Gray Dawn

28

On the drive back to the mountain I thought about Niska and Amethystine. They had very little in common except for the thing Amethystine had said about me: Toes in the soil beneath my feet. That’s what a detective had to have. She had to know her city, its peoples, dialects, and languages, its neighborhoods and histories, everything you could see and touch. A detective’s mind had to be right there in front of her. Your city was your whole world. That’s what Amethystine loved about me, and that same sensibility was what I was trying to impart to Niska.

Erculi was manning the entrance to the funicular that night. Motionless, he stood there, almost invisible in the earthen colors of his work clothes, leaning against a slender eucalyptus tree.

“What you doin’ out here, Herk?”

Pushing away from the slippery bark, he said, “Your friend Fearless told Matteo that you asked him to bring a woman he didn’t know. And then there was another woman.”

“One too many?” I asked with a smile.

“Cosmo said that you brought a man with a bullet wound at noon. And you have that scratch across your face.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “I was gonna call you as soon as I got in, Signor Longo. I swear I was.”

He nodded and then I told him the broad strokes of the trouble I had brought to his mountain.

“Not so bad,” he said when I’d finished.

“These are bad men, sir,” I said.

“We have had trouble with worse.”

“Okay. But don’t take any chances. I like your sons.”

He patted my shoulder and then sent me up the mountain.

It was about 10:30 when I went through the front door. There were lights on all over the bottom floor. And there were voices, even some laughter.

Beyond the entrance hall I could see that the foldaway long table we used for big dinners on the entrance level had been assembled in the middle of the large room. There were people sitting around the long bench in their folding chairs, eating and drinking, talking carelessly as if there wasn’t a problem in the world.

Fearless Jones was there along with his cowardly complement, Paris Minton. Hannibal, my son, was perched next to Violet. They were sitting back from the table, holding hands — somehow seeming serious even in that gentle act. At the table’s head Amethystine and Anger Lee were sitting side by side upon a short couch. Two matriarchs sharing a common throne.

When I entered, Prince Valiant and the smaller dogs leaped up and started barking their greetings and warnings.

“Easy,” scrawny Paris greeted. “Home at last, home at last, thank God a’mighty.”

“Paris, Fearless, Violet,” I hailed.

I used both hands, waving at everyone else.

“So, you decided to come up here, huh?” I asked Anger after kissing her cheek.

“When I called, your girlfriend told me that Hannie was here and that he’d been shot. You know I’m comin’ then.”

Fearless and Violet had stopped off at my favorite, nameless soul-food stand to bring in barbecued baby back ribs, macaroni and cheese, potato salad, collard greens, monkey bread, and redeye gravy, all along with a variety of hot peppers and pickles.

I was ravenous, and so eating occupied the majority of my attention. Fearless had also brought beer and wine. He was treating this retreat as a holiday. It was no wonder women and children loved him so.

For the next couple of hours, we all talked and joked around, ate and drank.

Paris found one of my albums, The Best of Sam Cooke. That was our clock. We played the LP all the way through — twice. At the end of the first side Hannibal and Violet retired to the guest room on the third floor. When the second side had played, Amethystine went up to my room. Fearless and Paris called it a night at the end of the third side. They took Feather’s room where there were two beds.

When Cooke started in on “You Send Me,” there was only me and Anger left.

“You want a cigarette?” I offered.

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s go up to the roof. I don’t smoke in the house.”

On the way up the stairs, we ran into Hannibal. He was sitting in the kitchen, drinking from a tumbler of water and reading a book that I had recently purchased — How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by the scholar-activist Walter Rodney.

“Hello, son,” his mother greeted both formally and lovingly.

“Hey.”

“We goin’ up to the roof for a cigarette. Wanna come wit’?”

“What you readin’?” I asked as he rose, painfully, to his feet.

“You should know,” he said. “I got it off your shelf.”

“Yeah. I was just surprised to see that’s the one you picked out.”

“It’s my field of study.”

“Which is?”

“Economics and revolution.”

“Where’d you go to school?”

“Princeton.”

The crown of my three-story round house was where I smoked, grew roses, and, now and then, made clandestine phone calls from a special phone that no one could eavesdrop on.

I lit Anger’s cigarette, Hannibal said that he didn’t smoke, and then I lit mine.

“It’s beautiful up here, Easy,” Anger said. “You know I always knew you was somethin’ special.”

“Takes one to know one,” I joked.

“So, this man is really my father?” Hannibal asked, the words feigning doubt.

“The best man I ever knew in all my life.”

“You know,” I added, “they say that the lowliest hyena female is superior to the best male in the pack.”

Mother and son both laughed at that fact.

I brought out a few folding chairs and we sat in a circle.

There were a lot of stars in the sky that night, and a chill flowed over our shoulders.

“I’m sorry about Saint,” son said to mother.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“If I hadn’t told Sasha about what I was gonna do, they woulda never known to come after him.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “But you thought you were dealin’ with a regular corporation, not no modern-day robber baron.”

Hannibal clasped his hands and stared down at the concrete between his feet.

“Why aren’t you asleep?” I asked him.

“Slept all day.”

“But you need to heal, baby,” his mother chided.

“Yeah, man. You wanna keep your strength for Violet,” I put in.

“That wide-faced girl, that Amethystine, your woman, Easy?” Anger wondered, running on a tangent from my words.

“I guess so.”

“You know she ain’t nuthin’ but trouble.”

I thought of maybe half a dozen smart-ass rejoinders, but I knew how much she was hurting and so kept quiet.

After Anger stubbed out her second cigarette she asked, “Where you got me sleepin’, doll?”

“There’s a couch on the first floor with blankets on it.”

“Okay,” she said, and then turned to her son. “You need help goin’ down the stairs, Hannie?”

He didn’t answer, just stood up and put his arm around her shoulders.

A while after they’d gone, I went down to the kitchen, there to pour a single shot of hundred-proof bourbon. I wasn’t tired, and even if I had been, there was too much going on for my body to consider sleep.

Somewhere around 2:30 the phone rang. I snatched it up so the ring wouldn’t arouse any of my many guests.

“Hello?”

“Now I’m callin’ you,” Melvin said.

“That’s why I stayed up, man. I was wonderin’ when you’d finally get down to work.”

“How’s Amy doin’?”

“Why you ask me that?”

“Mary said that you guys were back together.”

“What you callin’ about, Mel?”

“I got three men on Simmons,” he said. “We asked around about him. The FBI woke up a banker and had him look into his financials. We’re pretty sure your information was right.”

“You into Banks too?”

“Like white on rice.”

“Or black on my back.”

Having no rejoinder, Suggs asked, “Anything else?”

“I’m pretty sure that the owner of the warehouse, Mildred Franz, is not a part of all this.”

“Why?”

“Too proud of her business.”

“She coulda been playin’ you.”

“Maybe. But if I’m right, she could be a help to you.”

“I’ll look into it.”