Casey Daniels - Dead Man Talking

“Handsome?” Bad Dog laughed.

Years of dating had done nothing if not taught me how to blush on command. “I was going to say friendly.”

“Yet you’re worried. About my reputation. I couldn’t help but overhear what you said to Bud. You know, about my background. Does that matter when it comes to buying a car?”

“If I can’t trust you…” I could twinkle with the best of them, and I pulled out all the stops. “Then I can’t trust your cars.”

Bad Dog laughed. “We’re going to get along just fine.”

“But only if your prices are good. And your cars are dependable. And that means, really, I need to know about-”

“Prison. Yes, of course.” Bad Dog made a gesture with one arm that invited me to walk with him. I did, and he led me outside. “Sedan or SUV?” he asked and that was that-the subject had officially been changed. “Color? Is it important? Yes, of course, color is always important to a woman. I’ve found that the more beautiful a woman is, the more she cares about color and style. I think that means you must care very, very much.”

I was supposed to be flattered. If there wasn’t that whole drug empire/murder/prison thing to consider, I actually might have been. The way it was, I could see I was going to get nowhere fast with Mack Raphael. Not if I wasn’t clever, and very, very careful.

“Sedan,” I said. “Red if you have one in my price range. I’d prefer American made, leather seats if at all possible, a moon roof, and I’d rather not have a gas guzzler. I’m all about saving the environment.”

“Of course.” He led me to a maroon Ford. No moon roof and it had more than a hundred thousand miles on the odometer. Raphael opened the driver’s door. “Get in, why don’t you? Try it out. We could take it for a test drive.”

We could, but being that alone with Mack Raphael was not in my game plan.

I slid behind the steering wheel. “It was Central State, wasn’t it?” I asked him.

“If you know so much, why do you need me to confirm it?”

“Fair question. But like I said…” I skimmed a hand over the dashboard. It was spotless. “I can barely afford a car, and I can’t afford one at all if it isn’t going to last. If you’re not honest-”

“As the day is long!” He held up one hand, Boy Scout-style.

I smiled as if I was satisfied. Right before I asked, “How long ago?”

He thought he was home free. Which was why his expression clouded. “Before you were born.”

“I’m older than I look.”

“I was there from ’82 to ’90.”

And Vera Blaine had been murdered in ’84, I reminded myself. I also told myself not to lose heart. If Bad Dog could run drugs from inside the prison, surely it couldn’t be hard to arrange a hit and the frame-up of a warden he hated.

“I was a kid then,” I said. I ran my hand below the edge of the front seat, found the little lever, and moved the seat back. “It must have been terrible.”

He knew I wasn’t talking about the height of the last person to drive this car. “It was an education. Prison always is for those who are smart enough to see it that way. Believe me, I learned a powerful lesson. That’s why I’m an honest businessman today.”

He smiled down at me.

I smiled up at him while I wondered how I could tippy-toe my way back into a topic as delicate as a lengthy incarceration. Have no fear, I would have found the words.

If Absalom hadn’t shown up.

“There you are.” He strode through the line of parked cars like he had every right to be there, and when he got over to the maroon Ford, he glared. “Told you, woman, we don’t need no new car. The one you got, it’s good enough for you.”

“Family squabble?” Bad Dog looked sorry to find out I had a significant other. “Perhaps I should let you two talk privately.”

“Don’t need to talk.” Absalom reached into the car, grabbed me by the arm, and hauled me out. “We ain’t buying a car. Not today.”

I shook him off. “That doesn’t mean I can’t look.”

“Means you’re wasting this good man’s time. And you got work to do back at Monroe Street. Crazy woman works in a cemetery,” he told Bad Dog. “Which only goes to prove how really crazy she is.”

With no choice but to go along with Absalom, and itching to find out what he was up to and why he was there, I was about to walk away. Bad Dog stopped me, one hand on my arm. “Monroe Street. That’s not just any cemetery. Isn’t that the cemetery where Jefferson Lamar is buried?”

I blinked-actually, I batted my eyelashes-and asked, “Who?”

Bad Dog put a friendly hand on my back. “Just a name from the past. And not important. I hope when you both decide you need a car, you’ll come back to see me. Promise?”

I did, and with a straight face, too.

And I kept that straight face firmly in place until Absalom and I crossed the street and walked into the Mc-Donald’s parking lot.

“What the hell was that all about?” I asked him.

“You ain’t askin’ the questions today, I’m askin’ the questions,” he growled. “Like what the hell you doin’ tanglin’ with a man like Bad Dog?”

“We weren’t tangling. We were talking. About buying a car.”

“Except you don’t need a car.”

“And you-” He led me over to where my Mustang was parked. “How-”

Absalom opened the door and got behind the wheel, and I got in on the passenger side. “What-”

“Knew you were up to something you shouldn’t be up to. Figured you must be with the way you been readin’ over files and hurryin’ out at all crazy hours. Had to follow you,” he said. “Didn’t think I could do that very efficiently on a bus.”

“But…” I opened my purse, pulled out my car keys, and dangled them in front of his face. “I’ve got my keys. How did you-”

His laugh rumbled through the Mustang. “You think not having keys can stop me? You’re crazier than I told Bad Dog you were.” He wheeled out of the parking lot and cruised down Lorain Avenue, heading back toward the cemetery. At the next red light, he popped open my glove box and reached inside. He handed me the new voodoo doll I’d seen at the cemetery that morning, the one with the leather dress and the fluffy hair.

“That there is a juju guardian,” he said. “It provides protection from evil.”

And he must have known what I was going to ask, because he kept right on talking. “I don’t know what you’re up to, Pepper, but I can tell you one thing. If you’re going to go messin’ with a man like Bad Dog Raphael, you’re going to need all the protection you can get.”

Over the next week, a couple weird things happened. For one thing, the next episode of Cemetery Survivor aired, and when it did, we found out that in spite of the couple Sammi vs. Virgil knockdowns, our team and Team One were tied, points-wise. After the show aired, something even more surprising happened. We had more fans than ever. Go figure. Apparently, a lot of people were watching the show, and the more calls the station got and the more people who showed up outside the gates of Monroe Street, the more the whole superstardom thing went to everyone’s heads. Greer was sure her next stop was network news. Mae and her bunch (doesn’t it figure?) said they were humbled, and just grateful they could promote their good deeds to a wider audience. And my team? My team loved feeling like rock stars.

I was on the fence. From what I’d heard, the last episode opened with a shot of Sammi choking the life out of me. I knew this because both my aunts called my mom to update her, and my mom called my dad to tell him. Dad’s phone access was limited, but that hadn’t stopped him from leaving messages, and Mom was text messaging like every ten minutes, asking if I shouldn’t see a doctor, and did it still hurt, and had the bruises gone away yet, and wouldn’t I be better off in Florida with her and away from cemeteries and dangerous people?