Blood and Rain Page 16

  Graham asked Charles, "What did the guy look like that came in here and touched the bodies?"

  "See, that is something that bothers me too," Charles answered. "I can't remember what he looked like at all. I've tried to remember, so I can give a description or something. But whenever I try to recall what he looks like, it's like I have a blank spot there."

  Graham looked at me and I nodded my head. I'd heard this kind of thing before.

  The coach of Felicia's chess team had been able to see the guy who he noticed was around the kids at their chess tournaments. That had been Tor Ambrose. He had even been able to give me a description of Tor, even if it had been very vague.

  Whenever he tried to approach Tor to ask him why he was hanging around the kids, well he would just seemingly vanish.

  What this guy was telling us was different, yet in a strange way it was the same. He could remember what the guy had done and that he had spoken to him but he couldn't get a picture of the guy in his mind.

  It was almost like that part of Charles' mind has been blocked.

  Graham handed Charles his card. He told him, "If that guy comes back again, you give me a call immediately."

  "You don't have to worry about that," Charles said, "If he comes back I'm calling you, the police, and anyone else I can get down here quick."

  * * *

  Graham drove me back to Roxie's where my car was. On the way I told him, "Don't expect to get back that thirty seven hundred dollars you paid me."

  He laughed about that. "I'm calling that a retainer for future services. I'm sure you'll be there when I need you in the future."

  "As long as you got the cash," I told him.

  "It's never my cash anyway," he said. "It's always company funds."

  Then Graham surprised me. He came out with the kind of explanation that he never would have before.

  "This Robert Perry," he said, "was more personal than business. I knew Perry through informants. Perry and his queens took over Tor Ambrose's territory when you took Tor out of the picture. We couldn't nail Perry. He seemed to always know whenever we got information that his shipments were coming in. He'd change his plans and we'd end up busting an empty barge on the river or an empty tractor trailer."

  I listened to him speak in silence.

  Graham said, "Until my son committed suicide and left me a note, I couldn't figure out how Perry was always one step ahead of me. My son's note said that Perry had been blackmailing him for information he got from me. Robert Perry was such a good female impersonator that my son Don never even knew he was having an affair with a man until he was being blackmailed. Don had a wife and kids. It messed him up so bad he put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger."

  "Well," I told Graham. "I may not have pulled the trigger on Perry but after what I saw was left of him, believe me, he died slow and in pain."

  "I do suppose that is something," Graham said. "Now we have to deal with Tor, or what's left of him."

  "Yeah," I told Graham. "But I get the feeling there's something a lot worse than Tor out there this time."

  Graham said, "Me, too."

  CHAPTER 43

  DOWN MEMORY LANE

  I left Roxie's and drove by Julia's but like I thought, neither she nor Felicia were home. It was still too early in the day. Julia was still at work and Felicia was still in school.

  If Tor Ambrose was out roaming around, whether he was alive or dead, I thought Julia should be aware of it. That would now have to wait. I left a note on her door to call me.

  Not knowing what else to do at that moment, I drove over to Johnny's place. On the way over to Johnny's the heavy gray clouds that had been threatening to drop buckets of snow on the city started doing just that. Heavy large snowflakes looking like feathers started pouring down from the sky.

  Within about two minutes after the snow started I was using the windshield wipers. The snow was so thick that by the time I got to Johnny's the ice was building up on the sides and bottom of the windshield and it was getting hard to see. The weather was quickly beginning to look like a blizzard.

  Maybe I should have stayed in Atlanta, I thought, as I got out of my car and trudged into Johnny's.

  When I opened the door and snow blew in around me, Johnny yelled, "Man close that door. What's the matter with you. You born in a barn?"

  I shut the door behind me, shook the snow off, and before my eyes could adjust to the gloom of the bar room, I heard a high pitched laughing coming from the table where Johnny and I usually played chess. When my eyes adjusted I saw that Johnny was behind the bar and a rather short woman with black coffee skin was sitting at the table in front of our chess board.

  "I have beaten him again," the woman said and again laughed. She had a thick Cajun accent. Her words were a little hard to understand, but she spoke like she was giving a speech by projecting her words. "Do you wish for me to beat you now?" She said and laughed with a childish playfulness in her voice.

  I was finding myself liking this woman already.

  "I see you've met Grandma Jeanette," Johnny said from behind the bar. "Do you want a beer?"

  "Always," I told Johnny and sat down across the board from Jeanette.

  "John, John!" Jeanette said forcefully to Johnny. "Do not call me Grandma. Only call me Jeanette. I am too young to be called Grandma. Do I look like a toothless old woman to you?"

  "Sorry Gra… uh Jeanette," Johnny said. "But you are my Grandma. Why don't you want me to call you that?"

  "I do not like the name Ma," Jeanette said. "It sounds like a noise a cow would make. I am that which I wish to be and I do not wish to be a noise a cow would make. You may call be Grand or Jeanette or Grand Jeanette but do not call me Grandma. I will not answer to it."

  I laughed and Jeanette smiled at me. She seemed to look quite a bit younger than she could possibly be. When she smiled Jeanette's face positively glowed.

  "You put him in his place," I told Jeanette.

  "Fuck you," Johnny said from behind the bar.

  I sat down across from Jeanette and Johnny came with two beers.

  "And what about me?" Jeanette said to Johnny.

  Johnny and me looked at each other.

  "I do not want a beer," Jeanette said. "I want a shot of the strongest whiskey you have."

  Johnny started to go behind the bar and stopped. He asked, "Are you sure you want my strongest whiskey? I've got some white lightning that'll melt paint."

  Jeanette said, "Maybe too strong for you, but not for me."

  We set the pieces up for a new game and Johnny brought Jeanette a shot from the bottle of white lightening he had under the bar. When Johnny sat down at the table Jeanette pointed at me.

  "You are also John," she said. "There are too many Johns here. What shall I call you to differentiate you from my grandson?"

  "We do look almost like twins," I told Jeanette and I leaned my head toward Johnny and he leaned toward me. We both grinned at Jeanette.

  "Can you tell us apart?" Johnny asked his Grandmother.

  "I should slap you both," she said, "For acting the fool."

  I had the white pieces on my side so I moved my queen's pawn out two squares.

  Jeanette picked up the shot of white lightening and slugged it down in one quick swallow. She let out an "Ahhhhh."

  We were both watching her intently. I knew for a fact Johnny's white lightening would take my breath away because it burned like lit gasoline.

  She smiled at us. "Too weak," she said and moved her queen's pawn out two spaces.

  Playing Jeanette was no contest at all. She basically beat the hell out of me. We played two games in under an hour and she just toyed with me.

  During our games, Jeanette started calling me J.D., which was all right with me. Jeanette showed up at Johnny's unexpectedly about two hours before I had shown up. She was definitely a very interesting woman. She looked to be in her early fifties. When I made a comment on her looking so young she proudly announced that she was ninet
y-one years old.

  My mouth must have just about hit the floor when she told me that from the way she laughed at my reaction. "My God, you look like you could be Johnny's sister," I told her truthfully.

  "Yes," she said. "I believe I am young and so I am."

  I couldn't argue with a philosophy with results like that.

  * * *

  The snow was coming down in buckets. It reminded me of when I was a kid and we first moved to East St. Louis. My dad had been a cop in Crystal City, Missouri. He was working the night my mother was killed in a robbery at a grocery store.

  My dad hadn't been the cuddliest father on the block even before my mom died; afterward he was ten times worse.

  I think that maybe my mom had been a release valve for my dad's anger. I could remember some yelling coming from their bedroom at night and I had seen a few bruises on my mom, but if my dad had hit my mom I never actually witnessed it. After my mom was gone, my dad started drinking heavily.

  He would yell at me and take a swing at me whenever he would get the chance. I had an older brother that he drove out of the house and into the army when he was sixteen. My brother was killed in Viet Nam.

  My dad was booted off the Crystal City Police Department after repeated instances of beating handcuffed prisoners. When my dad went job hunting most of the police departments turned him away.

  When my dad applied to the East St. Louis Police Department he found out they were looking for the same kind of cop that he was. He was brutal and mean and that was what a cop in East St. Louis needed to be to survive.

  The day that I was remembering was cold as hell and snowing buckets. It was my first day of school at Washington Junior High.

  I had been frozen stiff with fear when the teacher introduced me to the class. I looked out from her desk at a sea of black and brown and yellow faces. I was the only white in the school.

  I was about thirteen years old on that first school day at Washington Junior High. At the end of home room I had my first experience with being beaten up by a group of kids before I even got to my first class. Those kids didn't need a reason to kick the shit out of me. I was just new and a different color than they were, so they just beat the hell out of me. That is just the way it was.

  At that school I was alone and friendless. When the bell rang that ended one class, I'd run and dodge the other kids as fast as I could. If I didn't, I'd make it to my next class bruised up and bloodied.

  That went on for about two weeks and either I was slowing down or the other kids had figured out my routes from one class to the next. Whatever it was, I took a beating in between every class the last couple days of the second week.

  Complaining to my dad made no sense. He gave me a beating whenever I came home with any marks on me at all. I came home marked up every day. So I got a beating at home every day.

  The Saturday after I'd had a particularly bad Friday by getting kicked down the stairs, a knock came on my front door about ten in the morning. I looked out the front window and saw three black kids, one Mexican kid and one Oriental kid waiting for me on the porch.

  It was snowing heavily on them and they all looked cold breathing steam out there. This group of kids looked like they were a couple of years older than me. So I expected to get a worse beating than usual.

  They knocked on the door again and my dad yelled from his bedroom, "Answer that damn door or I'll come out there and ram your head through it."

  I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Actually I was stuck between a beating and a worse beating. I figured I'd probably survive the beating from the kids outside. My Dad had gotten so drunk the night before that I knew he'd have a bad hangover. I wasn't so sure I would survive the beating he'd give me.

  I turned the knob and stepped outside into the wind and the stinging snow.

  The leader of the small gang was a big black kid. He would grow up to be much bigger before he was done growing. His name was Joe Briggs. Now, years later, he's a cop that hates me with a passion.

  He looked me up and down and said, "I’ve been seein' you have trouble at school."

  I had my fists doubled up because I figured trouble had just followed me home.

  "It ain't nothing I can't handle," I told him.

  "The way your head bounced down those steps yesterday, I think you do need our help," he said.

  "Look man," another one of the black guys who was to become my best friend, Johnny Davis, said. "We're offering to let you hang with us. You'd be crazy not to."

  "I can handle myself," I told them.

  Joe Briggs looked at me hard. "Before you go mistrustin' us because we a bunch of Negroes," he said. "Understand this, they don't pick on you cause you're white, they pick on you cause you're alone and can't do a damn thing about it."

  The Mexican kid spoke up now. I forget his name because he's been dead a long time. He said, "Fuck this guy man. He wants to keep getting his ass wasted, that's fine by me. We don't need that little fuckhead with us no how." He turned and started to walk away and the others started to turn away. "And who you callin Negro anyway?" He asked Joe Briggs. "I am Hispanic."

  "I'm callin me and my two brother's Negroes and we're proud of it," Joe told him. "You was callin’ yourself a spic before I told you to have some self-respect and stop doin’ that."

  "Hey, wait a minute," I asked the group. "Where you guys headin’ to?"

  "We're just walking around," the Oriental kid said. I later found out his name was Ben Lee. He's still a good friend of mine and he owns a restaurant that serves the best curry in existence.

  Johnny spoke up then, "We'll probably end up at the Southside Community Center and shoot some pool."

  "Hold on a second," I told them. I reached inside the door and grabbed my coat off a hook. "I'll go with you."

  I went with them and after freezing for a while on the streets and throwing snowballs at each other, we did go and shoot some pool.

  On Monday morning when the five kids who normally beat me up showed up outside my homeroom, so did my new group of friends. The opposing gang backed down quickly when they saw that our guys were bigger than theirs.

  The leader of the other gang told me he was going to get me later. So we faced off after school and slugged it out.

  I won the fight only because I was so used to getting beaten on that he couldn't do anything to me by himself that could hurt me very much. He beat on my head until his hands were swollen and bloody. He couldn't hit me anymore because his hands were so sore, so I took over. I gave him a beating until he was on his hand and knees and was curled up into a ball on the ground.

  Johnny walked with me to my home that night.

  He told me, "You really are one tough son of a bitch. But if you don't learn how to fight the right way, someone is going to beat your brains out."

  All I did was smile at him through my bloodied and smashed lips. It felt good to win for a change.

  About a week later after my lumps shrunk down a little bit, Johnny took me to Pop O'Grady's Gymnasium to learn to box. After that, the only trouble I had in school was keeping from being sent to the reform school for beating up other kids.

  CHAPTER 44

  WARNINGS

  I checked my watch again and saw that it was about the time that Julia and Felicia should be getting home.

  Jeanette and Johnny were playing another game of chess. Jeanette was beating him without any effort. It was another triumph for women's lib, I thought.

  "I'm gonna be taking off," I told them and stood up. "Got some business I gotta take care of."

  Jeanette stood up and intensely looked into my face. "Tell Johnny about the dead men who walk," she said to me in a commanding voice. "That is why I am here and my grandson needs to know!"

  Johnny looked at me. "What's my Grandma talkin about?"

  Jeanette gave him a mean look and he said, "Sorry about the Grandma, Jeanette."

  "Thank you," she answered.

  I weighed the situation for a mom
ent. Then I decided to tell Johnny and Jeanette the whole story about the Robert Perry job.

  When I was done Johnny said to me, "Man you do get yourself into some shit don't you?"

  "Even if Mr. Dark had not taken the job of murdering Robert Perry," Jeanette said. "Robert Perry and the other man in that room would have died just the same. They were both marked for early death a long time ago."

  I looked into Jeanette's eyes intently and saw an extremely intelligent woman looking back. "If you don't mind me asking you this," I said to her. "How do you know so much about all of this?"

  Johnny laughed and shook his head.

  Jeanette smiled at me and said, "I have been a Houngan voodoo priestess my whole life, ever since I was a little girl. A Houngan is someone who sees and hears more than others. We can influence the world with what we know if we wish. I only wish a long and happy life and to protect my grandson."

  I looked at Johnny and he said, "Jeanette‘s always known about things that were going to happen to people. She'd warn people if she could and sometimes they'd listen. When they didn't, bad things happened to them."

  He looked at Jeanette. "Like I remember you told that guy not to take his family to Santa Rosa Island in Florida for vacation. The bridge collapsed from under his car on the way out to the island. His car and about ten others went into the gulf. His entire family drowned."

  I asked Jeanette, "Ok, assuming you can see a bit of the future. What do you see about a Julia and Felicia Richardson?"

  She smiled again at me and spoke slowly, "It does not work like that. This gift, or curse, that I have, is not like a phone book. I only know that there is one in this city who is a Bokor, a voodoo sorcerer and he is much much more. He is evil on a level that you cannot even comprehend. No one in this city is safe so long as he is here."

  "I've got to go and warn Julia and Felicia," I told them. "If that bastard does anything to them, I'm gonna make him wish he was dead."