Fretful, she got to her feet, dropping the book on her chair, moving Vernon over on to her hip. He would have preferred to talk with her without Vernon, but he realized it would be pushing his luck to try for that, so he just led the way through the cooing mamas out the door, down the hall, and on down to the kitchen doorway, where he stopped, because the grandmother was in there, seated at the kitchen table, reading an astrology magazine.
Goody turned back. ‘We’ll talk here,’ he said, keeping his voice low, and moving so he’d be out of the grandmother’s sight, away from the doorway.
Maryenne was burning with curiosity and worry: ‘What is it, Goody? Come on.’
‘Brandon,’ he said. ‘Him and two other guys, they just bust outa the jail.’
She stared at him. She didn’t seem to know how to react, except to stare at his face, as though to memorize it. Even Vernon stopped his usual gnawing on his fist to look at Goody, his expression thoughtful and a little skeptical.
‘Maryenne? You hear what I said?’
‘It was that man,’ she said. She sounded awed.
He frowned at her. ‘What man?’
‘Chili Greebs brought him around,’ she said. Chili Greebs owned a bar not far from here, was in and out of different kinds of businesses. She said, ‘A white man. Chili said he was all right, and I was supposed to pass on a message to Brandon when I visited, that there was a white man in there with him named Kasper that he could trust.’
‘Huh,’ Goody said.
‘But I thought it was just to help each other in there,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know they meant this.’
Goody said, ‘You know what it means, don’t you?’
‘They’re gonna kill him.’ she whispered.
‘Waddaya mean, kill him?’ Goody demanded. ‘That’s not what’s gonna happen.’
‘They’re gonna hunt him down,’ she whispered, ‘and they’re gonna kill him.’ Her eyes were filling.
‘No, but that’s why I come here,’ Goody told her. ‘Cause we can help. You and me, with you and me on the case, they’re never gonna find him.’
Finally he had her attention. Frowning, she said, ‘What do you mean, you and me?’
‘Where’s he gonna come?’ Goody asked her. ‘He’s gonna need help now, lie low, get out of this state, probly get outa the whole country, get to Mexico, South America, somewhere. He can’t do that on his own, and who’s he gonna turn to? His favorite sister, that’s who. There’s no place else he’s gonna turn.’
She thought about it. ‘He’ll call,’ she decided. ‘He won’t come here, because they’d catch him, but he’ll call.’
‘And that’s when,’ Goody said, ‘you send him to me.’
‘To you? Why to you?’
‘Don’t you think the cops’re gonna be keepin an eye on you? Don’t you think they know who you are, where you are? But you’re right, Brandon’s gonna call, and when he does, you send him to me, cause the cops don’t know about me,and we can work it out together.’
She was frowning again. She said, ‘Why you wanna do that?’
‘ ‘Cause I always liked old Brandon,’ he told her. ‘And I always liked you. And I was playing with my police scanners, and I heard the first report, so I know I’m ahead of the news here, and you and me can plot and plan before anybody else even knowsanything.’
She nodded, thinking about it. Then she said, ‘It’s for sure, now. He broke out.’
‘It’ll be on the news,’ he told her, ‘the first anybody else knows about it. It’ll be on the news. What time is it? Half an hour, it’ll be on the news.’
‘Poor Brandon,’ she said.
‘He’ll call you, you know he will.’
Slowly she nodded. ‘Yes, he will.’
‘And you send him to me. Maryenne? You send him to me.’
‘All right,’ she said.
‘Good.’
‘Thank you, Goody,’ she said.
‘Oh, I knew I had to do it,’ he assured her. ‘Soon as I heard that police report, I knew I had to be on hand, I had to help old Brandon somehow.’
Yes, and by then, for certain sure, there would be a very nice reward out on good old Brandon’s head.
4
The class was called Low Impact Rhythm and was theoretically a preliminary for classes in ballroom dancing, but was actually merely an exercise class with slower music. In addition to Brenda, there were eleven other students here this evening, nine women and two men, and of them all, if she did say so herself, she was the youngest, the fittest, and the cutest. She didn’t needto take some flab off her ass, like that one over there, or learn not to move like an elephant on downers, like that one over there. Watching herself in the side-wall mirror, echoing herself echoing the instructor, a whippet-thin black man in black leotards, she knew she was already at what this class was supposed to move you toward.
