when I went to see him. Christ, what a piece she is. Tattoos, greasy hair, body like a scarecrow. She gave me the creeps.”
Runyon asked, “He still have ties to anyone in Bakersfield?”
“Not that I know about. He wouldn’t’ve gone back there, if that’s what you’re thinking. He hated growing up there; we both did.”
“What do you think, then, Mr. Madison? Is he running or hiding out somewhere locally?”
“I can’t answer that. Troy’s not smart; he’s just cunning-and so messed up on drugs there’s no telling what he might do.”
Runyon laid one of his business cards on the desk. “Let me know if he contacts you for any reason.”
“I don’t think so,” Madison said. “I help you catch him and he finds out, Arletta and I will be the ones to suffer when he gets out of prison. I hope to Christ none of us ever sees his ugly face again.”
5
TAMARA
Vonda’s brother James was a partner in a construction company called Three Brothers. Specialized in home repair for black home owners and landlords in Bayview-Hunters Point, the Fillmore, and other parts of the city. In the last couple of years Three Brothers Construction had expanded their operation, moved to a bigger location, and started bidding on small developments of new houses both inside and outside the city. James was the smartest of the three, the driving force behind the expansion. Natural-born hustler and promoter, so he ran the white-collar end of the business while his two partners did the blue-collar work.
Back in his high school days in Redwood City, James had run with a bunch of local gangbangers hooked in with an even tougher crowd in East Palo Alto. Got into heavy stuff for a while-drugs, using and selling both, and Tamara had heard rumors of weapons dealing and strong-arm robberies. What had straightened him up was watching a shotgun blast blow off most of his best friend’s face during a drug deal gone sour. Standing right next to the dude when it went down, took some of the blast himself and spent a week in the hospital. There hadn’t been enough evidence to charge him with anything, so he came out free and clear-with a whole new attitude. Changed his life around. Found some new, nonviolent friends to hang with, got himself a construction job, learned the trade, then hooked up with his two partners and started Three Brothers Construction with a loan from a minority small- business packager.
Funny how things turned out sometimes. Good and bad both. Tamara and Vonda had both been pretty wild themselves, chasing with some rough homies, experimenting with weed and sex, all cornrowed and grunge dressed and party ready. Done the racist thing, too, hating and cussing the white man’s world same as James did. And now here they were ten years later, all three of them living in San Francisco and holding down jobs they would’ve sneered at in their bad-ass days. Tamara partnered with a white man in a detective agency, Vonda a sales rep at the S.F. Design Center, James a damn-near executive in a successful construction outfit. Solid members of the establishment they’d once scorned-a world that still belonged to the white man but that had opened up and changed and was still changing. Any damn thing was possible for an African American or any other minority now. A half-black man being elected president proved that.
Tamara and Vonda had shed the racist bullshit, learned how to get along with people of any color or no color. Not James. He’d escaped the gang jungle and built a good life for himself, but when it came to white folks, the best he’d learned to do was tolerate them. Went off like a rocket when Vonda announced she was pregnant and going to marry Ben Sherman, who was not only white but Jewish besides. Showed up at Ben’s apartment on Tel Hill and got right in his face and tried to warn him off. No way that was gonna happen, a real love match there between those two. Ben had been cool and stayed cool with James. Made a real effort to turn him around. Hadn’t worked, but Ben had gotten further than any other white guy had. James still didn’t approve of the marriage, but he’d shaken Ben’s hand at the wedding and toasted him with a glass of champagne at the reception.
James had had a thing for Tamara in their bad-ass days, but she hadn’t given him any encouragement. Just not her type. He still resented her for the rejection, and the fact that she’d gone into the investigation business hadn’t made him like her any better. She was fuzz to him, not much different from her old man-a detective on the Redwood City PD who’d given James and his gangbangers plenty of grief. Sellouts, the way he saw the Corbins. Oppressors of their own people. And nothing she or Vonda or anybody else said or did was ever likely to change his mind.
So she had to be as cool with James as Ben had been. Not let him goad her into losing her temper. Last time she’d seen him was at the wedding and reception, and he hadn’t said ten words to her that day. Looked right through her most of the time. Well, this wasn’t a social event; this was business-important business. She was a professional, and professionals could get information out of anybody if they handled it right.
Three Brothers Construction’s new home was on Industrial Street, near the 280 and 101 freeway interchange. Tamara closed up the agency early and drove over there, calling first to make sure James would be in. But she didn’t make an appointment or give her name, just told the woman who answered that she was a friend. If James knew she was coming, be just like him to refuse to see her or duck out early himself.
She’d never been to the new place before and she had to admit it was steps up from the old one on 3rd in Hunters Point. Offices at one end of a big warehouse that the brothers had renovated themselves, and an equipment and storage yard that took up half a block. Fifteen full-time employees and twenty more part-timers, plus a handful of subcontractors on the bigger jobs. Mr. James McGee, contractor. Mr. James McGee, capitalist. She’d never have believed it possible, down in Redwood City. Neither would Vonda. And Pop least of all. He’d figured James would end up dead or in prison like so many others.
The business offices were plain and functional; so was Nancy, the office manager. Tamara said she was the friend who’d called and if James wasn’t busy, she’d just go on into his private office and surprise him. He wasn’t busy and Nancy didn’t offer any objections, so in she walked.
James was behind a big messy desk with a batch of blueprints spread out in front of him. He glanced up, then fixed her with a long scowly stare. “Shit,” he said.
“Good to see you, too.”
“I got no time for you. Or any other Oreo.”
“I’m no more white inside than you are.”
“Partner’s a white man, isn’t he? Clients mostly white?”
“None of your disrespect, okay? You work for whites yourself.”
“The hell I do.”
“The hell you don’t. Who you think runs the Franchise Tax Board in Sacramento, the IRS in Washington? Black men?”
Right thing to say. It wiped away the glare and brought a wry little chuckle out of him. He leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands behind his head. Handsome dude, she had to admit, much better looking than he’d been in his grunge days. Lean and mean, thick beard trimmed short, skin smooth as brown silk. Those bushy-browed black eyes had once burned like fire; the heat was still there, but the fire had been banked by time and success. He cleaned up pretty well, too. She remembered his wedding outfit: pin-striped charcoal suit, saffron-colored shirt, pink tie. Dressed more conservatively here on the job-tan sports jacket, open-necked blue shirt-and none of it showed a wrinkle or rumple. No question the new James was a big improvement on the old one.
He said, “So what the hell you doing here?”
“Vonda didn’t tell you about me and Lucas Zeller?”
“We don’t talk much since she married her white Jew.”
“Yeah, well, Lucas and I had a thing a couple of weeks ago.”
“Uh-huh.” James scratched one long finger through his beard, looking at her narrow eyed. “Why’d you hook up with that ugly dude anyway? You that hard up for a man?”
Tamara said between her teeth, “Wasn’t nobody else asking.”
“No surprise there.” But his eyes were on her body, roaming. “Lost some fat around your middle, looks like.”
“That’s right.”
