Prime Suspect

by A. W. Gray

  “That’s what it is, man,” Rock Man Bentley said. “Only by the time you touch it the afternoon be over.” He beat on the floor impatiently with the butt end of his own cue stick. Rock Man wore a grimy white T-shirt and size 48 jeans, his gut overhanging his belt and his skin the color of bittersweet chocolate.

  Frank grinned as he hit the shot, hit the cue ball hard with lefthand English, watched with a bland expression as the cue ball clipped the seven into the corner, rebounded from the rail with a soft thump. The English took hold; the cue ball curved slightly as it approached the nine, bumped the nine sideways. The yellow nine crept to the edge of the side pocket, teetered there, and finally tumbled out of sight with a muted rattle. “Afternoon ain’t over, man,” Frank said. “The game is, though. Pay me.”

  Rock Man grimaced and dug in his pocket as Freeway approached from the front entrance. Freeway was around sixty, his kinky brown hair going to gray, slightly stooped as though he’d picked a lot of cotton. Which Freeway had, doing half of his life on TDC work farms. “Dude up front to see you,” he said to Frank. “White dude, don’t look like he’s no man. No law or nothin’.” Freeway picked up the cue ball from the table, looked it over as though inspecting for loaded dice, dropped the cue onto the felt where the ball thumped and rolled. “Never seen this dude,” Freeway said.

  Frank took the bill from Rock Man and stuffed it in his own pocket as he squinted toward the front of the pool hall. The glare from the front window outlined the bearded man who stood by the entrance, leaning on the bar. Frank laid his stick down, nodded to Rock Man, then ambled up to the bar for a better look. Damn, he knew the white guy. Frank’s features relaxed. “Bossman,” Frank said. “You slummin’ on this side of town. If you ain’t lookin’ to see no police, then you really in the wrong spot. These streets over here be crawlin’ with „em.” He tilted his New York Yankees baseball cap lower over his eyes.

  “Well, you might be in the wrong place, too,”

  Lackey Ferguson said. “I don’t think guys on parole supposed to be shooting pool for no money.”

  “If you think that,” Frank said, “then what you doing looking for me in a gambling pool hall?”

  “I said you weren’t supposed to,” Lackey said. “That’s why I figured to find you in here. Got a minute?”

  “Parole dude say I can’t work for you,” Frank said, “and say I can’t do no gambling. But, shee-it, I got to make a living. Yeah. Yeah, I got time. You want a beer?”

  Lackey nodded and Frank motioned to Freeway. Freeway moved behind the bar, regarding the white dude with narrowed eyes as he dug into the cooler and opened two Pearl longnecks with faint hisses of air. Frank grabbed both beers in one hand, separating the necks with his index finger, and led the way to a booth in the back, moving casually, nodding left and right, saying once, “„S okay, brudda, dude’s cool,” and another time, “Ain’t no law, man,” while black men looked up from their pool games, gave Lackey the once-over, then returned to what they were doing. At the back of the room was a long, sawdust-sprinkled shuffleboard. As Lackey sat down, a skinny kid in a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt slid the puck to the opposite end where it halted overhanging the trough. A leaner.

  Frank handed one beer over the table to Lackey and sipped from his own. “You come in a Vaughn Boulevard poolhall in the afternoon and you going to get looked at funny,” Frank said. “It’s the way it is. You don’t look so good.”

  “I spent the night in a motel,” Lackey said. “I didn’t sleep much. Walls thin as pastrami. I can’t stay at home for a while.”

  “I seen in the paper. You gull friend, the paper say she help you disappear. She staying wid you?”

  “No, I took her home. She’s at work. They got no warrant for me, she wasn’t helping me escape from jail or anything. Other than get pissed off, there’s not much they can do to her.”

  “That’ll change, bossman. Lay you odds they got a little warrant before nightfall.”

  “Probably,” Lackey said. “I got some things to do I can’t get done with those two cops following me around.”

  “Way they writing you up in the paper, the best thing for you to do is hit the highway.”

  “It’s a thought,” Lackey said. “Hey, you know I didn’t do that to that woman.”

  Frank held the neck of the bottle between his middle and index fingers and swigged. “If I thought you did I don’t be sitting here wid you. We just thieves around here, bossman, ain’t no crazies. Guys that take pussy from women, they safer downtown in county jail than in no Vaughn Boulevard poolhall.”

  “As long as the cops got me to kick around they’re not going to look for anybody else,” Lackey said. “That much I can figure out for myself.” He lifted his own bottle to his lips, his gaze traveling to the far corner of the pool hall. A dusky, lanky chick in tight shorts was lining up a shot while a lightskinned black guy of about twenty-five watched her. She smiled at the guy over her shoulder. Lackey looked back to Frank Nichols. “Nancy thinks the woman’s husband had it done,” Lackey said.

  “Everybody think that if it wasn’t for the way the dude handled that woman,” Frank said. “Might be coverup, though.”

  “Look, Frank. If you wanted something done like that, kill your wife or something, where would you go?”

  “Don’t got no old lady and don’t want one,” Frank said. “But if I wanted somebody blowed away I’d do it myself. Not fuck wid no funky killer-man. Rich dude living out by Colonial Country Club think different, though. Yeah, there’s a few dudes around he could talk to.”

  “That’s kind of what I’m getting at.”

  Frank grinned. He had big white piano-key teeth with one gold inlay. “Getting at what? You don’t just walk up to one of these dudes and say, „Listen, you a hit man?’ People try that they wind up getting hit themselves.”

  “I guess you have to find somebody to arrange it with the guy,” Lackey said.

  “That the way it work,” Frank said. “Only most people go looking they wind up either getting ripped off or talking to the law pretending like they’re some killer-man. Getting somebody offed ain’t no easy proposition, bossman.”

  “That’s why I’m talking to you.”

  “I know a homeboy does things. You know these people not afraid to talk to me „cause they know I’m cool. I take somebody around that’s going to get these people busted or something, then I ain’t going to be walking around my ownself, not for long.”

  “I’m not going to get anybody busted,” Lackey said. “I just figure, well, if that Hardin guy went around looking for somebody to do his wife, then somebody you know probably heard about it.”

  “Probably did, bossman. Only they not be talking about it. That the way these people stay in business.”

  “Listen, I got a little money,” Lackey said. “Maybe the way to find out something is to act like I’m, you know, looking for somebody to do something myself.”

  “Most of these dudes going to know about you,” Frank said. “They read the Fort Worth Star-Telegram just like everybody else.” A squatty guy in a jumpsuit went by carrying a pool cue in a leather case. Frank nodded to the guy and said, “Tied up now, brudda. Little bit later.”

  “What I figure is,” Lackey said, “that if I can meet one guy then that might lead to another guy. All these people probably know each other.”

  “Yeah, they do,” Frank said. “But I got to tell you, bossman, you pretty much shooting in the dark. You got no way of knowing for sure that rich Hardin dude done anything. For all you know, whoever done that woman happened by on accident.”

  “Not in that neighborhood,” Lackey said. “Over there you got to know where you’re going. Plus, and I been thinking about this, Hardin let all of his servants off. He gave that gardener the day off while I was standing there holding his golf clubs, then when I talked to Mrs. Hardin about the bathhouse she said the maid was gone, too. In a neighborhood like that you’d have to know when she was going to be there alone.”
r />   “Makes some sense,” Frank said. “But then I ain’t no police detective or anything.”

  “If you were looking for the guy,” Lackey said, “and figure I’m right and Hardin had it done. If you were looking for the guy that did it, where would you go?”

  Frank rubbed a circle in the frost on his bottle with his thumb. Then he set the bottle aside, fished in his pocket for a crumpled pack of Pall Malls, and lit one. He blew smoke at the ceiling and scooted the ashtray closer to him on the table. He leaned forward and glanced around as he said in a near-whisper, “Well, you wouldn’t look noplace on this street here. Vaughn Boulevard they got a few gulls working around, some dudes selling twenty-five-dollar papers on the street corner, but nobody’s going to do no hit for nobody. I’d go over on East Lancaster Avenue. It’s on the borderline between white and black and they got people over there that’ll do anything, you want to pay „em enough.”

  “Any place in particular?”

  Frank dragged on his cigarette and exhaled smoke through his nostrils. “They got one spot, a white dude owns it. No place where you’ll find anything out by yoself. You better take me along.”

  “I don’t want to put you in any problem,” Lackey said.

  Frank grinned, slow and easy. “You done put me in a problem, bossman. I don’t have no job no more, remember?”

  Lackey went outside with Frank and stood on the curb, looking up and down the street at old weather-beaten houses, at a dumpy white building across the way which had a sign over the door reading “Cal’s,” and listened to muffled soul music drift from the interior of Cal’s while Frank said that they’d better ride in his old Buick. “That pickup you driving probably got a hot sheet on it by now. We going to see some patrol cars on the way. Bet on it.”

  The Buick was a ‘77 model, two-tone green, and was parked nose-on to the curb in a slant-in space. Lackey went around to the passenger side and climbed in. He closed the door with a creak of hinge and a solid clunk, then settled back, glad to have somebody drive him, the bone-weary tired feeling settling in, his eyelids suddenly heavy. The motel where he’d spent the night was on Belknap Street in Haltom City, and the air-conditioning hadn’t worked. He’d left the window open and had stared at the ceiling for the most part, listening to the rumble of passing motorcycles through the night. He’d finally shut the window when two bikers had gotten into an argument outside, but had opened it once more when the stifling heat had gotten to him. The bikers had gotten into it for real, cussing and slugging, then had made up and ridden off together like pals forever. At five in the morning, Lackey had still been awake. He’d dozed off for an hour or so, dreaming of Nancy, missing her, and had wakened at six-thirty to the sound of bottles clanking together, and finally had watched groggily through the window while the Coke man had filled the drink machine. While he’d been using the toilet a roach the size of a mouse had scuttled into the shower, so Lackey hadn’t bathed. He’d put back on the same blue T-shirt and jeans in which he’d sneaked away from the two detectives. At the moment he felt as though he’d been on a two-day march, back-pack and all, was certain that he smelled like a goat, and would have given anything to never have heard of J. Percival Hardin III— and would have given even more to have just married Nancy and spent his wedding night in a motel in Arlington near Six Flags. To hell with San Francisco. If Lackey ever got out of this, he’d never think of going to San Francisco on his honeymoon again.

  Frank got in behind the wheel and cranked the engine; James Brown wailed suddenly from the dashboard speakers. Frank turned the volume down, put the Buick in reverse and backed out into Vaughn Boulevard. Lackey sat up straighter, rubbed his eyes, and slapped his own cheeks. The car’s interior smelled of stale cigarettes and beer. As Frank applied the brakes and dropped the lever into forward gear, bottles rolled and clanked beneath the seat. “Got to clean this mothafuckah out,” Frank said, then pressed hard on the accelerator and Lackey sank back against the cushion as the Buick fishtailed away from the pool hall. A hooker wearing heavy makeup stood on the corner in front of Cal’s. She hiked her skirt and blew a kiss at Lackey as the Buick passed.

  They went north on Vaughn, past the old gas station which stood at the corner of Vaughn and J, with its rusty ancient pumps, to turn right on Rosedale Street. The Buick’s muffler had a hole in it, the engine noise more like a tractor than a car, and thick, carbon-filled exhaust fumes billowed from its tail pipe. It was cloudless and hot as the blazes; Lackey rolled down the window and let the wind whip around inside the car. Ashes blew from the end of Frank’s cigarette and swirled in the draft like confetti.

  On Rosedale Street they passed the sandy brick buildings of Texas Wesleyan University on their left and turned to the north on Miller Street. They wound a couple of miles between houses with sagging porches, finally going west on Lancaster Avenue. Lancaster was a wide boulevard with a tree-lined island in the middle and had once been a major thoroughfare. But twenty years earlier, when Lackey had been in high school, the freeways had opened and the traffic had gone to the north and west. Lancaster’s shopping centers were now deserted mostly, the clothing stores and restaurants replaced by pawn shops, tote-the-note car lots, X-rated book and video places, and an occasional topless bar. The discount furniture store where Lackey’s mother had once bought a dining room suite was no longer there; the building now sported a fifty-foot sign out front, showing an outline of a naked girl brandishing six-guns over the current name of the place, the Crystal Pistol. Two blocks on the other side of the Crystal Pistol, Frank pulled to the curb in front of a washateria and killed the engine; the Buick dieseled through a few vibrations and finally died with a backfire like a howitzer. “That joint. That joint right there,” Frank said.

  Next door to the washateria was a wooden building with swinging saloon-style doors. One wall of the building was painted black and doubled as a sign, the big white letters spelling out simply, “Herb’s.” A ten-year-old Eldorado was parked in front of the entrance. Frank got out and ambled toward the doorway, his head turning warily from side to side, watching for whatever it was that guys like Frank watched out for. Lackey climbed down and followed, and the two of them entered Herb’s. A spring creaked as the double doors closed behind them. Lackey blinked and squinted in the dimness.

  An old Wurlitzer jukebox stood in the far corner with its plastic panels lighted, and the song playing was “There Ain’t No Gettin’ Over Me,” by Ronnie Milsap. As Lackey’s eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, other shapes materialized, a stack of cardboard boxes, a long bar at the back of the club, barstools with plastic seats and cotton stuffing poking out in spots, a small stage near the jukebox, old wooden tables and old wooden chairs. The odor of must mixed with the odor of stale beer. The song ended, and while the juke’s mechanical arm searched for another record, a cooler motor hummed.

  The two guys seated at the bar were still as dummies. One man had his back turned and was facing the bar mirror. He wore a short-sleeved jumpsuit and had thick, hairy arms. His shoulders were hunched, his neck short, his hair thinning. As Lackey watched, the man lifted the longneck bottle in front of him and poured beer into a glass. Otherwise the guy didn’t move. Visible beyond him, a lighted red and yellow sign over the register advertised Budweiser Beer.

  The second guy at the bar was turned around on his stool, facing the door. He was skinny as a snake and wore sunglasses, and his nose was wrinkled as though he was squinting behind the dark lenses. He wore a short-sleeved khaki shirt open to the third button, and his elbows were stuck out behind him like vulture’s wings, resting on the bar. His chest was sunken and the color of grammar-school paste. His dark hair was long and stringy, its greasy ends touching his collar. The heel of one shoe was hooked over the rung on the barstool; his opposite ankle rested on his propped-up leg with its knee sticking out at an odd angle. He appeared frozen on the stool, like a man waiting for something to happen which never did. Frank left Lackey and skirted tables as he walked halfway to the bar. He
said to the skinny man, “I got a guy here. Need to talk.” There was a pop from the jukebox and Tina Turner moaned lustily through “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”

  The skinny guy finally moved. He took his ankle down from his knee and rose slowly, crossed the fifteen feet of space to stand beside Frank and to regard Lackey with hands on hips. The skinny guy’s nose was still wrinkled, and Lackey decided that instead of squinting, the guy was smelling something awful. Lackey sniffed the air. The skinny man said to Frank, “Who you bringing here?”

  “He’s cool,” Frank said.

  “So everybody’s cool,” the guy said. “Who you bringing here?”

  Frank’s shoulders lifted, then dropped. “A man wants to talk some business. You don’t want to talk no business we go someplace else. „S cool, brudda, we can dig it.”

  The guy raised a bony arm and pointed to a corner, away from the bar and jukebox. “Yeah, over there,” he said. “I got to turn down this fucking noise. Give a guy a headache.”

  While Lackey and Frank sat down, Skinny went over and adjusted the volume on the juke. Tina Turner’s voice grew suddenly faint. The man at the bar continued to mind his own business, watching the back mirror, drinking his beer in silence. There was no air-conditioning in the place; a tall rotating fan beside the juke blew a warm draft. A drop of sweat rolled down the side of Lackey’s neck and soaked into the collar of his T-shirt. With Tina Turner jiving faintly in the background, Skinny came over and grabbed a chair. He turned the chair around and straddled it, crossing his arms on the chairback and resting his pointed chin on his forearms. “So,” Skinny said. “What business?”

  Frank tilted his cap back and said to Lackey, “This dude name Dick. He can do some shit.” His skin in the dimness was midnight blue.

  “Depends on what you want done,” Dick said. His nose wrinkled even more than it had. “And who wants it done.”