that Bobo had an ex-girlfriend that worked there. He didn’t expect that Bobo would be hanging around an ex, but he was wrong.
Ora, Bobo’s girlfriend, was working serving drinks.
When Whisper asked her about Bobo, she just shrugged and gestured toward a corner with her jaw.
At the corner table sat a big man, a very big man. His shoulders sagged, and all you could see was the top of his uncombed head. The quart pitcher looked like a mug in his large hand.
Whisper and I went to his table. I tried to keep abreast of 289
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my new friend, but when we got to within six feet of Bobo, my legs just stopped moving.
Seeing our shadows in his beer, Bobo looked up. His brutal face seemed damaged somehow.
“What?” he whined.
“Bobo Handsome?” Whisper asked.
“Yeah? What you want?”
“Like to buy you a drink,” Whisper said.
I liked the style. I had to remember to use it the next time I wanted to grill somebody.
“Sure,” Bobo said, waving his hand at us.
Whisper ordered a fifth of whiskey and three glasses. Ora, Bobo’s ex-girlfriend, frowned when she received the order, but she kept quiet.
Whisper introduced himself and so did I. We traded shots for a while and discussed baseball. I don’t know a thing about baseball. I knew about the Negro Leagues, but if you asked me what they actually did on the field, I wouldn’t have been able to answer.
But Whisper knew. He seemed to know a little something about everything. Bobo got drunker, and angry, but he wasn’t mad at us.
“You evah have a friend that you really love?” Bobo asked me at one point.
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “I guess.”
“You talkin’ ’bout Tremont?” Whisper asked.
It was the first time I’d heard that name, but I knew from the context that he was the fat man that Three Hearts had killed.
“What you know ’bout Tremont?” Bobo asked, half rising from his chair.
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“Nuthin’,” Whisper said innocently. “I just heard that the cops fount his body. Somebody had shot him in the gut.”
The violence in Bobo’s demeanor melted into grief. Tears sprouted from his eyes, and his hands grasped at nothing.
Ora, who was a small dark-skinned woman, came over and put her hands on his oxlike shoulders. Her face wasn’t beautiful, but the feeling she held for him was.
“Leave him alone,” she told us. “Cain’t you see he’s hurtin’?”
“You want us to leave, Bobo?” Whisper asked.
“No, man. Go on, Ora. These here my friends.”
“You don’t even know these niggahs,” she answered. “They buy you a drink an’ turn your ass ovah.”
“We don’t wanna hurt you, Bobo,” Whisper said, and I realized that in order to be a detective you had to be cruel while seeming to be kind.
“Go on, Ora,” Bobo said. “I ain’t no fool.”
“Fuck you, then,” Ora said to all of us.
She stormed away to be consoled by three or four other bar-maids.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Whisper said.
What amazed me about Whisper was how simple and yet elegant his approach was at this point. If I were trying to get information out of Bobo I would have tried to fool him by making up a dozen lies. Whisper just told one lie and then soaked it in whiskey.
“I tell you one thing,” Bobo said. “Don’t evah put yo’ trust in no light-skin, light-eyed, high-yellah niggah. Mothahfuckah done made Tremont’s chirren orphans, an’ he won’t even let up on a dime. Wouldn’t shed a tear ovah his own.”
He said some other things, but I don’t remember what. I let him go on for a while and then I told Whisper that I had to go 291
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see my uncle. I explained to Bobo that my uncle had tuberculosis and needed help around his house.
Bobo told me to make sure that he drank a lot of milk. Milk was good for TB.
I thanked him and ordered another bottle of booze. I figured if he got drunk enough he wouldn’t be able to get in the way of my plans.
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Wh i s p e r d r o p p e d m e o f f at my bookstore. I hadn’t told him a thing about what I’d 45 learned.
