Say the girl had needed a fix. Booker had told her to go out and work. She had Pincus’s gun. So she followed Bagman and held him up on the street, and when he didn’t give her the drugs, she shot and robbed him. But how could she have also beaten him? She was small. Certainly no match for Booker.
“You’ll get me a fix?” she asked Conklin.
“We’ll get you help,” Conklin said.
Lawanda was scratching at her skin, ripping at her hair. I was sure we’d lost her, that she’d fallen down a black hole of misery and didn’t know we were still there.
But she hung on. Still rocking, still staring at the floor, she shouted as if possessed, “Sammy Pincus gave me the gun so I could protect myself on the street!”
I got out of my chair, walked over to Lawanda, stooped down so I could look in her eyes. I asked her, “How did Sammy Pincus get that gun?”
The girl stared at me as if I were as dumb as a brick. “She took it from her father. Mr. Neil? He’s the one who killed Bagman Jesus.”
Chapter 108
MY HEART WAS banging against my chest like a hammer on a steel drum. Conklin was behind me as we pounded up the narrow stairs leading to the law offices above the soup kitchen called From the Heart.
A gaggle of girls from the nail salon tried to pass us, saw the determination on our faces, and backed right up and flattened themselves against the wall at the landing, one of them saying loudly to the rest of them, “Those are cops!”
I banged on the door to “Pincus and Pincus,” and when a voice said, “Who is it?” I said, “Mr. Pincus, this is the police.”
Al Pincus, the bigger, younger brother, came to the door.
“How can I help you?” he asked, barring our entrance with his body.
“For starters, you can let us in,” I said.
He sighed, opened the door wide, called over his shoulder, “Neil, the police.”
Neil Pincus stepped out of his office. He was dressed as he was the last time I saw him: gray pants, white shirt, cuffs rolled up, no tie.
I took the warrant out of my inside jacket pocket and showed it to “Mr. Neil.”
“You’re under arrest.”
He snatched the warrant out of my hand, unfolded it, scanned it fast, said, “Are you crazy? I didn’t murder anyone.”
“We have your gun, Mr. Pincus. Showed up in the hands of a witness who will testify that you shot and killed Rodney Booker.”
“That’s nuts,” said Neil Pincus, wandering back toward his office. “I’m calling my lawyer.”
“Stop right where you are!” Conklin shouted. “Hands up where we can see them. Do it now.”
I hadn’t expected resistance, but I was prepared for it. As Conklin held his Glock on Neil Pincus, I shoved him to the wall and cuffed his hands behind his back.
“You have the right to remain silent,” I said as I frisked him.
“Hey!” Al Pincus shouted. “Let my brother go. You’ve got it all wrong. I’m the one who killed Rodney Booker.”
“Al, no! Listen,” Neil Pincus said to me, “Al had nothing to do with it. I did it. I killed the bastard because of what he did to my daughter.”
“It was me, and I’m not sorry,” Alan Pincus insisted. “Booker was an evil bastard. What he did to Sammy — that kid once had all the promise in the world.
“Neil wanted to get him legally, but Booker was too slick. So I took my brother’s gun. I found that shit on the street corner, and I shot him in the head over and over and over.”
“Thanks,” I said. “There were enough bullets in Booker and he took enough of a beating that both of you could have killed him. In fact, that’s my theory. You two took him down together.”
I read Alan Pincus his rights and Conklin cuffed him, but a niggle of worry was starting at the back of my brain.