thumbed down the top of a ballpoint pen.
“I got a kid brother, took the straight road,” said Houston. “Went to one of those good Negro colleges down South, got a government job, owns a house, has a wife and kids… I mean, he did it all right. That could have been my brother got run down in that street. Cut down for nothin’ but his color, you understand?”
“What about the car?” said Vaughn.
“Couple of men brought it in on Monday. Red Galaxie Five Hundred, all messed up in the front.”
“Sixty-three or sixty-four?”
“Sixty-three and a half,” said Houston with a hint of pride.
“And these guys said what?”
“Driver of the Galaxie, little sawed-off, cross-eyed white boy name of Walter Hess. Goes by Shorty? Said he hit a monkey in the street. Was smilin’ about it, too. He was talking about that young brother you described, I expect. “
“Walter Hess,” said Vaughn, writing it down.
“White boy he came in with? Big dude, wears his sleeves rolled high to show his muscles. Last name Stewart. I don’t know what his Christian name is, but he goes by Buzz.”
“They came in two cars.”
“Yeah. This Buzz Stewart was drivin’ a red Belvedere, white hardtop, tricked out with a Max Wedge hood.”
As Vaughn wrote, he felt his face flush with blood. He knew that car. “Tag numbers?”
“I got ’em off the Ford,” said Houston. He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and read the numbers off to Vaughn.
“Anything else?”
“The Belvedere had a name, kind of scripted on its side, you know how them gearheads do.”
“What was the name?”
“Bernadette,” said Houston.
Vaughn closed his eyes and tried to picture the car. He saw it parked beside the garage of the Esso station at Georgia and Piney Branch. He saw the big mechanic, the unfriendly greaser with the sleeves of his uniform shirt rolled up high, gunning the lugs off an Oldsmobile that was up on the lift in the bay.
“Bernadette,” said Vaughn, nodding his head. “I guess this Buzz has a girlfriend, huh?”
“I’d say he’s a Levi Stubbs fan.”
“What’s that?”
“The Four Tops,” said Houston with a small smile. “You listened to the radio the last ten years, you’d know.”
Vaughn shrugged.
“By the way, you overplayed it with that story, too,” said Houston. “You know, about them spray-paintin’
“You didn’t buy it, huh?”
“It was the arrow-pointin’-to-the-body thing that did it. Too complicated for those two.”
“I guess I took it too far.”
“Thing was, you had me goin’ without it.”
“Thanks, Lawrence.” Vaughn reached across the bench and shook Houston’s hand. “You did right.”
Houston drove off in his Dart GT. Vaughn killed his Schlitz, flicked his smoke out the open window, and walked to a phone booth in the corner of the lot.
TWENTY-FIVE
STRANGE STOOD ON the landing of the second floor of Lula Bacon’s row house, knocking on her apartment door. He wore his black leather car coat over gray slacks and a charcoal shirt, his service revolver in a holster clipped onto the belt line of the slacks. His badge was in the pocket of his coat.
“Yeah?” she said from behind the door.
“Lula Bacon?”
“Who’s askin’?”
“I’m a police officer.”
“You got some identification?”
Strange badged the peephole, which had darkened in the door.
“What’s this about?”
“Open the door, Miss Bacon.”
“You don’t look like no police.”
“You need to open this door right now.”
“Or what?”
“Or I come back with the welfare man,” said Strange. “He’s gonna be real interested in your lifestyle, I expect.”
Strange knew nothing about her lifestyle, but his limited experience told him that this was an effective way to gain entry. He heard a chain sliding off a catch and the turn of a dead bolt.
Strange had been to James Hayes’s place on Otis first, but Hayes was not in. Morning had become noon. He was due in at work for his four-to-midnight. He had decided to stop calling Dolittle and work this himself. What he was doing wasn’t procedure. It was beyond his duty limit and probably illegal. But he felt he was running out of time.
The door opened. A petite woman wearing a short navy blue shift stood in the frame. She had shapely legs and hips. She had big eyes accentuated by dark makeup, large hoop earrings, and store- done hair. A glass of amber-colored liquor over ice was loose in her hand. She smelled of whiskey and cigarettes. Bacon looked like a sloppy Diana Ross.
Strange did not move to go inside. “I’m lookin’ for Alvin Jones.”
“He ain’t in. I don’t expect him back, neither.”
“Any idea where he went to?”
“No idea,” she said lazily, leaning her figure into the door. A baby cried from far back in the apartment.
“He’s got another girlfriend, right?” said Strange, unconcerned with diplomacy or her feelings.
“That ain’t news.”
“Maybe he moved back in with her.”
“So?”
“You know her name or where she stay at?”
Bacon shrugged and drank off some of her liquor.
“Well?”
“I don’t know nothin’.”
“You lyin’, I’m gonna come back.”
“Big man,” said Bacon, looking him over, “you can come back anytime, even if I’m tellin’ the truth.”
“I’m spoken for,” said Strange.
