Shaka always had a way with words. They were musical notes to him, to be arranged in surprising ways, to agitate and enlighten. So while I was prepared for all sorts of interesting things to come out of his mouth that evening, I hadn’t expected anything quite as poetic as libidinous chum. “Why’d you call David Delarosa that?”
“Because that young beagle was always sniffing for a snuggle bunny. You remember that night at Jericho’s, don’t you, Dolly? That sucker punch I took for you?”
A squeaky self-conscious giggle spilled out of me. “I don’t think many men ever took me for a snuggle bunny, no matter how drunk they were.”
Shaka laughed like a horse. “That had more to do with your attitude than your attributes, Dolly. And you stuck to that boyfriend of yours like wallpaper on a convent wall.”
“Lawrence and I were engaged by then,” I said.
“Indeed, you were,” said Shaka. “But that night, as I recall, you were quite alone.”
I told him that Lawrence was in Columbus, covering the state debate tournament.
“Doesn’t matter where he was,” he said. “You were alone. And David Beaglerosa was on the hunt.”
I didn’t much like it that Shaka was questioning me-after all I’d come to question him-but I did want his impression of David Delarosa. “He never hit on me,” I said.
Shaka horse-laughed again. “But he sure hit on me.”
“But that was a racial thing, wasn’t it?”
Shaka was studying Ike again. “The fact that I was of the Negro persuasion didn’t help matters, I’ll give you that. And to tell you the truth, I don’t know if he specifically had designs on you or not. Chances are you were just a handy feminine foil. A way to keep me from digging any and all the white birds perched around the table that night.”
“Chances are,” I agreed.
He playfully patted his stomach. “I’m a fat old man now. Can’t get a bird of any feather to look at me twice. But in my prime I rarely had the pillows to myself.”
“Including that night I understand.”
Memories of a different time drained the confidence from Shaka’s eyes. “Thank God I didn’t.”
“And thank God it was Effie sharing the pillows?”
He nodded. “Imagine if I’d gone home with some other white girl that night? It took some real cojones for her to tell the police she’d been with me, I’ll tell you that.”
Ike hadn’t said a word since we’d lowered ourselves onto that old car seat. He said something now: “They would have strapped you in the electric chair fast as they could.”
Shaka’s answer was little more than a whisper. “That they would have, my brother.”
“Let’s hope they don’t get any ideas now,” I said.
Shaka leaned back in his chair. He put his hands behind his head and rocked. “That your way of asking me if I have an alibi for the day Sweet Gordon was killed?”
“She’s not the most subtle woman,” Ike said.
Shaka winked at him. “No, she’s not. But as long as I’ve got her old Dodge hostage in there, I’m going to operate on the assumption she’s on my side.”
“I’m on Gordon’s side,” I said.
Shaka took off an imaginary hat and tipped it to me. “So am I. He was a fine man.”
“And you’re a fine man,” I said.
Shaka didn’t quite know what to do with that. First he smiled and then he frowned. “I was here until ten-thirty that Thursday. Seeing if I couldn’t coax another hundred-thousand miles out of the Apple Street Baptist Church’s old Sunday school bus.”
“Have the police talked to you?” I asked.
“I’ve told them that, yes. But I was here alone. From five on, anyway.” He hesitated. “I don’t know if that gets me off the hook or not.”
The coroner’s report, of course, had put Gordon’s death sometime between noon and midnight that Thursday, anywhere between 36 and 48 hours before Andrew J. Holloway called from the landfill. “Neither do I,” I said.
Shaka rubbed the twitch out of his nostrils. “Well, they haven’t hauled me downtown yet.”
I struggled off the car seat and peered through the glass office door. My car was high on a rack. Two young mechanics were standing underneath it, heads tipped back like a pair of bewildered turkeys trying to figure out where the rain was coming from. “Did the police ask you why you weren’t at this year’s Kerouac Thing?”
“No, they didn’t ask me that.”
“And what would you have told them?”
“The brutal truth, Dolly. That sometimes those stuffy old poops are more than I can take. Every damn year reading those same old cob-webby poems. Telling those same old hyperventilated stories. Living in the past like they’re already dead.”
“One of them is,” I said.
“Another premature funeral,” Shaka said.
I asked him what he knew about Gordon’s argument with Chick over Jack Kerouac’s hamburger. “Another reason why I didn’t go,” he said. “Who wants to listen to two old white men argue about cheese?”
“They really got into it this year,” I said.
“That’s what I hear,” he said.
I asked him what he knew about Gordon’s relationship with Chick.
“Sometimes I got one vibe, sometimes I got another,” he said.
I asked him if he thought Chick could have murdered Gordon.
“No more than I could’ve,” he said.
Then I asked him if he thought Gordon could have murdered David Delarosa.
“I’d like to give you the same answer,” he said. “But the truth is, after those unrequited fisticuffs at Jericho’s, I was neither surprised nor dismayed to learn of that boy’s fatal fall. There was something infinitely unlikable about Mr. Delarosa.”
Finally I asked him if he knew what Gordon might have been looking for at the landfill. “The young cat he used to be,” he said. “That’s what I always figured.”
“So, you were aware of his digging out there-long before he was murdered?”
“Long, long before,” he said. “Like all the beans in the jar.”
I was following Shaka’s jive just fine, but Ike’s Republican mind was having trouble with it. “Beans in the jar?” he asked.
I explained: “Members of the Baked Bean Society,” I said. “And by virtue of that membership, the sizable number of suspects in Gordon’s murder.”
“Right-o-roonie,” said Shaka. “One big black bean and a whole bunch of little white ones.”
My Dodge Shadow had new belts and hoses, a tune-up, five quarts of fresh oil, the proper amount of air in the tires. It was scooting through Thistle Hill like a rocket ship on its way to the moon. The ancient streetlights were as dim as stars. “I’m glad you came along, Ike,” I said.
I was expecting him to say something supportive, something like I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Instead he said this: “Wish I hadn’t.”
“Wish you hadn’t? You begged to come along.”
“I know I did. He just seemed so life size.”
“Heavens to Betsy, he’s big as a bear.”
“It was just tough watching him squirm, I guess.”
I wasn’t smart enough to let up. “Squirm? Were you and I looking at the same man?”
“No, I don’t think we were.”
“Good gravy, Ike.”
“Don’t good gravy me, Maddy. He’s an important man in the black community.”
“I know that.”
“Not the way I know it, you don’t.”
It was my turn to be the bear. “This is not a black and white thing. A friend of mine has been murdered.”
“Oh yes, and you just wanted some impressions.”
“That’s right. I would never do anything to get Shaka in trouble. Not if he didn’t deserve it.”
“And you think there’s a chance he does?”
“I think we better talk about something else.”
“I think we better talk about this.”
I’d known Ike for twenty years. And he’d never spoken to me like that. Like a man that mattered. And, to tell you the truth, I rather liked it. “I don’t know what to think,” I whispered. “Not now.”