I smirked at her.
Uncle John said, “Juanita excuse us for a moment. I’ll talk to some people over at Faith Tabernacle and see if there’s anything can be done for your problem. Meantime, you keep your head up.”
“Promise you’ll talk to somebody?”
“I ever told a lie?” he asked her.
She smiled and walked away.
“I notice she didn’t answer,” I said.
Uncle John reached for the Daily News folded and resting by the table’s edge. I had it in my grasp before he could secure it.
That got him to look at me.
He smirked in a similar fashion as I’d done with Juanita. Smirked and went back to eating his food. I sat silently as he worked the meat off the bone, and then started to work on the bone itself.
“You know Darren Sweet?” I asked.
I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but he said, “A man shouldn’t be interrupted during a meal.”
“Two hundred and above.”
He frowned. “How’s that?”
“Your LDL cholesterol, if you keep eating that shit. Consider my interruption a favor.”
“You calling this good food shit? Pinky’s my sister-in-law, boy.”
I smiled. “I’m aware.”
He matched my smile. Then he said, “I see. Well, you’ll have to excuse me, boy. Stupidity has never suited me. And I don’t dumb down to make my company feel comfortable.”
“Is that an insult?”
“It was intended as such.”
“I’ve hurt men for less,” I told him.
He nodded. “I have as well.”
“Darren Sweet…”
“What about him?”
“You know him?”
“I know everyone, boy,” he said, and smiled.
“He seems to believe you mean him harm.”
“That’s funny.”
“Is it?”
“Sure,” he said. “Because, quiet as kept, I hear Darren is among those resting in peace.”
I had been checking the papers and the television news. There had been no mention of the motel murder.
“I notice you don’t seem surprised,” Uncle John said.
“Did you kill him?”
“That’s like asking a woman if her pussy smells like flounder.”
“Did you?”
“I rather cultivate than kill, boy.”
“I’ve heard different.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“I’m in the trenches, boy. Reverence and fear are more related than most realize. I need both in order to help the people.”
“I’ve heard you’re nothing but a street thug.”
“Nevada’s pussy walls must be lined with silk, boy, because you’re sitting here talking real thoughtless.”
Nevada.
My heartbeat ratcheted up.
“What do you know about Nevada?” I barked at him.
He laughed.
I rose to my feet.
“Careful,” he cautioned me.
The young thugs at the first table were on me in an eye blink.
He told them, “It’s okay. Shell isn’t as foolish as he looks. In fact, he’s about to leave.”
They hesitated.
“Go on now,” Uncle John said.
They took a seat, but not at their original table. They hustled the man reading the Walter Mosley novel from the table directly across from us and sat there. I’d never had anyone blatantly glare at me as they did. Never had witnessed so many flared nostrils.
“Now I’m gonna have to get out the hose and go Montgomery, Alabama on them,” Uncle John said. “You got ‘em all riled up, Shell. I truly appreciate this.”
“How do you know my name?” I said.
He laughed.
“If you’ve harmed Nevada…”
“You’ll what?” he said. “I could have you cut into steaks and package you off to your boy Jiang at the Panda House for the mystery meat in his fried rice before you even knew what hit you, boy.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree, Dashiell.”
My blood went cold.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know all about you. Don’t ask how, neither. Just be thankful I have a healthy respect for you.”
“Fuck your respect.”
“You’ve put aside your normal eloquence and gotten street on a nigga. That’s akin to some bitch takin’ off her earrings and rubbing Vaseline on her face. Don’t ever let yourself get that emotional, boy.”
“You’ll see emotion,” I said, “if you call me boy one more time.”
He sighed. “I didn’t kill Darren and I have no idea what happened to Nevada. That’s the truth. Darren was a fool and I’m not surprised he went and got himself killed. That boy was softer than Roseanne’s son.”
“You talk a lot of shit.”
“I do,” he agreed. “And back every bit of it up like it’s a government bond. But I’m telling you the truth here. I don’t have to do this, mind you, but I can appreciate a man with some lead in his dick.”
“This better not be bullshit,” I said. “If I find out you’re involved…”
“There you go again with the threats,” he said. “You interrupt my meal and despite my patience and understanding continue to piss all over everything. This is way fucked up, Shell.”
“I don’t give a fuck about your meal,” I said, meaning it.
“How about this?” he said. “You can go ahead and measure your dick with a ruler, and I can get a yardstick and measure mine”—he smiled—“and we can compare the findings and determine once and for all which one of us is the Lord of the Flies and Everything Else. Or, you can shut the fuck up and listen to me for a moment.”
“I’m listening.”
“Are you?” he asked.
“Start talking.”
He laughed. “Fuck you’re hard. I’m not even mad at that. I’m gonna be nailing some bitch to the mattress tonight thinking about this little interchange. Seriously. This shit warms an old man’s heart. No need for Viagra and red Kool-Aid tonight, boy.”
I didn’t respond.
He shook his head and smirked. “You’re interested in Darren and Nevada,” he said. “You need to be speaking with Cole Enger.”
EIGHTEEN
DESPITE ALL OF THE means of getting to Newark, there is an old joke that details the only true route: “through a multitude of bad decisions”. To say that Newark is a maligned city would be an understatement. Yet I have always appreciated its hidden gems, those things that outsiders just are not privy to. I have always appreciated those who champion the city, too. Cole Enger was quite possibly the biggest of these apostles.
He was born in Maryland, PrinceGeorgesCounty, but through some twist of fate ended up in a predominantly white, affluent town in North Jersey. An All-American football player in high school, he received several scholarship offers, settling on Stanford in Palo Alto, California. He earned a B.A. in political science and an M.A. in sociology. At some point during his scholarship, he dropped football like a bag of bricks. There is quite a bit of confusion on the timetable, but those who recall his gridiron glories say it happened the summer between his sophomore and junior years. Whatever the case, his studies supplanted his past love for the sport. After Stanford, he earned a Rhodes scholarship, studying at The Queen’s College in Oxford, England. Then came HarvardLawSchool, and, despite the vast opportunities that lay before him, a return to his North Jersey roots. Specifically Newark. And not through a multitude of bad decisions but rather a desire to uplift the city. He famously moved into a housing project and worked with his fellow residents to improve the living conditions in the complex. All of this while collecting a meager salary working as an attorney with a community “firm” that specialized not in tax law or class action or malpractice, but in “the downtrodden”.
Some thought Enger to be insane, while others praised him as though h
e was a deity. He shrugged off both sentiments and continued about the work of the people, eventually deciding public office was his calling and securing a grassroots, upset victory in a City Council race.
He was still serving in capacity as councilman with an eye on the mayor’s office. Not odds-on to win, but a very viable candidate nonetheless.
I called his office several times over the course of the day, and, stonewalled each time, decided a more aggressive approach was in order. Now, with a new day’s vibrant sun at my back, I stood in the lobby of his small office with nothing but my surly mood and two calling cards.
“You said Darren Sweet?” the equally surly receptionist before me asked. “And Nevada Barnes?”
She was unhealthily pale, with shocking green eyes and curly red hair, a spray of freckles around her nose. No makeup except for lipstick the bright color of a sports car in a Prince song. The last time she’d smiled was her first time. She hadn’t liked it.
“Let Mr. Enger know that I have some important information regarding the both of them, that I believe he will find compelling.”
“One moment.” And she pressed a button on her phone, and half turned to speak into the receiver. I watched a slice of her profile, but mostly her back. Never had I seen a receptionist actually turn their back on someone standing at their desk while they called in a query.
My synapses fired as I considered both my difficulty in getting through to Enger and his sentry’s odd behavior.
He was hiding something.
But what?
Red, as I’d decided to recognize her in my mind, turned back facing me before I could speculate further. “Mr. Enger is presently engaged,” she said.
“I greatly respect Councilman Enger, but he’s going to have a mountain of trouble if he brushes my concerns off,” I said. “This is a serious matter.”
She frowned and her face became beautiful. Some people are just meant to be sullen. “You didn’t let me finish,” she said.
“Finish.”
“Thank you,” she said. I had a feeling she lived for the last word.
I waited.
“Mr. Enger’s presently engaged,” she repeated. “But he has a brief pause in his itinerary in about one hour. He suggested you meet him for coffee at the shop on the corner.”
“How quaint,” I said.
“Pardon me?” Her frown actually deepened.
I wanted to say, “He has one hour,” but instead I left her with the last word.
I LOOKED OUT THE window at a Brinks truck double-parked in the street and causing a clot of traffic congestion. A man walked past with a black Rottweiler stringing saliva from its immense open mouth. Women in sharp business suits, usually gray, and sneakers, usually white, floated by without glancing in any direction but straight ahead. Several business transactions took place, right there on the sidewalk. A couple of them had even been legal.
“A great city we have here, isn’t it?”
I looked up at Cole Enger. His ever-present smile was in full bloom. He wore pressed blue slacks and an expensive short-sleeve white shirt. Tan leather shoes. A dark-face watch with a diamond at the twelve slid down his wrist. His hair was wavy and shorn close. Face freshly shaved. Dark eyes and skin the color of cocoa butter lotion. He still had the build of a wide receiver—long-limbed, impressive hands, and just enough bulk to make a door shudder if he rammed it with one of his wide shoulders.
“I’m not a resident,” I told him.
“And I was just about to subtly solicit your vote,” he said, pursing his lips in mock disappointment.
“Why don’t you have a seat,” I said. “I’ll try to not take up too much of your time.”
“I should probably grab my daily jolt of caffeine first.”
“Come here often?”
“Yes,” he said. “I find it difficult to function without my java.”
“I asked one of the girls if you were in here a lot,” I said. “She claims to have only seen you a handful of times.”
“I’m a busy man,” he said, without missing a beat. “Unfortunately intent isn’t always actualized.”
I nodded.
He sighed and stepped away for a moment, grabbed a peach Snapple from a freestanding cooler and left a five on the order counter. His chair squealed slightly when he dropped down across from me.
“I’m off to a bad start, I’m afraid,” he said to me. “If you were law enforcement, at this moment you’d be parsing my little white lie for greater meaning.”
“How do you know I’m not law enforcement?”
His smile would have gotten him my vote if I lived in the city. “Just a hunch. I hope you haven’t taken offense.”
“I haven’t.”
“Perhaps my equilibrium would return if I knew what it was you required of me, Mister…”
“Shell.”
“Mr. Shell?”
“Just Shell.”
“People with one name are usually enigmas,” he noted.
“Present company not excluded.”
He smiled again, at ease. “You mentioned Darren and Ms. Barnes to my girl Friday,” he said.
“Do you know them?”
“Yes, though not all that well,” he said, surprising me. He must have picked up something on my face because he added, “Despite my little slip a moment ago, I am a man of candor, Shell. My civic purpose requires as much.”
“How did you come to know the two of them?”
“In all due respect, Shell, unless the FBI has an altogether new recruitment stratagem, I’m not sure what your interest is. You’re asking questions clothed in grand jury intrigue. I don’t know what to make of that.”
“My interest is Nevada,” I said.
“I see.”
“We were involved at one time,” I explained. And it dawned on me that he might be her latest love interest. “It’s a history neither one of us is interested in revisiting.”
A mostly true statement.
“My own involvement with Ms. Barnes isn’t like that,” he said. “You needn’t worry about a pissing contest with me where she’s concerned.”
“She’s gone missing,” I said.
He nodded and a look of dismay flitted across his face. It seemed genuine. “I was out of the country for a diplomatic initiative I won’t bore you with the details of. I just got back in town late yesterday and heard the news. I’ll be reaching out to those I know in the police department to make sure the situation with Ms. Barnes is given the proper attention.”
“I would hope that to be the case,” I said, and cleared my throat. “I’ve heard some rumors that Nevada was involved in…Considering where she went missing from I’m concerned her disappearance will be written off as a deal gone bad.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You’re speculating about a drug transaction?”
I did not answer.
It took him a moment. “Prostitution?”
“I’ve heard rumors,” I said, a catch in my voice.
“Darren and Ms. Barnes both have done some work with my campaign. I don’t claim to know Ms. Barnes like a physician knows the Hippocratic Oath, but what I do know of her makes that rumor absurd.”
He would never know how much those words strengthened me. “Why was Darren Sweet disbarred?”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t tell you even if I knew.”
“He and Nevada were mixed up in something together.”
“It’s my understanding they were friends. You aren’t suggesting anything nefarious?”
“You’re familiar with Uncle John?”
Almost imperceptibly, his nostrils flared. “I am.”
“I’d been trying to track down Sweet to get a handle on Nevada.”
“I’m sure Darren wouldn’t be involved with Ms. Barnes’s disappearance. As I said, they’re friends.”
“I’d been asking around and Sweet called me,” I said.
“Oh?”
“He wasn’t too happy about my prying into his life
. He thought I was with Uncle John. He was scared to death.”
“I’m certain that’s in your head, Shell,” he said, and took the first sip of his peach Snapple. A bit missed his mouth and splashed his shirt. He wiped it with the back of his hand and shook his head. “You should see me eating spaghetti.”
“I’ve talked to Uncle John and he accepts no responsibility for either Nevada or Sweet’s disappearances. He suggested I talk with you.”
“I’m afraid he’s sent you on a wild goose chase, Shell.”
“Something about you rings false,” I said.
“What did you say?”
“There’s something here you aren’t telling me.”
“You have me confused with someone else, Shell. I’m not as involved as Uncle John would lead you to believe. I’d return my focus back to him if I were you.”
“I’ll keep my eyes on the both of you.”
He nodded. “Do that.”
“Sweet was frightened that Uncle John meant him harm. It wasn’t an act. And I know Uncle John is capable. You know it, too. Why would he lead me to you, though? How do you figure in all of this?”
He rose from his seat and half smiled. “I have to get back, Shell. I’m sure everything will work out okay.”
“Are you?”
“We live in a great city.”
“Absent of crime?” I asked.
“You take care, Shell.” And his smile returned as he caught the attention of one of the girls at the counter. “You have terrific Snapple,” he called to her. “I’ll be sure to come again. Promise.”
I watched him go.
The Brinks truck was gone as well. Traffic was still snarled.
NINETEEN
ONLY A FEW ITEMS for sale remained: a rickety-looking bicycle; a battery-powered, leaf-mulching lawnmower; a small maple bookcase. A handwritten cardboard sign advertising the yard sale was thumbtacked to a telephone pole at the access end of the street. A second sign was taped along the edge of a foldable card table set up on the sidewalk. Parking was forbidden for the day on the yard sale side of the street.
“You have an in with city hall?” I asked the woman on the payee side of the card table.
“Huh?”
“No parking on this side of the street,” I said.
Triage: A Thriller (Shell Series) Page 20