Bad Moon On The Rise (4 page)

“
No call for that,” he
said, eyeing the barrel. I lowered the gun and waited. He cleared
his throat, as if he were making a valedictorian speech and then
told me what I needed to know:

“
She used to hang out here
a lot, maybe last year. Always had money, you know. Could pay for
her share, you know. Even worked it a little, picking up stuff for
other people, 'til people caught her taking a cut, you know, when
she thought they wasn’t looking. After that, she disappeared for
awhile.”

“
When?” I
asked.

“
You think I keep track?”
he said indignantly. I raised the gun again and he hurried to
explain. “End of winter, maybe. Then she come back maybe six months
ago. She walk in here like she never be gone. She got drugs again.
Lots of drugs.”

“
She have the boy with
her?” I asked.

He shook his head. “She never bring no
boy here. We all think she’s lying. She bring newspaper photos here
sometimes, showing a bunch of boys on some basketball court and she
try to say one of them is her boy, you know. No one here high
enough to believe her. I tell that girl she be on crack for sure
and we all laughed. She didn’t like that none, you know. She used
to being the big dog around here, always being the one to bring the
product, you know, selling the shit and not being the one who got
to scrounge for nickels and dying to be doing it. But there be
plenty of times when the tables turn on her and she just a junkie
like the rest of us. But she don’t like no one to remind her of
that.”

“
Go on.”

“
She leave again for
awhile and she come back here end of this past summer, now that I
think of it, with a big load of drugs to sell and flashing her cash
‘til she run out again. This time she say she’s never coming back,
but I tell her I’ll see her again soon. Nothing changes, you know.
It’s always the same. People leave, you know, and then they come
back. Not too many leave and never come back. Lest they be dead,
you know?”

“
I know.”

He stared at me for a second before he
glanced down and, for the first time, noticed that he had wet his
pants.

“
Sorry,” I lied. “Some of
the water spilled in your lap.”

He accepted this explanation with the
remnants of his dignity. “Sure enough, she come back and she’s into
the smoke again. That girl can smoke some smoke when she gets
started.”

“
Whereas you are a model
of restraint and respectability,” I observed.

“
Huh?” He blinked at
me.

“
Go on.”

“
This go on for a week or
so. Then one night, Choo Choo here offer her some H-2-O and she
just freak the fuck out.”

“
Who’s Choo
Choo?”

“
That’s Choo Choo.” He
pointed to the woman on the floor. I definitely did not want to
know why she was called Choo Choo and so I did not ask.

“
Choo Choo offered her
water and she freaked out?” I asked, sounding dubious at
best.

“
Choo Choo don’t offer her
no water. I said she offer her some H-2-0.”

“
That is water,” I said
impatiently.

He looked at me like I was the village
idiot, savoring his superior knowledge over me. “You don’t know
what H-2-O is?” he asked. “Maybe you call it Double H?”

“
Gee, I must have missed
that when I was studying Drugs 101. That will teach me to just say
‘no.’” I cocked the gun and moved it closer. “I am so not in the
mood. What is Double H?”

“
Double H is what Choo
Choo’s on,” he explained, gesturing toward Sleeping Beauty. She was
still alive. I knew this because she’d started to snore. Not dainty
little rasps, mind you, but big honking snorts. She sounded like a
pair of geese trying to outrun a jet. I stopped and stared at her
in amazement. She had a hell of a pair of lungs.

“
She’s got that sleep
acne,” the man offered helpfully.

“
Sleep
apnea?” 

He nodded. “That’s it.”

“
Then perhaps she
shouldn’t be taking drugs that impair her respiratory functions?” I
suggested. “What the hell is Double H?” 

“
The O-Train, people call
it. Big white pills. If you know how to take ‘em, they got a kick
that lasts and lasts.” He grinned, revealing rotting teeth. “Kind
of like me.”

“
Careful, Romeo,” I told
him, “Don’t make me throw cold water on you again.”

He stuck his lower lip out. “Choo Choo
here offer that girl some Double H and Scout just freak out, you
know?  She jump up like she been bit by a snake and she start
to run for the door.”

“
She sees the pill and
starts to run?” I asked. Christ, what the hell was in
it?

He nodded, stretching his moment of
importance out. “Then she get to the door and she just stop, cause
she ain’t got no ride, you see.” He thought this was funny and
cackled for awhile. I waited him out. “Then she come back in here
and ask if she can borrow one of the cell phones.”

“
You have cell phones?” I
asked in disbelief, looking around the barren room.

He spoke solemnly, as if he were on
the witness stand. “Well, at any one time, we might have had us a
cell phone, yes.”

Yeah, like right before the run to the
pawnshop, I thought.

“
I let her use one,” he
said self-importantly. “And some dude come pick her up in a
truck.”

“
What kind of truck?” I
asked.

“
Like a bread truck,” he
said, nodding. “You know.”

“
What the hell does that
mean? Did it have a picture of a loaf of bread on the side of
it?”

He shook his head. “No, but it was one
of them big white, boxy kind of trucks. You know. Tin body, with a
picture on it.”

“
What kind of
picture?”  Getting information from him was like pulling
teeth, which was a step I was literally considering next if he
didn’t hurry it along.

“
It had, you know, like
drums painted on the side.”

“
Drums?”

He nodded. “You know, my people’s
drums.”

“
Your people’s drums?” I
asked slowly. 

“
African drums.” He beat
on the sofa cushion and damn if he wasn’t the only black man I have
ever met who clearly lacked rhythm. He had about as much finesse as
a pair of jackrabbits thumping their way across a tin
roof. 

“
You know,” he insisted
when I looked at him blankly. “There was a painting of them tall
round drums with bells on the side of the truck and then the short
ones with a gourd thingie next to it. African drums.”

“
Well, you are just a
fount of cultural knowledge.”  

He smiled proudly.

“
Have you seen her since?”
I asked.

His smile faded. “Nope. She climbed in
the truck and they drove away. Ain’t seen her since.”

“
Who was
driving?”

He shrugged. “No business of
mine.”

“
You didn’t get a look at
the guy driving the truck?” I asked, knowing they’d be on the alert
for cops and would check out each car that pulled into the
yard.

“
He was my brother,” he
suddenly remembered, pleased with himself.

“
Your brother?” I asked
incredulously.

“
Yeah, you know. A
brother. Black like me.” He raised a feeble black power salute,
then apparently forgot what he was doing in the middle of it and
stared at his fist blankly, as if wondering who—or what—he had been
intending to punch.

“
That really narrows it
down.” My sarcasm was sadly wasted because, well, he was too
wasted.

“
He had a mean set of
dreads,” he added suddenly. “The long kind.”

“
Yeah?” That would help,
at least. There weren’t that many sets of serious dreadlocks in and
around these parts.

“
Yeah.” The guy rubbed his
own scruffy head in envy. “He was a big dude with some big ass
dreads hanging down. I saw ‘em dangling out the window and thought
they were snakes at first.”

I bet he had. I bet he saw snakes and
dragons and gorgons and pulsating, undulating floral landscapes
half the damn time.

“
Knew I’d remember if I
thought hard enough.” He leaned back, satisfied that he had
accomplished something in his greasy, smoke-filled day. Outside,
the morning sun cleared the pines and a ray of sunlight leaked in
under the dirty sheet that served as a curtain. I suddenly wanted
very much to be out of that house and heading toward home, with the
clean country air blowing the stink from my head.

“
That help?” he asked,
closing his eyes and inhaling deeply from his cigarette. “Worth
something to you?” He held his palm out and waited, hoping for
money.

I slapped him a high five instead,
then wiped my palm on my pants. “Yeah, brother,” I said. “That
helped. You’re a prince among men.”

He looked disappointed, especially
when I scooped up his kitten on my way out.

“
Hey,” he yelled after me.
“Why you taking my kitten?”

“
You know,” I yelled back.
And fled.

Marcus was deeply offended. “So you
think because I happen to be black, I’m going to know every other
black dude in a five-county radius?”

“
No,” I said. “I
definitely do not. I’m just trying to catch a break. Drums, okay?
Focus on the drums. Who the hell drives around in a white bread
truck painted with African drums?”

“
A drummer?” he
suggested.

“
Marcus.”

“
I will ask around,” he
said prissily. “Despite your lack of racial
sensitivity.”

“
Oh, balls, Marcus. Don’t
give me that shit. What is really the matter here?”

“
My husbear is in Germany
for a month visiting his family. He did not ask me along. I’m a
schvatza, apparently.”

Marcus wasn’t actually offended. He
was just lonely.

“
Maybe it wasn’t the race
thing,” I suggested. “Maybe it was the gay thing?”

“
That makes me feel so
much better,” he said acidly.

“
I have a solution for
you.”

“
What?” he asked
suspiciously.

“
Pussy.”

“
Oh, do not, under any
circumstances, go there.”

“
No, really,” I insisted.
“I rescued the sweetest little kitten from the crack house. I can’t
keep it. I’d kill it. You know I can’t even keep a house plant
alive.”

“
That’s true.” Marcus was
silent as he mulled it over. “How big is the monkey on its
back?” 

“
Pretty big, I suspect.
It’s inhaled a lot. But it’s cute as a button.”

“
What if it goes into
withdrawal and starts clawing my leather couch?”

“
Get it a box filled with
catnip,” I suggested. “Just let it roll around in there for a few
weeks and stay stoned to the gills until it kicks the
habit.”

“
Kittens do not have
gills,” he said stiffly.

“
Yeah, I know that,
Marcus. Now do you want the god-damned cat or not?”

“
What color is
it?”

“
Calico. It would go with
your decor.”

“
Okay,” he agreed. “But
you’re buying the catnip. And I want three pounds of it. At
least.”

Man, he could drive a hard
bargain.

Marcus came through by dinner time. I
drove over and swapped the kitten for information, scoring homemade
chicken picatta in the process. According to Marcus, there were
three possibilities in the area for who owned the truck with the
drums painted on the side. One was an organization devoted to
teaching school children traditional African music; another was a
nationally-known percussion quartet whose founding members lived in
Durham; and the third was some guy, name unknown, who was reputed
to live in town and was thought to be one of the greatest living
djembe drummers alive but who shunned publicity, was very
religious, and may or may not live in some apartment building in
some bad neighborhood, somewhere, because he didn’t want to lose
touch with his urban roots. I thanked Marcus for providing such
specific information and was met with silence for my sarcasm,
followed by an icy invitation to fresh-baked pound cake for dessert
and a suggestion I help myself, as he needed to retrieve the kitten
from where it was hanging by its claws from his raw silk,
custom-dyed curtains.

It had to be the third guy, I
reasoned, as I drove home to my apartment. Not for any reason other
than that, with the way my luck was going on this case, chances
were it was the most obscure choice possible.

How do you go about finding a
religious hermit who drums like a god?

Of course: the churches. I could start
by driving around all the black churches in Durham the next day,
since it was a Sunday—though that would take all morning and then
some, as there are dozens of them. I’d hit Raleigh if I found
nothing in Durham. If worse came to worse, I’d give up on religion
and drive around skanky apartment lots until I found a white bread
truck with drums painted on its side.