I stayed in the morgue until six-thirty and drove down to pick up Ike. The lights in his shop were already turned off. He flipped the CLOSED sign. Locked the door behind him. Trotted to my car. “If I’m going to close early for you, the least you can do is get here when you say,” he complained.
Downtown Hannawa doesn’t have much rush hour traffic anymore, and what little it does have was over long ago. I made a wide U-turn and headed south. “I’m a woman with responsibilities,” I said.
He laughed until I laughed.
And I needed to laugh. I was so nervous about seeing Shaka Bop I could barely breathe.
“He knows you’re coming?” Ike asked.
“What fun would that be?” I asked back.
We were in Thistle Hill in two minutes. The streets there were narrow, mostly brick, mostly one-way. The houses were a hundred years old and looked it. Many yards were surrounded with chain-link fences. Many of those fences featured BEWARE OF THE DOG signs.
We passed Garfield High School and a half-dozen abandoned factories. We crossed Sixth Street and pulled into the bumpy, gravel-covered parking lot that surrounded Shaka Bop’s garage. We wound through the uneven rows of old cars until we found a place to park.
The garage was modest but it was big. It was constructed of cement blocks. It had five bays. A hand-painted sign ran the full length of the building. SHAKA BOP’S AUTO RUN RIGHT it said.
A tall, wide-shouldered man appeared out of nowhere at my car door. He bent low and smiled at me through the window. It was Shaka Bop himself. He wasn’t wearing his signature dashiki or porkpie hat that day. He was wearing a crisp white shirt and a blood-red necktie, a navy blue spring jacket zipped tight around his ample belly.
I rolled down the window. “You remember me?” I asked.
He squinted at me and then smiled. “Pop your hood for me, Dolly.”
“I didn’t come for my car, though God knows the old thing needs plenty of work,” I said. “I came to see you about Gordon.”
Shaka’s smile faded. Then recovered. “Pop it!” he said.
So I popped my hood and he strolled slowly to the front of my car. He lifted the hood and hooked it open. Ike and I joined him.
Shaka rested his hands on the grill and leaned over the engine. He studied all the dirty old parts, scatting some wonderful jazz under his breath. I introduced him to Ike. “This is my friend, Ike,” I said. “Ike’s Coffee Shop downtown.”
Shaka didn’t take his eyes off my engine. “Oh yes. Ike’s Coffee Shop. Good to see you making a stand down there, Ike.”
Ike put out his hand, but when no hand came back at him, withdrew it into his coat pocket. He remained cordial nonetheless. “Maddy’s told me all about those years in Meriwether Square.”
Shaka looked up now. “Too bad you couldn’t have been there,” he said.
I’m sure Ike knew what he meant. I know I did. Meriwether Square was as segregated as every other neighborhood in Hannawa in those years. Unless a black man had a saxophone or a trumpet or a pair of drumsticks, he was not welcome in any of those clubs.
Shaka checked my oil and antifreeze. He carefully lowered the hood, as if it might disintegrate if he let it drop. “You’ve got some catastrophically cracked belts and hoses, Dolly. God knows you need a tune-up. But other than that, everything appears surprisingly copacetic for an old honey wagon like this.”
Shaka wrapped his arm around me and walked me to the garage. Ike followed. By the time we reached his office, Shaka had my car keys and my agreement to let a couple of his miracle men give my Dodge Shadow a good going over while we talked.
Shaka had a huge wooden desk, piled high with car parts, diet Coke cans, old newspapers and magazines. He sat behind the clutter. He folded his hands across his belly. Ike and I sat across from him, on an old car seat propped against the wall.
“The love sure flowed back then, didn’t it, Dolly?” Shaka said. He was swiveling back and forth in his chair, like the confident king he was. “Though I don’t recall any of your love ever flowing my way.” His eyes studied my reaction, then shifted to Ike, to study his.
I wanted to see Ike’s reaction, too. But I didn’t dare look at Ike. Instead I watched as my car disappeared into one of the bays at the other end of the garage. “I guess by now you know I’m looking into Gordon’s murder,” I said.
Shaka sifted through the newspapers on his desk, pulling out a copy of The Harbinger. He snapped the story about me with his thumb and forefinger and grinned. “Soon as I saw this little nugget of journalistic joy, I knew it would just be a matter of time before I saw you, too.”
I stretched my neck toward his desk like an ostrich, as if I’d never seen the story before. “You did?”
He handed me the paper. “Murder ain’t a big thing in Thistle Hill. I’ve been to more premature funerals over the years than I care to think about. But over on your side of town, Dolly? Around that happy little college? Those happy little neighborhoods filled with all those happy, happy people? There’ve been just two murders in fifty years and both involving Sweet Gordon. Next stop Coincidence City and don’t forget your luggage. First his libidinous chum. Then the professor himself. Oh, yes! Soon as I saw that little write-up, I knew the sagacious Dolly Madison Sprowls must’ve put two and two together. Knew sooner or later she’d squeeze the saxophone man into her math.”
Shaka always had a way with words. They were musical notes to him, to be arranged in surprising ways, to agitate and enlighten. So while I was prepared for all sorts of interesting things to come out of his mouth that evening, I hadn’t expected anything quite as poetic as libidinous chum. “Why’d you call David Delarosa that?”
“Because that young beagle was always sniffing for a snuggle bunny. You remember that night at Jericho’s, don’t you, Dolly? That sucker punch I took for you?”
A squeaky self-conscious giggle spilled out of me. “I don’t think many men ever took me for a snuggle bunny, no matter how drunk they were.”
Shaka laughed like a horse. “That had more to do with your attitude than your attributes, Dolly. And you stuck to that boyfriend of yours like wallpaper on a convent wall.”
“Lawrence and I were engaged by then,” I said.
“Indeed, you were,” said Shaka. “But that night, as I recall, you were quite alone.”
I told him that Lawrence was in Columbus, covering the state debate tournament.
“Doesn’t matter where he was,” he said. “You were alone. And David Beaglerosa was on the hunt.”
I didn’t much like it that Shaka was questioning me-after all I’d come to question him-but I did want his impression of David Delarosa. “He never hit on me,” I said.
Shaka horse-laughed again. “But he sure hit on me.”
“But that was a racial thing, wasn’t it?”
Shaka was studying Ike again. “The fact that I was of the Negro persuasion didn’t help matters, I’ll give you that. And to tell you the truth, I don’t know if he specifically had designs on you or not. Chances are you were just a handy feminine foil. A way to keep me from digging any and all the white birds perched around the table that night.”
“Chances are,” I agreed.
He playfully patted his stomach. “I’m a fat old man now. Can’t get a bird of any feather to look at me twice. But in my prime I rarely had the pillows to myself.”
“Including that night I understand.”
Memories of a different time drained the confidence from Shaka’s eyes. “Thank God I didn’t.”
“And thank God it was Effie sharing the pillows?”
He nodded. “Imagine if I’d gone home with some other white girl that night? It took some real cojones for her to tell the police she’d been with me, I’ll tell you that.”
Ike hadn’t said a word since we’d lowered ourselves onto that old car seat. He said something now: “They would have strapped you in the electric chair fast as they could.”
Shaka’s answer was little more than a whisper. “That they would have, my brother.”
“Let’s hope they don’t get any ideas now,” I said.
Shaka leaned back in his chair. He put his hands behind his head and rocked. “That your way of asking me if I
