The Last Call

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Breakfast was a family affair. Keesha sat up at the table, smiling, a milk moustache prominent beneath her little nose. She wore a small light-blue PowerPuff Girls blouse-one of the purchases from Target, no doubt. She looked happy in it. No more lonely nights and grimy tenements for her. It made my heart glad.

Julie sat across from me and to Keesha’s left, making fast work with her knife and fork.

Lawrence put in an appearance, plopping himself down in a chair and looking as though he could do with a little additional sleep.

Breakfast done, Julie helped Ms. Coleeta with clearing the table and getting the kitchen squared away. It was refreshing to see Keesha both eager to help and encouraged to at the same time. The vacant look that had been there on her face had begun to fade. There is no greater thrill in life than to find that you are not only useful, but that you can help, and that your help matters. I was sure it was that, coupled with her natural childhood resilience, that made all the difference.

Hank remained at the table nursing yet another cup of coffee while Lawrence took me out back to the pit.

As the morning wore on, I helped him clean out the previous day’s dead coals and scrape the grill.

I had a beer in my left hand, and that made it feel like a Sunday.

“Hey, Bill?” I knew from the tone of his voice that what he had to talk about with me wouldn’t be exactly sweetness and light. I was right. “How’d you get roped into this?” he asked after handing me a scratcher pad.

“It’s a long story,” I told him.

“When did it start?”

“As far as I can tell about 1926.”

“You’re playin’ me, man,” he said.

“Well, maybe a little. But still, I think that’s where the money started. I’ve still got some checking into all that to do. But I came in on this whole thing Monday morning. By the way, what’s today?”

“Thursday.”

“Damn,” I said.

“Yeah. Time flies, and all that nonsense.”

“Yeah.”

“You got pulled in pretty fast, didn’t you?”

Fast. That was the word I’d been searching for while dodging Austin Police patrol cars in the night.

“Yeah,” I said. “But compared to what?”

“Don’t get me wrong, Bill,” he said. “She seems like a fine lady, even though she’s some kind of thief, but-you gonna do this thing? You going to help her?”

I thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know what else to do,” I said.

“Bill,” he said, pausing. I looked up at him. “You in love with this girl or something? Don’t get me wrong. I’m smitten with her myself.”

I looked down at the grill I was scrubbing and at my hands. The grill was cleaner than it had been probably since it was new and I had flecks of black carbon up to my elbows. It was a hell of a question, and I suppose it took me a little off guard. I wasn’t sure how to answer.

“You really want an answer for that, Lawrence?”

“Not if you don’t want to give me one.”

He looked at me, his large brown eyes both expectant and patient.

“I like her, Lawrence. She reminds me I’m still alive.”

He laughed. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’ve seen men do worse.”

We put our attention back on the job at hand for another ten minutes. When I looked back up, Lawrence was just standing there, his hands on his hips. He was a big man, but he carried it well. I’d known a few large guys before that were like Lawrence; much bigger than they themselves perceived. I had a theory that because they were not so consciously aware of their own size they could be dexterous and quick. There’s nothing quite as liberating as not knowing one’s own limitations.

“The kid can stay with us,” he said.

“That one came out of left field,” I told him.

“That’s where I pitch from. Don’t take this the wrong way, but she needs her own kind of folks. What she don’t need is more danger.”

I agreed with him. I hoped that Julie would as well. Maybe it wouldn’t be a sticking point. A wedge between us.

I finished up on his grill. When I looked around, he was unloading whole chickens from a large Igloo cooler, setting them up next to his cutting board, getting them ready to quarter.

“Bill. I’d join you. I’d help out.”

“But?” I waited.

“I’ve got to mind this grill and take care of my momma. I wouldn’t mind seeing a little action, though, you know?”

“Action? That’s the last thing I want. Really, I’d prefer a vacation.

“Yeah, right!” He laughed. “Since when do people like us get to take vacations?”

I supposed he was right.

He turned towards me, one large brown hand with long fingers like plump sausages wrapped around a whole chicken. I imagined those hands could be of real use to us in the near future, but it looked as though it wasn’t meant to be.

“Yeah. I understand,” I told him.

“But I do have one piece of advice for you,” he said.

“I’m listening.”

“Good. I don’t like to give out advice. Most of the time people don’t like to take it. It was a white fellow, I think, who said that people just hear what they want to hear, and disregard the rest.”

“Right. That was Paul Simon.”

“All right then. Don’t you think you better talk with that woman of yours in there about all this stuff? About the kid? About what she really wants you to do? You’d better take control of this operation right now. But first, I’d find out where her heart is. What side she’s on, if she’s on anybody’s but her own. If she’s willing to put you in danger then something’s not right.

I just looked at him.

“Well,” he said. “That’s it.”

“Okay,” I said. I didn’t realize that I had been holding my breath and so I let it out. “Maybe I’ll do just that,” I said.

By the time I got back inside the house the look on Hank’s face probably meant that he was aware that I had something on my mind, but that he wasn’t hell-bent on questioning me about it.

In the kitchen I caught Julie wiping wet dish hands on her pretty backside. She turned to look at me.

“We need to talk,” I said.

We sat on a couple of rusted-out and upended barbecue barrels in the back yard. There were bees around us, gathering nectar from the wild flowers that grew there in profusion.

“I had a dream about you last night,” I said.

“Not good?”

“Yeah. Very not good. Do you know what today is?” I asked her.

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. It’s Thursday. I had to ask Lawrence what day it was. I don’t like all this on-the-run, dodging bullets business, Jules. So we have to switch tactics about right now.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Do you still have Carpin’s little black book?”

“Uh. Yeah. I’ve got it in my purse. Who are you gonna call?”

I thought about not telling her, or lying. There was probably too much of that going on in our relationship already. So, I told her.

“Your friend, Archie Carpin, for starters.”

“Bill, no.”

“Oh, I’m going to talk to him, alright. Also to that other fellow… What’s his name? The one who helped you.”

She gasped.

“No. You can’t!”

“Oh. I can, alright. You’d be surprised what I can do. The next time you want to go setting somebody up and cleaning them out, come talk to me first. I know people with money. Money is the one thing you’d never have to worry about with me.”

“Okay,” she said.

“I’m not through. Also, we’re going to need some equipment. For-”

“Getting the money,” she finished for me. Her eyes were downcast. I’ve been dressed down a few times in my life and know how it feels. Julie was looking like I had shot her favorite cat. I didn’t feel so good about being the jerk, but somebody had to do it. Things had gotten way too far out of hand and she’d been shot at and a nice old fellow had been killed in an explosion meant for her. Some people will resist any effort to help them, even while they’re practically screaming for help. Julie was a walking disaster. But, then again, she had warned me about her middle name.

“I’m only hoping Carpin will negotiate,” I said.

“Oh Bill,” she began. Her eyes were red. “He won’t. He’ll kill you. And me. He’s…”

I held up my hand, cutting her off.

“Nobody’s going to kill you,” I said. “Nor me. And certainly not Hank Sterling.”

“You don’t have to do any of this,” she said. “I could- I could disappear.”

My stomach did a little flip-flop. My throat tightened and suddenly felt twice its size.

Dark clouds were coming in over the trees away to the east of us. Rain clouds.

“I told you I’d help you,” I said. “That’s what I do. That’s what I’m doing now. Just stick by me. There may come a time when I’ll want you to cut and run. Go into hiding. But that time’s not now.”

I turned and looked at her face in profile, her beautiful tresses, the warm, natural glow of her skin.

“Okay,” she said.

“Julie.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll get you through this.”

“I know.”

Silence again. I could feel the electric current between the two of us, an effect of the affinity versus the distance. Like two huge celestial objects attracted together by gravity or magnetism but held apart by some greater force.

But there were more important matters at the moment.

“You and Hank and I are about to leave,” I told her. “But Keesha stays here with Lawrence and his mother.”

She frowned. “She’s a wonderful kid, Bill. But I know we can’t take her with us. She’s why you came here. To Lawrence and his mom. It’s okay.”

“Good,” I said. I slipped one arm around her narrow, perfect waist. “Go get it,” I told her.

“Get what?”

“That little black book.”

Our goodbye was short. Underneath the shade tree in the front yard where the grass had given up the ghost many years before beneath the incessant comings and goings of barbecue customers and family, Ms. Coleeta and Keesha managed to get hugs in on all three of us. Hank and I shook hands with Lawrence.

As I started up the Suburban, Keesha popped around the car to my window. I flicked the button and rolled it down.

“My man Bill,” she said. “You be careful.”

“I will, darlin’.”

“My girl Julie, my man Henry. Y’all both be careful.”

“We will, honey,” Julie said.

She stood back and waved as I backed us out into the street. I patted Julie on the leg. She was actually smiling.

It was the best goodbye I’d ever had.