Shakedown

Chapter Twenty-one

Latrell watched the FBI agent drive away, glad to be shed of the dog. He felt responsible for having orphaned the mutt and meant it when he told the agent that he wanted to protect the dog from the bigger, stronger predators in the neighborhood. The dog, smaller and weaker, wasn’t to blame for having been abandoned. Nonetheless, he didn’t like cleaning up after the dog, which had left her messes all over his house. If the agent hadn’t taken the dog, he would have gotten rid of her, one way or the other.

He wasn’t certain what to make of the man who said he was FBI except he wasn’t working because he shook too much except there he was on Latrell’s street looking for that dog and oh, by the way, he says do you mind if I ask you some questions like did he see a woman out back of Marcellus’s house and did he know Oleta Phillips. Only reason Latrell believed he was FBI was because of seeing him come out of Marcellus’s back door that night and the way everyone treated him when he seized up.

The other agents hadn’t asked him about a man running away or a woman. The woman was Oleta. He knew that but he didn’t know who the man was, if there was a man. He wouldn’t be tricked into remembering something, that was for sure.

The agent told him someone always sees something. Latrell didn’t doubt that. Oleta had seen him. He went over everything from the time he stepped out of his house until the time he stepped back in, carrying Oleta over his shoulder. He was certain that no one else had seen him.

Yet the agent knew about the woman, asked him straight up did he know Oleta. Why would he do that? Then Latrell remembered the money she was carrying. He figured Marcellus had given it to her for her son being killed. It was blood money and he wanted no part of it. He took Oleta because she’d seen him. Didn’t matter that she thanked him. What mattered was that she’d seen him. That, and when he looked at her, he saw his mother. Saw his mother even now just thinking about her. How many times, he wondered, do you have to kill someone before they stay dead?

The agent had found the money under the tree. That’s how the agent must have found out about Oleta. He was smart not to have taken the money. That would have made sense to the FBI-someone killing Oleta for the money. Leaving it on the ground, that was the smart play. Maybe they found her fingerprints on the money. That’s how come they knew it was her. He was smart not to have even touched it.

Then there was story the agent told him about losing his son. Latrell knew a good lie when he told one, knew how important it was to feel it when he told it because a person could see the feeling in him. No feeling and it was just words. He felt it when the agent talked about his son; he saw the cloud in the agent’s eyes.

Why, he wondered, would the agent tell him about his son? Was it to make him feel sorry for the agent so FBI man could trick him? Was it because the agent knew about his mother and the men and Oleta and Jalise and everything else? The questions made his head spin, leaving him with only one certainty. This man who said he was an FBI agent, who came looking for a dog and who shook too much and asked too many questions, was dangerous.

Latrell went back inside and took off his shoes. He began in the kitchen, down on hands and knees, scrubbing the?oor, countertops, and tables. Moving into the living room, he swept the hardwood?oor, vacuumed the area rug, pulled out the sofa cushions, vacuumed them and the sofa, and wiped down the small bookcase filled with his alphabetized CD and DVD collections, double- and triple-checking that they were all in order.

The two bedrooms and bath upstairs were next, even though he hadn’t allowed the dog on the second?oor. He changed the sheets on his bed, turned the mattress, scoured the bathroom, and waxed the hardwood?oors until his face re?ected back at him. By three a.m., he had cleaned up after the dog for the last time.

Exhausted, he fell into bed. Latrell had planned to go to the cave tonight to make certain that everything was in order there as well, but he had to be at work in five hours and he was too tired. He’d go tomorrow night, probably sleep there in case any more FBI agents came knocking.

As he was falling asleep, he replayed his conversation with the agent. No doubt about it, the agent had suspected nothing. Latrell would have been able to tell. Still, it bothered him that they kept coming back to talk with him. Maybe they would leave him alone if he remembered something. Maybe the man the agent said had been seen running away. But not the woman. Definitely not the woman.