Walter Mosley: Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore

I smiled at the futility and bravery of Lana’s action and then pulled my father’s chrome-plated midnight special from out of the blue bag.

Ness registered the weapon with his small eyes but took another step, more out of reflex than bravery.

I pulled back the hammer and it snapped loudly, like some bug warning a larger predator of its venom.

Ness stopped.

Lana began hiccuping.

“My husband is dead,” I said. “And if you don’t move your ass out of my house you can collect whatever it is he owes you in hell.”

Lana hiccuped loudly and brought both hands to her mouth. In her left she still clutched the fork.

“Don’t be crazy, bitch,” Richard Ness said.

“What did you call me?” I said softly, dangerously.

Ness’s hesitation humiliated him. The shiver that went through his battered face told of the man he wanted to be but wasn’t. He wanted to come at me regardless of the pistol, rip the gun from my fingers, and batter me to the floor.

But he stayed in his place.

I stood up, luxuriating in my frumpy dress, and Richard fell half a step backward. He was looking in my eyes for some kind of weakness. His disappointment showed itself as a squint.

“I will kill you, Dick. Because you know, I’m not cool — I just don’t give a fuck.”

I had decided with those last six words to kill Richard. It felt right. The deadness, the orgasm, the death of the shallow-but-sweet man I called husband.

The muscle in my trigger finger contracted.

Richard leaned back, closing his left eye completely.

Lana hiccuped again.

“Hello? Anybody home?”

The voice came from the front of the house. It was male and sounded familiar but I couldn’t place it right off.

“Back here!” I shouted, giving up on the murder I wanted so badly to commit.

Just before Lieutenant Mendelson walked into the kitchen I placed my gun hand into the purse while still holding on to it, because I didn’t know if Richard was armed or what he might do if he had the chance to grab me.

“This is Perry Mendelson, Dick,” I said. “He’s the detective investigating Theon’s death.”

Richard’s big broken face showed a great deal of relief. He knew from the look in my eye that he was very close to the terminus of his life. A few seconds earlier I was going to kill him and claim self-defense — now... I wasn’t.

“Theon’s really dead?” the thug asked.

“Yes, he is,” Perry said, his senses filled with the unnamed danger that had just passed.

“Murdered?”

“It looks like an accident. I just came by to ask Mrs. Pinkney some questions about the woman he was with. Were you a friend of his, Mr...?”

“Ness. Richard Ness. I’m a... I was an associate of Mr. Pinkney.”

“What kind of business did you do together?”

“Movie production...” Ness said, looking at me. “... that and financial advice.”

“Would you happen to recognize this woman?” Perry took a photograph from the side pocket of his gray suit jacket.

“You really are a cop?” Richard said.

I noticed that the tension went out of the big man’s burly, lime green shoulders.

“Policeman,” Perry said correcting the term. “Lieutenant Mendelson. Do you recognize this woman?”

Richard took the photograph between two blunt fingers and examined it.

“I better go put on some clothes,” Lana said.

Lana was unobtrusive sitting there, almost invisible. She had a prepubescent boy’s body, with small breasts and a shaved pubis. When she darted out of the room Perry averted his eyes from an innate sense of propriety. Richard didn’t look because he didn’t care.

“No, Lieutenant,” he said. “I’ve never seen this young woman before. Looks like jailbait.”

“And you, Mrs. Pinkney?” Perry said as he retrieved the photograph and held it up for me. “Do you remember your husband talking about this young woman? Or maybe you even met her at some point?”

Jolie was lying on a slab in the picture. Her black hair was pulled back to show her face.

I had seen her looking worse.

“No, I haven’t,” I said. “Would you stay and have a cup of coffee with Lana and me?”

The question was carefully phrased. I wanted Perry to know that he was welcome while Richard was not. He caught the drift and turned his gaze on the leg breaker, loan shark, hustler, thief, and coward.

“Well, I guess I better be goin’,” Richard mumbled. “You have my condolences, Debbie. You know, usually when I’m told that people who owe me money are dead I take it with a grain of salt.”

There was a moment of absolute silence in that vast blue suburban kitchen. Then Richard nodded and walked swiftly from the room.

I followed, blue bag in hand, going all the way to the front door (which, I realized, the police must have left unlocked the night before) and watched the man who nearly died at the foot of my breakfast table get into his vintage purple Impala and drive off.

“Was he giving you trouble?” Perry asked at my back.

“No,” I said, “not at all. Dick thinks that because he’s so big and ugly that people are supposed to be scared of him, but not me.”

I stood there looking out at the blue, blue July morning, Perry Mendelson behind me, peering over my shoulder.

“You cut your hair.”

“I had to do something.”

I felt him holding back from touching my shoulder; I was sure of it. I wanted that touch. How long had it been since I yearned for a man’s hand on me?

I turned to him and said, “Let’s go get that coffee.”

When we got back to the dining nook, Lana was there wearing her faded blue jeans and a pale violet T-shirt from my dresser drawer. When she saw Perry with me she got up and set another place at the table.

“You don’t have to bother,” Perry told her.

“Oh, that’s okay,” she said, displaying that crooked smile. “There’s lots of room and food.”

“Just coffee for me... black.”

Lana’s expression was mild and yet overflowing with feeling. Men filled two roles in her life: predators and fathers. Perry, at least momentarily, had taken up the daddy position in her quivering heart.

“We’d really like to get a line on this girl,” Perry said when we settled across from each other. “She has a family somewhere, people who care about her.”

“Didn’t your people find her purse or anything?” I asked. “Wasn’t there something in her pockets?”

“Forty-seven dollars and some makeup.”

Poor Jolie. She didn’t even have a pay-as-you-go cell phone. Girls like her slept in a different bed each week and washed out their panties by hand every night. Friends came and went one at a time, each one promising something and delivering somewhat less.

Theon had obviously offered her a career in adult films. Depending on how they met he might have asked me to help her out. He wouldn’t necessarily have known that I’d already met the child.

Three weeks earlier my sometime producer, John Toland, had sent me to a hip-hop party at a music producer’s home in Laurel Canyon. When I walked through the open front door I found myself in an audience of about thirty people. Everyone was black except for little naked white Jolie on her knees giving up-and-comer Fat Phil Harmonik a very energetic blow job.

The men in the room were mostly leering while the women sneered uncomfortably. I waited until the job was finished before taking Jolie by the hand and leading her around until we found a bathroom with a lock on the door.

I could tell by her eyes that she was only partly aware of where she was and what she was doing, so I laid her in the bathtub and turned on the cold water of the overhead shower. She was so high that it took five seconds or so for the chill to take effect. When she started shivering I held her in place for a few seconds more and then pulled her from the tub.