“Homes!” Bo said, as if we were old friends.
Seeing Bo, standing there smiling, infuriated me. I got so angry so quickly that my hands started to shake. In the back of my mind, I knew I couldn’t pick a worse spot to make a move. But the adrenaline had already started up. And I owed Bo. For what he had done to my apartment. For what he had tried to do to me. For what he might try to do again, if I gave him the chance.
I didn’t think about my injuries. I didn’t think about Karen, waiting in the car. I didn’t think about anything but Bo’s razor and the wild, drugged-out look in his eyes when he’d come at me in my living room. Before he could open his mouth again, I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the Gold Cup, unlocking it with my thumb.
A couple of the junkies cried out, “No, man!” And one of them jumped up and ran toward the kitchen at the back of the room.
Bo stared at the pistol with horror, transfixed by it for a split second. Before he could react, I reached across the counter and grabbed him by the front of the apron, pulling him right up to the barrel, so that the front sight pressed against his lips. He dropped the ladle on the floor and started trembling. His eyes crossed, trying to stare down the gun barrel.
“No!” he shrieked in his girlish voice. “Oh, Jesus, don’t!”
I yanked him over the counter, knocking over coffee cups and sugar bowls. Hot coffee flew everywhere. The junkies nearest to where I was standing jumped off their stools. One of them fell off his, and went crawling backward on his hands toward the far wall.
I pulled Bo to his feet and pinned him against the wall by the grill, so I could see the whole room in front of me. No one went for a gun or a knife. No one was going to try. I could see it in their faces. All they cared about was not getting hurt by the wild honkie with the automatic.
I ground the gun barrel into Bo’s face.
“You going to do some cutting, Bo?” I said to him.
His eyes rolled back and he screamed. He tried to pull away, his feet flying around on the linoleum floor as if he were on roller skates. But I had a good grip.
“Where’s your boss?” I said to him, and smacked him on the scalp with the gun.
He shrieked again. And I hit him again.
His scalp started pouring blood. It spurted over his apron and over me. I wanted to hit him a few more times. I would have—I was that enraged—if someone with a deep, calm voice hadn’t called out: “That’s enough, brother.”
I looked away from Bo toward the counter. A tall, good-looking black man in another apron was standing in the aisle between the stools and the wall. He had a shotgun in his hands. For a second, I thought I was dead. Then I realized the man wasn’t training the shotgun on me—he was cradling it in his arms, as if it were just for show. Still, I almost shot at him. I was that close to gut reaction.
“No, no, no,” he said softly, as if he were reading my mind. “Ain’t gonna be no shooting.”
I took a deep breath and let Bo go. He slipped to the floor at my feet, groaned, and started to crawl around on all fours. I stared at the man with the shotgun, trying to figure out why he hadn’t shot me. Unlike the junkies in the chili parlor, he was stocky, almost healthy-looking. His face was light brown, handsome, with something unexpectedly gentle about his large black eyes.
While the guy with the gun and I were staring at each other, Bo managed to crawl around in a full circle at my feet. He grabbed at my trousers legs, pulled himself up, and stared at me desperately, as if he thought he’d found help. When he wiped the blood from his face and focused his eyes, he shrieked and let go of my pants. One of the junkies laughed shrilly, like a mynah bird. I pushed Bo away and he fell on his back. He just lay there pawing the air, like an upturned bug.
I stared at Bo for a second then looked back at the black man with the shotgun, to see how he’d react. He didn’t do anything. I still couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t shot me—a wild-eyed white man waving a pistol and beating up his friend. Then it dawned on me that he must have known who I was and that he didn’t want me dead—at least, not until he’d gotten his goods back.
“You’re LeRoi, aren’t you?” I said to him, lowering my pistol but keeping my finger on the trigger.
“I’m LeRoi, man,” he said, in his deep, soft voice—a choir bass.
“You’re his boss?” I asked, pointing with the gun at Bo, who had flipped himself over and was now making his way on hands and knees down the aisle.
“He work for me some, yeah.”
I raised the pistol and pointed it at LeRoi’s head. LeRoi blanched.
“Wha’chu doing?” he said with a questioning look.
“Put the shotgun down,” I said to him in a tough voice.
He hesitated a moment, then laid the shotgun on the lunch counter.
“Now, you think I’ve got something of yours, LeRoi,” I said. “But I don’t,”
“I don’t know what you talking about,” he said icily. The gentle look in his eyes had disappeared. Replaced by something tough and controlled—something much tougher than the stuff that Bo was made of.
“I think you do,” I said. “If you want to talk about it, you give me a call tonight. You know my number and my address. If you forgot, ask him.”
I kicked Bo in the butt and sent him sprawling on his face. I backed toward the door, keeping the pistol trained on LeRoi. He didn’t take his eyes off me. I opened the door and walked outside, pocketing the pistol as I left.
29
IT WASN’T until I started back across Vine Street that I began to pay the price for my hijinks. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking, and as the adrenaline washed away, my spine started to hurt like a son of a bitch. I’d wrenched it, pulling Bo across the counter. The spasms were bad enough to make me take small steps and pause in between them.
Worse than the pain was the effect my antics had had on Karen. I’d forgotten that she could see partway into LeRoi’s chili parlor from where she was sitting in the car. I hoped she’d missed the worst of it—the tussle with Bo and the business with the shotgun. But there was little doubt in my mind that she’d seen some of what happened and that it had probably terrified her.
I knew my suspicions were right when I saw her jump out of the car as soon as I’d crossed Vine. She came running up the snowy sidewalk toward me.
“What happened in there?” she said breathlessly, giving me an anguished look. “I couldn’t see through the window. You disappeared inside. Then people started running around, and I had no idea what was going down. I almost called the cops, for chrissake!”
I could see from her face that she was close to tears and very angry.
“I’m all right,” I said, trying to smile reassuringly.
“All right!” she shouted. “You’ve got blood on your cheek!”
I wiped my cheek and glanced back over my shoulder at LeRoi’s Silver Star. “Let’s just get out of here, okay?”
She eyed me furiously. “You son of a bitch!” she said. “Don’t you care about yourself? Don’t you care about me?”
Her pouty lip started to tremble, and she turned away and walked stiff-legged back to the Pinto.
When I got inside the car, she was holding her hands over her face, breathing heavily. I stared at her guiltily.
“Karen...” I reached out to touch her.
She dropped one hand and pushed me away. “Don’t you touch me!” she shouted.
She covered her face again. I knew she wasn’t just crying over me. It was the whole day—the toll it had taken. It was her past coming back to haunt her. It was that bad karma she hadn’t worked off. It was Lonnie. But it was also me, and I felt bad about it.
“I’m sorry, Karen,” I said heavily.
“At least I knew where I stood with Lonnie,” she said bitterly. “At least I could predict what he was going to do.” She took a couple of deep breaths.
“All right,” she said, her hands still tented over her eyes. She pulled her hands down to her mouth and rested
them against her lips. “What happened?” she said, staring at me over her fingertips.
“The guys that Lonnie got the crack from live in that chili parlor,” I said. “One of them was the kid who tried to carve me up in my apartment. When I saw him...I lost my temper.”
“You’re hurt!” she said through her teeth. “You’re supposed to lay off for a while. You crazy bastard.”
“It wasn’t all bad,” I said, blushing. “I made an impression on LeRoi. And LeRoi is the man we’re going to have to deal with.”
She shook her head, helplessly. “What about Norvelle? Did you forget about him?”
“I think we’re going to have to talk to Cal about Norvelle.”
She dropped her hands to her lap and gawked at me. “You are crazy.”
“I told you before, Karen. I didn’t make this scene. I’m just trying to survive it.”
“Sure you are,” she said, shaking her head.
She started the car up and headed south on Vine. As we passed LeRoi’s, I glanced into the chili parlor window. The junkies were sitting at the counter again, their heads bobbing like plastic dogs.
******
It was almost four-thirty when we left the chili parlor, and the sun was already low in the sky, setting in a band of orange behind a bank of dark gray storm clouds. It was going to snow some more in the night. And after the chili parlor and the scene in the car, I was too cold, too hurt, and too generally dispirited to face Cal before nightfall. I told Karen to drive us home—back to the Delores.
She had just turned left on St. Clair, when I happened to glance in the rearview mirror. There was a late-model gray Ford, a cop car, on our tail. At least, I thought it was on our tail. When we got to Burnett, the Ford turned with us, and I was sure he was following us. I was also sure that it was Jordan behind the wheel.
Karen turned into the Delores’s parking lot, with the Ford right on her bumper. Before she could turn off the engine, he’d turned on his siren.
“Harry,” Karen said, giving me a sick look.
“Yeah,” I said, “I know.”
“The whole block knows,” she said over the howl of the siren.
“That’s the way he wanted it.” I got out and walked slowly to the rear of the car. Jordan had parked behind us, on an angle—as if he were blocking off a felony suspect.
I peered through his front window, waiting for him to come out. He just sat there, for a good three or four minutes, watching me shiver. He left the siren running, too—long enough so that everyone in the apartment house had time to plaster themselves against their windows. People on the street had stopped, too, peeking over the snow-covered hedges into the frozen lot.
When Jordan was satisfied that he was commanding sufficient attention, he turned off the siren, got out of the Ford, and walked slowly up to me, a dead grin on his dead-eyed face. He knew how badly I wanted him, and he was enjoying making me squirm in front of the home folks, in front of Karen.
“How ya doing, Harry,” he said. “How’s the back?”
I straightened up. “What do you want, shithead?”
“Nice talk,” Jordan said, shaking a finger at me. “Saw where you paid a visit to your pal LeRoi. He’s an old friend of mine, too. I’ve seen lots of him downtown, Harry. You know about downtown, don’t you? Where we keep the bad guys?
“You know, Harry,” he said, staring at me hard. “It’s a good thing you’ve got friends on the force or you’d be in slam right now. I got your name on the Encantada register. I got a few rocks from the motel. I got the crack from your apartment. I got a Polaroid of you going into that chili parlor. And before too long I’m going to have a witness, Harry, who saw what you and your pal were up to at the Encantada on the night that Jenkins was killed. And when I get a deposition...” He whistled like a fast freight. “We’re going to take another trip downstairs. And this time, no one’s going to stop us.”
“You’ll have to kill me before I give you another chance like that, Jordan,” I said.
“Then that’s what I’ll have to do,” he said, nodding as if the matter were settled. “You called the shot.”
“Don’t count on it being easy,” I said with a smile.
“You pack your bags, Harry, and kiss the little woman good-bye. It won’t be long.” He waved at me with the fingers of his right hand. “See ya.”
Walking back to the car, he got in, turned around, and pulled back out of the lot, spinning his tires on the ice and throwing up a plume of dirty snow in his wake.
30
WHAT JORDAN had said had shaken me up, especially the part about a witness to the murder. I could explain away the rest of it—the name on the register, the crack, LeRoi and Bo. But if someone had seen me coming out of the Encantada office on Friday night, I was in serious trouble. Accessory after the fact, concealing evidence, at the very least. If they really wanted to get ugly, it could be as bad as aggravated homicide. The first thing I did when I got upstairs to the apartment, was phone Al Foster at CPD.
“I just ran into Jordan,” I said to him.
“You’re talking to me again, are you?” Al said in his wheezy, high-pitched voice.
“I guess I am,” I said. “I guess I forgot to say thanks yesterday too.”
“Forget it,” Al said. “What did Jordan want?”
“To put me in jail. He claims he’s got a witness to what went down at the Encantada Motel, the night that the clerk was murdered.”
“What do you care? You weren’t there, were you?”
“I just want to know who the witness is—if there is a witness, if Jordan’s not just jerking me off. You think maybe you could look into it for me?”
“I’ll get back to you,” Al said.
I stared at the phone for a moment, after I’d hung up. Karen came up beside me and put a hand on my shoulder. I patted her hand idly.
“Maybe I should take a trip out to the Encantada,” I said, half to myself.
“It’s past five,” Karen said, staring out the window at the twilight settling on Burnett Avenue. “Don’t you want to rest?”
I looked up at her with a smile. “I thought you were mad at me.”
She shrugged. “I’m mad at the world. I just want this thing to be over with, without either one of us getting hurt.”
I stood up and took Karen by the hand. “Let’s go to bed,” I said, staring into her pale blue eyes.
She smiled at me uncertainly. “You sure you want to? I said some lousy things to you, this afternoon.”
“I’ve got a thick hide,” I said, pulling her to me and guiding her down the hallway.
******
Our lovemaking wasn’t explosive, like it had been in the hotel room. The urge was there, all right, but I could only move awkwardly, because of my back. For the most part, I just lay there and let Karen do the work. She didn’t seem to mind.
After we’d made love, we huddled under the covers for a time, watching the snow blowing outside the bedroom window. The ground cover was reflecting streetlights and car lights, lending the night sky a warm, yellow cast. The bedroom was dark and quiet, save for the wind whistling in the casements. Karen traced a fingertip around my lips, then laid her head on my chest.
“I’m sorry about this afternoon,” she said softly. “I mean about the chili parlor. I wasn’t just mad at you.” She raised her head and slapped my chest lightly with her palm. “Although that was pretty stupid, what you did.”
“Pretty stupid,” I agreed.
She put her head back down. “That place reminded me of another place, in East St. Louis. For almost a year, all Lonnie and I did every day was go down to the junkie restaurant and hang out—nodding off, talking shit, waiting to score. It was a very bad time in my life—maybe the worst, all told. Some awful things happened in the back room of that restaurant.”
She shivered under the covers and I stroked her head, running my hand down her long, smooth neck. “We don’t have to talk about it. I shouldn’t have lost my temp
er in the chili parlor. It was stupid.” I grunted. “In fact, I don’t think I’ve done one smart thing since Lonnie stepped back into my life, except for making love to you.”
I couldn’t see her face, but I could feel her smile against my chest. She stirred under the blankets, pressing herself against me.
“There was something else about this afternoon,” she said in a whisper. “I realized it when I was sitting in the car, waiting for you to come out of that chili parlor.”
“What?” I said.
“I was afraid,” she said guiltily.
I pulled her tight against me. “You had a right to be afraid. It was a scary situation.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Karen said. “I wasn’t just scared for you, although I was scared for you. What I realized was that I’d been afraid for a long time. Ever since I left Lonnie, really. I’ve been holding my breath for two years.”
“I think what you did after you left Lonnie was pretty brave,” I said to her.
She shook her head. “Sure, I uncomplicated my life. But I stopped loving, Harry. I stopped trying to love and started trying to get by. Sometimes in St. Louis I’ll wake up alone in the night, and it’s like Lonnie never happened to me, like I have no past at all. When I feel like that, I have to get up and go look at the kids, just to reassure myself that I do have a history. And then every once in a while, I’ll hear an old song or see an old movie like Woodstock and it’ll all come back. I’ll think, my God, that was me, that was my generation. It’s like, in trying to forget Lonnie, I’ve been hiding out from a whole decade.”
“You kept going forward,” I said. “Like the Marine Corps manual says.”
She laughed feebly. “Sometimes I want to go back. I want to share that with someone. I don’t want to be afraid of my own past.”
“You can share it with me,” I said.
“For how long, though?” she said uncertainly. “He’ll always be there—for both of us.”
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