“I don’t know,” Linda said reluctantly. “You know how C. W. feels about me getting mixed up in police business. We’re out of that racket, Callahan. You, too. Why do you want to mess in something like that?”
“I don’t want to,” I said. “But the chief of police is already floating rumors that Bucky was involved in some robbery crew, and that’s how he got shot. It’s bullshit. And in the meantime, the guy who put two bullets in Bucky’s head is wandering around free. You and C. W. were cops, Linda. C. W. still works security sometimes, doesn’t he?”
“Every once in a while,” Linda said.
“So it could have been your husband who got shot. It could have been you. It could have been me.”
“All right,” she said, sighing. “Give me whatever information you’ve got. I’ll see what I can do. But just don’t go expecting miracles. And don’t mention any of this to C. W.”
“My lips are sealed,” I said. “See you at the Sundown at one?”
“Make it twelve-thirty,” Linda said. “If you get there before I do, order me a frozen margarita. No salt.”
It took every ounce of self-control I possessed to order an iced tea while Linda sipped her pale yellow margarita. I needed to keep my wits about me.
“Well?” I said expectantly.
She reached down into her purse and brought out a sheaf of computer printouts.
“Deecie Styles. Styles with a ‘y,’” she said. “Her real name is DeSaundra Charmaine. D. C., get it? Last address was Memorial Oaks Apartments, unit six-J. I got the phone number for you. It’s listed to a Monique Bell. That must be the aunt you said she lived with. By the way, that baby of hers? Faheem? He’s sick, Callahan. He’s got sickle cell anemia.”
“How’d you find that out?” I asked.
“Easy. I figured if she had a baby, she probably had it at Grady, which means she’s in the Grady system. One of the Secure Services guys works part-time in medical records. He looked it up for me. And no, I’m not telling you his name. I’m not doing this again, Garrity. Sure enough, Faheem Styles turned one year old back in October. The mama’s supposed to be taking him for his clinic appointments, but the nurse I spoke to said she’s missed his last two appointments, including today’s.”
He was so little, I mused.
“How sick is he?” I asked. “Is it like diabetes, where you die if you don’t get your insulin?”
“Not as bad as diabetes,” Linda said. “See, with sickle cell, the blood cell is sickle-shaped, and they sort of get caught in the joints, and then you get swelling and lots of pain. It’s kind of like when your kitchen drain gets clogged with grease. It can’t move anywhere. And you get a lot of pain. So when somebody with sickle cell is in a crisis, that’s bad. They give ‘em pain medication and a lot of fluids. I got a niece, she’s fifteen, with sickle cell. The kid spends a lot of time in the hospital, but then other times, it’s like she’s perfectly normal. If this baby, Faheem, is in a flare-up, and he doesn’t have his steroids, he could be really sick, poor little guy.”
“He was screaming his head off the night Bucky was shot,” I said. “I thought it was because he was so scared.”
“Scared and sick both, probably,” Linda said.
“So,” I said, taking a tortilla chip and dipping it in some salsa, “she’s got to get him to a doctor sooner or later—right? That’s good.”
“She can’t run too far with a sick baby,” Linda agreed. “Unless she leaves him with the aunt or another relative.”
I pushed the basket of chips toward Linda; she pushed it back toward me.
“What else have you got?”
“Got her DOB and SSI,” Linda said. “That could help us track her if she gets another job or applies for any kind of government benefits.”
“How did you get that?” I asked. “Did Washington give it to you?”
“I decided against calling him,” Linda said. “C. W.’s still kind of sensitive about the fact that we dated. Anyway, I don’t need Washington.”
She wiggled her fingertips at me. “It’s all online. Deecie was working for a liquor store, right? That means she had to have a work permit from the State Alcohol Control Board. And their database is online. While I was at it, I ran a couple other checks. But I didn’t come up with anything else. Deecie doesn’t have any credit cards, doesn’t own any property, doesn’t have a car.”
“She drives one though,” I said, leaning forward. “Or she did. An old white Buick LeSabre. It was parked in front of the liquor store the night of the shooting. But it was gone last night.”
“Police impound lot,” Linda said.
“No car. Sick kid, no job, no credit cards. I wonder where she went,” I said.
Linda shook her head and laughed.
“What?”
“You just described a way of life for most poor young black girls living in the inner city,” Linda said. “Come on, Garrity, you wanna find this little girl, you better lose that middle-class white mentality of yours.”
The waitress brought our food just then. Linda had the crab quesadilla; I had what I always have, Eddie’s Pork, which is a roast pork tenderloin served with sides of mashed potatoes and hot pepper-spiced collard greens. We ate and drank and gossiped until our plates were empty and our bellies hurt from laughing about old times.
“This was fun,” Linda said, scooting her chair back from the table.
“Yeah, we need to get together more often,” I agreed. “Seems like I hardly ever see you and C. W. anymore.”
“Well, what’s new with you and Mac?” Linda asked. “Any more talk of marriage?”
“No,” I said. “That subject is currently closed.”
“Oh,” she said. “It’s like that, is it?”
“Like that.”
17
Baby and Sister were overjoyed to see me standing at the door to their neat little apartment. “Lookee here, Sister,” Baby called over her shoulder. “Callahan come all the way over here to visit.”
“I’ve come to give you a job, if you think you’re up to it,” I said, allowing myself to be seated in one of three flowered armchairs in the minuscule living room.
“Cleaning or detecting?” Sister asked.
“Detecting,” I said.
Baby clapped her hands gleefully. “All right,” she said. “What you need us to do?”
I filled them in on my need to talk to Deecie Styles. Told them about her little boy and that she was the only witness to Bucky’s shooting. I also explained that Deecie lived with her aunt, a woman named Monique Bell, how the little boy was sick, and Deecie was on the run from the law.
The girls nodded understandingly as I outlined their mission. Old they might be, but the two of them had an uncanny ability to worm information out of people. They loved intrigue, loved to play-act. The black Gish sisters, Edna and I called them.
“What you think, Baby?” Sister had asked, soliciting her sister’s opinion on the right approach to a fact-finding mission.
Baby gave it some thought. “Church visitation committee? I got me a new hat and pocketbook, and we got some tracts we could hand out.”
Sister pursed her lips, thought about it, shook her head no.
“You right,” Baby said. “How ‘bout Publishers’ Sweepstakes Prize Patrol? We got Callahan’s van. Prize Patrol come in a van. I seen it on the TV.”
“Where we gonna get a big check from?” Sister asked. “Prize Patrol got flowers and champagne and a big ol’ check. Everybody knows that.”
“I got it,” Baby said, snapping her fingers. “Callahan said this girl got a sick baby. Nursing sisters, they take care of sick babies, ain’t that right?”
I parked the van across the street from the Memorial Oaks Apartments, under a bare-branched tree that provided the only shade on the block. The late-winter sun spilled a molten golden aura over everything, but even the buttery sunlight did little to brighten the squat red-brick apartment houses.
“You sure this is th
e right address?” Baby asked, staring out the window. “I been living in Atlanta all my life, and I never been on a street like this here.”
It was close to three o’clock, but groups of men loitered in front of every building, passing paper–sack—covered bottles. Overturned trash cans rolled in the grassless yards in front of the brick buildings, which had been spray-painted with signs and symbols I took to be gang markings. The street was lined with junked cars. A group of teenage boys were playing a pickup game of basketball in the middle of the street, using a hoop somebody had bungee-corded to a telephone pole. Three girls sat on the hood of a car in front of my van, passing a reefer and yelling obscenities at the players.
“This was a mistake,” I said, pushing the power lock button. “Maybe I should take you girls home. Linda said this was a rough neighborhood, but I had no idea it was this rough.”
“Don’t look too bad to me,” Sister objected. “Look at them little children playing ball. That’s nice, isn’t it? A playground right here for the children to be playing in?”
“Them ain’t children, you blind old fool,” Baby said. “Them’s mens. Able-bodied mens hanging around on a street in the middle of the day when they oughta be working a job. And look over there at them womenfolk.”
Five or six women sat on folding metal lawn chairs outside the steps to Building 6. They had a portable television hooked up to a long orange extension cord that snaked inside the building.
“Ain’t nobody over here got a job?” Baby fussed. “Why they sittin’ there watching that television with trash and all kinda nasty stuff layin’ in their front yard? What kinda place is this, Callahan?”
“No place for you girls,” I had to admit. I turned the key in the ignition.
“Now wait just a minute,” Sister objected. “You tellin’ me we got all dressed up in our nursing sister disguises and you ain’t gonna let us do our job? That ain’t right. That ain’t right at all.”
The two of them did look splendid in their blue uniforms with white aprons and old-fashioned white nurses’ caps, with white stockings and thick-soled white shoes. I’d forgotten that the Easterbrookses were longtime nursing sisters at their A.M.E. church, charged with the serious responsibility of reviving church members who fell ill or “fell out” during services.
“This place isn’t safe,” I said reluctantly. “I can’t let you wander around here asking questions. No telling what might happen. I’m sorry, Miss Baby, Miss Sister. But I’ll pay you anyway.”
Baby put her hand over mine on the steering wheel. Her skin was cool and dry to the touch, like onionskin paper.
“Them women there don’t look so bad,” she said, nodding toward the group watching television. “Lazy as they are, they probably wouldn’t let nothin’ bad happen to a couple of old ladies like us.”
“You sure?” I asked, torn between wanting to find Deecie and needing to keep the girls safe.
Baby patted the pocketbook she held in her lap. “Don’t you be worryin’ about us, Callahan. I got me something keep anybody from messin’ wit’ Baby Easterbrooks.”
“What you got?” Sister asked, leaning over the seat back. “You got that can of spray mace? Lemme hold on to that.”
“Lookee here,” Baby said, sliding her hand into the oversized tote bag she held in her lap. She drew out a heavy eighth inch-long iron cylinder, and before I could object, thwapped it in the palm of my outstretched hand.
A bolt of pain shot up my arm. “What the hell is that?” I yelped, yanking my hand away.
She clacked her dentures menacingly.
“This here is my insurance policy,” Sister said.
Baby leaned over the backseat of the van and brandished a similarly sinister-looking sap. “Got mine right here!” she chimed in.
“But what are they and where’d you get them?” I asked. Sister held her weapon up close for inspection, and for the first time I noticed a hole through a pointed end of the thing.
“Hey,” I said. “It’s a sash weight.”
“Good old-fashioned window sash weight,” Baby agreed.
“I haven’t seen one of those since I was a little kid,” I said. “Where did you get these?”
“Miss Bettye Bond,” Sister said. “We found ‘em in a box out in the storage shed.”
“Did she give you permission to take them?” I asked.
Sister, who is usually scrupulously honest in most matters, does have an unfortunate tendency toward acquisitiveness, like a magpie given to picking up bits of shiny foil and string. Mostly the things she appropriates for herself are harmless and worthless, things like a box of false eyelashes, or an old raincoat, or the occasional piece of cheap tableware.
“Miss Bettye, she don’t care nothin’ about an old box of sash weights,” Sister said. “I ast her about a shotgun I found down in the cellar, but she said Mr. Ralph still uses that every now and again. So I took the sash weights instead.”
“And if any of these no-count young’ uns around here tries to mess with me, I’ll show ‘em what a sash weight feels like upside the head,” Baby announced, shaking the weapon in my face. “Come on, Callahan, unlock this car door, sugar. We got work to do.”
It was pointless to argue with them once their minds were made up. Anyway, we were so close. Surely somebody would know something about Deecie Styles.
“All right,” I said. “But be careful. I’ll stay right here in the van, watching. If anybody says or does anything threatening, promise me you’ll leave. Okay?”
“Ain’t nobody gonna mess with women of God,” Sister said blithely, unlocking her door.
I watched while they approached the group of television watching women.
A huge woman in a red sweatsuit got up and towered over Baby and Sister. I had my hand on the door to go in for the rescue, but something made me wait.
A moment later, the fat woman was gesturing for Sister to take her chair. Another woman with a waterfall of lacquered lemon-colored hair stood up and offered her kitchen chair to Baby, who also sat down.
I rolled the window down, but could hear nothing over the blare of the basketball players’ boom box.
The women scooted their chairs up closer to Baby and Sister, who were talking a mile a minute, gesturing and smiling. No telling what outrageous story they were concocting, but from my point of view, it looked like the women were buying it.
After five minutes, Baby approached the van, her self-satisfied smile proof that they’d struck paydirt.
“Come on out of there and meet our new friend,” Baby said. “We told them you work at the Grady, and that you want to help that little baby, Faheem. Don’t pay no mind to that fat woman talking trash.”
The women looked up at me as I approached, their faces a mask of wariness.
Baby pointed me to an older woman who wore an apron and held a dishpan full of string beans on her lap.
“This here’s Miss Garrity,” Baby said. “Miss Garrity, I’d like you to meet Austine Rudolph. She know all about that little boy.”
I held out my hand. Mrs. Rudolph wiped hers on her apron and shook it. So far, so good.
“Mrs. Rudolph,” I said. “I guess my colleagues told you why I’m here. I’m an outreach worker with the pediatric sickle cell clinic at Grady Hospital. We’re concerned because Deecie Styles didn’t bring her little boy in for his appointment today.”
“Oh, now Grady got concerned.” The fat woman laughed. “And they done sent you around to see what’s the deal? Child, please.”
“Faheem sick again?” Mrs. Rudolph wrinkled her brow in concern. The apron was one of the old-fashioned bib kinds, cotton with red rick-rack trim. My grandmother must have had dozens just like it.
“Have you seen Deecie in the past few days?” I asked, ignoring the fat woman as Baby had instructed me. “It’s kind of important. Faheem needs his medicine, or he’ll be in a lot of pain.”
I winced inwardly at the lie. Austine Rudolph’s wide calm face was not the kind of face y
ou like to deceive. But I had a job to do, and anyway, it was true. Faheem was sick, and he did need his medicine.
Mrs. Rudolph shook her head from side to side. “The police come around here this morning asking about Deecie. Seem like she in some kind of trouble. Any y’all seen Deecie?”
The skinny woman looked at the ground. “Monique say Deecie moved out. That’s what she told the police.”
“When?” Austine Rudolph asked. “I ain’t hear nothing about that. Deecie, she sometime have me baby-sit Faheem when she works. She didn’t say nothin’ to me about moving.”
“Is Monique Bell at home?” I asked, trying to stay small and quiet and nonthreatening.
The fat woman pointed toward the door to the apartment house. “That’s her crib, right in there. Go ahead on and see. I ain’t seen her today. Could be she sleeping. Could be she drunk.”
“Might be she sleepin’ and drunk,” cackled the skinny one.
“Y’all hush,” Mrs. Rudolph proclaimed. She set her dishpan down on the ground, grunted, and stood up.
“Let’s go see,” she said, not unkindly.
The hallway smelled like bacon and ripe diapers. Mrs. Rudolph banged at the third door to the right of the entry.
“Monique?” She rang the buzzer and called again. “Monique? It’s Austine, honey. You awake in there?”
She waited a moment, then pounded again. “Monique. Come on, girl. Wake up. Somebody here to see about Deecie.”
A door opened across the hall and a little girl popped her head out. “Y’all looking for Deecie? Deecie ain’t here. She tol’ my mama—”
A hand reached out and jerked the child inside. “Shut up your mouth right this minute,” a man’s voice boomed. The door slammed shut. We heard a slap and then a sharp, high cry. “Did I tell you to shut up with that stuff?” the man said.
“Lord help us all,” Mrs. Rudolph whispered. She looked sad. “Monique must have gone to the store or something. I don’t know about Deecie. Guess she could have moved. She got a boyfriend. William. I don’t know where he stays.”
“William,” I repeated. “Do you know his last name?”
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