Farewell, Amethystine

36

Amethystine and I, sitting there, side by side, could not have been closer or farther apart. The lies she told didn’t bother me any more than pillow talk. It just meant that if I wanted to get to the truth, I’d have to make it there on my own.

“Mr. Rawlins,” a gruff male voice called out.

“Commander Suggs,” I hailed.

The boss cop looked better than he had when he arrived. Half an hour with Mary had reinvigorated the beleaguered warrior.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s sit down and make us some plans.”

Amethystine took the twins down the street to a park where they could play tennis on an inside court. Mary, Melvin, and I parked ourselves at a small dinette table set off from the large kitchen.

I started off by asking Mel, “So, did you talk to Anatole?”

“I did indeed. He says that the source was Fyodor Brennan, the chief’s attaché.”

“Brennan? Guy used to be a homicide detective?”

“I think it was homicide,” Mel replied. “That was before my time.”

“I need all his numbers. Address, phone, and anything else you can get.”

“I got it all. Annie didn’t want to give me it, but he could see that was the only way. He made me promise not to kill him, though.”

“He wouldn’t be any good to us dead,” Mary explained to the absent Anatole.

“Brennan almost always has these two cops with him,” Mel said. “We call ’em Frick and Frack, but really they’re Sergeant Dennis Haines and Patrolman Jesse Tran. The three of them together are called Dirty Tricks. Frick and Frack stay by his side all the time except at night, when they drop him off at the Sash and Tail.”

“The strip club?” I asked.

“You know the place?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Mary added. “Bjorn Firth’s bar.”

“I figure all we need is a girl willing to take our boy home,” Mel announced.

“You know anybody works there?” I asked my coconspirators.

“We can’t do it that way,” Mary said.

“Why not?”

“Because, Easy, I don’t mind if something goes wrong and we have to kill the cop, but if that does happen, we’d have to do something about the girl too.”

Melvin and I locked eyes. Neither one of us had ever been on a job with Mary. Intellectually, we understood that she was one of the most dangerous people we knew, but this was the first time I’d experienced the actual menace.

“I told Annie that I wouldn’t kill the guy,” Mel said.

“How many times have you arrested guys for murder, and they told you that things just got outta hand?” Mary asked her man.

“Yeah,” I agreed so Melvin wouldn’t have to.

“What about Amy?” Mary offered. “She’s gorgeous and knows how to talk with her eyes.”

“No.” That was me.

“Come on, Easy,” Mary cajoled. “You didn’t send her here for window dressing.”

“Like you said,” I argued. “It could be dangerous.”

“We know where he lives.”

“Suppose he takes her someplace else?”

“He takes her home,” Mel assured. “Or maybe someplace else, she says she needs to call her baby sitter, tells us where to go, and that’s it.”

“What if he tries to do something to her?”

“Never been nuthin’ about that with him. No complaints or rumors.”

“That don’t prove a thing and you know it, Mel.”

“Hey,” Mary said and then jumped up.

She dragged her chair over to the sink beneath a high cabinet, got up on the seat, opened a cupboard door, and rummaged around.

“I got these.”

She brought the booty back and dumped it on the table.

It was a dark-brown glass bottle and a very neat derringer about the size of the palm of a child’s hand.

“Knockout drops and a pocket pistol,” the career criminal announced, almost gleefully. “She could drug him or grab Little Caesar here from a pocket.”

“Grab what?” Amethystine was standing at the door to the kitchen.

“Where’s the kids?” I asked. Anything to change the subject.

“They stayed playing tennis.”

“You got bored watching?”

“I asked the instructor at the courts to look out for ’em. She’s pretty nice.”

Wanting to get ahead on the discussion I said, “Mel and Mary want you to take home a horny cop from the Sash and Tail.”

The newly minted tennis mom raised her chin a quarter inch and considered. She was beautiful, but even if she weren’t, I think my heart would have caught.

“Who’s that?” she asked.

“A guy named Fyodor Brennan.”

Amethystine looked as if she was considering the proposition.

“I’d be willing to try,” she said, seconds later. “But doesn’t a woman need an invitation to go into a place like that solo?”

“I know a girl could get you in,” Mary said.

Something clicked in my head, and I asked, “How about a cop?”

“What?” Mary asked.

She brought her chair back to the table while Amethystine took the one empty seat.

“You said that you were interrogated by a cop after the thing with your goddaughter. Can you remember anything about him?”

Mary’s eyes were searching the contents of her memory and then: “Graham. Um... Detective, Detective Derrek Graham.”

“What about him?” Mel asked.

“He was the cop who came and questioned me, you know, after.”

“Graham’s a good cop,” Mel said. “Real smart. How’d the interview with him go?”

“It was at a court apartment in West Hollywood. He asked me questions and I gave him answers. He asked about an alibi I had but never even checked up on it.”

“He had access to the evidence,” I allowed.

“If he had any idea of who you were, he’d have to suspect you,” Mel concluded. “So he very well could have held something back.”

“You’re saying that he might’ve been playing a shell game?” Mary asked.

“Maybe still is,” Mel offered.

“What kinda guy is this Graham?” I asked Mel.

“He don’t give in or give up. You couldn’t break him, and you’d be a fool to try.”

“And Brennan?”

“Smart enough to fold with a weak hand.”

“Then we know what link we got to break,” I said.

“It’ll be okay, Ezekiel,” Amethystine assured me. “We outnumber him four to one.”

After that the planning was mostly on Mary and Amethystine. Mel’s wife explained the knockout drops and the double-triggered pistol, which carried two .30-caliber shells.

By the time Garnett and Pearl got back, the adults were in the living room, sipping red wine.

We visited for a few minutes with the kids. Then Mary and Amethystine went to Mary’s bedroom to discuss clothes, hair, and makeup.

Mel went out shopping and returned to prepare dinner.

Garnett stayed in his room, leaving his twin sister, Pearl, adrift in the living room.

“Got any games?” I asked, taking pity on the fourteen-year-old’s boredom.

“You play Scrabble?”

“I do.”

We took her board out to the marble table in the Garden of Eden.

She was a good player and knew all kinds of sophisticated, unusual words, like aphasia and schizoid. I was a little better at getting multiple word and letter scores and so the game was pretty even.

“Your sister seems like she takes care of you guys pretty well,” I said when the board was getting filled.

“She’s great. Um...” Thinking about spelling. “I mean, me and Garnett don’t have to worry about nuthin’ really. And Amy’s real smart.”

“So you’re happy with her?”

“Shoreline,” she called out triumphantly, laying out the letters connecting two columns of already placed words. “And a double word score too.”

“Dinner!” Melvin called from the glass door.

He made angel-hair pasta with hot Italian sausage simmered in a red wine and tomato sauce. Along with the entrée he served garlic bread and a green salad.

I don’t know about the others, but I loved it. There’s something about a cook you haven’t experienced, who knows what he’s doing, that makes food new and interesting.

I loved looking at Amethystine too. Her short dress was loose and bouncy. It had a red-and-blue floral design over a cream-colored background, leaving much of her form up to speculation. Her hair was pulled tight with a round ponytail at the back. Her lips were a toned-down red and the liner around her eyes was barely visible, ending in metallic gold flecks at the far end of each.

After dinner Amethystine talked to her siblings about staying inside and not opening the door for anyone.

“Where you goin’?” Pearl wanted to know.

“Just out for a drink,” her sister said.

“Could you bring back a dessert?” Garnett asked.

Amethystine kissed him on the forehead and said, “Of course. But we might be so late that you’ll have to have it for breakfast.”

After that we were off for a night of kidnapping, maybe torture, and, according to Mary, even murder if we weren’t careful.