“Do I look like a cop?”
He stared for a moment and then laughed. “No, mon, for real you don’t. Go on in and enjoy yourself.”
The inside was far bigger than it appeared from the street, not wide but long. Rusted industrial fixtures hung from the rafters, dropping bright cones of light through the smoky haze. A makeshift bar ran along one side of the room, a small stage was set against the middle of the other, tables and chairs and a few ratty booths were scattered around the edges of a dance floor. The place smelled like spilled beer and sweet tobacco and the sizzling fat of barbecue. A loud band was playing on the stage, most of the tables were taken, the dance floor was already crowded.
“Ooh, lookie that,” said Derek, leaning toward my ear and shouting over the pounding music. He pointed to the dance floor with his chin. “That’s a caboose and a half. I’d like to hitch up my locomotive to them booty cheeks.”
“Can we just find who we’re looking for?” I shouted back.
“In due time, bo. But first we have to scope out the opportunities.”
“Well, we’re being scoped ourselves right now, I can tell you that.” And we were. Heads turned when we walked into the bar, and they remained turned as they registered my presence.
“You shouldn’t have worn that suit,” shouted Derek.
“I don’t think it’s the suit.”
He gave me a quick up-and-down. “You are a little pasty, I must say.”
“Are you really Barnabas’s cousin?”
“I’m a friend of a friend of a cousin, but that’s close enough to count around here. There’s an empty booth over there.”
As we edged our way through the dancers, a man bashed his shoulder into mine and turned without apologizing. Derek stopped for a moment to dance with a woman in tight jeans who was sashaying by herself to the music. I pulled him away by the sleeve, and together we slipped into a booth with ripped leatherette seats and a scarred wooden table.
“Why did you yank at me for?” he said. “She was into me.”
“What’s the plan?” I said.
“Loosen up, bo. Really, now. A place like this, you got to groove to the island rhythms. Undo your tie, unbutton your collar, lay back, blow a little weed, relax.”
“I don’t want to groove, and I don’t blow weed. All I want is to find some answers.”
“Okay, cool. I admire a man knows what he wants. The guy I need to talk to is at the bar. You see him? Dude in the overalls with the black porkpie and tats up and down his arms?”
“Dark glasses?”
“That’s the one.”
“Big, isn’t he?”
“He’s got guns, I’ll say that for him. And his arms aren’t tiny neither. His name’s Antoine. He’s sort of a free agent, flits from group to group, is allied with no one so is accepted by everyone. Takes odd jobs even as he works for his own agenda.”
“What agenda is that?”
“Hard to say. He’s like a community rabble-rouser.”
“I bet.”
“Let me go on up, fetch us some beers, maybe invite him to join us for a drink. He’ll know who’s selling the stuff. But you can’t rush these things, bo. You got to wait until the time is ripe. Until then there are a couple of sweet things at the bar that are waiting for a little Derek. You see the one with the hair, giving me the eye?”
“Is that what she’s doing?”
“Want me to bring one back for you?”
“Just a beer and your friend, please.”
“While we’re here, Victor, we might as well enjoy ourselves.”
I didn’t think that was going to happen.
Derek stood, bobbed his body to the music. “Be back in a flash.”
I sat in the booth, eyed the whole of the shack as Derek made his way to the bar, felt my paranoia grow. This was not my usual crowd. I didn’t really have a usual crowd, more loner than joiner am I, but whatever that crowd might be, the denizens of an outlaw reggae shack in the wilds of North Philly certainly didn’t qualify. I sat with my hands clasped on the tabletop, my knuckles whitening, and waited for Derek. Despite his promise, he didn’t seem on the verge of returning. He stood at the bar, hitting on a pair of tightly packed women, leaving me in limbo.
I saw more and more faces turn in my direction. Wondering what the hell I was doing here, no doubt. I was wondering the same thing. A small group seemed to be staring my way. I glanced away and then glanced back. They started moving toward me. I looked for Derek, he was focused on a very stretched tank top. The group got closer. Things were starting to get tense.
Then I saw an apparition move across the dance floor, broad-shouldered, thick-necked, with a countenance of angry irritation. He had grizzled gray hair, and wore a white smock smeared with blood, and as he walked slowly toward me, the group that had been heading in my direction halted their progress and stepped aside as if the old man were death itself.
Or maybe I was projecting.
He came right up to my table, placed his fists, knuckles down, on the wooden surface, leaned forward, stared at me with pitiless eyes.
“Who the devil are you?”
“Victor?” I said, my voice a questioning squeak.
“Where you hear about this place?”
“From Derek. He’s Barnabas’s cousin.”
“I don’t have no cousin Derek. What the blazes you want here, man?”
“Goat?”
He tilted his head, narrowed his eyes, stared at me for a long moment.
“Jerked or curried?” he said finally.
“Is the curry hot?”
“Hot enough for the likes of you.”
“Done,” I said. “And a Red Stripe, please.”
He stared a moment more, pursing his lips, and then he turned around and made his slow way back toward the dance floor. When he reached the group that had been eyeing me, he stopped, stared at them for a moment without saying anything, shook his head, and moved on. The group took a hard look back before retreating to the bar.
A few minutes later, Derek slipped into the seat across from me and plopped three Red Stripes on the table. The guy with the massive arms and the porkpie hat sat down next to me and slid over until I was pressed against the wall. He turned and stared, his eyes hidden completely by his dark glasses.
“You see that girl at the bar with those thighs and the rack?” said Derek. “Man, she was all over my ass. Shaking her thing like I wasn’t getting a good enough view as it was with the way her top was like three sizes too small. She might have been a size four in grade school, but that was before she started eating a whole haunch of cow for lunch. Oh, man, going to have to give her a free sample tonight, no doubt about it.”
“Can we get to it?” I said.
“Sure, man. No problem. I’m just saying did you see that rack?”
“Derek.”
“Calm yourself down. We’re just having a friendly here. Bo, this is my pal Antoine. Antoine, this here is my lawyer, Victor Carl.”
“Pleased to meet you,” I said.
Antoine grunted.
“Antoine here is the one with all the answers,” said Derek. “Funny thing, though, bo, he didn’t like them questions you was asking. So he’s got a question of his own.”
Antoine turned his head and stared at me a bit more.
“Antoine wants to know,” said Derek, “why you so interested in who’s selling that Black Cat. And since, bo, you never done told me, I didn’t have an answer for him.”
I glanced at Antoine. He seemed like he would just as soon crush my skull with those arms of his than hear any of my legal tap dancing. In times like these, I’ve found, when your body, if not your soul, is in mortal danger and there seems to be no way out, sometimes all that is left is for you to tell a story. And it better be a good one. And if you to want to tell a good story, among a pack of males, there’s one perfect opening line.
“There was this girl,” I said.
14
There was th
is girl.
I first spied her when she brought me an espresso in a coffee bar in Old City. She had bronze skin, dark hair, a lovely, suggestive mouth. I was taken breathless at first sight. When you saw her, you envisioned a certain kind of life, a private life ennobled by a singular obsession with a singular woman. Secret passions, teeming emotions, long walks by the river, sex on the rooftop, foreign films, visits to Paris, bad poems, summers at the lake, shared memories, her head on your shoulder as the years twirled around the stillness of your love. You looked at her and you saw it all, uncoiling, and when she turned away to clear another table, it vanished, quick as that, and you felt strangely bereft.
That was Julia.
Of course I was smitten, from the very first. With her looks and her body, she was many steps out of my league, except there was something about her, some sweet passivity, maybe, that made anything seem possible. She had no humor of her own, but she laughed at my jokes. She didn’t talk much about her life, but she seemed interested in mine. I didn’t expect that she would go out with me, but I couldn’t not ask. I figured there was no way she would sleep with me, but I couldn’t not try. It was inconceivable that she would actually marry me, but I couldn’t not propose. And at each step of the process, she acceded to my ever-more-desperate requests, as if she were being swept off on a voyage not of her choosing but one she couldn’t bring herself to halt.
And so we were engaged.
“You a dog,” said Derek.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding.
“And the sex?”
“What about it?”
“Was it rocking?”
“Derek, don’t be a jerk.”
“But he’s smiling, isn’t he? Look at that boy smile, Antoine. Bo, you a down-and-dirty dog.”
“Maybe. But this is what I discovered: In love, as in boxing, it is always dangerous to move up in class.”
“So what happened?”
“What had to happen,” I said. “She left me and broke my heart. Up and married a urologist instead.”
Antoine laughed.
“A urologist,” said Derek. “That is cold.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Still hurts?”
“Like someone ripped out my spleen.”
Just then the old guy with the bloody smock, Barnabas, showed up at our table with a tray. He slammed down a bottle of Red Stripe in front of me, spun a bowl with a light brown stew over rice onto the table, dropped a napkin and fork beside it.
“Goat,” said the old man.
“Freshly killed?” said Derek.
“Listen close, you can still hear the bleat,” said the old man.
“What are those?” I said, pointing my fork at some white chunks. “Potato?”
“Cho-cho,” said the old man, staring at me, waiting for me to taste the concoction. “And them yellow things is Scotch bonnets. That’s the heat.”
I speared a small piece of meat with my fork, stuck it in my mouth, gave it a careful taste.
“My gosh, that’s good,” I said. “That’s just terrific.”
Barnabas beamed.
“‘My gosh, that’s good,’” said Derek in a radio announcer’s voice. “Could you be more white?”
“But it is,” I said, and I wasn’t just blowing smoke, though the curry was hot enough. The stew was surprisingly delicious, the meat tender and tasty, the cho-cho and onions sweet. I pushed the yellow Scotch bonnets to the side, but my tongue still burned. I grabbed the Red Stripe, took a deep pull. The beer tasted like it was made purely to wash down curried goat.
Derek leaned toward the stew. “It does smell good. Get me some of that, old man.”
“Anything for my cousin,” said Barnabas.
Derek winced. “Sorry about that. Hey, Antoine, you want some goat?”
“Nah, mon,” said Antoine, in a thick Jamaican accent. “Just another bokkle Red Stripe, maybe.”
“Goat, the other red meat,” I said. “Who would have figured?”
“Another curry, then, and some more beers when you got the chance,” said Derek. “All this listening about old love, it builds up a thirst.”
“Old love?” said Barnabas.
“Victor here was telling us about the girl that broke his heart,” said Derek. “You still pine for her, bo?”
“Every day,” I said.
The old man looked at me for a moment and then eased himself into the seat beside Derek.
“There is always one,” said Barnabas.
“Don’t we know it,” said Derek with a sad shake of his head.
“I been married, it’s been now more than thirty-five years,” said Barnabas. “My wife, she’s a saint. We got children together, grandchildren, a great-grandson just got born. Named after me. My years with my wife have been the happiest of my life. But there is this one girl.”
“You tell it, Pops,” said Derek.
“Melinda. It’s been thirty-seven years since I seen her. Have no idea what the years they done to her. But if Melinda shows up tomorrow and says ‘Let’s go,’ well, you’d need send out the dogs to find me, brother, because I’ll be gone.”
“I believe it,” said Derek.
“Gone.”
“Your wife know?” I said.
“She’s got her own,” he said, “but he’s fat and lazy and can’t get out the house no more. He not coming north, that’s for sure. But Melinda, one never knows.”
He pushed himself out of the seat, sighed an old-man sigh, full of bone weariness and long-accepted regret.
“I can still smell her skin,” said Barnabas. “Smooth and sweet-scented, like polished rosewood.”
“So who is yours, Derek?” I said after the old man had ambled off. “Who is the old love that still haunts?”
“Who, me?” said Derek. “Nah, not me. I’m cool.”
“You lie,” said Antoine.
“Don’t do me like that, Antoine.”
“Derek still in love,” said Antoine. “For always and ever.”
“Shut up, man. All right. No biggie. There was one. Tamiqua.”
“What happened?” I said.
“We were together. From grade school, even. And then I started playing, and she acted like it was some crime, and that was it. She upped with some other slob and moved to New York.”
“Still hurt?”
“I’m over it.”
Antoine laughed. “Hell he is. Tamiqua, she only wanted for Derek a make something better for himself. All Derek wants a do is hang. So now he hangs alone.”
“Not alone.”
“Not with Tamiqua.”
“What about you, big guy?”
Antoine pointed those dark glasses at Derek. “Sam,” he said.
“Samantha,” said Derek, nodding his head.
Antoine tilted his head and stared until Derek involuntarily pulled back.
“Whoa,” said Derek.
There was a moment of awkward quiet.
“What does all this duppy love have a do with Black Cat?” said Antoine.
“It’s my Julia,” I said. “The guy she left me for was murdered on Sunday night, and she’s the main suspect. I’m looking into it and I discovered this.” I pushed away my now-empty plate, took out my wallet, let a few empty plasticine squares float to the table. “She had these on her the night her husband was shot. They were full, along with the whole needle-in-the-arm kit. I just want to know when she got them and why.”
“The why’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” said Derek. “She’s a hophead, your old love.”
“Maybe, but she doesn’t seem like it. And that night I didn’t see any marks on her skin.”
“Got a good look, did you? All the hidden places?”
“Good enough.”
“You are a dog,” said Derek. “The night she kills her husband you’re hooking up with her. Bo, I got to say, I’m almost impressed.”
“The murder happened at a pretty specific time. She told me she was out of the house at the
time, wandering around. But maybe she was wandering over to buy herself a couple of fixes when her husband was being shot in the head. I thought it was worth a try. Her life may be on the line.”
“She broke your heart, she smacking up, she maybe killed that man,” said Antoine. “Why you still a care?”
“Old love,” I said.
Antoine stared at me for a moment with his dark glasses and then said, “When was this killing?”
“Sunday. About eight o’clock at night.”
“You got picture?”
I took a photograph out of my jacket pocket. Antoine and Derek leaned over to get a look.
“Bo,” said Derek, nodding his head.
“Pretty like money,” said Antoine. “And if I get what you need, what promises you make me?”
“Promises about what?”
“About them police, about them lawyers, about keeping Johnny Crow off our backs.”
“The people who get hold of this will only be concerned about the guilt or innocence of the woman. Whatever else is involved, any trouble, I’ll handle it myself.”
Antoine turned to Derek. “You trust him?”
“He’s my lawyer. He got me out of a scrape with a certifiably slick move. Whatever comes up, he can handle it.”
Antoine thought about it for a moment before stuffing the photograph into the center pocket of his overalls. “You don’t want a be disappointing me, Victor Carl,” he said. “Wait here. I be back.”
As soon as Antoine left the booth, Derek leaned forward. “Can you believe that? Big old Antoine going all Brokeback on us. Damn, you never can tell where that shit will start breaking out.”
“Shut up, Derek.”
“Hey, I’m cool with the down low. I’m man enough it don’t threaten me. But Antoine? Damn. I’ll have to watch my step around that big boy, turn off the charm.”
It wasn’t long before Antoine was back at the table. He stood before us, his massive hand on the neck of a young, smooth-faced kid with nervous eyes.
“This likkle bwoy be Jamison,” said Antoine, tightening his grip on the kid’s neck. “And Jamison, he has something he need a tell you.”
15
It was after midnight, and a better man might have been able to stay the hell away, but I am not a better man.
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