Mr. Paradise

18

Lloyd, wearing a starched white dress shirt hanging out of his pants, opened the front door and stood facing Jackie Michaels in her winter coat, her patterned red scarf, her hair combed out, no dreads this morning, Jackie looking at peace.

"Now what you want?"

Her gaze came up from the square of cardboard taped over the broken pane of glass to Lloyd. "You ever gonna get this fixed?"

"I had to find out who's paying for it," Lloyd said. He stared at Jackie another few moments. "I don't have to let you in, do I?"

"It's still considered a crime scene," Jackie said. "I can come in if I want, but I'm leaving it up to you."

"You have a different tone of voice this morning," Lloyd said. "Come on in and let's see if it works on me."

He brought Jackie through the dining room and pantry to the kitchen, bigger than her living room with a range made for a restaurant, every size pan hanging above the worktable, Lloyd telling her Mr. Tony Jr. was here just a while ago.

"Had his daughter with him, Allegra, nice polite girl. She stops and looks at those old paintings in the foyer. Say she wants to have somebody from DuMouchelle come and look at them. I asked her daddy who was paying to have the door fixed."

Jackie was looking at the bottle of Remy and the teapot and cups on the plain-wood worktable.

"He said to call somebody. I said, 'I know how to do that, but what do I pay 'em with?' I said, 'Your daddy always paid the tradespeople cash.' I said, 'Let me have some money till I'm gone to Puerto Rico.'"

"You have family there, uh?"

"Yes, I do, a flock of cousins still living. Tony Jr. takes out a wad-the man has on a three-thousand-dollar suit of clothes and carries a wad. He says how much did I want, a couple hundred? I told him a couple hundred don't get the toilet fixed. I said give me fifteen hundred. He give me a thousand. But try to get it out of his hand-"

"Hangs on to it," Jackie said, "while you're pulling on the bills. My daddy was like that."

"He still living?"

"No, he went early. He'd be your age now, about sixty?"

Lloyd smiled at her showing gold in his teeth. "You know how old I am, you been through my jacket a few times, haven't you? You wondering, could this seventy-one-year-old geezer play any part in this? I bet you think you know all about me, my scores, the falls I took-"

"Only to become, from what I hear," Jackie said, "the perfect nigga for around the house. You gonna pour the tea, or you want me to?"

"Go ahead," Lloyd said. "You want sugar in yours or just the cognac, the way 'Lizabeth Taylor use to take hers?"

"I love to learn things like that," Jackie said. "I'll go with Ms. Taylor."

"I'll tell you something else," Lloyd said. "I was only sixty, you'd of smelled my lust before we's through the dining room."

Jackie said, "Takes a little longer now?"

The second time they passed the house in Carl's Tahoe Carl said, "That's a cop car."

"Chevy Lumina," Art said, looking back as they headed up Iroquois. "It could be Lloyd's, couldn't it?"

"The help don't park in the drive," Carl said. "Cops are in there looking for clues, like we're gonna do now. Go on over to Orlando's, stick a finger up our butts and wonder what the hell we're looking for. But, shit, tell me what Avern said. He wants us to take Montez out?"

"He says we might have to. Montez gets his nuts in a crack he starts looking to make a deal."

"You ask him who pays for this one?"

"Avern says it's self-preservation. Keeps us from going back to D Block."

"Next time we talk to him," Carl said, "I'll let him know he's paying for it, twenty each to stay out of jail."

"Avern?"

"Yeah, Avern. Otherwise, we get caught we give him up. He has to know that."

"Same with the smoke this afternoon," Art said, "if he don't have the cash."

Carl said, "Yeah, if he shows up. He don't, we have to look for him. Shit, this deal is all work and no pay."

They were seated at the kitchen table now with their Elizabeth Taylor hot tea and smoking leftover Virginia Slims. Jackie said, "Tell me, Sugar, for the record, you a hostile witness or you want to help us out here?"

"Do I look hostile to you? I'm watching what happens," Lloyd said, "like I'm at the movies."

"You find it interesting, how it's going?"

"Let me say predictable."

"You'd of done it different?"

"Done what?"

"Figured out how to get Chloe's money?"

"That's what this is about? I thought it was a murder case, somebody shooting Mr. Paradise and his sweetie."

"You have a motive for that, too. You're in the old man's will."

"You getting tough with me again? Finish your tea."

"It just slipped out," Jackie said, "from habit."

"I figured from the time you was here before," Lloyd said, "you the one plays the mean cop, the one don't take any shit, huh?"

"Sometimes, yeah, I try to mess with their heads."

"That's a shame, ask a nice-looking woman to do that. Listen to me. If I'm in the man's will and he's up in his years, what's my hurry? I been living in a big, comfortable house. I got all kind of hand-me-down clothes I'm taking to Puerto Rico with me for my cousins. I got hand-me-down shoes looking good as new. Always had shoe trees in 'em."

"They fit?"

"That's the only trouble. I took a pair and cut slits in 'em?"

"On the side by the little toe," Jackie said.

"That's right, and the man got mad, said I'd ruined a nine-hundred-dollar pair of shoes. I said, 'But they hurt my feet.' Didn't matter. He made me put the shoes back in his closet. I'll take all his shoes along, too. In my youth, I would've kicked his white ass with those pointy motherfuckers. See, but now I have control of my impulses."

Jackie said, "Wisdom coming with age."

"And a nine-year stretch."

Jackie said, "Learned crime doesn't pay."

"Listen to you," Lloyd said, "you don't know shit. It paid good when I was doing stickups on my own. Not till I teamed up was I ever caught."

"And your partner finked on you."

"A young man I thought I could trust."

"They all do it now," Jackie said. "Especially the dopers, they'll give you anybody you want looking at thirty years. I was wondering," Jackie said, stirring her tea for no reason, "if you'd like to say a few words about Montez. How he was seriously pissed off over not getting the house."

"Sign a statement?"

"Would you?"

"You won't need my help," Lloyd said. "Whatever Montez is into, he'll fuck it up all by himself."

They parked the Tahoe in the lot behind the White Castle and sniffed the air crossing the street to the redbrick two-story house: Art saying they ought to pick up a sack of burgers when they were through. Jesus, smell those fuckin onions. Carl saying those bricks must've been laid a hundred years ago, that old-style duplex, bay windows up and down, the tall chimneys, oval front doors. "The one on the left," Carl said. "See how the brick above the door's all black? From the smoke. That's the one we want. Twenty-two-ten."

The door had been battered in to hang on one hinge, the living room charred and smoke damaged, water dripping from the ceiling. Carl went in the kitchen past a blackened dining table, came back and said, "The kitchen's a mess, all tore up."

Art said, "What's this room, pretty nice? Look at that TV hanging on the wall. That cost some money."

"All they do in the weed business is make money," Carl said. "You think we ought to look into it?"

Art said, "Shit, I don't mind. This guy's out of business, we could take over his customers. You suppose there's any in the house?"

"What?"

"Weed. I think I got some Zig-Zags," Art said, getting his raincoat open to pat his jeans. "Yeah, I got a book of one and a halfs. If we get lucky."

"Cops've been through the place," Carl said.

"Avern said something like a hundred pounds were delivered by the guy got chopped up. But what'd he say to look for?"

"You was sitting there."

"He told you about it first. I'm on the phone with Smokey." He said, "Hey," looking past Carl and out the front window. "A colored guy's coming to the house. The hell's he want?"

"I doubt he's a looter," Carl said. "He ain't hesitating or looking around, is he? No, he could be coming back for something stashed-what do you think?-and knows where it is. Let's step out of the way."

Jerome already had a wanted sheet folded in a pocket of his cargoes he was wearing with a Tommy ski jacket and a black watch cap pulled down over his ears. He ripped down another sheet-Orlando's profile on it, his rows, his shitty beard with the bare spots in it-from the wall next to the bay window and went inside, into the living room and stopped.

Two white guys standing in the dining room were holding nines on him.

But not saying a word. Not telling him to freeze or do any of that shit cops told you to do. Jerome looked at their black no-style coats, at their regular shoes and said, "Don't shoot," raising his hands in the air, one hand holding the wanted sheet, "I'm on your side. I'm checking this place out for Sergeant Frank Delsa. He's on the police Homicide and my name's Jerome Jackson, I'm a C.I."

They still didn't say anything. Not telling him to go on, get outta here, nothing.

"Y'all are Homicide, too, aren't you?"

Carl said, "You know what we are, but we don't know what you are."

"Man, I told you, I'm a C.I. working for Frank Delsa, Squad Seven. I came over to have a look around."

Art said, "For what, weed?"

"There wouldn't be no dank in here now."

"What're you looking for then?"

"I'll know when I see it," Jerome said.

Art said, "You getting smart with me?"

"You never heard that? I start looking for phone numbers. You look on the wall," Jerome said, "where a phone was somebody ripped out. A man that don't mind messing up his walls."

Carl said, "What's that you got?"

He came over and Jerome handed him the sheet saying, "Twenty thousand reward, man, for Orlando Holmes, but y'all can't collect on it, can you, being with the police."

Art said, "What's he talking about?" and now both the guys were reading the sheet.

Jerome said, "Frank Delsa gave me one. Y'all haven't seen it? They some more stuck on the front of the house."

Art said, "Jesus Christ, we put him away we could score thirty each."

Jerome didn't know what he was talking about but didn't ask. The other one said to him, "See, we been on our vacation, only got back today. We're helping out here till we get, you know, assigned to some squad needs us." He said, "But you can collect this money, huh?"

"Since I ain't on the police, only working for 'em, yeah."

Carl said, "What if we help each other?"

"I don't know," Jerome said, "I guess." He wondered should he ask to see their badges. He said, "Even if you don't get any of the reward we find him?"

"It's all yours," Carl said. "As you say, we can't touch any part of it."