Page 48
Dragging him into a little alley, I let him fall on his back and then squatted down so he could see my face, illuminated by an automatic prowler light put there to scare potential burglars.
“Who you?” he said.
I took out my pistol and pointed it at the center of his forehead.
“I do sumpin’ to you?” he demanded.
“I need a name, Mr. Barret.”
“Huh?” He didn’t know whether to be drunk or afraid.
“Who in the police did you answer to fourteen years ago when you were running aitch outta the docks?”
His little eyes became big and he blinked like some kind of rain forest creature looking for a way out.
“Um, um, um…Cumberland,” he said. “Hugo Cumberland.”
That was the first time since Rikers that it came upon me in full force.
It was dark and dank, bug infested and rank from the odor of maggots in that alley. And I was, once again, a murderer-in-waiting, now with a gun in my hand and a man I yearned to kill prostrate before me.
It’s not that I wanted to pull the trigger; it was just that I was going to pull it and he was going to die. There was a powerful revelation in that burgeoning reality.
I think Little Exeter must have seen his death in my eyes and so the fear drained away, leaving only the seriousness of the last moments of a wasted life.
That look on Exeter’s face reminded me of Aja somehow. This brought to mind her asking for Coleman to be scuttled, for me to destroy him and her mother. If it hadn’t been for her, Exeter would have died in that filthy passageway.
I stood up quickly and ran.
When I got to my car, five blocks away, the pistol was still in my hand.
“Hello?” she said sleepily. “Is that you, King-baby?”
“Yeah,” I said after a short pause to catch my breath.
“What you doin’?”
“Sittin’ in a car down near the old navy yard.”
“What you doin’ there?”
“When I was in Rikers they broke me. Broke me like a china plate.”
Effy knew when to be quiet.
“They tore me down,” I confessed. “I thought I was tough, but everything I knew and believed in just slipped away.”
My face was going through all kinds of gymnastics to avoid crying.
“What you doin’ in that car, Joe?”
“I was looking for a name. There’s someone down here I thought might have it.”
“Did he tell you?”
“He did.”
“Did you kill him?”
