“I didn’t have to get with him, if that’s what you mean.”
“Cobb said he saw you two lockin lips out back his shop.”
“Kissin ain’t fuckin.”
“It can have the same effect.”
“I’m not above letting a man give me a kiss to get where I need to bee Illine.
“So you didn’t sleep with him.”
“Please,” said Maybelline. “Do I look like the kind of woman that Bobby Odum could satisfy?”
“I don’t blame him for trying. After all, he was a man.”
“He wasn’t much of one.”
Strange studied her. “The Rosens did you a solid by hiring you. Didn’t you feel any, you know, remorse?”
“Not really. Dayna didn’t pay a dime for that ring. That day when she had it on her hand, she said herself that it came down from her grandmother, like an inheritance.”
“When Dayna and her husband realized it had been stolen, they did what?”
“They called the police,” said Maybelline with a shrug. “The night Bobby stole it, the Rosens were all out to dinner somewhere, and the house was locked up. If they suspected me as an accomplice, they kept it to themselves. I guess they didn’t want to jam up another young black woman with the law. I swear, sometimes I felt like I could have slapped that woman in the face and she would have apologized to me.”
Strange recalled his conversation with Dayna Rosen. She’d said that she had told Maybelline they would no longer require her services, using the excuse that progress had been made with Zach and the job was complete. She had never accused Maybelline of anything and had even defended her, in a way, to Strange. Strange felt that the Rosens were decent people, if hugely naive. Maybelline saw their kindness as stupidity.
“What about the police?” said Strange.
“Police never even questioned me. You know the MPD don’t do shit for follow-up on those burglaries.”
The music had come to an end. Maybelline put her bottle down on a glass coffee table and went to her stereo. She took the album off the platter, replaced it in its sleeve, found a 45, and fitted a plastic adaptor into its center space. She dropped the record onto the spindle of the turntable and flipped the play lever located on the side of the platter. Luther Ingram’s new smash, “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want to Be Right,” came forward. Ordinarily, Strange would have thought, Koko 2111. He would have if he had not been studying Maybelline’s lush figure filling out every inch of her dress.
“You still buying singles?” said Strange.
“That’s all they had at the record store,” said Maybelline, and she went back to the sofa and sat on one end of it. She patted the empty portion of the cushion. “Why you sittin so far away?”
“Am I?”
“You could have phoned me,” she said. “I know you didn’t come over here to give me a personal update.”
“How you know why I came over? You got ESP?”
“Derek, I believe you’re scared.”
foe o height="0em"›‹div›
Fightin words, thought Strange. And: Figures that a mathematics teacher would have it all worked out. Everything this woman does is calculation.
He didn’t even like Maybelline Walker. But he moved to the sofa and sat beside her.
“That’s better,” she said.
She reached across him and held his hand.
“You still gonna find that ring for me?”
“I take a job,” said Strange, “I see it through.”
She moved his hand and placed it on her chest. Strange slipped his fingers inside the fabric of her dress and cupped her left tit. He brushed her nipple, pinched it, and felt it swell. She shifted her body into his and they kissed. Her flesh was warm beneath his touch and their tongues danced and he grew hard. Her legs parted and his hand went between them and she was naked there. She moaned as he found her spot and stroked her slick divide.
“Goddamn,” she said.
“What?”
“Come on.”
As quickly as he had been sprung, Strange lost his desire. He sat back on the couch. The image of Carmen had flashed in his mind, but it wasn’t just his conscience that had thrown cold water on his intent. After all, he’d been unfaithful to Carmen before; because of his nature, he would probably cheat again. But not today.
Strange slowly got to his feet. He straightened out his shirt and adjusted himself inside the crotch of his bells.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” said Maybelline.
“You talk too much,” said Strange.
Coco Watkins, Red Jones, and Alfonzo Jefferson sat on comfortable furniture around a cable spool table set up in the living room of Jefferson’s bungalow in Burrville. They were drinking beer from clear longnecked bottles and passing around a fat joint of herb. Jefferson had copped an OZ of premium Lumbo with his cut of the money they’d taken off Sylvester Ward. “Walk from Regio’s,” an instrumental from the Shaft soundtrack, was coming from the stereo, and Jefferson was moving his head to its bass, key, and woodwind vamp.
“This is bad right here,” said Jefferson, his woven hat cocked on his head, his eyes close to bleeding. “You know Isaac’s in town tonight.”
“We got plans,” said Coco, eyeing Jefferson with annoyance.
“I know,” said Jefferson, and he smiled with sympathy at Jones. “Donny and Roberta. Sounds like a real house party. You can’t dance to that shit, though. It’s got no backbeat.”
Jones hit the joint, hit it again, and handed it to Jefferson. When Jones spoke, smoke came with his words. “What’d your woman say, exactly?”
“Monique? Said Vaughn came by, lookin for my Buick. Registration and title’s got her name on it.”
“Ward snitched us out to the law. I can’t believe it.”
“Ain’t no honor out here anymore.” Jefferson inspected the burning herb, wrapped loosely in Top papers, and drew on it deep.
“Where your deuce at now?” said Jones.
“Parked in my yard, out back. Can’t nobody see it from the street.”
“If they walked into the alley they could.”
Jefferson put his hand on the worn.38 that lay on the cable spool table. “Official Police” was stamped on its barrel, and he liked that. He touched its grip, wrapped in black electrical tape. “If someone walks into that alley and they look at my shit? It’s on. At that point, don’t nothin matter, anyway.”
“How close you think Hound Dog is?”
Jefferson shrugged. “Man said our names to Monique.”
“Dude stays on it,” said Jones with admiration. He was not concerned. In fact, his blood ticked pleasantly. “I wouldn’t go out, I was you.”
“You about to go out.”
“I gotta take care of Long Nose.”
“And we got a date,” said Coco.
“You know where Roland at?” said Jefferson.
“Soul House,” said Jones. “According to you.”
“If he’s out the hospital, that’s where he’ll be.”
“So you gonna stay in,” said Jones pointedly. “Right?”
“Monique comin over here,” said Jefferson with an idiotic grin. “Conjugal visit.”
“What if she gets followed?”
“I ain’t stupid,” said Jefferson, smiling stupidly, his eyes gone. “Neither is Nique. She’s not goin any goddamn where unless it’s clear.”
They smoked the joint down to a roach and finished their beers. Jones got up quickly from his chair. His new Rolex had slid up his forearm, and he shook it to rest on his wrist.
“Let’s go, girl,” he said, standing tall. He was dressed for the night in rust-colored bells, three-inch stacks, and a print rayon shirt opened to show the top of his laddered stomach. Coco, similarly fly and regal, came and stood beside him.
“You gonna take my short?” said Jefferson.
“That Buick’s on fire,” said Jones. “We’ll be good in Coco’s ride.”‹"0e› p height="0em" width="27"›Jefferson liked that jam “No Name Bar,” the one with all the horns, on another side of Isaac’s double-record set. As Jones and Coco left the house, he found the slab of wax he was looking for and put it on.