Hop in the Impala and split. Then wait it out. Curl up by my fireplace, counting my twenty-five grand. Thirty grand, counting my half of Delmont’s payday.
Of course, I hadn’t collected that twenty-five grand yet, had I? That was set for a few hours from now. And did I really want to pull the job before the payoff?
Which suggested another possibility: stay in town one more day, decline doing guard duty at the house tomorrow for whatever reason... and come back after dark to do the deed, having, as we criminals say, cased the joint.
I could pretty much count on Terrell and Deon resuming their card-playing in the dining room. Maybe a little chancy counting on the Reverend to still be working on whatever it was he was writing. But a knock on the back door tomorrow night would summon someone, no matter who in the house it was, who would not be alarmed to find my familiar face on the back stoop. Someone who would be dead before it occurred to him he’d misjudged.
Only... what if Mrs. Lloyd returned tomorrow?
While I wasn’t thrilled by the idea of taking Terrell and Deon out, they were guys with guns in a job with risks. Mrs. Lloyd, however, was just a nice married lady, and very beautiful, which made it a shame. I was not at all anxious to add her to the collateral-damage list.
Of course, tomorrow I could probably ascertain at HQ whether Mrs. Lloyd was still at her sister’s or not.
“Mind if I join you?”
The resonant bass voice belonged to the master of the house, the Reverend Raymond Wesley Lloyd, poised in the doorway between hall and kitchen. Still in his rolled-up shirtsleeves but with his black-framed glasses M.I.A., he looked haggard, or anyway as haggard as that well-carved African mask of a face could.
“Please,” I said, and gestured to the chair next to me at the kitchen table.
The Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket was between us on the table with a stack of napkins near it. He first went to the fridge and got himself a Budweiser and returned and selected a thigh from the bucket — about all that was left that was worth eating.
He had a sip of Budweiser, made a face, and said, “Well, isn’t that vile. I only stock it because it’s what the fellas like.”
Terrell and Deon.
We sat quietly eating chicken until we were both finished and wiping our fingers at the same time. I’d started first but his piece was smaller.
“Sometimes,” he said, giving the remains of the thigh a satisfied smile, “it just can’t be helped — fried chicken just really hits the bull’s-eye.”
Hits the bull’s-eye.
He folded his hands, as if getting ready to say grace after the meal. “You’re Mr. Blake. I’m afraid I’ve been negligent where you’re concerned.”
“You have?”
He nodded. He was very black in that way that makes some white people uneasy. Not me particularly. Maybe when I was younger and too stupid to know better. Or maybe he just reminded me of somebody I’d known well, somebody who had flushed whatever residual prejudice I might have had out of my system.
His sigh damn near ruffled the curtains over the sink. “I’ve been busy, Mr. Blake. Preoccupied. I want to do everything I can to see that the right man gets into the White House this time around.”
“Afraid it’s an uphill battle, Reverend.”
He smiled, the whiteness of his teeth almost startling against that smooth black skin. “Why don’t you call me Raymond... and is John all right?”
“Make it Jack.”
He leaned back in the kitchen chair, folded his arms. “Oh, I know. ‘Raymond,’ not ‘Ray,’ must sound pompous. I admit to a streak of that. But my momma used to call me ‘Ray Ray,’ and it stuck and all my friends got to calling me that, and I hated it. Grown man called Ray Ray.” He shivered at the thought, then smiled again. “So you’ll have to put up with calling me Raymond.”
“Okay, Raymond.”
“And you’re right, it’s an uphill battle. McGovern comes across weak when really he’s strong, and then there was that lousy break with his V.P. pick.”
The guy McGovern had chosen for vice-president had a hidden history of mental problems, including electroshock therapy and suicide attempts. He’d had to replace the guy with a Kennedy in-law.
“What I’ve been meaning to say to you,” he said, his dark eyes holding me so tight it was as if his hands were doing it, “is that I greatly appreciate you joining this campaign. Coming on board like you have. I’m aware of your military service, and I value that service, beyond anything you might be doing for the Coalition.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Half a smile formed. “You may lose respect for me when I tell you that I didn’t serve. I tried to. But I was a felon, and they wouldn’t take me. That was what you’d call a wake-up call. I was already clean, but the bad things I’d done... well, there’s always a price to be paid, isn’t there?”
“There is.”
“I have to admit that I came around to realizing I’d been lucky not to go. That Vietnam was a bad war, an immoral war, but I came to that realization from a distance. You were on the scene, Jack.”
When the VC rushed Hill 55, trying to take out the First Division Sniper Platoon, I found myself in my first firefight. I’d never seen anything like it, never been in anything like it, but my buddy Bill helped me survive it. He was killing them as fast as they came at us, and while I only froze up for what was probably seconds, that was long enough for Bill to take that bullet for me. Bill Young, who never got older. He had that blacker-than-black skin, too. The red stood out so vividly on flesh like that.
“It means so much to us,” Lloyd said, “having you stand beside us. Providing us with the credibility you bring to the protest.” He unfolded his arms, leaned elbows on the table, raised a palm as if he were swearing in at court. “Now I understand that you don’t feel comfortable with public speaking, that you don’t want to be singled out. But I wish you’d reconsider, Jack... though I will respect your decision otherwise.”
“I’ll think on it, sir.”
“Please, just... Raymond.” He swigged some more Bud; he was getting used to it. Funny what you can get used to. “And, uh... about you and Ruth...”
He’d shifted gears so fast I could hear them grind.
That resonant voice became more intimate. “She’s a wonderful young woman, Ruth. I’m glad to see that you two are... getting along so well.”
He’d been keeping a closer eye on me than I could ever have imagined.
Too casually, he asked, “Has she... has Ruth... discussed with you...?”
“I’m aware of your relationship, Raymond.”
He lowered his gaze. “I can tell that you disapprove. You were talking to my wife, earlier.”
Jesus!
“Marianne is a wonderful woman,” he said, his smile sad now. “The best wife, the best mother... and, I don’t have to tell you, lovely. So very lovely, and I am so very lucky. But I am weak and the Lord is strong.”
“That’s quite a cop-out.”
Another half-smile. “Yes, I suppose it is. I grew up on hard streets, but that’s no excuse. I was sold poison and later I sold poison. My life in those days was all about two things — poison and pussy. I shook the first habit, but I’ve always had that weakness for the second.”
Maybe I was nobody to judge.
“Of course, Jack, after a while, riding the horse, you don’t even care about pussy. Just that spike in your arm. If they hadn’t busted me, I’d be long dead. If I hadn’t met Jesus in prison, I’d be dead, too.”