Every Man a King

15

Bestial. That’s the word that comes to mind when I remember walking through the vast entry hall of the museum with Mathilda Prim. I wasn’t breathing any harder but was aware of every breath. I was walking normally but it felt as if I was hunching with each step, turning my head from side to side looking for threats — or rivals.

When we reached the crowded curb in front of the museum she took a cell phone from her sapphire clutch and entered a number.

“Can I ask you something, Ms. Prim?”

“What’s that, Mr. King Oliver?” There was a smile in her voice.

“Those white men around your house.”

“Yes, what about them?”

“Are they working for you?”

“No,” she intoned. This time her mouth formed the shadow of a smile, but there was no humor behind it.

A black town car slid up to the curb, the door swinging open. Minta Kraft was driving. My museum date lowered into the passenger’s seat and closed the door, and Minta drove off, a dark samurai fish joining the school of brightly colored koi.

It’s never a good idea for lawyers or detectives to have real feelings. It’s okay to shout or frown. It’s fine to channel old spirits into threats or even violence. But once you feel connected to any part of the job, you end up like Amethyst Banks — giving away everything for a roll in the hay.

These thoughts in mind, I turned in my Mini Cooper and took a train to Yonkers. There I went to a small hotel I sometimes use, the Nurya Inn on Second. I liked it because the slender Black man who always manned the front desk preferred cash and hardly ever made eye contact.

I was unarmed and feeling a fool, Mathilda Prim’s fool. That woman got under my skin.

Nurya’s rooms were like small dens off a main living room in a big house. The chamber I liked was 304. There was a rolltop desk, a sofa that folded out into a bed, and an old-time stand-up lamp that had three forty-watt bulbs that gave off soft but certain light. The one window looked out on a small side street that shone under the yellowy streetlamps. It had started to rain. Everything outside glistened and pedestrian traffic was nearly nil.

I stayed at the window for a long time, savoring the moments of anonymity, safety, and, most of all, quiet.

After a while I pulled away from the window and made a few reservations via iPad. Then I called two men, asking them to help me. I got two yeses.

At 6:45 the next morning I was at Delta Gate 22 sitting very near the boarding gate. Across the way from my row of chairs sat Cousin Rags. He was leaning back in his chair studying a fishing magazine with great interest. I wondered if he really was a fisherman. We were blood but never really all that close.

Four seats down from me sat a thirty-something Black woman dressed for upper-echelon office work with good posture and a pink carry-on bag. I noticed her because now and then she would glance at my cousin.

I had a novel taken from my storage space library. It was Joe Hill, a biographical novel written by Wallace Stegner. Stegner was a good writer and a political activist of sorts. The man he wrote about, Joe Hill, was a martyr of the IWW back in the late nineteenth / early twentieth centuries. Ever since seeing Forthright and dealing again with Roger Ferris, I wanted to feel that I was about something meaningful. I mean, I realize that I was just another gumshoe working for a few dollars, prone to looking the other way if the client or the job was less than savory. But still it’s good to read about flawed heroes attempting to do something good on a field of bad intent.

I’d gotten through the foreword when I looked up to see that the Black woman with the pink carry-on had moved next to Rags.

They were chatting away about something — fish or fishing, boarding flights, or maybe how crazy the news is getting.

I imagined that Rags had a whole story about why he was going to Atlanta. He was dressed like a day laborer, so he wouldn’t pretend to be commuting for work. He didn’t have a southern accent so probably wouldn’t say he was going home. Maybe that’s why he had the fishing journal. Maybe, in his mind, he was going fishing in some stream or lake.

And her? I imagined she was a little nervous about flying and he reminded her of some family member who calmed her down. Rags was a good listener and so she could put her worry into words about a job or boyfriend, sister or some specific task that she had to perform on one Peachtree Street or other.

I sat toward the front of the regular passenger section of the plane. Rags passed me at some point, but the woman with the pink carry-on did not. She sat in business class in the second row.

I was in the aisle seat. A white woman and her nine-year-old daughter sat next to me.

The woman’s name was Ida Denton and her daughter was Florence. They were moving down to Savannah to live with her new husband, Clark Rowel.

“You think you’ll like it down in Savannah?” I asked the child.

“Uncle Clark’s got a swimming pool and a big tree where I can have a tree house.”

Ida glanced at me. She seemed embarrassed that she’d allowed her daughter to be bribed with material promises.

“What are you doing in Atlanta?” the newlywed asked me.

“I’m working for a company that builds and operates private prisons.”

“Oh,” Ida uttered. “I see.”

“You don’t like the idea of private prisons?” I asked.

“I don’t believe in prisons — period.” There was backbone there.

“Even for murderers and molesters?”

“Prisons criminalize,” she said. It was a welcomed rebuke.

“My daddy went to prison,” Florence offered. “They beat him up and then they killed him.”

I took the passenger train to baggage and then looked around until I found carousel 3. The lady with the pink carry-on was there. She waited patiently, glancing around now and then. Looking for Rags, I’d bet. But my cousin hadn’t checked a bag. He’d told me that anything special we’d need he’d send overnight.

My suitcase was the last one out of the chute. It was a gag bag that Aja gave me for a birthday one year — jet black with a big red eye painted on either side.

“Now everyone’ll know you’re a PI, Daddy.”

“Won’t that just be peachy,” I said, and she laughed and laughed.

The Airbnb was in an apartment building on Marquee Street in the Bankhead neighborhood. It was a lively Black enclave with music pouring out of windows and from passing cars. Men and women talked and laughed on the streets.

The studio was on the sixth floor amid a crowd of trees that housed an aerie of birds that, I later learned, sang both day and night. It had a small terrace that looked down on Marquee. I pulled a padded chair out there and looked down upon my new environs. Working-class and down-market, it was a lively place. I saw two men get into a fistfight toward late afternoon. They hadn’t been loud or boastful before engaging so I figured they must have had a deep disagreement. When one of the men got the upper hand, he kept on beating his opponent as the poor man lolled against a wire fence.

I saw that the loser was in danger of losing more than the fight, but I was too far away, and besides, I had a job to do and couldn’t afford getting mixed up with the APD. I was considering going into the apartment so as to not be identified as a witness when...

“Back it up!” a woman’s loud voice commanded.

The victor kept hitting his victim until the large Black woman advanced on him armed with a baseball bat. She went right into the sphere of the fight and hit the aggressor hard on the shoulder — to get his attention.

He looked up from the bloody loser and said, “I’m’a—”

What cut him off was the woman swinging the bat like a National League pro. It only missed because the man ducked. By the time he raised his head again she was ready for strike three.

Other older, and some younger, Black folk had come out to back the slugger up.

“You beat him,” the woman said. “Now get the fuck outta heah.”

Back in the studio I put on a pair of eight-year-old blue jeans and donned a white T-shirt. I wore a gold pinky ring festooned with an onyx square that had a tiny, glittering diamond at the center. Finishing the ensemble with a pair of Air Jordans, I made my way down to Big Bob’s Barbecue on Arthur. There I ordered a slab of ribs with extra spicy sauce on the side.

Waiting for the meal to arrive, I happened to be looking at the front door when a young Black woman came in. Five-three or four, she weighed maybe 138 filled out just right. She had a lazy eye and one gold-capped upper canine. At first glance she looked like a young office worker, but then you noticed the coarseness of the cloth and the subtle dissonance of greens and blues that made up her outfit. One lime pump had a deeply scuffed toe.

She was beautiful.

I made no gesture toward her, however. I was in Atlanta working beyond hope to finish a job before it did me in. So it seemed almost mystical that as she looked around the room that wandering eye settled on me.

She waved as if she knew me and then walked up to my table.

“You mind if I sit here, mister?”

“I’d mind if you didn’t.”

“I don’t wanna give you the wrong idea or nuthin’. There’s a man out there lookin’ for me and I don’t wanna talk to him.”

“Have a seat.”

She smiled and pulled out the chair.

“This man mad at you?” I asked.

“Uh-uh. He think he in love.”

“Thinks?”

“He likes a woman with my kinda figure and he broke up with his girlfriend just last week. Now he got his eye on me.”

“So? Just tell him no.”

“Yeah, I know, but I like the way he look too. I know if we talk he gonna make me do something I’ll be sorry for.”

“Like what?”

The waiter came up with my ribs. He eyed my date with definite suspicion.

“You want something to eat?” I asked the woman wearing the lime-colored shoes.

“I like their brisket,” she said.

“Bring it with everything,” I told the server.

Her name was Lula McKenzie and she was born on the living room floor of an apartment not seven blocks from that restaurant. She was twenty-seven years old January last.

“What do you do for a living?” I asked for no reason in particular.

“Why?” she asked me, an edge to the tone.

“I just want to get to know you better.”

“Why?” The hard tone was gone.

“Because I was sitting here alone when the prettiest girl I’ve seen down here walks through the door. Not only that, she walks up to me.”

“I told you that I was tryin’ to hide from Alfonso.”

“That don’t change a thing.”

Lula took a sudden intake of breath and I told her that I was staying two blocks away.

We started kissing on the stairs. It took maybe twelve minutes to make the five flights. She told me that she liked it when her boyfriends kissed her down there and I moved to oblige. She returned the favor and then we got down to it.

When I awoke the next morning, just about sunrise, Lula was gone. She’d only taken two of the seven hundred-dollar bills from my wallet so I knew she liked me.

Atlanta is my kind of town.