“Money.”
I shook my head. Everything up until that moment had been window dressing. It was all bells and whistles to get the gangster’s attention. Sure, I was trying to save Jackson Blue. But he would either survive the transaction or he wouldn’t; my real business was to save my job, my life, and Bonnie Shay. “I got a friend. She’s in trouble with one’a your friends. She’s willin’ to make up but we got to know that your friend is too.”
“What friend?” Stetz asked. His voice had gotten softer.
“Beam. Joseph Beam.”
Stetz winced. “And your friend?”
“Her name don’t matter. All that matters is that Beam think that she stole from him, but she didn’t. She got somethin’ but it was by mistake. She wanna give him back his property, that’s all.”
Stetz ran the four tips of the fingers of his left hand around his cheek; an insincere smile was on his lips. Maybe he was scared of Beam. Maybe he wanted to stay out of his friend’s business. I had tossed out the bait; it tasted good, but now Stetz had to wonder if it was worth it to swim away from the school.
“What is it?” he asked.
“You know who Roman Gasteau is?”
“Yeah.”
“Him an’ Beam was movin’ aitch. Somehow the last shipment they was movin’ got lost. Beam thinks my friend stole it.”
“Why come to me?” Stetz asked. But his eyes were saying tell me more. “Why don’t you go to Joey?”
“I went to him. At least I tried. But he put his boys on me. Guys named Rupert an’ Li’l Joe. They sapped me up at the Black Chantilly an’ was about to kill me ’fore I run.”
It was all I wanted to say. I knew that Stetz would be interested in any business that his people were doing. If he knew about it, then it was a sweet deal to get his drug back. If he didn’t know, it meant that he’d have to do some house-cleaning. Either way I had a chance to get what I wanted.
“You say this was up at the club?” he asked me.
“In a toolshed around the side of the main house. I had to run right through the front driveway. Somebody musta told you about it.”
“How much heroin?”
“Three pounds about. I don’t know but it looks pretty pure.”
“And you say they were selling it at the club?” “I don’t know about that. All I know is that Beam and Roman was in business wit’ Rupert an’ Li’l Joe.”
Stetz played his cheek with his fingers some more and then asked, “What’s in it for you?”
“They already killed Roman. They probably killed Roman’s brother. My friend is still alive and I’d like to keep her that way. And if I can save Jackson, well, I’d like that too.”
Stetz was a cat in the window, frozen before his leap. I was a bird on the ledge, praying for glass.
“When can you get me these telephone boxes?”
“Today. I could give you the aitch too.”
“I don’t like drugs, Mr. Rawlins. Not too much. You keep it for Joey, that is, if Joey still wants it.”
I read a volume in his words but all I said was, “When and where?”
“We use a warehouse on Alameda sometimes.”
“This afternoon?”
Stetz nodded. He was thinking about something.
“So it’s a deal?” I asked.
“What?”
“You gonna lay off Jackson and let me give what I got over to Beam?”
“I’m going to talk to Joey. And I’ll send somebody over to the warehouse at four to pick up your recorders.”
He gave me the address and I moved to go from the room.
“Rawlins,” he said to my back.
“Yeah?”
“How’d you know about the guy who wrote this book?”
“Rome is closer to Africa than it is to here, Mr. Stetz,” I said.
39
I called Raymond from a phone booth five blocks down from Philly Stetz’s hideaway.
“Could you come meet me up at Mofass’s place?” I asked the onetime gangster.
“What you askin’, Easy?”
“I just need some company, Ray. It’s tough men I’m dealin’ with, but it’s them makin’ money. I just need a friend to stand by me.”
“I ain’t totin’ no gun, Ease. I won’t do that. Not yet.”
“That’s good,” I said. “No need for trouble.”
We met at Mofass’s house and picked up Jackson. Mouse was driving a neighbor’s car that he’d borrowed.
“Good-bye,” Jackson said to Jewelle at the front door.
“Bye,” she said. “You gonna call?”
“Come on, Jackson,” I said.
“She sure is sweet,” Jackson was saying in the car.
“You got better things to think about, Jackson,” I said.
“What’s that?”
I reached over and opened the glove compartment in front of him. Inside was a wax-paper bag. We all knew what it held.
“We gonna sell it?” he asked.
“We ain’t gonna do a thing. All I need for you to do is to tell me where you got them bookie boxes hid.”
“What?”
“We cain’t cut you no slack without somethin’ to trade, Jackson. Those bookie boxes are worth your life.”
“They worth a lot more’n that.”
I don’t think he realized what he was saying.
Mouse, who was sitting in the backseat, put his hand on Jackson’s shoulder. “Let up on it, Blue. It’s time to move on.”
Mouse had a persuasive hand.
Jackson directed us to a Bekins storage warehouse on Pico where he had hidden his boxes. There were fourteen of them. Small black wooden cases, each one about double the size of a table humidor for cigars. Along with them he had a notebook full of the numbers of his clients.
“How do these things work, man?” Mouse asked Jackson. He had one of the boxes opened up across his lap, revealing a small transistor tape recorder and a large dry-cell battery.
“It’s just a circuit switch,” Jackson answered, a little distracted. “After it rings, the switch go off an’ the recorder go on. Then the one who call give their number and the bet.”
When Mouse smiled the blue jewel on his front tooth sparkled.
We all went back to my house to wait. Jackson didn’t want to go with us to meet Stetz, and we had an hour to kill.
“What the hell is this?” There was a dog turd in the middle of my neatly made bed.
I ran that dog all over the house. He scuttled under the couch and I yanked the thing away from the wall.
“He headed out t’the kitchen!” Mouse yelled out.
I ran right into the kitchen table and banged my thigh pretty bad. Jackson and Mouse tried to help me corner him but Pharaoh was too quick and they were mostly laughing anyway.
He finally took a bad turn into Feather’s room and I got him in a corner. He started yowling like Death had gotten hold of him — he wasn’t too far from wrong. The running had tired me and cut my anger a hair; if I had caught him a second sooner he would have had something to scream about. As it was I brought him out to the car and threw him into the trunk.
“Easy, you shouldn’t let that dog get under yo’ skin like that, man. He just a dumb dog,” Mouse said. “He don’t know what he doin’.”
I would have hit anyone but Mouse. I might have been angry but I hadn’t yet gone mad.
I cleaned up my bed and sulked on the couch. Jackson sat across from me, writing out his instructions on how to use the bookie boxes.
Mouse was squatting down next to the door — reading a book!
“You read?” I asked him.
“Li’l bit, brother. Li’l bit. EttaMae make me an’ LaMarque sit’own sometimes an’ go through his readin’ lessons. I picked up a little.”