45
UNDER ORDERS from Castelluccio, Detectives Jaworski and Gomez had brought Dwayne Stevenson back in. Dwayne was one of the corner boys who the beat cops had tagged as a possible eyewitness to Nazario’s rabbiting from the murder scene. Castelluccio wanted them to take another run at him now that their forensic evidence had gone south.
Because they’d made such a quick arrest the night of the shooting, neither Jaworski nor Gomez had interviewed Dwayne then. Instead he’d been handed off to a couple of other detectives, who’d mainly left him stewing in an interview room all night, the idea being that the best way to get him to talk was by tiring him into it.
“Dwayne Stevenson,” Jaworski said, paging through a small file, angling the pages so that Stevenson couldn’t see that they were nearly all blank sheets of paper. Stevenson was short and stocky, already seeming hardened beyond repair despite his youth. “See here you’ve got a possession with intent hanging over you now.”
Dwayne crossed his arms in front of his chest. “I’m waiting on my day in court. You want to talk about that, you best be getting me my lawyer.”
“You don’t need a lawyer here, Dwayne,” Gomez said. “We don’t want to talk to you about your own not-so-successful ventures into criminal enterprise. We want to talk to you about the shooting of Sean Fowler.”
“I don’t even know nobody named Sean Fowler.”
“The security guard killed outside your project,” Jaworski said.
“I didn’t have nothing to do with that,” Dwayne said. “You all kept me here all night on some bullshit.”
“We didn’t bring you in, then or now, ’cause we thought you’d done the shoot,” Jaworski said. “We know who did it. And after he shot that man, he ran right past you and your friend making his getaway. You know Rafael Nazario, don’t you?”
“We was in school together back in the day,” Dwayne said. “But not like we tight.”
“But you saw him running back to his project after he shot the security guard, didn’t you?”
“That’s what them other cops were saying back when it happened. All’s I saw running that night was the black five-oh.”
“We know what’s happening with your family, Dwayne,” Gomez said, softening his voice, playing good cop.
Dwayne wasn’t buying it, curling his lip in response. “You don’t know shit about shit,” he sneered.
“We know your family’s being evicted because of your getting busted for touting rock,” Jaworski said. “Putting your own mother out on the street—that’s pretty much the definition of ghetto there, Dwayne.”
“I got that on me,” Dwayne said, showing more shame than Jaworski was expecting. “But that don’t have nothing to do with some security guard getting shot.”
“No, it doesn’t, unless you make it.”
Dwayne glared at Jaworski. “Make it how?”
“You know how this works,” Jaworski said. “You help us; we help you. You manage to remember what you actually saw that night—Nazario running from the scene, a gun in his hand maybe—then we put in a good word for you, see if we can get this eviction to go away.”
Dwayne was openly incredulous. “That’s what you drag me here for? Ask me to lie for you, and all you’re going to even offer up in return is some shit ’bout how you gonna see if maybe you can help me out? You must be thinking somebody dropped me on my head and never even bothered to pick me back up.”
“We can help you out,” Gomez said quickly. “The DA’s on board with this. It’s for real.”
“Can I go now?” Dwayne said. “I don’t even want to be breathing the same air as you.”
“We can help keep your mother in her home,” Jaworski said.
“You said I couldn’t call my lawyer, so I ain’t under arrest. Guess that means I can go, right?”
Jaworski shooed him away with the back of his hand. “Christ, get out of here already.”
“YOU NOTICE what he said?” Gomez asked Jaworski. They were back at their desks, which faced each other, in the squad room. They’d switched back to day shifts a couple of weeks ago, right about the same time Gomez’s wife had let him move back in, and now he was showing up to work on time and bright-eyed, maybe still drinking some but keeping it under control. The downside for Jaworski was that his partner had become almost hyperactive on the job, a little too full of energy, making him a pain in the ass.
“He didn’t really say anything.”
“He said we were asking him to lie about seeing Nazario.”
“So?”
“We assumed the bangers weren’t talking because of some kind of stop-snitching shit,” Gomez said. “But if that’s all it was, he could’ve just said he didn’t talk to cops, given us the usual on that. But that’s not what he said. Instead he told us that he didn’t see Nazario running through the courtyard that night.”
Jaworski didn’t feel like indulging this. “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe he just doesn’t want to cooperate. Maybe Nazario snuck behind him, or maybe this Dwayne kid was stoned out of his mind that night. Who the f*ck knows? Doesn’t mean Nazario didn’t run back to his project.”
“You sure about that?”
“Where you going with this?”
“Nowhere,” Gomez said. “But I’m not pretending I didn’t hear it either.”
“Meaning what? Now you don’t think Nazario’s the guy?”
“I’m not saying that. But I’m maybe starting to wonder.”
“The case is down,” Jaworski said, clearly finished with the conversation.
Gomez gave his partner a look. “So I guess that means we shouldn’t worry about whether it’s down right,” he said.