War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel (45 page)

If we were lucky, O’Connor wouldn’t investigate us further.

If we weren’t lucky, we wouldn’t be able to go back to Chicago
,
either.
And I would have to evaluate if Jimmy and I had to change identities — again.

FORTY-SIX

The neighborhood where Joel Grossman’s parents lived was as different from my Harlem neighborhood as a street could get.
Before I had taken the train here, I had called the Grossman’s and asked if I could come up to the apartment to talk to Joel.

“We’re happy to cooperate,” Mrs. Grossman said. “My boy has had a rough time.
Anything we can do to find the person who hurt him, we’ll do.”

They promised to leave my name with the doorman.

The apartment building was large and imposing — not a
rehabbed
mansion like some of the buildings
facing
the park, but actually built for apartments.
The exterior, with its terra
-
cotta Egyptian accents and tapestry brick, made me guess the building had been built in the 1920s, not in the late
nineteenth
century like so much of the neighborhood.

The doorman, who was white, smiled at me as if I were
,
too, and told me that I was expected.
He held the door for me, something no one did outside of Laura’s place.

The building’s interior was dark, done in red and golds. The golds were supposed to add richness, the red warmth, or so I guessed. Both colors overwhelmed the real mahogany desk, set up like a motel check-in, and the heavy men’s club
-
style furniture.

The doorman had directed me to the tenth floor.
As I got onto the small elevator, the doorman picked up the phone. I assumed he was calling upstairs so that the Grossmans knew I was coming.

The elevator opened onto a lush hallway, with red shag carpet, and ivory and gold wallpaper.
The overhead lights were chandeliers, hanging every six feet like an interior decorator’s nightmare.

At the end of the hall, a middle-aged woman stood in a doorway.
She leaned against her open door, clasping ring-bejeweled hands together.

“Mr. Grimshaw?” she asked.

I nodded.

“I hadn’t expected — I mean —” She
interrupted
herself and gave me an apologetic smile.
She had obviously figured out halfway through her sentence that she had been about to insult me.

“I take it you’re Mrs. Grossman,” I said, making my voice as warm as possible.
My appearance — not just my blackness, but my size and my scar — intimidated a lot of people. Kindness sometimes got them past it.
“I can’t thank you enough for taking time from your Sunday to see me.”

She smiled. This time it was more relaxed.
She had a round face, with dark eyes that had still held some of their youthful beauty.
Her hair had gone gunmetal gray, and she wore it up, in an unflattering matronly style.

“My Joel, we nearly lost him,” she said as she ushered me into a darkened cave of an apartment. “He just lies in his room, listening to that music and sometimes watching some news.
Nobody visits, nobody calls. I think he feels abandoned.”

She twisted her hands together as she spoke, the rings making a slight clicking sound as they touched.

“Is that the detective, Mother?” A man came toward me.
He was smaller than I was, with delicate gray curls that fell around his face.
His features weren’t delicate, though.
His eyes were heavy-lidded, his nose large.
His face was lined, and I wondered if Mrs. Grossman didn’t keep her hair up and her style old-fashioned so that her age difference with her husband wouldn’t seem so obvious.

“Mr. Grimshaw,” she said as we reached the man, “this is my husband, Dr. Grossman.”

“Doctor,” I said.

He took my hand, and shook it.
“You are the lead detective on my son’s case?”

“Actually, no,” I said, deciding not to lie to these good people more than I had to.
“Apparently your son’s shooting is related to three others in the city.
I’m working on all four, hoping to find a link.”

“Three other shootings,” Dr. Grossman said.
“Did the victims live through them?”

“So far,” I said.
“Although the young lady shot on Friday has had a rough time of it.”

“Her poor parents,” Mrs. Grossman said. “Are they holding up?”

“I haven’t met them yet, ma’am,” I said. “She had just finished her second emergency surgery when I arrived yesterday, and no one was up to talking with me.”

“Understandable,” Dr. Grossman said.
“Were they in the park when they were shot as well?”

“Actually, no,” I said.
“One of the shootings was in Central Park, another in a different section of the Village, and the last near Battery Park.”

“So different,” Mrs. Grossman said.
“Why do you think they’re related to my Joel?”

“Because they all took place during a protest, ma’am, and all of the victims are friends of your son.”

“We taught him to be active in his community,” Dr. Grossman said, “but the world is a different place than it was when I was a young man.
Active now has another meaning.
I am not in favor.”

“I’m not sure I am either,” I said.

“Papa,” Mrs. Grossman said to her husband, “Mr. Grimshaw came for Joel.
We should let him conduct his business.”

“Yes,” Dr. Grossman said.
“This way.”

He led me down a dark corridor.
The narrowness of the hallways surprised me.
I was used to Laura’s apartment, filled with light and floor-to-ceiling windows.
I glanced into the living room as I passed it here — there were large windows, but they were covered
by
heavy brocade curtains.
All the doors in the hallway were shut, adding to the closed-in feeling.

Dr. Grossman opened a door at the end of the hall.
A sharp odor of camphor and stale sweat wafted toward me.

I peered in.
A small man lay in the center of a large bed. Nearly a dozen pillows rested around and behind
him
.
An IV stood to one side, unused, and there were more medical supplies on a nearby table.

His neighbor had said he couldn’t be alone, but I hadn’t realized he was hurt this badly.

The young man looked at me from his
bed
, his face gray in the artificial light.
“You’re the detective?” he asked, and I could hear the same disbelief I had heard in his mother’s tones.

“Yes,” I said.

He shook his head slightly, then sighed.
I went deeper into the room.

“Do you want me to stay, son?” Dr. Grossman asked.

“No, Dad,” the young man responded.
“It’s okay. I can ring if I need you.”

His hand moved tiredly toward a bell pull that hung down the wall beside the bed.
I hadn’t seen anything that old-fashioned outside of the movies.

“All right,” Dr. Grossman said. Then he gave me a pointed look.
“Go easy on him.
He’s still frail.”

“I will.” I went deeper into the room. Someone had moved an upholstered chair close to the bed.
A book rested on the cushion.
I picked it up and looked at it as I sat down.
It was about the upcoming Apollo mission to the Moon.

“Think they’re gonna make it?” I asked, holding up the book.

“I think it’s one of the riskier things we’ve done,” the young man said.

“Me, too,” I said.
“And I’m not sure the expense is justified.
I’m Bill, by the way.”

“Joel.” He glanced at the door, then back to me. “My folks told me you were coming.
You’re really investigating the shooting, huh?”

“There’s been a few others,” I said.
“I’m investigating all of them.”

He nodded.
“I don’t remember much.
I already told somebody that.”

“I know,” I said.
“But tell me what you can.”

“The Lower Manhattan Expressway.”
He pushed himself up on the pillows, then winced.
“
P
eople have been fighting it for years.
I’d gotten my own place
nearby
, and it had become home.
There were meetings about it, and I finally decided to go to one, in the park.
I show up early, talk to a few friends, and then suddenly — nothing.
I can’t remember any more.”

“You were there for the
e
xpressway meeting,” I said.

He nodded.

“Not for the War at Home Brigade?”

His eyes narrowed. They were as dark and arresting as his mother’s.
“Who told you that?”

“That you were part of the group?”

“No, that I was there for WHB.”

“One of the detectives said you were involved in it.
”

Joel pursed his lips.
“I stopped being part of that group when they changed their name.
When
someone
actually brought a copy of the
military’s bomb-making pamphlet
to a meeting and started demanding that we
take stuff
out of it for future use. Feh. I told Daniel that I would have nothing to do with him.”

“Daniel Kirkland?” I asked.

Joel nodded.

“What was his response?”

“He doesn’t understand smaller goals.
The
e
xpressway doesn’t matter, he says to me, because the city doesn’t matter. It’s part of the capitalist system that oppresses all of us.
And so on and so on.
I am not a rhetorician.
I am a man who gives to his community.
I am against the war — who isn’t? — but I am not going to kill for peace. There is no logic in that.”

He wheezed, then closed his eyes again, taking shallow breaths.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

He nodded, but didn’t open his eyes.
“Just give me a minute.”

I did.
He breathed slowly, evenly, until the breaths got deeper.
His face had gone even paler.

When he opened his eyes, I asked, “Is all of this from the gunshot?”

“Didn’t even have to go to Vietnam to get my war wound.” He said it lightly, but he didn’t mean it that way.

“When did you drop out of the group?” I asked.

“I didn’t drop out,” he said.
“I left.
A number of us did.
The ones who are left have come for the spectacle, for the fight, not for any real cause.
Or maybe they’re slightly crazy, I don’t know.
It’s not for me to know.”

“You left the group to Daniel,” I said.

“No,” Joel said.
“Groups change.
They follow the strongest personality.
And I am not that.
Daniel has a charisma, a gift.
I call it a gift for lies, but that could be because I seem immune to him.
I have a lot of friends — I had a lot of friends — in that group who saw nothing wrong with him, who believed what he had to saw, even though it doesn’t hold up to rational thought.
They tell me that sometimes rational thought isn’t enough.
Sometimes emotion will turn the tide.
Do you believe that?”

“The best leaders I’ve known have combined both,” I said.

He gave me a sideways look.
“But we shoot all of those people, don’t we?”

Was that how he justified his own shooting?
That he had spoken a truth, and the truth had somehow angered someone enough to shoot him?

“Did you think your shooting had political overtones?” I asked.

“One of the cops said that it might’ve been related to my political activities,” he said. “Or it might have been random.
They found some shell casings on a rooftop that came from the same kind of gun that fired my bullet, but that’s all I know.
You tell me.
You’ve read the file.”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” I said. “First Ned Jones gets shot, then you, and then Victor McCleary —”

“Vic?”
Joel shifted on the pillow.
“When?”

“Last weekend,” I said.

“Then it’s definitely not connected.
We left at the same time.
Right after the refrigerator incident.”