Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Authors (22 page)

“Whatta you want?” asked Jeffrey Watkins, swinging the door open in response to Coletta's broken, badly out-of-tune, three-note door chime. Watkins, a stubby, balding, forty-year-old black man, seemed to enjoy the fact that he was standing a full step above C.J.

“I'm C.J. Floyd, and I'd like to speak to Coletta.”

“I know who you are.” Watkins screamed back into the house, “Coletta, there's somebody here at the door wants to talk to you.”

Puffing up her hair and adjusting her clothes, Coletta shouted, “Let 'em in.”

Watkins grunted out an unpleasant, “Come in,” and led C.J. back into a room that had the overpowering smell of burned cabbage.

“C.J.,” said Coletta, rising from the couch to shake hands. “What brings you out?”

“I'm trying to find out what happened to Billy.” Noticing Coletta's surprised look, he added, “as a favor to my uncle and Billy's mother.” He was well aware that Coletta and Billy had shared fathers, not mothers, and that Coletta's relationship with her stepmother, Marguerite Pinkey, had always been a lot colder than lukewarm.

Coletta forced back a frown. “I bet you that old redbone witch told you I had somethin' to do with what happened to Billy.”

“No.”

Coletta glanced at Jeffrey Watkins, who was now standing next to the room's soot-stained fireplace with his right hand resting on the tarnished bonze head of a cast-iron poker. “Well, if it's information you want, chew on this. That eighteen thousand Billy claimed he won at Policy wasn't all his. I know for a fact that he had a partner.”

“Any idea who it was?”

“I'd put my money on that new girlfriend of his, or his mamma.”

“And you think one of them might have killed him for their share of the winnings?” C.J. eyed Watkins, whose hand was now cupped tightly over the head of the poker.

“Woulda and coulda,” said Coletta. “Shit, everybody knows that mamma of his used to be a madam. Anybody capable of sellin' their body is capable of sellin' out their son.”

“Food for thought,” said C.J., shooting another glance at Watkins. “What's the story on Billy's girlfriend, Retha Ann?”

“She'd been hugged up to Billy since the beginnin' of the summer. Latched on to him like a magnet. She coulda killed him, I guess. She knew where he kept everything in his apartment, includin' his money. Could be she decided, rich girl or not, she needed the Benjamins.”

“Could be,” said C.J., remembering his uncle's directives.
Put her on
the defensive, make her nervous.
“Any truth to the rumor that you owed Billy money or that he was planning to take you to court over the fact?”

“I didn't owe Billy nothin'!” Coletta's bellow forced Jeffrey Watkins's hand, causing him to move the poker he'd been fingering forward in its stand.

C.J. considered pulling the .38 as his thoughts turned to the 50 caliber machine he'd manned during Vietnam. A gun he'd named Fat Annie, and eaten with, slept with, prayed with, and killed with for two long years. In his book, guns were meant for only one thing, and he knew that if he pulled the .38 he'd more than likely kill Jeffrey Watkins. “Don't be stupid, friend,” he said, locking eyes with Watkins. “Slip that poker out of its holster and trust me, you'll never see another day.”

Recognizing that C.J. meant what he said, Coletta shouted, “Get out of here, C.J. Get out of here now!”

“I'm gone,” said C.J., stepping his way backward toward the front door as Watkins, poker in hand, tracked him step for step. “Nice seein' you,” he added, holding the front door open with his butt and letting it slam in Jeffrey Watkins's face before he turned to trot back to the Bel Air.

Billy Pinkey had lived on the fourth floor of a low-rent Five Points apartment building that looked as if it had been intentionally constructed to appear rundown. As C.J. made his way up the creaking wooden spiraling center-atrium staircase, he kept asking himself what Coletta Burns could possibly be hiding. She hadn't seemed too upset about her half brother's death, and the only thing that had set her off was his accusation that she owed Billy money. He suspected that she probably didn't have the nerve to kill Billy herself, but he wouldn't put it past Jeffrey Watkins. On the drive over to Billy's he'd had the feeling that he was being followed, but after parking the Bel Air he'd scouted a two-block perimeter, looking for a tailer, and turned up nothing.

The building's five-story atrium echoed with the noises of crying children and blaring TVs. Billy Pinkey's apartment was at the end of a dark hallway. C.J. approached the door casually, looked around, slipped his slim jim out of his pocket, and popped the door open in a matter of
seconds. Stepping inside, he flipped on a light. The first thing he noticed was that the room looked orderly. To his right, a World War II-vintage army footlocker, a rickety porch rocker, and a couch marred with cigarette burns filled a tiny living room. Scraps of paper, a week's worth of the
Denver Post
sports pages, and a pocket-sized calculator rested on top of the footlocker. Suddenly C.J. thought he heard a noise from the kitchen, and he hit the floor spread-eagled, fumbling for his gun. Quickly realizing that the sound was a Venetian blind banging against a half-open window, he hopped up and searched the apartment's kitchen. Finding nothing of interest there, he next searched Billy's bedroom. Nothing seemed out of place, and except for a few of Billy's flashy clothes that Coletta had evidently left behind and a .32 stashed in the top drawer of a dresser, the bedroom could have been his own.

The apartment's neatness told C.J. that the cops hadn't yet made it to Billy's. Billy Pinkey had been dead for close to twenty-four hours, the victim of a violent street attack, and his death wasn't important enough to warrant a simple visit from Denver's finest. Shaking his head as he walked back to the living room, C.J. considered the fact that when it came to black folks, some things never changed. He sat down on the lumpy couch, pushed the sports sections aside disappointedly, and picked up a torn half-sheet of paper from the top of the footlocker. One side of the paper was filled with six columns of penciled numbers. The words
good bet, possible winner,
and
lucky set
had been scribbled near the lower right edge of the paper.
Lay down $50.00
jumped out from beneath the scribbling. The two zeros after
50
had been boldly double-underlined. C.J. picked up a second half-sheet of paper with a similar set of columns, numbers, and notes. Certain that the two half-sheets probably listed the numbers Billy had used to come up with the winning combination for his $18,000 Policy hit, C.J. was about to stuff them in his pocket for Unc to have a look at. It wasn't until he placed the torn sheets together that he realized that the handwriting on the two pages was different. On one sheet the numbers and notes had been written in large, looping, bold black script. On the other sheet of paper the writing resembled chicken scratch, and the numbers were tiny and much lighter.

C.J. spent the next several minutes scrutinizing the writing styles on both half-sheets, concluding in the end that two people had done the
writing and that one of them was very likely Billy's Policy partner and killer. There was something about the bolder of the two handwriting styles that C.J. even thought he recognized. He couldn't put his finger on it, but he swore he'd seen the handwriting before.

Satisfied that he had gleaned everything he could from his search, C.J. slipped the papers into his pocket and checked his watch. It was eleven-thirty. He hadn't eaten all day and kicked himself for not sharing in his uncle's fight night chicken-wing feast. At least he'd made a dent in things, he told himself, as his stomach began growling. The next day he'd run the handwriting issue past Unc, track down Cordell, and have a face-to-face meeting with Billy's girlfriend, Rhetha Ann. But for now he needed to feed his face, and luckily he still had an hour and a half before Nobby's place closed. With his stomach still rumbling, C.J. slipped out of Billy's apartment, down the staircase, and out into the night.

Halfway into the eight-block drive to Nobby's, the driver of the car that had been tailing C.J. ever since he'd left Coletta's turned on its lights.

For a Thursday night, Nobby's was jumping. People were lined up two-deep around the bar, ordering drinks as if the evening had just started, and the jukebox was blaring “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” a cut from a Four Tops tape that C.J. had worn out during his first tour of Vietnam.

C.J. negotiated his way across the crowded barroom and past the pool-table area toward what Nobby called a restaurant, stopping briefly to shake hands and acknowledge friends. A small, apartment-sized kitchen with a painted concrete floor and a table with six rickety chairs made up the restaurant. An order window poking through one of the room's grease-stained walls led to a kitchen where one of Nobby's part-time cooks was preparing food.

C.J. had his heart set on one of Nobby's juicy, three-quarter-pound cheeseburgers and fries. Fare that had probably pushed his cholesterol to unprecedented limits while he was a teenager.

Nobby spotted C.J. the instant he entered the room. Wiping his brow, he rushed over, and pumped C.J.'s hand. “Must be a full moon. Been swamped all night.”

“Money, money, money,” said C.J., shouting above the noise.

Nobby smiled. “Too bad it ain't like this every night. Then maybe I'd be able to afford a set of new shocks for my ride. What can I get for you, C.J.?”

“Cheeseburger, medium rare, fries, and a Coke. And an order of coleslaw,” C.J. said as an afterthought.

“Got ya!” Nobby jotted down the order, turned, and walked over to the order window, where a skinny, long-faced cook wearing a nylon stocking cap took the ticket. “Ten minutes and you'll be singin' my praises,” Nobby called back to C.J. “Just like when you was a kid. Now, aside from my cookin', what brings you out tonight?”

“I've been looking into what happened to Billy.”

Nobby's eyes widened.

“As a favor to Unc and Billy's mamma.”

“Oh.”

“Got any ideas?”

“Have you talked to that girlfriend of Billy's, Retha Ann?”

“I tried.”

“You ask me, she's the one who put it to Billy. Prissy siddity bitch. Down here stickin' her nose in where it don't belong. I'd say you need to be tryin' to contact her a little harder.”

C.J. made a mental note to try again to contact Retha Ann Stitt the first thing the next morning. He was about to ask Nobby how long Billy had known Retha Ann when one of the bartenders walked up.

“The high rollers' boat must've sailed in today, Nobby,” said the bartender. “Need change for a couple of hundreds.” He shoved two hundred-dollar bills at Nobby and nodded at C.J.

Nobby patted down his pockets. Realizing he didn't have that kind of change, he said, “I'll have to go get it from the back.”

“Ain't no rush,” said the bartender. “The way the two fish who gave me them hundreds are drinkin', I won't owe 'em nothin' more than a ten spot by the time you get back.”

Nobby looked at C.J. and shrugged. “Gotta run.” Giving C.J. a wink, he added, “And don't wolf down your food. Remember, you ain't a kid no more, C.J.”

C.J. smiled, sat back in his chair, and watched a smoky haze waft up from the order window to the kitchen. A steaming burger and fries arrived a few minutes later, courtesy of the harried-looking cook. “I had an order of coleslaw too,” C.J. said, pinching off a couple of fries.

“Wasn't none that I seen,” said the cook. “Check your order ticket.”

C.J. glanced down at the grease-stained check next to his plate. The order read:
burger, medium rare—$1.75, fries—50 cents, Coke—45 cents; total $2.70.

“Guess Nobby missed it,” said C.J.

“Guess so,” said the cook, shrugging and walking off.

C.J. was two bites into his cheeseburger and still eyeing the order ticket when something began to gnaw at him. At first he thought it was the fact that in addition to dropping his coleslaw order, Nobby had raised his prices. Setting his burger aside, he picked up the ticket and examined it closely. It wasn't until he had read through the order a couple more times that he realized it was the handwriting that was holding his attention. Suddenly his stomach began to quiver the same way it had whenever his patrol boat had set out on a night mission in Vietnam.

Reaching into his pocket, he slipped out the two half-sheets of paper he'd taken from Billy's apartment and spread them on the table. As he silently read off the numbers on the greasy order slip, he realized that the 5s and 7s were dead ringers for the 5s and 7s on one of the torn half-sheets. He swallowed hard as he realized the looping e's and undotted i's in
possible winner, lucky set,
and
good bet
were nearly identical to the e's and i's in the words
burger, fries,
and
medium rare.
But the clincher was the identical set of double underlines beneath the seventy after the $2.70 total on the order ticket, and the zeros after the $50.00 at the bottom of the half-sheet of paper in front of him.