“You worked nights. Local deliveries?”
“The general area, yeah. Sal Junior, my boss at the shop, hooked me up with the gig. The pay was good and in cash and what was I doing anyway? Sitting around here by myself, drinking too much beer.”
“Sal Junior.” I made a connection I didn’t want to make. “You work for the Arcados?”
His flinch was all the answer I needed. Arcado Automotive was the largest independent body shop in Memphis. Everyone knew that if you wanted a first-class paint job or if you needed a totaled ‘67 Mustang restored to cherry perfection, you went to Arcado Automotive. Everyone in law enforcement also knew that the garage had been a front for the Montesi crime family since JFK was in the White House. If Sal Junior was involved with Mid-South Transport, it meant something very profitable and most likely very illegal was going on.
“What were you hauling for them, Don? Electronics? Television sets? Hijacked cigarettes?”
“Nothing like that. Just garbage,” he said. “And it didn’t have nothing to do with my attack, anyway. I’d unloaded my truck at the industrial park. We were on our way out of the neighborhood when the engine broke down.”
“I thought you were alone when it happened. You said we.”
His eyes darted away from me. “The drugs,” he said. “They make me fuzzy.”
“I’m not trying to accuse you of anything.”
“Look, Charlie. I’m tired, okay? I think I need to lie down.”
“Don...”
“I’m going to lie down.”
I got the message so I said sure, that was probably a good idea. Then he stopped me.
“Those kids who did this?”
“Yeah?”
He shivered a little, remembering. “I tell you the truth, Charlie. I think they just wanted to watch me burn.”
Frances Cheatham looked as if she’d lost five pounds and added ten years since the day her grandson died. She sat in her shadowed living room, surrounded by flowers and condolence cards and her photo albums, sipping straight bourbon from a coffee cup.
“I don’t see what my husband’s job has to do with Terrell.”
“I’m not sure that it does,” I said.
But that was only partly true. Nate Randolph, my old partner in the homicide division, had surprised me by not only returning my call but actually doing me a favor. A decade ago I’d ended up in a situation where I had a choice between destroying evidence that could have put the former head of the Montesi family, Fat Tony, in prison for twenty years or saving the life of a woman who was very close to me. The internal-affairs investigation that followed my decision led me to resign from the Memphis P.D. Guilt by association ended Nate’s chance at making captain. Maybe his new wife had mellowed him.
Two years retired, Nate still had a lot of friends. It had taken him less than twenty minutes to find out that although they hadn’t been arrested, Bop-Bop Drake and Demond Jones were considered the only suspects in Terrell Cheatham’s murder and that four of the five witnesses who claimed the perps were young black men were employed at the West Parrish Industrial Park, the Depression era sprawl of abandoned brick warehouses, corrugated tin shacks, rusted-out water and gasoline storage tanks, and collapsing docks on the banks of the Mississippi River just a few blocks from Frances Cheatham’s apartment. The Park had last operated at full capacity back during the Vietnam War but somehow seemed to employ everyone on the scene of the murder as well as Frances Cheatham’s late husband.
“Terrell worked there, too, before he went to Tops,” I said.
“It was temporary work, is all. About the time Marcus found out he had cancer Terrell’s job played out. Things always happen at the worst time.” She glared at me from over the rim of her coffee cup. “At least, that’s the way it works around here.”
“Your husband worked the night shift,” I said. “It’s odd, don’t you think? That the Park would need twenty-four-hour security, I mean?”
“We were thankful to have a steady paycheck.”
“Did your husband or Terrell ever mention Mid-South Transport?”
“Not that I remember,” she said, but her eyes darted away from me.
“Mrs. Cheatham, you and I both know that Terrell was killed by two white men. Somehow five people claim the shooters were young and black. Four of the five work at the industrial park where your husband and grandson were employed. The fifth works for Mid-South Transport, a trucking company that makes regular deliveries to the Park and one I’m fairly certain is a front for the Mafia. If your husband ever mentioned what goes on there...”
“He never said and I never asked.” She met my eyes. “I’ve not hired you for anything, and you’re not a cop so I don’t know what you think you can do.”
It was a good question, and I didn’t really have an answer. Part of it was pride, maybe. I didn’t like being told that I hadn’t seen what I knew I had. But it was more than that. The pain I’d seen in Frances Cheatham’s face when she realized Terrell was dead and that impotent drowning feeling I’d had as I rushed into the parking lot a few minutes too late to do anything that mattered haunted my sleep. This was the only way I knew to put those memories to rest.
“If someone has threatened you or if you’re...”
“Ain’t no one done nothing,” she said, her voice quavering and angry. “But what does it matter anyway? Nothing you or me do is going to bring my grandson back, is it?”
“No, ma’am,” I admitted.
“Then what’s it matter?” She shook her head and reached for her coffee mug. “It doesn’t matter. Not now.” Her eyes flashed at me. “This was our home. We told ourselves if we raised him right, things could be different for him, that if you was fair to people they’d be fair to you, that if you did the right thing it would be right. We was stupid, and I’m just a fool. My husband was a good man and Terrell was too. At least he was going to be.”
She stared into her empty coffee mug as if she could will whiskey to appear. After a minute, she pulled herself from the couch, wobbling a little as she waited for me to stand.
“Sometimes you got to look after yourself. You can’t always be worrying about what ought to be. Sometimes you just got to take care of your own.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I agreed with her that sometimes you did. Then she reminded me that this was a dangerous neighborhood, especially for someone with my skin tone.
“What I’m saying,” she said in case I hadn’t understood, “is that it would probably be best if you didn’t come down here anymore.”
Then she slammed the door. In the parking lot, a little boy, ten or eleven, maybe, stepped from between two cars. He was small, delicate looking, with huge brown eyes that seemed to swallow his face, but he already had the walk, the aggressively slumped shoulders, the sneer of a gang kid. Ten years from now, he’d have the jailhouse banter, the dead eyes, and the rap sheet to go with them — if he lived that long.
“You Raines, right? They some people want to see you.”
“Oh yeah?” I said.
“I’m telling you,” he said. “You pass that school up the block? See the courts in the back? Bop-Bop and Demond ballin’ up there.”
“Thanks for the message,” I said, opening my car door.
“So you going?”
“Depends on what they want.”
“Man, they don’t tell me what they want. They just say go get that white guy, tell him we got something to talk about.” He kicked at the pavement with the toe of a scuffed sneaker. “So?”