The 5:47 from Memphis was due in at Gate 14. I sat across the aisle in the waiting area for Gate 15, where the bus from Buffalo was due at 6:59. Pretty much alone in that area, I sat with my back to the Memphis gate. It was only on days like these that I wore my olive trench coat and gray fedora. The hat helped to conceal my identity, while the back collar of the coat hid a microlens developed by Bug Bateman. The lens’s Bluetooth connection to my cell phone gave me a good view of the Memphis gate and those waiting there.
In my opinion, there were two possibilities. One was a skinny forty-something white guy dressed in faded jeans, a well-worn blue T-shirt, and a Cardinals baseball cap. He was traveling with a drab green duffel and carried a brown paper bag that could have held a half-pint of whiskey, a small lunch, or a weapon. Four seats away and across the row from him sat a hale black man sporting an overabundance of coifed facial hair, almost a mask. This healthy specimen, who could have been in his thirties, wore a loud red ensemble you’d expect on the hipster interpretation of urban Santa Claus.
There were eighteen or so others. Some waiting to board the Memphis bus back down south and others who were meeting loved ones. These bystanders were white and black and brown, young and old, men and women.
The citizens waiting were, on the whole, solitary units. The few who clung together broke down on color lines. One exception to this rule was a black woman somewhere in her forties and a thirty-something white woman. They spoke to each other, crossing their arms in that familiar and yet distant way that strangers do when they decide to speak. The black woman wore a lovely blue-and-silver dress with the fur and hide of some kind of vermin draped across her shoulders. What really got me was her blue hat. The brim was large and malleable. She’d worked it so that the shade dipped down over her left eye and behind her head while the other side rose over her right eye, almost like an introduction. I love black American women in hats. It reminds me of church, even though I am an atheist, and also of the nobility that mobs of men like me are destined to slaughter.
The white woman had a bright pink carry-on suitcase with four wheels. She wore a one-piece polyester dress that was patterned with bright yellow and deep brown squares. She had a long, equine face and big eyes that wandered aimlessly, looking at nothing.
“You probably think it’s the brothah in red,” a disturbingly familiar voice said from my right.
I didn’t turn. There was no reason to.
“The guy in the baseball cap is a likely candidate,” I suggested.
“Uh-uh, main. White guy stand out in a crowd like that there. People, both black and white, remembah him.”
“So we move on the one in red?”
“Why? It ain’t him.”
“No?”
“It’s the one with the pink suitcase. The girl.”
I oriented the phone screen on the polyester white woman. She was a few inches taller than I and in better shape than you would guess at first glance.
“I see,” I said. “You know the woman she’s talking to.”
“That’s it, McGill. Alberta Jackson. She were married to my half brother—Israel.”
“If she’s family, what’s she doing here?”
“Her and Izzy didn’t break up too well.”
The pathos inside those last words caused me to turn and regard my pickup partner. Ernie Eckles looked exactly the same as he did when we first met. He was the kind of farmer who went to the country store once a year and bought three pairs of pants and shirts of the same cut and color.
“What you plan to do about her?” I asked the killer.
“Nuthin’. I mean, I might wanna kill her, but she’s my two favorite nephews’ mother. And she went through hell with Israel.”
“Door’s opening,” I said. “Bus must be here.”
Ernie’s ex-half-sister-in-law moved quickly to get behind her white friend as Polyester Girl rolled her pink bag to the far left side of the door. It was a good move, though not good enough to fool an old pro like Ernie. And yet something about the way she positioned herself made me believe that she had a better plan.
Ernie had the same idea.
“You right,” he told me. “Prob’ly baseball cap.”
“Could be both,” I opined. “You know, in twenty-first-century New York, white and black have learned to work together.”
“Maybe so.”
“If I were to go against you again, I’d prefer three lines of fire.”
“That’d do it.”
“You agree?” I asked.
“Yep. Redbeard and Red Cap, too.”
The men he spoke of positioned themselves at equidistant positions, forming a semicircle around the door. The black man had his left hand in a red pocket. The white guy held the paper bag close to his chest.
“Somebody paid a fuck of a lot of money to see me dead,” Ernie muttered.
“Your friend Catfish made a threat that goes all the way down to the first nerve of America.”
“We bettah move on before the bus empty out. They might start lookin’ round when I don’t show.”
We walked away from the waiting area just as the first passenger emerged from the gate door. The killing crew wasn’t looking anywhere but there.
There’s a breakfast place on Thirty-Third Street near Eighth Avenue. It doesn’t have a name, but the cook is French and the omelets are too.
“Damn,” Ernie said. “This some good shit here.”
I sipped my coffee and took a bite of sage-accented sausage.
“I plan to retire next year,” he said. “At least I will if I live that long.”
“You’re not even fifty, are you?”
“This ain’t a old man’s trade.”
“Now you tell me.”
Then for a while we ate in silence.
After some minutes, he said, “I got Alberta’s address around somewhere.”
“I thought you said you were going to leave her alone.”
“I said I’m not gonna kill her. But she might know somethin’ give us a little edge.”
“I already got a good idea,” I said.
“I needs facts, not ideas.”
Later that morning found us at the corner of Second Avenue, one block up from Ninety-First.
“Why don’t we just go up and ring the bell?” I asked.
“Because it’s Wednesday,” Ernie said with certainty.
“Wednesday?”
“Alberta always goes to confession on Wednesday mornings. She was gonna slaughter me, so then, after maybe an hour of lookin’, she had to go explain why her information about me bein’ on that bus was wrong. They’ll scare her a little bit, and then you better believe she’s gonna run for the safety of the church. I figure she’ll be back here in somewhere around twenty minutes or so.”
I didn’t argue, because we were out of my depth. Maybe Ernie was right about Alberta. Even if he wasn’t, we were standing less than a block away from her apartment building. Sooner or later, something was bound to happen.
“How did you know that they’d be waiting for you?” I asked.
“The ticket taker at the bus depot in Clarksdale is Mattine Hogarth, cousin to Myrtle Jennings. Myrtle is from around where I come from, and she’s friends with Alberta. When I bought my bus ticket, Mattine got all nervous, like she didn’t know whether to smile or cry, know what I mean?
“I figured somethin’ was up. Anyway, half the time I abandon my ticket and take a detour.”
“Everybody’s gotta change sometime,” I said. Ernie smirked and nodded.
“You say Catfish is all right?” the killer asked.
“As well as a man in his nineties can be after gettin’ shot in the shoulder.”
“An’ you shot the guy got him?”
“My son did,” I said. “I wasn’t there. But the shooter is gonna live too. I saw him just after the shootout.”
“Look,” Ernie said, gesturing with his chin.
Miss Jackson’s floppy blue hat jounced on the w
ay up to the front door of a brick apartment building. She ministered over the lock and then went in.
Ernie stared after her for a while, then said, “Let’s go.”
I picked the front door lock just to show Ernie I could.
Alberta lived on the ninth floor of the well-appointed residence. Ernie and I took the stairs and then waited behind the door that opened onto her floor. Somewhat surprising to me, Ernie took out a cell phone and entered a number.
“Myrtle?” he said after the span of three or four rings. “Yeah, baby, it’s me. Yeah, yeah. I’m up here in New York, and I thought I might get together with Bert. You know there’s been too much bad blood, and I wanna see if she’ll accept my apologies. She still live at that place on Second Avenue between Ninety-One and Ninety-Two, right?…Uh-uh, no, no, honey, you don’t have to call her. I’m just gonna drop by.… Yeah, like family.”
He disconnected the call, pushed open the door to the hallway, and led the way till we were standing on either side of number 914. We’d been waiting four minutes when the lovely rose-brown woman came out toting a diminutive brown suitcase in each hand. I was on the side leading toward the small elevator, so Alberta turned toward me. She’d changed into sleek brown slacks and a billowy, silken blue T with yellow flowers of some kind stenciled here and there.
We stood eye to eye. I smiled and gave a small nod. She did an about-face, coming nose to Adam’s apple with the Mississippi Assassin.
“Hey, Bert,” he said, smiling broadly.
“Oh no,” was her reply.
“Can we come in?”
I liked everything about Alberta Jackson. Her styled short hair, her bright skin that was an equal mixture of copper and gold, the comfortable furniture in her living room, and the framed photographs of her and her sons, when they were all ten years younger, hanging on the wall. I liked everything about Alberta Jackson, and so her fear and consternation ate at me.
She sat at the edge of a stuffed chair upholstered in reds and violet. I was perched on a matching piece two yards away. Ernie remained standing, his back against a yellow wall.
“You, you want me to g-get you sumpin’ to drink, drink, Ern?”
“I’m not here to hurt you, girl,” he replied.
I’m sure that Ernie’s promise was meant to put her at ease, but instead it seemed to harden her resolve. Her eyes tightened and her lips wanted to curl into a sneer.
“You not?” she spat. “You don’t think it hurt a woman to be burned outta her home? You don’t think it hurt to be driven outta town an’ tore away from her chirren?”
Ernie’s usually emotionless face was suddenly etched with feeling.
“You know I didn’t have to do with any’a that,” he said.
“Maybe not by hand, but it’s cause’a you that nobody would help me. It’s cause’a you that my sons are growin’ up without a mother’s love.”
“You stepped out on Israel, baby.”
“An’ how many times you think that no-good half brother’a yours done done me dirt in the street?”
That accusation actually made Ernie look away.
I sympathized with the woman. Judging by his expression, Ernie did too.
There was anger, remorse, and even self-recrimination dancing between the killer’s eyes and lips, cheeks and brow.
“I’ll make you a deal,” he said after a few scowls. “You tell me everything about how you got to that bus station this morning, and I will get you back home with Karnak and Troy.”
Their eyes met with such intensity that I began to feel intangible.
Ernie’s aspect turned stoic again. He had offered a solution and so was no longer compelled to feel guilt. Alberta, on the other hand, needed to climb over the jagged terrain of pain, fear, and distrust to get to a place where she could even consider entertaining an armistice. Her inner rage was so hot that she shook. I’m pretty sure that she wanted to scream.
It took a few minutes for all that to pass.
“A man come to me,” she began. “He the one want you dead.”
“What man?” I asked, in an attempt to remain solid.
“White man.”
“There’s a whole lotta white men in New York,” I countered.
“He’idn’t gimme no name. Forty-sumpin’, prob’ly. Brown hair and his left arm was in a sling.”
“What this one-armed white man say?” Ernie asked.
“He wanted to know how to find you if you come to New York. I told him that you was like a ghost, that you never rested your head on the same pillah twice. I told him that that was for the good, ’cause he’d be bettah not findin’ you. I said that lookin’ for you was like lookin’ for Spanish flu.”
“An’ what he say?”
“He was all smug. Said he had fifteen thousand dollars for the man or woman could put a finger on you—more if that man or woman helped set you up.”
“Why’d he even think I’d be comin’ up here?” Ernie asked.
Not minding the question, I feared the answer.
“He said that a man told him that you hired a detective or sumpin’.”
Ernie looked at me.
I shrugged.
“And you asked Mattine to tell Myrtle when I got on that bus,” Ernie said to his favorite nephews’ mother.
Alberta didn’t answer that question.
“You don’t have to worry ’bout your friends,” he said. “Me bein’ sloppy ain’t their problem.”
That softened Bert a bit.
“I get how the pieces fit,” Ernie continued. “But the thing I don’t understand is how the white man in the sling knew to come to you in the first place.”
“Montgomery.”
“Monty Morrison? That boy done lost his mind?”
“He deep into the opioids. All they have to do is give him some pocket change, an’ he’d send his own mama to hell.”
“How’d they know to go to this Monty?” I asked, still trying to maintain substance in that hyperreality.
“That niggah brag about anything,” she told me. “You bettah believe he done said to a dozen peoples that he knew the Mississippi Assassin.”
“So you went down to the bus station with that white woman and her friends to point me out and collect your blood money,” Ernie stated. It wasn’t actually an accusation, but considering the source—it was serious speculation.
A tremor ran along Alberta’s neck, but she didn’t fold.
“They gimme the money up front and promised ten more if you died.”
“How about the bus station’s video cameras?” I asked. Professional curiosity.
“They said somebody was gonna turn ’em off.”
“What if I didn’t die?” Ernie asked.
Alberta looked at her ex-half-brother-in-law with an eye as cold and clear as the polar sun.
“If they killed you,” she said, “I could go home and take Israel to court ovah my sons. If they only wounded you, I figured I’d have enough time and money to take Troy and Karnak outta Mississippi. Now that I had the money for that.”
Ernie was looking down at the floor. I believed that I knew what he was feeling, that all these years he’d thought he was doing one thing, but really all he was was wrong.
He raised his head to regard Alberta. She swayed back an inch or two.
After a long moment, he said, “Keep them bags packed, Bert. After I clear this mess up, I will bring you home.”
On the street in front of Alberta’s apartment building, Ernie told me that he had a few things to take care of. We made plans for a later rendezvous and went our separate ways.
I hadn’t been alone in my office in quite a while. I actually missed Mardi and naturally worried about Twill. But if life has taught me anything, it’s that you had to survive desertions, abandonments, and loss—no matter the cause.
I took a burner phone from my pencil drawer and fired it up.
There was one message.
“This is Justine Sternman,” her recorded vo
ice declared. “The contents of my grandmother’s letter came as no surprise. Nine years ago I took a DNA test with some friends at college. It was an anonymous test, as I am a Sternman and our bloodline is considered more valuable than any other possession. You must know what I discovered in that report. I took three other blind tests, and they all turned out more or less the same.…”
Something about her tone made me trust that she was telling the truth. Trust is the most dangerous emotion for a man in my business.
“…that said, I would very much like to meet with you, him, my grandfather. I know you said that I could choose the place, but if my father is suspicious, I cannot presume that he won’t be monitoring me. So I ask that you send an email addressed to Lolo at [email protected], giving the place and time of your choosing. And tell my grandfather that I look forward to meeting him.”
I figured that the email address was connected to one of her computer-nerd friends. It was probably safe, but I forwarded the information and address to my own private nerd—Bug Bateman. He’d send the message and monitor its progress. The time and place were to be Bellingham’s English Eaterie at 7:30 that evening.
In the late afternoon, at an upscale hamburger stand in the basement of Grand Central Station, Ernie and I approached a man sitting at a small round table in a corner. Hush’s back was against the wall. In front of him was a milkshake and a triple-decker cheeseburger in a red plastic basket.
Hush stood and extended a hand. Ernie accepted the offer. They held each other’s eye for two seconds, maybe a little less. Then we all sat.
To anyone around, we looked like three men who probably worked together, stopping for a bite at the end of a long day. That observation would be mostly true, the only difference being that our work hadn’t yet begun.
“Nice to meet ya,” Ernie said. “I been hearin’ ’bout you for years.”
“Me too,” Hush replied. “I even caught a glimpse of you one time.”
“Oh? Where was that?”
“In Vegas eight years ago. You were coming out of Tony Violet’s office at that casino he ran.”
Trouble Is What I Do Page 9