Prudence Couldn't Swim (4 page)

A purse under the bed had a red wallet inside. I pulled open the Velcro and found an Iowa drivers' license for Deirdre Lewis. I doubt Prudence had ever been to Iowa but the picture was her. The address was an apartment somewhere in Davenport. Not exactly a hot lead.

Red Eye searched the five dresser drawers and found a green thong and an empty black leather shoulder bag. The bathroom yielded lots of bottles, tubes, and bars of sweet-smelling soap. Nothing of use. Prudence hadn't planned to live with her legal husband much longer.

I lifted up the mattress to find two photos underneath. One showed a much younger Prudence standing in front of a brown wall wearing flip-flops and a blue cloth dress. Her short-cropped hair was coated with a layer of dust. Next to her was an old woman in a yellow
headscarf—either her mother or grandmother. The old woman's face was wrinkled and shiny like she was healing from a burn. Her smile revealed three missing front teeth. At their feet lay what looked like a short-handled hoe with a wide blade. It resembled an adze. I'd once seen a movie where they shaped timber with an adze back in the 1850s. I couldn't imagine Prudence as a wood chopper.

The other photo was a studio portrait of a girl about five years old. The white lace of her collar set a stark contrast to the color of her skin, the same deep black of Prudence's and the older woman's. The girl's hair was plaited, white ribbons dangling from each side. None of the photos had dates. No one had written anything on the back. How could I piece together her life from this? The photo of Prudence could have been taken anywhere you could find an adze. Maybe they had them all over London. I'd never been there. For all I knew vast sections of London were full of brown walls and black women in headscarves.

“Where was she living?” asked Red Eye.

“I don't know,” I replied, “but she was pretty well moved out of here. She never said a thing to me.”

Red Eye lifted the plastic liner out of the waste basket.

“There's a card in here,” he said, reaching down to pick it off the bottom.

Sam “Pearly” Gates, the card read. “Owner and proprietor” of the King and Queens. I knew the place—a not-so-sparkling club with dancing girls and topless waitresses in the little podunk town of Sunnyvale, near San Jose. Except for San Francisco, most cities in the Bay Area had banned adult clubs. Not Sunnyvale. It was the only reason anyone went there.

“I knew this cat Pearly back in the day,” said Red Eye. “Dude looked like Sean Connery, hairy chest and all. Someone told me he was Connery's backup in one of those James Bond movies.
Goldfinger,
I think.”

“I wonder if she was working there,” I replied. “Do they do lap dancing?”

“Let's find out,” said Red Eye. He dialed the number on the card. “Pearly” Gates was gone for the day. They were coy when he asked about the lap dancing.

“We can go by there with her picture,” said Red Eye. “In the meantime there's this Mandy or Mandisa. Strange name, eh?”

I'd tried talking to managers at twenty-four-hour restaurants on more than one occasion. They liked to put lots of barriers between themselves and disgruntled customers. A complaint about a fly in the soup or a search for a job as a cook wasn't going to work. We needed a more elaborate scheme. But then elaborate schemes were our specialty. With a couple of bottles of Wild Turkey, Red Eye and I could hatch a scheme to sell boat tickets to Mars.

As we parted, Red Eye reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out something wrapped in a brown paper bag.

“You better keep this with you from now on,” he said, handing me the parcel.

I could feel the automatic inside. I peeked. Walther 9 mm.

“Whoever got Prudence might be after you next,” he said.

“Could be,” I said, “just wish I knew why.”

It had been almost a decade since I'd touched a gun. For an ex-con, just having this thing could get you five years. Any self-respecting square would have handed the piece back to Red Eye.

“Better to be caught with it than caught without it,” he said. He was always full of convict wisdom, but he had a point. What was I supposed to do, count on Dr. Robson to come jogging to my rescue if Prudence's killer showed up?

I fingered the Walther and released the clip. He'd only put five rounds inside.

“You got any more ammo?” I asked. Though I didn't care for Walthers, it felt comfortable in my hand.

Red Eye brought out a box of hollow points and slid it into my jacket pocket. As soon as he left I decided to stash the Walther. I rolled back the rug at the foot of my bed, took off the piece of molding at the bottom of the wall, lifted out the floorboards, then groped for the bent coat hanger I used to lift the metal box that held a slough of fake papers and IDs and a little bit of dope. I might be living the square life but the underground wasn't that far away. Just as I hooked the box I realized what a stupid idea this was. What good would the Walther be hidden under the floor? I put everything back into place and opted for
sleeping with it under my pillow—safety on, round in the chamber. The next morning I'd practice sighting on a target. Even in my shell-shocked state, I suspected my hand was still pretty steady. I always liked to think I was a good shot even though I'd never really fired a gun at anyone. It felt like my first chance was just around the corner.

Zimbabwe, November 1985

T
arisai Mukombachoto had only one kilometer left to walk. It was still morning; that hot African sun hadn't started the sweat percolating through her skin. She walked alone today. Her twin brother, Garikai, was sick with some kind of stomach flu. She thought he was faking. He didn't want to go to school because the results from the grade seven exams had arrived from the Ministry of Education in the provincial capital of Mutare. That's why the walk felt so long for Tarisai, even though the sun wasn't yet burning bright. If she'd failed those exams, all chances of going to high school were gone.

Her bare feet slapped along the dirt path just as they had for seven years. She was confident she'd done well. After all, she'd been number one in her class since grade two. No one could top her, not even the teacher's nephew, who had the benefit of extra help from an educated uncle.

Tarisai's parents had only gone as far as grade three. Since they rarely used English, they'd forgotten most of what they'd learned. Occasionally when someone came from town with a newspaper she would see her father reading some of the articles. Sometimes he asked her the meaning of a word. He would always say what a clever daughter he had when she would tell him that “rapid” was the same as “fast” or that a “general anesthetic” was something the doctor used to knock you out when they removed parts from your body. Like almost everyone else at Kudzai School, Tarisai's parents were farmers. They worked the land day in, day out, just as their family had done for generations. When money ran short, they contracted to work for Mr. McGuinn, a white farmer who lived nearby. McGuinn was stingy but at least he
paid in cash. Some farmers still paid workers with bags of mielie meal and packets of rotten meat.

The hope of Tarisai's parents, though, was that their two children would excel in school and eventually end up with good-paying jobs in town, jobs that would provide their parents with enough money so they wouldn't be plowing and weeding until the day they died.

As Tarisai came down the grass-covered hill toward the school, she wasn't thinking of her family's future. The only thing on her mind was that group of her classmates she could see gathered around the notice board outside the headmaster's office. They were waiting for the results to be pinned up.

As she walked past one of the goalposts on the grassless soccer field, she saw the headmaster come out of his office with a piece of paper in his hand. The students crowded around him, as excited as if he were handing out free ice cream cones.

“Boys and girls,” she heard the headmaster say in his refined English, “please allow me space to pass so I can pin up your results.” He repeated the words in the local Shona language, to make sure everyone understood.

The eager students moved back a step or two. They all wanted to be the first to see.

Tarisai started to run. She hated the thought that someone else would see her marks before she did. The headmaster stepped away from the board and caught sight of Tarisai striding full speed past the grade four classroom, her feet leaving a faint trail of dusty prints on the bright red cement walkway.

“Slow down, Tarisai,” said the headmaster. “You know running is not allowed.”

It took all the will power Tarisai possessed to reduce herself to a walk.

“And well done, Tarisai,” he said. “You are the only pupil to score a 1 in both English and maths.”

The buzz of the students went silent as they turned to look at Tarisai. Gladys, her best friend, galloped toward her and gave her a joyous hug. The headmaster smiled. The two girls skipped toward the board.

Tarisai's eyes ran down the list. First she saw Garikai Mukombachoto.
Her brother had gotten a 3 in maths and a 4 in English. Better than he expected. Tarisai had told him he must study harder.

Her results were there under her Christian name, Prudence Mukombachoto: 1 in English, 1 in maths, just like the headmaster said. She jumped up and down, clapping her hands. She never expected perfection.

Suddenly the headmaster was at her side.

“Congratulations, Tarisai,” he said, adding a “makorokoto” the Shona word for such occasions. “With a mind like yours, you will go far in life. You may end up in the UK or America at one of their famous universities.”

Tarisai had never traveled farther than Mutare, a little more than an hour's bus journey away. And she'd only gone there twice, to help her mother do some shopping.

The UK, America, these were places she'd never dreamt of going. She'd seen some photos of London once in a very tattered magazine. The buildings were old. Someone once told her it was also very cold there.

Tarisai stayed and chatted with her friends for a while. Everyone was excited for her.

“We always knew you would succeed,” Gladys told her. “You got what you deserved.”

After an hour Tarisai set off for home to give her parents the news. They would be so proud. No one from their village had ever gotten a 1 before.

T
here were three Denny's and five IHOPs in the East Bay. I didn't want to think about the possibility that Mandisa worked farther away. These days some people travel a hundred miles to jobs. It's crazy. My first thought was to phone all the stores but it seemed awkward asking if the manager was a woman named Mandisa. If I did get her on the line, what would I say?

Instead, Red Eye and I prepared my paperwork as an official Denny's shopper, one of those fake customers employed by the company to go around and check up on the restaurant's service and smiles. I left the house just after midnight with a stack of business cards, evaluation forms, a handheld stopwatch, a clipboard and a letter from headquarters verifying the credentials of one Peter Clark, my new alias. I doubted if anyone used handheld stopwatches any more but it felt real official.

I started with Fruitvale Denny's, out near the freeway. I wasn't the least bit hungry but I ordered a stack of silver dollar pancakes. The waitress, a young, blonde collegiate type was tweaking. Even though only three tables were occupied, she couldn't stop wiping surfaces and putting coffee packs and sugar bowls in precise little rows. The pancakes weren't hot enough and were only about the size of a quarter. I felt short-changed. After I'd mopped up the last of the blueberry syrup, I motioned the waitress to the table. She slid the bill under my coffee saucer and started to move away.

“Excuse me,” I said, “is there a night manager I could speak to?”

“Was there something wrong, sir?” she asked. “I can bring more pancakes if you want. No charge. Just don't say anything to him. I've already had a warning.”

“No, nothing wrong at all. I'm actually a shopper employed by head office. I just reviewed your performance and I wanted to tell the manager how excellent everything was.”

I showed her my stopwatch and the evaluation form attached to the clipboard. Not a computer but she looked impressed. I invited her to glance at the all the check marks in the “excellent” column.

“You only faltered in not removing all the extra side plates,” I told her. “Minor, but something to work on.”

“That's great,” she said reaching over to wipe the table one more time. “I need something to go right in my life. I flunked my geology midterm today. All I need now is to lose my job.”

She sped off to the kitchen and came back with a middle-aged white guy in a cheap white shirt and an even cheaper blue tie. His tie clasp had a “D” inside a pancake, an icon for Denny's I guess.

I stood up as he approached.

“Hello, sir,” I said. “I'm Peter Clark with Quali-Serv Associates. I'm a shopper contracted by your company. I wanted to inform you that everything was excellent. I'm not supposed to reveal my work, but when performance is outstanding, I believe it merits recognition, instant recognition.”

I paused to scrutinize my stopwatch.

“Your waitress was here within forty-five seconds of my sitting down. The food arrived three minutes and thirty-seven seconds after order completion. And your waitress” I added, stealing a glance at her name tag, “Charlene, never stopped cleaning and prepping. She's fabulous.”

“Thank you, Mr. Clark,” he replied. Two decades ago he might have been a high school football star. Lots of pancakes and more than a few beers had intervened since then. He blushed a little with my praise, as if I was a cheerleader admiring his biceps.

“Are you the regular night manager?” I asked