18

Jiffy Eats. The black letters were painted on a white board over the front door. All three—black letters, white board, front door—could have used a paint job. I folded the umbrella and went inside.

Like most small sidewalk stores, the place stank of bug spray and rodent decay. This place also smelled of oil. The retailer next door sold used auto parts, so maybe that accounted for the oil aroma. Lolonda Eggers had said that the original owner, a Korean man, had died and his son now ran the shop. Lolonda at first accused the Korean son of being the go-between for the skag trade until faced with the truth that her Johndro was the tip-and-fee entrepreneur.

When I entered, the bell mounted on the door jingled. Groups of what my mama called hooligans were hanging out around a few game machines. I thought about the visit this weekend and Lake’s and my discussion last night. It had left a raw conflicted feeling in my soul. He understands. I know he does. He loves me. I know he does. But Mama needs to be with me. He’s right. I can’t get over the guilt of stashing her in a high-priced home and thinking periodic visits sufficed. They didn’t.

While I’d drifted off into introspection, the young black men meandered from the store. I looked at the plastic shield that protected the shop keeper and saw eyes in a round face staring my way. I smiled, held up the identification badge and walked up to the lip-high hole in the shield. “My name’s Moriah Dru,” I said. “When you get a minute, I’d like to talk to you.”

He grinned, turned, and walked through a door that hooked up to the guard shield.

Late thirties, short, thin, and strong with black hair cut short on the sides, leaving the top to fall from a middle part halfway to his ears. He rounded the coffee and hot chocolate bar saying, “Mal-Chin Choi at your service. Call me M.C.”

“Reminds me of K.J. Choi, the golfer.”

“Ah, yes. Kyung-Ju Choi. He is a hero in our country, although America is now my country. I have become a citizen.” I congratulated him, and he continued, “K.J. Choi and I are not related, although one might say everyone is related. Choi is a name like Smith.” He zeroed in on the ID badge hanging from my neck. “You are Miss Dru, as you say. You work for Child Trace, Inc. I remember seeing you in the neighborhood, and now I’m pleased to meet you.”

“Same here. Child Trace is my company.”

“Like me, here, I am my own employee.” He roamed his arm over the small store, which was jam-packed with high-priced, high-caloric edibles and drinkables. Among non-foods were fire wood, trashy magazines with masked the covers, dog collars, gaudy jewelry, and, racks of video games for rent.

Motioning my head in the direction of the game machines, I said, “They keep the kids coming in.”

“Seventy-five percent of my customers are under the age of sixteen,” he said. “Like the young men you saw when you came in.”

“Nice kids?” I asked.

“Yes, very nice,” he said, his eyes not meeting mine.

“I’m trying to find Johndro Phillips,” I said. How could a face go blank so fast? “He disappeared from his home last night.”

“I had wondered. He did not come into the store this morning.”

“Has there been any talk about last night?”

His brow wrinkled like a worried man’s would. “I do not evaluate my customers, Miss Dru.” I started to say I wasn’t asking for an evaluation, but he held up a hand and said, “I find that listening is good, but speaking is not so good.”

I told him I had been hired by Juvenile Justice to find Johndro. M.C.’s unyielding eyes stared at me. I explained that Johndro was not in trouble with the law as far as I knew, but he had witnessed a shooting that took place the next street over and his disappearance could mean he’s in trouble.

He interrupted, “You want to know if I will help a kid who’s probably in trouble?” He looked at the back wall as if seeing kids playing games. “Most of the kids in this neighborhood are in trouble of one sort or another.” He stood erect and stretched his short frame. “I have two sons. We live in Roswell now. Before I married, I lived in this neighborhood. I inherited the store from my father, who was very strict with the customers. When my father died, I decided to help the young people, do outreach, especially the young boys turning into men. They think they are men before their ages are double digits. It didn’t take long before I learned a lesson. I tried to help a young boy—ten he was—who was a truant. I trusted his desire to get an education. His mother was a doper who didn’t take care of him. I spoke to her and she ran me off; I spoke to the school officials. They sent the authorities. One day, I turned my back and this ten-year-old kid stabs me. I am lucky he missed my liver.”

I heard the pain in his voice. “They know not what they do sometimes,” I said, reaching into my card case.

“They know,” he said, his voice hard and hoarse. “I thought about selling this store, but I decided to be a shopkeeper and not a social worker. When I married, I moved. As things stand here, the kids trust me not to interfere in their lives. It’s unspoken, but if I leave them alone, they won’t rob my store and beat me up.”

I handed him my business card. “I get the message, M.C. If you hear from him or see him, will you call me?”

He didn’t answer.

* * * * *

It was a short ride to Christ’s Mercy Church on Chestnut Street. And who to my wondering eyes should appear—I knew in a moment it must be Lieutenant Lake—the detective without peer.

He didn’t need an umbrella, what with the new blue fedora rakishly angled on his head.

I was ten minutes early for our eleven o’clock appointment with the Eggers’ pastor—the eloquent Dr. Thurmond Jennings who appears every Sunday morning at seven o’clock raving and finger-shaking out sermons to his television congregation. We have awakened to his shouts of eternal damnation when we’ve not reprogrammed the television for the weekend.

I found a parking place, got out of the car, raised the umbrella and crossed the street. In the mist Lake’s face lost its definition. I suddenly felt vulnerable and tense. I thought about last night. We would get through this. Seeing Mama. Making decisions.

Sometimes Lake’s expression tells me his world is complete with my arrival. He said, “How’s Hippolyta this morning?”

Like a magic spell, his words eased my anxiety. “Shakespeare before noon?” I said and stretched my neck and raised my chin. “Four days will quickly steep themselves in night; Four nights will quickly dream away the time; And then the moon, like to a silver bow, New bent in heaven, shall behold the night of our solemnities.”

His eyes shimmered, brightening the day. About a year after we met, I persuaded him to come with me to see Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Since then, when the situation calls for it, he calls me Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazon warriors. As Hippolyta says in the bard’s comedy, “This is the silliest stuff I ever heard.”

Lake said, “Don the magical girdle, warrior queen, methinks we’re going to have a hell of a fight before this is o’er.”

The murmur of voices intruded, and I looked over my shoulder to see a line of people at the side of one of the church’s ancillary buildings. Young and old turned wary eyes to the cop. Lake, wearing the trademark chapeau of APD homicide detectives, looked exactly like what he was.

We walked up the broad steps. Mercy Church looked more like a cathedral than most Protestant churches in this city. A plaque at the double doors claimed the church was established in 1836. It had, however, been expanded on all sides but the front. The original sanctuary soared like Notre Dame. Despite the mist, I looked up to see the steeple puncture low glistening clouds.

Lake removed his hat, and we waited in silence in the vestibule for the church secretary. An organ played, probably someone practicing for services that were held morning and evening seven days a week. The church doors were open from dawn to dusk; meetings were held all day and into the night. It was a church of specialty groups, catering to its city and neighbors, embracing young, old, poor, and poorer, welcoming gang bangers and drug dealers, rapists and murderers alike as sinners needing salvation. Those standing in the line outside waited for the cafeteria to open. The ladies of the church served lunch to anyone who was hungry, who didn’t have a dime. Pastor Jennings called his television ministry one that worked for the Lord, feeding hungry people and lifting up their sorry souls.

While thinking all this, I watched a pretty young woman walk from a side office and close the door quietly. She approached and smiled. “Welcome to Christ’s Mercy. Are you waiting for an audience with Pastor Thurmond Jennings?”

“We are,” Lake said, half-rotating his hat in his long, slender hands. These little things he does cause a pleasant tightness in my chest. He introduced us. “I’m Detective Lieutenant Richard Lake and this,” he nodded at me, “is Moriah Dru, of Child Trace.”

“Yes, Child Trace,” she said, broadening her smile. “You saved those two little girls.”

“I had a lot of help,” I said, looking at Lake.

“I love the story of those dogs.”

After their heroics in what I’ve dubbed the end game case, Buddy and Jed were featured in our city’s newspaper. The piece got picked up by the wire services and appeared in newspapers across the country, prompting a dog specialty magazine to write another feature, which circulated across the country, too. They were famous, but were still working. Which gave me an idea. I said to the woman, “Search and rescue dogs love finding people. Their reward is here on Earth in the form of food and toys.”

She revealed nice dimples when she said, “Dogs go to Heaven, too. Come this way.” She beckoned. Her glance at Lake lasted a fraction of a second longer than necessary. He’d made another woman’s eyes gleam. Church person that she was, she should know the Tenth Commandment. Thou shalt not covet they neighbor’s wife or servant, ox or donkey. Coveting somebody’s lover is tops on my cardinal sin list, too.

She led us into the nave, walking smartly down the aisles and around the chancel to a door, where she tapped three times. A strong male voice bid us enter. Inside the office, I was reminded of the oriental rugs on Baxter’s floors. This office was spacious and these rugs must have employed half of India. Pastor Jennings rose from his meticulously cluttered rosewood desk, came forward and shook our hands. “Happy to meet you,” he said. Vocal chords made the orator and had since the bards of ancient history and the emergence of tent revivalists.

Greetings over, we sat in two soft black leather chairs parked in front of his desk. He seated himself in a stunning, cardinal-red chair and shuffled some files before he folded his hands atop the desk. “Johndro Phillips is on the cusp of going two ways. To Christ or to the Devil.”

Lake said, “He’s proven himself head-strong. I don’t have high hopes, unless ...”

“Unless,” the pastor finished, “he gets scared shitless.”

Lake and I smiled, for obvious reasons. Lake said, “Do you know where he is right now, or where he might be?”

His headshake was more avuncular than a no. “I’ve tried with Johndro, short of taking the strap to him, of which you,” he looked at me, “would soundly disapprove.”

I raised my shoulders, indicating not necessarily. “Beatings make brutes,” I said. “Light spankings get their attention and curtail their arrogance. All children are arrogant. It’s the me thing.”

He turned brown, brooding eyes to a photograph on the wall. “The wood shed put the fear of the Lord in me. I can tell you that I went three times with Daddy. That was all it took to drive the devil out of my soul.”

Lake said, “I’ve felt the power of the strap, but you strap a child today and you’re in jail and they’re in foster care.”

“Ever since that devil Devus Johnson moved in, Johndro’s changed. Now the boy is growing up so he’s naturally going to change, but he was heading in the right direction with Mr. and Mrs. Eggers— pillars in the work of the Lord. We need more like them.”

“But they couldn’t stop Johndro hanging with the wrong crowd.”

“The wrong crowd is mostly what’s around here,” the pastor said, “but we try. We believe in nurture by love. Love of God and love of each other.”

Wasn’t he just talking about taking a strap to Johndro?

Lake asked, “And you have no idea where Johndro Phillips would go?” He’d grown impatient. He wanted evidence, facts, not a sermon.

The pastor puffed his lips and made a humming noise.

“Would he come to you for help?” Lake asked.

He sighed. “In the past he has. Find Devus Johnson. It is my understanding he witnessed a shoot-out with the Johnson gang and has disappeared. If that devil is involved, I fear for the boy. I talked with Mrs. Lolonda Eggers after services last night. She told me you came by, Miss Dru. We all need to pray for her.” He looked at me like I had something to answer for. “The poor woman is distraught.”

She hadn’t seemed so yesterday. Something was amiss with Thurmond Jennings, too. Why does he think his evasive answers fall on dead heads?

I felt Lake’s eyes on my profile. I believe he and I were on the same wave length.

“And,” Lake stood. “You have not seen Johndro since the shooting?”

“I have not. Tell the truth and shame the devil.”

* * * * *

We ate lunch at a little meat-and-three-veg place down the street from the newspaper. Southern fried places are getting as rare as eight track tapes. We are an international city now. Blink your eyes and downtown changes along with food choices. Asian fusion, German brats and sauerkrauts (not yummy), Indian served by belly dancing waitresses. But there are some Southern cheap eats places and we have a favorite.

A line ranged out the door, but we, servants of the city, were waved in by the owner, who yelled, “Let’s get these cops back out fighting crime!” I’m no longer a cop, but that doesn’t count with her, and most of her patrons were regulars and knew the drill.

When my plate was loaded with mashed potatoes (the owner always gives me extra), green beans cooked for several hours in fat back (I’m a genuine southerner after all), butter beans and fried chicken breast, I found a table we could squeeze into by the window. Lake came along balancing two plates, one piled with pork chops, collards, butter beans and rice with gravy; the second held five cornbread muffins and ten pats of butter. We were going to have a food fight over the fifth muffin and two pats. He set his plate down and went to get the iced teas. Sweetened. I figured I would have twenty-five hundred calories to work off before dinner. But I was feeling much better. Lake had made by day by calling me a warrior—something I am for kids.

After slathering butter on cornbread, I said. “Buddy and Jed.”

Lake stopped his fork halfway to his mouth. “You reading my mind again?”

“At least we got something from the preacher. Is it a greater sin for a man of God to lie than it is for me?” Lake frowned as if wondering where that came from. “I’m convinced he knows more than he’s telling us.”

“They never tell us everything. Even men of God,” Lake said, around a mouthful of collards.”

When we’d finished, Lake got into a verbal fight with the owner. She wouldn’t take his money.

“I got a raise, Celia,” he said.

“You’re money’s still no good in here, Detective Lake.”

“What about a tip?”

“A tip will be okay.”

So he gave her three twenties, enough to cover the meal and a generous tip.

On the sidewalk I raised the umbrella and he adjusted his fedora. “Come to the shop,” he said. “I’m going to call and see if Buddy and Jed are free. The air’s heavy with moisture and the ground is soft, but maybe they can get something, if Johndro’s holed up in the neighborhood.”

“Betcha.”

“I never bet against you, my love.” Crossing the street to the parking garage, he said, “I do love you, you know.”

I bobbed my head. “I know. I love you.”

“So. No problem.”

“No, no problem.” I gave him a quick push forward. “You go on, Lake. I want to question LaRisha Brown.”

He shook his head. “She’ll be in school.”

“I’ll call her CPS worker, get her out of class. Portia will aid in that.”

Our eyes met. I made a kissing moue which he returned, then got into the unmarked cruiser and drove away. Five minutes later, Portia told me that LaRisha Brown was missing. She left home to walk to school and hadn’t shown up.

“God damn me.”

“What’s wrong?” Portia said.

“Priorities.” I let Cho Martine slip away and now LaRisha Brown.

“If you insist on wearing a verbal hair shirt, at least explain.”

“I stopped to talk to the Korean grocer where Johndro hangs out. He couldn’t help. I talked to a pastor who I believed lied, I had lunch with Lake. My whole damned day was squandered.”

“Don’t self-flagellate just yet. The Decatur police are looking for LaRisha.”

“She knows where Johndro would go. She’ll be with him, if she’s not now.”

“These street kids get around. MARTA.”

That’s the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, which subway trains travel north, south, east and west, and feeder buses run on every major street. I said, “She’ll be in The Bluffs by now.”

“So go back there.” Click.

My head began to pulse with the mother of all headaches. My cell phone played Haydn. Another case heard from. “Baxter, how are you?”

“I’m fine. And are you, my personal private detective?”

“I don’t know when I’ll be back on the case, but there are enough LEOs on it now, if anything happens ...”

“That’s only partially why I called. I am inviting you to dinner at my house in Augusta.”

The doll collection, oh boy. “A big affair?”

“Nothing like that. A quiet dinner. With someone you need to talk to.” His exuberance was infectious.

“Having to do with the case, right?”

He laughed and told me he’d been giving serious thought to the whole business and come into information that could break it wide open.”

“Tell me now, Bax.”

“The story is not mine to tell. Please, be my guest.”

He remained mysterious even after I asked if he’d found and tamed the fiery Cho. He said he’d invited me because I was good at getting people to talk. Then he said he ran into Felix accidently on purpose. Felix told him to relay—if I didn’t already know—that Special Agent Hagan and Sergeant Thomas hadn’t talked to the Martines, but they knew they were in Iceland and were incommunicado.

“Why incommunicado.”

“Felix didn’t know or I believe he would have told me. He knows damn well I don’t talk to his sergeant.”

“When is this mysterious soiree?”

“Tomorrow night. At Ammezzato, a name given to the house, but not by me. The gates are always open because they’re old and creaky.”

Saturday. My day with Mama. An excuse. You are a cruel girl. I dry-swallowed guilt. “I’ll damn well try. I’ll keep in touch. How is Henry?”

“He’s gone home. The police won’t tell him anything, either.”

“That’s probably because there’s nothing to tell.”

I apologized again for not having time to personally devote to his case and assured him my staff was working on it.

“The newspapers are a-glee with speculation,” he grumbled.

Maybe some enterprising reporter would dig up evidence. Also Bax’s giving serious thought was a good sign. “One more chance to tell me what I can expect at this enigmatic dinner.”

He said, “I’m not certain when I’ll get away so if you arrive before me, you will find a spare key in the carriage house under the floor mat of an old Model T Ford. The alarm may or may not be set, depending on my caretaker’s memory. He’s old and lives in an apartment above the carriage house. You know my alarm number. Same as the condo, my birth date.”

“All your properties the same?”

“I’m of the opinion, if a burglar wants in, he’s going to get in.”

“I certainly could,” I said in a joking way, but I wasn’t joking.

I put in a quick call to Web to tell him about the Martines. As usual he already had the answer. “Paul Ardai emailed. Martine’s in shipping negotiations with the Swedish government.”

“I heard Iceland.”

“A ruse for secrecy. Also, the French National Police haven’t been helpful. Thank God we’ve got Paul.”

Yes, thank God. Monsieur Ardai was most helpful in solving the deadly Scuppernong affair. Web said that Ardai had a man keeping tabs on Martine and would approach him when he surfaced. Ardai also told Web that Mrs. Martine was ailing and that there was only a caretaker at their Paris house.”

“Keep me posted.”

“As if I wouldn’t.”