Part 36 (1/2)

”Even so, I guess I felt like I was still on Erno's string. Went overseas on vacation and scored in Amsterdam and just fell in with the drugs again. When I got taken down this time, Erno quit on me. Put his own self on the line and this was how I repaid him. That was the speech. I was in medium security in Jensenville and he didn't come visit once.

”I didn't really see how bad off I was until I got out in 1990. I only knew two things, really”slangin dope and travel agenting. Black and white, in my mind, if the truth be told. And I couldn't do either. One more narcotics conviction, I was Triple X and gone for life. And I'd lost my travel license when I got convicted in '89. Should have just moved, but young folks, you know how it is, figured I'd beat the system. Called myself Faro Cole, faked the degree information, and sat the license exam all over again.”

”Ah,” said Muriel. Collins responded with a rueful little smile.

”Got a job at Mensa Travel, strictly commission, and it was the same as before, tryin hard and no money. Well, that thing with the hand tickets had worked okay the first time. Just had to find somebody who could scratch them off the books the right way. Now, I couldn't go over there to TN myself”Erno would have run me out”but I was hangin in the wrong place one night and in comes Gandolph, tryin like always to unload something somebody or another stole. I knew who he was. I'd worked out at the airport right after high school for a couple of months. He used to buy weed off me. By then, he couldn't begin to reckon my name, but I figured, since he always knew if something had come loose of its owner, he might know a ticket agent out at DuSable who'd like to work something. Promised him if it cooked, we'd look after him. That's how I got hooked up with Luisa.

”She didn't want any part of it at first. How I convinced her finally was when I told her Erno had done the same thing. That had some traction with her. She wasn't gonna be Erno's fool or anybody else's.”

Muriel asked when this was.

”Oh, we must have started in January of '91. That's when they all got killed, right, '91? I'd say January, then. And it went along fine till I ran into Gandolph in that same place, Lamplight, and it turned out she wasn't givin him anything from her end. Might be she didn't really get it that she was supposed to cover him. Man, I know I told her, but she hadn't done it, and he went all over the airport runnin his mouth, till she finally give him her cameo, just to shut him up while she tried to get together what she owed him.”

”You're saying Luisa basically p.a.w.ned the cameo to him?” asked Muriel.

”Exactly,” said Collins. ”Said it was like a family heirloom. Course it was too late, cause with Squirrel mouthin off, Erno had fallen to this now and he was trippin. Soon as he heard my name, he knew darn well what was goin down and he got up in my face. He wasn't gonna have me stealin right under his nose, in his shop, specially not as he was the one who taught me how to do it. He told me to quit, or he'd stop it, and next I heard, he'd had Luisa searched for some phony reason””

”Drugs,” offered Larry.

”Exactly,” said Collins. ”Drugs. Said she had drugs on her. Maybe Erno thought since she was mixed up with me, that we were doin that, too. But she wasn't anybody to treat that way. After that, man, it was on. She wanted money anyway for Gandolph, so she could get her cameo back.

”Early July, she give me the word. Said she'd been real careful, but she had some tickets stashed. She wasn't worried any about Erno, either. Said she'd hide those tickets so wasn't anyone would find them, not to worry. Fourth of July, n.o.body around, she figured that was the time.

”So come to July 3rd, actually July 4th, past midnight, we had a meet at Paradise. She wasn't in the door two seconds when Erno runs in behind her. He'd been watching her error reports, sneaking around, following her. 'You had it now, lady,' he says to her. 'I gave you a chance.' Looks at me and says, 'You get the h.e.l.l out of here. And as for you,' he says to Luisa, 'you hand me those tickets you got stuffed in your underwear and write out a resignation right now, or I'm calling the cops.'

”Luisa, man”she was tough. She didn't take it from n.o.body. 'F you,' she says. 'You ain callin no po-lice. You call the po-lice on me, I'll tell them you did the same thing.'”

Lifting a hand, Collins s.h.i.+fted. The sun was straight in his eyes. Jackson stood to rearrange the blinds. Either recovering his place, or responding to the memory of what he was describing, Collins was still for a second.

”See there, when she said that to him, that was what you'd have to call the turning point. Cause Erno, it didn't even enter his mind that I'd have let on about him. He just figured I'd turned on Luisa. But he would never think I'd tell that kind of secret. Not to somebody who wasn't family.

”Erno”he had a temper. Get all red, eyes like saucers. And you could see right then, he was ready to kill somebody. For real. Only it wasn't Luisa he meant to fade. It was me. If he'd had a gun in his hand, he'd have shot me dead for sure. But he didn't. Not yet. He just started busting on both of us, screamin and what not, and Gus came over and told him to get his b.u.t.t out of there, and Erno wasn't hearin it. That didn't go on too long before Gus came back with his pistol.

”After that, it was pretty much like my uncle said in court. Erno told Gus he wouldn't shoot anybody, and Luisa grabbed that pistol out of Gus's hand, and Erno went after it. I don't think it was as much of an accident as Erno made out that he shot her. To me, it looked like he had that gun full out of her hand. But it was all so dang fast. Bang! That sound, man, it was like it was still shaking the restaurant five minutes later. And there's Luisa, looking down at this hole right through the center of her, and smoke, smoke floating up, like it was coming off a cigarette. For a second, none of us knew what to do except stand there and look at her, it was so peculiar.

”Finally, Gus snapped out of it and went for the phone. Erno told him to stop and Gus didn't stop and Erno put him down, like he was shootin a horse.”

”And you?” asked Larry of Collins.

”Me?”

”What were you doing?”

”Man, I'd heard all kind of woofin and carryin on, but truth is, I hadn't never seen somebody killed. It was terrible. Truly terrible. All I was thinkin at first was, Now, how am I gonna get him to take this back? It was so crazy, I couldn't make myself believe it was gonna last. Like things just had to snap back to normal. Then it comes to you, that isn't gonna happen.

”After Erno shot Gus I bust out crying and my uncle, man, started in hollerin. 'Whose fault is this, anyway, Collins? Whose fault?' Right then, I figured I was next, and I even started lookin out the windows, tellin myself there were two shots now, somebody had to hear and call the police. But it was the Fourth of July, n.o.body's thinking nothin 'cept firecrackers.

”Then Erno saw the last one. Hiding. Poor dude, he was under a table. Erno pointed the gun and marched him down to the freezer. Then I heard the shot. Didn't sound like the first two, for some reason. Something worse about it. For Erno, too.” After he came up and looked at me, all that anger, that was done. He just sat there wasted and told me what to do. We were gonna make it look like a robbery. 'Get this.' 'Wipe that.' I did it all.”

”Was he threatening you?” Muriel asked.

”He still had the gun, if that's what you mean. But from the look of him, I wasn't thinkin anymore he was intending to shoot me. Truth of it is that it probably didn't ever occur to him that I wasn't gonna do what he said, cause it didn't ever occur to me either. It was just family,” said Collins. He stopped and took a heavy breath over that thought.

”And it was you who dragged the bodies downstairs?” Larry asked.

”Right. Cryin the whole time, too.” Collins chucked his face in Larry's direction. ”You thinkin about those footprints?”

”That I am.” Forensics had matched Paul Judson's shoes with the footprints trailing through the b.l.o.o.d.y drag patterns left by the bodies.

”When I come up the last time, Erno saw that my slip-ons were soaked through with blood. He said, 'You can't go out on the street in those. Go downstairs and see which of them dead men got shoes that might fit you.' That was the first time it even came to me to say no to him. 'I ain putting my foot in no dead man's shoe.' Can you imagine? We actually carried on about that for a while. But I finally did like he said, same as the rest of it.”

Collins pointed at Larry. ”You go check those shoes that came off the third one, the businessman. Nice pearl-gray pump, I-talian. Faccione, the brand, I think. Too big for him, too. I couldn't ever believe n.o.body noticed those shoes. What businessman goes round in a pearl-gray pump?”

Muriel could see something moving behind Larry's hard expression: the shoes were clicking. It seemed to be hitting home with him that Collins was probably telling a large chunk of the truth. She hadn't had much doubt of that for some time now.

”We were ready to leave outta there, already at the front door, when Erno snaps his fingers. 'Hold this,' he says. He had everything, wallets and jewelry, bank deposit, the gun, all of it wrapped up in one of Gus's ap.r.o.ns. He sort of tiptoed down the stairs and when he comes back up, he's got a johnny in his hand.”

”A condom, you mean?” Muriel asked.

”Exactly. Used, too. After everything else”” Collins just shook his head several times. ”Anyway, Erno says, 'Stuffed those tickets up her behind. Couldn't have found them with a miner's light, if I hadn't seen the edge of this here.' She had maybe fifteen tickets rolled tight in that rubber.”

Collins for the first time looked back to Anne-Marie. Behind him, his wife had sat with her mouth compressed against the heel of her palm, appearing, to Muriel's eye, as if she was doing her best not to react. But when Collins turned to her, she responded at once. She reached out and the two sat holding hands for a second.

”You okay?” Aires asked his client.

Collins wanted water. They took a break. Everyone needed a minute. Muriel searched out Larry's eye, but he looked funky and wrapped up in himself. Out in the hallway, waiting for the john, Muriel asked Tommy Molto what he thought. Molto picked with a fingernail at spots of tomato sauce on his s.h.i.+rt and tie, and said he didn't know what to think. Muriel wasn't sure either.

When they returned, Anne-Marie had slid her chair beside Collins's and was holding his free hand. The other was still gripping his Bible. After a minute or two of fiddling with the tape recorders to be sure they were running, Muriel gave the date and time, then asked Collins what happened when they left Paradise.

”I followed Erno back to his house, and sat with him in his car. He'd been through some changes that night. We both had. At Paradise, he'd been outta-his-mind angry, then all blown away and subdued. Now he was just flat-out scared, trying to think out every angle not to get caught. He had one lecture after another for me. Make sure and mention to some folks how him and me went out for a pop last night. Don't ever get myself inebriated and start braggin about all this to my homes or some lady I was after. The big thing on his mind, though, was how to get rid of that ap.r.o.n full of stuff in his trunk”the gun, the wallets, the jewelry, it was all in there. It was past three by now and both of us were just too messed up and worn out to deal. I didn't want to have no more to do with any of this. And Erno was flat paranoid. All he could see was how we were bound to get caught, if we went to toss the ap.r.o.n in the river, or built a big fire and burned it all, or buried it in the Public Forest. There'd be light by five. But there was a toolshed in his backyard with a dirt floor”if we dug there, no way anybody was gonna see us. And so we each shoveled till we were halfway to China and threw that ap.r.o.n in there. He said he was gonna come up with a better plan when he calmed down, but I knew the both of us would be happy never to look at any of that again. Then he walked me to my car and right there on the street reached up and hugged me. That hadn't happened since I was ten, and in the middle of all that craziness, maybe the craziest thing of all was how good that felt. Murdered three folks and hugged me. I drove off cryin like a child.

”After that night, there just wasn't a way for me to be right with myself. I was done bein Faro for a while, case the police figured out anything 'bout the tickets. It wasn't a week, and I was back in to dopin. Erno tried hard to stop me, but with time to think, I wasn't havin any more of him. One day I'm at Lamplight and there's Gandolph. This has to be two months after all this mess. And with twenty dudes around, he reaches into his pocket, and wrapped in this ratty piece of tissue, there's Luisa's cameo. I knew it straight out. I'd seen it on her neck.

'Faro,' he says to me”that's all he knew to call me”'Faro, man what-all'm I gone do with this thing now? Ain worth nothin to n.o.body else.'

I'm like, 'Word up, n.i.g.g.e.r, you gone put yourself under. You best get rid of that. Po-lice be sayin you the one who busted a cap in her.'

He's like, 'How they do that, when I ain done nothin? I'm in mind to find her kin. They pay good for this here, now that she dead. They owe me, cause of how she held out on me.'

I'm like, 'Do what you have to, brother, but maybe you oughta hold up with that till somebody else is under the weight for dropping her down six. And I don't want to never hear nothin over them tickets.'

He says, 'Ain no chance of that.'

”Uncle Erno, man, he just was trippin when I told him. He was lookin around for Gandolph after that, gonna roust him and get that piece off him before he made trouble for himself and the both of us, but Erno didn't ever find him, I guess. Wasn't quite winter yet, so Gandolph wasn't hangin at the airport.”

Muriel made a sound. Winter. As carefully as Erdai had papered over Collins's role, he'd missed that detail when he'd invented his own encounter with Gandolph and the cameo, and she'd nailed him on the witness stand. It was the first instant she was certain he was lying.

”Pretty soon, I had trouble enough on my own,” Collins said. ”Second of October I got set up on a big buy-bust. Videotape and everything. Cops knew they had me bad, even when they were shovin me in the cruiser. 'Third time for you, boy. Take a good look out the window, cause you ain never gonna see the street again for the rest of your life.' They were cold. But I had to give them something. I would have started in talking on the way to the station, if I didn't figure those Gangster Outlaws I was kickin down to would kill me first night in the jail.

”Anyway, couple hours back inside, and I'd gotten it in my head that this was all Uncle Erno's fault. If he didn't go and shoot those people, I wouldn't be jammed up like this. And if I stooled on my uncle, wouldn't be any g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers to kill me for doing that. Erno though, he was a smart one. Knew d.a.m.n well what I was fixin to do. He was the first visit I got.