He stared at us for a moment, then passed a hand through his black hair and smiled. His mouth was rotten-looking—long decayed teeth, red-rimmed gums.
“You looking for Norvelle?” he said in a thick Appalachian drawl.
I nodded. “We’re friends of his.”
Cal laughed a nasty little laugh. “You told them girls you was his caseworkers.”
When I didn’t answer him, he said, “Well, which is it, mister?”
“Friends,” Karen said quickly. “Norvelle used to play in a band with my husband.”
“And who would he be?” Cal asked. “Your husband?”
“Lonnie Jackowski. Lonnie Jack.”
Cal shook his head. “Never heard of him.”
“You don’t know where Norvelle is, do you?” Karen said.
“I hope he’s dead,” Cal said. “I done kicked him out of here about a month ago. I got tired of that nigger freeloading on me. Eating up my food and shit.”
“Do you have any idea where he might have gone?” Karen asked.
“Might try K.T.’s Barbershop on Forest. Norvelle used to hang out there.”
Cal wasn’t the kind to volunteer information, so I assumed he was lying. “We heard Norvelle was still living with you,” I said, throwing him a hard look.
The look didn’t faze him. He was used to that kind of look. He bounced it back at me, with a little extra spin of his own. “You heard wrong,” he said icily.
“What if I wanted to look around?” I said. “How’d you feel about that?”
Cal tossed his head back and laughed—a single, contemptuous bark of amusement. When he leveled his head again, he stared right at me—his mean blue eyes full of fight.
“You’re welcome to try,” he said in a whisper.
“Harry,” Karen said nervously. “Maybe we better get out of here.”
“She’s right,” Cal said in that same whispering voice. “You better get out of here.”
“Tough guy, huh, Cal?” I said, smiling at him.
“Don’t you press it, mister,” he said, smiling back at me.
“We’ll check out the barbershop, Cal,” I said, guiding Karen toward the door. “But if I find out you were lying to me...I’ll be back.”
“I’ll be waiting,” he said, with his rotten grin.
It felt good to get out in the cold again. I took a deep gulp of the snowy air and breathed it out in a cloud of steam, as if I were breathing out the corrupt atmosphere of that dirty living room. Karen ran down the walk ahead of me. She had already started the motor up by the time I got to the passenger-side door. I glanced over the car roof at the screened-in porch. Cal was peering out the front window, watching me closely.
“Why did you push him like that?” Karen said irritably, once I’d gotten in beside her.
“He’s a junkie who runs a chicken ranch,” I said to her. “Why should I coddle a piece of shit like that?”
“Aren’t you forgetting that you’re hurt?” she said, giving me an aggravated look.
“Hurt or not, if I can’t take Cal, it’s time for me to hang it all up.”
Karen shook her head disgustedly. “That kind of macho bullshit may impress the hell out of your other girlfriends, Harry, but I think it sucks. That was a bad scene in there, man. Don’t you know that a guy like that has nothing to lose?”
I smiled at her, soothingly. “I know more about guys like that than you think.”
“I wonder,” she said coldly. “I don’t want to get killed so that you can prove a point about your manhood. I used to live around fuckers like Cal, and they are not fooling around. He’s not another Lonnie, Harry. He doesn’t mule for dope, or cash bad checks to score a bag. That man is a stone-cold dope fiend, for chrissake! He makes his buy money by ripping people off. Even other junkies are scared of him. He’d murder his mother for a big score. Man, he likes his work.”
“You’re really scared, aren’t you,” I said, patting her shoulder. “I’m impressed.”
“You’re crazy,” she said, shaking off my hand. “And you’re not listening.”
Karen pulled out onto Cross Lane and turned around. “Are we going to try K.T.’s Barbershop?” she said in a calmer voice.
“Might as well,” I said. “But I think the bastard was lying to us.”
Karen nodded halfheartedly. “I do too.”
I stared at her for a second. “If he was lying, you know I’ll have to come back here.”
She bit her pouty lip and sighed. “Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe Leanne’ll come through for us. Or maybe well find Norvelle on our own.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But don’t count on it.”
“Do you have a death wish or something?” Karen said.
I laughed. “Just picking up after Lonnie,” I told her.
27
K.T.’S BARBERSHOP was located on Forest, about a half block from Burnett, in a part of South Avondale that had once been a prosperous Jewish neighborhood. The area had long since gone downhill. The houses and apartments, those that were still standing, were dilapidated turn-of-the-century buildings, red-brick and frame, with sprung porches, peeling paint, and broken doors and windows. Many of the oldest structures had been torn down and replaced with two-story, tar-papered storefronts. K.T.’s Barbershop was one of the storefronts. It stood in the middle of the block—a little concrete building spackled with windblown snow.
From where Karen had parked across Forest, I could see halfway into K.T.’s through its plate-glass front window. The shop looked deserted—the old-fashioned leather and steel barber chairs standing empty on their porcelain pedestals.
This time I managed to talk Karen into staying in the car. She took one look at the rundown tar-board building and nodded at me.
“I’ll wait here. But for my sake, Harry, please be careful.”
I told her I would.
I got out of the Pinto and walked across Forest, through the ankle-deep snow. As I got closer to K.T.’s front window, I could see farther into the shop. It wasn’t completely empty. A middle-aged black man in a white smock was sitting on one of the barber chairs at the back of the room. He was resting his head against the headrest and was holding an Ebony magazine tented above his face. A second black man was sitting in a cracked leather chair across from the barber. He was an old man, in a tattered topcoat. A beat-up felt hat was tipped back on his head. He was staring stupidly at the checked tile floor, his hands cribbed between his legs.
I went up to the shop door and walked in. The mirrors behind the row of barber chairs were chipped and cracked; in several spots, they’d been worn down to the black mica under the glass. The porcelain toiletry counter underneath the mirrors was worn away in black spots too. The tile floor beneath it was thick with grime and unswept clippings. A half-dozen patchy armchairs sat on the left side of the room, with stacks of dog-eared magazines piled between them for waiting customers. The room smelled of hair oil and sweat.
As I came in the barber put down his magazine. He was a middle-aged man with processed hair, a trim black mustache, and a shiny, acne-scarred yellow face. He didn’t make any move to get up. He just stared at me from where he sat in the chair. The old man stared at me too. His face was deep black and heavily wrinkled. His bloodshot eyes looked unfocused, as if he were very old or very drunk.
“What can I do for you?” the barber said, as if he knew perfectly well there was nothing he could do for me.
“I’m looking for an old friend—Norvelle Thomas.”
“Don’t know no Norvelle Thomas,” the barber said.
“Cal told me I could find him here,” I said, with a smile.
“Don’t know no Cal,” the barber said. “You sure you in the right place. K.T.’s Barbershop?”
“That’s where Cal told me to look,” I said, with an exaggerated sigh. “Norvelle used to play bass in a band that I managed. I was thinking of using him again. I mean, if he’s straight and I can find him.”
The barber stared
at me for a long moment. “You a promoter?”
“Something like that.”
“Don’t look like no promoter.” He glanced at the old man. “He look like a promoter to you, Lyle?”
The old man shook his head savagely. “Uh-uh,” he said. “Don’t look like no promoter I ever seen.”
I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out my wallet. “I think I have a card in here,” I said. I opened the wallet wide enough to let the barber, and the old man, get a look at my stake. “I guess I ran out of cards.”
I pulled a couple of twenties from the wallet, instead. The old man licked his lips.
“I sure would like to find Norvelle,” I said, holding the money out.
“I sure would like to help,” the barber said. He eyed the bills for a moment and shook his head sadly. “But like I told you, I don’t know no Norvelle Thomas.”
I was certain that he was lying. But then I was certain that Cal had lied to me too. There was no sense in muscling both of them. I figured Cal was the better bet. I thanked the barber for his time and walked back out into the snow.
As I started across Forest to the car, the old man, Lyle, came scurrying out of the barbershop.
“Whooa up, there!” he shouted at me, over the wind.
I stood on the curbside as Lyle came up to me. I figured he was going to hit me for a handout—to buy a drink or a fix. I’d seen the way he’d looked when he spotted my bankroll.
“Heard what you was saying in there,” he said, working his lips slowly, as if he were trying to get some spit.
A sudden gust of wind lifted his hat off his head. He pinned it in place with his right hand and tried to hold the skirts of his tattered topcoat together with his left. The wind kept blowing straight at us, kicking snow up like a passing truck. It made the old man’s eyes tear and his black face tighten into a grimace, as if someone were yanking on his hair.
“You know where Norvelle Thomas is?” I asked him.
“I maybe might,” Lyle said.
I pulled the two twenties out of my pocket. The breeze made them snap in my fingers like pennants.
“Oh, Lord,” the old man said. “Don’t let them blow away.” He laughed hoarsely, but it wasn’t a joke to him. He wanted to reach out and grab them before the wind did, as if they were his own children.
“You can have them if you tell me where Norvelle is,” I said to him.
He eyed the money hungrily, then eyed me. “You say you a promoter?”
I nodded.
“Well, I guess it’ll be all right.”
So much for his scruples, I thought.
“You know that Cal you done talked to?” the old man said. “Norvelle live with him. Over to Cross Lane.”
“He told me Norvelle had moved.”
“Shee-it.” The old man let go of the skirts of his coat and threw his left hand at me contemptuously. “If’n you believe anything that boy tell you, you crazy. He’s a mean boy, that boy is. He treat Norvelle like dirt. Ain’t but one reason he keep him around.”
“And what’s that.”
Lyle put a liver-colored finger to his nose and sniffed dramatically. “Norvelle get him that candy. That boy do like candy.”
“Why should I believe you?” I said to him.
“What reason I got to be lying to you,” the old man said, looking a little outraged. His coattails were snapping around his legs like a wild dog. “Shee-it, out here in all this cold and snow.” He put a pitiful look on his face and grumbled some more, under his breath.
“I was just over on Cross Lane,” I said, “and Norvelle wasn’t there.”
The old man looked puzzled. “Well, I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Norvelle be there most of the time. But sometime he hang around the chili parlor, down here to Vine Street.”
“Which chili parlor?” I asked.
“LeRoi’s Silver Star,” Lyle said.
“Why does he hang out there?”
The old man gave me a dirty look. I was making him work too hard for his money, and it galled him. Before he could get his scruples back, I pulled another ten out of my pocket and added it to the two twenties in my hand. It was just enough to put him back on track.
“LeRoi be the man,” Lyle said.
“Which man,” I said, playing dumb.
“The man, fool. The candy man.”
I handed him the fifty bucks. He snatched it out of my hand and tucked it deep in his pants pocket.
“Don’t you say where you heard that,” Lyle said, with a warning look.
“I won’t.”
“And don’t you turn your back on that boy Cal. He rob you blind.”
The old man turned around and walked back into the barbershop—his head bent against the wind.
28
WHEN I got back inside the car, Karen asked, “Who was that old guy you were talking to?”
“That was my good friend Lyle,” I said to her. “C’mon, we’ve got another place to visit.”
Karen started the car up and pulled out onto Forest. “The old man told you something?”
I nodded. “He told me where to find Norvelle’s connection. And maybe Norvelle, too.”
“Where?”
“A chili parlor, down on Vine Street.”
“Then Cal wasn’t lying to us,” Karen said, with a touch of surprise.
“Oh, yes, he was,” I said. “And we’re going to pay Cal another visit, too. A little later. He didn’t kick Norvelle out—he didn’t dare.”
“Why?” Karen said.
“Because Norvelle is Cal’s connection. And Cal likes his cocaine.”
Karen glanced over at me. “You got all that from the old man?”
“He was thirsty,” I said. “I bought him a few drinks.”
“Nice job you’ve got,” Karen said sarcastically.
For some reason, the crack pissed me off. “You feeling sorry for Lyle? Or for yourself? You know, I told you to go back to St. Louis. You can still go, if you want. I didn’t make any of this happen. It was wished on me by your ex-husband.”
Karen ducked her head. “I’m sorry, Harry. It’s just so fucking dirty—all of it. I thought I’d had my share of this scene. I thought I’d worked out that karma. But I guess I was wrong.”
I felt the anger drain out of me. “Look,” I said, glancing at my watch, “it’s been a long day already. Once we’re done at the chili parlor, we’ll go back to the Delores. Plan some strategy. Take a little R and R.”
“That sounds very good to me,” Karen said with a smile. “The R and R part. You think you’re up to it?”
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” I said with a wink.
******
We found LeRoi’s Silver Star chili parlor on Vine Street, a few houses up from the Mitchell intersection—right on the borderline between South Avondale and St. Bernard. Like K.T.’s Barbershop, it was nothing more than a concrete-block storefront, with a flat tar roof, a picture window, and wavy canary-yellow aluminum siding in front. A cracked neon sign hung above the door.
I made Karen drive past LeRoi’s a couple of times, before we parked down the block from it on Vine. Unlike K.T.’s, the chili parlor was doing business in spite of the cold. The counter on the left side of the joint was lined with a dozen stools. Half of them were occupied by customers. I saw one of them—a middle-aged black man in a sweater cap and a raincoat—pour half a bottle of sugar into his coffee. You didn’t have to be a genius to know that he was stoned. They all looked stoned—heads bowed or bobbing like the heads of those plastic dogs you see in the rear windows of old Chevys.
“That’s a drug store, Harry,” Karen said, staring through the car window. “And they don’t just push cocaine. The guys in there are junkies.”
“I know.”
“You can’t walk in there and start asking questions,” she said, glancing back at me. “Not unless you have a badge.”
“Do you see Norvelle in there?” I asked her.
S
he peered out the window and shook her head. “I can’t tell from here. I’ll have to go inside.”
“You’re not going in,” I told her.
“You don’t know what he looks like,” she protested.
“Just stay in the car, Karen,” I said in a no-nonsense voice, and got out onto the sidewalk.
The salt trucks had already hit Vine, and the snow on the street had turned to blackened slush. I waited for the traffic to slow, then walked across the boulevard to LeRoi’s chili parlor.
It was hot inside LeRoi’s, and the whole place stank of that peculiar mixture of cumin, rosemary, and grease that passes for chili in this chili-crazy city. A wall hanging was nailed beside the door—an Arabian scene full of camels and turbaned men, like an exotic postcard for the junkies to nod over. There were a few empty booths to the right, and the luncheon counter on the left, with its row of stools leading back to the kitchen. Behind the counter, a grill boy was standing in front of a tureen, ladling soup into a bowl. He had his back to me as I walked into the room.
The men on the stools glanced up at me as one. They all looked the same—black men in raincoats, with lean, hostile faces and bleary eyes. A couple of them started snorting, as if they had bad head colds. All of them eyed me with hate. I surveyed their faces, but I wouldn’t have recognized Norvelle if he’d been sitting in front of me. None of those hardened junkies was going to talk to me. I began to think it had been a mistake to walk in there.
I knew it was a mistake when I turned toward the grill behind the counter. The grill boy was staring at me with surprise, the soup ladle still in his hand. He didn’t have his sunglasses on, this time, or his camel’s-hair coat or his plantation hat. He was wearing a chili-stained cook’s apron, tied over a white shirt and black pants. But I recognized his curls and his milk mustache and his high-yellow face instantly. When he smiled, I saw the diamond in his teeth twinkle like a signet.
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