“Do I understand? Are you kidding?”

“So it isn’t so much Clement doesn’t know you went over there,” Raymond said. “You don’t want him to know.”

“If you say so.”

“Why don’t you want him to know, Sandy?”

“He don’t like it when I smoke too much grass.”

“Like when you get nervous or upset?”

“Yeah, usually.”

“Well, the way things’re going, Sandy,” Raymond said, “I think you better hit on a couple pounds of good Colombian.”

15

CLEMENT HAD NEVER ICE-SKATED, but he could see the Palmer Park lagoon would be a good place. It wasn’t a big open rink, like most. It was a pond, several acres in size, with wooded islands in it to skate around. A good place to dump the Ruger when he was finished with it. He parked by the refreshment pavilion and cut through the woods along Merrill Plaisance Drive to where he had hidden the rifle in some bushes a few minutes before.

It was almost six o’clock; getting dark in a hurry. He picked up the rifle and moved up to the edge of the trees where he could look directly across Merrill Plaisance, across the narrow island separating the drive from the residential street and the front of the four-story, L-shaped apartment building that was 913 Covington, the home of Lt. Raymond chicken-fat Cruz-with the sad mustache and the quiet way about him, which could be politeness or just empty-headed dumbness.

Clement had said to the woman’s voice on the phone, the cop’s former wife, “What’s Ray’s address again? I lost it… And the apartment number?… Oh, that’s right on the first floor, huh?” Then had got the id of the building manager off her mailbox and called her saying this was Sgt. Hunter: they were planning a surprise party for Lt. Cruz; the guys were gonna drop in and then, when he wasn’t looking, reach out the window and haul in this present as a surprise, a stereo outfit, and he wanted to know which window to put it outside of. The landlady said in this neighborhood they better put a policeman with it or they would be the ones surprised when they reached out to get it.

There were three windows: one with an air-conditioning unit, one with a plant, one with raised venetian blinds, close to the sidewalk on Covington.

Ten past six.

The landlady had said he was usually home by six-thirty the latest, unless he didn’t come home. Her apartment was next to his and if she was in the kitchen she’d hear his door slam and then sometimes she’d hear him playing music… Didn’t he already have a victrola?… A little cheap one, Clement told her, which was probably the truth.

Look for a medium-blue four-door Plymouth. Clement had heard cops didn’t use their own cars on the job because no one would insure them.

Twenty after. There was a last trace of red in the sky. The front of the building was without definition now, a few lights showing in apartments. Clement practice-sighted on Raymond Cruz’s dark windows. Range, about fifty yards. But a tough shot with the cars going by in front of him, on the park drive.

Maybe this Raymond Cruz did use his own car. Or lieutenants got a different color than that shitty medium blue. Clement didn’t worry about odds or luck. Something happened or it didn’t. The man would come home or he wouldn’t. If not tonight, tomorrow. Clement didn’t plan on waiting around forever; but a little patience was good and more often than not got rewarded.

That’s why Clement wasn’t too surprised or especially elated when he saw the light go on in Raymond Cruz’s apartment. Sooner or later it was supposed to. Clement put the Ruger against a tree and lined up his sights on the figure moving inside the apartment, Clement waiting for a lull in the traffic…

Raymond had come into the apartment building from the alley, walked through to the foyer and got his mail: Newsweek, a visa bill, a bank statement, a thick window-envelope from Oral Roberts, Tulsa, Oklahoma, addressed to Mr. M. Cruz, and a folded piece of notepaper.

In his apartment Raymond dropped the mail on the coffeetable, went into the kitchen with Newsweek and got a can of Strohs out of the refrigerator. He drank from the can as he glanced through the magazine on the counter, learning that beer was now discovered to cause cancer along with everything else. In the living room again he sat down at the end of the couch by the floor lamp he’d bought at Goodwill Industries. He picked up the mail from the coffeetable, threw back the bill from visa and the bank statement, laid the Oral Roberts envelope on his lap and opened the piece of notepaper that was folded three times. The typewritten message said:

Raymond would replay the scene, what happened next, and at first believe the guy was right outside because the timing was that good… sitting there looking at the typed words, wondering…

And the front window and the lamp exploded, the glass shattering and he was in darkness, instinctively rolling off the couch, catching a knee on the coffeetable, trying to yank the snub-nosed .38 out of his waistband that was tight on his hip, crawling toward the window now, the flat sound of reports reaching him, erupting through fragments of glass, thudding into the wall, six, seven shots-he got his legs under him, turned and ran for the door… down the hall, out the front entrance. Cars were going by on the park drive, headlights on, making faint humming sounds. He crossed Covington to the island, kept going, heard a car horn and brakes squeal and he was into the trees, in darkness, with no sense of purpose or direction now, no sounds except for the cars going past on the park drive.

In the apartment again he picked up the phone, began to punch buttons. He stopped, replaced the receiver. If Sandy was home with the Buick, what was Clement driving? Could it have been someone else? No. He sat in semidarkness, a light showing in the open doorway to the hall.

Raymond picked up the phone again and punched a number.

“Mary Alice, I just want to ask you a question, okay?… No, I don’t have time to get into that. Somebody called and you gave him my address. Did the guy have kind of a southern accent?… I know you didn’t know who it was. Mary Alice, that’s why you’re not supposed to give out… No, you just tell them you don’t know. Last night, did a lady call?…”

Jesus Christ, Raymond said. He put the phone, in both of his hands, in his lap and could hear her talking. He saw streetlight reflections in the jagged pieces of windowpane. Raising the phone again he heard her pause and said, quickly, “Mary Alice? Nice talking to you.”

He called Squad Seven. Maureen answered and he asked her to look in his book and give him Carolyn Wilder’s phone number. Maureen came back and said, “Six-four-five…”

And Raymond said, “No, that’s her office. Give me her home number. And the address.” He got out his pen and wrote on the back of the Oral Roberts envelope as Maureen dictated. Maureen said, “Why would she have an office in Birmingham if she lives on the east side?”

Raymond said, “You want me to I’ll ask her. But I got a few other questions first.”

He dialed Carolyn Wilder’s home number. Following the first ring her voice came on. “Yes?”

“You were waiting for me to call,” Raymond said.

“Who is this?”

He told her and said, “I’d like to talk to the Oklahoma Wildman, but I don’t know where he is.”

“He isn’t here.”

It stopped Raymond. “I didn’t expect him to be.”

There was a pause. “He was here,” Carolyn Wilder said. “He left a few minutes ago.”

Raymond said, “Carolyn, don’t move. You just stepped in a deep pile of something.”