What It Was

SIXTEEN

Strange stood on a landing in an apartment building on 15th Street, located across the road from Malcolm X Park. He made a fist and prepared to knock on the door before him. He hesitated, knowing he could still go back down the stairs. Knowing he was wrong. There were many ways a young man could ruin things with a good woman, and this was the most thoughtless. But he was here, right now, and he had come here deliem" w weberately and with determination. Later, if confronted, he would make excuses, but there weren’t any valid ones, none for real. He wanted what he wanted. He had been thinking on it since the woman had walked into his office, swinging her hips.

Strange recalled the day he had sat at the Three-Star Diner when his father, Darius, was still alive and working the grill. Seeing a moment pass between his father and the Three-Star’s longtime waitress, Ella. Recognizing the familiar look between them that suggested intimacy and maybe even love. He had always thought that his mother and father had shared an unbreakable, sacred bond. To realize, at that moment, that his father had cheated, and had done so, perhaps, for many years, had dropped Strange’s heart. But it hadn’t ruined Darius in Strange’s eyes.

Much as he loved his mother, Strange couldn’t bring himself to righteous anger or to hate his father for his transgression. Yes, he was disappointed. Also, he understood. His father, like all mortals, was a sinner, fallible. In matters of the flesh he was downright weak.

I am my father, thought Strange, as he knocked on Maybelline Walker’s door. No better than any other man. Just a man.

Vaughn bought a ticket at the Lincoln box office and went through the lobby to the auditorium. The 5:30 show was about to begin. Buck and the Preacher had been held over, but first the projectionist was running a reel of trailers for the current features playing at other District Theaters, a chain whose bookers programmed films for black audiences in black neighborhoods. Vaughn let his eyes adjust and watched the promo for The Legend of Nigger Charley, currently running down at the Booker T. How the West Was Rewritten, thought Vaughn, as he spotted Martina in one of the middle rows and made his way to a seat beside him.

“Just got your message, baby,” said Vaughn, leaning close to Martina so he could keep his voice low and still be heard.

“You weren’t followed or nothin, were you?” Martina was wearing a dress, heels, and red lipstick.

“No. This about Red Jones? ’Cause I already know about the Sylvester Ward robbery.”

“That’s not why I called you.”

“I gotta find Red. Get me his location and I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Money,” said Martina huskily, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Cash ain’t gonna do nothing for me unless you got a lot of it.”

“Tell me what’s going on.”

In the light coming from the screen, Martina’s features were angular, masculine, and troubled.

“Tell me,” said Vaughn.

“Hitter name of Clarence Bowman came into the diner earlier today. Was talkin to Gina Marie.”

“I know Gina.”

“Many do. Bowman had Gina Marie call some woman up on the phone and theinaask her when her man was gonna be home tonight. I had the impression that Bowman was about to put work in.”

“What man?”

“A prosecutor. Cotch-somethin.”

“Cochnar?”

“That’s what it was.”

Vaughn wrapped a hand around Martina’s forearm, hard as wood. “What’s Bowman look like?”

“Tall, dark, and cut. Like that actor, used to be an athlete.”

Vaughn looked at the screen, saw Fred Williamson, and said, “Him?”

“Nah, one of them Olympic dudes.”

“I gotta get out of here.”

“Wait a minute, Frank.”

“We’ll settle up later.”

“It’s not about that,” said Martina, looking at him straight on. “I’m scared.”

“Keep it together,” said Vaughn. “I’ll work it out. You’ll be fine.”

Vaughn rose abruptly and rushed up the auditorium aisle. Martina’s head jerked birdlike around the house. He was trying to see if anyone had been watching or listening to their conversation. Half-believing that they had not been observed, Martina slouched in his seat and got low.

Derek Strange sat in a big cushiony armchair in the living room of Maybelline Walker’s apartment, the last of the day’s sun coming in through her west-wall windows. Maybelline sat on a matching sofa, so close to him that her bare knee almost touched his. She was in her strapless dress and she had removed her shoes. Her big natural was lifted by the wind of a floor fan set near the furniture. It was warm running to hot in her pad. Both of them were drinking Miller High Lifes out of bottles. Beads of sweat had formed on Maybelline’s forehead and across her chest, where the tops of her breasts were exposed. Strange could smell her perspiration and that sweet strawberry scent he remembered from the time she had visited his office.

Maybelline had put the Staple Singers’ Be Altitude: Respect Yourself, their new one on the Stax label, on her compact system, and Mavis was belting out “This Old Town (People in This Town),” the last track on side one.

Strange and Maybelline were deep into their conversation. It had become a confession for her. She claimed it felt good to get it out. Now that the horse had been let out the barn, Maybelline had begun to drop her finishing-school manner of speech, and her G’s.

“Hallie Young phoned me just after you gave her a call,” said Maybelline, giving Strange a wicked eye, “askin for references.”

“That was kind of lame of me,” said Strange. “And then I really messed up when I met that Rosen gal. Told her I was looking for a tutoingidth="27r for my ten-year-old daughter.”

“Your look doesn’t say ‘devoted father.’ Or husband.”

“I’m too young,” said Strange. “Ain’t nobody gonna tie me down to a marriage. Not yet.”

They both sipped at their beers.

“How’d you find the ring?” said Strange.

Maybelline wiped a bit of foam from her full mouth. “Dayna Rosen used to leave me with her son alone in that house for, like, two hours at a time.”

“She barely knew you.”

“Derek, she didn’t know me at all. But white folks like her, they just overdo that ‘I feel for your people’ thing. Tryin so hard to be right. Like, Look at me, I got an actual black person in my home, and I’m gonna trust her enough to leave her there with my child while I run errands around town. If I had a kid, I wouldn’t leave it with a stranger, would you?”

“We already established I don’t have one, so I can’t answer that.”

“Dayna used to call me girl, sister, all that jive. Shoot, she was no kin to me.”

Strange, trying to redirect her, said, “Back to the ring.”

“Dayna had showed it to me, and then I saw it again in a jewelry box in their master bedroom one day while she had gone out and Zachary had disappeared. I was always having to go and look for him. Boy couldn’t sit still and work on math to save his life.”

“Six years old, he’s not supposed to sit still.”

“I didn’t steal that ring,” said Maybelline.

“I know,” said Strange. “Bobby Odum did.”

Maybelline’s eyes went to the beer bottle in her hand. “I had got to know Bobby. Used to go into Cobb’s for my fish sandwich, and he’d come out from the kitchen every time he saw me walk through the door. We went out for a drink, and he mentioned his history…”

“Odum was a second-story man, among other things. You put him up to the burglary, right?”

“Yes,” she said, turning her face away suddenly, like an actress in a silent film. “He volunteered to steal it, once I told him about the ring.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I didn’t have to get with him, if that’s what you mean.”

“Cobb said he saw you two lockin lips out back his shop.”

“Kissin ain’t fuckin.”

“It can have the same effect.”

“I’m not above letting a man give me a kiss to get where I need to bee Illine.

“So you didn’t sleep with him.”

“Please,” said Maybelline. “Do I look like the kind of woman that Bobby Odum could satisfy?”

“I don’t blame him for trying. After all, he was a man.”

“He wasn’t much of one.”

Strange studied her. “The Rosens did you a solid by hiring you. Didn’t you feel any, you know, remorse?”

“Not really. Dayna didn’t pay a dime for that ring. That day when she had it on her hand, she said herself that it came down from her grandmother, like an inheritance.”

“When Dayna and her husband realized it had been stolen, they did what?”

“They called the police,” said Maybelline with a shrug. “The night Bobby stole it, the Rosens were all out to dinner somewhere, and the house was locked up. If they suspected me as an accomplice, they kept it to themselves. I guess they didn’t want to jam up another young black woman with the law. I swear, sometimes I felt like I could have slapped that woman in the face and she would have apologized to me.”

Strange recalled his conversation with Dayna Rosen. She’d said that she had told Maybelline they would no longer require her services, using the excuse that progress had been made with Zach and the job was complete. She had never accused Maybelline of anything and had even defended her, in a way, to Strange. Strange felt that the Rosens were decent people, if hugely naive. Maybelline saw their kindness as stupidity.

“What about the police?” said Strange.

“Police never even questioned me. You know the MPD don’t do shit for follow-up on those burglaries.”

The music had come to an end. Maybelline put her bottle down on a glass coffee table and went to her stereo. She took the album off the platter, replaced it in its sleeve, found a 45, and fitted a plastic adaptor into its center space. She dropped the record onto the spindle of the turntable and flipped the play lever located on the side of the platter. Luther Ingram’s new smash, “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want to Be Right,” came forward. Ordinarily, Strange would have thought, Koko 2111. He would have if he had not been studying Maybelline’s lush figure filling out every inch of her dress.

“You still buying singles?” said Strange.

“That’s all they had at the record store,” said Maybelline, and she went back to the sofa and sat on one end of it. She patted the empty portion of the cushion. “Why you sittin so far away?”

“Am I?”

“You could have phoned me,” she said. “I know you didn’t come over here to give me a personal update.”

“How you know why I came over? You got ESP?”

“Derek, I believe you’re scared.”

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Fightin words, thought Strange. And: Figures that a mathematics teacher would have it all worked out. Everything this woman does is calculation.

He didn’t even like Maybelline Walker. But he moved to the sofa and sat beside her.

“That’s better,” she said.

She reached across him and held his hand.

“You still gonna find that ring for me?”

“I take a job,” said Strange, “I see it through.”

She moved his hand and placed it on her chest. Strange slipped his fingers inside the fabric of her dress and cupped her left tit. He brushed her nipple, pinched it, and felt it swell. She shifted her body into his and they kissed. Her flesh was warm beneath his touch and their tongues danced and he grew hard. Her legs parted and his hand went between them and she was naked there. She moaned as he found her spot and stroked her slick divide.

“Goddamn,” she said.

“What?”

“Come on.”

As quickly as he had been sprung, Strange lost his desire. He sat back on the couch. The image of Carmen had flashed in his mind, but it wasn’t just his conscience that had thrown cold water on his intent. After all, he’d been unfaithful to Carmen before; because of his nature, he would probably cheat again. But not today.

Strange slowly got to his feet. He straightened out his shirt and adjusted himself inside the crotch of his bells.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” said Maybelline.

“You talk too much,” said Strange.

Coco Watkins, Red Jones, and Alfonzo Jefferson sat on comfortable furniture around a cable spool table set up in the living room of Jefferson’s bungalow in Burrville. They were drinking beer from clear longnecked bottles and passing around a fat joint of herb. Jefferson had copped an OZ of premium Lumbo with his cut of the money they’d taken off Sylvester Ward. “Walk from Regio’s,” an instrumental from the Shaft soundtrack, was coming from the stereo, and Jefferson was moving his head to its bass, key, and woodwind vamp.

“This is bad right here,” said Jefferson, his woven hat cocked on his head, his eyes close to bleeding. “You know Isaac’s in town tonight.”

“We got plans,” said Coco, eyeing Jefferson with annoyance.

“I know,” said Jefferson, and he smiled with sympathy at Jones. “Donny and Roberta. Sounds like a real house party. You can’t dance to that shit, though. It’s got no backbeat.”

Jones hit the joint, hit it again, and handed it to Jefferson. When Jones spoke, smoke came with his words. “What’d your woman say, exactly?”

“Monique? Said Vaughn came by, lookin for my Buick. Registration and title’s got her name on it.”

“Ward snitched us out to the law. I can’t believe it.”

“Ain’t no honor out here anymore.” Jefferson inspected the burning herb, wrapped loosely in Top papers, and drew on it deep.

“Where your deuce at now?” said Jones.

“Parked in my yard, out back. Can’t nobody see it from the street.”

“If they walked into the alley they could.”

Jefferson put his hand on the worn.38 that lay on the cable spool table. “Official Police” was stamped on its barrel, and he liked that. He touched its grip, wrapped in black electrical tape. “If someone walks into that alley and they look at my shit? It’s on. At that point, don’t nothin matter, anyway.”

“How close you think Hound Dog is?”

Jefferson shrugged. “Man said our names to Monique.”

“Dude stays on it,” said Jones with admiration. He was not concerned. In fact, his blood ticked pleasantly. “I wouldn’t go out, I was you.”

“You about to go out.”

“I gotta take care of Long Nose.”

“And we got a date,” said Coco.

“You know where Roland at?” said Jefferson.

“Soul House,” said Jones. “According to you.”

“If he’s out the hospital, that’s where he’ll be.”

“So you gonna stay in,” said Jones pointedly. “Right?”

“Monique comin over here,” said Jefferson with an idiotic grin. “Conjugal visit.”

“What if she gets followed?”

“I ain’t stupid,” said Jefferson, smiling stupidly, his eyes gone. “Neither is Nique. She’s not goin any goddamn where unless it’s clear.”

They smoked the joint down to a roach and finished their beers. Jones got up quickly from his chair. His new Rolex had slid up his forearm, and he shook it to rest on his wrist.

“Let’s go, girl,” he said, standing tall. He was dressed for the night in rust-colored bells, three-inch stacks, and a print rayon shirt opened to show the top of his laddered stomach. Coco, similarly fly and regal, came and stood beside him.

“You gonna take my short?” said Jefferson.

“That Buick’s on fire,” said Jones. “We’ll be good in Coco’s ride.”‹"0e› p height="0em" width="27"›Jefferson liked that jam “No Name Bar,” the one with all the horns, on another side of Isaac’s double-record set. As Jones and Coco left the house, he found the slab of wax he was looking for and put it on.