“No, thanks,” I said. I hesitated, and then asked, “Was he that way in Germany, too?”
“What way?”
“Closemouthed.”
“Oh, sure. Except when he was busting some poor bastard who got drunk on a weekend pass. We’d get a lot of soldiers come to Bonn, we still got lots of troops stationed in Germany. They’d come up there for the weekend, get drunk and start howling at the moon. Georgie’d love to bust ’em. He has a mean streak in him, Georgie has. I’m not surprised it ended up this way.”
“Do you mean what happened to Michelle?”
“Yeah, sure, what else would I mean? The way he used his club on some of those dogfaces over there... well, I’m not surprised, is all I’m saying.”
“When you say ‘The way he used his club...’ ”
“Well, these guys were drunk for the most part, I mean they weren’t doing anybody any harm, you know what I mean? Okay, every now and then you’d get some guy pissing in the Rhine, or else starting up with some German girl he thought was a hooker but who turned out instead to be some honest burgher’s daughter, you know what I mean? Even so, it was all harmless, guys off on a weekend toot. Georgie used to treat them like they just committed an ax murder. Beat the shit out of more damn stupid assholes...”
Davis let the sentence trail. He tilted the beer can to his mouth, sipped at it.
“Did you know Michelle in Bonn?” I asked.
“Sure, that’s where I met her.”
“Where was that?”
“In Bonn. You just asked me—”
“Yes, but where? Under what circumstances?”
“Oh. Georgie and I double-dated one night. I had me this white chick used to sing in a little cabaret — listen, don’t mention this to Leona, okay?” he said, and winked. “I was married at the time, but I was a long, long way from home. You ever been a long, long way from home?”
“On occasion,” I said.
“Then you know how it is,” Davis said, and smiled.
“So you double-dated...”
“Yeah, we went to a little joint near the Kennedy Bridge — are you familiar with Bonn?”
“No.”
“Anyway, that’s where I first met Michelle. Saw her that one night, and that was it.”
“How come?”
“What do you mean, how come?”
“If Harper was your friend...”
“Well, yeah, but... you know. A guy wants to be alone with his chick, am I right?”
“What was she doing in Bonn? I thought she was French.”
“Her father’s French, her mother’s German. They used to live in Paris, moved to Bonn when she was — I forget what she said, thirteen, fourteen, something like that. She was maybe nineteen when I met her.”
“Was that the last time you saw her? That night?”
“No, no. Saw her again here in the States, when she came here looking for him.”
“Looking for Harper?”
“Right. Came to the house here, first place she came. Well, let me correct that. She went to his mother’s place first, ’cause that’s where she thought he was living. Then she came here. I was the one who gave her his address in Calusa.”
“When was this, Mr. Davis?”
“A year and a half ago, little more than that maybe.”
“Before they got married?”
“Oh, sure. That’s why she came here, you see. To find him, to get him to marry her. She was crazy about him.”
“But he was crazy about her, too, isn’t that right?”
“Yeah? Funny way he had of showing it then. When we got our orders, when we knew we were coming back to the States, he shipped out without even giving her a dingle.”
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t phone her, nothing, just packed his duffel and off he went.”
“How do you happen to know that?”
“He told me, is how.”
“That he hadn’t called her?”
“That he didn’t plan to call her. Said she was prime white pussy, but that was all behind him, he was coming back home to feast on some soul food. Those were his exact words.”
“Did he have anyone specific in mind?”
“Huh?”
“This ‘soul food’ he mentioned.”
“No, no, just the general black female population,” Davis said, and grinned.
“But she followed him here anyway.”
“Sure did. Real tenacious lady, that Michelle,” he said, and grinned again. “Didn’t find him here in Miami, went right up there to Calusa, cornered him like a rat. Said she loved him and wanted to marry him, and either he married her or she’d go drown herself in the ocean.”
“Who told you that?”
“She did.”
“Then you saw her again after she left Miami?”
“Oh sure. I was at the wedding, in fact. Best man at the wedding.”
“When did Michelle tell you this story about drowning herself if he wouldn’t marry her?”
“Oh, I don’t remember. One time when I was visiting the house there. She made a big joke of it, you know, like how to hook a man who doesn’t want to be hooked. Georgie laughed, too. It was like a joke.”
“Uh-huh. So you continued seeing them after the wedding, is that right?”
“Now and then. Socially, you mean? Now and then. Business, I see Georgie every month or so, whenever he comes down with a load of stuff.”
“Let me try to get this straight,” I said. “Harper left Germany without even phoning Michelle, after what was apparently a hot romance between them...”
“That’s right.”
“So she followed him here and demanded that he marry her or else she’d drown herself.”
“You got it.”
“Was she in trouble?”
“What do you mean?”
“Was she pregnant?”
“No. What makes you think she was pregnant?”
“Woman follows an American soldier all the way here, says he’d better marry her or else she’ll drown herself... that sounds peculiar to me, Mr. Davis.”
“Peculiar or not, she wasn’t pregnant.”
“You know that for a fact.”
“I know it for a positive fact. I was at the wedding, this was maybe six months after we shipped out of Bonn. A woman six months gone can’t wear a tight gown like she was wearing and not show whether she’s pregnant.”
“Is that what she was wearing? A tight gown?”
“White satin,” Davis said and nodded. “She looked beautiful. A real beauty. Lord knows what she ever saw in Georgie.”
“What do you think she saw in him?”
“Who knows?” Davis shook his head. “It’s a real pity,” he said. “She was a nice lady. And I’ll tell you, Mr. Hope, even though Georgie’s a friend of mine, I wish he fries for this. I wish they strap him in that chair real tight and turn on eight million watts of electricity, and fry him to a crisp.”
I found George Harper’s mother in a storefront Baptist church in the same black section of town. I had been to her house first, and the man who lived next door told me where she might be. Except for her, the church was empty. She sat on a folding chair some three rows back from the altar, her head bent, her hands clasped in prayer. I was reluctant to intrude, but I was there about her son, and my business was urgent.
“Mrs. Harper?” I said.
She looked up, blinked, shook herself out of her reverie, and then seemed surprised to see a white man in a black man’s church.
“I’m Matthew Hope,” I said. “I’m the attorney representing your son.”
She was a woman in her late sixties, I guessed, her complexion as black as her son’s, her face wizened and weary, her eyes studying me with a suspicion bred of centuries of slavery and nurtured by another century of denial, her eyes silently asking why her son couldn’t have found himself a black attorney.