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“Why you trying to tie me with Earl?”
“You seem to know a lot of the same people, Joey.”
His face was gray and dry. His eyes searched in mine.
“I got you figured,” he said. “You’re trying to put out word to the AB I’m gonna roll over. That’s it, ain’t it? You’re gonna keep squeezing me till I cop to some bullshit plea. Do you know what you’re doing, man? The A
B’s not part of the organization. They think somebody’s gonna rat-out a member, it’s an open contract. They’re in every joint in the country. You do time when there’s an AB hit on you, you do it in lockup. I mean with a solid iron door, too, man, or they’ll get you with a Molotov through the bars. That’s what you’re trying to bring down on me? That’s why you’re pulling on Bobby Earl’s crank? That’s a lousy fucking thing to do, man.”
“Would Jewel Fluck try to whack you, Joey?”
His eyes narrowed and grew wary.
“I saw him take out Eddy Raintree. It was pretty ugly.”
“I got no more to say to you.”
“I can’t blame you. I’d feel the same way if all the doors were slamming around me. But think about it this way, Joey. You’re a made guy. There’re cops who respect that. Are you going to do major time while a guy like Bobby Earl sips Cold Duck and gets his picture on the society page? He’s a Nazi, Joey, the honest-to-God real article. Are you going to take a jolt for a guy like that?”
He leaned over the side of the bed and spit in the waste basket. I looked the other way.
“Drop dead, man. I don’t know anything about Bobby Earl.”
I studied his face. His skin was grained, unshaved, filled with twitches.
“What are you staring at?” he said.
“Give him up.”
“You must have some kind of brain tumor or something. Nothing I say seems to get in your head. You guys ain’t gonna do this stuff to me. You tell these local bozos I’m walking out of this beef. I’m not doing time, I’m not getting whacked in custody, either. I ain’t getting whacked. Can you handle that, Jack?”
“The local bozos aren’t taking a lot of interest in your point of view, Joey. Every once in a while a token guy gets dropped in the skillet, and this time it looks like you’re it. It might not be fair, but that’s the way it works. You never saw a mob run across town to do a good deed, did you?”
He tried to turn away from me, but his wrist clanked the handcuff chain against the bed rail. He hit the mattress with his other fist, then clenched his arm over his eyes.
“I want you to leave me alone,” he said.
I got up from the chair and walked to the door. His chained right foot stuck out from under the sheet. He tried to clear his throat and instead choked on his saliva.
“I’ll see about the canned goods and the hot plate,” I said.
He worked the sheet up to his chin, kept his arm pressed tightly across his eyes, and didn’t reply.
I ARRRIVED IN the park before Bootsie and Alafair and walked idly along the bayou’s edge under the trees. Desiccated gray leaves were scattered along the mudbank. I squatted down and flipped pebbles at several thin, needle-nosed garfish that were turning in the current.
I was troubled, uncomfortable, but I couldn’t wrap my hand around the central concern in my mind.
Joey Gouza was in custody, where he belonged. Why did I worry?
Policemen often have many personal problems. TV films go to great lengths to depict cops’ struggles with alcoholism, bad marriages, mistreatment at the hands of liberals, racial minorities, and bumbling administrators.
But my experience has been that the real enemy is the temptation to misuse power. The weaponry we possess is awesome—leaded batons, slapjacks, Mace, stun guns, M-16s, scoped sniper rifles, 12-gauge assault shotguns, high-powered pistols and steel-jacketed ammunition that can blow the cylinders out of an automobile’s engine block.
But the real rush is in the discretionary power we sometimes exercise over individuals. I’m talking about the kind of people no one likes—the lowlifes, the aberrant, the obscene and ugly—about whom no one will complain if you leave them in lockdown the rest of their lives with a good-humored wink at the Constitution, or if you’re really in earnest, you create a situation where you simply saw loose their fastenings and throw down a toy gun for someone to find when the smoke clears.
It happens, with some regularity.
I saw Bootsie and Alafair setting out picnic food on a table by the baseball diamond and I walked over to join them. Alafair streaked past me, her face already flushed with expectation.
