A Little Yellow Dog

22

The kids loved it when I cooked Mexican food. We ate and joked and told stories. Pharaoh even yipped happily from under Feather’s chair.

After dinner I put on a dark blue shirt and a loose brown leisure suit.

“Juice.”

“Yes, Dad?”

“I got to go out for a while. You take care around here until I get back, okay?”

He grinned and nodded, understanding that I trusted him again.

We understood each other. The money in the box upstairs was his domain.

“I might be late but you and Feather get to bed on time.”

Jesus nodded.

Feather said, “Okay.”

I had three stops planned for that night: Whitehead’s, Jackson Blue’s, and the Black Chantilly. The last one promised to be the most fruitful.

Whitehead’s was a black tile building that sat on a high foundation. There were fourteen steps between the slender double doors and the street, but I could still hear the music and noise from outside.

Inside there was a lot of drinking and eating and loud talk from every table. It was like a big party. People were calling across the room between the tables. One waitress got so engrossed with what a portly man was saying to his friends that she sat down and put her elbows on the table.

“Reba,” a man from another table said to the waitress.

“What you wan’?” she answered, clearly bothered about being distracted.

“Where our meat loaf?”

The man’s date, who had brown skin and chalky chiffon-pink lips, looked as if she were going to abandon her man if he didn’t produce some food soon.

“You know where the kitchen is, Hestor. Go an’ get it yourself,” Reba said to her complaining customer.

Pink lips parted indignantly but the young man scooted up behind the counter and grabbed two large platters loaded down with meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and turnip greens.

“Mister?” a woman’s voice asked.

“Yeah?”

The woman standing behind me resembled a bowling ball. She was round and hard and black — not blue-black or brown-black, but black-black. There was no sheen to her eyes and her head was pulled back, making it seem as if she didn’t have a neck.

Her looks would have spelled danger except for her tinkly high voice and sweet smile.

“We ain’t got no free tables, mister,” she sang. “But you could sit at the counter.”

“This a nice place,” I said easily. “You work here?”

Her smile grew large.

“I’m the owner,” she said.

“Really? What’s your name?”

“Arletta.”

“Hi, Arletta,” I said. “Idabell Turner told me that this was a nice place. She asked me to come on down here and shout at William.”

Distaste flicked across Arletta’s lips but the smile returned quickly. “She’s a nice girl but she got to realize that William is workin’ an’ what she want ain’t always the most important thing in the world.”

“Listen, Arletta,” I said, putting my hand on her bare upper arm. “You don’t have to tell me. But you know I need to talk to the man for a minute.”

Arletta was the kind of woman that you wanted to touch. She was older than I, maybe fifty. I wasn’t trying to get over with her by caressing her skin. I wasn’t trying to but I did just the same.

“Well,” she said. “He’s out here in the kitchen.”

Arletta walked through a swinging door into the kitchen. I followed. There we found a large bald man who held a meat cleaver in his left hand. A once-white apron barely covered his large middle. The apron was stained with thick patches of pocked cow’s blood. Behind him hung what was left of a whole side of beef.

“William,” Arletta said a little loudly as if the cow-chopper was hard of hearing.

“Yeah?” The sharp voice came from behind the side of beef.

A small, gold-colored man came out from behind the slab of meat. He also wore an apron but he was so slim that it fit him like a wraparound dress.

When I saw his face I knew that I was in trouble deep. Up until that moment I knew that I had to be cautious; that there was trouble just waiting to rub off on me. But I had thought that it was other people’s troubles — not mine. What did I know about crazy mulatto brothers or swinging math teachers? What did I know about international smuggling, extortion, or murder?

Nothing.

I didn’t know a thing up until that moment. But I did know Idabell’s friend’s face. I’d seen it in a three-year-old Sojourner Truth yearbook. He was William the butcher at Whitehead’s but he was the blackmailer Bill Bartlett to me.

William carried a small knife and had no blood on him even though there was a rough cut of meat dangling from his other hand.

“This man need to ax you sumpin’,” Arletta said.

“Arletta, I cain’t work wit’ this shit,” the big, bald, and bloody cook interrupted. “I need William if we gonna prepare this meat an’ get the food out on the tables too.”

I walked quickly over to William with my hand outstretched. “Brad Koogan.”

William held up his knife and flesh to show that he couldn’t shake.

“Pee-dro!” the bald butcher shouted.

A Mexican man with mean eyes came from somewhere in back of the kitchen.

“What?” He was as large as the butcher.

“Get over here and help me with this meat.”

“I got six orders up,” Pedro replied.

“Com’on,” William said to me.

He turned and went through a back door. In the moment it took me to follow he’d put the knife and meat down on a plate, removed his rubber gloves, got a cigarette between his lips, and was ready to strike a match.

The speed he showed sent a chill through me.

“What you want, brother?” the little man asked.

I was noticing how large his head was in comparison to his body.

“What you said your name was again?” he asked.

“Brad Koogan.”

“Sound like a white man’s name.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, man. Every time I send in a application for’a job, and call about it, they always say on the phone, ‘Yeah, come on in, we got a openin’.’ But just as soon as they see my face the position has been filled.”

“Dig it,” the chef’s helper said.

“But the reason I’m here,” I continued, “is because this woman said that she saw you here an’ I need to get in touch wit’ her.”

“Who is that?” William spoke in short sentences and quick bursts, like a burp gun.

“Idabell Turner,” I said as he inhaled the smoke from his cigarette.

He held the breath a little too long and then, instead of saying anything, he took the pack of Winstons from his pocket and shook it at me.

I took the cigarette.

I took a light.

“What you want Idabell for?” he asked.

“She send a friend’a hers over to drop her dog off with me. He said that she’d come by today to take Pharaoh back but she ain’t showed an’ I already had to clean up shit twice.”

“How you know Ida?”

“Met her. At a party. Her an’ her hus’bun. Brother-in-law too, I guess. Damn! Look like twins t’me.”

I was saying one thing and thinking something similar. Did Bartlett know Roman and Holland? Was he involved in the killings? I wanted to grab the little man by the throat and choke the truth out of him but it wasn’t the right time — not yet. If he was involved and knew who I was, and that I knew him, then he’d run before I could gift wrap him for the cops.

So, for the time being, the only information I could get from him was what he let slip.

“I’ont know where she is, man.” His bullet words were a warning just over my head. “Bitch owe me three hundred dollars for six months. Come by last night to pay me off.”

Our eyes met in the involuntary agreement that we were both liars.

“But if I do hear from her I’ll tell’er you come by,” he lied. “What’s your number?”

“They took out my phone,” I answered. “But do you know her husband? Maybe I could call him.”

“Whose husband?”

“Mrs. Turner’s. Idabell’s.”

“Naw, man. Not me.”

“Where you know her from?”

“Around,” he said easily. “Listen, I got to get back on the job. Maxwell don’t hold much with no coffee breaks.”

I wanted to keep him talking. I wanted to break his face.

Instead I said, “Yeah, man. It’s a bitch.”

“See ya, brother. I’ll tell Ida you lookin’ for her — if I see her.”