The Witness Read online

  Eddie rolled onto his stomach and placed his folded jacket under his chin and looked at the groups of people around him. He tried to guess which were male, which female. It was hard. He looked up at the iron railing that encircled them, at the faces gazing down into the grassy circle, and Eddie felt anger tighten across his chest.

  A string of vile words emerged soundlessly from his mouth. The seamy old Italian men and women, the high-cheekboned, small-eyed Slavs, the big brawny Irish guys, smirked or made disgusted faces and called out nasty remarks to the young people. Fine, let it all bounce off the hippies. It didn’t touch them, but Eddie let it touch him, deliberately let it touch him; let it sink deep inside himself, into the center of his being, where it roiled around and bit into his guts.

  It was a familiar feeling, bone-deep and as old as his memory: hatred. Eddie rolled onto his back again and closed his eyes. The tense feeling of anger gave way to a slowly building sense of excitement. Man, His Highness Old Mumbo-jumbo must be having ulcer attacks. He must be looking under his carpets, wondering who he could trust and who he couldn’t trust. The old bastard. Forty-two of your best, old man. I got me forty-two of your best and we all got us guns and we are going to blast open tonight. And tomorrow—you are out! And all that crappy double-talk is out after tonight, you nine-thousand, nine-million-year-old phony.

  Eddie moved onto his side, propped his chin up on the palm of his hand and watched a young uniformed cop outside the iron fence. The cop pushed his cap off his forehead, blotted his face with a white handkerchief. His eyes stopped at Eddie for a moment, then slid on.

  Here I am, fuzz. But you’re not looking for me, are you? You don’t know nothing about nothing about nobody. Eddie almost wished he could stand right up and tell that cop, tell everyone. Hell, not one hour ago, cop, not one mile from here, buster, I got me a big fat man.

  Eddie pressed his forehead against his arm and in the darkness, with pleasure and joy, he recalled the scene. The fat man: the Royal Leader’s fat bastard. Jesus. Tailing him, tailing Eddie Champion. Waddling along, quivering along the side street behind him, never even thinking Eddie might know him. But Eddie knew who he was all right and what he was up to.

  Eddie had turned into a black pit of a bar, a real deadbeat joint, stinking of cheap booze and beer and bums. He leaned against a stool and ordered beer and the bleary old slob behind the bar took his money and shoved the dirty glass at him without looking up. And the fat man. Eddie’s fingers tightened as he thought of him. That elephant, so sure Eddie was as dumb as the rest of the brotherhood, just rolled into the bar after him, walked to the back of the joint and jammed himself into an old-fashioned metal telephone booth. Eddie had glanced around. Everyone in the dump was dead, gone in his own world. He had moved real easy, quiet, slow. Just leaned into that telephone booth and smiled at the fat man.

  The fat man’s hand fell from the dial and Eddie heard the dial tone and he leaned his face real close and told him, “Fat Man, you not gonna call up nobody nomore.” It was comical, really funny, the way that big tub of flesh tried to squirm; hell, he was wedged in that booth so tight that when Eddie slashed him with the edge of his right hand across the throat, that fat man just kept sitting there, all pressed into the phone booth, just like he was still alive.

  And nobody had noticed a thing; all those bums with their faces in their beers, the bartender with his head down. Nobody saw nothing and Eddie had just moved out, nice and easy, and never stopped until he got to this crazy park with all these crazy weirdoes.

  He would stay right where he was, do just what he planned tonight, in front of them all. And the brothers who were looking for him would meet themselves coming and going, because the brothers who were with him had tipped him and had agreed to make the move with him tonight.

  The whole deal: mine. I won’t run it the way the old screw did. It will be the real thing—the real Secret Nation—and the streets will run red with blood. Eddie thought of money. Not nice new even stacks of bills, but crumply handfuls of green fives and tens and twenties, uncounted and endless. And not just for him—for all of them, all the brothers. All the other crap, the buildings and businesses and stuff—who needs it? Just the cash, collected every week, stuffed into the black bag and then divided up.

  They had discussed it last night in Claude Davis’s room and Claude had that scared look on his face. He was the only one asking any questions and finally Eddie had told him to just shut up and leave all the details to him. Eddie wasn’t exactly sure himself how to set up that end of things, but with the men and the talent and the guns he’d work it out.

  Eddie stretched his body and tried to get loose. He needed to sleep a little. Tonight: they would show their strength and their power and the white bastards would bleed and die all over the streets. The Secret Nation would be whispered about and written about and it would be a fact. A real, true thing, not like the swindle the old man had pulled off.

  He wished the sun would move real fast, sink, die, turn black. Come night. But before everything else, he had to go through with this FFA crap. He had to show up with them, mingle with them, be seen by them, just one of the nice kids sorrowing after young Billy. He didn’t want to call attention to himself in any way; he could get lost in the crowd easy enough when the time came.

  Eddie Champion frowned and tried to catch the elusive wave of panic, the sensation of weightlessness, of falling. His hands pressed flat against the grass beside his body; his fingers dug into the earth and tightened, but he could not hold on or reach out to whatever it was that was taunting him. Some feeling, some warning, something he had to remember. Something from the moment he had shot Billy Everett. Something. ...

  He forced his hands to relax, to relinquish the small bits of grass and dirt. He was determined to sleep. He had to sleep, to be prepared for tonight.

  After all, it wasn’t every night in your life that you got to shoot the Mayor of the City of New York.

  TWENTY-TWO:

  CHRISTIE OPARA KEPT A close watch on Barbara Reardon. The girl had been tense and silent during their ride to the Everett home, her face a sick white, her eyes large and glazed. A policeman and a law student, Gerald Friedman, lifelong friend and neighbor and classmate and confident of Billy Everett, stood just outside the house and asked identification of everyone who sought entry. The curious, the sensation seekers, the hostile, the slummers, were kept a full city block away from the house, yet their voices reached from behind the police barricades from time to time. Barbara displayed her FFA membership card and didn’t notice Christie flash her shield. The girl’s face was set into a stony resolve but she couldn’t have been any more prepared than was Christie for the terribleness of the mourning room.

  The coldness generated by the powerful rented air conditioners was no more incongruous than the gay flowered wallpaper—all cheerful red roses and pink daisies rising up from behind the coffin which was set against the one wall. The coffin seemed huge in the smallness of the room, and rows of folding chairs were lined up facing it. In one corner was a large, comfortable high-back plush chair of bright green; it was the only piece of furniture that had not been shifted to another part of the house. Banks of flowers surrounded the coffin and young people moved uncertainly, fingering the cards of the donors. There was a soft, hushed murmur of voices in every corner of the room but there was an island of absolute silence radiating around the large, stiff, straight, middle-aged Negro who sat bolt-upright on a wooden chair directly in line with the open end of the coffin.

  A lean, light-skinned Negro in a black suit and clerical collar nodded at Christie, then saw Barbara Reardon’s face and reached for her elbow and wordlessly led the girls to the coffin. Barbara knelt, crossed herself, her eyes wide and unseeing, her lips moving. Then she crossed herself again and rose unsteadily, her eyes on the dead face. She shook her head, then turned her face away and was steered by the minister to Billy’s father. Her hand was pressed and released by his, but their eyes never met.

/>   “Mrs. Everett is in the kitchen, my dear. She would take it kindly if you would have some coffee she has prepared,” the minister told Barbara.

  Christie looked down at the small, large-eyed woman whose hands twisted in the lap of her black crepe dress and found her hand going out and being reached for and held for one brief, tight second by a cold hand that quickly retreated. Christie heard herself whisper some words, some senseless words, which were accepted with a small, sad, devastatingly sympathetic smile. She was offered some coffee, which she accepted and tried to drink, but her hand trembled as she lifted the cup from the saucer to her mouth. She couldn’t control the tilt of the cup, and a large unanticipated swallow of hot coffee flowed down the back of her throat and Christie had to clench her teeth to keep from choking. Barbara had moved to a corner of the kitchen and was speaking to some students. The girl looked sick: as sick with shock and disbelief as she had at the moment of the shooting.

  Christie tried to concentrate on the coffee, on the small piece of cake that had been placed on a plate and handed to her, but it was as though the pores of her body had been opened and she could not stop absorbing the room in which she stood. Here, in this room, in this house, Billy Everett had existed in all the many facets of his life. Christie’s eyes were drawn to the shining Formica table, beige with a marble pattern, where Billy had eaten his meals. To the large glass jar, half filled with chocolate-chip cookies, to the stove where his mother prepared his meals, to the small metal-topped cardboard box where offerings were made for the benefit of some Southern Baptist church, to the large calendar hung on the yellow-papered wall, with careful red circles drawn around significant dates. There was a collection of notebooks tossed carelessly on a counter top next to aluminum canisters of tea, coffee, flour and sugar. Christie put the cup and saucer down beside her cake plate. Her fingers slid over the notebooks and she opened one and saw lines of cramped notes, and in the margins were inked doodles of flowers and stars.

  Against her will, she looked at Mrs. Everett and something far more terrible than sympathy welled up in Christie: the ultimate grief, the ultimate disaster, the one unacceptable, unbearable loss that she had never allowed herself to envision. Death of her father had been hard; death of her husband had been torment, the worst kind, the most terrible. But not really, for Christie had survived even that. But Mrs. Everett, holding herself quietly, concerned with her guests, had not yet been encompassed by the most unbelievable loss: death of her son. Fear welled up inside of Christie Opara, terror, and she could no longer look upon Mrs. Everett.

  Barbara Reardon finished her coffee, placed the cup in the sink, and her eyes met Christie’s and answered the unasked question: yes. She wanted to leave now.

  The hallway just outside the parlor was filled with young people and though their voices were low and hushed, they were intent upon their conversation. Barbara lingered and Christie waited, standing back, not really looking at any of the faces. The light in the hallway was dim, and all the faces, brown and tan and white, seemed the same. Facing Christie was a small, thin, wiry white boy with large dark eyes and black circles of grief and exhaustion extending down his pale cheeks. It was Gerald Friedman, now temporary leader of the FFA. He was a tense boy, filled with quick nervous movements of his hands and arms and facial muscles.

  “We have to go,” Gerald was saying, “all of us. We have to present a united front. It is more important than anything we’ve ever done, to show ourselves together: black and white. To show people how it is and that Billy must not be used as a trigger for violence. To show the community that violence is not the way.” His thin hand reached out and grasped the shoulder of a heavyset young Negro to his left. “Don’t tell me about the mood of the crowd. We have to change that mood. To get out there and back the Mayor and make this an interracial meeting, on the streets. We have to, or we will have lost our last opportunity.”

  Barbara Reardon stood transfixed now, not taking part in the discussion, but standing close inside the circle of white and black boys and girls, just needing to be there for the moment. Christie was tired and her eyes smarted from the bad air, filled with smoke and human bodies and heavy flower scent and yellowish light. She stood impatiently behind Barbara, waiting for the girl to turn away. Christie followed the gist of the conversation but the words were blurred and hazy, as indistinct as the half circle of faces confronting her, as featureless and empty as she herself felt. She glanced at her watch, determined that they would leave now. She drew in her breath heavily, wearily, and the breath stuck in her throat and her eyes cleared and sharpened. Directly opposite her, a young man had edged his way into the circle, nodding politely as room was made for him. His eyes did not meet Christie’s; they were intent upon Gerald Friedman and he was nodding in solemn approval of Gerald’s words. His eyes, a clear, bright yellow, strayed about and Christie turned her face from Eddie Champion’s.

  She didn’t know if he had just joined the group or had been standing there motionless in the semidarkness all along. But there he was, three feet away from her, and Christie didn’t know what the devil to do about him. There was a telephone on the hall table directly behind her: call the office, check with Reardon. She forced herself to slow down; she couldn’t possibly use the phone here.

  Christie was startled by the pressure on her arm. Barbara Reardon was ready to go home. Christie glanced over Barbara’s shoulder. Champion was saying something. Something about leaving now. Something about ...

  “Barbara, listen to me.” The girl’s face was expressionless and Christie whispered sharply, “For God’s sake, listen to me. Something has come up.” Champion was moving toward the door. “Barbara, I can’t take you home. Listen, tell the cop at the door who you are. Ask him to get you a cab.” The girl blinked, her mouth opened slightly, but she said nothing. “Please, Barbara. I can’t explain. Promise. Promise you’ll go straight home.”

  Barbara Reardon nodded, but Christie wasn’t sure the girl had even heard one word she had said. She couldn’t think about that now. She left the house quickly, then stopped on the small cement patio. Eddie Champion was standing on the sidewalk, his back to her, his head bent over a flickering flame, lighting a cigarette.

  Christie stood beside the patrolman, her eyes on Champion. “Officer, I’m Detective Opara of the District Attorney’s squad and ...”

  The cop, young and tall in his new uniform, squinted and said, “Huh?”

  Christie looked at him, just one quick glance, and her insides felt like heavy plaster. She looked back at Eddie Champion. He was moving now. She paced herself to his stride, her eyes fastened on the figure as it moved in and out of the shadows. There was nothing else she could do: just stick with him.

  TWENTY-THREE:

  DETECTIVE STONER MARTIN CROSSED his fingers before he asked Ferranti his question. It was the eighth time that day—the second time that night—that he had called the office. It was the first time he had spoken to Detective Ferranti.

  “Any calls for me, Bill?”

  Ferranti, always so calm, always so careful, hesitated. “Hang on, Stoney. I think you got one message. Let me check.”

  Stoner Martin’s fingers pressed together so hard they felt numb. It was a stupid gesture, without meaning, but he was exhausted and desperate. He heard Bill’s voice, quiet, polite, refined. Then, in the background, Marty Ginsburg, then, in his ear again, Ferranti. “You got one call about an hour ago.”

  “Right, right.”

  “Marty’s scrawl is hard to—here. A Mr. Richard C. Jackson. He called about an hour ago, five-thirty P.M.”

  For a moment, just a bare moment, Stoner held his breath. It could be. It could be Tomlin.

  “There’s two numbers for you to call, Stoney. He said you should call him anytime. I checked the numbers he left—one for his office and one for his home. He’s listed in the directory as an insurance agent. Home address is on Staten Island.”

  Stoner Martin uncrossed his fingers and his hand clenched into a
tight fist which he tapped lightly against the metal shelf inside the phone booth.

  “Nothing else? No other calls, just this one guy?” he asked.

  “That’s it. Oh, he did say it was important, Said feel free to call anytime.”

  “Great. That’s what I need. An insurance man. Okay. I’ll be ringing in periodically.”

  Stoney’s fist lightly and rapidly continued to tap the metal shelf in time to his low, hoarse, continuous flow of words. That fat bastard. That dirty rotten stinking ... that ... His fist smashed the metal shelf with a thunderous painful blow. Fat Man’s face; Fat Man’s lying rotten mouth. Called my bluff. Called my bluff but it was no bluff. Not now. You’re in, you slob; if I have to perjure myself into hell, you’re in. He closed his eyes and stood rigid. Okay. Okay, now slow it down. There are other lines out. Fat Man later. Much later.

  He dug into his back pocket and extracted a small index card from a dog-eared notebook. There was a coded series of marks against each of five names, based on thorough background reports on each of the individuals. He would call the office back and leave relay instructions for each of the four men assigned to work with him. Give each man a name: he’d take the top name himself. It was one of the alternatives that had been discussed.

  He interrupted Ferranti’s long recitation of identification. “Yeah, it’s me again, Bill. Listen—”

  “That Mr. Jackson called again.”

  “Forget it. Look, you know those men I got working with me? They due to check in again soon—like within the next thirty minutes?”

  “Yes, they’ve been prompt with every ring.”