Blackbird, Farewell

by Robert Greer

  Sympathetic to Etta Lee's disappointment, Damion nonetheless found himself thinking, Good for them. He was thrilled that CJ, after two tours of Vietnam and more than a three-decade career as a bondsman and bounty hunter, and the woman who'd stood by him all that time had tied the knot—happy that they'd finally made their vows before some disgruntled bond skipper or deranged cokehead ended up taking CJ out for good.

  “Your mom knows all about it, don't she?” asked Rosie.

  “Yeah. She's the one who told me.”

  Rosie shook his head and grinned. “Guess this could get CJ off the streets for good, ’cause Mavis, now that she's Mrs. Floyd, ain't about to let him risk life and limb runnin’ down a bunch of bond-skipping pond scum. Hell, he needs to slow down anyway,” Rosie said with a snicker. “The brother's damn near fifty-five years old.”

  Damion nodded in agreement. “And it's not like he doesn't have Flora Jean to take up the slack,” he said, aware that CJ's partner, Flora Jean Benson, a six-foot-one-inch Las Vegas showgirl–sized former marine, had been trying to get CJ to cut back for the past five years.

  “I wouldn't mention nothin’ to CJ about slowin’ down, though.” Rosie crossed his lips with a forefinger. “He might take it the wrong way. Besides, you'd be surprised how quick us old men can be,” added the 260-pound onetime college football prospect who'd been forced to choose mechanics school over the University of Nebraska's football program the summer after finishing high school because he'd blown out his right knee in a motorcycle accident.

  Damion simply nodded and smiled. Although he was an inch taller than Rosie, he was a good twenty-five pounds lighter. He'd seen Rosie and CJ toss knife-wielding drunks, gang-bangers, and disgruntled gamblers out the back door of the den into the adjoining alley more than once. There was no question in his mind that even five years hence, both men would still be able to do the same thing.

  Securing a quart of oil into place to let it drain down into the engine, Rosie dusted off his hands. “Your boy Blackbird ready to start the season?”

  “He says he is.” Damion glanced across the garage bay toward the gas pumps outside to see a high school kid race toward a waiting car. Smiling and thinking that he'd made hundreds of similar runs as a high schooler, he was about to ask Rosie the kid's name when he realized who the car that had pulled in belonged to. “Shit! Old man Wilhite just drove up.”

  Rosie slipped his head out from under the hood and tossed the now empty quart of oil into an open 90-weight oil drum. Looking at Damion and shaking his head, he said, “Uh-oh. This should be good. You runnin’ or stickin’?”

  “Stickin’,” Damion said defiantly.

  Seconds later, Theo Wilhite strolled into the garage. He paused just inside the middle bay and scanned the place, looking as if he expected anyone within earshot to run for cover. A well-chewed two-inch cigar stub poked from the right corner of his mouth as, grinning ear to ear, he continued walking toward Damion and Rosie. Seventy years old and amazingly fit, with only the barest hint of a paunch, Wilhite, at just under five-foot-six, had spent a lifetime using his booming baritone voice and unbridled pushiness to make up for his diminutive stature.

  “Well, well, well.” Wilhite's words echoed off the walls as he slipped the cigar stub out of his mouth and stopped a few feet short of Damion. “If it isn't the wonder boy they call Blood and his faithful auto-mechanic companion. Hell, I decide to stop in for some gas, and lookie here, got me a twofer. Never figured on strikin’ gold.” He looked at Damion and chuckled. “No Blackbird here with you two boys to make it a triumphant kinda day?”

  Damion, whose nickname (short for Blood Brother) had been bestowed on him in high school as a badge of honor by a cadre of black friends despite his Latino roots, remained silent.

  “Hell, I'm surprised. No Blackbird!” Wilhite shook his head in mock amazement. “But then again, why would Shandell be here? No reason for a future NBA superstar to be hangin’ out with a sparkplug jockey and a would-be doctor.” He flashed Damion a sly, toothy grin. “How's life been treatin’ you, Blood?”

  “Fine,” Damion said, starting as Rosie slammed the Jeep's hood and flashed Wilhite a look of pure disdain.

  “And that's as it should be, son. Fine. Especially with you bein’ all primed to head off to medical school here shortly and your sidekick Blackbird financially set for life. Things couldn't be nothin’ but fine.”Wilhite eyed his cigar stub. Wet with saliva, the stub came close to matching the mocha color of his skin. “Now, as for ol’ Theo here, things aren't quite so rosy.”

  Damion, who'd heard Wilhite's long-standing gripe about losing a good sized bet he'd placed on CSU to win the final game of the NCAA basketball tournament the previous March, only to see them lose in the final seconds, tried to ignore the comment. Turning to Rosie, he asked, “We done here?”

  Rosie nodded. “Yep.”

  Wilhite, who normally let things go after issuing a backhanded swipe or two about either Damion's or Shandell's play in the championship game, seemed more bent on confrontation than usual. “Ignore me if you want, Dr. Madrid, or should I say Dr. Choke, but …”

  Before Rosie, who was hoping to put a quick damper on things, had a chance to respond, Damion stepped to within inches of Wilhite. Hovering over the smaller man with his jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed in anger, Damion said, “You're pushing your luck, old man.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  Sensing that if things continued to escalate, Damion, known to be hot-tempered in the face of confrontation, might do something he'd be sorry for, Rosie stepped between the two men.

  Shaking his head in protest, Wilhite eyed Damion. “Choker.”

  Seething, Damion cocked his arm and launched a right cross at Wilhite's chin. The punch was halfway home when Rosie hooked his own right arm under Damion's left shoulder and yanked him back into the Cherokee's fender as if Damion were anything but a six-foot-five-inch, 235-pound man. Pushing Wilhite, whose eyes were suddenly silver-dollar-sized, aside as if he were a rag doll, Rosie yelled, “Get the hell out of here, Theo!”

  Surprised by Damion's reaction, Wilhite began backpedaling. “Touched a nerve there, did I?” he said, beaming from ear to ear as he increased the space between him and the angry-looking Damion. “Ain't good for a doctor to come all unglued like that, Madrid. No way losin’ your cool like that could ever be good for a patient. I'd say you need to practice up on your bedside manner some, son.”

  Still locked in Rosie's grasp, with his upper lip quivering and his right arm still cocked, Damion had the uneasy feeling that Wilhite might be right. Maybe he did need to practice grinning and bearing it. Perhaps he did need to slap a governor on his often overly competitive spirit. He was still second-guessing his actions when Wilhite erupted with a booming laugh, pivoted, and walked out of the garage.

  “Don't give Wilhite no never-mind, Damion,” Rosie said, watching Wilhite swagger across the service drive toward his car. “You did good just to keep from cold-cockin’ him. I woulda sure enough kicked the little runt's ass when I was your age. But ain't no way a doctor can do that.”

  “You would've, and I still might,” Damion said, twisting out of Rosie's grasp. Boiling with anger and shaking his head, he walked across the bay to watch Wilhite slip into his car. As the self-satisfied-looking Theo Wilhite drove away, Damion shook his head, wondering what Shandell would have to say about Wilhite's comments when they met for their weekly three o'clock scrimmage at the Glendale basketball courts.

  The Holiday Inn Express just off Pena Boulevard, six miles west of Denver International Airport, was several steps up from the kinds of places Leon Bird usually found himself staying in. So, as he lay stretched out in his underwear on a king-sized bed in a room he was shelling out $109 a night for, he planned to enjoy every second of his stay. He was in town, after all, to do a little extra father-son bonding with his future NBA superstar son and further cement the relationship he'd worked so hard at fostering the past year.

  It h
adn't been hard to get inside Shandell's head during that year, or to convince him on visit after persistent visit that what he needed was for his long-absent and worldly wise father to run interference for him in the treacherous world of superstardom. Shandell had been a docile, willing recipient of Leon's scheming and scamming, even in the face of Aretha Bird's protests.

  Leon knew he had to be vigilant and above all careful if he expected things to play out his way. He'd have to milk the father-son reunion for all it was worth and uncork his bunco-artist best if he expected to finesse the whole rebonding con down a road that would reap him the ultimate payday. One false step and things could turn on a dime. Shandell would almost certainly recognize him for what he was, and the two overly protective she-devils who ran interference for Shandell—Aretha, whom Leon had left behind to fend for herself sixteen years earlier without so much as a “fuck you,” and Shandell's big-titted piece of white pussy, Connie Eastland—would surely finish him off. Aretha he could deal with. He'd whipped her ass scores of times before. The Eastland woman was another story. One he was currently working on solving.

  Personally, he'd never seen any percentage in screwing around with a white woman. Getting tangled up with them was the equivalent of giving some redneck cop an excuse to crack open your head. Or a reason for a car full of tanked-up white boys, out looking for trouble, to kick in your teeth. He understood his son's infatuation with the Miss Annes of this world, but he couldn't fathom why Shan-dell would take such a risk.

  He'd often wondered how much Shandell had told the big-titted shrew about him. Wondered if Shandell had ever spilled his guts to her about his worthless, wife-beating, son-abandoning father. He had no real way of knowing whether he had, but he had Connie East-land pegged. The dollar signs in her eyes when he'd had occasion to talk to her told him everything he needed to know. They also told him that if worse came to worst, he and Connie might be better off as partners than adversaries.

  He'd made it a point during his last two visits from the Midwest to let Connie know he was onto her game. He'd clued her in on the fact that blood was thicker than water and that he would be the one to milk this cow. She'd seemed unfazed by him, however, standing her ground, even telling him once in a guarded telephone conversation that if push came to shove, Shandell would stand by her.

  The air of certainty in her statement had grabbed his full attention, causing him to wonder what she had on Shandell and whether she really could derail his gravy train. But in the end, he'd decided that she was simply a passing fancy. The kind of fancy he might have to negotiate with or maybe even cancel out in the end, but a fancy nonetheless. He, on the other hand, was blood, the man who'd passed Shandell's athletic gifts on to him by virtue of his semen. There was no way he intended to let either his ex-wife or Connie Eastland stop him from reaping what was rightfully his.

  Chapter 3

  Damion and Shandell had been playing their weekly one-on-ones at the Glendale basketball courts, courts long favored by high-profile college and high school ballplayers, since the fifth grade. Over the years, Glendale, surrounded by an ever-enlarging Mile High City, had defied encroachment to remain an independent village, known for having a lower sales tax than Denver and for being home to the notorious Colorado Boulevard strip joint Shotgun Willie's. Glendale and the courts that pro basketball scouts often frequented seemed to chug along in a surreal zone of their own.

  Years earlier, as grade schoolers, Damion and Shandell had sneaked onto the brightly lit courts at night after the big-time ballplayers had left to spend an hour or two with the courts all to themselves. They'd practice their ball-handling skills—bounce pass, shovel pass, pick and roll—or engage in a round robin of perimeter shooting until one or both of them gave out, it got so late they figured they'd better head home, or the big boys returned for a late-night scrimmage and ran them off. Now, instead of watching the big boys and waiting for court time, the courts were theirs for the taking and folks, big and small, gathered to watch them.

  A crowd of nearly forty people, aware of Damion and Shandell's weekly ritual and unfazed by ominous-looking thunderheads to the west, stood behind the chain-link fence that surrounded the main Glendale court, prepared to take in a dose of Blood and Bird. Shandell stood at midcourt with a basketball tucked under his right arm. Looking briefly to the east toward Glendale's two most prominent municipal structures, the post office and the police headquarters building, he winked at Damion and put the ball into play. Bursting from the top of the free-throw circle with a high left-hand dribble, he powered to the right baseline before methodically working his way back toward the right side of the key. Fifteen pounds lighter and three inches shorter than Shandell, Damion stuck with him on every move. Each time the ball bounced off the court, its high-pitched ring seemed to announce to the onlookers that they were privileged to be watching. Stopping his dribble and leaning into Damion, Shandell pushed off Damion's right shoulder, faded back, and released an off-balance eighteen-foot jumper into the air, popping the net.

  Damion shook his head as the crowd chanted, “Bird, Bird, Bird.” Still shaking his head, he chased down the ball, grabbed it just before it rolled to the edge of the court and into the fence, and tossed it back into play. Moving swiftly across the court and seeming to glide on air, he dribbled straight to the free-throw line and fired up a jump shot. The ball bounced high off the front of the rim as Damion, a step quicker than Shandell, skied for the basket and slammed the errant shot home. The response from the crowd was a lingering Aaahhh.

  “Dr. Blood,” Shandell yelled in admiration as the ball slowly rolled back toward them, “nasty!”

  “Ball's all yours, Mr. Blackbird,” Damion said, tipping the ball up into his right hand with the toe of his sneaker and handing it to Shandell.

  Shandell palmed the ball but suddenly appeared to Damion to be daydreaming. It was a transitory habit he'd never been able to kick even when the game was on the line. When Damion yelled, “Get your head back in the game, Blackbird,” Shandell began a slow waist-high dribble toward the basket. On this day, his mind was on more than mere daydreams.

  With Damion glued to his side and storm clouds gathering, Shan-dell was thinking not about the millions of dollars he'd soon be earning, or even his meeting later that evening with the person who'd called him as he'd sat in his SUV in the bank parking lot that morning. What he found himself thinking about, of all things, was his father—a man who had caved in to his drinking and gambling urges before Shandell was four, and who'd deserted him and his mother to head for Chicago and fail in the record industry when he had a family in Denver to feed.

  Not wanting to end up like the father he'd basically never known, Shandell had given himself over completely to his mother's stern, God-fearing guidance at an early age. In many ways he'd become her obvious reflection, and the scores of greedy sports agents, money-grubbing women, and out-and-out ne'er-do-wells she'd shooed away from him over the years had earned Aretha Bird the nickname “Scarecrow.” Shandell's perseverance had emanated from her, and it was largely because of her that he'd always been a loner, an introverted giant who was clumsy with words, slow to make friends, and distrustful of relationships. Only Damion had been able to break through Shandell's protective coat of armor to become a lifelong friend.

  With thunder rumbling in the distance, the game seesawed back and forth until, with Damion leading 38 to 30, the sky opened up. As everyone, including Damion and Shandell, raced for cover to escape the downpour, Damion yelled, “What the hell was up with your game out there, Shandell? Half the time you seemed to be sleepwalking. You should've been killing me, man. Hell, you're on your way to training camp in a few weeks, and I'm out of shape. What gives?”

  “Nothing.” Shandell flipped his sweatshirt hood over his head. “Just thinking through a problem.”

  “Must be a doozy. Anything I can help with?”

  “Nope.”

  “You sure? No problem with Connie, is there?” Damion asked, aware that
Shandell and Connie Eastland's relationship was often volatile.

  “’Course not.”

  All but drenched as they jogged toward their cars, and still confused over Shandell's lackadaisical play, Damion called out, “I'll meet you at Mae's.”

  “I'll be right behind you,” Shandell yelled back, sounding strangely dismissive.

  As he slipped into his Jeep to head for Mae's Louisiana Kitchen, the Five Points soul-food restaurant that had been owned by CJ Floyd's new bride, Mavis Sundee, and her family for more than a half century, Damion peered through the Jeep's rain-splattered rear window to see Shandell standing in the pouring rain next to his Range Rover, looking less like a future NBA superstar than a lost, frightened child. When Shandell realized that Damion was staring, he ducked his head and slipped into the vehicle. As he cranked the engine and pulled away from the curb, knifing ahead into pelting rain, Shandell had the strange sudden sense that he was trapped inside a chunk of black granite that was starting to sink at sea.

  Shandell and Damion's dinner at Mae's turned out to be a heartbeat above morbid, and an hour after the meal of fried catfish, collard greens, sweet corn, and buttermilk biscuits, Shandell found himself saddled with a severe case of indigestion. His gastric distress was brought on not by the heavy meal or the feeling that he'd somehow strained the bond of friendship between him and Damion but rather by the knowledge that his 7 p.m. meeting at the Glendale basketball courts, which he'd been dreading all day along with being dogged by thoughts of his father, was at hand.

  As he pulled his Range Rover to a stop on Kentucky Avenue just west of the Glendale main court, he thought about the strangely awkward meal he and Damion had shared. There'd been the usual small talk at first, and they'd even briefly slipped into their familiar banter about who had the best perimeter jumper and which of them was the better rebounder. But things had soon turned silent, and when he'd stared blankly into space after Damion had asked him for the fourth time if anything was wrong, the dinner and the evening had disintegrated.