Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Authors (23 page)

Coletta had been right about Billy having a partner, and the partnership had probably cost him his life. But the question C.J. needed answered more than anything was why. Shoving his half-eaten burger aside and holding the order ticket and the papers from Billy's apartment out in front of him as if they were contaminated, he rose from his chair.

“You can pay at the bar,” the cook called out through a rising pocket of smoke. “Just show 'em your order ticket up front.”

C.J. didn't answer. He knew the drill. Instead of heading for the bar, he turned and headed for Nobby's office.

A two-inch-tall stack of five-dollar bills, a short stack of tens, and a fifth of Jack Daniels occupied the middle of Nobby Pittman's desk. Nobby looked up, surprised, and his eyes shot toward the top desk drawer to his right when C.J. pushed the door open and walked in. When he realized who it was, he let out a sigh. “Shit, C.J., you scared the hell out of me. Thought you might be a damn robber.”

“No,” said C.J., his tone noticeably somber.

“Drink?” asked Nobby, shoving the Jack Daniels across the desktop.

“Nope.”

“Suit yourself. Whatta ya need?”

“A few answers, Nobby. That's all.”

“ 'Bout what?”

“About Billy Pinkey's murder.”

“Can't help you there.”

“I think you can.” C.J. stepped up to the desk and laid down his dinner order ticket and the two half-sheets of paper he'd taken from Billy's. “Recognize any of these?”

“Yeah. The one on the left is the order I took for your dinner. Never seen the others.”

“I think you have.”

“You callin' me a liar?” Nobby sat up straight in his chair.

“No. Just hoping to jog your memory.”

“I said I never seen 'em.”

“Strange. The handwriting on the sheet to your far right matches the writing on my dinner ticket.”

Nobby eyed his top desk drawer once again. “Damn, C.J. Bein' a war hero ain't enough? Now you a handwritin' expert too?”

“Don't claim to be either, Nobby. But I'm betting a real handwriting expert will say that the writing on that one piece of paper and my dinner ticket are a match. Why'd you kill Billy, Nobby?” asked C.J., remembering what his uncle had said about ratcheting up the pressure on a suspect.

Nobby scratched his head, eyed the desk drawer once again, and smiled. “Let's say we keep what's on them papers 'tween me and you. You stand to make yourself two grand richer if we do.”

“Can't.”

“Four grand, then.”

C.J. shook his head.

Nobby shrugged. “Suit yourself.” With a flick of the wrist, he opened the desk drawer, pulled out a snub-nosed .38, and aimed it squarely at C.J.'s chest. “You just spent two years seein' what bullets can do to a man, C.J. Take the four thousand.”

When C.J. didn't answer, Nobby shook his head. “Billy tried to stiff me. Keep all that money for hisself. You believe that? With me bein' the one who picked them numbers, and me layin' down half the cash. Never should've let the Policy runner give Billy all that money. But I trusted Billy, C.J. Like I always trusted you kids. See what you get for puttin' your trust in someone? Guess eighteen grand was just too much of a burden for Billy to handle. Especially with that new high-yellow woman of his. When I come for my money, Billy said he wasn't gonna give me squat. Said his woman told him possession was nine-tenths of the law. I pleaded with him for my money for the better part of a week, but he wouldn't budge. In the end I had to get what was mine, C.J. You understand.”

“Not really.” C.J.'s response changed the pleading stare on Nobby's face into a look of rage. Nodding toward a darkened corner of the room, Nobby said, “I want you to walk over there and park your ass in that chair in the corner while I think this out.”

“You think long, you think wrong,” said C.J.

“Don't play funny man with me, C.J. Sit!”

C.J. eased down into the lumpy overstuffed chair, his eyes locked on the .38. After a half-minute of silence, Nobby said, “Gonna have to kill you, C.J. Ain't no other way.”

“You need to be smarter than that, Nobby. One killing, and you might be able to plea-bargain your way down to life. Two killings, and you'll get the gas chamber for sure.”

“If I get caught. Get up. We're headin' out the back.” Nobby
motioned C.J. toward a doorway in the opposite corner of the room that led out into the alley. “Go ahead. Move.”

C.J. headed for the door, looking for the right moment to pull his own .38. As he thought about making his move, the smells and sounds of the Mekong River Delta filled his head, and as he slipped through the doorway and out into the moonlit night he swore he could hear the sounds of F-100s and machine-gun fire in the distance.

“We gonna walk down two blocks and around the corner down to where they found Billy. Sorry to say, C.J., it's the same place they'll be findin' you. I'm figurin' that when the cops start to scratch their heads, they gonna think we got us a serial killer down here on the Points. And don't think about runnin', C.J., 'cause if you do, I'll just plug you in the back.”

C.J. spotted a Dumpster jutting out in the alley ten yards ahead, and he felt a sudden rush of hope. He'd leap behind the Dumpster and pull his .38, and then it would be Nobby dropping in the alley instead of him. A few feet from the Dumpster, C.J. heard a familiar voice behind them shout, “Hold your horses right there, Nobby!”

The two men turned in unison to see Ike Johnson standing a few feet behind them, his shrunken silhouette awash in the glare from an overhead streetlight. Unc was aiming the .45 he'd carried as a member of the elite all-black World War II transportation unit known as the Cannonball Express directly at Nobby's midsection.

“Had my eyes on you ever since you stepped out your back door, Nobby. I don't know what the hell's goin' on here or why you're holdin' that pea shooter of yours on C.J., but I know you better drop the damn gun.”

Nobby squeezed off an errant shot as Ike took a knee. Steadying the .45 with both hands, Ike returned fire. His second shot slammed into Nobby's right thigh, sending Nobby sprawling face first onto the ground.

C.J. was on top of Nobby, knee to the back of his neck, in seconds. Looking up at his uncle, who still had his .45 trained on the moaning man, C.J. said, “Nobby killed Billy. It was all over money.”

“Figures,” said Ike, looking back toward the half-dozen heads that
were now poking out Nobby's back door. “Best get our story together for the law. You can be sure one of those folks back there'll be callin' the cops.”

“When did you get here?” asked C.J., watching blood stream from the wound in Nobby's leg.

Ike smiled. “Been trailin' you all day. Checkin' out how you was doin' with your assignment.”

“What?”

“You may have been a big dog in Vietnam, C.J., but when it comes to bail bondin', bounty huntin', and dealin' with the Five Points bottom feeders, 'round here, you just an unschooled pup.”

“So you decided to glue yourself to my tail?”

“Watched you make your phone calls, followed you to Coletta's, Billy's apartment, and finally to Nobby's,” Ike said with a smile.

“Why?”

The look on Unc's face turned icy serious. He looked at Nobby Pittman, writhing in pain, and then back at C.J. “ 'Cause C.J. You the only kin I got in the whole wide world, and on top of that, when it comes to breakin' in new hires, it's a matter of policy.”

For all the dubious skills I've mastered over the years—the ability to talk grown-up to my babies and baby talk to their daddy, the ability to steer with my knees while reaching to the backseat to pop the kid who's acting up, or the ability to speak several dialects of Caucasian, including both North and South Valley Girl, Berkeley Breathless, and Bureaucratus—the one that I regret not mastering is the ability to projectile vomit at will. Forget super powers, if I could have had just one power that Wednesday afternoon that Ada Perkins, my newly appointed slash anointed supervisor chose to reprimand me, it would have been the ability to drench her in bile of my own manufacture. I sat in the deliberately undersized chair in front of her desk, imaging the partially digested contents of my stomach glomming on to that wig of hers that only fooled white folks. I could just see it eating through the St. Johns knit she wore a little too well, tarnishing those gold buttons, dripping onto her shoes, and making sizzling sounds as it ate through the leather.

Ada Perkins clutched a heart-shaped rubber stress ball. She gave it a few squeezes. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and kept them like that for a count of ten, opened them again, and fixed them on me. She said, “Don't you ever speak to the secretary without my permission.” Because
English was her second language, she tended to overenunciate. She'd grown up in the Mississippi Delta speaking Anglish, a kind of Afro-English dialect, and worked hard to keep it from tripping her up. She went on, “I am the under-deputy assistant secretary of this agency, not you. I am the governor's surrogate, not you. Do you hear me?”

I heard her. I relinquished my vomit reverie and stood up. I didn't have any epaulets to rip off, no sword to break over my knee, so I ripped the page out of my notebook and slammed them down on her desk. ‘Fuck you! I quit!' I said. And I walked out. It felt so good. My endorphins were kicking. Unfortunately, endorphins fade fast.

I'm a grown woman, a professional, with an MBA from one of the finest institutions in the nation, CSU Sacramento. I'm married with two children and a house in the suburbs. Growing up, I was a daddy's girl, but no matter how hard I try, I'll never outgrow being my mother's child. That's why by the time I got back to my cubicle—cubicle-dwelling being another indignity I've had to suffer since getting this so-called promotion—my mother tapes had clicked on and were blasting full volume. “What in the world have you gone and done, child? Did you even stop to think it through? Now you got no job now, no income, and you got a house note, a car note, and anything else you can get a note on note. And the language you using these days; Lord have mercy.” The tapes played over and over and over, beating my brain to mush. So when Mother's phone call came through I was ripe for the plucking. I was vulnerable. That's all you need to know to understand how I got mired in another of Mother's messes, how I got stuck overnight in a little tar paper shack outside Pixley, California, with an eighty-seven-year-old would-be suitor, how I had to answer nature's call at three in the morning in a Brer Rabbit molasses bucket, and how I learned a lesson about murder that cut both ways.

I picked up the phone. “You ready?” It was Mother, her inquiry ricocheting off my hello. She wasn't on my calendar, but that's never stopped her. Pinning Mother to a little square on a piece of paper accomplishes little.

“What am I supposed to be ready for?”

“We going to go get Sister Venable from the jailhouse.”

“What's she there for?”

“Assault and battery.”

“That little ole lady?”

“We don't have time for all this chit chat, child. You better come on before I change my mind and take this girdle off.”

This was serious indeed if Mother was fully girded, long line bra fortified, and clean handkerchief endowed. I told her I was on my way. Then I signed out—twenty years of state service is a hard habit to shake—and left.

“All Venable has to do,” Mother explained, “is take her medicine and collect that little nut check every month, and she won't even do that.”

“What's the medicine for?”

“To keep her from acting all crazy.”

“I meant what disease is it for?”

“She doesn't have no disease, 'cept sugar. Venable is just crazy.”

“Doesn't somebody look after her?”

“Remember Quintelle, Quintelle Jackson?”

“No.”

“Yes, you do. She's Nay Nay's cousin's girl.”

“Mother, I do not know Quintelle. I do not know Nay Nay. I do not know Nay Nay's cousin, and I most decidedly do not . . .”

Mother cut me off, “I think you're getting a little besides yourself, Miss Lady.”

“Maybe I am, I've had a rough day. But it's a stereotype to assume that all black people know each other, even if the one doing the assuming is black.”

I'm not sure what a jaundiced eye is, but I think Mother looked at me with one. She said, “Just live on, child. One day you'll realize it's a small colored world.” Then she went right on telling me about Quintelle. “The county pays her to do some cleaning and a little cooking, but she's only
there a few hours a week. Toni from across the street looks after Venable the rest of the time. She's the one went over there this morning and found out Sister Venable wasn't there, so she called me.”

“Why'd she call you?”

“She knows I care about people,” Mother said. That wasn't exactly how I would have described her. Overly involved with her neighbor's affairs would do if I were feeling particularly generous, plain old-fashioned nosey would suffice if I weren't.

I said, “I don't see why Toni would think something was wrong just because Sister Venable wasn't home.”

“Venable doesn't get out much since that doctor she used to see called down to DMV and had them snatch her license, and Toni had to hide the keys to that big old Chrysler of hers. Besides, lately she's been acting a little more touched than usual. The other day, Quintelle took her down to that farmers market on K Street Mall, and there was a preacher holding service on one of the corners. Quintelle said something came over Venable when she saw him.” Mother chuckled. “Do you know she ran off and left her walker?”

We arrived at the jail and parked. That was the easy part. Getting Mother though the metal detector with five thousand metal stays in her long-line bra was the hard part. The metal detector kept beeping and spitting her back out. I'd read about a female attorney who'd been forced to remove her underwire bra rather than miss an important pretrial conference. The officers staffing the metal detector gathered in an uneasy huddle. It was obvious they didn't want to ask Mother to unharness herself. A 42 triple D is a terrible thing to set free in a public place, and I think they knew it. Finally, they settled on giving Mother one more going over with the handheld wand and let us in.

“Mrs. Venable confessed to the ‘Rag Doll Murders,' ” the release officer informed us.

Mother chuckled uneasily. “You don't believe her, do you?”

The officer took a moment to examine Mother before responding. “Ma'am, the Rag Doll Murderer killed a woman with his bare hands, lifted her body over an eight-foot chain-link fence, and hid it in a Dumpster. Mrs. Venable uses a walker to get around.” Relief flooded Mother's
face. She let out the breath she'd been holding and fanned herself with her hand.

They rolled Sister Venable out in a wheel chair. She sat with her head down, her lower lip quivering. Mother turned to the officer with an accusing look. “Just a precaution,” he said. “We didn't want her to hurt herself. She's been somewhat combative.” Mother bent over and asked Sister Venable if she was all right. She didn't respond.

We were on the freeway when Mother tried again. Turning to the backseat where we'd strapped Sister Venable, Mother said, “What in the world were you thinking, child? Don't you know better'n to play with the police like that? Didn't you see what they did to that Rodney King boy?”

“I want them to lock me up and throw away the key.”

“Why, Venable?”

“That's what I deserve.”

“Venable, you taking your medicine?”

Venable pursed her lips and made a rude noise. Mother sighed and turned back around. “They can put you under the jail for all I care. See if I come down to bail your old behind out again.”

Toni was waiting for us at Sister Venable's Second Avenue cottage. A small, heavy-chested woman about my age, she clucked over Sister Venable the way you'd expect a much older woman to, admonishing her for running away. “What you trying to do, Auntie Honey,” she teased, “make us all have a heart attack?”

We settled Sister Venable in her recliner in front of the TV. She brightened in familiar surroundings. Pointing to a small table next to her chair weighted down with unguents, powders, and pills, she said, “I use fungi nail, now.”

I didn't know what to say, so I told her that was nice. She nodded, pleased.

I squatted next to her chair for a little girl-to-girl chat. “Sister Venable, did you really want to go to jail?”

She gave me a solemn nod.

“Why?” I said.

“That's the only place I'd be safe.”

“Safe from what?”

Her lower lip started to quiver again. She clinched it between her teeth and patted the top of my hand, shaking her head the way women do at church when the spirit overcomes them. Quintelle appeared at the door just then, and Sister Venable never did get to tell me what she needed protection from.

Quintelle didn't seem surprised to see us. Notwithstanding her as-shiny-as-patent-leather finger waves, and lavender scrubs, she was all business. Pausing only long enough to broadcast a greeting, she moved from the door to Sister Venable, picking up and straightening out as she went. She continued to work as Mother and Toni recounted Sister Venable's bid to get locked up for the Rag Doll Murders. When they finished, Quintelle went to the kitchen and returned with a beer. She placed it in Sister Venable's hand and continued with her chores. Mother raised her brows, but Toni held up both palms, the international sign for “please don't start nothing.” Oblivious, Quintelle grabbed a broom and started to sweep the old, nearly theadbare carpet. Mother and Toni scrambled for the door, neither willing to risk losing a relative simply because she wasn't agile enough to avoid having a sweeping broom touch her feet. I followed, but at a less frantic pace. Quintelle swept us out the front porch down the steps to the walkway. She stopped and stood on the porch looking down at us. “Don't y'all worry, she said, “We gon' take care'a Miss Venable.”

Mother wasn't so sure. “I don't think she should be drinking in her condition,” she said.

Quintelle laughed. “Hell, she ain't pregnant, Miss Lorraine.”

Mother's mouth snapped shut with such force I feared for her tongue. If there's one thing she can't stand, it's a smart mouth child. Mother lives by that old adage, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” It mattered little to her that the child, in this case, was forty-seven years old and not even hers. Quintelle is saved. She shouts in church every Sunday. She's gainfully employed as a certified nursing assistant, helping old folks like Sister Venable. She's also a recovering drug addict with self-control issues. And at six feet and a good 240 pounds, she's a big slab of muscle with titties. I didn't want any trouble, especially the kind that might involve me having to put up my dukes. Hooking my arm through Mother's, I commenced dragging her down the walkway toward our car, but she dug her Rockports in and
assumed her combat position with her hands on her hips and her head cocked to the side.

Quintelle realized her mistake. I could see her consciously shifting, morphing into something oily and sweet. “Pardon my tongue, Miss Lorraine,” she said. “The devil is busy today, ain't he? Dr. Houghton, he the one say it's alright to give her a beer now and then when she gets too riled up. It helps her calm down.”

Mother stared at her a good fifteen seconds. Quintelle, a better woman than I, didn't even squirm. Finally Mother said, “What about all those medicines she takes? Won't that alcohol react with them?”

Quintelle raised her shoulders to show she was just as perplexed as Mother. “I don't know, Miss Lorraine, Dr. Houghton said it was all right.”

“How long she been talking this mess about wanting to get locked up?”

“That's a new one, Miss Lorraine. That's certainly a new one on me.”

Quintelle closed the door. Toni shook her head and turned to Mother, “That Quintelle is something else.”

Mother didn't respond. Toni walked with us to the car. Mother was quiet, which is unusual for her. I, on the other hand, was bubbling over, having discovered the joy of minding other people's business. Funny how that works, now that I had troubles crowding 'round my door with the job or lack of one, someone else's problems—anyone else's problems—seemed so much more appealing. And to think, I'd criticized Mother for the same thing all these years. But this was different, I told myself. My interest was purely anthropological. Mother was plain old nosey, but I was a social scientist studying the culture and mores of crazy old people in the suburban community of Oak Park.