C H A P T E R • 54
“Don’t turn around. Walk!” I heard him speak at the end of a shuffling sound that caught my attention too late. I was feeling mildly surprised and mostly resigned. “Bobby? Now what?”
“Lt. Summer Knight, you’re getting ready to get real ugly.”
He pushed me back towards Viola’s house with one hand around my arm, while he held something at my back. There was no way I was going docile on him, but breaking away wasn’t an option if it meant getting shot.
He pushed me again. “I said walk.”
When I turned my head, I got to see the bandage on the damage I had caused when I cut his face with the throwing star. And he watched me register the knowing and jabbed something hard into my ribs. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of any more than my groan to acknowledge how it hurt.
My brain was dancing through my few choices. The sidewalk was clear, and at the same time I hoped for one of the neighbors to witness and report, I didn’t want anyone to be hurt as the drama unfolded.
The hand around my arm tightened and I could feel the other arm moving behind me.
“Turn around. I want you to see this.”
I turned around.
“It’s a nasty thing to cut somebody’s face,” he said.
He had holstered his gun and he swept with a dramatic flourish to open a knife, which left his middle open.
I drove my knee into his groin hard enough that he closed down on himself. Even with my injured rib, he was at the disadvantage and I took the gun out of his holster. Still, I had to back up quickly after I took the knife to steady myself and be in the position of holding the gun on him.
“You won’t shoot me,” he said.
“The hell I won’t.”
But I can’t say whether I would or not because Viola came out through her parlor floor door.
“Please get off the street. Get in here. Where’s Virginia, Pearl?”
“She’s safe.”
“I’m not through with you,” Bobby said. “Know that I owe you.”
I pointed his gun at him until we got to Viola’s kitchen. Then I let it hang heavy against my leg and kept my distance. She looked at it and handed me my vodka and OJ.
The back of her hand was covered with scratches, and long welts and scabs also showed red and brown on the skin up her arm.
When she handed him his drink, Bobby took it with one hand and with the other arm brought her to him and they kissed.
“So, you like them young. Daddy must have bored the hell out of you.”
“No,” she said. “When he was healthy he could get down. We had a bunch of fun.”
I had a little speech to make, whether I felt like it or not. And I did not. But I said, “Viola, you were right about your Chicago audience. Some of them were disappointed when you didn’t show up Thursday night for the Black Women Business Owners Festival. It was Thursday night Heavy was murdered.”
“I thought you said you were calling me from Chicago when you told me where the money was,” Bobby said.
“You were my last secret, darling. Don’t listen to her. Thursday is when I got sick and had to cancel my presentation. There are people who saw me in Chicago. She’s wasting our time with this.”
“If she called you and told you to go to Al’s, then she set you up for a murder,” I told him. “Because Heavy was dead in there. And I’m betting those sneakers in the shopping bag behind your garbage cans probably fit the footprints I saw in Al’s backyard, Viola.”
“Oh please. No doubt those were Al’s own footprints in his own backyard.”
“Or, how about you made them when you came back to town and went to Al’s dressed in a red track suit? People saw you. You must have been desperate.”
She reached into a kitchen drawer and pulled out a gun she pointed at me. “Give me that,” she said.
I let Bobby’s gun hang against my leg just a little longer. It was my welcome companion. Then I laid it on the counter.
Bobby started for it.
“No. You stay there,” she said and turned her gun on him.
“Vy. Vy. You going to shoot me girl?” he asked and laughed.
“You don’t have anything else I need. You’re the last mess I have to clean up.”
“So, now I’m a mess? Ain’t that some shit?” I felt a little sorry for him.
“More like a loose end. If it wasn’t for you, Charlie would have left me most of his money in the will. I was counting on his money to pay back whatever cash I can pull together to get out of this mess. I need that money.”
“You also need me. I’ve bought you the time with my partners to straighten out this bank confusion. And tonight, I aimed a Chevy at this one. You can’t do this without me.”
He was moving toward her when she shot at him.
“I won’t miss again. Sit down.”
He sat on the edge of a chair and she sat down on the other side of the kitchen but with her gun still pointed at him.
“You know, desperate is such an unattractive word,” she said. “I had to wait for Heavy to let me in to Al’s apartment after I rang and heard the rustling. I was tempted to wave at him when I knew he could see me outside around the curtain that was moving just enough. But I didn’t wave. I’m not the type on a good day. And this was not a good day.”
“He was wired and he was high from what I had the cop man deliver. He said it helped with the pain. He said his face hit the steering wheel. He took a pose. I suppose it felt like a tough guy pose from where he stood. It looked foolish and pitiful to me.” She leaned a little forward. “And he was not dressed for travel.”
“He took some of the money out of my little rolling suitcase and released the bills from the rubber bands. He said he was glad they were small bills and they would be easy to spend down south where he had some family. But he needed more, because it was one thing to drive a car at somebody and keep on going. It’s another thing to have to cover up a murder and keep ahead of the cops.”
She leaned back. “It was strange how in those few beats it was a relief—when I knew for sure what I had only anticipated. I told him I would get more money and to leave the door open so I could get back in. And I showed him the surprise I brought him. We shared the joy because we both wanted him good and high.”
She looked at me directly. “I gave him time. And when I went back in and walked into the bedroom, he was unconscious. Then I heard someone outside. It must have been you Miss Thing. I couldn’t tell if he was still alive, so I hit him with the baseball bat and ran out the back and climbed over the fence and landed in the bushes on the other side and got all scratched up.”
I interrupted. “And you couldn’t get the suitcase over the fence, so you called Bobby to tell him there was money at Al’s and to go get it.”
“That’s your story. But how do you like this story, Pearl?” Viola said. “Bobby shoots you with his gun. And you shoot him with yours. You two are the only ones who know.”
Although, I must say I always had the instinct there was something off about her damsel-in-distress act, I still had a hard time imagining Viola was capable of this level of evil. She shot Obsidian? She paid to put Cecilia in mortal danger? And, within a matter of days, this latest information was more like a wrinkle. She killed Heavy with the baseball bat. And now, she was getting ready to kill us.
“You are multi-tasking like a motherfucker,” Bobby said, laughing absurdly for a man who’d already been shot at once.
“I’m not armed,” I said.
Bobby bought me some time because he had pulled a small pistol out of his pocket and he aimed it at her.
At the same time, we heard the sound of the explosion, Viola shot him. She ran up the stairs.
“Call an ambulance,” Bobby said.
“I will,” I told him. And, using all the chops I’d learned as an actress cop, I ducked and ran, hugging the wall. When I got up to the landing I saw Viola going out the window and I heard what sounded like gun shots at the front door.
I climbed down the ladder to the alley.