“What about people around John, people who worked for him?” Then she remembered he’d said previously that Man had been Tall John’s partner back then. “Would Man know?” But Stone seemed back in his stupor.
She called out again at the inner door, “Officer?” Stone began stripping the jumpsuit from his chest and arms as he came toward her. “Think, Stone. Think. Someone wanted, someone put us together in this room so one or both of us would get hurt, hurt each other. Like killing two birds . . . well, you know. You’ll never get out if you don’t back off. Now.”
He pushed the suit to his ankles and stood there naked, fingers flailing with energy. He sprang just as the outer door rattled and then opened. Before the officer could react, Stone wrapped his arms around Salt, and covered her lower face with his horrible mouth, broken teeth and flaccid lips. “That’s for Man,” he whispered, wincing at the first blow from the guard’s baton.
—
SHE REPORTED the incident to Sergeant Huff, filled out the forms, made the institution’s report, but held little hope of anyone finding out who’d allowed the “mix-up,” as they were calling it, that had put her alone with a mentally disturbed, unshackled inmate.
She’d called Wills and he was on his way to meet her at her place. “They wanted to get Stone and me at the same time.” She made the drive home in record time, not caring about speed limits or the possibility of getting stopped. She made it to the driveway, held herself together till she got the car switched off, and went up to the back door to let Wonder out. She got as far with him as the paddock fence before she leaned against the rails and began retching. Squeezing back tears, she attempted to catch her breath, but it sounded to her like she was sobbing. Wonder ran to her, then ran around her barking, as if she were a stranger. “It’s all right.” She reached and held out her unsteady hand. He waited in a sit in front of her until her knees began to register the rough ground and she sat back against the fence, brushing pieces of dirt from her palms. Wonder then lowered himself beside her, where he remained until Wills’ headlights washed over them as he came up the gravel driveway.
MAN
Salt waited in the lot across from Sam’s and the Blue Room. Beyond a weary water oak on the nearby rise, the downtown buildings were dark silhouettes against a dusty-rose sunset. Not much ever changed around Sam’s and its strip mall neighbors, just gradual decay. The large billboard frame overhead was empty. Someone had finally torn down the beeper business sign over one of the storefronts. The amateurishly painted globe on the window of God’s World Ministries looked a little dirtier. Taggers had scrawled obscenities on the posters for a gym advertising cage fights.
Salt tried to forget the stench of Stone’s saliva. She had her own message for Man. People traversing the lot cut their eyes in her direction, some made a detour when they recognized the Taurus and recognized who or what she was. Others went ahead with purchases at Sam’s window and left with Styrofoam boxes or canned sodas, but most didn’t bother. They made their transactions with the drug boys leaning on the wall beside the take-out window. They knew murder police from narcs.
Streetlights and building security lights came on at the corner, deepening the dark outside the immediate area of the dope hole. She rolled her shoulders and adjusted the straps of the shoulder holster that crisscrossed her back. The old man again approached to see what she was up to. Before he could offer his usual greeting, Salt cut him off. “Tell Man I’m waiting for him. Won’t take long, and then I’ll be out of here and quit making folks nervous.”
“Oh, I ain’t spyin’ for them. You my friend.” But he stepped back away from her car window, his diseased hands drawn farther inward, like claws.
“I know—it’s all right. Just get word to Man. Now.”
His face stayed low as he crossed back to the business. In minutes the SUV, gleaming black, jacked high and decked out with rotating rims and running lights, rolled to a gravel-crunching stop in front of where she was parked, back end to the side of the building. Behind the wheel, looking out with a skeptical eye and a clenched jaw, was a young man with a port-wine birthmark on his neck: Lil D. It saddened Salt to see Lil D with Man. Over the years she’d been working The Homes she’d come to know most of Lil D’s family, and had hoped that of all Man’s gang he might be the one to find his way out of the thug life. Lil D reached with his right arm and the truck responded, audibly switching gears to park. Man waited for the dust to settle before getting out from the other side. Pedestrians stopped to appreciate Man’s entrance. In the few cars that were in the lot, people’s faces turned in his direction.
Man raised his head as he came around the front bumper, as if he’d been troubled but was ready to be friendly, arms wide, a smile growing on his lips but vacant from his eyes. Light from the street caught some sparkle off a fat gold watch at his wrist and rings on each hand. Lil D turned on the headlights, which gave their spot a stage-like feel. “Detective.” He smiled, and a glimmer from one diamond tooth caught the light.
Salt got out of her car. “Oh, look, and here I am in jeans. I didn’t realize it was a dress-up occasion.” She waved at his ensemble. She’d never seen him or anyone from The Homes wearing such a suit, black with a gleaming white shirt and silver tie. His hair was tightly done in small horizontal cornrows; his light skin had a silk-like shimmer.
“Naw, I’m on my way. Wass up?” He held the smile a little longer.
Salt nodded in Lil D’s direction. “You trust him with all your business?”
“Go ’head. You ain’t know nothin’ Lil D cain’t hear.”
“You are dressed for success, Man.”
“Like I was telling you, I got plans. You was always telling me I could do something else. Well, I’m doin’ it.”
“What? You giving up the streets?”
“Might. I’m gettin’ connected, club bidness, and music. I got some rappers want me to produce them.” He grinned and nodded.
“Music, huh,” she said. “You make anything off the old guys that played here the night the guitar player was shot? He died, you know.”
“I mighta made a minute, but I ain’t into that old shit. The blues ain’t where the money is. Big money in rappers and video, and getting play in clubs.”
“You’ll have to somehow lose your past to go legit, Man. How are you going to do that? And speaking of the past—I saw Stone again.”
Man shifted his posture; muscles tensed or loosened, some of both. He briefly closed his eyes, and then drew a resolving breath. “He taken care of.”
“I can see how it would be no trouble for you to have one of your boys or connections watch out for him with the inmates. But what about the guards, the corrections people, the institution? You don’t have that kind of pull. This city and who controls it do not bend to your wants.”
“Who controls you, Miss Dee Tec Tive?”
“I’ve got a couple of murders and I’m looking for answers—for who killed Dan Pyne and who might have given Mike Anderson a hot dose years ago. Both of the victims bluesmen. The connection could be your associate Spangler.”
“Spangler. And here I thought you might be lookin’ for DeWare.”
“DeWare?”
“Yeah. Ain’t he the one they got word on for killin’ that rich woman and her kids?”
“Do you know where DeWare is?”
“I hear the manager of Toy Dolls be runnin’ snow out his crib. Top of the club. Might be where you find DeWare, too.”
“Hold on. Why are you telling me this?”
Man straightened the cuffs of his shirt.
“I get it. Toy Dolls. You moving up.”
“So what? It all works out for everybody, doncha know. The narcs get some blow, you get DeWare, and I get in the club business. No harm, no foul, as they say.”
“What about your friend Spangler? Won’t he be unhappy that his manager is in trouble? If
his club comes under investigation?”
“How he gone know I told you ’bout DeWare? This between you and me, right? I got reason to trust you and you said you needed my word. ’Sides, I think you got some mojo, somebody”—he pointed at the sky—“on you side, lookin’ out for you. DeWare aimin’ at you that night, you know. You keep gettin’ outta messes woulda got other folks killed. Like I say, you got some powerful root workin’ for you. And Spangler ain’t my friend. He bidness.”
“What about his business? What he did to Stone back then? I still need names. Names of other boys, girls he pimped, customers he supplied with kids. Is he still in that business?”
Man turned his head, then looked down at his beautiful white shirtfront and dusted some imaginary particle. “Why don’t you ask that cop he got on his pay?”
“Who, Spangler? Are you talking about Madison?”
“That SWAT cop. He go back and forth between Spangler and the biggest customer for baby bootie in the city.”
“What are you saying, Man?”
“The preacher, Prince, he the one hurt Stone.” Man walked to the other side of his ride and got in. Lil D spun the wheels, leaving a wake of dust that swept over everything.
POST–MAGIC GIRLS
With a view of the church doors, Salt sat in the Taurus, waiting in the parking lot. She counted at least four elected officials, a PD deputy chief, and one aspiring mayor, all paying homage to Reverend Midas Prince and courting his patronage as they shook his hand exiting after the Sunday morning service. Prince and his wife were in matching white suits, his wife balancing a tall, sequined crown atop her elaborately coiffed and lacquered-looking hair.
As the last of the service-goers made their way to their cars, she timed her arrival at the reverend’s white Lexus. “It’s a beautiful day,” she said.
Without acknowledging her, he waved as one of the officials’ sedans passed. “What did you think of the service, Officer?” he said, reaching for the door of the sedan.
“I’m sure it was impressive, Reverend Prince, but I only just got here. I have just one question I’d like to ask you.”
He took a pair of sunglasses from his pocket and put them on. “Ask,” he said. “My wife is waiting.” He opened the door and stood in the wedge between the door and the car.
“What do you know, or did you know, about a man named John Spangler?”
“No,” he said too quickly. “I mean, I don’t recall the name.” He dropped into the leather seat.
“He’s also known as ‘Tall John,’ white guy, controls some of the clubs around town? Officer Madison might have mentioned him. Madison works another after-hours job for Spangler.” Salt moved to block him from closing the door.
“You’ll have to take that up with Officer Madison, now won’t you? Good day, Officer Salt.” She moved away as he pulled the door closed, concealing himself behind the window glass, tinted, she was certain, to an illegal opaque.
AT CHURCH WITH PEARL
Near the gold-domed capitol and state government buildings, the church was one of three that Sherman had spared when he’d burned the rest of the city. In response to a plea from the priest of the Catholic church, instead of torching them, the general put the churches to use as billeting and storage and as slaughterhouses to feed the soldiers.
Salt was sorting the connection between Midas Prince, Madison, and Spangler when she drove past the Methodist church, as she’d been doing, on the off chance of seeing Pearl. And this time Pearl was sitting right where she’d said, on the front steps that led up to the red door, her belongings in two shopping bags on either side of her spread skirts. Salt stopped at the curb and got out. She offered Salt a seat, brushing a place beside her with a yellow towel from one of her bags. There was a cloud of cologne surrounding Pearl that at first was overwhelming, but gradually Salt grew accustomed to it. The scent was some strange blend, orange, lavender? Mixed with something dark, coffee?
“I come from where the Southern cross the Dog and my daddy was a wolf,” Pearl said, using an old-time South rhythm to introduce a story. Pearl began to rock back and forth, humming. “My Mama told us she got to Mississippi by a straight dirt road that stretched out for more than a lifetime. She said that she was almost dead, starving right on that road, a road lit all red, yellow, orange. And beyond that was a dark cloud that colored the long, open road blue. It started to rain and at her feet the first drops smelled sweet and damped the hot silt road.” Pearl’s hands moved like she could have been telling the story in sign language or painting it on an imaginary canvas, and she told it with a cadence that was close to singing.
Salt stared through the blur of passing traffic as she listened.
“On either side there was nothing but mown scratch hay. She said she saw her feet below the hem of her brown dress and they were the same color as the dirt. There weren’t nowhere but the ditches to take cover, and the coming cloud was lightning full. She said it was so hot she fanned her skirt, bringing storm air to her thighs and privates. Seemed like a little to be happy for. She was like that. It somehow made it easier, owning only the dress on her shoulders and the horn under her arm, she said. Searching for Louis Armstrong was enough. She didn’t need a case for the horn or underclothes to bind her up.” Pearl’s telling had a mesmerizing, rhythmic quality, like a poem she’d memorized.
“When she found the struck crow on the side of the road, its heart was still beating, so she broke open its feathered chest, scooped out the heart, still fluttering, only about the size of a quarter, and popped it right in her mouth.” Pearl mimed the motion, throwing her hand toward her own mouth. “Then she lay in the ditch face upward to the pounding storm and drank lightning-flavored rain. She said the white streaks across the sky reminded her of Louie’s shimmering smile, and she slept with notes of laughter in her dreams.
“When she woke up, it was a new day broke and a large black dog was sniffing her. He seemed friendly enough, his large paws were gentle on her shoulders. He panted awhile in the ditch beside her until some sound, unheard by her, called him off. ‘Well, thass all right, dog. I hear a high horn myself.’ She’d say it like that. Then she’d smile and pick up the horn. That’s where she say I come from. She kept a handbill in the horn’s bell that said Louie’d be playin’ in Tupelo.
“She would tell other dreams of cows, spiders, and plants growing in ‘fast time’ she called it. Cows that had winter wavy fur that felt soft between her fingers. Spiders with eyes that beamed out shiny and brilliant. A Bonnie Brae tomato vine forwarded from seed to shoot to a yellow-blossomed scrub in seconds.
“But that’s the one ’bout who was my daddy. She say later she learn that he was a wolf from around there. She never found Louie, just the folks in that part of Mississippi who took her in, and there I was born where them railroads come together. She would never talk about before that road or her people, nothin’ but that wolf, that road where the blues come from, where the Southern cross the Dog.”
Pearl tapped her on the shoulder. “Wake up. You the poleese.”
“My eyes are open, Pearl. I was listening.”
“You look like you in a spell,” Pearl said
“I came looking for you because I—”
“You got questions ’bout Mike. Hum hum.” Pearl nodded. “I was young when I was Mike frien’. But he knowed I come from the Delta, hearin’ my mama an’ them all my life. He try to help all us who knowed the real ol’ blues. And we teached him some stuff, and it was still ’fore I got sick in my head that I helped him with some devilment of his own.”
“The heroin?”
“No. He just played with that stuff, he mostly into blow. Mike’s folks tried to get him what they call ‘saved’ by Midas Prince. That’s how I met Mike, ’cause he help me after he heared me sing in church and knowed that I was out of the blues. Mike wouldn’t go with the preacher, and he want Mike dead ’cause he wouldn’t g
o with him, and Mike know some more in that church that did go with him. We was gonna get some of the others to report on Midas Prince and all report together, but then Mike was dead and I was sick.”
“Wait a minute, Pearl. You know something about Reverend Midas Prince?” She put her hand on Pearl’s shoulder, turning her toward her.
Pearl stopped and looked at Salt. “I see you got Legba ’round your neck.”
“Legba?”
“There.” She pointed to the Saint Michael pendant that had made its way to the outside of Salt’s shirt.
Salt held the medallion out, shifting it in her palm for Pearl to see. “This is Saint Michael, patron saint of police and soldiers.”
“He play Legba in church. See that stick in his hand. My mama, she know ’bout that ol’ voodoo. She don’t say how, but she know.”
“Legba, the voodoo guy?”
“He go back and forth at the crossroad between the folks living and them that’s dead. Good man, but he’s tricky.” Pearl twitched her head for emphasis. “He gots to be, communicating from one world to the other. He the spirit in voodoo church that gets called first and last. He opens and closes the door to the other world.” Pearl sniffed. “And he got a dog with him. Maybe a hellhound.”
“I wish he would get me a message from Mike. I wish he could tell me if Mike wanted to die, or if somebody killed him, who. If there were other boys, who they were.” Salt held the medallion in the cup of her palms.
“The preacher didn’t just get boys. He got girls, too.” Pearl looked down at her lap.
Cars were stopped at the traffic light, close by at the end of the block. The breeze blew, then stalled. There was a sudden lack of motion around Salt and Pearl. The sun bounced off the shiny surfaces of the cars. Then the church bell above began to clang and the light at the corner changed. Salt waited through the chiming, then said quietly, after the bells stopped, “I need your help, Pearl. I don’t think I can do this without you. You’d have to come off the street and let me get you a place to live, and to a doctor.”
Out of the Blues Page 20