Read Online Done for a Dime by David Corbett - Free Book Online Page A

tales to tell about several, Hennessey’d only been able to bring one full name to bear: Arlington Thigpen, age nineteen. He appeared in one of the Polaroids with the hood of his sweatshirt puckered tight around his face, but a webwork of whitish scars around one eye gave him away.
    “I know Sarina, his mother. She works over the convalescent hospital. Has a retarded daughter. Her oldest, Robert, he lives in Richmond, I think, works construction.”
    “This is Arlie.”
    “Yes, sir. Don’t know him. Not really.”
    “Any idea how his eye got like that?”
    “No, sir. Couldn’t say.”
    Hands trembling, Marcellyne shuffled the pictures together and handed them back to Murchison. One of the first things he’d learned about interrogation was when to pretend you believed, when to pretend you didn’t. If someone’s lying to you, act like every word is golden. String him along. If you think he’s holding something back, accuse him of lying. Or her.
    “You’re not being up front with me, Marcellyne. You know, or Mr. Carlisle knew, Arlie or some of these other young men. That’s the truth, isn’t it?”
    A flinch shot up her shoulder and neck. She couldn’t look at him. “Everybody knows everybody up here, okay? But all I know is what I’ve told you. Did Mr. Carlisle know anybody in particular? I couldn’t say. Anybody in those pictures?” She pointed. “I do not know.”
    “But you know them.” He held up the picture again, took out his pen, and prepared to write on the back. “You just said it. Everybody knows everybody.”
    As he walked down from Marcellyne’s door to the street he checked to see who took notice. In particular, he looked for J. J. Glenn, Waddell Bettencort, Michael Brinkman, Eshmont Carnes—the young men whose names Marcellyne had just delivered. Only three scattered groups of onlookers remained, and none of those were promising. It was, after all, Saturday night. Sunday morning now, to be exact. Money to be made.
    Truax, looking almost lonesome, remained on guard with his clipboard at the gate to the scene. The coroner’s unit had come and gone, taking the body with them. Two patrol units had left; the others had turned off their lights. The street seemed almost normal—dark, windblown, wet.
    Glancing back at Marcellyne’s home, Murchison spotted a sprawling bougainvillea, once high as the roof gutters, now sagging from its trellis, weighed down with rain. It littered warm-winter blossoms onto the patchy lawn. Here and there, daffodils, bearded iris, daylillies already bloomed in scattered flowerbeds down the block. Oxalis—yellow bell-shaped flower, clover-shaped leaves, a weed—cropped up everywhere. First week of February, Murchison thought. Might as well be Easter.
    From across the street, Stluka bounded up to greet him, all smiles. “Oh man, are you gonna fucking love this.”
    Something feral lit Stluka’s eyes. “Let me guess. One of the Victorians?”
    “You kidding? Both of ’em, locked up tight as a nun’s butt. Listen to me.” Stluka pulled a notepad from inside his sport coat. “I figured, this close to last call, we couldn’t wait any longer to contact the club, this Zoom Room in Emeryville where the so-called son played tonight.”
    “What do you mean, ‘so-called’?”
    “Spoke to the owner, woman named Vanessa. You should get a load of this broad. Oh, oh, oh, what a girl.”
    For what seemed the thousandth time, Toby looked around the bare interrogation room, seeing it finally not as a place but a state of mind. The state of mind was: guilty . He recalled his thoughts on the ride home with Francis: Leave the old man behind. Let him drink himself sick in that house alone. Let him die alone. He welcomed the sound of the door opening, someone joining him, anyone, even police. Glancing up, he saw there were two of them, both white, in plain clothes. They looked at him as though trying to figure him out. He felt a slight disorienting charge, like static