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.