Prudence Couldn't Swim (14 page)

“I don't know if she was whitemailing them or not. I told you I don't know. I gave you the names—Jeffcoat, Newman, Margolis. Now just stay out of my life. I should have known better than to meet you here. Since when did I start hanging around with ex-convicts? America does weird things to you.”

She looked angry enough to hit me but she kept walking.

“I'm leaving,” she said. “If you follow me I'll phone the police and say you're a stalker. You're nothing but trouble. I told Prudence that but she wouldn't listen.”

“I'm a good pimp,” I said. “I look after my girls. A pimp with a heart.”

She strode quickly, almost breaking into a run. I trailed behind.

“Slow down,” I shouted.

“I've got nothing else to say to you,” she said. “Nothing.”

She kept up the pace for a while but after a couple hundred yards she was starting to wheeze. Apparently IHOP didn't pay for gym membership, but then I was no triathlon master either. My chest was heaving, my throat on fire.

“I'm not trying to bring misery into your life,” I shouted in between pants. “Don't you realize whoever did this to Prudence can strike again? Who do you think are the likely next targets?”

She stopped.

“You think I haven't thought of that?” she said. “That's why I want you to back off. If you leave it alone …”

“As long as that person thinks those tapes are out there, we're in danger.”

“She did come upon a lot of money about two weeks before she died. She sent it home. That's what she always did. For her daughter, her family.”

“Work with me on this,” I said. “It's not just for Prudence. It's for you, for our safety. Tell me what you know.”

“I already have.”

“I don't think so. Who was Prudence? What was her real name?”

“Tarisai Mukombachoto,” Mandisa said. “She was a mother trying
to look after her child. The world is not kind to African mothers. Sometimes we end up ten thousand miles away from our children just so we can pay their school fees, buy them shoes.”

“Is that your situation, too?”

“This isn't about me” she replied. “Prudence and I were different women from different countries. I have my problems. She had hers. Different from Americans who worry about what SUV to buy, where to fly for a vacation. That was my common point with Prudence. We never knew the details of each other's lives. We just understood.”

The sunglasses only partially hid Mandisa's tears. She dug a tissue out of her pocket but kept talking as she wiped her cheeks.

“She didn't deserve to die for trying to help her child,” she said. “She wasn't even buried at home.”

“No one deserves that,” I said. I was tempted to tell her that Prudence wasn't even buried, that her ashes sat somewhere in some urn. I decided this wasn't the time.

“I'm scared,” she said. “Those two men are rich, powerful. If another African woman dies in Oakland the police won't care anymore than they did about Prudence. Do you know about Amadou Diallo?”

“Who?”

“This African guy the police in New York shot forty-one times. He was just walking down the street. They found the police innocent. We are nothing here. Completely nothing. They don't care about an African woman.”

“Or about a pimp,” I said.

We stood for a long time on a patch of grass by the lakeshore. A middle-aged white couple were rowing a blue boat across the water. The kind you could rent by the hour. The man dropped an oar. Their cackles carried across the lake as he tried to fish the thing out of the water. Each failure brought a new round of laughter. With every lunge the boat rocked. The woman shifted her weight to try and restore their balance. Finally the man got the oar, put it though the ring on the rim of the boat and they started off again. A pleasant respite from whatever might have been the slings and arrows of their lives. Maybe they'd bought the wrong SUV. Derogatory comments from the neighbors can be debilitating. Row your worries away. Life is but a dream.

Mandisa and I had lost both of our oars. I was trying to get mine back but she wasn't helping balance the boat. The problem was, if I fell in, she came with me. She couldn't swim and I couldn't do much better than a dog paddle. I'd meant to take swimming lessons when I bought a house with a pool but I never got around to it.

There were a hundred reasons for an African woman and a hare-lipped white pimp to quarrel. But the reality was that we needed each other. We had to find a way to get our oars through those rings. I hoped she'd stay on board long enough to get it done.

We walked back toward the park bench.

“I think Newman did this,” she said. “He's a psycho.”

“Now we're getting somewhere,” I said.

An old man sauntered past with a little Cairn terrier tied to his walker. I felt sorry for the old guy. Probably took him three hours to get around the lake. Then came a loud bang, followed by a couple more. The dog made a little yelp and the old man keeled over on the grass. More bangs. Definitely gunfire. I dove under the bench and looked up to see Mandisa on her knees next to the old man starting to pump on his heart. I was more worried about the bullets than this geezer's cardiac arrest. Prudence's killer was nearby and either a little off-target or issuing us a very scary warning.

“Phone 9-1-1,” Mandisa hollered at me in between pumps and breaths. I dialed, told them where we were. The gunshots stopped. I took off, leaving Mandisa with her lips on top of the old man's. I wasn't hanging around for the cops or Freckle Face and his crew.

I walked the half a block to my Volvo at a calm, orderly pace. I wanted to run but running always attracts attention and sometimes bullets as well. I heard someone shouting something about a drive-by, that a gangbanger got shot in the head. Too bad for him but I was relieved if this wasn't about Prudence or me or Mandisa or any of that. Life on the streets had its own rhythms and worries.

As I got near my car I looked back and saw the old man start to sit up. Mandisa gently eased him back into a prone position as the sirens drew near. She'd saved that old codger's life. That Katlehong where she came from must have been one helluva place.

A
fter the incident in the park, I couldn't sleep. Five hits of Wild Turkey didn't help. I got up in the middle of the night. For some strange reason, I wanted to watch those tapes again. I knew they'd heat me up enough to do something to make up for hiding under the park bench while Mandisa saved an old man's life. In prison, we'd call that a bitch move. I was lots of things but nobody's bitch.

I did the routine with the rugs and the floorboards and pulled the tapes out of the box.

I put in the first tape as I popped the seal on a fresh bottle of Wild Turkey I gritted my teeth and knocked back the whiskey. By tape number three the sun was coming up and I was ready. I put on my best suit, stuffed my Walther inside my belt and headed for Jeffcoat's office—ready to rock and roll. I didn't even take the time to put the tapes back in my stash.

When I came out of the elevator Jeffcoat's secretary's eyes were on me like a store detective. I'd popped two Wintergreen Lifesavers in the elevator to get rid of the Wild Turkey smell. Not everyone appreciated whiskey breath in the morning. When I got into her sights, I gave her my biggest smile.

“I'd like to see Mr. Jeffcoat,” I told her. She looked at me for a long time before replying.

“I don't remember your name on today's appointments, Mr. Winter.” I was surprised she remembered my name, even more shocked when she pulled a little Chinese paper fan out of her desk drawer and waved it in my direction. I guess the Life Savers didn't do the trick.

“I don't have an appointment,” I said, “but I think if he reads this note, he'll make time for me.” I handed her an envelope with a letter
inside informing him I'd seen the tapes and would like to talk to him. She disappeared into his office and came back after a couple minutes.

“He'll see you when he's finished with this client,” she said. “Can I get you some coffee?”

“Cream and two sugars,” I replied. I was enjoying my momentary triumph over Jeffcoat's gatekeeper. She was a little past her physical prime but her hips were tastefully plentiful and the cleavage display extended a little beyond office protocol. She was more than enough to make plenty of wives jealous. But then Mrs. Jeffcoat had bigger jealousy concerns. The coffee was freshly brewed, just the jolt I needed to face the enemy.

“I didn't expect to see you again,” he said as I strode through his office door.

“Some pests are harder to eradicate than others,” I replied. I debated about pulling the Walther but left it in my belt.

“I'm an optimist,” he said. “I always assume that little roaches die on the first spray. What's your price?”

“Information.”

“I've got plenty,” he said. “You want stock tips? Interested in a little foreign currency trading? I look for the value of the Euro to rise. I've got nothing but good advice.”

“Prudence was blackmailing you,” I said. “You paid her some money a couple weeks before she died.”

“Interesting theory. Difficult to prove.”

“I could always try. If I reported the matter to the police like what you did to me, they might launch an investigation. Videotapes linked to crimes play well on the evening news, especially when they're X-rated. Could make national, with some tasteful editing of course. Not to mention marketing the unedited versions to the porn sites. The whole world wants to know how the rich do it. They're hot and I haven't even seen them all.”

“Perverted bastard,” he said. “The girl's not even cold in her grave and you're already trying to squeeze money out of her corpse.” He stood up and turned away, as if looking over the city would solve the problem. When someone sits on the fourteenth floor all day, the lives of everyone else begin to look small, insignificant. Tiny ants scurrying
around the streets. Every once in a while, though, disgusting little insects like Calvin Winter manage to scale the walls.

I enjoyed his quiet suffering even though I could be provoking a murderer. I was coming back to reality, feeling more and more out of place with that 9 mm tucked in my belt. I wasn't a killer. Who was I trying to kid? That's part of why I kept Red Eye around. He'd earned his stripes. Had an SS tattoo on his leg to prove it. Luckily Fast Freddy hadn't seen that one. You only won the right to wear that ink in prison by completing a mission. Red Eye had done more than one. By contrast, I usually liked to think of myself as a coyote, living by my wiles. If I was going to pin Jeffcoat to the wall, it wouldn't be with a gun.

“I'll ask again,” he said, “what's your price?”

“I'm trying to find out how Prudence died,” I said. “I want information.”

“She drowned,” he said. “That's what you told me. That's what the police say. She died with the winning lottery ticket in her purse. Right, Winter?”

“That's part of the story. I think you know more.”

If he was looking for an apology for the lottery scam, he could forget it. I'm no investor but I know there's no more underhanded game than playing around with other people's money. In other words, I know a hustle when I see one. He wasn't going to get away with sneering at a coyote.

“What information do you want?” he asked. “Yeah, I screwed her a few times. She made a film of it without my knowledge. I paid her $10,000 to destroy the film. I guess she didn't do it. Where's my crime in all this? I made a mistake. Everyone falls to temptation once in a while. She was a beautiful woman. And I wasn't the only one she fucked. “

“Would you care to name the others?”

“That's got nothing to do with this.”

“And neither would all those other women you've been hitting over the years.”

“My personal life is none of your business.”

“It would definitely be the business of the court. If you've had a
string of affairs that ended badly, expect a nice little parade of your conquests to stream up to the stand in your murder trial. Of course, since you've got the perfect marriage, the little lady will stand valiantly at your side like Hillary did for Bill. Then there's the issue of Peter Margolis.”

I still had no idea who this Margolis was but I figured it was worth testing the waters. I was on a roll.

Jeffcoat glanced briefly at a gold-framed family photo on his desk. His wife had put on a few pounds after childbirth and hadn't lost them. And those gray roots were showing through big time. I guess she couldn't be bothered to keep up appearances. She didn't know what league she was playing in.

“Margolis's death was a boating accident,” he said. “A great tragedy.”

“I suspect there's a little more to it than that.”

“You can surmise all you want, but you can't prove a thing. So if you don't want money and you're not going to give up the tapes, then get the hell out of my office.”

“So you say she had other men?”

“I didn't worry about it. She was a good time for me. As long as I protected myself, what she did with the rest of her life was none of my business.”

“So you always used a condom,” I said. “That makes me feel better because she was my wife.”

He laughed.

“I know that,” he said. “I know everything about you.” He stood up. He was losing his cool. Anger can do strange things to people.

“It's time we ended this meeting,” he said.

“I know you hate unnecessary meetings. Something about ineffective business practice.”

“Get the hell out of here or I'll call security.”

“That's what you won't do,” I told him with my first smirk of the day. “The Internet porn sites are just a mouse click away. And if you know so much about me, you know I'd love to put you out there naked for the world to see.”