by John L. Monk
“You see that?” he said, indicating Marty with a nod. “That’s what I call the homeless limp.”
“Come again?”
“You know. You see them skinny dudes out there limping back and forth with signs on saying they homeless and bless you Jesus? They always limping, every one—like that’s why they can’t get to work. Cracks me up every time. But you know why I laugh most?”
“No, why?”
“One time, I saw a man walking to the subway with nice clothes and a tie and a smart haircut. You know what, though?”
“What?”
“He ain’t have no arms,” Elvin said. “He had a short sleeve shirt, button-down, and them little sleeves ain’t have nothing coming out. I figure he must have someone do the buttons for him. He had a badge on to let him in his building, strung around his neck. All I’m thinking is, what the fuck they have him do at that job?” He shook his head. “Before that day, I ever see a motherfucker with no arms and a sign saying he homeless I don’t just give him money, I lend him my girlfriend.”
Elvin laughed at his own joke, watching me.
I wasn’t there to be entertained, but I laughed a little. He was one of those guys with natural charisma.
“So why’s my name worth four hundred dollars?” he said.
“Not just your name,” I said. “I was hoping to pay you for some information.”
“What kind of information?”
“Yesterday, about eleven o’clock, you made a call to a friend of mine. I’m wondering, why did you call Debbie?”
Something in his manner changed. As my words registered, he went from guardedly friendly to more guarded and less friendly.
“That’s what you wanna know, huh?” he said, pursing his lips. “How do you know Debbie? That’s what I wanna know.”
“She’s a friend of a friend.”
“Who’s the friend?”
“Anna,” I said, and realized for the first time I didn’t know the last name of the mother of my son.
Elvin shook his head. “Don’t know no Anna. But, yeah, I called Debbie. Someone was looking for her. She used to work here, back in the day. I remember all them swanky places trying to steal her, but she stuck through the hard times and helped me stay open. I owe a lot to that girl. So what the fuck you want with her?”
And just like that it was as if I’d never seen him smile or laugh. Also, during his story, he’d gotten closer to me than I ever should have allowed.
“Nothing anymore,” I said. “Someone killed her.”
Before I could react, Elvin slammed me against the wall, pinning me in a two-fisted choke. I tried standing on my tiptoes to relieve the pressure on my neck, but that just made it easier for him to lift me higher up the wall.
“What you say?” he shouted. “You do something to her?”
I gurgled at him, trying to breathe.
He shook me like a dog shakes a rabbit and yelled, “Answer me!”
“I’m her friend, dammit, let go!”
With one hand still around my neck, Elvin leaned over, slammed the door and locked it, then turned back to me.
“All right, start talking, and don’t leave nothing out.”
In my leprechaun voice, I told him how I went to see her and found the door to her apartment open—a necessary lie, because I didn’t think he’d appreciate how I’d bumped my way in. I lied again and said I’d shouted to see if she was there and almost called the police, but something told me to check the bedroom, and when I did, I found her dead.
“What happened?” he said. “Someone stab her? They shoot her? What?”
I started to feel dizzy.
“Nobody stabbed her or anything like that. I found a purple bag with drugs in it next to her hand. Can you please let me breathe now?”
Elvin slackened his grip, and my vision swirled with colorful tracers.
“What you say your name was? Boy?”
“Bo,” I said.
“You better not be fucking with me, Boy. You say this bag was purple?”
“Like a sandwich bag, only purple. I don’t even know where you buy something like that.”
Elvin let go and said, “Hold on.” Then he reached over to the desk and picked up a phone.
If he called the cops, I was toast. I still had Marco’s gun on me and a bunch of bump keys. He dialed a number and waited, watching me the whole time. Eventually, he hung up.
“She didn’t answer,” he said, staring at me like it was my fault.
“There’s more to the story.”
“If this other girl’s your friend,” he said, “what you go see Debbie for?”
“I thought Anna might be there.”
I told her how Debbie helped me find Anna the first time and glossed over how I’d tased Manny and Fruit. Then I told him how Fruit had taken Anna and Jimmy. I left out how he might be my son.
Elvin nodded his head, and I saw something odd in his expression: recognition.
“Yeah, I heard about you,” he said. “They say you got the drop on Fruit and his muscle, took one of his ladies off him. That was Anna?”
“Yeah.”
He smirked. “Surprised you ain’t dead yet. Speaking of which, after you found Debbie, you call the police?”
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because the police will be nice to Fruit when they find him. I was willing to be nice before.” I shook my head. “Not now.”
“Well,” Elvin said, “the police gonna come in here and ask me why I called her apartment.”
“Tell them what you want—after you tell me who asked you to call her.”
Elvin looked at me a long time. Briefly, I wondered if he was trying to psych me out, then I saw he wasn’t really looking at me so much as I was in his line of sight.
Moments later, as if coming to a conclusion, he took a steadying breath and said, “Fella came by two days ago looking for her. Said if I called her it be easy money. Figured he wanted her to come be one of Fruit’s hos, then Debbie tell him fuck off like she always do.”
He paused a moment, like he was trying to find the right words.
“What?” I said.
“It didn’t seem right when I said she not there. He just smiled, like that’s the answer he wanted, then gave me fifty bucks and left.”
“Was it Fruit?” I said. “Manny?”
Elvin shook his head and said, “No, it was Lionel. Manny’s cousin.”
“So where can I find Lionel?”
I noticed I still had the money out and went to put it away. Elvin’s hand closed over mine, gently. For some reason, I felt disappointed at that.
He leaned back and said, “Marty, I know you’re there.”
I looked to the door, but a sound came from behind me where the room bent to the right. And there was Marty, standing up from his hiding spot where he’d heard everything.
“First, where’s my money?” he said, grinning and rubbing his hands together.
Chapter 27
Elvin brokered a deal with Marty to help find Manny’s cousin Lionel. Two hundred now, and Elvin would give him the other two hundred tomorrow—so long as he kept his mouth shut and didn’t go blabbing to anyone what he’d heard. Marty agreed.
Marty, however, was incapable of keeping his mouth shut.
“Where’s your car, man?” he said, barely two seconds after we’d left the building.
“Right over there.”
“What is that, a Volvo?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Why you drive a Volvo? Oh, that’s right, you white.”
He kept asking questions and I kept answering—for a while, then I stopped. But all it did was let him get in more questions per minute:
Where you from?
You see the titties on that one?
Can you stop around that corner for a second?
He wouldn’t shut up, and I had to constantly prompt him with, “Do I turn here?” and “Should I keep going straight?”
&nbs
p; Sometimes he’d just nod and I couldn’t tell if he was really listening. Then he confirmed my worst fears when he said, “Why you come this way for?”
I grit my teeth, turned around, and fifteen minutes later we were bouncing over potholes in Washington Highlands, cruising past long rows of brick boxes with doors and windows. There were a lot of young black men sitting on street corners staring hard at me and everyone else who drove past. I didn’t see any cops, so I blew through the stop signs.
“Ma’fucker, you look worried,” Marty said, giggling.
“Where’s this house at?”
Still giggling, not quite ready to let me off the hook, he said, “Next left. You’ll love it—it’s the big white building. Lionel live up on the third floor. But first, can you drop me off?”
“Where would you like?” I said.
“Only one more block, over at the bus stop?”
“Sure, in a minute,” I said, then turned and parked in front of a brick apartment complex, painted white, with windows spaced in a five-floor grid.
I said, “Is this the place?”
“Yeah, he live up on the third floor. See that one there with the sheet over the window?”
Three of the windows had sheets for curtains.
“That one?” I said, pointing at the one I thought he meant.
“Uh huh. You know what? Lionel got a snake in an aquarium. Real big one, too. I watched him feed it one time. A rat. Fucked me up for life.”
I nodded.
“You gonna take me to the bus stop?” he said. “You promised.”
I turned around, back to the main road, and then went left. Marty’s one block turned into four, but I didn’t care because it put off what I had to do. Strangely, I felt nervous. More nervous than in the Bahamas, and I’d been mugged there.
Marty had me drop him in front of a liquor store that just happened to have a bus stop in front of it.
“Thanks, Bo, you all right,” he said, then got out and walked toward the store. His foot must have gotten better because he wasn’t limping anymore.
I went back to the white apartment building and parked out front. The one thing I had going for me was Manny’s cousin had never seen me before. If he and Lionel were both in there, things would escalate fast, but that’s what crossing your fingers is for.
Before going in, I tucked the gun in my belt like they do in the movies, with the barrel pointed safely toward my nether regions. Then I locked the car and went to the entrance. It had one of those call box systems to get inside. I hit a random number and waited. Then another and waited again. On the next one, a lady’s voice said through a tiny speaker, “Who is this?”
“My number won’t work,” I said, tugging at her heartstrings.
Given some of the people I’d seen on those corners, I couldn’t imagine anyone letting me in. Which shows I had way too much faith in people’s good sense, because the door started buzzing and I went inside.
A military green elevator beckoned from the end of the hall, but I took the stairs. On the way up, I stepped over cups and bottles and even a pizza crust crawling with ants.
Lionel’s door should have been the first one on the left. I stood in front of it, adjusted the gun, then got that nervous feeling again. If I’d had a gun in the Bahamas when Eddie and his brother jumped me, what would have happened? Or what about later, when I went to their neighborhood to get my stuff? I like to think I wouldn’t have done anything regrettable, but in way, I already had.
If I could get inside Lionel’s apartment, I wouldn’t need the gun. Maybe I could find Fruit the same way I’d found Elvin? If I knocked and Lionel wasn’t home, I’d go in and look around.
Then, out of nowhere, I thought about Debbie lying in her chilly bedroom with the covers pulled up and realized: I wanted him to be home.
I knocked on the door and waited, watching the peephole. After a bit, I knocked louder and waited some more. When I did it again, a door opened down the hall and a young black woman peeked out.
“Hi,” she said in a light, pleasant voice.
“Hi,” I said.
“You looking for Lionel?”
“Yeah, have you seen him?”
“He’ll be back in a little. He’s off doing something. I’m Mona.”
“I’m Bo.”
“You wanna come in and wait for him?”
She was pretty enough to be distracting. About twenty-years old, wearing short-shorts and a tight yellow tank top. I glanced at the door and back at her and before I knew it I was heading her way—with everything at stake and the clock ticking on a meeting with a pimp who would almost certainly try to kill me, money or no money.
“Sure, love to,” I said, smiling like a fool.
She smiled back. What a great smile. Nice apartment, too. Colorful, with a sunflower yellow kitchen, a green accent wall in the living room, and light blue couches. The rug had a checkered pattern to it that gave the illusion of tiles.
“So how do you know Lionel?” Mona said. “Or should I be asking?”
Briefly, I considered how best to answer that.
Mona laughed.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” she said, like it was no big deal. “You want a soda?”
“Sure, thanks. And I don’t mind telling you. Lionel has something of mine.”
She came back with my drink in a cup, with ice.
“Thanks,” I said, and took a sip.
“Did he steal it?”
“If he didn’t, he knows who did.”
Mona shook her head. “He’s always doing stuff like that. We used to see each other. I dumped him. Anyway. You, uh … sure you wanna be looking for Lionel?”
She looked me over, not unkindly, but I knew what she was thinking. Same thing homeless Marty must have been thinking: what’s this white fish doing out of his bowl?
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure. Do you know one of his friends, goes by the name Fruit?”
Mona scratched her cheek thoughtfully, then shook her head. “Sounds like a funny name. I’m sorry, Bo.”
I shrugged and took a sip.
“But hey!” she said brightly. “You wanna go over and look for it?”
For a second, I didn’t know what she was talking about. Look for what?
Oh.
“Uh, yeah, sure. Are you saying you have a key?”
“He doesn’t know I have it—I made a copy when we were dating so I could find out what he was up to. Turns out he was…” She shook her head. “Never mind. Anyway, if you want to we better hurry before he gets back. Unless you’re scared. Not that I blame you.”
I wasn’t scared, exactly, just awed. For once, crossing my fingers had actually worked.
“You talked me into it,” I said.
Lionel’s apartment departed from Mona’s colorful unit in a number of ways. The living room had a ratty futon, dirty carpeting, and there were no pictures on the walls. Where Mona’s kitchen had pots and pans and a few appliances, Lionel’s had pizza boxes stacked on the sink and paper plates and beer cans everywhere else.
“Lionel’s always been messy,” Mona said, giggling.
I didn’t see directions to Fruit’s secret lair anywhere in the kitchen or living room, so I moved on to bedroom. The change couldn’t have been more pronounced. Where the living room and kitchen drew from the shut-in school of interior design, his bedroom opened like an Eagles song, with mirrors on the ceiling, and ended in the middle of the old SNL skit, “The Lady’s Man,” with leopard-spotted silk sheets on a mahogany-framed waterbed with tigers and rhinos carved into the posts.
“I sort of like the waterbed,” she said. “A little, but these sheets gotta go.”
“They are a bit much, aren’t they?”
I was supposed to be looking for something, so I made a show of searching through the closet. Then Mona said, “Oh, look, he’s got a safe.”
“Yeah?” I said, not wanting anything to do with it. I needed to find a house phone to che
ck his calls.
Mona pulled out a small fire safe numbered 0-9 and handed it to me. She seemed intrigued by it.
Because there were no heavy weights to bench-press in front of her, I said, “Want to see a trick?”
“Yes!”
I got on my knees, raised the box to eye level, and dropped it, turning the little handle at the same time. It didn’t open, but I didn’t expect it to on the first try. I did it again, adding more force, and it popped right open. That’s because there was a lever inside locking the bolt in place, held there by gravity alone. Almost any cheap safe you can tuck under your arm can be opened this way.
“Oh wow,” Mona said, clapping excitedly. “How did you do that?”
Quickly, I told her how and tried not to flush at the awed expression on her face.
The only thing we found inside was his birth certificate, a few pictures, and some gold necklaces.
“None of this is what I’m looking for,” I said. “How long did you say until Lionel gets back?”
Mona frowned and said, “Yeah, we probably need to go.”
I shut the safe and put it back.
On the way out I pointed to the one room we hadn’t checked and said, “What’s in there?”
Mona wrinkled her nose. “That’s where he keeps Titan, his snake. He let me hold it one time. I almost dropped it and he got so mad.”
I’d forgotten Marty said Lionel had a snake. I thought we were leaving, but Mona opened the door and went in.
“Look at that,” she said, pointing.
At first I didn’t know what I was looking at. In the far corner of the room, a big, glassed-off case spanned a corner, forming a triangular terrarium. Inside, rocks, branches and small plants created a miniature jungle paradise. There was a little pool of water fed by a mini-waterfall. Then I saw the snake, curled up under a heat lamp. About as thick as my arm. Probably six feet long, extended. Some kind of boa.
“Wow,” I said, and meant it. Who would have thought the creator of the love nest in the other room could have done all this?
Mona made a sound of disgust. “Lionel cares more about that snake than anything.”
She pointed to the other wall at a framed photo of a smart-looking young man in a military uniform.
“Lionel’s brother, Terry,” she said. “Terry gave him that snake before he got killed in Iraq. I think that’s why he makes such a big deal about it.”