“I been given the all-okay for you to see that bwoy. And I got something myself I need be telling him, too. But no calls, no numbers. We’ll meet him in person. I’ll take you.”
“You will? That’s actually nice of you, Antoine.”
“Nothing nice about it,” said Antoine, turning around to face forward.
“Remember our arrangement?” said Derek. “Forty an hour?”
“It was thirty.”
“It was, but not no more. This be dangerous now, running from cops, dealing with fugitives. I’ve had to jack the rates. Forty an hour.”
“Okay.”
“Plus expenses.”
“Right.”
“Well, Antoine here, right now he’s the expense.”
“I get the feeling this is going to be a costly trip. Where are we going?”
“You hungry, mon?” said Antoine.
“Not really.”
“It don’t matter,” he said as he fired the ignition. “You still buying the breakfast. I know a wan irie place. You like grits?”
“No.”
“You’ll be liking these.”
It was a long drive for a plate of grits, but Antoine was right. I did like them, lighter than I would expect, thick with butter. And I liked the biscuits with gravy and the spiced stewed apples that went along with my two eggs over. The place was narrow and old, built of stone, with open ductwork on the ceiling, steam sweating off the windows, and hot sauce on the tables. There were four of us sitting at a small booth with a rickety Formica table between us, the table laden with plates smeared with grease and filled with our breakfasts.
The waitress in her maroon apron ambled over with a pot. “You boys want more coffee?”
“Sure we do,” said Derek. “Hey, this place is famous, isn’t it?”
“Didn’t you see the sign outside?”
“I did, yes, but just because the sign says it, don’t mean it’s so.”
“Look around,” she said, pointing at the photographs that ringed the diner. “We get politicians here, singers, movie stars.”
“And now, best of all, you got Derek,” he said.
“Who is Derek?”
“You’re talking to him.”
“Now, ain’t that special?” said the waitress as she poured coffee into one of the purple plastic coffee cups. “Tell the Post to hold the presses.”
“You want to take my picture, put it up with the others?” said Derek. “I’ll sign it and everything.”
“Your face is going to have to stay right where it is, honey,” she said. “We can’t be scaring the customers’ appetites. You boys need anything else, just give me a holler.”
“She wants me,” said Derek after the waitress had left.
Antoine shook his head and turned to Jamison, who was sitting quietly beside him. “When you coming back, bwoy?”
“Don’t know,” said Jamison. He was dressed in baggy jeans and a T-shirt, more skateboarder than gangster. In the bright lights of the Florida Avenue Grill, he seemed younger than I had remembered. “My aunt’s been bugging me to come down and live with her for a while. And I didn’t like the cops sniffing for me like that.”
“Take your time,” said Antoine, “but J.T. wanted me a tell you them dues is up.”
“I’m not paying my dues, me having to run like that.”
“He says you still under his right arm, so you got to still be paying.”
“Hell if I’m paying. Tell him I’m out. My aunt wants to put me in the school down here. Says it’s a pretty good school, they got computers and stuff.”
“J.T. don’t want to hear about school.”
“I knew something like this was going down. That’s why I met you here and not at my aunt’s house.” He balled up a napkin, threw it atop his eggs, stood. “You’re a message boy now, Antoine? After all the crap you been blowing out your ass, that’s what you become? Well, here’s a message back to J.T. Tell him I’m out. Tell him if I’m paying dues, I’m paying them local, and he’ll have to fight through the protection I got wrapped down here to get to me.”
“Well, lookie this,” said Antoine, a smile breaking out. “Bwoy’s all grown up. Sit down and finish them eggs. Victor’s got some questions.”
“What are you going to tell J.T.?”
“I’ll tell him what you say. That you off to school and giving up the business. Don’t make a liar of me, now, or it won’t be J.T. you be worrying about.”
Jamison bobbed his head a bit and then sat down again. He took the napkin off his food, shoveled a forkful of eggs into his mouth. “All right,” he said to me, “what the hell do you want to know?”
“Remember the woman whose picture I showed you? The one who you said was buying heroin from you?”
“Course I remember. That’s the reason I was chased down to here in the first place.”
“So the question I have, Jamison, is this. Do you have any idea who she was buying it for?”
He looked at me for a moment, then down at his eggs.
“Go ahead and tell the mon,” said Antoine.
“Another one of my customers,” said Jamison. “A pretty boy with a ferocious habit. Whenever she came, she bought some for him and paid what he owed. We would sell him on credit whatever he wanted, because she was always good for it.”
“Do you have a name?” I said.
“We called him Sweets,” said Jamison, “because of the way he looked, but that wasn’t his real name.”
“What was his real name?”
“Terry,” said Jamison. “His name was Terry.”
32
We were back on the road, Antoine and Derek and I, heading farther south on I- 95 in that blue Camaro, driving deep into Julia’s past. What was going on was so obvious I should have figured it out before. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been telling me over and over what she was doing and why. She was begging me to understand, but I guess I was so blinded by my own lost love that I hadn’t been able to see hers.
Terry. As in Terrence. You should have seen him then, she had said. He was Romeo in his bones, she had said. Now all I had to do was find him.
We were still about thirty miles from where we were headed, just rounding Fredericksburg, when my phone rang. It was noisy in the Camaro – a car built for speed, not comfort – so I pressed the phone hard into my ear.
“Victor, where are you?”
It took me a moment, within the din of the backseat, to identify the voice, but finally I did. Sims.
“What do you want?” I said.
“We need to talk.”
“I think I’ve talked enough. You’ve had me down to the Roundhouse three times. Next time you want to chat, bring a warrant.”
“That can be arranged, I assure you,” said Sims. “But maybe we should talk in an unofficial capacity. Where are you?”
“You tell me. You’re following me, aren’t you?”
“I was, until you arranged to lose me. Not the most innocent of actions. You are the chief suspect in a murder case. And I must say the evidence is lining up quite neatly against you.”
“I’m being framed.”
“Yes, you’ve told us. By Mr. Swift, who I don’t think could frame a poster, better yet a cookie as smart as you. But I could be convinced to see it your way, Victor. I could turn my attentions in another direction. I am more flexible than you might imagine.”
“Oh, I doubt that. I think this-” I stopped talking. “What is best is-” I stopped talking again.
“Victor, you’re breaking up.”
“Am I? That’s a shame because-”
“Remember that I told you not to leave town.”
“I remember.”
“There will be costs if you have discarded my advice.”
“I’ll be in touch,” I said. Then I hung up. Then I turned off the phone.
“Who was that?” said Derek.
“Johnny Crow,” I said. “How much longer?”
“About twenty minutes now,” said Antoine. “Then we have to ask.”
“Won’t be a problem,” I said. “Everyone knows where the high school is.”