As usual, Clarence’s mother was sitting on her porch, a lap full of sewing in the folds of her day dress, her tapered and weathered fingers busy with close work.
“Good day, Mrs. Quarles.”
“Yessir, Mr. Freeman,” she answered, looking up at the sky. “I believe the Lord has done us right today.”
“How have you been, ma’am?”
She moved her gaze from the azure sky over to the courts where the players had gone back to more important things than assessing the stranger who’d put a wrinkle in their day.
“I got my boy home. And I rose for yet another day on this earth, Mr. Freeman,” she said and turned a smile on me. “So I’m on the plus side, sir.”
“Indeed you are, Mrs. Quarles,” I responded, taking my time, knowing the ritual. Since her son’s tremendous athletic skills had turned him into a commodity in high school, no coach, no recruiter, no so-called adult fan, was allowed to address or approach him without the permission of his mother. If you broke that rule, you automatically lost access. That’s how it was and it was upheld by CQ and thus by everyone else.
“That’s some kind o’ old-time vehicle you got there, Mr. Freeman,” the elderly woman said, again without looking at the subject of her sentence. “Reminds me of bad times.”
Her tone was conversational, carrying no other meaning than a simple statement. But the message was there.
“Yes, ma’am. She’s an old classic. Billy gave it to me as a present.”
“Is that right? And how is Mr. Manchester? We don’t see him as much as we would like to.” The mention of Billy improved her demeanor. A hint of a smile came to her face. “He still livin’ on top of that big ol’ palace down on the beach?”
“Yes, ma’am, he is. And although he is in good health, Mrs. Quarles, he is working very hard. In fact, I came by today to see if Clarence might be able to help Mr. Manchester with something.”
The elderly woman looked at me, studied my face in the way I was sure she had studied the eyes of every recruiter or coach or vice principal of a private school or any other man who came to her porch bearing propositions for her son.
“If it’s for Mr. Manchester, I’m sure Clarence will want to help,” she said, now looking past me toward the court, indicating I was allowed to speak to her son. I took my foot off the first step and my elbow off her banister.
“ ’Cause I know Mr. Manchester would never put my boy in a bad situation,” she said. The inflection was a mix of question and command.
“No, ma’am,” I said before turning away. “He wouldn’t.”
I slipped inside the fence of the basketball court and walked toward the far end. The players, all African Americans ranging from elementary school children to prematurely gray, yellow-eyed men, lowered their chins but raised their eyes, cutting looks at yet another white dude in search of CQ.
“Yo, Coach,” someone yelled from the deep corner of the court. “I gotta sweet jumper, too, like to light up yo’ field house like a star.”
The comment elicited a number of guffaws from the other players.
“Hey, man. I take CQ a dozen times one-on-one. He ain’t that good,” the young caller said.
More sneers from the others and then from a group on the bench: “Shut up, nigger. You can’t take CQ’s mama with that raggedy-ass game a’ yours.”
“Why don’t you come out here, nigger, an’ I sho’ you what’s raggedy-ass?”
I kept walking, though I felt a grin pulling at the side of my mouth. If a white man had used such a racial epithet on the playground, or anywhere else for that matter, words or fists would be flying. Here it was ritual. I did note that when the braggart commented that he’d beaten CQ in one-on-one games in the past, CQ himself had never turned from his concentration on his own basket. I saw him simply shake his head and shoot another free throw.
As I approached, I watched him bounce the ball twice, then position it delicately in the web of his elongated fingers. With a fluid motion like the slow whip of a willow tree limb in the wind, he shot the ball in a parabola that I knew was too high for a standard free throw. Yet the orb rose with an exaggerated backspin, pierced the hoop without touching any part of the rim, and because of the spin, struck the macadam and bounced back perfectly to CQ, who had not moved from his spot at the free-throw line.
I was three steps behind him, and he had not turned his head.
“That the way Pistol Pete Maravich did it, Mr. Freeman?” he said, still not turning, but again positioning the ball on the tips of his fingers and letting go another shot, exactly the same, with the same rotation and result.
“So I’ve heard, CQ,” I said. “He didn’t have anyone to rebound for him when he was a kid, so he developed that backspin so he wouldn’t have to chase the ball.”
CQ shook his head.
“Ol’ school, man. But you do what you have to do, right, Mr. Freeman?”
This time, he turned, cradled the ball in one hand, and reached out the other, offering it. The young man’s palm swallowed my entire hand like I’d slipped it into a manila envelope. And I do not have small hands. “Maravich was a legend,” I said, looking into CQ’s strikingly black eyes, the corneas so dark it was impossible to detect the color there. They made you stare into them a bit longer than was naturally polite.
“True,” CQ said. “But can you imagine a guy playing in the NBA today with the nickname ‘Pistol’? Man, the press would crucify that dude.”
I was still looking into the kid’s eyes, but felt myself smiling at his grasp of the world around him. “Probably true,” was all I said.
Clarence bounced the ball a couple of times and let an awkward silence sit for three beats. “Y’all didn’t come to play, did you, Mr. Freeman?” he said with a smile of his own.
“No. I came to ask a favor, CQ, for me and for Mr. Manchester.”
The statement caused the young man’s lips to seal and his eyes to avert for the first time.
“OK,” he said, stepping toward the empty benches at courtside. “Let’s talk.”
So what did I need from him? CQ asked. I just had to name it. Mr. Manchester was his friend. He’d been supportive from a distance, not like the others who wanted to be close just for the sake of prestige or spin-off money or any residual self-gain they could get from “knowing” CQ.
“He’s cool. And I met his lady once and she was cool, too. What do you think I can do to help?”
I gave CQ the facts in low tones on the courtside bench. The other players had left us alone. I explained the kidnapping of Billy’s wife and the instant speculation that her case dealing with the extradition of a Colombian drug supplier had in all probability been the motivation.
“We think they’ll keep her close, hiding her until they think they can use her in some sort of trade to keep their man from going to court here in the States.”
CQ had followed the logic. He was a college-educated twenty-one-year-old. In fact, he was smarter than a typical college kid because he knew both sides of the street: the campus and classrooms where he was learning macroeconomics, and the local corner where a more visceral form of business theory held sway.
“So you’re looking for Mrs. Manchester and because you think there are drugs involved, you figure I might have access to relevant information, being that I have such wide connections within the drug underworld?”
Crafting his synopsis, CQ had discarded all hints of ghetto cant in his voice and diction. The metamorphosis was impressive, but I wasn’t sure if he was employing it because he was pissed at me for making assumptions, or to show that he understood exactly what I was asking him to do.
“Y’all need a CI. Right?” he said, instantly switching up the lingua franca. “Somebody who know everybody in the ’hood and got an ear for the street scut.”
“Right,” I said—no use hiding my intentions.
>
He stared out over the empty half-court for a minute, spinning the ball in his huge hands, letting it slide over his skin. With each revolution, there was a hissing sound.
“Are you providing incentive, Mr. Freeman?” he finally said, cutting his eyes at me.
“I am. I’ve got two grand in my pocket and more if the information pans out. Unmarked cash. You pass out the first taste, and then I’ll personally deliver the follow-up if your source has more.”
Again, CQ spun the ball.
“That ain’t the way the cops do it.”
“I’m not the cops.”
The ball stopped. CQ looked me directly in the eye, the way he’d been taught by his mother, the way that meant he understood what was being asked of him and that he was promising to do what he said he would.
“For Mr. Manchester and his wife, yes,” he said.
He reached out a hand. I reached into my pocket first and then gave him a handshake containing a disposable cell phone and a packet of a hundred twenties.
“You make the call to me and then ditch the phone, CQ. No blowback on you. We’re not putting you in jeopardy.”
He looked past me, staring first at the ground and then raising his eyes past me in the direction of the porch where his mother still sat.
“Yeah, you are, Mr. Freeman. But it’s cool. I know the game, and I’m better at playing it than you are.”
I thanked the young man, knowing he was correct, but justifying my actions as I walked off the court.
“Yo, Coach. Yo, check it out, Coach,” yelled another player who fired a twenty-five-foot air ball that again elicited hoots from the others.
As I moved past CQ’s front porch, I cut my eyes to Mrs. Quarles, who was still in her chair, watching me with a relaxed but suspicious look on her aged and mottled face. She returned my nod, but not with full approval.
The Gran Fury was untouched under her protective eye, and I climbed in and keyed the ignition, rumbling the 420 V-8 to life, the noise helping me keep at bay the ethical argument that I knew was going to haunt my thoughts. But I had other stops to make, including one to a lawyer Billy would be loath to contact on his own, even though it was an obvious connection to the Escalante empire.
When I’d pulled away from CQ’s neighborhood under the baleful look of his mother, I knew I was running without rules. And in the world of both the good and the bad guys, someone running without rules can be dangerous.
Chapter 10
I need something to drink. My baby needs something to drink.” Whine, whine, whine, Rae thought, looking over at the hooded woman on the bed. Christ—these rich bitches, always whining. She just stared at the figure, arms still bound behind her, propped up at an angle against the wall now, letting her bloated stomach take the softness of the mattress.
“The baby needs hydration. You must know that, sir. You must know that a child needs water. Please.”
Rae remembered the time one of her mother’s boyfriends put up a sign in their trailer home above the kitchen sink in a place you could see from just about any spot in the front half of the trailer, which in reality wasn’t but one room with a stupid bar counter separating the kitchen area from the so-called living room.
The placard was shaped like a traffic sign with a red circle and a red stripe lashed across the words NO WHINING—like it was the law or something in their home. And he hadn’t been staying there more than two weeks, James or Jimmy or some damn out-of-work long-haul trucker dude. He was another of her mother’s beaus, as she called them. Putting up a damn NO WHINING sign in their home! Asshole would just point at the sign when he thought Rae or her mother was complaining too much.
He wouldn’t even turn his head away from the big-screen television set he’d lugged in, obtained no doubt from some electronics theft ring that was actually in cahoots with the drivers of tractor-trailers who hauled the stuff from Detroit or Grand Rapids up north. He’d just point his finger at the goddamn NO WHINING sign, and Rae would walk out the front door, flipping the bird at the back of the guy’s head as she left.
“Please. Please,” the woman had whispered. Rae looked down at the Big Gulp that had been under the chair since Danny brought her lunch, a Coke and a taco from the 7-Eleven. The drink was warm by now, but she picked it up and stepped to the bed. The woman turned her head, and Rae poked the straw from the Big Gulp up under the hood, poking until the woman finally got it into her mouth and started sucking, a little at first and then as if her damn life depended on it. Not so haughty now, right, Ms. Rich Bitch? Us hicks ain’t so much shit on the heel of your shoe when you need us, huh?
Finally, the woman started pulling at the straw, and Rae could see that the opening at the bottom of the hood was starting to gape. She was afraid the woman was trying to sneak a look at the floor, the room, even get a look at her, so she yanked the Big Gulp away.
Now you’re taking advantage? Now you’re trying to get over on me? She wanted to yell at the woman, but she held her tongue. Silence, Danny and the asshole Geronimo had said.
Instead, Rae retreated back to her chair and sat and stared at the hooded head across the room. Rich bitch trying to get over, like they all did. Always conniving, trying to figure out how to get their way, make their businesses more profitable, and put more in their pockets, and all the time sounding like they were doing you a favor. Yeah, she heard the big shots, talking at the bar about their big deals and methods of financing. Talking about their hidden interest rates and sweetening the pot with government subsidies they’d never be on the hook to pay back—pulling a profit they couldn’t dream of without those tax subsidies.
Oh yeah, they’d chat and whisper the internal dealings without the least concern over doing it in front of some backwoods bartender girl who’d be too stupid to understand the ways and methods of the big-business boys.
So was Danny any different? Hell, sometimes it was the car and truck and heavy equipment owners themselves who’d get him to steal the damn vehicles just so they could write it off on their insurance. Isn’t that fraud? Isn’t that a crime? Oh no. That’s the game, baby. You need to know how to cheat without getting caught. It ain’t a crime unless you get caught. The old “If a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a noise?”
Hell, Rae had been working the Grand Traverse Resort and Spa bar on a Sunday afternoon with a basketball game on the big screen and heard the NBA commentator say that a player “would never make the big time if he wasn’t willing to push the envelope, do what needs to be done. It’s not a foul unless you get caught by the ref. That’s his job. Not yours.”
The business boys drinking their lunch had looked at one another and nodded, and tapped their fists together. You tell it, brother. That’s the way it’s done, right there on national television. Cheat if you can get away with it.
Rae sat watching the hooded woman and slipped the Big Gulp back under her chair.
“Thank you,” the woman said. “You are very kind.”
Chapter 11
I didn’t have an appointment, but I knew that Johnny Milsap, Esq., attorney at law, would greet me with an extended hand when he found out I was walking around with cash money. Just like on the street: I’d be different than some detective or prosecutor calling in a favor with the promise of a break or a reduced sentence. Johnny did his business under the rubric made famous by an old-time Philadelphia counselor and politico who was caught on tape braying: “Money talks and bullshit walks.”
I’d be talking his talk.
Not that I was making moral judgments. I’d already made two other stops, one to see a bail bondsman whose reputation was spread among the users and losers in the drug trade as the man to go to when you were in jail on a possession-with-intent-to-distribute charge, and the other to see a retired DEA investigator who owed me and still kept his finger on the workings of the cocaine importation trad
e on the Miami River in Miami-Dade County.
Neither of them seemed to mind taking Billy’s money as a “consultant’s fee” for any information, rumors or otherwise, they might come up with about who might be involved with Diane’s abduction.
For a man I considered a low-life lawyer, Johnny’s offices were decidedly conservative. He was on the sixth floor of a building on Las Olas Boulevard in downtown Fort Lauderdale. There was a community college across the street. The main offices of the biggest newspaper in Broward County were catty-corner. Just across the Intracoastal Bridge on Sixth Street was the county courthouse and jail complex where Johnny did his work. The reception area for Suite 609 was done in beige and lavender, with a thick carpet and artwork on the walls that was a couple of grades above Motel 6, but prints nonetheless. There were eight chairs in the room, all of them empty.
Milsap did most of his work defending drug charges against his various clients and being kept on retainer for bail service and for questioning the proper procedures of collection of evidence and the strength of warrants. His wealthier clients did not come to his office; they had their people do it.
But his more street-level clients were sometimes unpredictable and always carried the possibility of danger if their cases didn’t turn out the way they’d hoped. The receptionist at Milsap’s office was behind a sliding, pebbled-glass window, so you felt like you were visiting the urologist or the local psychotherapist. I could tell by the thickness that it wasn’t bulletproof glass, and knowing Johnny, I wondered why not. I ignored the stupid-looking bell on the shelf and rattled the window with a knuckle instead.
The glass slid open halfway, and a receptionist with streaked blonde hair and the doe-eyed look and complexion of a seventeen-year-old met my gaze with emerald green eyes that hadn’t a clue behind them.
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