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“Nope. The Wiz is a nickname, Buddy is the name on my birth certificate. It’s actually Buddy Jr. My old man was named Buddy, too.”
As they got to the corner, a tall woman in a sleeveless tee-shirt, perhaps to show off her full-sleeve tats and biceps muscle, walked over to a rack of speed bags. She began hitting one of them, working into a rhythm that Virgil recognized as the bass line in Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust.”
Lucas said to Corbin, “We have a couple of delicate questions for you. We don’t want you repeating them. If you do, we’ll make life difficult for you, because you could be warning off a criminal. A serious criminal. We’re not trying to be mean, we’re trying to be informational.”
“Kind of a mean way of doing it,” Buddy said. “What’s going on?”
“Who-all works with the kids in the boxing program?” Virgil asked. “Specifically, the ten-to-twelve group?”
“Well, there are four of us,” Buddy said. “There’s me, there’s Roger Smith, there’s Don Hess, and Carol-Ann Lee.”
“We’re interested in a white man, six feet or so. Not too heavy.”
Corbin tilted his head, and said, “Don Hess. What’d he do?”
“We’re not sure he did anything,” Lucas said. “This is all preliminary. Why isn’t it Roger Smith?”
“You said white. Roger isn’t, he’s black. He’s six-four, and big. Don looks more like a high school basketball player.” Pause. “What do you think he did?”
“Have you ever noticed an... interest in the boys?”
Corbin took a step back, looked around as if they might have been overheard, stopping to check the woman on the speed bag: “Oh, Jesus, no. We wouldn’t, we couldn’t... if anybody said something like that, we’d get our asses sued off. Jesus.”
Virgil: “So Mr. Hess is all right?”
Another pause, and then Corbin said, “I gotta think so.”
“That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement,” Lucas said.
Corbin looked toward the front desk; the desk man was watching them. He shrugged and said, “I believe he’s okay, I believe he’s fine. That’s all I got to say about that.”
“What time are the boys’ classes?” Lucas asked.
“They start at six-thirty, that’s when the kids arrive, the class starts ten or fifteen minutes later, goes on to eight o’clock. They’re out on the street by eight-fifteen or eight-thirty at the latest. Their folks pick them up.”
He continued to edge away. Lucas said, “Don’t talk to anyone about us. Don’t talk to Rudy. If you do, and if Hess turns out to be a pederast, you’ll be in court with him. We’ll put you in prison until you’re a very old man.”
“I won’t talk to nobody,” Corbin said. “But I gotta say something to the boss,” and his eyes clicked toward the desk.
“Tell him what I just told you—that if you talk, you go to prison,” Lucas said. “And if we trace the talk back to him, he goes with you. Best for everybody if you keep your mouth shut. Tell him that.”
Corbin nodded. “Okay. Okay. I can do that.”
They let him go. Virgil said to Lucas, “Don Hess.”
“Could be.”
Virgil glanced toward the woman on the speed bag, who’d lost her rhythm and was looking at them. She mouthed, silently, “Outside,” pulled off one of her gloves, glanced toward the desk, where Corbin was talking to the desk man, held up five fingers, then did it again, and mouthed, “Ten minutes.”
Virgil nodded and he and Lucas started toward the door.
—
They didn’t haveto wait ten minutes, but did have to wait eight until the woman appeared at the front door and looked both ways. Lucas opened the door of the Cayenne, so she’d see it up the street. She hurried toward them, wearing a puffy jacket and carrying a duffel, and he popped the door to the back seat to let her in.
She settled in, said, “Hi, I’m Georgia Hooper,” and, “I’m sorry, I don’t want the guys to see me talking to you. I heard what you and The Wiz were talking about.”
“Why do they call him The Wiz?” Virgil asked. “Like the Wizard of Oz?”
