“You don’t know her,” I said.
“A slut’s a slut, it don’t matter what you feel below your belly.”
Nothing he said could change her lips blowing that kiss.
Nothing.
Jeanette started bringing me fresh coffee every morning when we got to the job.
“Jesus Christ, he can’t work when you do that,” Olivet said.
“I take care of those that take care of me,” she replied, glancing at me to make sure I heard.
After a few dates and a Christmas ring, she started in about Olivet.
“He don’t deserve all that money,” she said, “his boys in the garage do all the work. He just counts it, the fat prick.” She laid her open hand on my inside thigh.
By Valentine’s Day, she was talking about Olivet’s money like it should be ours.
“Think about us with that money, Jackie,” she said. “We could get away, baby, far away.” It didn’t take her hand long to convince me
“We can’t live without that money, Jackie.”
“I don’t know how to get it.”
“Find somebody who can.”
I turned away from her.
“Or I will,” she said, and drew her hand away.
A couple of days later, I told her I knew a guy could take that money, you know, trying to impress her, like I was connected to more than a lousy paint brush. I dropped Michael Fannon’s name, a guy from my brother’s old gang.
“Call him,” she said.
I didn’t contact him right away, Michael wouldn’t remember me. I tried to ignore her. But she stayed after me. Call him. Call him. Call him.
When I did, he didn’t know me, but then I mentioned Richie, and he pretended to remember me. I told him about Olivet, the chop shop, the money, and Jeanette. He got interested, fast.
“Ripping off criminals works best,” he said. “Less chance getting caught, and they deal in cash. I’ll get back to you.” He hung up without a goodbye.
He called me back a month or so later, on Friday night, my twenty-first birthday, April 5, the day after some cracker killed King in Memphis and the blacks set fire to the city.
“Now’s the time,” he told me, “the cops got their hands full.”
Jeanette and I had big plans for my birthday, but they went to hell like everything else when King got shot.
“Come by anyway,” she told me on the phone, “we’ll do something.” She didn’t need to ask me twice.
“Keep out of downtown,” Pop said when I left the house. He glued himself to the TV and muttered about the welfare sons-of-bitches burning his old stomping grounds.
I drove Pop’s van to Jeanette’s apartment around 10:00. Her straight black hair shimmered in the hall light when she opened her apartment door. She wore a skirt the size of a hand towel. All her leg showed. Pink fuzz stood out from her sweater like she was electrified, and when she knew I was staring, she pulled the sweater down so tight I had to look away. A half-assed picnic dinner sat on her counter top, and she said we should go to McMillen Reservoir, park on Hobart, in front of Pop’s old place, and celebrate my birthday.
“Forget about everything but us,” she said, and she got close to me and reached her hand around my ass.
Pop was right, you can’t think below your belt.
I figured the reservoir was safe. The blacks wouldn’t burn anything near Howard University. We found an empty spot in front of the house where Pop grew up, and parked. Jeanette pointed at the mirrored moon reflected on the reservoir.
“Romantic,” she said. Compared to Edgewood Terrace, where she lived, and Michigan Park, where I lived, she was right. We hadn’t known much else.
Jeanette piled Pop’s paint tarps flat on top of each other, covering the floor of the van, and tucked a clean sheet around the outside corners, like a real bed. She laid two pillows and an old quilt on top, then shed her clothes and stripped off mine. Pop’s van had no windows in the back. We crawled under the quilt. She pulled at me, impatient, wild, and when she was ready, she pushed me flat on my back and guided me inside her. She made me swear to do anything for her love. Swear. And swear. And swear.
When we dressed, we sat in the front seat and rolled the windows down. An orange glow lit the sky above Howard. Smells, like fire jobs before new paint, drifted through the van. Smoke leeched from between Howard’s big brick buildings and rolled across 5th Street, smothering McMillen’s still surface like cemetery fog. I cracked two beers, lit a smoke and another off it, and clicked on the radio. I searched for that new Smokey Robinson song, but the shit going down all over the city screamed out on every station. I was wrong about Howard. 7th Street burned as hot as 14th.
Jeanette’s eyes glazed over.
“I got to get out of here” she said. “I’ll die here.” She waved her hand across the windshield. “We’ll all die here.” We stayed on Hobart until 4 a.m. The fires never went out, and I never mentioned Michael’s call.
The next morning, Pop and I loaded the van for work, and he told me that Michael had called after I left. He wanted to know why Michael “that piece of shit jailbird” was calling after me. Pop made it real clear, when Richie enlisted, that he didn’t want to see any of Richie’s gang again.
“What, that scumbag wants to sing you Happy Birthday?” Pop said.
My only brush with crime, shoplifting from the five-and-dime on Monroe Street, had been dealt with swift and sure. One of the clerks, who had a crush on Richie, ratted me out. I was in third grade at Saint Gertrude’s.
Richie beat my ass and said he’d do worse if he caught me again. From then on, my criminal activity stayed limited to stealing Pop’s change. High school ended and I signed on with Pop’s paint crew. A couple of years passed and Pop dumped his crew. From then on, it was just me and him and the sick smell of paint.
I didn’t tell Pop that I’d called Michael first. Pop would never understand. I called Michael because I promised I’d do anything for her love. I hoped he’d never call back.
But King got killed, the cops got busy, and Michael got hungry.
“Perfect,” Jeanette said when I finally did tell her, “Olivet’s stashing more money than ever. He’s fencing for the looters. They been bringing stuff since they torched downtown. The safe under his desk is fat with cash.”
“Where are the cops?” I said.
“You think the squares from out in the burbs would come by at night shopping for their wives and girlfriends if cops were a problem? And Olivet keeps counting that money, alone, late, after midnight, when everybody’s stopped coming around. Big money, Jackie, for everything we want, and all the cops across the river.”
I called Michael back and told him what Jeanette said, and about the alley that Pop and I used to get into Olivet’s back lot. Olivet’s lot filled the triangle between the train tracks and Kenilworth Avenue, where they almost collided, and stretched alongside the back fences of Deanwood’s gasoline alley garages.
“Smart girl,” he said. “I know her?”
I didn’t answer.
Deanwood’s a quiet place, street after street filled with squat brick and cinderblock duplexes, and none too nice apartments. Pop called Michigan Park a move up from Hobart Place. Nobody moved up to Deanwood, that was clear. The only single houses were country shacks thrown up by the colored farm boys who came looking for city jobs, money jobs. Everything looked beat.
Olivet’s alley lay half hidden behind brush grown wild around the tracks. It dead-ended into Olivet’s back lot. He didn’t bother with a gate or fence. He wasn’t worried about keeping anybody out. I told Michael that the whole time Pop and I worked painting Olivet’s office, we never saw a soul use that alley, coming or going.
“Tonight’s the night,” Michael said on Saturday when I got him on the phone, “the city’s still hot. Get the key from your girl and meet me at Chick Hall’s.” Honky-tonk whites gathered at Chick Hall’s Surf Club, a shitty storefront bar just over the line in P.G. County. Jeanette loved Chick Hall’s.