Max Collins - No Cure for Death

When I was in high school, every month or so John and I and a carload of guys would go up to see the skin flicks at the Roxy Theater, which was a couple doors down from the Filet O’Soul. I can remember the butterflies in my stomach as I’d walk past the place with my buddies, heading for the safety of the Roxy’s hard seats and stale air, trying to ignore the milling blacks smoking out front of the Filet, hoping they wouldn’t say anything, hoping they wouldn’t kill us or worse, paying dearly for the sin of the Roxy.

Such was the feeling I had Thanksgiving morning when Jack Masters called to tell me he’d arranged a meeting for me with Rita Washington at the Filet O’Soul.

But after a second the feeling went away, and I hadn’t, I hoped, let any of it show over the receiver to Jack. Great, I said to him, what had he told her?

Just that I was an okay guy, he said, and that all I wanted was talk. That I was a writer, but not a reporter-just a mystery writer researching something for a story. And, since she was a part-time schoolteacher who could use the money, that there was twenty bucks in it for her.

I told him he was awful free with my money and he said nothing’s free, son; then I asked him what time he’d set it for.

Eleven o’clock this morning, he told me, and nobody’d be there but the bartenders, getting ready for the crowd that’d be in to watch the football games on TV. Rita knew one of the bartenders pretty good and he’d given the okay, Jack said.

I thanked him for all the trouble, and he said, well, he wasn’t going to let me go up there myself night before a holiday. Hadn’t I heard what they said about the Filet O’Soul?

The door’s steel was cold on my knuckles as I knocked. I stopped knocking and waited a few moments, was getting ready to knock again when the door opened. The man who answered was tall and lean and wore a black satin long-sleeved shirt with a red patent leather vest and black brushed corduroy pants. Skin coal black, nostrils wide, eyes dark and alert, forehead, cheekbones and chin chiselled, smile white, slow, careful and amused-he looked like a charcoal drawing, and a good one.

“You’d be Mallory,” he said.

I nodded, smiled liberally.

“Rita isn’t here yet,” he said.

“Oh,” I said.

“You want to come in and wait?”

“Please.”

He opened the door and I stepped in. But would I ever step out again?

The room was a long rectangular box, lined with booths; the lights were up full, but the room was still pretty dim. About halfway down, a guy was sweeping dirt into a dustpan, his uniform identical to the bartender’s, though faded, and matching the floor’s red and black tiles, which were also faded. I watched as the bartender walked to the far left corner of the room to the semicircular bar, which he got back behind, and started polishing glasses. I went over to a booth and sat down. The guy swept his last pile of dirt into his dustpan, and as he carried the filled pan away, he cut the lights, with the only remaining illumination coming from small red bulbs under the abstract prints by each booth and a few lighted plastic booze ads at the bar and elsewhere. Immediately the place looked better, and was on its way to having “atmosphere”: all that was lacking was smoke and people.

After I’d waited ten minutes, the bartender came over and put a glass of draw beer down in front of me.

“You looked dry,” he smiled.

I thanked him and dug for some change in my coat pocket.

He just smiled and shook his head no, with an odd mixture of friendliness and condescension.

I thanked him again but he was already on his way back to polish glasses behind the bar.

When I was halfway through the beer, the door opened.

She was tall: five-nine at least; a slender young woman, almost thin-though nothing was missing-wearing a purple pantsuit with a turtleneck sweater peeking up over the collar, the sweater a deep purple, the suit a lighter purple. Her skin was the color of milk chocolate. Her face was wide-set, with heavy-lashed big brown eyes; pouting, flower-petal lips; strong, angular cheekbones; and a gentle, almost delicate nose, the kind people go to plastic surgeons to get, though her nostrils had a hint of the proud flare that money can’t buy. Her hair was up, Afro-style, but was straight, and a coal-black contrast to the light brown skin.

She came over and looked at me with the big-lashed eyes not blinking and said, “Mallory?”

I stood. “Yes. Miss Washington?”

“Rita,” she said, and sat down while I was still in midair.

“Mal,” I said, sitting back down.

“Mal,” she said, neutrally, a verbal shrug.

I said, “Thanks for coming, Rita.”

“You mind telling me something?”

“Not at all.”

“Why am I here?”

“You don’t want to be?”

“I’m half an hour late, aren’t I?”

“Listen, if you’re worried this is going to be some kind of come-on…”

“I wasn’t worried about that-not till I came in here and you sat there looking at me with your mouth open.”

I felt the red crawl up out of my neck. “I’m sorry, I didn’t expect…”

“What did you expect?”

“Let’s start with what I didn’t expect, which is the best-looking woman I’ve seen in…”

“A coon’s age?” she said. “Save it. This better start sounding like something besides pussy hustle, and quick.”

“Hey, nothing like…”

“I should’ve known what the twenty bucks was for.” She started to get up. “Happy Thanksgiving, turkey. I’ll see you.”

“Wait. No hustle. Please wait.”

She hesitated.

“Just listen to something and let me ask you a couple questions. Take the twenty just for listening.” And I laid two tens on the table.

“Questions about what?”

“Why don’t you listen first?”

“Why don’t you tell me why I should?”

“It concerns a brother of yours.”

“I got lots of brothers.”

“Not that kind of brother.”

“I got a lot of that kind, too. Six of them.” She pushed the two tens on the plastic tabletop away. “None for sale.”

“Is one of your six brothers missing an eye?”

“Why, did you find it? Screw off.” She started up again.

“Wait. Please.”

Again she hesitated, sat back down in the booth. She sat silently for a moment, then brushed the bills aside and said, “Why don’t you just put the twenty away? It gives me a cheap feeling.”

“It’s not enough, you mean?”

“I mean nothing I got is for sale.”

“Listen, I didn’t mean to…”

“My brother likes privacy. If that’s what he wants, that’s okay with Rita, and there isn’t a price on it.”

“Will you do this much? Will you listen to what I have to say and then decide?”

She sighed.

I told it to her, but in a different order than I’d been using; I got out my violin and started with Janet’s end of the story, the kid with heart trouble, the mother beaten and left to die in the burning house, the Colorado Hill “accident” that echoed Senator Norman’s earlier fatal crash, with the part about the one-eyed guy who was maybe her brother in the middle of the story, ending with the encounter I’d had with Phil Taber last night.

“What about your friend’s stepdaddy?” she said, interested in spite of herself. “If he’s the sheriff, you ought to be able to get the straight shit on this Taber dude from him.”

“No way,” I said. “Brennan was out last night, and didn’t answer the message I left for him with John, which was to call me whenever he got in. I went over this morning and he was off somewhere else. Besides, he isn’t likely to cooperate with me, anyway.”