”You federal?“ Violet said. ”I ain’t seen you around.“
”I’m not anything,“ I said. ”Just a guy looking to buy some information.“
”Well, I hope you got a license for that piece on your right hip then.“
Violet paid attention to detail. ”Okay.“ I took a card from my breast pocket and gave it to him. ”I’m a private cop.
From Boston. But I’m still buying information.“
”Baaahston.“ Violet laughed. ”Shit. What Donna do, steal some beans?“
”No, she stole some teenybopper clothes from a ladies’ dress shop and I think you’re wearing some of them.“
Violet laughed again. ”Hey, man, you want me to dress like one of you tight-assed honkies?“ He slapped one hand down on the hood of the Cadillac and whooped with laughter.
”Look at that little mother-loving Buster Brown suit. Shit.“
Tears were forming in his eyes.
”Look, Violet,“ I said. ”I didn’t come down here to write a sonnet about your Easter bonnet. How about I buy you a beer and we talk a little?“
”Yeah, why not, man? You said something about buying information?“
We went in the Casa Grande and sat at the bar. There was a Mets game on television down the bar. The bartender, a middle-aged man in a clean white shirt who looked like Gilbert Roland, came down and wiped the bar off in front of us.
”What’ll it be, gentlemen?“ he asked, looking carefully at a spot between my head and Violet’s.
”Two drafts,“ I said.
Violet said, ”Be cool, Hec, he’s okay. We just talking a little business.“
The bartender looked at me then. ”Okay, Violet,“ he said and drew the beers.
Violet took his hat off. His head was stark bald and smooth. ”Hec figured you for fuzz too. I hope you don’t think you working in disguise, man.“
I shook my head. ”You either,“ I said. Violet whooped again.
”What you want to know, man?“
I took out my picture of Donna Burlington and showed it to Violet. ”Know her eight years younger?“
”You mentioned buying. How much you buying for?“
”Fifty bucks.“
”That’s not much bread, man.“
”You don’t have to work very hard for it,“ I said. ”It’ll cover your next tankful in that brontosaurus out front.“
Violet nodded, drank half his beer, and said, ”Yeah, I remember Donna. Remembered her when you said her name.“
”Tell me about her.“
”A shit kicker,“ Violet said. ”Come from somewhere out in the woods. Real young when she worked for me.
Worked for me maybe six months.“
”How’d you meet her?“
”Her boyfriend was pimping her on my turf, man. I chased him off and she stayed with me.“
”She have any choice?“
Violet grinned. ”Not in this neighborhood, man.“
”How come you remember her so well?“
”She was white, man. Most of my chicks are black.“
”What happened to her?“
Violet shrugged. ”Moved uptown, fancy stuff, appointment only.“ He finished the beer. The bartender brought us two more without being asked.
”She work on her own?“
”Naw, she work for another broad, a madame, baby.
Very classy. Probably screwed only Baaahston dudes, dig?“
And again the whooping laugh.
”Can you give me the name?“
”I can get it, but that’s extra.“
”Another fifty?“
