“Hey, Easy,” Jackson said, “come on in. Pretty was just tellin’ us how she live in this cute li’l house all by herself.”
I was wondering how my accomplices had insinuated themselves into the mercenary young woman’s good graces, but I didn’t have time to consider that for long.
“Yeah,” I said. “She’s been known to stretch the truth in my brief experience with her. She also said she don’t know Mouse.”
“I said I didn’t know that nickname for him,” Pretty said.
“Uh-huh. Listen up. You people stay out here and continue on with your chat. Me and Perry gonna go in the bedroom and figure a few things out.”
Perry glanced at Pretty, looking for some kind of support or help, but she turned her head away.
“Come on,” I said to the dead man.
DOWN THE HALL on the right side was a bedroom with two single beds. The one on the right was tousled. I sat on the made bed and gestured with the pistol to the one that Pretty and Perry had used for sex.
Perry sat down, clasping his hands. He slapped the palms together and rubbed them like an anxious fly.
“So?” I said.
“What you worried ’bout, man?” he whined. “I ain’t dead, so they cain’t hang Ray.”
“They can if they don’t find you,” I said.
“I wouldn’t let ’em take Ray down.”
“Don’t look like that to me.” I was speaking a street dialect that was filled with unspoken threats. This was a language that black people all over the nation knew.
“I give you my word,” Pericles pleaded.
“An’ what you give to Leafa?”
“Leafa?”
“I’m a detective, Pericles. Your wife borrowed three hunnert dollars for me to hunt you down. She told me about when you got ambushed in the war, about how you smeared the blood of your dead friends on your own face to keep from gettin’ killed. She said that she knew you weren’t dead.”
My claim was so shocking that it knocked the fear right off Perry’s face. He was trying to understand how his ploy had failed.
“Who gonna lend Meredith three hunnert dollahs?”
“EttaMae Harris, that’s who. Meredith went to EttaMae and told her that she didn’t believe Ray killed you. She said that she would hire me if Etta lent her the money.”
“What? She borrowed three hunnert dollahs just in case I was alive? She some kinda fool?”
“She’s desperate, man,” I said as if I were an enemy pretending he was a friend. “She ain’t got nuthin’. You gone. They wanna kick her outta that rented house.”
“I got money for her,” Pericles said, squaring his shoulders at the insult to his manhood.
“You do?”
“Thirty thousand dollars.”
My mind went blank for a moment. There wasn’t one Negro out of a thousand that I ever knew who could say that they had held thirty thousand dollars in their hands. As for the ones who could make such a claim, they were all gamblers or criminals.
Mouse.
“Armored car or payroll?” I asked Pericles.
“Say what?”
“You heard me, niggah,” I said, lifting the .38 three inches.
“Payroll.”
“What state?”
“Washington.”
“Are you a fool, Mr. Tarr?”
“What you mean? What you tryin’ to do, man?”
“Lemme tell you,” I said. “You went up there in a blue Pontiac you and Ray bought from Primo. You had regular plates up to Washington, but then you put on stolen ones when you got near the job. Early in the mornin’ you walked into the shop where guards were movin’ the money, two hunnert fifty thousand or more. The guards let you hit ’em in the head, and you and Ray moved all that money into the trunk, went to a motel, put it in boxes, and shipped it down here to this house.”
“Who the fuck are you, man?”
“Have you told Pretty where you got the money?”
He shook his head.
“Because if you do,” I continued, “Ray will kill both’a ya’ll.”
“I ain’t said a word.”
“You told me.”
“You got a gun and you already knew most of it.”
“If you tell anybody, you’ll be dead.”
“I just told Pretty that I won twelve thousand on the trifecta. That’s all I said. I bought her some dresses an’ said I’d take her to New York in style.”
“Gimme the money for Meredith and the kids,” I said.
Perry didn’t even stall. He went to the closet, turned an iron plate in the floor, and pulled out a pillowcase filled with stacks of twenty-dollar bills held together by rubber bands.
“Thirty thousand,” he said. “There’s a letter in there already sealed and addressed to her. I was gonna drop it off when they were asleep tonight.”
“When you leavin’ for New York?” I asked him.
“Monday. We flyin’ first class. We gonna live in Brooklyn. After I get a divorce, we be married.”
I doubted that the nuptials would ever take place, but that was okay. Perry would be better off without Pretty Smart.
“One more question,” I said.
“What?”
“Where’s Raymond?”
He blinked four times.
“No, man,” he said. “I cain’t tell ya that. Ray kill me wherever I was if I told you about that.”
I put the pistol in my pocket and sighed.
“Okay,” I said. “All right. I can see that you really mean it.”
“I cain’t tell ya,” Perry said again.
“I know. So you won’t mind when me and my friends hog-tie you and drag you back to Meredith and all them kids.”
Pericles Tarr was a man of decision despite his weaknesses. He was more afraid of his family’s love than he was of the deadliest man in Los Angeles. He gave me the address in Compton without another word of hesitation.
38
When Perry and I came back into the living room, Jean-Paul was talking to Pretty. She was grinning and ducking her head coyly. I had the pillowcase in one hand and the .38 in the other. I’d taken the gun out again to dissuade the young bombshell from asking questions.
When Jackson saw us he got to his feet. Reluctantly, Villard followed suit.
Perry went with his woman to stand by the front door. They watched us file out. There were no words of good-bye or good luck.
“HOW’D YOU GET that girl to let you in the house?” I asked Jackson as we were driving away.
I had put Meredith’s nest egg in the trunk.
“Jean-Paul’s shoes what did it,” Jackson said with a grin.
“Shoes?”
“Martin Lane,” Jean-Paul added.
“Who?”
“These shoes cost twelve hundred dollars,” the insurance kingpin informed me.
“So?”
“Pretty asked me if I was wearing Martin Lanes,” he said. “It seems that she keeps up with the fashion.”
“That was the icebreaker, Easy,” Jackson bragged. “She was fallin’ all ovah herself to get us in there an’ figure out why my man here got them shoes. She and him goin’ out on his yacht for dinner tomorrow night.”
“Perry told me that they were flyin’ to New York on Monday,” I countered.
“She didn’t tell us nuthin’ about that. I guess she gonna be spendin’ Sunday night packin’ or sumpin’,” Jackson said. “You know Perry don’t know Martin Lane from John Henry.”
At least I broke into her house, I thought. At least she will feel some discomfort.
I WAS ANGRY AT PRETTY for being like me. She was showing her man the door because she couldn’t control her compulsions. She wanted to be near real wealth and was willing to give up whatever it was Perry had to offer for a ride on a yacht.
I was upset by her betrayal, but wasn’t Pericles the same? He’d run from a wife and a house full of children. He was just getting what he deserved. None of us were innocent. Why shouldn’t Pretty go for the brass ring?
Jean-Paul and Jackson were talking about how sexy Pretty was when I started considering Mouse.