Prudence Couldn't Swim

by James Kilgore

  A month later Cephas sent his driver to fetch Tarisai from the hostel. She told him to go away. Tarisai had decided to face this on her own. She wrapped two belts around her waist to keep the baby from showing and was carrying on with her studies as if nothing had happened.

  CHAPTER 22

  Red Eye claimed he could only hear the television at volume 42. At that level the commentary on ESPN rocked the walls of my bedroom. Now that I lived in Carltonville, on those nights I did manage to sleep the only background noise was a few distant dog barks. I’d gotten used to the quiet. When Red Eye cranked up ESPN, I wouldn’t have heard a pit bull growling in my ear.

  While I lay on my bed trying to figure out how to track down this Margolis, Don Dunphy’s stirring commentary on the Rumble in the Jungle filled the house.

  “Foreman is down. His eyes are glazed. He doesn’t know if he is on the streets of Houston or in the middle of Africa. Ali has pulled off another miracle.”

  While Dunphy got more and more excited, I pondered the nearest place to buy a set of earplugs. Then the phone rang. Red Eye’d already had about eight calls from punters that night, so I didn’t think of picking it up. I got calls about as often as we had snow in the hills of Oakland. I liked it that way. Suddenly Dunphy receded. “That broad’s on the line,” Red Eye shouted. That didn’t really narrow it down.

  It was Mandisa. Newman had paid her a visit at work. Wanted to know if she knew some white guy who was going around talking about Prudence’s will.

  “I told him I had no idea,” she said. “I thought you might want to know.”

  “How does he know where you work?” I asked wondering if Newman was standing right next to her as she spoke. Why should she trust a white harelip ex-con over a black millionaire with bulging muscles? She told me Prudence had brought him there once. I wasn’t sure what that was all about. Mandisa had made out like she’d never met the guy.

  She suggested we meet at the Berkeley Pier the following morning. I agreed but I wasn’t exactly sure why all of a sudden she was being so friendly. I didn’t have time to think about it. As soon as our conversation ended, Don Dunphy was pounding out his message again. Ali was dancing to his left. Foreman was looking bewildered. At the end of round three the doorbell rang. The volume sank again.

  “Don’t worry, Cal,” said Red Eye, “it’s for me.”

  A minute later he was standing in my bedroom door holding a jumbo pizza.

  “What would life be without pepperoni?” he asked as he stuffed a piece into his mouth. A thin string of cheese floated down onto the carpet.

  “Come and get it, homeboy, extra romano.”

  I got up and grabbed one slice, and Red Eye went back to Don Dunphy. As round five started, I got a wash rag from the bathroom and scrubbed the cheese off the carpet. I managed to doze off after stuffing some toilet paper in my ears. By that time Red Eye had left the Rumble in the Jungle and gone to Hagler-Hearns.

  The empty pizza box was in the middle of the floor the next morning, along with a second one with two slices still inside. Must have been a midnight snack. I hadn’t heard the doorbell ring. My light sleeping skills were fading away. But at least I was sleeping.

  The Berkeley Pier was cold and foggy. Mandisa showed up half an hour late and I didn’t have a jacket. I told her how much I enjoyed watching three old men fish off the pier and drink hot coffee from their Thermoses while I froze my butt off. She pulled her beanie a little farther down over her ears and shrugged her shoulders as if getting there late was out of her control. I figured maybe she was bonking Newman and they had to have one more round for good measure. The world is a strange place.

  “I want to know about this business with the will,” she said as we sat down on a wooden bench. I could feel the moisture seeping through my pants. The fog is the one thing I hate about Oakland.

  “Why are you asking me?” I replied.

  She only offered a damning stare as a reply.

  “Okay, I’ll level with you. We came up with this scheme about a will just to get a meeting with these guys. We didn’t know how else to do it.”

  “Did you ever think of just asking them for an appointment, like telling Newman you wanted to hire some trucks?”

  “We never do things the easy way.”

  “Well, you’ve got this weirdo Newman coming to my work, threatening me one minute, offering to satisfy my African urges the next. Just what I need in my life. I don’t think he’s a killer but he’s a pain in the bum. Why don’t you just give up all this private eye stuff before you have us all in hot soup. Leave well enough alone.”

  “Well enough alone has gotten at least one person killed so far.”

  “Let’s make sure it stops at one,” she said. “If I wanted to be killed by thugs I would have stayed in Katlehong.”

  “Do you know anything about this Peter Margolis?”

  “You’re not hearing me.”

  One of the old men fishing near us got a bite, a big one. His two friends ran over and drowned him with advice about letting out some slack and reeling it in. I’d never actually seen anyone catch a fish off this pier. Maybe I just came at the wrong times.

  “I want to know about Peter Margolis.”

  She fumbled in her pocket and pulled out a folded up piece of paper.

  “If you promise to drop this will thing, I’ll let you have this.”

  “What is it?”

  “You have to promise about the will thing first.”

  “The will thing is history. We’ve moved to a new stage.”

  She handed me the paper. It was a handwritten list of names, in Prudence’s carefully spaced lettering. Margolis was at the top.

  “Who the hell are these people?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I counted the names. Twenty-three in all.

  “Prudence told me I could use this against Jeffcoat if something happened to her and I ever needed money.”

  “Doesn’t make sense. Did all these other people die in boating accidents?”

  “It’s your puzzle to put together,” she said, standing up. “It’s been a pleasure.” She held out her hand. She’d changed from silver to a deep red nail polish. It went nicely with her skin.

  “Do you need any help keeping Newman away?”

  “With friends like you, who needs enemies?” she said and walked quickly down the pier. I hoped Newman wasn’t waiting for her in the same bed where he’d made those films.

  When I got home, Red Eye was tucking into some jelly donuts. The living room carpet was speckled with the powdered sugar coating. The empty Winchell’s bag was lying next to one of the pizza boxes from the night before. He’d told me he had to eat extra these days since the Greeley Hot Dog Eating Competition was drawing near.

  “It’s all about stretching the stomach,” he reminded me.

  Red Eye crumpled up the empty donut bag and picked up one of the pizza boxes to use as a notebook, jotting down the important points he was extracting from the Daily Racing Form.

  “Can you throw that stuff away when you’re done?” I said. “The garbage can is in the kitchen.”

  “Sure, homeboy. No problem. I’m just like you. I like to keep a place neat and tidy.”

  Before I made it to the bedroom, he’d hit the remote. Replays of the previous day’s races from Santa Anita. Then the phone rang. I heard Red Eye say something about how the odds had fallen to 10 to 1. I was calculating that me and Red Eye lasting more than a week together was more like a 100 to 1. And those odds were growing with every empty pizza box.

  CHAPTER 23

  The next night Red Eye went out to the sports bar so I had some peace and quiet to chase down Peter Margolis. I’d never used an Internet phone directory before but after an hour or so, I’d located twelve Peter Margolises in the Bay Area. I posed as a reporter for the Oakland Tribune doing a story on boating accidents. After several voice mails, a grouchy old lady, and a Penny Margolis with screaming kids and barking dogs in the backg
round, I found the widow.

  “I’m so sorry about your loss,” I told her, “but there’s been a rash of boating accidents in Northern California over the last few months. I’m determined to get to the bottom of it.”

  “There’s nothing too complicated about my husband’s death,” she said. “He ran his boat into a tree, the idiot.”

  My question about foul play or possible mechanical failure brought a long derisive giggle.

  “The failure was Peter. He hadn’t been sober behind the wheel of a boat since 1983. Or was it ‘73? Can’t remember which. When it came to alcohol, he didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘enough.’”

  I’d prepared myself for a delicate run up to any possible points about her husband’s death that might lead us back to Jeffcoat. This Mrs. Margolis was an open book. Once in a while life deals you aces. “And that goddamned insurance guy was the icing on the cake,” she said, “trying to claim Peter hadn’t paid the premiums. What an asshole.”

  “So you eventually got the money?”

  “After the bastard threatened to take us to court. Then I produced all the receipts and bank statements and shut him up. I had a lawyer on his butt. Ended up costing me fifty grand.”

  “And which insurance company were you dealing with?”

  “We had an independent broker, some shithead out of Oakland named Albert Jeffcoat.”

  “Did you suspect him of being involved in your husband’s death?”

  “No. He just wasn’t putting the premiums we paid into Peter’s policy. I ended up suing. We settled out of court. The bastard belongs in jail.”

  I told her how sorry I was to hear all this and that perhaps I should be doing a story on insurance fraud rather than boating accidents.

  “Absolutely,” she said, “have a nice day.”

  Jeffcoat’s list of sins extended well beyond humping other men’s wives. He was a certifiable scumbag with a lot to lose. That list of twenty-three with Margolis at the top must have been other people he’d cheated out of payments. Or maybe it was just people who died in boating accidents. I searched for a few of the names and none of them came up dead at sea, or dead at all for that matter. But they weren’t connected to insurance fraud either. Normal citizens, doing normal things I guess, deceived into thinking their life was secured by layers of insurance policies. Next to Jeffcoat’s, the morals of a coyote and trafficker in willing wives looked pretty upright.

  I decided to phone Mrs. Margolis back, to see if she knew any of these other people on the list. She picked up on the fifth ring. I figured I woke her up.

  “So it’s my reporter friend again,” she said. “How’s tricks, reporter friend?” Her voice told me that her husband wasn’t the only one in the family who liked the hooch.

  “Just fine,” I said. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  “No time like the present. You wanna talk about insurance or are you gonna talk dirty to me?”

  “I’m all business, Mrs. Margolis. All business.”

  “Too bad because you know what the hottest thing on the planet is?”

  “No idea.”

  “A horny widow.” She cackled for a couple seconds until I heard something crash to the floor in the background. I hoped it wasn’t Mrs. Margolis, but after a few seconds she was back on the line.

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” she said. “I’ve got a situation here. I’ll call you later.”

  She never phoned back. I decided to let her sleep it off.

  A few minutes later, Red Eye came in with two young Chinese guys and three pizzas. Manchester United was playing, Red Eye’s team.

  “One of ‘em’s married to Posh Spice, homeboy,” Red Eye reminded me as I headed for bed. “She’s hot.”

  “Whatever,” I said. I put the pieces of tissue in my ear. They drowned out the commentary but at exactly 1:47 Red Eye’s celebratory screams let me know that Manchester had scored. I pulled the blankets over my head.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” said Red Eye, “Fulham motherfuckers are history.”

  A little while later I heard the Chinese guys leave. I pulled out one of the pieces of tissue from my ear thinking that the game was over but the English accent went back to volume 42 to let me know that Fulham was losing shape at the back. I replaced the tissue but after a few seconds Manchester struck again. Those balls of tissue were no match for Red Eye.

  I imagined him standing on his feet, his fist pumping high in the air. Red was triumphing for him again. What the hell had I gotten myself into? Then I heard a shot and the shattering of glass. It sounded like my kitchen window.

  CHAPTER 24

  I hit the floor, waiting for more shots, hoping to hear Red Eye move. Even groans of agony would have been welcome.

  The bedroom door was closed and I was in no hurry to open it. I crawled to the edge of the bed, reached up under my pillow and grabbed the Walther. The black steel felt good in my hand. There was movement in the living room—someone slithering across the floor.

  “You all right?” asked Red Eye.

  “Yeah, is it clear?”

  I wiggled to the door like a fat dog sliding on its belly. I turned the knob, remaining below the line of sight for a sniper rifle. Those TV cops who barged into rooms with their guns drawn were sitting ducks. I believed in the power of crawling low to the ground.

  I peeked through the crack in the door just above the bottom hinge. Red Eye stood in front of what used to be my kitchen window. The remains littered the counter. A foot-long glass wedge stuck up from the front burner on the stove.

  “Someone jumped over the fence and threw a brick through the window,” he said. “I’m not sure where the shot came from. Maybe there were two of them.”

  I felt brave now. If Red Eye could profile himself in the window frame, I could stand up and hug the wall.

  I went into the living room, then to the sliding doors, my Walther at my side. As I stepped onto the patio, I grasped the 9 mm in both hands and pivoted in half circles around the yard, looking for anything suspicious. Maybe there was something to what those TV cops did after all, though I was pretty sure the intruders had gone. As I reached the corner of the house I did a quick 90-degree turn and pointed my pistol down the narrow alley between my house and the fence. Toodles, the cat from next door, jumped down from a window ledge. Luckily my shot missed her.

  I ran along the fence toward the front of the house. I wondered if my neighbors had ever woken up to gunshots before. When I got to the front all I found was the cat squeezed under the Volvo in the driveway. I didn’t fire a second shot.

  I went as far as the sidewalk. No cars in the street. No lights on in the houses. I figure a gun goes off maybe once every ten years in this neighborhood. I also figure the well-healed are expert at diving under the blankets when a neighbor is under attack. My little trauma wasn’t going to disturb their beauty sleep as long as the bullets and bricks didn’t fly through their windows. Had Prudence screamed that day as she tried to fight off her attacker? Did those frantic cries fall on unresponsive ears tuned into HBO or blocked with space suit style headphones? She’d have had a better chance soliciting aid from the African wilderness.

  Red Eye was busy sweeping up the glass. A strange moment to become fastidious about cleaning. He’d swept the big pieces off the counter onto the floor and started cruising over all surfaces with the dust buster. Then he showed me the brick that came through the window. The thrower had etched “Next time you die Winter” on its face in a black marker. This brick was definitely not a teenage prank.

  Red Eye carried on sweeping the glass away, attacking the counter with a sponge.

  “The little pieces can get into your food,” he said, “they’ll tear you up from the inside out.”

  “Who did this?” I asked.

  “Don’t know,” he said, “they got away. But I did my job. If I wasn’t here, homeboy, they’d have come through the front door.”

  I wasn’t convinced by Red Eye’s self-important evaluat
ion, but he was right. I wanted him there, late-night soccer, pizza boxes, the whole nine yards.

  I expected the police to arrive, but the quiet through the rest of the night was only punctuated by two more Manchester United goals and Red Eye’s slightly repressed reaction. I heard him mumble something about winning $500 from “those motherfuckers.”

  The next morning a woman from the police phoned. They said they were following up a report of a “loud banging noise.”

  “Our call is part of the ongoing process of evaluating police services,” she said.

  “How did you find out about this incident?” I asked. “Did the pony express deliver the message?”

  “I’m looking at a report,” said a Miss Francona. “Someone called at 1:46 a.m. A squad car arrived three minutes later. They reported that it was all quiet. I’m just doing a follow up. Trying to maintain a high level of communication with our clients.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “I never saw any police but maybe they spoke to someone else. Who phoned in the report?”

  “I’m not at liberty to divulge that information,” Miss Francona said.

  “Have a nice day,” I said and hung up. Even when they were trying to do the right thing the police pissed me off. I would have let them know it too, if I didn’t have so much to lose. I had a shot of Wild Turkey and decided I’d give Miss Francona a piece of my mind after all. I hit the call back button on my phone. I got a recording saying that the number I had reached was out of service. Miss Francona lucked out. She wasn’t going to like what I would have said.

  But the more I thought about that brick, the more I realized police weren’t really the problem. I had been violated again. I had to fight back with everything I had or just keep getting punked until one day I ended up lying on my living room floor just like Prudence. I needed a little more firepower than that Walther could provide.