Hard News

years old—you know, could ride a family of ten. He said, ‘Hop in,’ and I did. Biggest mistake of my life, miss. I’ll tell you that.”
    “Jimmy.”
    “Right. But then I told him
my
name was Dave. I just had a feeling this wasn’t a person I wanted to open up with a real lot.”
    “What happened after you got in?”
    “We drove south toward the city, making small talk. ‘Bout women mostly, the way men do. Telling how you get put down by women all the time and how you don’t understand them but what you’re really doing is bragging that you’ve had a ton of ‘em. That sort of thing.”
    “Where was Jimmy going? Further south?”
    “He said he was only going so far as New York City but I was thankful I was getting a ride at all. I figured I could buy a Greyhound ticket to get me on my way to Atlanta. In fact I was thinking just that very thing when he looks over at me in the car and says, ‘Hey son, how’d you like to earn yourself a hundred bucks.’ And I said, ‘I’d like that pretty well, particularly if it’s legal but even if not I’d still like it pretty well.’
    “He said it wasn’t
real
illegal. Just picking up something and dropping it off. I told him right away, ‘I’ve got a problem if that’d be drugs you were talking about.’ He said it was credit cards and since I’ve done a little with them myself in the past I said that wasn’t so bad but could he maybe consider two hundred. He said he’d more than consider it and said if I drove he’d make it two hundred fifty And I agreed was what I did. We drive to this place somewhere. I didn’t know New York but at the trial I found out it was on the Upper West Side. We stopped and he got out and I scooted over behind the wheel. Jimmy, or whatever his name was, walked into this courtyard.”
    Rune asked, “What did he look like?”
    “Well, I wasn’t too sure. I oughta be wearing glasses but I’d lost them overboard in Maine and couldn’t afford to get new ones. He was a big fellow, though. He sat big, the way a bear would sit. A moustache, I remember. It was all in profile, the look I got.”
    “White?”
    “Yes’m.”
    “Describe his clothing.”
    “He wore blue jeans with cuffs turned up, engineer boots—”
    “What are those?”
    “Short buckled boots, you know. Black. And a Navy watch coat.”
    “Weren’t you a little nervous about this credit card thing?”
    Boggs paused for a minute. “I’ll tell you, miss. There’ve been times in my life—not a lot, but a few— when two hundred fifty dollars hasn’t been a lot of money. But back then it was. Just like it would be now and when somebody is going to give you a lot of money you’d be surprised what stops becoming funny or suspicious. Anyway, I sat for about ten minutes in the car. I had me a cigarette or two. I was real hungry and was looking around for a Burger King. That’s what I really wanted, one of those Whoppers. There I am, feeling hungry, and I hear this shot. I’ve fired me enough pistols in my life to know a gunshot. They don’t boom like in the movies. There’s this crack—”
    “I know gunshots,” Rune said.
    “Yeah, you shoot?”
    “Been shot at, matter of fact,” she told him. This wasn’t ego. It was to let him know more about her, make him trust her more.
    Boggs glanced at her, decided she wasn’t kidding, and nodded slowly. He continued. “I walk carefully into the courtyard. There’s a man lying on the ground. I thought it was Jimmy. I run up to him and see it’s
not
Jimmy and I lean down and say, ‘Mister, you okay?’ And of course he isn’t. I see he’s dead. I stand up fast and I just panic and run.”
    Boggs smiled with a shallow twist of his lips. “And what happens? The story of my life. I run into a police car cruising by outside. I mean, I really run right into it, bang. I fall over and they pick me up and collar me and that’s it.”
    “What about Jimmy?”
    “I glanced around and seen the car but Jimmy wasn’t inside. He was gone.”
    “Did you see any gun?”
    “No, ma’am. I heard they found it in the bushes. There wasn’t any of my prints on it but I was wearing gloves. The DA made a big deal out of it that I was wearing gloves in April. But I got me small hands …” He held one up. “I don’t have a lot of meat on me. It was real cold.”
    “You think Jimmy shot Mr. Hopper?”
    “I pondered that a lot but I don’t see why he would have. He didn’t have any gun that I saw and if it was