C H A P T E R • 289
I had the nerve to be mad, until I turned around and got a look at the silhouette of a man standing center stage with the light behind him. Even from there I could see his handgun reflecting the light and looking comfortable in his hand. It convinced me to abandon my attempt at escape over the fence, which probably would have been tricky anyway in the stupid skirt.
I turned to get my shoes off the box.
“Stop! Now! Put your hands up and come back here.”
I walked again along the edge of the path in my stocking feet, avoiding the footprints. But he messed up the prints when he covered the last distance separating us and reached out to grab my arm. Then he dropped his hand.
It was Bobby Bop. “This is close enough,” he said. “You can’t get anywhere I can’t reach with this.” And he gestured toward the fence with his gun. “Maybe we’ll go see what’s in the box.”
“Oh please. Not the mud again.”
“Move.”
We walked to the compost box and he stood on the step stool and tossed me my shoes. I considered running, but he was right that there was nowhere to go the gun couldn’t reach.
He opened the lid and damn if he didn’t find something. “Aha.”
He used a stick to dig around some more in the box. When he didn’t find any more of what he was looking for, he hefted out a small suitcase. It looked dry but it had little wheels and the wheels were muddy.
“I liked the show tonight,” I said. “It was just what I needed.” He didn’t answer.
“How did you get away when the movie police busted us this morning?”
He still didn’t answer. But I kept talking while we walked because it lightened the death-march aspect of our return trip through the garden. The wheels got muddier as he rolled the suitcase back.
“Why are you here? Is that money? I overheard you and Al talking about making bootleg movies. Was he really making suitcases full of money? And how did you know?”
We were at the door and we looked down at Heavy while time stopped.
“He was a little wannabe hustler. Wasn’t going to have much else happen to him than this anyway,” he said.
“Then why kill him?” I asked. It was a question to maybe start a conversation now that he was talking back, while I paid attention to the space I had to maneuver in. There was no way I was getting enough room to use the baseball bat, even if I could have made myself touch it.
He wiped some of the mud off his Sly Stone concert boots on the carpet before he shoved me from behind down the hall. When we got to the bathroom, I reached in and grabbed one of Al’s thick towels. He waited while I wiped off the mud. I would have been taller than him in the heels but I didn’t put the shoes back on.
When we got to the living room, he opened the suitcase. In it was money in batches wrapped with rubber bands nestled in bunches of loose bills.
“Look at that,” I said for lack of anything better to say.
He closed the lid and rolled it to the door.
“Is that why you killed him?”
“I didn’t kill him. I want people alive to pay me.”
“You’re the loan shark. That was the loan you were talking to Al about.”
“I’m a businessman.”
“I thought you were a music man.”
“It doesn’t pay the bills.”
“Do you know who killed Heavy?” I asked.
“He got paid to scare Cecelia and he killed her with the cab. Bunch of idiot niggers.”
I didn’t expect him to tell me. It was probably not a good thing. But if he was talking, I needed to know.
“Why? Why would somebody try to scare Cecelia?”
“To make her shut up.”
“About what?” I asked. “About the bank?”
“Your newspaper let everybody know the bank wasn’t safe.”
“Aren’t you curious to see how much is in the suitcase?”
He stopped for a moment. “There will be time.”
He turned to the business of searching Al’s inventory and picked up one of the videotapes. I was thinking about my options and they seemed like a precious few. I moved close enough to the rack and to Al’s throwing star sitting on one shelf. My teacher had given me a shuriken and instructions on how to use the eight-pointed star as part of my training.
“I buy product. That’s good business. But I don’t like negotiating at a disadvantage,” he said.
“Is that why you killed Heavy? He was just at the wrong place? He was just in your way?”
“I’ve got a better story. Too bad you won’t be writing it Pearl Washington from the newspaper. I know this town. I went up and over the house today to get away from the bust. I always have a way out. And here’s one you’ll love. Whoever killed Heavy killed you too. Obviously.”
I watched him turn back to the tape library.
“I’m going to get a tissue out of my little bag.” The emphasis on the size of my beaded evening bag seemed to work and he looked up and then went back to another row of tapes. It was the last one. He squatted and hunched over to get a good look.
While he was preoccupied, I slid the throwing star off the shelf and took it into my hand then closed my fist so only the points showed between my fingers. I held it against me behind my beaded bag. Sometimes an instinct takes over all the available space in my head. My instinct told me to walk over to the front door. But he had had the presence of mind to lock it.
I turned two locks with one hand and felt it give.
“Get away from the door!” He shouted and moved across the room fast and grabbed me. I turned to say something to distract him, something to continue the conversation we were having, and only managed to turn slightly away before he punched me in the face.
I rooted myself, stepped forward, and my body drove my backhand to deliver the metal points of the throwing star between the knuckles of my hand, not into the lethal place in his throat, but into his cheek.
He howled and held one hand to his face. I grabbed the limp wrist of the gun hand and used my knee to push him back. He stumbled and I watched the gun fly off down the little hall. He started for it. And I was out.
There was really nowhere to hide on the sidewalk. When you see what people do on the sidewalk, you’re not that quick to hit it. I heard him coming. And, I flattened myself against the building behind the little bit of wall the Urban League had built to enclose their front stoop next door and waited. From there I could hear his footsteps running toward Seventh Avenue.