Trip Wire by Charlotte Carter Page B

Something like that.”
    Burned,
eh? Well, ain’t you just the hippest narc in town.
    “Is that what the police think?”
    “It’s in the running,” he said.
    I shook my head. “No way. Wilt and Mia didn’t do that.”
    “Right.”
    He pressed a cherry danish on me, but I declined.
    “It’s pretty tense over your way since the riots. I mean, even now,” he said. “We’re looking at a lot of violence in that neighborhood. Shootings, holdups, muggings. You and your friends get along with—with everybody?”
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “Did your guy Wilton know any of the brothers from the projects maybe? Any of them ever come by the apartment to see him?”
    “No.”
    “I’m wondering if any of the brothers ever give your friends grief?”
    “Grief for what?”
    “For living like you do—did. He had a girlfriend, after all, who wasn’t the same race.”
    I didn’t answer for a minute. His questions were rife with implications, all of them unimaginative and dumb. Probably the very dumbest was that young black males would actually be outraged that one of their own was screwing a white girl.
    “Wilton knew lots of people,” I said. “Far as I know, nobody resented him for being with Mia. Not because she was white, anyway.”
    “She was a pretty girl, they say. Some of the other guys in the house a little jealous of your friend Wilton?”
    He was being cagey. Obviously he’d heard something about Barry and Wilt’s rivalry. So it shocked me when he said, “Are you sure you never heard this Zuni threaten your friend Wilton?”
    “Dan? What are you talking about?”
    “Just wondering.”
    “Look,” I said. “You people are wasting your time suspecting Dan. Not only did he think the world of Mia and Wilt, he wouldn’t kill a flea if it was biting him.”
    He nodded, relit his brown smoke, which had gone cold.
    “I mean it. Dan’ll turn up in a day or two with a perfectly good explanation.”
    “Um-hum.”
    “Besides, has it occurred to Norris that somebody might have hurt Dan, too? He could have been grabbed or something when he left the house that morning. If you all have any smarts, you’ll start looking at him as another possible victim.”
    “Good thinking. Any other thoughts?”
    My chance to twit him a little. “There are these guys ‘around our way,’ as you say. These white guys who don’t like freaks. Or black people. I heard they’re the ones ripping off apartments. I heard a couple of girls have been raped.”
    He took that in. “Doesn’t sound likely. Thugs like that, if they’d been watching the apartment, they’d have waited till you were all at home, and they’d have waited to catch everybody where you all live, not in a vacant apartment. No, this thing sounds much more personal. Lot of anger in this killing. Somebody really didn’t like Wilton Mobley.”
    That sounded right. Unhappy as I was to have it said.
    “Anyway,” he said, “the chatter says it doesn’t look like Mia Boone was raped.”
    “I’m glad,” I said. For whatever it was worth.
    “You looked so surprised when I mentioned Dan Zuni might’ve been jealous of your friend.”
    “Like I told you, that isn’t true.”
    He opened a second container of coffee. “Cass, I told your uncle I’d do what I could for him. For you. And I meant what I said. Woody told me you’d cooperate in any way you can to help us nail whoever did this crime. Is that true?”
    “What do you think?”
    “So why don’t you come clean about this fella Zuni?”
    I tried to second-guess the man. Why in hell was he so convinced Dan had something to do with the murders? What kind of cop tactic was he pulling?
    “Did you hear me, Cass?”
    “I heard you. But you’re not making sense.”
    “So it’s news to you that Zuni and Mia Boone used to live together? You had no idea she was pregnant by him a couple of years ago? Had an abortion?”
    I fell into a wordless stupor.
    “Her parents even know about it. Mia