The young woman now identified as Camilla bent down, wrapped her arms around Aphisha, hugging the little girl tight, and kissed her forehead.
Darcy and I looked at each other.
She whispered, “That’s Willa Mae’s friend from the diary.”
“We need to talk to her,” I whispered back.
At ten A.M., Brother Thomas stood in front of the closed casket I’d purchased for Willa’s remains and gave a moving eulogy of life and death and rebirth. I thought about the efforts Willa Mae had made before the end of her short life to pull herself free of the consequences of her earlier poor choices, only to be gunned down, dismembered, and burned in a trash barrel. The more I contemplated it all, the angrier I got.
Rebirth? Someone robbed Willa Mae of her rebirth in this world.
And someone would pay.
After the service, Camilla gave us the slip. More like she just vanished. And not because I wasn’t looking out for her. Darcy and I stood outside the church and watched everyone else exit. Across the street, I spotted someone I recognized—Trevor. He wore a suit and covered his eyes with sunglasses. But it was him. He saw me watching him and walked away.
Brother Thomas came up to us. Taking Darcy’s hands in his, he said, “It sure was nice of you to attend, mm-hmm.”
She asked, “Who is Camilla?”
“I ain’t seen her before.”
Aphisha and her grandmother exited behind us.
I waved them over and introduced Darcy.
Mrs. Jasper said, “I know. I seen you on TV. You such a pretty girl.”
Darcy said, “Thank you.”
I knelt to speak with Aphisha. “How are you today, sweetheart?”
She kissed my cheek.
Darcy knelt. “Aphisha, who’s your friend Camilla?”
“She Willa’s friend.”
I asked, “How do you know her?”
“Willa Mae and Camilla took me shopping,” she said. “They got me my purse.” The child proudly held up her pink handbag for us to admire.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Before we left the funeral, Brother Thomas mentioned another lead, this one a long shot. Desperation could be defined as grasping at straws, like this one now.
With Darcy having to film a news segment, I asked Mutt to join me. While I had a manager running the daily operations of my bar, Mutt had no one. But his regular clientele followed a pattern. During the first week of the month after receiving their stipend, the patrons packed the place. But by the middle of the second week everyone had spent most of their money and needed to stretch what was left until the next check.
Since it was now into the last week of May Mutt had some free time on his hands. He and I stepped through a doorway with no door into an old apartment building in North Charleston. We turned right and headed down a corridor that smelled like the men’s room at a busy truck stop, one that hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. Light fixtures jutted from the walls like gargoyles, most of them lacking bulbs. Some apartment doors had four inch black script numbers screwed to them. Others were missing theirs. We stopped at number two-nineteen.
I gave the door two swift raps. The sound echoed down the hall.
Brother Thomas had said the old man living at this address tried to file a police report about some gangbangers shooting up the parking lot. The police had brushed him off as some disgruntled old crank. While I think Brother Thomas wanted us to check in on his friend, the lead part was finding out any connection to Willa Mae. Not sure how he would help connect those dots, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
We waited twenty seconds and I rapped again.
A scruffy voice spoke through the unopened door. “Yeah, yeah. Whadda ya want?”
Mutt said, “Mr. Porter?”
“Who wanna know?”
“Brother Thomas sent us come talk to you.”
“What about?”
“Can we come in, sir?” Mutt asked.
Another few seconds passed—enough for a long sigh. “Okay.”
Locks clicked and chains scratched and banged. When the door opened, a hot sticky breeze blew past us carrying the musty smell of old age, tempering the stench of feces in the hall. Mr. Porter stood in the doorway, his black wrinkled face tinted with a permanent gray pallor. He wore no shirt, but suspenders held up his pants.
“Come on in if you’re comin’,” he said.
Mutt and I entered a time warp. Drawn curtains kept the glare of the sun out, but not the heat. In this part of town, air-conditioning was a working ceiling fan and prayer. The foyer of the small apartment doubled as the dining area and contained a small metal card table and two worn chairs with duct-taped seats. A red light on an old Mr. Coffee glowed and a half-full glass pot warmed on the burner.
“Can I get you guys some coffee?” the old man asked.
“Love some,” I said.
Mr. Porter took out two cups and saucers. He set the cups in the saucers and poured our coffee. I noticed a faint flower pattern around the top of the cup and felt the rim of the underside of the matching saucer when he handed it to me. It was smooth which told me it was not cheap.
“Nice china,” I said. “I can tell it’s good stuff.”
Mr. Porter looked me over and said, “It was a wedding present from my wife’s parents when we was married. Nineteen sixty-six. Cancer got her. What can I do for you?”
Mr. Porter sat in one of the taped-up chairs. Mutt grabbed the stool by an old wall telephone whose once spiral cord had long given up its struggle with gravity. I took the chair opposite the old man.
Mutt said, “Mr. Porter, the reason we here is, well, we heard you was the one called the po-lice on those boys shootin’ guns in front of your building.”
“Two night ago,” the old man said, “I was tryin’ to watch the ’leven o’clock news. They was givin’ highlights on the president’s trip and I wanted to catch them. As soon as the president came on, it sounded like I was back in Nam. Those boys was raisin’ all kinds of ruckus, with them little guns they got popping all over the place.” He shook his head. “If they wanna shoot each other, why not sign up for the Marines?”
“Pay’s not that great,” I said.
His clouded eyes met mine. “You was in?”
“A couple years ago,” I said. “Afghanistan. Mutt was in Kuwait.”
Mutt said, “I thought I had enough shootin’ to last me. But Opie, I mean Brack here, seem to bring it wit him.”
The old man’s wrinkled face stretched smooth as he chuckled. “Only white folks come round here’re either givin’ handouts or collectin’ taxes. You don’t look like you doin’ neither.”
“He own a bar, like me,” Mutt said. “But he don’t drink no more.”
The old man nodded. “So what you wanna know about them troublemakers?”
“You know a girl named Willa Mae?” I said.
He took a drink from his coffee. I did, too.
“That the girl Brother Thomas been lookin’ for?”
I said, “She’s dead. The police found her body burned up in a trash barrel. You think she had something to do with the boys shooting up your parking lot?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Mr. Porter said. “But I never saw her around.”
“What about her friend, Mary Ellen?”
Mr. Porter put a hand on the table and used it to push himself up. Mutt stood and helped him.
The old man waved him off. “I got it.”
He walked to the back of the apartment—only about ten steps.
I whispered, “I hope it wasn’t anything we said.”
We heard the old man shuffling things around. After a few moments, he made his way the ten steps back to the table. He handed Mutt a picture. “This who you axin’ about?”
Mutt took the photo, looked at it, and handed it to me. It was Mary Ellen. A younger version, looking directly into the camera, her hair pulled back and a big smile on her face that showed she’d been innocent once. I wond
ered how the girl in this picture could be the same one we saw prancing across the stage at the Treasure Chest, and how she’d decided on the path to get from one place to the other. The question of paths chosen by all these young people, girls and boys, deserved answers.
“That her,” Mutt said.
“She my niece,” Mr. Porter said. “Mary Ellen was a smart girl. Then she got to runnin’ wit the wrong peoples. Now God knows where she is.”
Mutt’s eyes met mine. We knew where she could be found. I shook my head no. We weren’t here for that.
“Why you wanna get mixed up in all this, anyways?” the old man asked, eyeing me.
“Brother Thomas asked me to. I owe it to him.”
Mr. Porter frowned as if in thought, then nodded as if he understood.
We left Mr. Porter’s apartment after a second cup of coffee and a few war stories. In the parking lot of the apartment complex, a Crown Victoria idled past as Mutt and I climbed into my truck. Twenty-four-inch diameter wheels and purple paint told me it wasn’t a police car, or wasn’t one anymore.
Mutt said, “Hold on, Opie. Let’s see what they doin’.”
The windows of the purple people eater were tinted too dark to be legal. It passed, pulled out of the drive, and rolled up the street.
I started the truck, backed out, and sped down the street in the opposite direction. A hundred yards ahead at the next intersection, two more large American cars with huge rims looked like they were waiting for us.
Mutt said, “They might just be trying to scare us.”
I slowed to assess the situation.
When the distance had shrunk to fifty yards, the doors opened on the cars ahead. I stopped the truck. The purple car was coming up behind us fast. A long brick building stretched to my right. To my left hid a narrow alley between two homes blocked by trash. Beyond the rubbish I saw a clearing. I slammed the gearshift into low, cranked the wheel, and floored it. We shot up the drive.
“Oh man!” Mutt braced himself.
The Ram’s bumper did its job, scattering an old mattress and boxes of junk.
The alley ended just ahead. More like it dropped off. I shifted into second and we bounded over the edge of the drive, landing seconds later on the other side of a ditch. The truck bounced once and then settled. I gunned it and the rear wheels bit through dead undergrowth. The clearing ahead was a football field.
Mutt looked back. “You crazy!”
“They still back there?”
“Naw. They out of their cars though. Looks like they got machine guns. Better get us outta here.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I cut across the fifty-yard line. We sped past worn bleachers, rumbled down a cracked, concrete sidewalk, and hopped onto an empty parking lot. Lucky for us the gate was open. Not so lucky that another huge-rimmed rolling jukebox was on a collision course with my front bumper. I slammed on the brakes, threw the transmission into reverse, and floored it again. The parking lot had separate openings for cars to enter and exit. We sailed out the entrance backwards. The street was empty. Ten years racing everything from go-carts to stock cars had taught me a thing or two about vehicle control. At full speed in reverse, I threw the gearshift in neutral and spun the steering wheel left. The front of the truck slid perfectly around and I caught it when we faced in the other direction, put it in drive, and mashed the gas pedal.
The chase car was no match for the power of my Hemi and we rocketed away. At the last minute, I sliced down a side street. Machine gun fire peppered a stop sign we overran. Mutt hung out his window and fired several return shots. I didn’t look back to see how true his aim was.
At the next intersection, I hung a sharp left and gunned it again.
“We lost them,” Mutt said. “but don’t let up just yet.”
I didn’t argue.
“You did what?” Detective Warrez stood beside her unmarked car in the Church of Redemption parking lot, arms folded, mouth open. The reason I’d called her was not all that clear to me. If I looked hard enough, I might find that I wanted an excuse to see her again. But I also knew that Mutt and I had stumbled onto something and she needed to know.
“Opie is one crazy white boy,” Mutt said. “I ain’t never jumped in no car before. Pick’em up, neither. Then we go full speed in reverse, musta been doing a hundred. He spins the wheel and here we go facing the other direction.”
She shook her head.
I patted the fender of my truck. “It was a pretty good bootlegger reverse, if I do say so myself. Junior Johnson and Jim Rockford would have approved.”
She said, “You could have gotten killed.”
“They tried,” Mutt said. “We outran the bullets.”
She opened her car door, leaned in, and grabbed the radio. Mutt and I listened as she asked for a BOLO so all the cop cars would be on the lookout for each of the vehicles we’d described. She returned the radio to its cradle and straightened up.
“I don’t think we’re going to get much from that but it’s worth a try,” she said. “The real question is what you were doing in that part of town. I know you aren’t still looking into Willa Mae’s disappearance, because, Mr. Pelton, you have been unconditionally warned to stay away from it and to let us handle things.”
I said, “Speaking of that, how far have you gotten?”
“We’re treating it as important as any other case.”
“Yeah, right,” Mutt said. “And a white man invented the cotton gin.”
Detective Warrez put her hands on her hips. “Now what is that supposed to mean?”
My phone vibrated and I ignored it.
“It means,” I said, “the people around here have been getting hosed by the police force long enough to develop a slight mistrust.”
She said, “I haven’t been anything but honest with you.”
“You’re a minority, and not because you’re Latina,” I said.
Her dark face reddened and her darker eyes stared into mine. She was very attractive, in a hard-working, natural kind of way. I know Mutt liked her. I liked her, too.
She dropped her eyes and sighed. “You’re right. I am the minority. I’m the only one who seems to care. Everyone else wants to get back to business. Sweep this whole thing under the rug.”
“Then we’re on the same side,” I said.
She shook her head. “No, we’re not. You guys are wild cowboys without the hats. I’m trying to conduct an official investigation and you’re not helping.”
“There wouldn’t be no investigation without us,” Mutt said.
Detective Warrez looked at him. “Yeah, well tell that to Willa Mae’s family when the prosecutor can’t use anything you find because it wasn’t obtained by a legal search.”
Mutt kicked a bottle and stormed off.
“Look,” she said to me, “unofficially I appreciate what you’re doing. Everything you’re uncovering. But next time let me talk to the witness. Let me do the things the city of Charleston is paying me to do.” She pointed to a busted headlight on my truck. “It’ll be a lot less damaging.”
A new headlight unit from the Ram dealer cost a lot more than I expected. In my converted factory, I replaced the busted pieces and set about touching up a few scratches in the paint. All things considered, it could have been a lot worse. Shelby helped by snoring in the corner of the shop. A Miles Davis tune ended and the Wurlitzer switched to U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday. I thought about how Willa Mae turned and faced the man with the gun while all I could do was run.
My cell phone vibrated and the caller I.D. displayed Darcy’s number. Since I’d forgotten to return her last call, having been preoccupied playing twenty questions with Detective Warrez, I figured I’d better answer.
When I did, she asked, “Wasn’t there a TV show in the eighties about some stuntman jumping his pickup truck all over the place?”
I thought about it a moment. “The Fall Guy.”
“That’ll be your new nickname,” she said. “You can read abo
ut it in tomorrow’s paper.”
“What?”
“That’s what happens when you ignore my calls and I don’t get an exclusive. You get a nickname. The Fall Guy is better than some of the others I considered.”
“That sounds like a load of what’s left in the toilets when we close the bar after a busy Friday night.”
“Gross,” she said. “But if the shoe fits—”
“Very funny.”
“Are you going to let me in or do I have to drive through the door like they do on the TV show?”
I hung up and went to press the inside button. The door to my factory opened silently on roller-bearing wheels and lubricated hinges. Darcy drove in and parked beside my Mustang.
I pressed the button to close the door. “How do you know about eighties television anyway? Weren’t you just an embryo?”
“It’s not like you were old enough to be at Woodstock,” she said, “yet you play Jimi Hendrix all the time.”
Pointing to the neon-lit jukebox, I asked, “Does that sound like Jimi Hendrix?”
“No,” she said, “but it’s still U2 before my time.”
“Come to think of it,” I said, “the Fall Guy had a blond sidekick. Not very bright, but she did have a certain presence.”
“Whatever.” She sat on the stool. “So why didn’t I get a call after your shootout at the OK Corral?”
I couldn’t think of a good reason so I grabbed a clean rag from a box next to the workbench and ran it across the front grill of my truck to remove my dirty fingerprints.
She said, “Not talking, huh? That’s all right. My anonymous source says you ran over three little kids playing in the street.”
I didn’t bite.
“They also said you’re wanted for speeding.”
With the chrome polished, I stopped and said, “Is that all you got?”
She folded her arms across her chest. “I’ve got you and Mutt trenching the local football field.”
I waited.
“And I’ve got a source that says there’s money for your head.”
“How much?”
“I’m serious, Brack,” she said. “A gang wants you. Dead or alive.”
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