Out of the Blues (21 page)

S
alt needed names, the men to whom Tall John pimped Stone, street names, other victims, descriptions, anything. She came prepared, wearing her coat for the chill inside the prison walls. Behind the pockmarked, scratched, and dirty Plexiglas partition of the entrance station, the corrections officers went about answering phones and filling out paperwork with seemingly practiced indifference to the people, including Salt, who appeared on the other side of the barrier. She put her weapon in the retractable receiving tray and pushed it through, then waited for someone to acknowledge her. An officer finally came over, asked for her ID, and tossed the chit for her weapon into the tray. A second officer said something to him, cutting his eyes at her, before coming to the intercom to tell her someone would escort her back. Their uniforms, light gray shirts over dark gray pants, blended with the walls and office furniture. On the other side of the station opposite Salt, inmates stood or sat waiting to be processed.

As always, there was a continuous cacophony of banging steel and
iron, clasping, clicking and clanking, hollow hard noises from throughout the jail. Over the metallic din another clank sounded as a female officer with an upswept hairdo that looked glued into place activated the door down the hall, called Salt's name, and motioned for her. As Salt went through the door, propped open by the officer's significant hip, the woman offered no response to her greeting, no nod of the head, nothing, maintaining a look of annoyance, eyes narrowed, mouth squeezed to one side. Salt followed in the draft of the guard's rolling ass cheeks as they made their way through the prison labyrinth.

While they waited for an elevator, Salt tried again—asked if the corrections personnel had been given better working conditions since a federal overseer had been ordered by the court because of a class action suit. “No.” The woman looked up at the ceiling without elaboration. The elevator arrived and they stepped in without further conversation. In the elevator the officer kept her eyes on the floor numbers scrolling above the doors. They got off on the same floor as the last time Salt had been to see Stone, but this time the officer led her to the right instead of the left. Down another long hall they stopped at a door marked “Private.” “Wait here,” said the officer as she went in and closed the door behind her.

The door was marked “OFFICE” but was secured with a high-tech lock and had no window. When it opened, the woman who'd brought her was gone and another officer was there with Stone, having made their entrance from an interior door opposite the one Salt now entered. Stone was again in the red jumpsuit that was issued to inmates with mental illness. The room was bare, no tables or chairs. Before Salt realized what was happening, the officer accompanying Stone had gone back out the entrance he'd come from and closed the door, the locking mechanism making a resounding
thunk
as it took
hold, leaving her alone with Stone. He was without either ankle restraints or handcuffs.

Stone leaned his back against the wall and looked down at his fingernails. He curved his long fingers inward and brought them up to his face. “They screwed up.” He looked up from his nails and seemed to be trying to smile while keeping his ruined mouth shut. “We ain't supposed to be alone and me with no bracelets.” He held up his arms as if they were bound together, the cuffs of his prison uniform slipping back to reveal his bare wrists. “Are you scared?” he said.

“I don't think it was a mistake. I think someone hopes the worst for both of us.” She considered her options and drew in a breath. There was something different in him this time. His face seemed flat, his eyes dull, more stoned than Stone.

“You the reason I'm in here to begin with.” He raised himself off the wall, jangling his arms at his sides. “You don't have good sense.”

“Are the meds working, Stone? You feel any different?” She tested the knob on the door behind her to the outer hall. It was, as she guessed it would be, locked. She moved over to the inner door, finding it to be locked as well. As Stone moved to the center of the room, she knocked, knowing there'd be no response. She faced Stone ten feet away. Of course he could kill her. It was like a cage. “They let you work out here? Lift weights, run?” she asked him.

He moved a few feet toward her, smacking his lips over his broken teeth, then went over to the wall opposite her and leaned against it as his eyes briefly rolled back in his head. “What difference it make to you if they give me drugs or I work out?” He slumped and seemed to lose consciousness still on his feet.

She debated trying to get the attention of some passing guard by banging on one of the doors, but at the risk of rousing Stone. His eyes opened but were hooded, his face remaining dull and expressionless.
He blinked and slowly swiveled his head as if trying to stretch out some kink. “What?” His eyes clouded again.

She went to the inner door and kicked it hard. Stone straightened against the wall. She crossed the room quickly to the other door, knocked, and called, “Officer!” She turned and faced Stone, who was now back in the middle of the room. “How are they treating you? Any problems with anyone? The guards? Other inmates?”

He looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. “Man got my back, even in here. You arrest Tall John? Man always got my back.”

“Stone, I need names, more information, anything you can remember.” But she realized that now, under whatever medications they were feeding him here, it was unlikely he'd ever remember much.

“Didn't nobody tell me no names.” He slid down the wall to a squat, his arms at his sides, head hanging between his bent knees.

“What about people around John, people who worked for him?” Then she remembered he'd said previously that Man had been Tall John's partner back then. “Would Man know?” But Stone seemed back in his stupor.

She called out again at the inner door, “Officer?” Stone began stripping the jumpsuit from his chest and arms as he came toward her. “Think, Stone. Think. Someone wanted, someone put us together in this room so one or both of us would get hurt, hurt each other. Like killing two birds . . . well, you know. You'll never get out if you don't back off. Now.”

He pushed the suit to his ankles and stood there naked, fingers flailing with energy. He sprang just as the outer door rattled and then opened. Before the officer could react, Stone wrapped his arms around Salt, and covered her lower face with his horrible mouth, broken teeth and flaccid lips. “That's for Man,” he whispered, wincing at the first blow from the guard's baton.

—

S
HE
REPORTED
the incident to Sergeant Huff, filled out the forms, made the institution's report, but held little hope of anyone finding out who'd allowed the “mix-up,” as they were calling it, that had put her alone with a mentally disturbed, unshackled inmate.

She'd called Wills and he was on his way to meet her at her place. “They wanted to get Stone and me at the same time.” She made the drive home in record time, not caring about speed limits or the possibility of getting stopped. She made it to the driveway, held herself together till she got the car switched off, and went up to the back door to let Wonder out. She got as far with him as the paddock fence before she leaned against the rails and began retching. Squeezing back tears, she attempted to catch her breath, but it sounded to her like she was sobbing. Wonder ran to her, then ran around her barking, as if she were a stranger. “It's all right.” She reached and held out her unsteady hand. He waited in a sit in front of her until her knees began to register the rough ground and she sat back against the fence, brushing pieces of dirt from her palms. Wonder then lowered himself beside her, where he remained until Wills' headlights washed over them as he came up the gravel driveway.

S
alt waited in the lot across from Sam's and the Blue Room. Beyond a weary water oak on the nearby rise, the downtown buildings were dark silhouettes against a dusty-rose sunset. Not much ever changed around Sam's and its strip mall neighbors, just gradual decay. The large billboard frame overhead was empty. Someone had finally torn down the beeper business sign over one of the storefronts. The amateurishly painted globe on the window of God's World Ministries looked a little dirtier. Taggers had scrawled obscenities on the posters for a gym advertising cage fights.

Salt tried to forget the stench of Stone's saliva. She had her own message for Man. People traversing the lot cut their eyes in her direction, some made a detour when they recognized the Taurus and recognized who or what she was. Others went ahead with purchases at Sam's window and left with Styrofoam boxes or canned sodas, but most didn't bother. They made their transactions with the drug boys leaning on the wall beside the take-out window. They knew murder police from narcs.

Streetlights and building security lights came on at the corner, deepening the dark outside the immediate area of the dope hole. She rolled her shoulders and adjusted the straps of the shoulder holster that crisscrossed her back. The old man again approached to see what she was up to. Before he could offer his usual greeting, Salt cut him off. “Tell Man I'm waiting for him. Won't take long, and then I'll be out of here and quit making folks nervous.”

“Oh, I ain't spyin' for them. You my friend.” But he stepped back away from her car window, his diseased hands drawn farther inward, like claws.

“I know—it's all right. Just get word to Man. Now.”

His face stayed low as he crossed back to the business. In minutes the SUV, gleaming black, jacked high and decked out with rotating rims and running lights, rolled to a gravel-crunching stop in front of where she was parked, back end to the side of the building. Behind the wheel, looking out with a skeptical eye and a clenched jaw, was a young man with a port-wine birthmark on his neck: Lil D. It saddened Salt to see Lil D with Man. Over the years she'd been working The Homes she'd come to know most of Lil D's family, and had hoped that of all Man's gang he might be the one to find his way out of the thug life. Lil D reached with his right arm and the truck responded, audibly switching gears to park. Man waited for the dust to settle before getting out from the other side. Pedestrians stopped to appreciate Man's entrance. In the few cars that were in the lot, people's faces turned in his direction.

Man raised his head as he came around the front bumper, as if he'd been troubled but was ready to be friendly, arms wide, a smile growing on his lips but vacant from his eyes. Light from the street caught some sparkle off a fat gold watch at his wrist and rings on each hand. Lil D turned on the headlights, which gave their spot a stage-
like feel. “Detective.” He smiled, and a glimmer from one diamond tooth caught the light.

Salt got out of her car. “Oh, look, and here I am in jeans. I didn't realize it was a dress-up occasion.” She waved at his ensemble. She'd never seen him or anyone from The Homes wearing such a suit, black with a gleaming white shirt and silver tie. His hair was tightly done in small horizontal cornrows; his light skin had a silk-like shimmer.

“Naw, I'm on my way. Wass up?” He held the smile a little longer.

Salt nodded in Lil D's direction. “You trust him with all your business?”

“Go 'head. You ain't know nothin' Lil D cain't hear.”

“You are dressed for success, Man.”

“Like I was telling you, I got plans. You was always telling me I could do something else. Well, I'm doin' it.”

“What? You giving up the streets?”

“Might. I'm gettin' connected, club bidness, and music. I got some rappers want me to produce them.” He grinned and nodded.

“Music, huh,” she said. “You make anything off the old guys that played here the night the guitar player was shot? He died, you know.”

“I mighta made a minute, but I ain't into that old shit. The blues ain't where the money is. Big money in rappers and video, and getting play in clubs.”

“You'll have to somehow lose your past to go legit, Man. How are you going to do that? And speaking of the past—I saw Stone again.”

Man shifted his posture; muscles tensed or loosened, some of both. He briefly closed his eyes, and then drew a resolving breath. “He taken care of.”

“I can see how it would be no trouble for you to have one of your boys or connections watch out for him with the inmates. But what about the guards, the corrections people, the institution? You don't
have that kind of pull. This city and who controls it do not bend to your wants.”

“Who controls you, Miss Dee Tec Tive?”

“I've got a couple of murders and I'm looking for answers—for who killed Dan Pyne and who might have given Mike Anderson a hot dose years ago. Both of the victims bluesmen. The connection could be your associate Spangler.”

“Spangler. And here I thought you might be lookin' for DeWare.”

“DeWare?”

“Yeah. Ain't he the one they got word on for killin' that rich woman and her kids?”

“Do you know where DeWare is?”

“I hear the manager of Toy Dolls be runnin' snow out his crib. Top of the club. Might be where you find DeWare, too.”

“Hold on. Why are you telling me this?”

Man straightened the cuffs of his shirt.

“I get it. Toy Dolls. You moving up.”

“So what? It all works out for everybody, doncha know. The narcs get some blow, you get DeWare, and I get in the club business. No harm, no foul, as they say.”

“What about your friend Spangler? Won't he be unhappy that his manager is in trouble? If his club comes under investigation?”

“How he gone know I told you 'bout DeWare? This between you and me, right? I got reason to trust you and you said you needed my word. 'Sides, I think you got some mojo, somebody”—he pointed at the sky—“on you side, lookin' out for you. DeWare aimin' at you that night, you know. You keep gettin' outta messes woulda got other folks killed. Like I say, you got some powerful root workin' for you. And Spangler ain't my friend. He bidness.”

“What about his business? What he did to Stone back then? I still
need names. Names of other boys, girls he pimped, customers he supplied with kids. Is he still in that business?”

Man turned his head, then looked down at his beautiful white shirtfront and dusted some imaginary particle. “Why don't you ask that cop he got on his pay?”

“Who, Spangler? Are you talking about Madison?”

“That SWAT cop. He go back and forth between Spangler and the biggest customer for baby bootie in the city.”

“What are you saying, Man?”

“The preacher, Prince, he the one hurt Stone.” Man walked to the other side of his ride and got in. Lil D spun the wheels, leaving a wake of dust that swept over everything.