Prudence Couldn't Swim (10 page)

“So it seems.”

“She used men as sugar daddies,” Mandisa said, “got what she could from them.”

“Including me?”

“I wouldn't know about that.”

“Or wouldn't tell me if you did.”

“I suppose not but I don't know.”

She poked around in the float trying to break up a big lump of ice cream at the bottom.

“I think she had quite a few, uh, gentleman companions. She was clever and beautiful.”

“It didn't help her much in the end.”

“She was desperate because of problems at home. Life is different in Zimbabwe. So hard.”

“I read something about this, what's his name?”

“Mugabe?”

“Yes. Kicking all the whites off their farms. Sounds like a real bastard.”

“It's a little more complicated than that,” she said.

She was probably right but the last thing I needed was a discussion about complications in a far-off land. I didn't even keep up with Sacramento, let alone Washington, D.C. My conversation had raised one burning question for me though—one apparently without an answer: did Prudence ever call me a sugar daddy?

Mandisa handed me a piece of binder paper with two names and phone numbers printed in careful, feminine lettering.

“Be careful,” she said, “these are important people. They're married, respectable. They're not interested in being connected to a murdered African seductress.”

“You're sure she wasn't English, with that accent?”

“Zimbabwe used to be a British colony. Also South Africa. They taught us Africans how to speak like them. If the Americans had colonized us, we'd be saying ‘French fries' and playing this funny football of yours instead of soccer.”

I read the names: Alfred Jeffcoat and Carlton Newman. Fast Freddy wasn't lying to me. Jeffcoat was the name he'd given to us outside the King and Queens. At least someone believed in us.

“Do you know anything about them,” I asked, “like where they live or work?”

“Prudence told me if I ever needed money, they could help but that I should be careful. She said they had houses, boats, planes. They're loaded.”

“Did they ever threaten her?”

“Not that I know of. She just said they were rich. Newman is black.”

“Did you just remember all this now?”

“Some of it came to me earlier but I didn't know the names.”

“Anything else come to you?”

She slurped at the bottom of her float until every drop was gone.

“No, but if I think of something, I'll call you.” She moved the empty glass to the edge of the table.

“She said if you ever had trouble with Jeffcoat, just mention the name Peter Margolis.”

“Who the hell is that?” I asked.

“No idea,” Mandisa replied. She wrote down the name on the napkin and handed it to me.

“Did you talk to the police?” I asked.

“No. Never.”

“You're sure?” I asked.

“The police shot my neighbor Billy Mzimane when he was coming back from the shops with a loaf of bread. He was running, pretending he was playing soccer. He was eleven years old. It was like that for us then.”

“For who?”

“Blacks, blacks in South Africa.”

“Is that why you left?”

“Something like that,” she said. “I have to go. I must catch a cab and get to work.”

“I'll give you a ride.”

She adjusted her cap and got up to leave.

“No thanks, I'm fine.”

“By the way,” I said, “where is it?”

“What?”

“This place where you grew up.”

“You've never heard of it.”

“Try me.”

“Katlehong. Near Johannesburg.”

“I know Johannesburg,” I replied. It was the biggest dot on the map when I was looking for Zimbabwe. Almost as big as Philadelphia.

“Good for you,” she said and headed outside to look for her cab.

A
fter paying for my coffee and Mandisa's float I powered the Volvo straight to Chumash casino, about a four-hour drive from Oakland. I made it in three. I got $1,000 from the ATM in the casino. My stake. I needed an escape and since my escapade with Olga had only left me with a guilty conscience, I opted for a gambling binge. I couldn't think of any other alternative.

I have two rules about gambling. I never do it for more than ten hours at a stretch and I go home when I lose all my stake. I've never broken either rule.

After ten hours and lots of blackjack hands, my $1,000 had grown to fifteen grand. I headed home with my $14,000 in profit stuffed in a Ziploc bag, not feeling one bit better as I pulled out of the parking lot. I had a few more hours on the road to contemplate the investigation. I hoped I wouldn't fall asleep.

A mile outside the little tourist trap of Solvang with all its fake Danish houses, an Indian guy and his woman stood by the side of the road. The man held up a crude sign lettered in magic marker: “Broke. Need Job. Kids 2 Feed. Do Anything.”

I pulled over about a hundred yards in front of them. The man came running to the car.

“Thanks, boss. I'm a carpenter. I can fix anything for you.” He wore a tattered carpenter's belt. A hammer and screwdriver dangled from two of the loops.

“I'm ready to work, sir,” he added. “Just give me the word.”

A little boy appeared and grabbed onto the man's leg. He looked about three years old. The bottle of milk in his hand held about one more sip. His shirt had a rip in the shoulder.

I reached into the glove compartment and grabbed the Ziploc bag.

“Come here,” I said to the boy, “I've got a present for you.”

He looked up at his father, not sure what to do.

“It's okay,” said the father.

The little boy let loose of his father's leg and took two steps toward the door. I held out my arm and gave him the Ziploc.

“Don't spend it all in one place,” I warned the man, “and make sure that kid gets some more milk and a good steak in his belly.”

I drove off, feeling a little better anyway. I looked in the rearview mirror long enough to see the man jumping up and down and throwing me kisses. A different breed altogether from the “associates” of Prudence I'd soon have to face. They were corporate tycoons. About as close as I ever got to those types was Dr. Robson's fiftieth birthday party. I didn't even know how to dress for a meeting with them.

Somewhere south of San Jose I decided to do the logical thing, just drop the whole affair. It was all driving me crazy and nothing could bring Prudence back. Even if it could, she was on the verge of moving out. If she didn't care enough about me to even let me know of her plans, why should I be taking risks to solve the mystery of her death? I could go on for the rest of my life happily believing she just got drunk, slipped and fell in the pool. I didn't owe her a thing.

A few miles later, my mental pendulum swung back in the other direction. It was the violation thing. Once you open yourself up to that kind of abuse, it never ends. If prison taught me anything, that was it. I'm small and not all that strong but no one ever punked me. No one. If they'd tried, they knew I'd fight back. I'd catch them when they were asleep or sitting on the can and slice open their liver. It kills every time. I never had to do it but people thought that I could and I did too. That's all that mattered. Now someone had invaded my territory. Life threw you tests and this was one of mine. I couldn't let those Oakland hills get in my blood. I had to fight back for me, not for Prudence or her family. My manhood was on the line. Pure and simple.

As soon as I got back to Carltonville, I called Red Eye for a strategy session. We finished off a bottle of Wild Turkey trying to figure out how to tackle these millionaires. Red Eye didn't go down well in a suit.
His tattoos and prison-built bulges would make him look like a bull wrapped in silk. I would have to be the one to talk to these guys.

“Why don't you go through your house for clues?” he asked. “You know, DNA and all that stuff.”

“We need a crime lab for that, a CSI operation,” I said.

“I've got a hookup,” he replied. “Billy Trout works for some crime lab company. He owes me.”

“Won't work, bro,” I said. “I swept and hosed down the pool area. Luisa scoured the house with disinfectant. Bless her little heart.”

“Maybe she knows something about Prudence and her men.”

“I already asked. She told me Prudence's life was all a secret. Not wrong there.”

“So you want me to forget about Billy Trout?”

“For now, yeah.”

All roads kept leading back to me interviewing Jeffcoat and Newman. The problem was that if one of them killed her, they'd know me. They might even have killed her over jealousy because I was married to her. If I was the next target, doing an interview could be walking into the lion's mouth. We racked our brains trying to think of anyone else who could do it.

“Back in the day,” said Red Eye, “we were convicts. Today you can't trust anyone.”

“If they're not a rat,” I said, “they're so high on crank they blab to everyone anyway. Same difference.”

After we finished whining about the demise of the convict code, we accepted the inevitable. My best pinstripe suit would have to go to the dry cleaners.

“I've got an idea,” said Red Eye. “We'll tell them Prudence left a will and that they were the beneficiaries.”

“She had nothing,” I said. “These guys are millionaires. She was hitting on them for money.”

“She won the lottery, Cal.”

“Then what?”

“You found the winning ticket in her purse.”

“I don't get it,” I said. “This is as crazy as the scheme with the Super Bowl tickets.” Red Eye had bought fifty tickets from a scalper for the
Super Bowl the year the 49ers made it. He figured he could double his money. The tickets turned out to be fake and a bunch of Niner fans got arrested trying to get into the stadium. Some of them came looking for Red Eye. Eventually, the charges were dropped and it all calmed down but Red Eye still never goes near a Niner game. You don't anyway if you're Raider Nation.

“This is way different,” he said. “Just listen. She won the lottery. And you, being an honorable man, did the right thing with the ticket. Collected the seventeen million and put it in an account to be distributed to those mentioned in her will.”

“Then what?”

“You read them her will. Each beneficiary gets a third. Jeffcoat, Newman, whoever.”

“I don't get it.”

“You want to convince a man of anything, start off by telling him he's got the biggest dick in town.”

“And they'll think they got the money because they were bonkin' her the best,” I said.

“Now you got it. Just got to iron out the details. They'll be drooling at your feet over that money.”

We spent the better part of a second bottle of Wild Turkey on those details. Red Eye had an ex-con friend who was a paralegal. He was ready to write up the will and dress it in all the right jargon.

“Then you'll go and meet these guys individually,” Red Eye added, “read the will and test their response. Use that English butler accent of yours.”

“I'm through with the Prince Charlie act,” I said, “but I will buy some new ties. Brown, gray. Whatever. Do these guys wear hats?”

“I don't know,” he said, “you're the one who lives in Carltonville.”

“I try not to look at them.”

We discussed how to read their expressions, how I'd know if I'd stumbled into the office of the killer.

“You'll get a gut feeling,” he said. “These guys aren't pros. Their nerves will crack if you push the right button.”

“I don't know,” I said, “rich dudes know how to cover their tracks. That's why they don't pay taxes.”

“Trust me,” said Red Eye. “You'll know.”

“Maybe they used a hired killer.”

“Too sloppy,” he replied. “A pro doesn't take a chance with drowning. Too slow. Too risky. And there was no sign of a struggle. She probably knew the guy. Otherwise there'd have been pushing and shoving.”

“You're right,” I said, “Prudence would have fought back.”

“It'd be a trip bustin' a fuckin' millionaire. I'm just lookin' forward to seein' him squirm.”

“We should cut the prize down to four or five million. Seventeen is a little hard to believe.”

“Whatever works,” said Red Eye.

I phoned the numbers Mandisa had given me for Jeffcoat and Newman. Both were business lines. I got the street addresses from their receptionists. In the meantime, Red Eye's paralegal friend completed a will plus a cover letter from a lawyer explaining the lottery ticket. The lawyer wrote that the executor of the will, Mr. C. Winter, would be contacting them to “discuss the matter.” Using my real name took a little edge off the hustle but we agreed if the thing unraveled or one of them knew me, a false identity would dig us into a deeper hole.

Red Eye and I financed a couple of throwaway cell phones, one for the lawyer, another for me as the executor. If I could just keep them straight, we'd be in business.

I started with the white guy, Jeffcoat. He ran some kind of financial services company from the fourteenth floor of the Oaks Building, not far from Jack London Square in downtown Oakland. I phoned his secretary and made an appointment to talk about some investment opportunities.

The elevator got to the fourteenth floor in about three seconds. The office could have been a set for one of those soapies about tycoons. A thirty-foot-wide floor-to-ceiling window looked out over miles and miles of the central region of the city. From the fourteenth floor even Oakland looked spectacular. I always thought of my city as somewhat like myself, not much to look at but loaded with character. Jeffcoat had a different perspective, I'm sure.