one night, ripping out Buckie’s eyes and kicking them up his ass so far he’s staring at what he had for dinner?”
“Yeah. You ever think about stuff like that?”
“Never.”
“That’s good. I’ve got to head home. My ass is worn out.” He slipped on his jacket, tossed a few bills on the table, walked to the door. He turned and came back.
“What now?” I said to Harry’s looming form, hands in his pockets.
“You know if you ever lit into a guy like that you could kiss your job good-bye.”
“I know, Harry.”
“Good.”
He turned away. Paused. Turned back around.
“Your job would be gone in an hour, Carson. No, a finger snap.”
“I realize that, bro.”
“I know,” he sighed. “I’m just making sure I do.”
CHAPTER 19
I slept some that night. It was between four-fifteen and five-forty-five, I think. The rest of the time I stared at pictures forming and re-forming on my shadowed ceiling. Listened to words tumbling through the darkened air.
She’ll betray you. They always betray us, don’t they?
The words were my brother’s words, Jeremy. He was, by all measures of the human mind, insane. Driven mad by our father’s relentless punishments and beatings, Jeremy had at age sixteen killed our father. Over the years he had killed five women. In his twisted mind he was avenging himself on our mother for never protecting him.
But she was blameless, little more than a child herself. It was the three of us against my father, a trio of Chihuahuas caged with a rabid Doberman.
Jeremy was incarcerated at an institution west of Montgomery. I was a hesitant visitor every four months on average. Last year I had taken Dani with me to visit Jeremy. He hated women, and the visit had not gone well, ending with him forecasting that my relationship with Dani would end in betrayal.
His senses were uncanny. Had he seen something I had not? Or was it just his usual antifemale ranting?
I had planned on visiting my brother soon, was overdue by a month, in fact. But when he would ask, as he always did, How’s your little love-muffin, Carson? Has she betrayed you yet? I did not want to admit the truth: that she had tried me for a year, found me wanting, and had taken up with a man who could deliver her the world wrapped in silk and served with champagne.
I decided to postpone my visit this time around. Take a break from Jeremy. He wasn’t going anywhere.
I stumbled from bed at six, turned on NPR, and fixed coffee. Figuring I needed the caffeine, I used four tablespoons per cup, drank four cups, buzzed off to the department.
Harry showed up with a half dozen ham biscuits, correctly figuring I hadn’t eaten. We chomped biscuits and shuffled through phone slips from the previous day, hoping for points of gold glittering in the mud. Harry read a slip, reread it. Snicked it with a fingernail.
“Something here, maybe. Lemme make a call.”
Harry got up and went to the conference room to phone, returning a call to a snitch. When we told a snitch no one was listening as they talked, we told the truth. Maybe it didn’t mean much, but that’s the way we played it.
Harry was back a minute later, eyebrows raised.
“You know Leroy Dinkins?” he asked.
I searched my memory and saw nothing but an amorphous blob wriggling in a doorway. It took me a second to realize my mind was showing me Leroy.
“Met him once when I was in uniform,” I said. “A shoplifting beef. Leroy got stuck when he tried to run out the back door of a grocery downtown, the back door a lot smaller than the front. He was about eighteen, if I recall.”
“That’s blubber butt himself,” Harry said, scowling at the slip. “I got this snitch hangs with Leroy Dinkins sometimes. He says Leroy was cadging drinks at a bar named Lucky’s when a guy looking like our drawing comes in. They talk in private, the hairball leaves. Suddenly Leroy’s ordering from his own pocket.”
“The hairball gave Leroy some money,” I said.
“That’s the way my snitch saw it.”
“Why’d your snitch tattle on his buddy Dinkins?”
Harry laughed. “Leroy drank all night and didn’t buy anyone else a single pop. My snitch got pissed off, dropped the dime.”
“Leroy should learn to share,” I said. “You know where bubble butt lives?”
“With his mama.” Harry grinned. “Where else?”
Leroy Dinkins was easy to spot: a hulking mass on a porch. Harry knew Dinkins better than I did, filling me in as we drifted into a space in front of Dinkins’s house, a tiny frame bungalow.
“Leroy’s the original fraidy-cat, Carson. Placid, flaccid, and lazy-assed. Hangs at the edge of the street scene, too lily-livered to get in any serious trouble. Scared to death of doing time.”
I nodded. There were guys in the can who’d rather see a fat guy than a slim woman. Harry continued his assessment. “Leroy’s not real bright, but he’s all over the hood, and he’s got two big fat ears that suck up information that he sells. Who’s got the best reefer, where the upmarket hookers hang. He’s less a doer than a connector.”
“How should we approach him, bro?”
“Like he’s about twelve years old.”
Dinkins was testing the limits of a lounge chair, lying back. He wore a kinte cloth-pattern shirt the size of a bedspread over voluminous jeans and orange plastic flip-flops. He tensed as we pulled to the curb, looked stricken when we headed up the sidewalk.
“Howdy, Leroy, remember me?” I asked. “Here’s a hint, the front half of you was outside Packy’s EZ Mart, the back half was inside.”
“Dunno what you talkin’ about.”
Leroy Dinkins was sucking a forty of Coors Light and nearing the bottom of an industrial-size bag of cheese puffs. A wide circle around his mouth was orange with cheese-puff dust, like clown makeup.
Harry gave Leroy the hard eye. “Rumor has it you were at a joint called Lucky’s a few days back.”
“So wha’? I go to Lucky’s two-three times a week. They got good po’ boys and cheese fries.”
“Plus Lucky’s has wide doors, right?” Harry said.
“Why you botherin’ me? Bein’ nasty and all?”
Harry leaned close. “We’re looking for a guy. You might remember him, looks like King Kong maybe? Face that’s all fur.”
Dinkins pushed himself up from the chair, the Goodyear blimp filled with Jell-O and struggling to get aloft.
“I got to go inside and fix my mama’s supper. She has to eat same time every day.”
I stepped between him and the door. “Come on, Leroy, you’re not in a jam. Did you sell this guy something?”
“I don’t know nobody look like that,” he whined. “I gotta go inside.”
The door pushed open behind me and bumped my ass. I turned to a petite woman in her sixties wearing horn-rim glasses, the frames adorned with rhinestones. She was leaning on a cane. I figured she’d been behind the door trying to hear our conversation.
“Leroy, you didn’t tell me you had company.”
