“I was after the Negress,” he said. “That’s the one that Sasha said was supposed to have the deed. The old rancher knew who I was, he said so.”
“The other ones didn’t know you.”
He hunched his shoulders, ever so slightly.
“Tell me sumpin’ else,” I asked then.
“What?” the happy killer requested.
“What’s your name?”
“Why?”
“I like knowin’ the names of people I might have to kill one day.”
The fairy-tale ogre laughed out loud. He was tickled all the way down to his fungal core.
“Leon,” he said loudly. “Leon.”
It took me less than an hour to make it downtown and to Melvin Suggs’s disheveled office.
“How’d you even find out where Crudock was at?” he asked me.
“I looked it up in an old phone book.”
“Yeah, right,” he doubted.
“He as much as admitted he was behind the attack on Solomon’s,” I said. “They got a big safe on the sixth floor that was pulled out of a wall. I bet it’s the one LaCraig had in his house.”
“So?”
“What you mean, so? He confessed to me. There’s proof of the home invasion. All you got to do is bring him in.”
“Look, Easy, that man Crudock got more money than God. He has residences in four states and in each of them he has at least one senator that owes their seat to him.”
“But he attacked Orchestra Solomon,” I reasoned.
“And if she attacks him back, I won’t be able to do a thing about that either.”
“I told him I could get the deed that all this shit is about.”
“So either give him what he wants or move to Mongolia.”
“You can’t do anything?”
“Not within the law.”
When I got home, Amethystine was there waiting for me, wearing a classic fifties housedress, black with yellow polka dots on an A-line ensemble that went down to just above her ankles. Her flat black shoes were inhabited by brown feet in white silk socks.
“Are you wearing anything under that?” I asked.
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
When she pressed her red, red lips up against mine, I tasted strawberries and whiffed the mild scent of fresh-milled soap.
“I hear you been hangin’ out with Mary Donovan.”
“Yeah,” Amethystine admitted. “She’s nice.”
“If this was three hundred years ago, they would have burned her at the stake.”
“You like Mary,” she said dismissively. “Me and her being friends is not the problem, now, is it?”
I could feel the breath resonating in my chest.
I said, “One of the richest men in America seems to want me dead.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s not enough?”
“Is this a flesh-and-blood man?”
“Quite a bit of flesh.”
“And does he have anywhere near the acumen of the ways of the world that you do?”
“He has an army.”
“Beehive got a queen. But step on her and her army don’t mean a thing.”
“I love you, Amethystine Stoller.”
Jesus, Essie, and Benita made it home that afternoon. By nightfall Hannibal, Violet, and Lutisha James had arrived.
I scoured the standalone freezer kept in a closet on the second floor. From there I brought out gumbo and jambalaya, eggnog mixed with bourbon, and collard greens. While those country delicacies warmed on the stovetop, I made white rice and monkey bread with creole sauce. Benita made a fresh citrus salad to cut the grease and Jesus and Essie threw together a mess of pralines — to end it all on a sweet note.
We had all just sat down to dinner at the long table on the first floor when the front door, which had been locked, was opened.
Feeling for my pistol, I rose from the table.
Then, “Daddy?” she called.
“Baby?”
Feather came in dragging a huge canvas duffel bag.
“Hi-i,” she cried.
Most of the room rose to hug her. The dogs leaped in the welcome.
“I didn’t know you were comin’,” I told her after the third or fourth hug.
“You sounded so sad, Daddy. Bonnie said I should go.”
That night was like a furlough in the middle of a world war. I had family, people I loved, and they loved me. There was no tomorrow. There was no war. Everyone had a full stomach and a safe place to sleep.
I was the last one awake, washing dishes and putting away food. It felt so good, so safe and secure doing family chores, that I was surprised to hear the doorbell.
Erculi and Orchestra stood at the threshold, swathed in solemnity. The wise old man bore up under a great weight and the lady stayed close to him, lending him her strength of will.
I ushered my late-night guests out onto the small terrace, where they took seats on two iron stools while I leaned against the latticed-steel balustrade.
“Cosmo is dead,” Erculi said.
“I’m so, so sorry, man,” I said, feeling his pain in my chest.
“It is not your fault,” the proud Sicilian judged. I could tell by his tone that he’d wondered if I was the cause. He thought it over and, I believed, finally decided that he and his sons had failed in their preparedness.
“It’s not your fault either,” I said.
“Maybe not my fault, but it is my responsibility.”
“What do you need from me?”
Erculi wanted to know where he could find the man who was the cause of the death of his son. Orchestra sat next to him, lending her authority to back up the request.
34
There’s a red leather sofa chair in the corner of my third-floor bedroom, diagonally across from the bed. I was sitting naked on that chair while Amethystine slept peacefully, also naked, on top of the jumble of blankets, pillows, and sheets. I was going over and over the unwritten balance sheet of my work, so far, that week.
There was no proof that Jesus had been dealing drugs. There was, on the other hand, a mountain of evidence against the dead BNDD agents. I’d discovered that I had a blood son, Ivy League educated and committed to the struggle. The two most important lovers in my life, Amethystine Stoller and Anger Lee, each one more than I could manage, were coexisting under the same roof. This was a predicament that all Black men, maybe all men everywhere, hungered for even though it was clearly a bad omen.
I wondered if I should offer Niska a limited partnership at the agency but, in the end, decided to shelve that idea for a while.
Somewhere around 5:00 a.m. I realized that I was not going to sleep, so I dressed in a burgundy housecoat that my old girlfriend Bonnie had given me when we still had a future. I made French roast coffee in the kitchen and then went down to the living room to sit near the trickling stream that flowed through the ground floor of our home.
There were plans in motion. These stratagems were not completely mine, but they had something to do with me. I smoked my daily cigarette on the terrace, with the door to the house shut. The dogs had come along with me to look out over the broad plain and sniff the air.
I waited for the sun before turning on a transistor radio. Flipping the dial, looking for music that would soothe me, I happened upon what they called an important news bulletin.
Early this morning Waynesmith Von Crudock was shot and killed along with his bodyguard, Leon Mumford, in front of his office in North Santa Monica. He received multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead on the scene. The SMPD reported that there were no witnesses and no leads.
That week I attended three funerals. The first of these was for the cattle king, his thirty-one-year-old niece-in-law, and her husband. Orchestra came with me because I asked her to. The Ellenbogens were there with Gigi. The minute the orphaned child saw me, she threw herself into my arms. She was crying and laughing, holding on for dear life.