Drop Dead, Gorgeous

by J. D. Mason

  “Thirsty?” Joel asked, leading Jordan through a small living room with worn furniture and creaking wood floors, into the kitchen with the linoleum peeling up in the corners. “I keep tea in the house. Got ice—if you thirsty.”

  “No,” Jordan said, surveying the small room with the tiny gas stove, ancient refrigerator, and small window over the sink. “I’m fine.”

  Joel pulled a glass from the cabinet. “Suit yourself,” he said dismissively, filling the glass with ice, and then pouring tea over it. He motioned for Jordan to have a seat at the small kitchen table. Joel sat across from him, and stared at Jordan like he couldn’t believe that he was finally able to see him in person. “Look just like your momma,” he said, nodding. “Olivia. How is Olivia?”

  He hadn’t come here to make small talk. This wasn’t a social visit, and he had no intention on catching up on all the years that the two of them missed together.

  “Tell me about the money, Joel,” Jordan said unemotionally. The bluntness of his question seemed to catch the old man off guard. “Where have you been getting the money from?”

  Tunson’s eyes glazed over, and all of a sudden, he wasn’t so thirsty anymore. He slid his glass off to the side. “That why you came here? ’Cause of money?”

  “Yes,” he said matter-of-factly, leaving no room for misinterpretation. Jordan had come here to ask a question, and he would leave as soon as he had the answer.

  Joel turned introspective for a moment, taking his sweet time with the answer. “The money comes,” he said simply. “That’s all I know.”

  “Who sends it?”

  He shrugged. “First I thought Gatewood was sending it. Sending it to keep me from saying anything about you being mine. After he died it kept coming. Didn’t know what to think about that.”

  Jordan wasn’t his.

  Joel looked wounded. “I can see you don’t like hearing that any more than Olivia did.”

  Jordan wouldn’t be baited. He came here for a reason. Just one. “When does it come? And how much?”

  Joel’s expression hardened. “Well, if you ain’t the one sending it, then I guess that ain’t none of your damn business. Is it?”

  This time, it was Jordan who was caught off guard. But his defenses were high, and he wasn’t about to lose sight of what he’d come here for. He wasn’t going to let this old fool drag him into some kind of personal confrontation, because he didn’t give a damn enough about Joel Tunson to even want to argue with him.

  “It’s going to stop,” he threatened. “You’ve gotten your last dime of Gatewood money.” It was a dig, and Jordan could see the sting in the old man’s eyes.

  Joel stood up slowly, disappeared into the living room, and came back a few minutes later with a faded yellow pillowcase, stood over Jordan, and dumped stacks of money in front of him. “Take your goddamned money! I never wanted it! That motha fucka took my wife, and he took my son! What the hell would I want his money for?”

  There had to have been hundreds of thousands of dollars on that table.

  “Whoever’s putting it in my bank can go to hell!” Joel growled. “Be it you! Or Olivia! Or who the hell keeps sending it!” He stalked around to the other side of the table, and glared at Jordan, nostrils flaring. “You don’t have to like it, but I’m the one who made you!” His chest heaved. “I’m the one who carried you in the house when I brought you and your momma home from the hospital because she was too tired to carry you! I’m the one who rocked you to sleep, and who played with you out there in that yard!” He pointed. Joel’s eyes glazed over with tears. “She begged me to let you both go! Said, if I loved you, I’d want better for you than I could give! Said that Gatewood could give you all the things a boy could want! Said she’d hate me for the rest of her days if I didn’t let her go!” Joel’s voice cracked. “I’m the one”—he pointed his finger hard in his chest—“who loved you, Theodore! Even more than she did!”

  Joel tossed the empty pillow case on top of the pile of money, and stormed out of the kitchen. “Getcho goddamned money and get the hell outta my house!”

  Jordan sat frozen, even as the sound of the screen door echoed through that shack of a house. He had come here to ask one question. That’s all. He’d expected to leave with one answer. Jordan stood up, stared at all that money, slipped on his Ray-Bans and left. Joel was back to watering his plot of dirt. He didn’t turn around when he heard the screen door slam as Jordan left the house. He didn’t turn around when he heard the sound of Jordan closing his car door, or starting up his engine. Jordan didn’t even see him turn around in his rearview mirror as he drove slowly down the street, leading away from that old house—the house he’d lived in after he was born.

  What a Wild-Eyed Beast You Be

  “Frank, man, what the hell is going on?” Lawrence, his old partner before he was paired up with Colette, called him. “Is it true?”

  Frank suddenly had that sick feeling in his stomach. It was late. Phone calls this time of night were never good. Frank swung his feet over to the side of the bed. “What’re you talking about?” This was it. Frank had been sitting on pins and needles pretending that he wasn’t waiting for this moment, but it was never far enough away from his thoughts. Shit, if it hadn’t already hit the fan, it was about to.

  “They arrested Colette, Frank. For murder. Says she shot some drug dealer. Is it true?”

  Frank groaned without realizing it, squeezed his eyes shut, and swallowed the bile boiling up in the back of his throat. They had her. That meant that they had him, too.

  “What the hell’s up, Frank? You know anything about this?”

  Frank opened his eyes. He hadn’t heard from Lawrence in months, maybe even a year, and now all of a sudden, the dude had his cell phone number. Frank straightened his back. He took a deep breath to help clear his mind. Lawrence didn’t call him because he was a concerned friend. He called Frank because they were trying to get him to confess.

  Desperation engulfed him and the instinct to save himself took over reason. He had to think fast. Frank had never been much of an actor, but if he was smart, he’d act his ass off now so good he’d deserve an Oscar. “They arrested Colette for murder?” he said, doing his best “Damn, how could that happen?” impression. “Nah, man. That can’t be—Nah! Not Colette. Somebody must’ve made a mistake, Lawrence. You know Colette. She’s a good cop, a damn good cop. Nah!”

  Lawrence waited too long to respond, which confirmed what Frank suspected all along. The man was sitting in an interrogation room, maybe with another cop, maybe with Colette sitting right there across the table from him. He’d cast a hook out into the pond and had hoped Frank would nibble. Frank didn’t take the bait.

  “They got a witness, Frank. A witness that saw Colette arguing with this cat named Reggie. He had his younger brother in the backseat of the car, crouched down so that Colette couldn’t see him. Said the kid was sixteen.”

  “The kid’s lying!” Frank shot back. “I worked with her for years, man. I know her. I know her better than I know myself. Colette wouldn’t do that, not unless he had it coming. Not unless he pulled a gun on her or she felt threatened.” Frank’s mind was reeling. The words were popping into his head faster than he could say them, and he couldn’t help but to marvel at just how good of a liar he really was.

  Again, Lawrence took too long to say anything. Frank held this mental picture of him sending hand signals to another cop in the room, or scribbling down notes. Maybe he had his hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver while someone else gave him direction. In any case, Frank knew that one wrong word from him would be the end of his freedom. His palms were sweating. Frank concentrated on taking long, slow, even breaths.

  “She’s saying something else, Frank,” Lawrence finally chimed in. “Saying that you and her had something to do with killing Ed and Jake.” His voice trailed off, and he paused. “She’s said that y’all shot them—”

  The sound of the world crashing down around him was deafening. Fran
k raked his hand across his head. Sweat broke out on his face. “What? Are you—is this some kind of a joke, Lawrence, man?” Frank laughed nervously. “You know that shit’s not funny, man. I don’t know what kind of game y’all playing, but it ain’t cool,” he said evenly.

  “That’s what I heard, man,” he said dismally. “I heard she said that she’s not going down for this by herself.”

  “No.” He shook his head. Lawrence was baiting him. It was the oldest cop trick in the book. He was dangling some shit in front of him to get him to slip up and say the wrong thing.

  “Colette’s in a bad spot. This ain’t looking good. Not looking good at all.”

  “No, man! No! She didn’t kill nobody! Neither of us are killers! You know I wouldn’t do no shit like that, and you know that Colette wouldn’t either!”

  “They got her, Frank. They got the kid who said he saw her do it. They got ballistic that matched the kind of gun that killed that dude to the same kind she bought for her personal use, a few years back.”

  “How do you know all this?” Frank challenged. If Lawrence wanted to play games, then Frank was going to play it too, and call his ass out on his bluff. “How you know so much, Lawrence? You sound like you’re working the case!”

  Lawrence didn’t respond right away. “Did you kill those cops, Frank?”

  Frank shook his head as if Lawrence could see him.

  “Frank?”

  “I can’t believe that you’d think I’d be capable of doing something like that,” he said quietly. “How long have you known me, Lawrence? How long were we partners? I came to the hospital when your last kid was born, man. You took me out to get drunk after my divorce was final.”

  “Did you kill those cops, Frank?” he asked again, more gravely this time.

  Frank had pieced it all together in his head. Colette was arrested for killing Reggie and she fell apart.

  “I wouldn’t shoot another cop,” Frank said quietly. “And fuck you for asking.” He hung up the phone, and then looked at the door, knowing that at any moment, they were coming for him.

  * * *

  “He’ll run,” Colette said, sitting across from Lawrence. Her eyes were swollen from crying, and bloodshot for being up all night. She was tweaking for another fix. The drugs had done this to her, turned her into what she was now. Colette could admit that.

  The detective standing over Lawrence shrugged. “He won’t get far.”

  Colette craved a cigarette, but she knew they wouldn’t give her one. “I saw that kid,” she volunteered. “I saw him, and I could’ve shot him too.” Her gaze dropped. “But, I couldn’t shoot a kid…” Her voice trailed off. “It wouldn’t have been right.”

  “You had no problem shooting your fellow officers, though,” he said matter-of-factly.

  She smirked. “They weren’t boy scouts.” She glanced at him. “They wanted in on a bad deal,” she volunteered. Her mind warned her to shut the hell up, but Colette and her mind hadn’t gotten along together in years. She was caught, and she was going to prison. But she wasn’t going by her damn self.

  “The two of you could’ve just let them in on whatever it was you had with Rodriguez,” the detective said. “You didn’t have to kill them.”

  She thought about it, and tried to recall the details of that day. “Jake pulled his gun first,” she said introspectively.

  “So you say,” he challenged her.

  “Frank saw him. We only pulled our weapons because they did.”

  “Well, they’re not here to corroborate your version of the story.”

  “Frank can.”

  “But will he?”

  She wasn’t going to do this by herself. Even if he did run, he didn’t have the money to go far enough away. That stupid-ass scheme of his to get that rich man to get him money had fallen apart. Unless, of course, he’d lied. Maybe he did have the money, and maybe he never had any intention of sharing it with her.

  “You get him here,” she said. “If I go to prison, then he’s going with me. If I get the death penalty, then Frank’s gotta have it too. It’s only fair.”

  Your Glory Was Lost That Night

  Jordan hadn’t visited his mother in months, but he’d followed the money trail back to her. The last time he visited, she didn’t know who he was. Jordan introduced himself to his mother as if he were a stranger and they sat and talked for an hour about the Stylistics concert she and her best friend, Margaret, had begged Olivia’s father, the doctor, to go to. The time after that, she remembered him, but she ignored him.

  The disdain on her face this time when she spotted him crossing the green lawn headed in her direction was a sure sign that she knew who he was today. Olivia lay stretched out on a chaise, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, a pretty orange and yellow sundress that covered her legs down to the ankles, and a white shawl draped over her shoulders. Even at seventy-three, she was a lovely woman. Looking at her now, and knowing what he knew, Jordan could see how a man like Julian would go to any lengths to have her. What had attracted her to a nobody like Joel Tunson was anybody’s guess. But nothing about her looked like it had ever belonged with him.

  “Hello, Mother,” he said, leaning down and attempting to kiss her cheek.

  Olivia shrugged away from him.

  Jordan accepted her rejection of him, but she wasn’t about to get rid of him that easy, not today. He pulled up a lawn chair and sat down next to her. She flipped through her magazine, pretending that he wasn’t there. Jordan found himself looking at his mother with a new set of eyes today. To say that his getting to finally meet Joel Tunson face-to-face hadn’t affected him would’ve been a lie. In the days since that visit, Jordan found himself starting to put certain things in perspective and to accept them.

  Once upon a time Jordan had worshipped this woman. She had been his queen and everything about her was perfect. She was beautiful, loving, kind, and considerate; graceful, delicate, and gentle. When Julian’s affair had come to light, right after his death, Jordan loathed the man for daring to misuse his mother like that, to humiliate her the way he had done with Ida Green. And when Desi Green’s book came out, implicating Olivia as the person who’d actually pulled the trigger and shot Julian that night in Ida’s living room, Jordan packed her up as quickly as he could, and tucked her away here, put her under a doctor’s care, and dared the police to try and take her away from him. He couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that she had actually been the one to shoot Julian. But that was then.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked, strictly out of courtesy.

  Of course, she didn’t respond. She would talk to him, though. Before he left this place, Olivia would finally open up and tell him what he already suspected was true—that perfection was just an illusion.

  “Joel Tunson asked about you,” he said coolly.

  She stopped turning pages.

  “Asked how you were.”

  She had taught him to protect those things that mattered most to him, to cherish family and to always show them loyalty, especially when the rest of the world was watching. He wondered where she’d learned those things from—who’d taught them to her—when she took her infant son and her beautiful self away from one man because she preferred another.

  “He doesn’t want your money, Mother,” he continued.

  Olivia abruptly cleared her throat, closed the magazine, and slipped her sunglasses onto her face.

  “Why’d you send it to him?”

  “Because I know he needed it,” she suddenly said. “He needs it now; he’s always needed it.”

  He had no love for the man. Jordan didn’t know Joel Tunson from the man on the moon, but even he couldn’t turn a blind eye to the kind of humiliation and pain he must’ve felt when another man came banging on his door, demanding that he hand over his wife. And how he must’ve suffered when his woman, his wife, begged him to let her go, and “Oh by the way, I’m taking my baby with me.”

  “Whether he needs it or not, he never wan
ted it.”

  “That’s fine,” she said curtly. “I’ll stop sending it.”

  “Why’d you really send him money?”

  She pursed her lips together and turned her face away from him, trying to make him disappear.

  “Answer me, Mother.”

  “I don’t have to, Jordan.”

  “Turn around and look at me,” he demanded in a tone he would’ve never dreamed he’d ever take with his mother.

  She did look at him. She looked at him like he’d lost his damn mind.

  “You paid him thinking that it was going to keep him from what? You thought it would help to keep him quiet? You thought that giving him that money would keep that secret locked away in that little shack he lives in? Were you protecting me? Or you?”

  “How dare you!” she said, clenching her teeth. “How dare you talk to me like that, Jordan! I am your mother!”

  “Yes, you are! You are my mother who took me away from my poor-ass daddy. You are my mother who shot my rich stepdaddy! You are my mother who won’t talk to me because I’m trying to keep you from going to prison.”

  “If you don’t like your station in life, then you’re free to take a walk,” she said bitingly.

  Whoa! Jordan reeled back in his seat a little at the sight of this lovely, old woman finally baring her claws like the feline she was.

  “Had I stayed with him, where do you think we’d be? Joel is a nice man, Jordan. He’s always been a nice man, but make no mistake—he’s never had shit and I didn’t want that for me or for you!”

  “But more for you?” The thought flicked on in his mind like a light switch.

  Of course the gracious Olivia Gatewood was offended. “Careful how you speak to me, Jordan,” she said with warning. “My power of attorney put you where you are now. It wouldn’t take much for me to have it revoked. I could just as easily hand over the helm of Gatewood Industries to your sister.”

  Jordan found himself mildly amused by the threat. “And all this time I thought I got my prowess from my dad—Julian—when I really got it from you.”