She smiled at him deceptively without answering.
“Who are you anyway?” she asked. “What’s your name?”
“Memphis.”
She arched her eyebrows in amused surprise.
“That your real name?”
He gave her a noncommittal shrug for an answer.
“You got a last name?”
“Red.”
Her amused smile broke down into an unrestrained laugh.
“Okay, if you say so,” she managed to reply.
“What’s yours?”
“Lena,” she answered. “Lena Haynes.”
A waitress interrupted to take their order, and Memphis welcomed the intervention. He wasn’t big on unplanned encounters. That’s when mistakes could occur, and he couldn’t afford mistakes. He watched Lena surreptitiously as he ate. She seemed so different from her appearance at their initial encounter. She was a pretty woman and appeared far too intelligent to have placed herself in untenable circumstances without a reason. He could tell that she was trying to feel him out, and he remained intentionally circumspect.
“You’re either a very brave man or a fool, Mr. Memphis Red. I haven’t decided which yet.”
“Bravery is a matter of perception,” Memphis replied coolly. “I suspect it takes more courage to associate with a fool than to confront one.”
She absorbed Memphis’s penetrating stare for several seconds, as if trying to discern the meaning of the remark. She finally excused herself as if ultimately concluding that she had been insulted and her presence unwanted. She hesitated after taking a step away as if delayed by an afterthought.
“Sometimes people are compelled to do things for a reason.” She spoke softly and introspectively. “But I’m sure you wouldn’t know about things like that, would you?”
She moved away before he could reply. Memphis took a final sip of coffee. What he knew or didn’t know was nothing he planned to discuss with Lena Haynes for the time being.
Memphis slowly coaxed his car down the tortuous driveway that led to a sprawling ranch-style house nestled in a pine grove about a hundred yards from the highway. He rang the doorbell twice before he was greeted by Lena Haynes’s surprised countenance.
“You’re full of surprises,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you, especially here.”
“May I come in?”
She stepped aside, allowing him to enter the elegantly appointed foyer.
“I’m glad you came,” she volunteered.
It was an admission he hadn’t expected and one that he suspected she hadn’t intended to allow.
“You’re an interesting man, and interesting men are a rarity around here.”
His eyes wouldn’t leave her face. She was appealing even without makeup. He had known that she would be attracted to him. What he wasn’t prepared for was the ripple of emotion that she incited. He hadn’t felt that when looking at a woman for some time.
“Well, what should we do now?”
Her coquettish inquiry alone revealed vulnerabilities that would have ordinarily left him pursuing his advantage. He found himself torn, however, between his wants and his needs, and there was a fire in his gut that made him driven for things other than the obvious.
“I need to see Angus Haynes.”
He watched the darkness descend over her face and regretted instantly the demons that drove him.
She recovered quickly, and a tiny self-deprecating smile played at the corners of her lips, but her disappointment was apparent.
“Well, Mr. Memphis or whoever you are, I was foolish enough to think that I was the source of your interest.”
“You’re not foolish—” he began.
“Spare me,” she interrupted. “Save your platitudes for my father.”
She directed him down a short hallway where Angus Haynes sat in a study laboring over some papers. Angus Haynes languished on the far side of middle age. He regarded Memphis suspiciously as his daughter whispered in his ear. A younger man who appeared as if his duties could only be physical stood nearby and tried to look intimidating as Lena left the room, closing the door behind her.
The young man patted Memphis down and nodded his confirmation that there was no weapon. Haynes still kept his hands hidden behind his desk as he scrutinized Memphis.
“Memphis Red. An unusual name,” Haynes commented. “What is it you think I can do for you?”
“The name’s Travis Redmond. Memphis is just what they call me. I believe you have a job opening.”
The old man laughed, apparently finding Memphis amusing.
“You job hunting? What makes you think I need help?”
“The help you had was piss-poor, unless Ray Mayweather was just one of your charity causes.”
Haynes’s eyes narrowed. Apparently Lena hadn’t told him who had put Ray out of commission.
“You’re a dangerous man, Mr. Redmond. I don’t like dangerous men.”
“Yeah, you do.” Memphis took the liberty of sitting down without being asked. “Besides, I’ve worked for you before, so I figured that you owed me a job among other things.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Haynes’s patience was getting short.
“Vincent Morelli.”
Haynes sat back in his chair without speaking. He stared at Memphis for several seconds while flexing his jaw before moving the pistol in his lap to the top of the desk.
“What do you know about Morelli?” he asked.
“He hired me to help him with a job up in New York.”
“You’re lying,” the old man said. “Morelli only hired niggers. I thought it was a personal failing, but he assured me that there was an advantage to working with a disposable product.”
“You’re wrong. The colored boys could only go so far. That’s what happens when you don’t do your own planning.”
“I’m what they call an enabler, Mr. Redmond. I provide the means. I leave the details to others. Why didn’t Morelli ever mention your name?”
“I guess there was no point if he thought I was dead.”
Memphis’s eyes remained fixed on the gun that lay on the desk between them. Haynes’s henchman had moved beyond his peripheral vision and probably stood behind him. He could only imagine what he was preparing to do.
“He said he had problems,” Haynes continued.
“To say the least. You and Morelli were pretty smart. He ran the game up North then brought the goods down to this little hole in the wall where nobody would ever think to look. Down here in Chitlin’ Switch, North Carolina, you can live like a king.”
The old man smiled an unplanned acknowledgement.
“So what’s your story, Mr. Redmond? What is it that you think Morelli didn’t tell me? What went wrong?”
“The numbers bank was upstairs in a small hotel. It was in Harlem right off Morningside Park. Nightclub on the first level. The thing is, the club was all white — big money, high rollers, plenty of cash. They gambled, bought numbers, dope, whatever. The only thing colored could do was to wait on them. So that was the way in. See, nobody paid any attention to colored boys going in to cook, wait tables, that sort of thing. So we sneaked in with the help that morning. Morelli and me were supposed to be supervisors. We worked our way upstairs where they kept the money, cracked a few heads, and walked away with two hundred fifty grand.”
“Why didn’t you come down with Morelli?”
“Because somebody shot me.”
Memphis watched the old man closely. He had no reaction. He couldn’t tell if it was because he already knew the story or whether he had lived long enough to not be surprised by much of anything anymore.
“I woke up in an alley. The three colored boys were dead, and I should have been. It took a year for me to get back on my feet, Mr. Haynes. Morelli was gone, and it took six months more for me to find out about you.”
“So I’ll bet you’re here for your share of the loot, aren’t you. Of course, I should just hand some money over to you because I have your word that you were in on it.” The sarcasm dripped from Haynes’s lips like a bitter poison.