Still looking at me, Jackson got up from behind his desk.
“Let’s get comfortable, Easy,” he said. “You know I don’t like bein’ stuck behind a desk; makes me feel like I’m my own worst enemy sittin’ in that chair.”
Back on the yellow sofa Jackson kicked off his black shoes, revealing blue, green, and yellow argyle socks. He pulled these dressy feet up under him, settling into half lotus, his back resting against the window-ward armrest of the office couch.
He took off his useless glasses to scrutinize me.
“I’m not a ghost, Jackson, just a very lucky man who survived a hellacious car crash.”
“Then why you ain’t in bed?” he asked, flinching a little at his own question.
“Like a shark.”
“Got to keep movin’,” he agreed tentatively. “You wanna drink?”
“You know I don’t drink.”
“They said you went off that cliff drunk. Now you back on the wagon?”
“Either that or the bottom of the hill.”
That got Jackson to smile.
“And you just come by to say hi to me and JP?” he asked.
“Evander’s in trouble and I promised Ray that I’d dig him out.”
“Uh-huh.”
The light knocking on the half-open office door announced Jean-Paul Villard. The Frenchman was olive-skinned with dark, dark brown eyes, almost black. The little mustache he’d sported the last time we met had been shaved off. His hair was longish compared to the crew cuts of his corporate American counterparts. If the police asked me to describe him I would have said that he was about five-nine, welterweight and wiry.
That day Jean-Paul was wearing a black suit designed for a slight build. His shirt was slate gray with no tie, open at the neck.
Seeing the understated French CEO I understood what my old friend and I were doing—or, more accurately, what Jackson was doing. The whole act, from half lotus to his honest questions, was a holding pattern until his boss arrived. Jackson was born to be another man in another country, where his worth would have been realized from the start. When Jean-Paul hired him at P9, Jackson felt not only friendship but a kind of patriotism for the man and his company. Black men of our day were never told, The sky’s the limit. Our limits were more like the inner lid of a coffin. Our potential was purely physical and necessarily short-lived. We could aspire to Joe Louis but never Henry Ford.
“Come on in, JP,” Jackson hailed.
Villard closed the door and approached us, an irresistibly charming grin on his lips.
“Easy,” he said, holding out a hand.
I rose and shook his hand, smiled and nodded.
“Jean-Paul.”
“Sit, sit, my friend,” he said.
Jean-Paul perched on the glass box table between Jackson and me.
“I am so ’appy that you are not dead, Easy,” he said.
We’d only met once, but the French businessman was very friendly toward black Americans, especially veterans of World War II. He’d first met them at the liberation of Paris and he, like Asiette, was contemptuous at the particular nature of racism in the United States.
“How’s Pretty doing?” I asked.
Pretty Smart was a beautiful young black woman who had fallen for Jean-Paul, or at least his wealth, when he and Jackson helped me smoke out one of her boyfriends who was the subject of a complex investigation.
“Coming along,” he said. “She does not understand that a Frenchman and the Negro American woman are so very much alike. I mean …” He moved his head from side to side. “I mean, she understands, but it makes her uncomfortable.
“But, Easy, what is it you need from me?”
Instead of talking I dumped the money from the laundry bag onto the glass table.
Jackson Blue, in spite of all his success in love and in business, was amazed by the immensity of the pile.
“L’argent,” Jean-Paul said, unimpressed. “What does this mean?”
I told both men the story of Evander and his misadventures as far as I understood them. I skipped over the fact that the luckless boy’s mother worked for P9. That bit of information didn’t seem salient for JP.
“I need to put this money somewhere until I figure out what it and the blood mean,” I said. “You’re the richest man I know, and so I thought maybe you would have a secure place to store it until I put the rest of the pieces together.”
The Frenchman was looking into my eyes. From the age of sixteen he had been a part of the resistance in Paris; this service lasted over the entire occupation. Villard was a man who studied other men.
“Yeah?” I said in response to his stare.
“You trust me?”
It was the only question worth asking, and so I smiled.
“I don’t know you hardly at all, Mr. Villard, and in part that’s why I came here. This money is no threat to you, and what do you care about a little pile of cash when you own this whole building?”
There was knowledge in my answer, understanding of myself in relation to the man sitting across from me. We both knew that knowledge is the deepest kind of trust.
“I could put it in my private safe if you want,” he offered.
Jean-Paul smiled without showing his teeth and cut a glance at Jackson, who still had his feet folded under his thighs. This brief, wordless exchange told me a great deal about the relationship between the two men. There was intimacy, conspiracy, and friendship there, but also the hierarchy of roles.
Jackson let out a quick breath and said, “Easy,” and I knew that my particular therapy for the reversal of death and dying was about to be expanded.
“You ever know a guy named Charles Rumor?” Jackson asked.
“Sneak thief, cheat, and liar,” I said. “An ex-girlfriend of his once told me that the only true thing he ever uttered was his snoring when he was asleep, and not always then.”
“That’s him.”
“I knew Charles back in Galveston before the war,” I said.
“He up here now. We used to run together before I got straight.”
“Yeah?”
“Uh-huh. Mostly it was a floating blackjack game, but we also used to go do target practice in the San Bernardino Mountains. He had this collection of pistols and liked to shoot beer cans and bottles, stuff like that.”
“Hm,” I grunted, just to keep the patter going.
Jean-Paul had clasped his hands together and was looking down at the floor.
“Anyway, that’s it; at least, that’s all I thought it was. Had to be seven or eight years ago. You know men like shootin’, Easy. I’d pop them bottles and cans off a wood railin’ up there. When I hit six I’d reload and shoot again. When we were finished I just dropped the piece in a bag and we’d drive back to visit these two sisters he knew.”
“Jackson,” I said to underscore the stupidity of his actions.
“I know, Easy. I know. I know I’m a fool. I mean, what has Rumor evah done that wasn’t only for him? But I didn’t work it out until three weeks ago.”
“And why then?”
“A white dude name’a Huggins called me one day here at work. He said that he could make me ten thousand dollars for just one afternoon of my time. I told him to get lost, but then he said that I’d get paid ten percent up front just to listen. I didn’t see anything wrong with it. If he aksed me to do sumpin’ against P9 I’da just said no and taken a thousand for the time. So I goes down to meet ’im at this little bar on Temple. It was pretty fancy, a white place, and they didn’t wanna let me in, even though I was dressed in a business suit an’ everything. But when I mentioned Mr. Huggins the waters parted and I was shown to a private room in the back.
“There was this big blousy dude in a brick red suit introduced himself as Theodore Huggins. He was with another man that he called Johnny Portia. This dude looked just like his name, sporty and sharp. His suit was as dark as green can get, and his smile coulda been used for a dentist’s ad.
“Huggins works for Portia, and Portia is a vice president of TexOk.”
“The oil company?” I asked.
Jean-Paul looked up.
“Yeah, man,” Jackson said. “Portia told me to look up in the old newspapers back in ’sixty-four when a cop broke in on some burglars and one of the crooks shot him in the leg. He told me that the gun used in that shooting had my fingerprints on it, that he had got that gun from Charles Rumor. He said he would give it to the cops if I didn’t sign an investment note for twenty-three million dollars to a company that works for TexOk’s experimental drillin’ up in Alaska.”
“But you work in computers,” I argued, as if I was at the table with Portia and Huggins.
“I ’ave allowed Jackson some power as an officer of the company,” Jean-Paul said. “ ’E would be an asset for business because people underestimate ’im, and that is always good in negotiations.”
“So you made it that just one man can make a loan like that?” I asked Jean-Paul.
“Of course not. There must be three officers signing the document. This Portia must ’ave two of my men in ’is pocket.”
“So you could’ve done this?” I said to Jackson.
“Yeah, I could. Of course, then I’d be on the run. But if the cops got hold’a that gun that I know only I touched with bullets that I loaded it with, that’s attempted murder, twenty-five years minimum—if the cops don’t kill me first.”
“And how,” I asked, “does Portia make money on this investment?”
“At first I didn’t get it, Easy,” Jackson said. “But when I looked into it I found out that Portia’s sister’s husband owns the exploratory company. Jean-Paul found out that the place they’re lookin’ at probably won’t pan out, so the company goes bankrupt and they put a good half’a the money aside.”
“So you came to Jean-Paul?” I said.
“I woulda come to you, Easy, but you were in a coma and Portia give me a deadline.”
“What was the plan before me?”
“We were looking for countries where Jackson could go that did not ’ave extradition treaties with America,” Jean-Paul said.
“Makes sense. So now what?”
“I haven’t been able to find Rumor,” Jackson said. “You know I been off the streets too long. Nobody is where they were when I was at large. But you could find him, Easy.”
“That’s all?”
“Non,” Jean-Paul said. “The president of TexOk is a man named Merkan. ’E will not believe this of his top man, not without proof. I want this proof … without paying for it, of course. I also want to find out who it is in my company that would betray me. I cannot allow people to do to me like this.”
“And you’ll hold my money?”
“I would if you ’elped us or not.”
I gazed into the Frenchman’s eyes. There was nothing for me to consider. “Okay, then. Let me try and come up with somethin’.”
Jean-Paul gave a satisfied nod and Jackson grinned like a coyote.
“I don’t care if you are Mama Jo’s zombie, Easy,” Jackson said. “I’m gonna shake your hand.”
I stuck out my hand to test Jackson’s mettle. He licked his lips and, with obvious gumption, he grabbed on. I smiled and held his eyes with mine.
“That’s a good thing, Jackson,” I said. “Because you know you got to get out there with me to make sure we get it right.”