Farewell, Amethystine

42

“You’re so quiet,” Amethystine said after maybe fifteen minutes on the road.

“I am? Guess I’m a little played out.”

“You are a beautiful man.”

“Old man,” I corrected.

“Not quite yet.”

Joe South was on her radio advising Americans to “Walk a Mile in My Shoes.”

“I had a real heart-to-heart with your friend Shadrach,” I said at song’s end.

“He’s no friend of mine,” she replied.

“Acquaintance, then.”

We were coming up on the outskirts of Studio City. Amethystine pulled her car to the curb on Coldwater Canyon Avenue. She turned in the driver’s seat to face me.

“What did he say?” she asked.

“That Harrison was Sturdyman.”

“Oh? I didn’t know that,” she claimed.

I smiled. “You know, you get more charming when you lie.”

Her dark face took on a different kind of darkness.

Forging on, I said, “The first thing I noticed about you was your perfume.”

“It was? What about it?”

“It’s very pleasant but not really sweet.”

“You like that?”

“Garnett needed an operation. He needed it and you borrowed the money from Shad. He turned around and sold your debt to Purlo, who planned to use you, in a carnal way, with his big players.”

Everything about her right then was remote, maybe even calculating.

“I already told you all that,” she said.

“That’s where Curt came in. He offered to do a secret job for Ron P. that would enable him to pull off the Exeter Casino deal in Vegas. Curt took the job to save you. Maybe he thought you’d come back to him. You’d fly off to Paris and he wouldn’t be so boring anymore. The only problem was Harrison. Curt was still a kid. He wasn’t sure of himself, so he asked his favorite, funny uncle for advice. Harrison saw the possibilities. He probably thought that he was helping you guys.”

“Helping?” She couldn’t keep the hatred out of her tone.

“Yeah. He made contact with someone, a bigger crook somewhere, and made the deal to sell Curt’s work for a sizable down payment and probably a piece of the action. Finally, after a whole lifetime of being a loser, Harrison Fields was gonna come out on top.”

She was as still as a cat that had come across potential prey. I think she might have hated me for talking about Curt’s uncle with a trace of empathy.

Then she sat back, took a breath, and relaxed.

“I don’t care,” she said.

“No, you don’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Why didn’t you take the money?” I asked.

“What are you?” she condemned. “Like a trained seal showing you can balance a ball on your nose?”

“Come on, girl, answer my question.”

Instead, she said, “It’s because you came up so poor, huh? My mother was like that. We’d be somewhere in Dallas and she’d put a hand on my shoulder and say, ‘Child, we gotta get outta heah. They’s trouble.’ And when I’d ask her how she knew, she’d say, ‘I can smell it.’

“Just like you smelled my perfume on Harrison. I, I hugged him because I didn’t want him to suspect why I was there.”

That turned me, a little bit more, in her direction.

“I didn’t take the money,” she said, “because I was there for Curt. When I read him saying that Sturdyman was out, I knew that Harrison had fucked up and pulled Curt down with him.”

“You could smell it?”

She smiled despite herself. “I don’t know how he tricked his way into where Curt was, but that note told me that he did. He killed that man Oliver outside the room Curt was in and then...” She took a breath to contain the grief. “I’d been to Paul’s place a few times — to ask him if he knew where Harrison was. The last time I went, before seeing you in Studio City, Harrison was there alone. Paul had left him a key if he ever needed a place to stay. When I pulled out Mary’s derringer, he broke down. He said that he didn’t mean to kill Curt, that he brought the gun to give to him—”

“He admitted killing him?”

“Yes. He said Curt didn’t want to run with him. When Harrison pushed, Curt said that he had to tell Purlo what Harrison was doing in order to save me...”

“And what, exactly, was Harrison doing?”

“It’s like you said. He sold Curt’s reports to mob guys he knew in Cincinnati. Then, then, then he said that he did it for me too.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. He said that Purlo would still own my debt and he was sure to kill Curt when they were through. He said that killing Curt would mean that only one of us would die instead of all three.”

“Is that when you shot him?”

Instead of answering she straightened up in her seat, turned the ignition, and pulled away from the curb.

When we merged into traffic I said, “I hope you wore a pair of gloves.”

“I’m no idiot, Ezekiel.”

We got to the apartment hideaway and Amethystine pulled up behind my parked car. There was a ticket under my windshield wiper.

We sat there for a moment in labored silence. I wanted to forget everything I knew, to start over again.

Maybe Amethystine was a mind reader, maybe she just knew me that well after only a few days, because she asked me, “Can’t we just get over it? Start over again?”

“You murdered that man.”

“He killed Curt... for money.”

“I got to go.”

“Will you call me?”

I wanted just to say no, no I wouldn’t call, but the words that came out were, “All I can say is, fare thee well, Amethystine.”

“That sounds final.”

An hours-long conversation whittled down to a few sentences. Just the beginning of a talk that might have gone on for years.

“One week,” I said in explanation, “and one way or another, I was involved in five killings. Five dead men. Five.”

Amethystine didn’t speak because there was nothing to say.

“Shadrach and Purlo might be added to that list,” I said.

“What would you have done?” she asked, her subdued tone filled with passion.

“That’s different.”

“In what way?”

“I know me,” I said. “At least that far I do.”

Her smile was the right response.

“I,” she said and then paused, considering the words she was about to say. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“We ain’t nevah had each other,” I said, once again that teenage boy looking for Anger on the streets of the Fifth Ward.

“Are you going to tell Mel?”

“No. I’m not gonna tell anybody, but you already know that.”

“Then why farewell? Do you think I’m a danger to you and your family?”

“Maybe to me.”

“I’d never hurt you.”

“I can’t,” I said, an unexpected sob welling in my throat.

She put a hand on mine.

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll give three months for us both to think about it. I’ll be here. I will.”

I don’t remember leaving her car or driving back home.

It was twilight by the time I got to Brighthope. Feather and three of her girlfriends were laughing by the koi pond. Jesus was making dinner while Benita played with Essie.

I said my hellos and went up to the roof with a triple shot of Jack Daniel’s.

I’d finished the drink before Jesus came up to join me.

“How you doin’, Dad?”

“It’s been a hard week.”

“Is it the case you’re working on?”

“Cases,” I corrected. “And no, everything worked out the way it was going to.”

“Is that good?”

“It is what it is.”

“You got a cigarette?” my son asked then.

“You smoke?”

“Every once in a while.”

I took the pack from a pocket and shook out a Lucky for him and one for me. I lit us both up. He took in a deep drag and then let the smoke out.

“Feather said that you really like that woman, the one who stayed over last night.”

“Feather liked her.”

Sometimes at nightfall in LA the darkness seems to roll in, in waves. It was like that, that night.

“Do you like her?” Jesus asked.

“She’s young.”

“Like you always said, Dad, we all just people. And you need somebody to keep you company.”

“I got a family.”

“You need more than that.”

“I do?”