Trip Wire_ A Cook County Mystery - Charlotte Carter [20]
I took out my pack of Multifilters, and he lit my cigarette.
“I understand they were friends of yours,” he said. “You holding up okay?”
“I guess.”
“Tough thing to be going through.”
“Right.”
He waited for me to expand on it. But I just sat there.
“You probably know I don’t have jurisdiction in the case. I can only poke around, ask to be kept up-to-date.”
“Okay.”
“It’s early in the investigation. But I was able to find out a few things anyway. I thought maybe you and me could catch some breakfast and I’d tell you about it.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I mean no, thanks. I don’t want to keep you from your job. Can’t we just talk here?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
He used the intercom to ask for coffee. A few minutes later, it was delivered along with a tray of sweet rolls.
“They don’t have a lot to go on so far. There were plenty of prints and junk left in the apartment from the previous tenants. You and your roommates had all been in the empty place, too—and the maintenance guy who had the heart attack. All that just puts more BS in the game. And as you know, they haven’t fixed time of death exactly. But before we get into what I know, let me ask you something, Cass.”
“What?”
“What do you think happened? Any idea who could have killed them? Maybe they were dealing? They ripped off a supplier, burned the wrong guy. Something like that.”
Burned, eh? Well, ain’t you just the hippest narc in town.
“Is that what the police think?”
“It’s in the running,” he said.
I shook my head. “No way. Wilt and Mia didn’t do that.”
“Right.”
He pressed a cherry danish on me, but I declined.
“It’s pretty tense over your way since the riots. I mean, even now,” he said. “We’re looking at a lot of violence in that neighborhood. Shootings, holdups, muggings. You and your friends get along with—with everybody?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Did your guy Wilton know any of the brothers from the projects maybe? Any of them ever come by the apartment to see him?”
“No.”
“I’m wondering if any of the brothers ever give your friends grief?”
“Grief for what?”
“For living like you do—did. He had a girlfriend, after all, who wasn’t the same race.”
I didn’t answer for a minute. His questions were rife with implications, all of them unimaginative and dumb. Probably the very dumbest was that young black males would actually be outraged that one of their own was screwing a white girl.
“Wilton knew lots of people,” I said. “Far as I know, nobody resented him for being with Mia. Not because she was white, anyway.”
“She was a pretty girl, they say. Some of the other guys in the house a little jealous of your friend Wilton?”
He was being cagey. Obviously he’d heard something about Barry and Wilt’s rivalry. So it shocked me when he said, “Are you sure you never heard this Zuni threaten your friend Wilton?”
“Dan? What are you talking about?”
“Just wondering.”
“Look,” I said. “You people are wasting your time suspecting Dan. Not only did he think the world of Mia and Wilt, he wouldn’t kill a flea if it was biting him.”
He nodded, relit his brown smoke, which had gone cold.
“I mean it. Dan’ll turn up in a day or two with a perfectly good explanation.”
“Um-hum.”
“Besides, has it occurred to Norris that somebody might have hurt Dan, too? He could have been grabbed or something when he left the house that morning. If you all have any smarts, you’ll start looking at him as another possible victim.”
“Good thinking. Any other thoughts?”
My chance to twit him a little. “There are these guys ‘around our way,’ as you say. These white guys who don’t like freaks. Or black people. I heard they’re the ones ripping off apartments. I heard a couple of girls have been raped.”
He took that in. “Doesn’t sound likely. Thugs like that, if they’d been watching the apartment, they’d have waited till you were all at home, and they’d have waited to catch everybody where you all live, not in a vacant apartment. No, this thing sounds much more personal.