Quit bullshittin, he says. Put that on something.
On my mama and baby, I say.
Static cackles across our line and we wait for it to clear.
Damn, so the whitey tryin to pull the okey on us, huh? Hell nah, hell nah. Come swoop, he says, and we’ll find this motherfucker.
Next thing I know, I got Half Man barking in the passenger seat, swearing what he’ll do when we catch Jude. Serious threats I’m hoping ain’t a bunch of fatmouthing on his part, cause about now I’d be happy to see Jude waylaid, flogged, water-tortured, Chinese-style. Sounds extra, but I’m so so serious: When we catch him it’s whatever, zero interference on my part. Better yet, why stand aside when I can partake?
Me nursing visions of grave physical harm. Half Man’s a mute-mouth, don’t utter a motherfucking peep till we wheel into a suburb, and even then, all he asks is how much farther, how do I know that we’re headed the right way.
Cause I been here once, I say.
So we’re relying on your faulty memory? he says.
Who’s the one who’s fucked? I say. Who wants to find him more, me or you?
We’re in Southwest, which means we’re suspects. (Try not feeling suspicious when you’re treated suspect.) We journey long suburban blocks, stretches and stretches minus nary a familiar sight. We do this for what feels like an eon of hearthurt, and just about the time I’m about to wail a dirge I see, if my memory can be trusted, Jude’s house up ahead. There, it’s up there, I say, feeling pleased for a snap.
He asks me if I’m sure, this dude and his assurances, and I park right in the front, lift the armrest, hand him my strap. He tucks it in his belt, and about now it’s looking like an amulet, though how long can good fortune last in this zip? We bandit out the car, policelike, hunterlike, bounty hunters who’ve fallen under the gaze of wish-they-were-circumspect citizen detectives: a woman tending plants in her front yard, a guy reading a paper on his porch, the person spying us from a Red Sea part in a curtain — all waiting for an excuse, legitimate or not, to call Officer Arrest-a-Nigger-for-Nothing’s direct line. Maybe they’re too preoccupied to notice we don’t (or do) fit the neighborhood profile, but maybe, just maybe, they ain’t.
Scratch what I said about the pistol offering comfort. It’s an onus.
The back and forth, the back and forth, Ibullshityounot, if you snatched off the top of my head, you’d hear me pop and fizzle. Half Man follows me onto the porch, and if he’s attentive at all, he mocks my best nonthreatening Negro gait, the one full of leisure and anti-bounce. I rap the door and stand back and it’s déjàfuckingvu. I hit it again, inch closer. I twist and catch a detective (the green thumb lady) peeking up from tending her plants. She sees me see her and don’t bother to look away, the white woman’s audacity gone in the flesh. Half Man hits the door this time, and bet a life, you could hear it for blocks. That loud, and still no answer, not a sound. Stand close to me this second and hear hope’s slow leak. Ssssssssssssssssssssss … Half Man says we should go around back, bust in, see what’s what.
You call that a plan? I say.
You got a better plan? he says.
Yes, I say.
Oh, he says. How could I forget you’re the king of gold plans?
Who the fuck are you, I say.
He crosses his arms and smacks his lips, and we could be anything to each other. We could be not nothing at all.
It’s empty, says a voice. It’s the green thumb detective. She wipes a tool on her apron and climbs the steps.
You mean not home or empty? I say.
I mean empty, she says.
But my friend lives here, I say.
My friend lived there, she says.
Do you know where I can find him?
Heaven, she says. Let’s hope.
Me and Half Man swivel face to stunned face.
Dead, I say. But I just seen him last week.
Saw who? she says.
Jude, I say.
There’s no Jude at this address, she says. That was Ted’s place. Mr. Rose.
You sure? I say.
He was my neighbor before my boys were born, she says. And they’re all grown men.
This is how it feels to have all the thew knocked right out of you, to be one of those fat monster truck tires stabbed flat. Let’s go, I say, and slog off the porch. Half Man complains in the car that this don’t make sense, that the lady might be lying, that we should circle back, break in, ransack the place.
It’s a fool’s idea, and I tell him so.
Just trying to look out, he says. But fuck it. You’re the one taking the L. Half Man’s braids are skinny limp ropes on his neck. I could twist them into a noose and hang him, twist them into a noose and lynch myself.
Because Jude’s not there and hasn’t been and I know it.
Watch, he says. Next we gone find out we don’t know his real name.
Leave it to my homeboy (is he my aceboon?), or else glimpse my bleak-ass future before me.
Here’s a foolproof plan for an express pass to prison: Run up in a bank acting a fool. Now, I know this as any mentally fit human being does, but since most days, today being one of them, it’s disputable whether Half Man’s one of us, I have to remind him to leave the strap in the car. We get inside and Half Man (thank God) finds a seat and chills while I scan the lobby checking to see if by some great change of fortune (my luck?) Jude can be found lollygagging in a line. Is he here? What you think? I stretch my face into a suburban-block-long ersatz smile and bop over, nonthreatening Negro gait every step to a young banker’s cube.
Good afternoon. I was wondering if you might be able to assist me? I say, so pusillanimous somebody should punch me dead in my face.
Sure, sure, he says. That’s what I’m here for.
Dude ain’t much older than me, which another time, another day, would count for something, but I’m sure it don’t count for nothing. Since I can’t at present, for my life, concoct an acceptable lie, I settle on the truth, most of it anyhow, which spills out in a fusillade. The banker waits for me to finish. He taps his keyboard and squints at his screen. He says he wishes he could help and blames his punkish ineptitude on bank rules and privacy laws; he prattles a hyperbolic list of bureaucratic bullshit that boils down to this: Hell, no, leave! It’s not that I don’t believe you, he says, capping his bulletin, but we’ve got rules, strict rules, and stiff penalties.
I ply longer, fall, fall to the other side of desperate, and when I reach the end of my wits with him, I ask to see the branch manager and the banker calls over this middle-aged dude in a cheap suit and scuffed brogues. Here I go pleading again, asinine, but at least the manager fronts as though he’s listening: giving me hammy head nods with a grip on his concave chin. He lets me vent, indulges a second of mock post-speech musing, then quotes, with zero compassion, from the same trite script as his banker.
You can’t do nothing? I say. Nothing?
The man’s no is implacable and I know it. He tells banker to take it from here. He excuses himself and moseys off the way anyone would whose life was still intact.
Half Man’s across the room, thumbing a brochure. Long white tee, those killer braids, they might think he’s casing the joint. We don’t need that heat.
Common sense says it’s time to break, but I ring the bell on another round with the banker. This time I describe Jude, his tippy-toe gait, his silvered sides, his hulk nose, his indelible-ass voice, but the banker says he can’t recall him, tells me he wishes he could be of more help, asks if he could assist me with anything else, a new checking account, a savings account, a CD, a reply that got me considering a bribe, a threat, of snatching his computer and breaking out the front door, going back for my strap and taking hostages till they unass every copper cent in Jude’s accounts — got me thinking all that plus a host of other numbskull moves. Who’s fooled? We all know by now or should that I ain’t got it in me to be that bold. I ask him (it’s a hairsbreadth from a teary plea) to please give me a call if he sees or hears anything, anything at all, and limp out, Half Man behind me, defeated, demolished, fucking disemboweled. Outside, the sky is a battered blue, and I’m convinced the color’s a sign for me and me alone. We sit in the car, me with a tick, tick, tick, in my ear and a bully twitch. I bash the wheel and a part shakes loose and clatters. I smack the back of my head against the seat rest and scream a scream that Miller-knots my gut. I look over at Half Man, my terror gauge, who at times is unshakable, and he looks worried beyond belief.