Lucius said, “Rob’s not a killer. He never wanted to kill anyone. Not ever.” But there was no way to explain why he believed this, and he did not try.
“You can deny it all you want. Chicken don’t deny it.” Speck would not explain this. Morose, he was gazing back toward the silhouetted figures at the fire. As suddenly as it had flared, his rage had guttered out, and his voice was quiet. “Anyways, we can’t let him loose till we are finished, and even then we got a problem cause he seen too much. We ain’t got time to mess with him, is what it is. Junior and them got their own idea how to clean up this damn mess, and you don’t come up with a better one pretty damn quick, that’s what has to happen.”
“Cold-blooded murder? That what they’re talking about?”
“They’re through talkin, Colonel,” Speck said quietly, folding his arms upon his chest.
Then he said, “Let’s say we turn ol’ Chicken loose. The law is after him. You was mentionin that nigger cook—”
“Oh hell no! It wasn’t him!”
“Well, you know that, and Dyer, too, I reckon. All the same, the law told Dyer they would settle for the nigger. They got all the witnesses they need—all them scared old people who was up all night with heartburn. Them kind will want somebody to pay. And Dyer says it’s a nice tight case that will teach them kind of smart-mouth niggers a good lesson.”
Speck’s mean chuckle came from down deep in his belly. “I asked him, Do you really want to go after that man, and he says, ‘Hell yes, I’m a law-and-order man, I don’t believe in coddlin no criminals.’ Respects the hell out of the law and never seen a jail he didn’t like. Says, ‘I’m out for justice or my name ain’t Watson Dyer.’ ” Speck emitted a low, hard bark of derision. “Sure hates to mess with our American justice system, Dyer says. And otherwise he’d feel obliged to testify against ol’ Chicken, who don’t stand a Chinaman’s chance of gettin off. Man out in the parkin lot, he spotted an old white man in a red neckerchief shootin at the victim’s car from a hotel window. Seen him plenty good enough to testify that it weren’t no black boy in a chef’s outfit who got loose some way in a whites-only room on the sixth floor.”
“Rob shot at the car tires. He never shot at Dyer.”
“Pretty hard to sell that to a judge, with Chicken’s record.”
“My brother will confess before he lets that black man go to jail for him. That’s who he is.”
Speck Daniels snickered. “Specially when all that poor coon ever done was go to cuttin on a white customer with a damn carvin knife!” He heaved around and squinted at Lucius in disbelief. “Chicken was tellin me just yesterday how he wasted maybe half his life in one pen or another, and you’re goin to set there and tell me you would let that old feller get locked away for the rest of his natural life? For a crazy nigger?”
Daniels searched Lucius’s eyes for doubt and nodded when he found some. “I was warnin Chicken only this mornin how we might have to kill him, and he told me that was fine by him. He meant it, too. Said he had his fill of this shitty life and couldn’t tolerate no more hard time in prison, so it was no use wastin time tryin to scare him. He was scared to death of death, all right, but was scared a lot worse by the future.”
“He’s better off dead than going to prison? That what you’re saying?”
“That’s what he’s saying.” He held Lucius’s eye for a long time, nodding minutely. “What do you say, Lucius?”
“He’s my brother, for Christ’s sake!”
Heart jumping, sick and dizzy, he reeled to his feet. Driven by urgent pressure of the bladder, he staggered off toward the sea grape. But he had scarcely opened up his fly when he was punched between the shoulder blades by what turned out to be the muzzle of a hand gun. “Let’s see them hands before you turn around.”
Startled, hurting, and incensed, Lucius took time to finish and get things straightened out, ignoring the emphysemic hacking close behind him and the steel prod nudging his bruised back. Finally he stuck his hands out to the side. “Kind of jumpy, aren’t you?” he said then, with as much contempt as his shaken voice could muster.
“Kind of jumpy, yessir, I sure am. Which is why I’m still doin pretty good after thirty years in my same line of business.” For the second time in a fortnight, Daniels frisked him. “I have growed a nose for a certain kind of a cock-eyed sonofabitch that you give ’em any room at all, it’s goin to cost you.” He spun Lucius around harder than necessary, slapping at his chest and front pockets with the back of his free hand. “Next time, do your pissin out where I can see you.”