Prudence Couldn't Swim

by James Kilgore

  Mandisa and I had lost both of our oars. I was trying to get mine back but she wasn’t helping balance the boat. The problem was, if I fell in, she came with me. She couldn’t swim and I couldn’t do much better than a dog paddle. I’d meant to take swimming lessons when I bought a house with a pool but I never got around to it.

  There were a hundred reasons for an African woman and a hare-lipped white pimp to quarrel. But the reality was that we needed each other. We had to find a way to get our oars through those rings. I hoped she’d stay on board long enough to get it done.

  We walked back toward the park bench.

  “I think Newman did this,” she said. “He’s a psycho.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” I said.

  An old man sauntered past with a little Cairn terrier tied to his walker. I felt sorry for the old guy. Probably took him three hours to get around the lake. Then came a loud bang, followed by a couple more. The dog made a little yelp and the old man keeled over on the grass. More bangs. Definitely gunfire. I dove under the bench and looked up to see Mandisa on her knees next to the old man starting to pump on his heart. I was more worried about the bullets than this geezer’s cardiac arrest. Prudence’s killer was nearby and either a little off-target or issuing us a very scary warning.

  “Phone 9-1-1,” Mandisa hollered at me in between pumps and breaths. I dialed, told them where we were. The gunshots stopped. I took off, leaving Mandisa with her lips on top of the old man’s. I wasn’t hanging around for the cops or Freckle Face and his crew.

  I walked the half a block to my Volvo at a calm, orderly pace. I wanted to run but running always attracts attention and sometimes bullets as well. I heard someone shouting something about a drive-by, that a gangbanger got shot in the head. Too bad for him but I was relieved if this wasn’t about Prudence or me or Mandisa or any of that. Life on the streets had its own rhythms and worries.

  As I got near my car I looked back and saw the old man start to sit up. Mandisa gently eased him back into a prone position as the sirens drew near. She’d saved that old codger’s life. That Katlehong where she came from must have been one helluva place.

  CHAPTER 18

  After the incident in the park, I couldn’t sleep. Five hits of Wild Turkey didn’t help. I got up in the middle of the night. For some strange reason, I wanted to watch those tapes again. I knew they’d heat me up enough to do something to make up for hiding under the park bench while Mandisa saved an old man’s life. In prison, we’d call that a bitch move. I was lots of things but nobody’s bitch.

  I did the routine with the rugs and the floorboards and pulled the tapes out of the box.

  I put in the first tape as I popped the seal on a fresh bottle of Wild Turkey I gritted my teeth and knocked back the whiskey. By tape number three the sun was coming up and I was ready. I put on my best suit, stuffed my Walther inside my belt and headed for Jeffcoat’s office—ready to rock and roll. I didn’t even take the time to put the tapes back in my stash.

  When I came out of the elevator Jeffcoat’s secretary’s eyes were on me like a store detective. I’d popped two Wintergreen Lifesavers in the elevator to get rid of the Wild Turkey smell. Not everyone appreciated whiskey breath in the morning. When I got into her sights, I gave her my biggest smile.

  “I’d like to see Mr. Jeffcoat,” I told her. She looked at me for a long time before replying.

  “I don’t remember your name on today’s appointments, Mr. Winter.” I was surprised she remembered my name, even more shocked when she pulled a little Chinese paper fan out of her desk drawer and waved it in my direction. I guess the Life Savers didn’t do the trick.

  “I don’t have an appointment,” I said, “but I think if he reads this note, he’ll make time for me.” I handed her an envelope with a letter inside informing him I’d seen the tapes and would like to talk to him. She disappeared into his office and came back after a couple minutes.

  “He’ll see you when he’s finished with this client,” she said. “Can I get you some coffee?”

  “Cream and two sugars,” I replied. I was enjoying my momentary triumph over Jeffcoat’s gatekeeper. She was a little past her physical prime but her hips were tastefully plentiful and the cleavage display extended a little beyond office protocol. She was more than enough to make plenty of wives jealous. But then Mrs. Jeffcoat had bigger jealousy concerns. The coffee was freshly brewed, just the jolt I needed to face the enemy.

  “I didn’t expect to see you again,” he said as I strode through his office door.

  “Some pests are harder to eradicate than others,” I replied. I debated about pulling the Walther but left it in my belt.

  “I’m an optimist,” he said. “I always assume that little roaches die on the first spray. What’s your price?”

  “Information.”

  “I’ve got plenty,” he said. “You want stock tips? Interested in a little foreign currency trading? I look for the value of the Euro to rise. I’ve got nothing but good advice.”

  “Prudence was blackmailing you,” I said. “You paid her some money a couple weeks before she died.”

  “Interesting theory. Difficult to prove.”

  “I could always try. If I reported the matter to the police like what you did to me, they might launch an investigation. Videotapes linked to crimes play well on the evening news, especially when they’re X-rated. Could make national, with some tasteful editing of course. Not to mention marketing the unedited versions to the porn sites. The whole world wants to know how the rich do it. They’re hot and I haven’t even seen them all.”

  “Perverted bastard,” he said. “The girl’s not even cold in her grave and you’re already trying to squeeze money out of her corpse.” He stood up and turned away, as if looking over the city would solve the problem. When someone sits on the fourteenth floor all day, the lives of everyone else begin to look small, insignificant. Tiny ants scurrying around the streets. Every once in a while, though, disgusting little insects like Calvin Winter manage to scale the walls.

  I enjoyed his quiet suffering even though I could be provoking a murderer. I was coming back to reality, feeling more and more out of place with that 9 mm tucked in my belt. I wasn’t a killer. Who was I trying to kid? That’s part of why I kept Red Eye around. He’d earned his stripes. Had an SS tattoo on his leg to prove it. Luckily Fast Freddy hadn’t seen that one. You only won the right to wear that ink in prison by completing a mission. Red Eye had done more than one. By contrast, I usually liked to think of myself as a coyote, living by my wiles. If I was going to pin Jeffcoat to the wall, it wouldn’t be with a gun.

  “I’ll ask again,” he said, “what’s your price?”

  “I’m trying to find out how Prudence died,” I said. “I want information.”

  “She drowned,” he said. “That’s what you told me. That’s what the police say. She died with the winning lottery ticket in her purse. Right, Winter?”

  “That’s part of the story. I think you know more.”

  If he was looking for an apology for the lottery scam, he could forget it. I’m no investor but I know there’s no more underhanded game than playing around with other people’s money. In other words, I know a hustle when I see one. He wasn’t going to get away with sneering at a coyote.

  “What information do you want?” he asked. “Yeah, I screwed her a few times. She made a film of it without my knowledge. I paid her $10,000 to destroy the film. I guess she didn’t do it. Where’s my crime in all this? I made a mistake. Everyone falls to temptation once in a while. She was a beautiful woman. And I wasn’t the only one she fucked. “

  “Would you care to name the others?”

  “That’s got nothing to do with this.”

  “And neither would all those other women you’ve been hitting over the years.”

  “My personal life is none of your business.”

  “It would definitely be the business of the court. If you’ve had a string of affairs that ended b
adly, expect a nice little parade of your conquests to stream up to the stand in your murder trial. Of course, since you’ve got the perfect marriage, the little lady will stand valiantly at your side like Hillary did for Bill. Then there’s the issue of Peter Margolis.”

  I still had no idea who this Margolis was but I figured it was worth testing the waters. I was on a roll.

  Jeffcoat glanced briefly at a gold-framed family photo on his desk. His wife had put on a few pounds after childbirth and hadn’t lost them. And those gray roots were showing through big time. I guess she couldn’t be bothered to keep up appearances. She didn’t know what league she was playing in.

  “Margolis’s death was a boating accident,” he said. “A great tragedy.”

  “I suspect there’s a little more to it than that.”

  “You can surmise all you want, but you can’t prove a thing. So if you don’t want money and you’re not going to give up the tapes, then get the hell out of my office.”

  “So you say she had other men?”

  “I didn’t worry about it. She was a good time for me. As long as I protected myself, what she did with the rest of her life was none of my business.”

  “So you always used a condom,” I said. “That makes me feel better because she was my wife.”

  He laughed.

  “I know that,” he said. “I know everything about you.” He stood up. He was losing his cool. Anger can do strange things to people.

  “It’s time we ended this meeting,” he said.

  “I know you hate unnecessary meetings. Something about ineffective business practice.”

  “Get the hell out of here or I’ll call security.”

  “That’s what you won’t do,” I told him with my first smirk of the day. “The Internet porn sites are just a mouse click away. And if you know so much about me, you know I’d love to put you out there naked for the world to see.”

  He calmed a little. He’d deployed nearly every weapon in his con man arsenal and I was still right in his face. Being a thorn in the side of a millionaire was better than shooting my wad with Olga any time. I had to find out about this boating accident.

  “I’m just thinking that maybe you forgot to protect yourself one time and you caught something from her,” I said. “She was, after all, an African. You knew that, didn’t you? AIDS is rampant there. It could be a motive for revenge.”

  “You’re way off the mark now,” he said. “She was from London. Time to regroup your forces. This is going nowhere for either of us.”

  “But at least we’re having a good time along the way.” I gave him the broad smile I’d used on the secretary. My joy was not infectious.

  “If I think of anything else, I’ll call you,” he said, moving toward the door.

  “I’d appreciate that. I hope you don’t mind if I drop in from time to time just to keep you informed. I’m sure you don’t want to be out of the loop on this.”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Winter. If there has been foul play, I hope you uncover it. In the meantime, please call before you show up at my office again. I’d hate to miss you. If you continue to bother me, though, I will find an appropriate response.”

  “That almost sounds like a threat.”

  “Take it however you like,” he said. “We in the business world don’t issue threats. We make offers, prepare lists of negotiating issues, determine priorities. I’m quite skilled in all phases of my work.”

  “I’m sure you are,” I said. “So am I. I’ve got a certificate from the Leavenworth College of Business. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”

  He opened the door. I walked out, grabbing a quick glance at the harelip on his high school football team on the way. Poor kid was ugly as sin. I bet he was a reserve tackle. I paused for a second. The short kid next to him looked familiar, but I couldn’t put a name to the face. Probably somebody I met in the joint.

  I gave the secretary a replay of my greeting smile and headed for the stairs. Waiting for elevators doesn’t make it when you’re trying for a triumphant exit.

  Jeffcoat was clearly a ruthless character. I was probably on over my head playing with him, but I couldn’t stay away. This felt like my fifteen minutes of fame, wheeling and dealing on the fourteenth floor. If I was about to fall, let it be remembered that Calvin Winter successfully got under the skin of millionaires and cops in his quest to find justice for a wife he’d never kissed.

  In the meantime, I had to find out about Peter Margolis.

  CHAPTER 19

  That night Red Eye and I went for a drive in the hills of Oakland. Life always looked different from up there. I’d had a taste of hills life in my house but I didn’t have a view. A view would have cost me another $100,000. It didn’t seem worth it at the time, but now I understood. My neighbors with those enormous tinted windows overlooking San Francisco Bay saw the same world as Jeffcoat from the fourteenth floor. I hadn’t quite gotten over my encounter with him. Even with all my experience, I just wasn’t sure I could out-con a millionaire on his own turf. I came from a different planet.

  When I wasn’t in juvie, I grew up in neighborhoods where the only view I had was peeping in on what the family next door was up to. What I couldn’t see, I heard through open windows or thin walls. There was life in those streets, though, and on the playgrounds. Nowadays they’d probably call the families in my old neighborhoods “dysfunctional.” Definitely two or three of the foster homes where I ended up fell in that category. Going to juvenile hall and then the penitentiary didn’t help. Everyone knew your habits there. If you used an extra square of toilet paper, half a dozen guys would ask you if you had diarrhea. The hills had none of that openness. Everyone’s life in Carltonville was a closed circle. Too much time to worry over nothing.

  Red Eye halted the car in one of those places where you could see from San Francisco all the way down to San Jose. We wanted to get out of the car to take a fresh look. I waited while Red Eye put on a long-sleeve shirt. In this neck of the woods, he never showed off his montage of ink spider webs, dragon heads, prison bars, and the little graveyard with the RIPs for his fallen friends. If people in Carltonville saw all that, they might jump to dangerous conclusions.

  “Just when I buy a house and get out of the ghetto,” I complained, “a woman turns up dead in my pool. I wasn’t meant to have any peace in life. The curse of the harelip.”

  “Trouble follows us,” said Red Eye. “We can move up the hill but we’ll always be foreigners here. Our past is only a few miles away. It can climb up here and find us any time.”

  “I’ve thought of moving to Hawaii,” I said.

  “We can’t let go, don’t know how to leave it alone. It’s just like in the pen. Someone steps on your foot and doesn’t say ‘excuse me.’ Another guy burns you for a few soups. Just a couple of bucks. But you have to retaliate. You know it’s petty but you can’t leave it alone.”

  “This isn’t petty,” I said. “It’s a murder.”

  “One we should leave alone. It will only bring us more trouble.”

  “You’re right, we should just forget about it, get on with our lives.”

  “But we won’t, will we?”

  “Hell, no. It’s just not our nature,” I replied, “just so we’re on the same page.”

  “We’re on the same paragraph,” said Red Eye.

  Before we’d left my house, Red Eye had rolled two joints and tucked them into his pack of Camels. Even with the weed I hadn’t relaxed since Prudence’s death, except for that one time with Olga. That really didn’t count.

  As we got back in the car, Red Eye put on the Eagles’ “Lyin’ Eyes.”

  The lyrics highlighted my situation. But whose eyes were lyin’? Was it Jeffcoat’s or Newman’s? Was it Prudence’s? Her eyes were lying from day one. She didn’t come from London. English wasn’t even her first language. And she had a family she never talked about. Lots of lies. But they never bothered me that much. Some people had to lie to survive. All my years of bringing people acr
oss the border taught me that.

  My worry was that the real lyin’ eyes might be my own. I’d have to check the next time I looked in the mirror. Was I lying to myself thinking I could solve this? After all, I’d made so many bad decisions in my life, how could I be sure this wasn’t just another one? But I knew one thing. Finding Prudence’s killer was the right thing to do. I just had to stop thinking about all this other stuff and go and track down Peter Margolis. That’s what would turn this case around.

  CHAPTER 20

  I Googled “Peter Margolis” and got 353,000 hits. I looked at the first hundred. There was a Dr. Peter Margolis in St. Petersburg, Florida, who did boob jobs. Another Peter Margolis in Lincoln, Nebraska, had won first prize in the county fair pork and beef grill-off. I stopped there. I’d have to find someone who understood this Internet stuff.

  I got up to go and put the tapes back in my stash. I looked next to the Paul Newman classics where I’d left them the night before. Gone. Cool Hand Luke and Harper were missing as well. I couldn’t believe it. I tiptoed around the house, checked all the windows and doors. No sign of a break-in. Nothing else disturbed. I’d violated a basic rule of survival: what belongs in the stash stays in the stash—always. A real professional doesn’t think it’s a waste of time rolling up rugs and prying off floor boards. It’s always time well spent. Someone was invading my space. My first thought was Jeffcoat, though I wasn’t sure why.

  I phoned him but his secretary told me he was out of town for the week. When I told her who it was, she wouldn’t give me his cell number or tell me where he’d gone or when he’d be back.

  She did agree to take my message.

  “Tell him if I don’t hear from him by the end of the day, I’ll Fed Ex the tapes to the webmaster of Zebralove.com.”