“She been payin’ my bills for a long time, Easy. Don’t matter what I like.”
It takes a woman to make a man. That’s what my cousin Rames used to say. I never knew what he really meant until that moment.
“So what is it you need from me, Jackson?”
“You remember that answerin’ machine I hooked up for that numbers thing?”
“You mean when those white gangsters were tryin’ to kill you?” I asked. “You mean the reason you livin’ in Santa Monica today? So they don’t find you and shoot you in the back’a your head?”
“Yeah,” he said, giving me the evil eye. “I wanna put that machine on your office phone.”
“Why?”
“I gave your number for a reference. I said that your number was for the office of Tyler Office Machines. I said that I fixed your cash registers and time clocks.”
And there it was again. Jackson couldn’t fly straight down if you threw him off a cliff. He could have gotten a job as a filing clerk or a secretary and worked his way up to the computer room. But that wasn’t how he operated. Get in quick, burn down everything, and then run like hell—that was Jackson’s way.
“Sure,” I said. “I’d be happy to.”
I even smiled.
Jackson didn’t like it. He was ready to give me some long sob story about how we both owed so much to Jewelle and how he was finally trying to settle down and use his mind. He wasn’t used to me saying yes without an argument.
“What’s up, Easy?” he asked cautiously.
“Let’s wait till after dinner,” I said. “Then we can go down and put in your machine and maybe you could do a little something for me.”
27
Bonnie and Feather had made short ribs roasted in a spicy Jamaican sauce. They also served rice with some red beans mixed in and collard greens cooked with kale, onions, and salt pork. There were corn muffins to soak up the juices and for dessert we had Feather’s favorite: strawberry Jell-O made with a cup of melted ice cream folded in.
Like most naturally thin men Jackson had a good appetite. He took thirds on everything and would have kept on eating if I hadn’t pulled him out of his chair.
I kissed my weepy daughter good-bye and asked Bonnie to tell Jesus if he called that I expected to see him by the next day.
“OKAY, EASY, WHAT kinda trouble you in?” Jackson said when we were less than a block from my house.
I could have tortured him but with Harold on the streets I didn’t have the leisure to act coy. I told him the whole story starting from the time I helped Musa Tanous prove that he hadn’t killed the beautiful teenager Jackie Jay.
“And the cops didn’t believe you up until this new woman got killed?” was Jackson’s response.
“It’s only one cop believe me now,” I said. “It’s just the three of us if you wanna help.”
“Me? What can I do, Easy?”
“Talk to me, Jackson. Talk to me. You one’a the only men I know can talk about the streets with me. I mean Mouse knows the street but he only knows one way.”
“That sounds like what you would want with a man like this here Harold,” Jackson said. “Mouse would do what’s right in a situation like that.”
“I got to find the man first.”
Jackson nodded and sat back in his seat. Then he scratched his left ear with a baby finger and I knew he was applying his mind to my problem.
I was so upset about Harold and the riots and the sweet sugar talk of Juanda that there wasn’t much room in my head for logical thought. I wanted to use Jackson as a kind of a jump start.
We got to my office and installed his answering gizmo. It was a big box that he wired directly to the jack. If the phone rang, it picked up after the third ring and gave out a prerecorded message.
Jackson wrote a little speech for me to give and I did it without any Texas or Louisiana in my voice. After that Jackson put his feet up on the edge of a small trash can and grabbed the back of his neck with both hands.
“What you think about these riots, Easy?” he asked, beating me to the punch.
“I don’t know.”
“Me neither. Me neither. I just cain’t see how people gonna get out in the street and waste that much energy when all you gonna get is some scratched-up shit don’t even match the carpet on yo’ floors.”
“It was more than that, man,” I said. “It’s hot and they been sittin’ on our necks forever.”
“I don’t see nobody sittin’ on our necks, Easy.” Jackson looked around, indicating that it was just him and me in the room.
“No? Did they ever send a letter to your mama’s farm askin’ you to go to college and say that they’d be happy to pay for your courses?”
“’Course not.”
“Did your teachers tell you that you were the smartest kid in school and you need to go to college?”
