Chapter 35
GARY SONEJI was still in Washington, indeed. He was sending out special-delivery messages to his fans. There was a difference now. He was baiting us, too. Sampson and I got a dispensation from The Jefe: we could work on the kidnapping as long as it was linked to the other murder investigations. It definitely was.
“This is our day off, so we must be having fun,” Sampson said to me as we walked the streets of Southeast. It was the thirteenth of January. Bitter cold. Folks had fires blazing in the garbage cans on almost every street corner. One of the brothers had FUC U 2 razorcut on the back of his head. My sentiments exactly.
“Mayor Monroe doesn’t call anymore. Doesn’t write,” I said to Sampson. I watched my breath launch clouds in the freezing air.
“See, there is a silver lining,” he said into the wind. “He’ll come around when we catch The Thing. He’ll be there to take all the bows for us.”
We walked along, goofing on the situation and on each other. Sampson rapped lyrics from pop songs, something he does a lot. That morning, it was “Now That We’ve Found Love.” Heavy D & The Boyz. “Rev me up, rev me up, you’re my little buttercup,” Sampson kept saying, as if the lyrics made sense out of everything.
We were canvassing Vivian Kim’s neighborhood, which was on the edge of Southeast. Canvassing a neighborhood is mind-numbing work, even for the young and uninitiated. “Did you see anyone or anything unusual yesterday?” we asked anybody dumb enough to open their doors for us. “Did you notice any strangers, strange cars, anything that sticks out in your mind? Let us decide whether it’s important.”
As usual, nobody had seen a thing. Nada de nada. Nobody was happy to see us, either, especially as we moved into Southeast on our canvass.
To top it off, the temperature was about three degrees with the windchill. It was sleeting. The streets and sidewalks were covered with icy slush. A couple of times we joined the street people warming themselves over their garbage-can fires.
“You motherf*ckin’ cops always cold, even in the summer,” one of the young f*cks said to us. Both Sampson and I laughed.
We finally trudged back toward our car around six. We were beaten up. We’d blown a long day. Nothing good had come of it. Gary Soneji had disappeared into thin air again. I felt as if I were in a horror movie.
“Want to go out a few extra blocks?” I asked Sampson. I was feeling desperate enough to try the slot machines in Atlantic City. Soneji was playing with us. Maybe he was watching us. Maybe the f*cker was invisible.
Sampson shook his head. “No mas, sugar. I want to drink at least a case of brew. Then I just might do some serious drinking.”
He wiped slush off his sunglasses, then put them on again. It’s weird how well I know his every move. He’s been dusting his glasses like that since he was twelve. Through rain or sleet or snow.
“Let’s do the extra blocks,” I said. “For Ms. Vivian. Least we can do.”
“I knew you were going to say that.”
We filed into the apartment of a Mrs. Quillie McBride at around six-twenty that night. Quillie and her friend Mrs. Scott were seated at the kitchen table. Mrs. Scott had something to tell us that she thought might help. We were there to listen to anything she had to say.
If you ever go through D.C.’s Southeast, or the north section of Philadelphia, or Harlem in New York, on a Sunday morning, you’ll still see ladies like Mrs. McBride and her friend Willie Mae Randall Scott. These ladies wear blousy shirts and faded gabardine skirts. Their usual accoutrements include feathered hats and thick-heeled, lace-up shoes that bunch their feet like sausage links. They are coming or going from various churches. In the case of Willie Mae, who is a Jehovah’s Witness, they distribute the Watchtower magazine.
“I believe I can he’p y’all,” Mrs. Scott said to us in a soft, sincere voice. She was probably eighty years old, but very focused and clear in her delivery.
“We’d appreciate that,” I said. The four of us sat around the kitchen table. A plate of oatmeal cookies had been set out for the occasion of anyone’s visit. A triptych with photos of the two murdered Kennedys and Martin Luther King was prominent on a kitchen wall.
“I heard about the murder of the teacher,” Mrs. Scott said for Sampson’s and my benefit, “and, well, I saw a man driving around the neighborhood a month or so before the Turner murders. He was a white man. I am fortunate to still have a very good memory. I try to keep it that way by concentrating on whatever passes before these eyes. Ten years from today, I will be able to recall this interview on a moment-to-moment basis, detectives.”
Her friend Mrs. McBride had pulled her chair beside Mrs. Scott. She didn’t speak at first, though she did take Mrs. Scott’s bulging arm in her hand.
“It’s true. She will,” Quillie McBride said.
“One week before the Turner murders, the same white man came through the neighborhood again,” Mrs. Scott continued. “This second time, he was going door to door. He was a salesman.”
Sampson and I looked at each other. “What kind of salesman?” Sampson asked her.
Mrs. Scott allowed her eyes to drift over Sampson’s face before she answered the question. I figured she was concentrating, making sure she remembered everything about him. “He was selling heating systems for the winter. I went over by his car and looked inside. A sales book of some sort was on the front seat. His company is called Atlantic Heating, out of Wilmington, Delaware.”
Mrs. Scott looked from face to face, either to make sure that she was being clear, or that we were getting all of what she had just said.
“Yesterday, I saw the same car drive through the neighborhood. I saw the car the morning the woman on C Street was killed. I said to my friend here, ‘This can’t all be a coincidence, can it?’ Now, I don’t know if he’s the one you’re looking for, but I think you should talk to him.”
Sampson looked at me. Then the two of us did a rare thing of late. We broke into smiles. Even the ladies decided to join in. We had something. We had a break, finally, the first of the case.
“We’re going to talk to the traveling salesman,” I said to Mrs. Scott and Quillie McBride. “We’re going to Wilmington, Delaware.”