“To make it waterproof inside and out,” he said. “That’s what the book says to do. That way if water gets inside it won’t rot.”
His face was the color of a medium tea; his features were closer to the Mayans than to me. He had deeper roots than the American Constitution in our soil. Neither of my children were of my blood, but that didn’t make me love them less. Jesus was a mute victim of sex abuse when I found him. Feather’s own grandfather had killed her mother in a parking lot.
“I got a lot to do the next few days, son,” I said. “Could you keep close to home for Feather?”
“Can I have a friend come over?”
“Who?”
“Cindy Needham.”
“Your girlfriend?”
Jesus turned his attention back to the frame. He could still be a mute when he wanted to be.
* * *
I MIGHT HAVE CLOSED my eyes sometime during the night, but I certainly didn’t fall asleep. I kept seeing Raymond in that alley, again and again, being shot down while saving my life. At just about the same time John F. Kennedy was assassinated, but I never mourned our slain president. The last time I saw Mouse, his lifeless body was being taken to the hospital with a blanket covering his wounds.
TITO’S WAS A RECTANGULAR BUILDING raised high on cinder blocks. The inside had one long counter with two tables at the far end. Only one of the tables had an occupant. I would have bet the .38-caliber pistol in my pocket that that man was Emile Lund.
More than anything he looked like an evolved fish. There were wrinkles that went across his forehead and down along his balding temples. His eyes bulged slightly and his small mouth had pouting, sensual lips. His chin was almost nonexistent, and his hands were big. His shoulders were massive, so even though he looked like a cartoon, I doubted if anyone treated him that way.
The fish-man had been making notes in a small journal, but when I opened the door he looked up. He kept his eyes on me until I was standing at his table.
“Lund?” I asked. “I’m Alexander.”
“Do I know you?”
“You wanna talk business or you wanna talk shit?” I said.
He laughed and held his big fins out in a gesture of apology.
“Come on, man. Don’t be so sensitive. Sit down,” Lund said. “I know your rep. You’re a man who makes money. And it’s money makes my car go.
“Mona,” Lund said to the woman behind the counter.
She was wearing a tight black dress that probably looked good on her twenty years before. Now it was just silly, like her brittle blond-dyed hair, her deep red lipstick, and all the putty pressed into the lines of her face and neck.
She waited for a bit, just to show that she didn’t jump the minute someone called her name, and then walked over to our table. “Yeah?” the waitress said.
“What’s your pleasure, Mr. Alexander?” Lund inquired.
“Scrambled eggs with raw onions on ’em, and a bottle of Tabasco sauce on the side.” It was Mouse’s favorite breakfast.
The waitress went away to pass my order on to the cook. Lund made a final note in his small journal, and then put the book away in a breast pocket.
“So, Mr. Alexander,” he said. “You wanna play cards.”
“I’m gonna play cards,” I assured him. “I need a little seed money and some insurance against Roke Williams and the cops.”
“From what I hear about you, you never buy insurance,” the fish said.
“Man gets older he gets a little more conservative, smarter—you know.”
The fish smiled at me, tending more toward shark than sardine. I took it in stride. After all, I wasn’t the moderate custodian/landlord Easy Rawlins, I was the crazy killer Raymond Alexander. I was dangerous. I was bad. Nobody and nothing scared me.
The waitress came over with my eggs. I doused them with the hot sauce and shoveled them down.
“When do I get to see your game?” Lund asked me.
“Tonight if you want.”
“Where?”
“We got a garage over on Florence.” I took a slip of paper from my pocket and put it on the table. “That’s the address.”
“What time?”
“Nine-thirty would be too early. But anytime after that.” My eggs were gone. I never liked raw onions and eggs before but I loved them right then. “You could sit in if you wanted to.”
“Maybe so,” he said. “Maybe so.”
