by Odie Hawkins
Elijah carefully recounted the money on the dining room table, keeping his voice to a steady monotone as he came to the final figure again. Two thousand, five hundred dollars.
“That’s it, Mrs. Campbell,” he announced in a dry, official tone, “two thousand, five hundred dollars.”
Mrs. Campbell stood with her arms folded across her lank breasts, a vague expression on her face. “That’s a lot of money, isn’t it? Mr. Adams … I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite so much money at once.”
Elijah’s eyes traveled quickly over the short, green stacks of fifty-dollar bills. Damn! only twenty-five hundred! damn!
“We see that much, and a whole lot more, every day, down at the bank, Mrs. Campbell.”
“Ohhh, yes, I’ll bet you do! I’ll bet you do.” She brightened up slightly as she spoke, thinking of her role in the solution of a crime.
Elijah forced himself to calmly pull out his carefully designed receipt book, an expensive creation by a thug buddy who had majored in printing in Statesville. He scribbled twenty-five hundred, Mrs. H.T. Campbell, dated the receipt and with a flourish, signed, “Donald T. Adams, special investigator, Security Division, First National Bank.”
“Here you are, Mrs. Campbell.” He handed her the receipt, opened his small attache case, a relic from his pots ’n pans day, carefully arranged the money inside, clicked it closed and reached to shake Mrs. Campbell’s hand.
He had toyed with the idea of using a diplomatic courier’s wrist chain, doing a superdramatic bit of clicking the bracelet on his wrist and locking the other end to the attache case, but decided against it because it might seem too corny.
Mrs. Campbell squeezed his hand tightly with both of hers. “My … uhhh … everything will be all right, won’t it, Mr. Adams? I mean …”
He fixed a kind, gentle, warm expression on his face and reassured her. “Your money is absolutely safe with First National, Mrs. Campbell, please be assured of that … your receipt is a double safeguard.”
He moved quickly to the door, hating the pitiful, trusting puppy dog look in her eyes. “Once again, Mrs. Campbell, thank you for your cooperation … I’m sure you’ll be very pleased with your bonus interest rates and, I’m not supposed to tell you this …” He opened the door and peeked out theatrically. “Your reward will be two hundred and fifty cash dollars.”
Mrs. Campbell clasped her hands together in delighted surprise, looking, with the gesture, like a TV giveaway prize winner. “Oooooohhhhh!”
Elijah felt a trickle of sweat run down his side. God! the door is open, I’m on my way. “Goodbye, Mrs. Campbell, see you in the newspaper,” he said, and took a step out of the door.
“Oh, Mr. Adams, won’t you need my bankbook?”
It seemed, for a moment, that time was suspended and that Mrs. Campbell’s right hand was floating into her apron pocket and pulling out her bankbook in slow motion. The whole thing! she was giving him the whole thing!
He stared at the little blue book and did some electronic thinking. The bankbook? Today is Thursday, nobody around that I trust at the moment … by Friday, anybody walking in for the other half might get hassled and busted, leading to me … and by Monday it would definitely be unsafe.
He took a step back into the apartment. “No, Mrs. Campbell, your bankbook won’t be necessary. I thought I explained … I will re-deposit your money, or Mrs. MacElroy, one of our administrative assistants, will … and it will be automatically credited to your account by way of our computer coding process.”
Mrs. Campbell shook her head in wonder at all the marvelous, sophisticated ways of the world and pushed her bankbook back down into her pocket. “You people think of everything, don’t you, Mr. Adams?”
“We try to, m’am.” Elijah smiled easily and waved as he started down the stairs. Home free! if the F.B.I. wasn’t waiting in front of the apartment. Home free!
He squared his shoulders and marched out of the court-way, knowing that Mrs. Campbell was digging him from her front window. He turned the corner of the apartment building and felt like running to his car, but decided to be cool and walk … it would never do, to twist an ankle or something, with two and a half grand to be spent … never.
CHAPTER 10
Elijah sprawled out in his favorite easy chair, music on his box, a stick of high-grade grass in the corner of his mouth, slowly roving his eyes around his new apartment. Furnished with all the necessities, ultra delooxe, two hundred and seventy-five a month.
He sucked a bit of smoke into his lungs. Two hundred and seventy-five bucks per month, plus all the other b.s., but it was boss. Yeahhh, outta sight. But this is the way I been wanting it for a long time. Pockets pumped full of stolen coin, a groovy crib, a nice ride, what else do I need?
Without giving it very much serious thought, he reached over and dialed Toni Mathews’ number, the exchange memorized now. After four rings he was about to hang up, to forget all about it, when Toni’s voice came through, heavy from sleep.
“Hellooooooo?” She stifled a giant yawn. All of his rehearsed rhetoric, all of the violent language he had planned to release in her ear, whenever he caught her on the phone, skidded out into left field. He settled back in his chair to rap, opened up with as mellow a tone as his voice could manage. “Heyyyy there, Miss Lady … this is brother Elijah.”
“Who?” she asked.
His body stiffened slightly. She had to be jivin’… behind all the messages he had left.
“Me, baby … Mr. Elijah Brookes, the First,” he answered coldly, falling back slightly into his groove.
“Ooooohhh, hi ya doin’, luv?” she responded warmly, all trace of sleep and b.s. gone from her voice. “Say, look, I know you’ve been tryin’ to reach me …”
“For weeks, almost.”
“Yeah, I can dig it; I’ve just been so tied up with one thing and another. Look, could I ask you to please call me back a li’l later? Say, a couple hours from now? I’ve got some business that I absolutely must take care of, within the next half-hour, if I don’t, my name will be mud junior.”
Elijah took a deep hit on the joint, his head throbbing suddenly with a frustrated headache. “Yeah, I can do that. Are you definitely sure you want me to?”
For a few seconds it seemed that her connection had died in his ear, or that she had covered up the receiver. “You know I do,” she finally answered, her voice firm and honest.
“Awright, later then.”
He slowly replaced the receiver, feeling elated and depressed at the same time. What is it the old people used to say?… “the melon that you’ve waited the longest to steal usually tastes the sweetest.”
He laid his head back on the headrest and pulled hard on the joint. Was she worth it? Up to this point he had been so involved with the pursuit part that he had never really considered any other section. Is she worth it?
He blew a small jet stream of smoke up to the ceiling, floating into the lived-in voice of Billie Holiday singing “Sophisticated Lady.”
The softly clanging chimes startled him. Who could it be? Only three people, aside from the telephone company, knew where he lived.
He eased over to the fisheye peephole in the front door. Two white dudes. Who could they be? and how could they have gotten in without buzzing? And they told me that this fuckin’ place was well-guarded.
One of the dudes rang again. And again. And again. Elijah felt paranoia creeping up the back of his skull. Pigs? Yeah! pigs!
He raced away from the front door, snatched his wallet from the dresser, grabbed his leather jacket from the closet and made tracks to the back door.
Damn!
He stopped dead in front of the back door, his hand reaching out for the knob. If it was the pigs, they probably had twice times the number of people at the back door as they had at the front. He flung his jacket down on the kitchen table in disgust, tears swelling up in his eyes. Goddamn it to hell!
He shuffled back through the apartment, the chimes clanging in his
ears like doom bells, arrogantly lit a half-smoked joint and strolled to the door. What the fuck! why not go out with style?
“Yeah! who could it be?” he asked sarcastically.
“Police!” a bass voice rumbled back at him.
He opened the door and graciously waved the two swarthy, tallish, well-built men into the apartment, insolently blowing smoke into their faces as they passed by him.
“Uhh, may I see some I.D., officers? Do y’all have a search warrant? Are you sure you’re in the light place? Lots o’ mistakes been happenin’ these days, you know?”
The shortest of the two, the six-footer, playfully punched Elijah on the shoulder.
“Relax, relax, Elijah. We ain’t the cops.” The other man strolled in, looking around carefully, sat in Elijah’s easy chair, pulled out a German luger and laid it in his lap, his face a mask.
Without asking, he knew who they were now. His shoulders slumped a little. Were they going to throw him out of the window? the way they had done Duke “Dice” Manson, a few years back? or break his thumbs, the way they had done the Jewish call girl a few weeks ago? The newspapers had printed a lot of bullshit, all of the In people knew what had gone down.
Or were they just going to kill him?
“What can I do for you guys?” he asked in a shaky voice, measuring the distance he’d have to cover to the door, dodging luger shells.
The luger man reached into his inside breast pocket and passed his partner a sheet of paper.
The man standing in front of him spoke with a cold smile on his lips. “Browney, your friend, sent us over to remind you that you owe him, as of today, exactly one thousand, two hundred bucks and ten cents interest, plus two hundred bucks. You wanna pay all or part of it now?”
Elijah looked at him as though he were speaking a lost language. “How much?” He finally worked the question out.
“One thousand, two hundred and ten cents plus two hundred. Which comes to one thousand, four hundred ’n ten cents. You hard o’ hearin’?”
The luger man’s face creased in an animal grimace that was meant to be mistaken for a smile.
Elijah’s shoulders slumped a little more.
“Uhh, nawww, hah hah hah … I, uhhh … I just hadn’t realized it was that much.”
“That’s how much it is,” the man in the chair spoke for the first time. “How much do you wanna give us? the whole pie or just a piece?”
Elijah could feel the nervous tic creep up his cheek and felt powerless to prevent it. “Dig, fellas … I’m a li’l low right in through here, I got a deal that’s about to go down.”
“How much, man?” the luger man cut in.
“Well, I can give you a couple bills now … and then, when my … uhhh … deal comes through …”
“Fuck the con, Elijah, we want the dough.”
Elijah dug down into his wallet and pulled out four fifties from the rest of the bills in the wallet.
The man in the easy chair slid out of it, his piece in Elijah’s face, as his partner snatched his wallet out of his hands and pulled the rest of the bills from it. He fanned the bills out like cards, three hundred dollars’ worth, divided the money with his partner and said, “That’s it, huh? two hundred on your account.”
“Not unless you gon’ add that other three!?” Elijah shot in, his anger at being robbed overcoming his fear.
Both of the men laughed. “Nawww, we don’t include that. Let’s just call that a gift from you to us.”
“A gift?!”
“Yeah,” the luger man added, “a gift for not breakin’ your fuckin’ head.”
Elijah looked down slightly, not wanting to give any provocation at this point.
The two men moved, in step, to the door. “We don’t make but two visits, Elijah … remember that.” The taller of the two held up one finger to indicate that they had made one already, and slammed out.
Elijah stood in the center of the room, shaking with fear and rage. Dirty, rotten, cold-blooded motherfuckers! Dirty rotten …
He stumbled to his chair, feeling wasted. Son-bitches! opened his wallet to stare at the empty space left by the removal of his money. Oh well, I guess if you play with the bull you got to get a li’l horn sometimes.
Feeling a bit steadier after a few minutes of serious thinking, he eased into his bedroom and lifted the mattress … six hundred dollars’ worth of fifty-dollar bills stared back at him.
How much have I paid that leech? Seven, eight hundred bucks? and it still goes on. How much did the muscle say I owed? A grand-four hundred.
He picked up two of the fifty-dollar bills and stuffed them into his pocket. One thousand and four hundred bucks … not really too much, really.
All I got to do is make another big score and I can pay the whole business off for good. The mistake I been makin’, he rationalized, is tryin’ to pay it off in bits ’n pieces.
Leaning closer to stare at his bloodshot eyes in his dresser mirror, he smiled cutely at his image. Things weren’t really too bad … just a momentary scare, a mirror hassle that could be squared away. Anything that could be squared away with money was a minor hassle, no more, no less.
Feeling braver, he grazed his right hand across his chin. Think I’ll do myself a close shave and get out into these terrible streets, see what I can catch … I need a li’l relaxation.
Elijah stood at the long bar, a tall, fancy drink in front of him, squeaky clean, staring at Toni Mathews. Caesars. Yeah, Caesars would we the kind of place she’d go to … half-ass plush, filled to the brim with upper-crust slicksters.
He took a short sip of his drink, to wet his lips, stiffened his back as he made his way through the tables to her table.
He approached her at an oblique angle, just as she and the five other people stood up to leave. Three men and three women. Which one of the men was her man?
The angle of their exit placed him behind them … he moved a little quicker. Ain’t no way I’m gon’ let you get away.
He eased up behind her in the velveteen-draped foyer. “Well, well … if it ain’t Mizz Toni, herself.”
She turned to him with a seductive curl to her mouth. “Hi you doin’, Elijah …! I saw you at the bar and I was goin’ to come over to you but I could see that you were comin’ to me. I thought you were goin’ to call back this afternoon?”
Elijah cocked his head to one side. After all the times he had tried to reach her, and finally did, she would manage to snag him on a technicality. He noticed her friends moving a discreet distance away, evidently they were all just friends and nothing more. “Uhhh, well, somethin’ came up that sort of tuned everything out, including the return call. Say, look, why don’t we stop this Mickey Mouse bullshit …?”
“Toni!?” one of the men called to her.
“Be right with you, Bob,” she signalled to him.
“Tell me,” Elijah rushed on, “either you have some time for me or you don’t. Now which is it gon’ be?”
She patted him on the cheek and he didn’t know whether or not he dug it. “You’re a pretty direct type dude, aren’t you?”
“Gotta be, baby … life is too short for a bunch o’ jive.”
They stared into each other’s eyes for a few hot seconds, a nice visual suggestion being created.
She dug down into her purse …
“Oh oh, here we go again,” he cracked.
“Nope, not really,” she said and scribbled her address on the back of one of her cards. “Look, I gotta run now. I’m havin’ a few people over tomorrow night. Can you make it? We can sit off in a corner somewhere and rap.”
Elijah gave the card an elaborately shaped kiss. “I’ll be there with bells on.”
“Beautiful! see you,” she sang out and glided away.
He watched her join her circle of people, joining and leading, he noticed. She sho’ is a bad bitch. He stood rooted to the spot like a love-struck mark, smelling the subtle scent she had trailed behind her, her way of talking, the thing she ha
d with her hands, her … her … her her-ness, he finally decided after struggling for a complete description of what she was in his eyes.
He became conscious of several dudes standing off to one side, checking him out with cynical, cold smiles on their faces. He pocketed the card and turned away abruptly … I better be cool, people’ll be thinkin’ that I got my nose open.
“Man can’t never tell what he gon’ do ’til he gets in that situation.”
Elijah patiently mumbled, “Right on,” to Home’s soliloquy, his mind miles away. At any other time he might have dug the barber’s constant, lightweight folktalking, but for now, he felt himself going up and down. Why couldn’t he just go on and cut hair?
“And to top it off,” Home swept grandly from one section of his spirit life to another, “would you b’lieve this chick comes to the door after I done sat out front on the steps, drinkin’ moonshine ’n cryin’… she comes to the door and says, ‘Home, whatchu doin’ out here? why didn’t you knock so I could let you in? You gonna catch yo’ death o’ cold, or get the piles sittin’ out there! come on in, baby!’”
“What did you do, Home? kick her teeth down her throat?” Elijah asked, feeling obligated to snake some sort of moral comment.
“Nawww, nawww … if I’da lissened to my first mind, that’s what I woulda done, but the minute she put them steamin’ hot arms ’round my neck I just melted. And I ain’t jivin’ when I say I had actually felt my knees buckle when I passed the bedroom window and seen Joe Gales’ ol rusty black ass doin’ the rooty tooty.”
The customers sitting along the wall, waiting their turn, cracked up. The bursts of laughter jacked Elijah’s spirits up a bit, taking his mind away from the blues.
“So, don’t tell me what a man won’t do, ’specially when it come to a woman.”
Home flashed his big kidney-shaped mirror in front of Elijah’s face for his approval.
Elijah carefully studied the contoured lines of his natural. No doubt about it, Home was a helluva barber, worth driving halfway across the city for.