“Sons love their fathers,” I said. “He set up Tilly. Did a good job of it too. Even if his cousin would have said that he got the money from Ed, Oliphant would have never believed it.”
“But he didn’t think his father would have killed him,” Amiee said.
“He wasn’t thinkin’ about what would happen at all,” I said. “Only how he could make his father as mad as he was.”
Soon after that we’d finished the wipe-down.
“Put this somewhere down in the basement and leave it there for a day,” I told her. “Then bring it back up here. Get a few prints on it. Call the cops and tell ’em you found it looking for your husband’s legal papers.”
“Okay.” She was looking into my eyes. “Stay with me tonight.”
“I can’t.”
“It’s because I been with so many men,” she said. “You think I’m some kind’a whore.”
“No.” I put my hand on her side. “I think you saved my heart from turnin’ back to stone.”
“What?”
“That’s why I’m helpin’ you. Because you gave me somethin’ and you didn’t even know it.”
I kissed her for a moment longer than I should have but then I leaned back.
“Thank you,” I said.
“HI, DADDY,” Feather said, as I came out of the bedroom the next morning.
She was all dressed for school in a green outfit and brown shoes. She looked taller.
“Baby.”
“You better?”
“Better than what?”
“You not nervous no more?”
I remembered our talk and sat next to her at the breakfast table.
“Yeah, baby,” I said. “I’m better. It was just that I was jealous that Bonnie goes all over the world and meets such wonderful people.”
“And you wisht that you could go?” Feather asked.
“No. I was wanting her to stay home and not have anybody but us as friends.”
“But she can’t do that because, because that’s her job.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
“Everybody got to do their job,” Feather added.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, and Feather giggled and kissed me.
Gray-Eyed Death
ACAR DOOR SLAMMED on the street somewhere but it didn’t mean anything to me. I was at home drinking lemonade from the fruit of my own trees on a Saturday in L.A. Nobody was after me. My slate was clean. Bonnie had gone out with her friend Shirley, Jesus was taking sailing lessons near Redondo Beach, and Feather had gone down the street to her little boyfriend’s house, a shy red-headed child named Henry Hopkins.
Just four weeks before I would have spent my solitary time wondering if I should ask Bonnie to be my bride. But she had spent a weekend on the island of Madagascar with a man named Jogaye Cham. He was the son of an African prince born in Senegal while I was raised a poor black orphan.
Bonnie swore that the time they spent together was platonic but that didn’t mean much to me. A man who expected to be a king, who was working to liberate and empower a whole continent, wanted Bonnie by his side.
How could I compete with that?
How could she wake up next to me year after year, getting older while I made sure the toilets at Sojourner Truth Junior High School were disinfected? How could she be satisfied with a janitor when a man who wanted to change the world was calling her name?
Sharp footsteps on concrete followed the slamming door.
Bonnie had made my life work perfectly for a while. She never worried about my late-night meetings or when I went out for clues to the final fate of my old friend Mouse. I knew he was dead but I needed to hear it from the woman who saw him die. EttaMae admitted that she buried him in a nameless grave.
The footsteps ended at my door. They were the footsteps of a small man. I expected Jackson Blue to appear. Maybe he wanted my advice about his crazy love affair with Jewelle now that Mofass was dead. Or maybe he had some scheme he wanted to run past me. Either way it would be better than moping around, wishing that my woman wasn’t born to be a queen.
The knocking was soft and unhurried. Whoever it was, he, or she, was in no rush.
When I pulled the door open I was looking too high, above the man’s head. And then I saw him.
He pushed me aside and went past saying, “If it wasn’t for ugly, Easy, I woulda never even seen you again.”
