“What about JJ?”
“You remember when you brought me over her house last year, when I was in trouble with them gangsters?”
“Yeah? What about it?”
Jackson’s shrug was as damning as a signed confession.
“You and her?” I asked.
Just before Mouse had been shot I brought Jackson to my real estate agent’s home in Laurel Canyon. His name was Mofass. Mofass lived with what we called an almost-in-law, Jewelle MacDonald. She was barely more than a third of his age but she loved him and ran his business since emphysema slowed him down.
Jackson had been in trouble because he was competing with the mob for the numbers game in Watts. He had information I needed so we traded favors: a foolproof hideout for some names and addresses.
“After it was all over,” Jackson said, “I went back up there. She told me that Equity Realty had a relationship with another company that manages that apartment I got on Ozone.”
“And then she brought you some groceries?” I asked.
“She was just lettin’ stuff off, you know. Then we started talkin’. She told me that she was brought up a Catholic in Texas. You know, fish on Fridays an’ like that. I told her that the whole philosophical structure of the Catholic Church was based on Aristotle hundreds of years before Christ was even born. You know I said it just to fuck with her head. She just told me that I was crazy but the next time I saw her she must have been to the library or something, because she knew about Plato and Socrates and them, and she wanted me to explain what I had said.”
I sighed. Jackson was winding up into a story. Most other times I would have cut him off but I let him go on because I didn’t really want him to get to the point. I was in no hurry to go into the world where men got shot down in the street for doing their friends a favor.
“So,” Jackson continued, “I read her the riot act on Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. You know, you’n me talked about all that stuff ten years ago, more.”
“Uh-huh,” I grunted. “So what?”
“I figured out up at her house that she liked talkin’ about books and shit. But I didn’t know that it got her hot. I never met a black woman who got hot over a man’s book knowledge.”
I wanted to tell him that he didn’t know my girlfriend, Bonnie Shay, but I thought better of it.
“So what, Jackson? Mofass can’t hardly leave the house. I guess if JJ wants a boyfriend, it’s okay.”
“It’s not that, man,” Jackson said. “I mean Jewelle made it plain from the start that she ain’t never gonna leave Mofass. She wants to be with me. She lets me stay in that apartment and helps me out if I need it. But I cain’t call her up at the house or stay with her the whole night because she got to get back up there to the canyon and take care’a him.”
“So you’re kinda like a married man’s girlfriend on the side,” I said, cracking a smile in spite of my trepidations.
“Laugh if you want to, man. But once I figure out the binary language of machines I’ll be inside them computers and you’ll be out in the cold.”
“What’s the problem, Jackson?”
“Clovis.”
Another name, another universe of danger.
“What about her?”
“Really it ain’t her. Or maybe it is,” Jackson speculated.
“What, Jackson? What you tryin’ t’say?”
“Misty Stubbs.”
“Who’s that?”
“She’s Jewelle’s half-sister on her dead daddy’s side.”
“Yeah? So?”
“Jewelle’s been writin’ to Misty down in Texas all these years since she been up here. She been askin’ Misty to come up but the girl got married when she was fifteen and had to stay with her husband. You know, like it should be. Anyway, I guess her and the husband started not gettin’ along a while back and Misty finally decided to come out here. We went down to Greyhound and everything but she didn’t show up.”
“But she said she was comin’?”
“Give us the schedule and everything.”
“Did JJ call her house in Dallas?”
“How could she do that, man? Misty was leavin’ her husband.”
“Maybe Misty changed her mind.”
“They closer than full sisters is, Easy. Misty wouldn’t do somethin’ like that and not say.”
“Well what do you want from me?” I said. “Girl got on a bus or she didn’t. Maybe her husband stopped her. Maybe she got pulled off somewhere on the road. Either way it’s the kinda story you tell to the cops.”
“But I didn’t say about Clovis yet,” Jackson said.
