Double Deuce

CHAPTER 32

We were on Hafford Avenue, with the enduring rain coming steadily against the windshield and the wipers barely holding their own.

“I thought posses were Jamaican,” I said.

“Language changes very fast here. Now it just means a small gang. There are gangs with five or six kids in them if that’s all there are in the neighborhood,” Erin said.

We turned onto McCrory Street, a block from Double Deuce, and left onto Dillard Street and pulled up into the apron of an abandoned gas station. The pumps were gone, and the place where they had been torn out of the island looked like an open wound. The station windows had been replaced with plywood; and the plywood, and the walls of the station itself, were covered completely with fluorescent graffiti. The overhead door to the service bay was up and half a dozen kids sat in the bay on recycled furniture and looked at the rain. There was a thunderous rap group on at peak volume, and the kids were passing around a jug of white Concord grape wine.

“The one with the wispy goatee is Tallboy,” Erin said.

He was sprawled on a broken chaise lounge: plumpish, and not very tall, wearing a red sweatshirt with the hood up.

“Tallboy?” I said.

“He usually drinks beer in the twenty-four-ounce cans,” Erin said. She rolled down the window and called to him.

“Tallboy, I need to talk with you.”

“Who you with, Miss Macklin?” Tallboy said.

He hadn’t moved but he’d tightened up. All of them had, and they gazed out at me in dark silence from their cave.

“A friend,” she said. “I need to talk. Can you come sit in the car?”

Tallboy got up slowly and came even more slowly toward the car. He walked with a kind of wide-legged swagger. He might have been a little drunk. When he was in the back he left the door open.

“What you need, Miss Macklin?”

“You knew Devona Jefferson,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“I know you did, Tallboy. She was your girlfriend.”

“So?”

“And she was killed.”

“Don’t know nothing about that,” he said. He looked hard at me. “Who you?” he said.

“Guy looking for the people killed your girlfriend.”

“You DT?”

“No.”

“So what you care who piped Devona?”

“They killed your baby, too,” I said.

“Hey, man, what you talking shit to me for? You don’t even know that my little girl.”

I waited. Tallboy glanced back toward the open garage where the jug was.

“She prob’ly was,” he said. “She look like me.”

He looked back toward the wine again. I reached under the front seat and brought out a bottle of Glenfiddich Single Malt Scotch Whiskey. It’s handy to have around, because there are times when it is a better bribe than money.

“Try a little of this,” I said.

Tallboy stared at it and then took the bottle and swallowed some.

“Damn,” he said, “that is some juke, man. That is some bad beverage.”

“You know who killed her?” I said.

His eyes slid away from mine and he took another pull on the Glenfiddich. Then he looked back at me and his eyes were tearing. He was drunker than I thought and the scotch was moving him along.

“Sure you do. But you don’t care. You want them to get away with it.”

He shifted his gaze to Erin. “That ain’t so, Miss Macklin.”

“I know,” she said. “I know you don’t want them to get away with it.” She put her hand over the back of the seat and he took it and she held his hand. The tears were running down his face now. I was quiet. We waited. He drank again.

“Nine my fucking baby,” he said. “Motherfuckers.”

“Who?” Erin said.

“Motherfucking Hobarts.” He was mumbling. I had to listen hard. “Dealing some classic for them and I a little short, I gonna pay them. I just a little short that minute. And motherfuckers nine my little girl.”

“You sure?” I said.

“Who else it gonna be?” Tallboy said.

“You know which Hobart?” I said.

He shook his head.

“It ain’t over,” he said. “We gon take care of business. Can’t fuck with us and ride.” His head had sunk to his chest. He was talking into the bottle… and out of it. “Can’t dis a Dillard and ride, man.”

I looked at Erin and gestured with my head. “Thank you, Tallboy,” she said. “You know how to call me up, don’t you?”

Tallboy nodded.

“If you want to talk about this any more, you call me,” she said.

“Yass, Miss Macklin.”

Tallboy lurched out of the car holding the bottle of Glenfiddich. He held it up in one hand and waved it at the rest of the posse.

“Fine,” he said and started to say something else, and didn’t seem able to and lurched on into the garage, out of the rain.

I slid the car into gear and pulled away. “He isn’t even tough,” I said.

“Of course he isn’t,” Erin said. “He tries, but he’s not.”

“Tough is the only way to survive in here,” I said.

“I know,” Erin said. “Some of them are tougher than one would think possible… and some of them aren’t.”