“Yeah?” I said. “And how would Conrad know that?”
“He saw you. He was hiding in the house. He said that you must’a fooled him to get him to bring you to where they were meeting, just like you fooled me an’ Xavier into gettin’ arrested.”
“So then they told you to kidnap me?”
“No,” Tina said with a sneer. “You called on me. I would have stayed away from you, but you stuck your nose out once too often.”
“So now you’re in with the gang,” I said. “Now you plan to use those guns Brawly and Conrad stole.”
“Those guns are only for self-defense.”
“Does Xavier know all this, too?”
“No. They only told me. Xavier’s nonviolent. He didn’t even have bullets in his gun the night you saw him.”
“That’s why you were layin’ up in Strong’s bed?” I asked. “Because you needed a man who could resort to violence?”
“You don’t know a thing about me,” she said from the spleen. “I do what I have to do.”
“Did your friends kill Aldridge Brown?” I asked.
“For all I know, you and your cop friends killed him, too.”
We were down around Ninetieth Street. A futile plan was all I had. My old house was on 116th. I still owned it. My friend Primo lived there for free.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Keep driving,” she said.
Two green lights and four red ones later we came to the signal at 116th. It was turning amber when I was maybe three feet from the crosswalk. I gunned the engine to make the light and then suddenly cut across traffic to make a left turn. I used my left hand to steer and with my right I hit Tina in the head much harder than a man should ever strike a woman. Her head hit the window and made a small cracking sound. I hoped that it was glass I was hearing as I sped past the blasting horns toward the deep driveway and front yard of my old house.
Primo was sitting on the porch with his ebony-colored Panamanian wife, Flower. Around them were babies and children, some theirs, some their children’s children.
“Easy,” my old friend shouted.
“Come on over here, man,” I cried.
We carried the unconscious woman into the house while Spanish-speaking babies and infants capered around us, wanting to be a part of the game. Tina’s skull had broken the glass, but she didn’t seem all that damaged. While Flower set her in the bed, I rummaged through her purse.
She was the same kind of liar that I had always been — she lied by telling the truth about something distracting while coming to her own conclusion. The only problem was that her conclusions about me were wrong.
Still, she had the receipt for the house she rented on 136th. The landlord, Jaguar Realty, had offices on Crenshaw.
Outside the house Primo and I stood by my car. I was smoking a cigarette while he puffed on a slender cigar.
Primo was shorter than I was and broad in both the shoulders and hips. He was a thick man, but the only fat on him was around his belly. He had a full mane of black hair that hid a portion of his forehead and true-black eyes that were usually filled with mirth — but I had seen them when they were honed down to a killing glint.
He was serious that day, but his eyes still smiled.
“She tried to kill you?” he asked me.
“Kidnap me is more like it,” I said. “Take me to some men who would like to do me in.”
“What men?”
“Revolutionaries,” I said. “Like Zapata.”
“Oh,” Primo said. “Good men for storybooks but you don’t want to be around them when they’re alive.”
I chuckled and then I laughed. Primo laughed with me for a while.
“Can you keep her here a day or two?” I asked him. “Sleeping?”
“Sure,” he said with no conflict, consideration, or question as to why. “I’ll call you if I need to.”
We shook hands and said good-bye.
— 42 —
The house that Christina Montes rented from Jaguar Realty was in the center of the block of a very residential street. There was no nearby nook where a spy could hide and survey them.
There was an alley at the end of the block. I backed in there, partially hidden by a stand of miniature evergreens that the last house had put in to hide the alley from view. I watched the white and blue two-story house and smoked cigarettes.
I’d been at my post for over an hour when Conrad cruised up in his Cadillac. Brawly was with him and so was BobbiAnne. Another man got out of the car, but I didn’t recognize him.
I tried to imagine what was going on inside. Not the mischief they were planning, but the surroundings they were planning it in. There was no indication on the rental receipt that the house was furnished. So they must be in a big empty room, sitting on the floor, surrounded by food containers and bottles. Maybe the guns were stacked in a corner. Their plan was probably tacked up on the wall so they could all see it while they drilled the operation, whatever that was, over and over.
Because the rooms were empty, their voices would make a slight echo, lending to the fervor of their convictions. There was no phone or television but there was probably a radio. Would they be listening to music? I doubted it. The dial was probably turned to a news-oriented station. They were worried about being found out and also wondering where Tina was. Did they know that she was going to bring me to them the same way that Strong brought me to the construction site in Compton? Was she involved with the killing of Strong? No. There was love for him in her voice. She loved both the older and younger leaders.
“What you doin’ here, man?” a voice said from behind.
I wasn’t worried. If it was one of the revolutionaries, I would have already been either dead or unconscious.
The man who spoke was short and wore matching ochre pants and shirt. He had a protruding belly and small hands with stubby fingers. Only his voice held any kind of threat.
“Hey,” I said, sticking out my hand. “I’m Troy. This your house?”
“Yes, it is,” the little man replied. He took my hand out of reflex but let it go before I could complete the perfunctory shake.
“You must be wonderin’ what I’m doin’ out here,” I said.
“Yes,” the little man said.
“It’s ’cause’a my girl — Royetta.”
“I don’t know any Royetta.”
“She’s my girl,” I said again. “At least that’s what she tells me. But I heard from Lucas that she been seein’ a man on this block. Yeah, every day, Lucas said, she drive down to this block to see some man. He didn’t have the address, so I decided to come down and use these here nice trees of yours so that she didn’t see me or my car when she come down to meet her sidetrack.”
It felt good to be lying again. It was as if I disappeared behind a cloud of black ink like the squid or cuttlefish.
The man I spoke to was muddy brown with many folds in his face. His head widened as it went toward his neck; with the folds, his head and face resembled a brown candle slowly melting down toward his shoulders.
“I don’t want no trouble,” the man told me. “This here is my property.”
The alley was a public throughway and not his property, but I didn’t say that.
“I don’t want no trouble, either,” I said. “But you see, Royetta got a sister named Cindy, and me and Cindy been messin’ around ourselves. Now if I can prove to Royetta that I know about her man, then when I leave her and take up with Cindy she cain’t get all that mad.”
“Can’t you just get your friend that...that—”
“Lucas,” I said. “Lucas.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a gold-colored Ford Galaxy drive past. I turned to my right to see where the car was headed.