Gettin place 97814013060.., p.33
Gettin' Place (9781401306069), page 33
“Detective Harley,” the low voice came. “I need to speak with you, Marcus.”
His beard shadow was like black pepper strewn along his jaw. Harley wore a brown coat and tie, and he paced around the living room. Marcus stayed by the closed door, working hard to keep the tremors he felt from visibly shaking him.
“You know, after that first time when you and Finis came walking up out of the riverbottom, I admired you for your loyalty,” Harley began, folding his arms. Marcus tried to look into his face, but the old Treetown fear of cops kept weighing heavy on his lids. Harley’s fingers were etched with tiny black wires of hair.
“I did. I don’t have any brothers. You got four brothers over there, on your dad’s place. You’re the only one with no stake over there, but you worried about Finis. So all this time, since the city councilman’s starting to threaten to hire somebody to find out who killed his daughter, and all this time, when I’ve had someone keeping an eye on you when you head down to the river and to Finis’s girlfriend’s and to the Gardens, where everybody’s an expert at hiding, I was hoping you’d worry enough about old Finis to take care of him. And we could just ask him a few more questions. But now I think we might have found your brother before you did.”
“Finis?” Marcus felt his tongue, as dry and thick as jerky.
“Come on with me,” Harley said.
On the street, Marcus felt a stronger tremor slice down his neck. He didn’t want to get in the car with McCartin, with the thick wrists and hidden mouth. “I want to take my car,” he said at the curb. “I ain’t ridin with you.”
“Fuck it, Marcus,” Harley said. “It’s you and me in the front seat, going to see if my fucking tenth body of the year is your brother, okay? Are you coming or not?”
Marcus smelled cigar smoke and Armor All in Harley’s car. He stared at the freeway overpass ahead, and Harley said conversationally, “Look at all this new graffiti. Why can’t you guys get kids to write out all their fantasies on paper, in school?” He glanced over at Marcus.
Marcus couldn’t think. “Does my mother know?”
“About Finis?” Harley stopped the car. “Does she?”
Marcus blinked in confusion, seeing police cars and lights to the right at the pink cottages of the Kozy Komfort, the chain-link gate wide open. Harley pulled into the parking lot, where the men usually sat outside on a warm night like this, and Marcus saw all the doors closed tight on each tiny stucco facade, like a little girl had shut down the dollhouse.
The door to the farthest cottage near the overpass was open, and officers were milling around. Harley walked just behind Marcus, his shoulder inches away, and one of the men said, “This guy gonna ID?”
“Maybe,” Harley said. “Marcus, watch your step. You gotta be ready, now.”
Marcus kept his eyes on the ceiling when he entered the tiny room. He saw the low plaster above him, as small and square as a handkerchief. When he dropped his eyes slowly, the grimy wall showed a mist of blood like red smoke.
A thin brother lay on his back near the wall, his chest bare, his face tattered into something beyond recognition. The bones held only garish red pieces of a man, and blood lay bright on his chest like dripped candle wax. Marcus wheeled around to face the corner, where he brought up the food he’d eaten at the restaurant; he felt his own skull wedged into the sharp angle.
“Here.” Harley handed him a packet of moistened towelettes, like at a restaurant. “I keep these handy. I don’t know if your brother was a killer or not, but somebody used a blunt weapon on this guy, like the tire iron on the—uh—the gentleman dressed like a lady.” Harley’s fingers pulled at Marcus’s elbow. “Did somebody pay Finis back like this?”
Marcus forced himself to look at the face again, the ear hanging loose like a copper amulet. He said, “Why you think it’s Finis?”
“The guy has a braid, he’s around thirty, he has no ID. This place is a haven for smoke brains like your brother.” Harley’s voice seemed far away, like a transistor radio deejay. Marcus looked around the tiny room, the hotplate and bed and door to the toilet. “No radio or Walkman, no tapes or anything?” he asked. “If it’s Finis, he has music.”
“Coulda been stolen,” Harley said. “You’re gonna have to look at him.”
Marcus looked past the swimming red face and down to the bare arms. He bent and lifted the curled fingers, ducking his head and holding his breath at the metallic scent of blood. No puckered sunburst of paler skin above the elbow, where Finis’s bad reaction to a vaccine always drew his mother’s rueful touch. Marcus gently laid the hand back on the gritty floor. He looked at the chest, down toward the ribs, where Finis had a complicated series of markings given to him by a crazed rooster in someone’s backyard in Agua Dulce. Then he saw the long, stitched shine of an old stab wound on this stomach, and he shook his head.
“Great,” the same cop said in the same disgusted tone. “We got one fatal shooting at the Gardens and this one, all in one night. And nobody knows nothing.” He spat out the door.
Marcus walked out the door and stood near the fence, breathing in the hot dust raised by tires. Harley spoke beside him. “That’s how the back of Bessier’s head looked. McCartin told me you saw his face. Somebody was that angry with Bessier—like somebody was pissed at this guy. I’m thinking maybe his guy body in that dress pissed somebody off. His—her face, you know? And this guy, with a braid like Finis—his face made somebody mad, too. Right?” Marcus was silent. Harley went on. “Now Pammy and Marissa—well, Marissa was burning, probably, and Pammy got shot with that gun you kindly directed us to in the canal. I guess you can’t imagine her fear, right, when the flames were licking up high?”
“Why you sweatin me about it all the time?” Marcus said softly, keeping his mouth close to the dust-coated fence.
“Like I told you, Mr. Sawicky is still broken up about it. He has friends in the department, since he’s been a city councilman all these years. Yeah, he was encouraged to hear about the gun, but then, the ballistics and no fingerprints didn’t add up to much. He did tell us she had some pretty disreputable friends, some unsavory kinda guys.” Harley paused and leaned against the fence to face Marcus. “I’m just saying I hope nobody gets that mad at Finis. I really thought that was him, in there, that somebody was going outside the law. I mean, maybe he’d actually be safer, safer to himself and others, if he was in custody. Nobody could do a Kozy Komfort on him, right? Think about it, Marcus.”
Marcus walked away, standing beside Harley’s car. Another shadow man, beyond the glaring doorway. Nobody knew him but his mother. No papers, no traces. He shivered uncontrollably now near the car window, seeing himself distorted in the glass.
He called in sick to Kurt’s, since even the thought of the salsas and meats brought acid to his throat. The whole weekend, he kept the phone off the hook, the shades down, and he listened to his old tapes. Ohio Players, Rufus, Mandrill. Funkadelic. He saw Finis, liquid shoulders moving steady when he walked, chin poking to his own beat. He read the scribbled blues lyrics SaRonn had recalled, trying to decipher the bloodred river and clay. He listened to Brother Lobo’s show, his eyes welling hot while he walked furiously around the living room, touching his wood figures from Haiti and India and Lesotho. Shadow men. The dead teenager in the Olive Gardens parking lot and the dead brother in the Kozy Komfort—they’d each gotten two paragraphs in the newspaper. Page eleven. No witnesses. No suspects. In the brother’s case, no one had even identified the body.
Jungletown. That’s what the cops called it. Fights and drunks and deaths down there. “Only good nigger is a dead nigger,” Uncle Oscar used to say, grinning evil. “What I always heard.”
But the three people found on his father’s place were white. He looked at Pammy Sawicky’s yearbook photo, the sharp nose with a circle of bone at the end, the pearlescent forehead. The All-American smile. No more costume changes.
He tried to picture how beautiful Sofelia would have been in this row of senior photos: her glowing cheekbones raised high, her big molasses eyes, her hair as dark as a scarf. SaRonn had said it was a hole in your body, to lose a child. He couldn’t know. Pammy’s father and the other girl’s parents had huge chunks missing, and Bessier’s parents, even though they hadn’t even wanted his bones, had to be missing the feel of theirs. The hollow Sofelia spot at his mother’s ribs wasn’t full now, and if Finis was never found, or found like the brother in the motel room, she would lose heart muscle, too.
When he had to eat, he decided to get sushi. The knocking came while he was looking at the menu he kept in a basket near the phone. Marcus stared at the dark wood floor, not moving. Harley—with more questions?
“Marcus,” Demetrius shouted. “Come on, man.”
Demetrius sat on the couch, his dark-blue work clothes banded with oil at the thighs. “I ain’t seen you in hella long,” he said.
“I been workin at Chipotle Chile,” Marcus said. “Seem like all I do is mess up and make things worse at the place. Mama probably still mad.”
Demetrius shrugged and rubbed his jaw; his fingernails were outlined in black. “She just finishin up the pecans, you know. Sofelia still sittin in the bed, smokin.”
Marcus shook his head. “Come on. I was goin for some food.”
“Naw, man, I probably don’t want nothin you fixin to eat,” Demetrius said.
“You ain’t seen my car,” Marcus said.
Demetrius laughed when they stood next to the faded sky-blue VW Bug. “Oh, man,” he said, slamming the hood. “This is you?”
Marcus grinned. “Hey, I couldn’t make up my mind, so I bought this just for the duration.” He pointed to the turquoise Cadillac convertible Kurt had just bought. “This is a Funkytown car.”
“Funkytown?”
“That’s what Sofelia’s son calls this neighborhood. I was tryin to figure out the proper vehicle for a Funkytown brotha like myself. People got their costume, their uniform, and their vehicle. Lifestyle choices.”
“Shut up, man,” Demetrius said. “Where you takin me?”
In the Japanese restaurant on Las Palmas, Demetrius sat uncomfortably while the woman made up the fresh sushi. There was a long line, and Marcus sat down at the small table with two Kirin beers. Demetrius took a sip and grimaced. “Man, I’ll take Uncle Oscar’s choc any day,” he said. But then he leaned forward. “That’s what I came to talk to you about. Somethin Enchantee told me.”
Marcus said, “I gotta tell you about somethin first,” he said. “You see the dude killed in the Kozy Komfort?”
“Same night one a them Proudfoot boys got it in the Gardens,” Demetrius said, his fingers hard on his jaw again. “One a Bantam’s boys. Lorenzo. They say he was just gettin back to the parkin lot and some dude pull up in a car and ask him ‘Where you from?’ And Lorenzo said, ‘You talkin to me?’ And the other kid opened fire.”
Marcus pictured all the Gardens doors closing tight like clenched eyelids. Hear no evil, see no evil. Like the Kozy Komfort doors. He told Demetrius about Harley, about the brother with the scar and no face. “They said they thought it was Finis,” he said.
Demetrius was silent, looking at the label on the beer bottle. Marcus got up to get his order. Futomaki, with egg and spinach. He offered one of the colorful rolls to Demetrius, who shook his head. “The brotha wasn’t nobody we knew,” Demetrius finally said. “I’da heard.”
“That’s hard,” Marcus said. “He was somebody’s brother.”
“Hey, man, I cain’t be carin about everybody,” Demetrius said, his voice edging harder. “He was at the Kozy Komfort. Brothas make choices. I learned long time ago: Who you run with, that’s who you gon fall with.”
Marcus got up to get soy sauce and extra wasabi. He saw people lingering by the counter, waiting for their take-out orders, saw them glancing hurriedly at him and Demetrius. The people eating at other tables avoided his eyes when he walked back across the small room. Jungletown. Demetrius’s grimy uniform, his thick braid, his harsh voice. Funkytown. Quiet conversation about movies. Dockers. Him. But not tonight.
“Come on, D,” he said, making his voice light. “Try some a this. You always puttin Tabasco on everything.” He handed Demetrius a pinch of rice smeared with the green Japanese horseradish.
“I ain’t Oriental, okay?” Demetrius said, low. “I can’t eat this fish stuff. Probably don’t taste like nothin.”
“This is just rice. Try it.” Marcus watched Demetrius’ eyes water and a flush of maroon crawl across his nose.
“Damn! That green shit go in your nose, man, not in your throat.” Marcus laughed. Demetrius drank some beer. “Tabasco, man. Salsa. The nigga in me like Tabasco and the Mescan in me like salsa, okay?” Marcus had to laugh loud in the low burble of talk around them.
Back in the apartment, he gave Demetrius a Miller. “Where you get the Bug?” Demetrius asked.
“Layton. That’s somethin else I been wantin to tell you.”
“I know—Layton got all them guys restorin V-Dubs now.”
Marcus shook his head. “No. You said maybe somebody was mad at you for tryin to get the city contract, the cop rotation.”
Demetrius leaned back on the couch. “I shouldn’t have bragged to nobody. I said we were goin twenty-four hours now, gettin all the paperwork. Rotella—I know he probably got mad.”
Marcus said, “I asked Layton straight up if somebody was mad cause you wanted in on that deep pocket. He said you and him go way back. And he said Rotella was a damn junkyard dog.” Marcus smiled, remembering Layton’s wry face. “Said he gets everything from the cops and sells it fast as he can. But he said…” Marcus hesitated, watching Demetrius lean forward and hold the beer. “He said Rotella ain’t worried about you and Daddy and Eight. Said Arrow Towing is small-time. Not like he was doggin you. He just said Rotella and him got the whole city, and with all the commuters, the new people, there was too much work.”
Demetrius was quiet for a while, finishing the beer and fanning his fingers behind his neck. Then he said, “Well, I sure can’t make no moves now. What I gotta tell you is about somethin illegal. And I ain’t doin none a that. I know Julius do sometimes, but not so me and Eight find out.”
He told Marcus about what Enchantee had heard—The Blue Q, the name on the land, and something illegal. “You said you recognize this Web Matheson dude from somewhere.”
“I swear I’ve seen his face somewhere besides Chile. Like a long time ago.” Marcus thought about the recent news photos of aspiring politicians, but he shook his head. “You said they talked about blue paint?”
Demetrius stood up. “Think about it. That’s what you supposed to be good at—thinkin. Cause you sure as hell ain’t good for nothin else.”
“Nice hangin with you, too, my brother.” Marcus grinned. “You sure you ain’t hungry?”
“Man, I ate neckbones and rice at Mama’s. And now I gotta go home and eat whatever Enchantee cooked, so she won’t get mad.” He stretched at the door, big-knuckled fists frozen for a moment in the air. “I gotta keep two women happy. And you ain’t got a one hidin round here. Nowhere.” Demetrius stuck his tongue in the corner of his mouth and raised his eyebrows. “My brother.”
By the next Friday, after dealing with sullen students in the stuffy classroom where the heating system wanted to kick in for late fall even though the sun was still working overtime, Marcus only wanted to finish his shift at Chile and then sit at a quiet corner table to write down the things he could remember. The strange splinter of dried fish, the salted plums he’d found on the hillside behind his father’s. The blues song Finis had given SaRonn for him. He wouldn’t think about her neck or her tinkling bracelets, he told himself, walking toward the school parking lot.
Rival car stereos were blasting rap and metal while students stood around talking. Marcus glanced up and saw Mortrice, wearing the big jacket, standing with several other boys and a white man with a blond ponytail.
When the man looked up from his notebook, Marcus saw that it was Bent, the guy he’d met in the gym. Mortrice was shrugging, face impassive. His friend Chris said loudly, “Why you wanna know?”
“I’m doing a series for the paper on the history of rap,” Bent said easily. “One part is who listens to rap. I saw you all talking here, I heard the beats, and I figured you for experts.”
Marcus grinned at the smooth, cajoling voice he used with them—like a teacher. He stopped to listen. Mortrice, Chris, a boy Marcus knew went by B-Real, and two white kids he didn’t know stood near the fence. One of the kids had blond stubble and a spindly braid tail; the other had brown hair in awkward wings over his forehead.
“B-Real the expert,” Chris said. Marcus watched Mortrice turn away, his arms folded.
“What do you listen to?” Bent said, his pen waiting.
B-Real said, “I listen to the real thing. Stuff you can’t find, cause it’s not on the radio. It’s in the car and in the street.” He glanced at the two white kids. “You better ask them. They think they’re experts. That’s all they play.”
“You guys are buddies?” Bent asked, but Mortrice and his friends were leaving. They didn’t see Marcus.
“We got class together,” the blond kid said, grinning.
“You guys like rap, huh?” Bent said, writing fast.
“NWA, DJ Quik, all them guys,” the blond kid said, rocking slightly. “It’s real, homes. Real life. Gats and cappin and rollin. If you got the right attitude.”
“Josh and William, right?” Bent said, looking up. He saw Marcus then. “Hey, thanks, guys. I might be back looking for you again.” Raising his hand, he smiled wide. “Marcus, right? You teach here?”
“Yeah. I’m on my way to my second gig,” Marcus said. “I work at Chipotle Chile, too.”
“Whoa, Abby’s favorite place.” Bent put his small notebook away. “I figured I’d find some rap fans here.”
“Plenty of them,” Marcus said, walking with him toward the street. “Not just Treetown kids. All those Plymouth Hill and downtown kids listen to it.”
