Carter had done all he could to help the defendant.

I’d given a lot of thought to that on the drive back to Pickeral Point. It was only out there someplace in Macomb County when the rain changed to snow that I began to think on matters even darker.

Snow brought with it the threat of death, the death of a child. Murder. Whoever the killer was, he hadn’t missed an opportunity yet. There had been three snowfalls so far in this season, and each had left a dead child. They had a psychologist or two trying to explain the symbolism of snow and death, but so far no one had come up with anything helpful.

The Kerry County administration had been roundly criticized by the media not only for its failure to capture the killer, but also for failing to adopt any sort of preventive measures. It was true that up to now they had done nothing but send policemen and policewomen around to the schools in Kerry County to warn children against accepting rides from anyone, even people they knew. Bud Billings, who had been removed from direct participation in the case because of the false arrest suit, was put in charge of this program. But sometime during Stash Olesky’s big football party, he took me aside and told me that at the next threat of snow, there was a plan to put every patrol car available out on the roads in and around Hub City. Domelights flashing. “Any kids they see they’ll send home,” he told me. “And we’ll just keep them out
there all night long, if we have to, so we can be sure nothing will happen.” He sounded bold and determined. I remember thinking at the time that it might not be foolproof, but at least it was a plan. I sure hoped it would be effective.

That night’s supper came out of the freezer, which was well stocked with TV dinners for occasions like this. I had no desire to take a table for one at one of the three or four restaurants around town, and I’d already made one visit that day to Benny’s Diner.

Frozen dinners are getting better, I guess. I followed the simple directions, and the lasagna tasted pretty good right out of the microwave. It was about as good as what they give you on the airlines. I sat there in the kitchen, eating it slowly and making it last, and listened to the all-news station on the radio. After I’d finished and was sipping my second cup of coffee, they did a brief feature on the murders, making it sound like all Kerry County would be awake tonight on a vigil, “hoping against hope” that their children would be spared by the killer on this snowy night. There were a couple of interviews done in advance from Hub City, ordinary citizens mumbling inarticulately about what a shame it was, asking why the police couldn’t do something. The usual, wrapped up in two minutes’ time, followed by a supermarket commercial.

All that seemed a little too much, so I switched off the radio and rinsed the few dishes I’d dirtied and put them away in the big, noisy dishwasher. It would take at least three days to make even a light load for washing.

Did the people of Kerry County “wait in terror,” as the interviewer had suggested in her sign-off? For most, it was business as usual; they might not even be aware of the threat brought by the snow. But for some, anxiety, fright, terror—all that was real enough. Parents in Hub City and surrounding areas were certainly in that minority; and if there were any whose kids weren’t safely in or accounted for, they must be going through hell right now. Doris Dieberman, Dominic Benda, and perhaps even the crazy
Evans family felt a chill that night that had little to do with the temperature outside.

I felt it, too. Having seen those people through their separate ordeals with the police, and having watched as these terrible killings tore apart Sue, I felt tied to the case, bound to it in ways that surprised me. I had viewed one of the victims, that was the beginning of it for me. As it happened, I knew more about the killings than a lot of the cops did, those who were not directly concerned with the investigation. I had my own vague suspicions and theories that seemed invariably to run counter to those of Bud Billings, Sue, and the office of the county prosecutor. That night, I felt so emotionally involved in all of that, I was tempted to jump into my car and head out to Hub City and help the cops patrol the roads. But I knew they wouldn’t welcome my help.

I hadn’t been asleep long when the telephone rang. I’d listened one last time to the all-news station at the top of the hour just to reassure myself that nothing had happened, no plastic-wrapped package had been found by the side of the road; they didn’t even rerun the feature on Kerry County’s vigil. I’d say the call must have come about ten-thirty, certainly not much later. The funny thing was, I never looked at my watch, just reacted sort of zombie-like, sleep fogged.

“Charley, it’s Sue. There’s …”

I waited for her to finish the sentence, fearing, knowing just how it would end.

“There’s been another murder. This one was closer to us here in town, at our end of Copper Creek Road.”

“Everything else the same?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out.” She hesitated. “Charley, I was wondering … Look, I know I woke you up.”

“That’s all right.”

“I know we’ve been sort of on the outs because of this
investigation, but Charley, could you go out to the crime scene with me? I know it’s a lot to ask. I remember how you reacted before, but I’m scared to death I’m going to lose it again. What I need badly is some support out there, the kind you could give.”

She sounded desperate, already near tears.

“Where are you now?”

“I’m downstairs in my car.”

“Okay,” I said. “I just have to get dressed. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

I hung up and stood there for a moment, blinking in the dark. What else could I say to her? What else could I do? Whatever else she was, she was a friend in that peculiarly complicated way in which love and sex get mixed into the equation and confuse things so. But a friend nevertheless. I couldn’t have said no to her, but later, knowing the price I would pay, I wished to God that I had.

All right, it may have taken me three minutes, although I’m sure it was less than five from the time I hung up the telephone to the time I slid in beside her in the front seat of the Chevy Caprice. I gave her a hug. She seemed to need that.

“Thanks, Charley. I knew I could count on you.”

She started the car, put the emergency light on the dashboard and activated it.

“This stuff is terrible to drive in,” she said. “We’ve already lost one car tonight.”

“How was that?”

“We almost got him. We came so close. This time we had a plan. Every patrol car we had was out on the road, the Hub City cars, too.”

“I know. I heard about it beforehand.”

“Oh?” Suddenly cautious. “Who from?”

“Stash Olesky.”

“Well,” she said uncertainly, “it was his idea, so I guess he can talk about it if he wanted to. The point is, it almost worked.”

She went on to tell how Steve Majeski had been patrolling
Copper Creek Road out as far as Beulah, with his domelights flashing. Back and forth, for about four hours, he drove, there in the snow. It had slowed after-work traffic on the road considerably in the beginning, but three hours later there was really very little traffic anyway. Once home, people were kept in by the snow. And after all, Copper Creek Road went as far as the edge of the county, and not many lived out that way. It wasn’t a direct route to anyplace.