Prudence Couldn't Swim

by James Kilgore

“I’ll give him the message.”

  He phoned me three minutes later. The secretary had grasped the urgency of the situation. I assumed he was poking her as well. Just a gut feeling. I figured we still had him by the balls but our grip was getting a little loose.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said before I even had a chance to let him have it. “Whatever you have to say, say it straight to me. People can read between the lines. I don’t need that.”

  “Call your thugs off and return what they stole,” I said. “There’s plenty of copies in other places. In Leavenworth we killed anyone who stole from us. Anyone.”

  “I don’t have thugs,” he said. “It’s not my style. And I’m not a thief.”

  “So you have no idea who broke into my house last night?”

  “I wish I did,” he said. “I’d like to give ‘em a medal.”

  “You’re pushing me to where I don’t want to go,” I said, “but I’ve been there before. It’s uncharted territory for you.”

  “You live in a fantasy world,” he said. “Too bad you never investigate anything before you make wild allegations. You’re a moron, Winter. Recognize who you’re dealing with. I’m not from the world of breakins and broken thumbs. I’m a businessman, but I’m no Scout Master. When I’ve had my fill, I fight back. You don’t want to go there.”

  “You’re nothing special just because you have an office on the fourteenth floor. We all come from the jungle.”

  “So you’re stupid enough to think because I let my dick get the best of me now and then I’m a murderer?” he said. “Have a nice day, Mr. Winter.” He cut the phone before I had a chance to tell him I wouldn’t let him alone until he spilled his guts. He was just an arrogant bastard. I was beginning to think he might have killed Prudence after all.

  The worst part of it all was that Jeffcoat was learning how to make me feel like a fool. Too quickly. This talking game was supposed to be my turf. I had to settle into my groove or Jeffcoat and his thugs, if he had any, would be dancing on my face.

  Before I had time to pour another shot of Wild Turkey, Red Eye phoned.

  “My buddy’s through with tape number nine,” he said. “He can’t recover the audio and the video never came clear enough to ID anyone. All he knows is that the guy has a tattoo on his right arm and another one over his heart. Can’t see what the tats say.”

  “How many guys we got in Oakland with tattoos?” I asked. “A hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand?” It wasn’t my day. I asked him if his buddy could follow up Peter Margolis.

  “I tried,” I told him, “but there’s about five thousand Peter Margolises around. I don’t know where to start.”

  “No problem,” Red Eye said, “homeboy is the bomb on computers.”

  We arranged to meet later that night. I didn’t even tell him the other tapes were gone. I was too wiped out to listen to his advice on how I should have put them back in the stash.

  I filled in the afternoon with a business matter—matchmaking. Only for me it was usually more pleasure than business. If you got a perfect match it was like doing a good deed for the day. Even the Calvin Winters of the world like to do a good deed every once in a while.

  As it turned out, I wasn’t sure if this match qualified. I found a Filipina woman for Sunny Jim Fitzpatrick in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. Sunny Jim looked like a geek. No teeth, no eyebrows. He’d pay $4,000 plus airfare. Corazon Pehau, his partner-to-be, said she was five foot four, 130 lb., aged thirty. She looked closer to 95 lb. and barely legal. Hard to tell in a photo, and I had to be careful in this business. Trafficking in minors was dangerous. Could get me plenty of federal time at 85 percent with no reduction for good behavior. Besides, I had some boundaries. I wasn’t about selling some kid into sex slavery. If a grown woman wanted to put herself on the market, that was different. It was her affair. I was just a broker. Without the middleman, most trade would never happen.

  I decided Corazon was over eighteen and e-mailed the photos to the prospective client. Like most Filipina women in my line of work, Corazon was ready to come at the drop of a hat, even if future hubby looked like the back end of a pit bull. I’d found out this modern world of ours had generated millions of desperately poor women in the far corners of our planet. Their flip side was the flood of lonely, socially misfit males in the United States. The women, the Prudences of the world, supplied companionship, sex, a little cooking and housecleaning, plus the image of a marriage—exactly what lames like my man from Idaho demanded. Of course Sunny Jim’s demand was backed up by what made the whole process function—money.

  Sunny Jim claimed to have a three-bedroom house on half an acre. He didn’t post a photo of the place, either because it didn’t exist or because the yard was strewn with old transmissions, broken down Lazy Boy recliners and piles of unrecyclable bottles. No guarantees in this matchmaking marketplace. Truth in advertising did not apply. The parties relied on that most elusive of commodities—trust. Hell, I didn’t even know if I could trust myself. At this stage I might tell all kind of lies just to have another body next to me, a voice in the house to suppress that image of Prudence’s eyes receding into her head next to my guest bathroom toilet.

  At least, unlike my Sunny Jim, I had a presentable house. It would look good in photos but it was no longer the sanctuary I dreamed of. The house wasn’t really the problem. It was the situation I’d backed myself into. I couldn’t settle for a homely woman who worked at J.C. Penney’s and made a terrific meatloaf. I had to show the world that a harelip could attract a sexy woman, the type everyone wanted to get their hands on. The world was full of Corazons—desperate, homely, hardworking. I wanted glamorous. But the glamorous types like Prudence only came to me when they hit rock bottom. Prudence still had dreams when I met her. A short little ex-con with a harelip was just a stepping-stone. Corazon might stay with that guy from Idaho for years. I couldn’t hold Prudence for more than a few months.

  Not long after I’d connected up Sunny Jim with his bride to be, Red Eye arrived for our meeting. He had information and a proposal. The information was that Margolis was a local businessman who died in a water skiing accident somewhere in northern California.

  “My partner said something smelled fishy about it all,” Red Eye said, “but he couldn’t put his finger on it.”

  I had no idea. Maybe Jeffcoat was driving the boat, maybe Margolis was bangin’ Mrs. J. Red Eye’s friends didn’t always paint in all the numbers, but if Prudence told Mandisa this would buy leverage over Jeffcoat, we had to pursue it.

  After the tidbit about Margolis came Red Eye’s proposal:

  “Let me move in,” he said. “I’ll be your security. Say for a month or so, until things cool down. I’m sure my parole officer will agree. He’s cool as hell. I’ll tell him you’re paying me a couple grand a month.”

  “You mean I have to pay for the privilege?” I asked.

  “No, no. Just something to keep Mr. Roosevelt Johnson, my PO, happy,” he said. “He doesn’t trip. A closet Bears fan. Wanted to send me somewhere to get this SS tat taken off my leg. I told him I’d think about it.”

  “I think you’re a little bit too late with this offer,” I said.

  “Whaddya mean?”

  “Somebody broke in and stole the tapes.”

  “They got to your stash?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Shit happens, bro, that’s why you need twenty-four security. Red Eye’s five-star service.”

  It was an offer I couldn’t refuse, even though I had my doubts. Red Eye slept at odd hours, liked weird horror movies, and obsessed on sports betting. Though I had no concrete proof, I bet he snored like a fat lady passed out after dollar-pitcher night. In prison you learn the power of a snore. A real snorter can keep dozens of men awake through the night. If you’re unlucky enough to share a cell with one of those buzz saws, you’re locked in your own private hell. If you don’t move away you’ll start dreaming of smothering him in midroar. I’m sure
my Sunny Jim from Idaho made as much noise as twenty hungry warthogs. But Corazon would just put up with it to send a few dollars back to Manila every month.

  Red Eye’s offer left me in fits. I needed security but I needed solitude—my own space to plot my next move and completely recover from the death of my so-called wife. I didn’t know how to handle such things other than alone.

  I decided on a compromise. I moved all my business paraphernalia, desk and computer into my room. Red Eye could take the second bedroom and the living room for his all hours TV watching. He’d probably be betting on some bantamweight title fight in Indonesia at 3:00 a.m. Far be it from me to get in his way. Just so he kept the volume down. By that night he was camped out on the sofa in front of the TV with his Daily Racing Forms covering the coffee table. Somewhere in the middle of a special on the great Yankee home-run hitters of all time, I phoned Mandisa. I wasn’t sure why.

  “I’d like it if you’d just stay out of my life for a while,” she said. “You bring nothing but trouble.”

  Before I could get her to rethink, she’d cut off the phone. Mel Allen, the voice of the Yankees sounded like he was jumping out of the press box over some home run that Mickey Mantle had hit fifty years ago. I had a feeling this arrangement with Red Eye might not work out.

  CHAPTER 21

  Harare, Zimbabwe

  April 1994

  The nurse gave Tarisai a small paper cup.

  “Take this with you and fill it up with pee,” she said. “Then we can run the test.”

  Tarisai did as she was told. She couldn’t remember when she’d been this nervous. She hadn’t eaten in two days. This morning when her stomach retched, nothing came out but bile. She could still feel it burning the inside of her nose. She should never have allowed Cephas to do it without a condom. He was a deputy minister, always used to having his way. He’d promised to leave his wife, Eternity, and marry Tarisai as soon as she graduated.

  Tarisai had seen the wife on TV, giving a speech at the opening of a grinding mill in some village. Wives of deputy ministers were often called upon to do such things. Eternity looked like she was made for the rural areas. She had one of those workhorse bodies that not even perms and clothes from upmarket boutiques could disguise. Tarisai imagined that this woman called Eternity had those flat rural feet bulging with bunions as big as pumpkins.

  Tarisai was proud of her soft feet—one of the marks of a sophisticated urban woman. Every night she covered them in Vaseline and slipped into some cotton socks before she went to bed. Cephas always commented about the smoothness of the skin on Tarisai’s heels. In just a few months they’d be sleeping together every night. Tarisai would be going to diplomatic parties and accompanying her husband on overseas trips. Other girls at the university had been to Botswana or South Africa with their “sugar daddies” but those were just good-time jaunts. Cephas was no sugar daddy. This was for real. He’d already told her the name of the hotel in London where they’d stay during their honeymoon. The Princess’s Arms.

  Tarisai loved the fact that none of the other girls knew about her relationship with the deputy minister. Nearly every female student lusted after Cephas Kanyere. They all ran to the TV room in the hostel whenever he came on the screen.

  “He may be forty-five but he looks ten years younger,” said Tarisai’s roommate Doris. “Unlike other cabinet ministers he’s only got one chin and the tummy doesn’t cover his belt buckle. That touch of gray makes him look distinguished.”

  Doris could speak with authority. She’d dated two cabinet ministers. One of them gave her a 67 cm Sony color TV and VCR, but his tummy looked like he’d swallowed three soccer balls.

  Doris actually saw Cephas’s wife on the news one day. She screamed with laughter.

  “She’s a country bumpkin,” Doris said to Tarisai and the other girls who were watching. “SRB—strong rural background.”

  Tombizodwa, a girl who lived next door to Tarisai suggested that Cephas’s wife would be at her best “helping a team of oxen plow the fields.” The girls at university loved to belittle their rivals.

  Luckily for Tarisai, the deputy minister was always cautious. He never came to collect his young girlfriend. He always sent a driver. Tarisai told her friends the driver worked for her “rich uncle” who owned a furniture factory in the industrial areas.

  “Bought the business from a white man in 1980 for next to nothing,” she told them. “He’s rolling in money.”

  Tarisai played along with Cephas’s game to the letter. She always packed her overnight bag when no one was around to see the scanty pink nightie or the diaphragm. The other girls thought Tarisai had no interest in men. Many male students had tried to approach her, telling her they loved her as Zimbabwean men often did when they first met a woman. She gave them all polite but firm refusals.

  “Love can wait,” she always told her girlfriends. “The only important thing in life is education.”

  When they teased her more intensely, she reminded them that her family was counting on her.

  “I’m the only one from the Mukombachotos to ever finish high school, let alone attend university.”

  Now it could all be falling apart. She handed the nurse the urine-filled cup.

  “We’ll have the results in two days,” the nurse told her.

  Tarisai tried to distract herself with her studies. She spent hours in the chemistry lab monitoring the reactions of various lipids. Normally this work fascinated her. Lipids were essential in the formation of cell membranes. Few people recognized this. But while she waited for her pregnancy test results, the world of cell membranes didn’t really matter.

  Finally the moment of reckoning arrived. She jumped into the bus that drove from campus to town every hour. She got out at Fife Avenue, telling a friend who rode with her that she was going to the dentist for a checkup. It was the sort of lie the girl would believe. Few Zimbabweans went to the dentist—only the most responsible and most grounded in Western medicine. That’s how everyone thought of Tarisai.

  “I have good news for you,” the nurse told her. “You’re pregnant. Eight weeks. Congratulations.”

  Tarisai fainted. The nurse had to press smelling salts to her nose to bring her around.

  “Upenyu hwangu hwapera,” were Tarisai’s first words when she woke up. “My life is over. I’ve let down my family. Everyone.”

  The university’s policy was to expel pregnant students. After delivering a child, a female student could then reenroll at her own expense. That was fine for girls who came from wealthy families. Tarisai’s parents could barely afford to buy her school uniforms when she was in grade five. The university cost thousands.

  Some girls managed to hide their pregnancies. They tied belts around their waist and wore loose-fitting clothes. Tarisai couldn’t do such a thing. “What a disgusting practice,” she thought, “so demeaning.” She would get Cephas to look after her and accelerate the plans for their marriage.

  “If only I had refused that night,” she thought. But Cephas was very drunk, claimed he wanted to feel the “real Tarisai” just once. Being a scientist Tarisai calculated the odds. They were in her favor. She could sense when she was ovulating. She was sure she was safe that night. She’d bet and now she’d lost.

  She waited five days before meeting him. They rented a cottage at Lake Chibero on a Saturday night. The lake was just a few miles out of town, a well-known getaway for illicit lovers.

  Cephas told his wife he’d gone to Kadoma for a meeting. Fortunately, the phones in Zimbabwe were so irregular, his wife wouldn’t think of phoning her husband when he was away. Besides, a deputy minister was always traveling. His wife had learned to live without knowing where her husband was or who he was with. Like every politician’s wife, she knew important men had girlfriends. A wife ignored such things as long as the husband kept the money flowing into the household and didn’t flaunt his affairs. The comfort of high society life outweighed the disadvantages of sharing a husband.


  Tarisai decided to tell him before he started drinking. He was more reasonable when he was sober, more likely to understand. He took the news without flinching.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “If you want to get rid of it, I can make arrangements.”

  “What about us?” she asked. “I’m about to graduate. Maybe we need to marry sooner.”

  “You must still graduate,” he said, “then we’ll go ahead with those plans.”

  Tarisai wanted to believe him but there was no emotion. He talked like he was discussing some office procedure with a secretary. Tarisai expected him to be happy. Proud. A man in Zimbabwe always took pride in fathering a child, even one that came at an awkward moment. Cephas left the cottage in the middle of the discussion, said he was going to the office to get wood for the fireplace.

  He came back three hours later without the firewood. Instead he carried two quarts of Castle Lager and reeked of beer. By then Tarisai had fallen asleep in her clothes with a blanket pulled over her.

  Cephas pulled off the blanket and tried to rub her belly.

  “It will be all right, my dear,” he said.

  He tried to kiss her but she turned away.

  “I’m tired,” she said. “I don’t feel well.”

  “I can make you feel better,” he said, lying on top of her. She turned onto her side and he pulled her arm, pinning it to the bed.

  “Stop,” she said, “I don’t want this.”

  He slapped her across the face, then got up and sat in the cane chair next to the fireplace.

  Tarisai wept quietly on the bed. When she woke up, he was gone. She had to hitchhike the thirty-five kilometers back to town in her wrinkled dress and high-heeled shoes. A man in a Peugeot picked her up and drove her to the door of the university hostel. She offered him ten dollars for petrol but he refused the money.

  “You look like you’ve had a hard night,” he said. “A beautiful girl like you shouldn’t have to be abused.”

  She thanked him and held a scarf to her cheek as if she had a toothache. Luckily it was Sunday afternoon and most of the girls in the hostel had gone out. She lay in her bed with the blanket pulled over her head. She’d never felt so low.