Johnny Temple - USA Noir - Best of the Akashic Noir Series

“Stayin’ warm, Verdon?”

“Tryin’ to.”

Barnes, a broad-shouldered dude with a handsome face, had a deep voice. He favored Hugo Boss suits and cashmere overcoats. Like many police, he wore a thick mustache.

“So,” I said. “Rico Jennings.”

“Nothin’ on my end,” said Barnes, with a shrug. “You?”

I didn’t answer him. It was a dance we did. His eyes went to the rearview and met mine. He held out a twenty over the seat, and I took it.

“I think y’all are headed down the wrong road,” I said.

“How so?”

“Heard you been roustin’ corner boys on Morton and canvasing down there in the Eights.”

“I’d say that’s a pretty good start, given Rico’s history.”

“Wasn’t no drug thing, though.”

“Kid was in it. He had juvenile priors for possession and distribution.”

“Why they call ’em priors. That was before the boy got on the straight. Look, I went to grade school with his mother. I been knowin’ Rico since he was a kid.”

“ What do you know?”

“Rico was playin’ hard for a while, but he grew out of it. He got into some big brother thing at my mother’s church, and he turned his back on his past. I mean, that boy was in the AP program up at Roosevelt. Advanced Placement, you know, where they got adults, teachers and shit, walkin’ with you every step of the way. He was on the way to college.”

“So why’d someone put three in his chest?”

“What I heard was, it was over a girl.”

I was giving him a little bit of the truth. When the whole truth came out, later on, he wouldn’t suspect that I had known more.

Barnes swung a U-turn, which rocked me some. We were on the way back to Park View.

“Keep going,” said Barnes.

“Tryin’ to tell you, Rico had a weakness for the ladies.”

“Who doesn’t.”

“It was worse than that. Girl’s privates made Rico stumble. Word is, he’d been steady-tossin’ this young thing, turned out to be the property of some other boy. Rico knew it, but he couldn’t stay away. That’s why he got dropped.”

“By who?”

“Huh?”

“You got a name on the hitter?”

“Nah.” Blood came to my ears and made them hot. It happened when I got stressed.

“How about the name of the girlfriend?”

I shook my head. “I’d talk to Rico’s mother, I was you. You’d think she’d know somethin’ ’bout the girls her son was runnin’ with, right?”

“You’d think,” said Barnes.

“All I’m sayin’ is, I’d start with her.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

“I’m just sayin’.”

Barnes sighed. “Look, I’ve already talked to the mother. I’ve talked to Rico’s neighbors and friends. We’ve been through his bedroom as well. We didn’t find any love notes or even so much as a picture of a girl.”

I had the photo of his girlfriend. Me and Rico’s aunt, Leticia, had gone up into the boy’s bedroom at that wake they had, while his mother was downstairs crying and stuff with her church friends in the living room. I found a picture of the girl, name of Flora Lewis, in the dresser drawer, under his socks and underwear. It was one of them mall photos the girls like to get done, then give to their boyfriends. Flora was sitting on a cube, with columns around her and shit, against a background, looked like laser beams shooting across a blue sky. Flora had tight jeans on and a shirt with thin straps, and she had let one of the straps kinda fall down off her shoulder to let the tops of her little titties show. The girls all trying to look like sluts now, you ask me. On the back of the photo was a note in her handwriting, said, How U like me like this? xxoo, Flora. Leticia recognized Flora from around the way, even without the name printed on the back.

“Casings at the scene were from a nine,” said Barnes, bringing me out of my thoughts. “We ran the markings through IBIS and there’s no match.”

“What about a witness?”

“You kiddin’? There wasn’t one, even if there was one.”

“Always someone knows somethin’,” I said, as I felt the car slow and come to a stop.

“Yeah, well.” Barnes pushed the trans arm up into park. “I caught a double in Columbia Heights this morning. So I sure would like to clean this Jennings thing up.”

“You know I be out there askin’ around,” I said. “But it gets expensive, tryin’ to make conversation in bars, buyin’ beers and stuff to loosen them lips…”

Barnes passed another twenty over the seat without a word. I took it. The bill was damp for some reason, and limp like a dead thing. I put it in the pocket of my coat.

“I’m gonna be askin’ around,” I said, like he hadn’t heard me the first time.

“I know you will, Verdon. You’re a good CI. The best I ever had.”

I didn’t know if he meant it or not, but it made me feel kinda guilty, backdooring him the way I was planning to do. But I had to look out for my own self for a change. The killer would be got, that was the important thing. And I would be flush.

“How your sons, detective?”

“They’re good. Looking forward to playing Pop Warner again.”

“Hmph,” I said.

He was divorced, like most homicide police. Still, I knew he loved his kids.

That was all. It felt like it was time to go.

“I’ll get up with you later, hear?”

Barnes said, “Right.”

I rose up off the bench, kinda looked around some, and got out the Crown Vic. I took a pull out the Popov bottle as I headed for my father’s house. I walked down the block, my head hung low.

Up in my room, I found my film canister under the T-shirts in my dresser. I shook some weed out into a wide paper, rolled a joint tight as a cigarette, and slipped it into my pack of Newports. The vodka had lifted me some, and I was ready to get up further.

I glanced in the mirror over my dresser. One of my front teeth was missing from when some dude down by the Black Hole, said he didn’t like the way I looked, had knocked it out. There was gray in my patch and in my hair. My eyes looked bleached. Even under my bulky coat, it was plain I had lost weight. I looked like one of them defectives you pity or ridicule on the street. But shit, there wasn’t a thing I could do about it tonight.

I went by my mother’s room, careful to step soft. She was in there, in bed by now, watching but not watching television on her thirteen-inch color, letting it keep her company, with the sound down low so she could hear my father if he called out to her from the first floor.

Down in the living room, the television still played loud, a black-and-white film of the Liston-Clay fight, which my father had spoke of often. He was missing the fight now. His chin was resting on his chest and his useless hand was kinda curled up like a claw in his lap. The light from the television grayed his face. His eyelids weren’t shut all the way, and the whites showed. Aside from his chest, which was moving some, he looked like he was dead.

Time will just fuck you up.

I can remember this one evening with my father, back around ’74. He had been home from the war for a while, and was working for the Government Printing Office at the time. We were over there on the baseball field, on Princeton, next to Park View Elementary. I musta been around six or seven. My father’s shadow was long and straight, and the sun was throwing a warm gold color on the green of the field. He was still in his work clothes, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His natural was full and his chest filled the fabric of his shirt. He was tossing me this small football, one of them K-2s he had bought me, and telling me to run toward him after I caught it, to see if I could break his tackle. He wasn’t gonna tackle me for real, he just wanted me to get a feel for the game. But I wouldn’t run to him. I guess I didn’t want to get hurt, was what it was. He got aggravated with me eventually, lost his patience and said it was time to get on home. I believe he quit on me that day. At least, that’s the way it seems to me now.