Quarry in the Black (19 page)

Wasn’t like Delmont was about to come charging in to carry out his contract. Even if he were alive, he’d wait for the Saturday rally, to give his racist client more bang for the buck. And here I sat, at the target’s kitchen table, my nine millimeter in my pants, having another cold breast of original-recipe chicken, getting by on Pepsi, marveling at how easy they were making it for me.

Just screw on the silencer, take out the card-playing bodyguards—two nine-millimeter hiccups should do it—and then swing around and pop the Reverend at his desk, and beat it out the back door and around to the Impala and gone. Take maybe forty-five seconds. About as hard as reaching in the Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket for another piece.

Which I did.

The only tricky thing was that several staffers at Coalition HQ, including Jackson and Ruth, knew I was going to the Ville to help babysit the Reverend this evening. That meant going in tomorrow with a story—how I’d arrived and found everybody already tragically dead—or splitting the scene post-hit tonight, and taking my chances.

The former meant getting looked at by the cops a lot harder than I had been this afternoon. The latter meant holing up in my A-frame up north in the cold waiting for the heat to subside. Yes, they’d have police sketches, but nothing else, and if these looks of mine were any more average, I’d forget who that was in the mirror when I shaved mornings.

Hop in the Impala and split. Then wait it out. Curl up by my fireplace, counting my twenty-five grand.
Thirty
grand, counting my half of Delmont’s payday.

Of course, I hadn’t collected that twenty-five grand yet, had I? That was set for a few hours from now. And did I really want to pull the job
before
the payoff?

Which suggested another possibility: stay in town one more day, decline doing guard duty at the house tomorrow for whatever reason…and come back after dark to do the deed, having, as we criminals say, cased the joint.

I could pretty much count on Terrell and Deon resuming their card-playing in the dining room. Maybe a little chancy counting on the Reverend to still be working on whatever it was he was writing. But a knock on the back door tomorrow night would summon someone, no matter who in the house it was, who would not be alarmed to find my familiar face on the back stoop. Someone who would be dead before it occurred to him he’d misjudged.

Only…what if Mrs. Lloyd returned tomorrow?

While I wasn’t thrilled by the idea of taking Terrell and Deon out, they were guys with guns in a job with risks. Mrs. Lloyd, however, was just a nice married lady, and very beautiful, which made it a shame. I was not at all anxious to add her to the collateral-damage list.

Of course, tomorrow I could probably ascertain at HQ whether Mrs. Lloyd was still at her sister’s or not.

“Mind if I join you?”

The resonant bass voice belonged to the master of the house, the Reverend Raymond Wesley Lloyd, poised in the doorway between hall and kitchen. Still in his rolled-up shirtsleeves but with his black-framed glasses M.I.A., he looked haggard, or anyway as haggard as that well-carved African mask of a face could.

“Please,” I said, and gestured to the chair next to me at the kitchen table.

The Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket was between us on the table with a stack of napkins near it. He first went to the fridge and got himself a Budweiser and returned and selected a thigh from the bucket—about all that was left that was worth eating.

He had a sip of Budweiser, made a face, and said, “Well, isn’t that vile. I only stock it because it’s what the fellas like.”

Terrell and Deon.

We sat quietly eating chicken until we were both finished and wiping our fingers at the same time. I’d started first but his piece was smaller.

“Sometimes,” he said, giving the remains of the thigh a satisfied smile, “it just can’t be helped—fried chicken just really hits the bull’s-eye.”

Hits the bull’s-eye.

He folded his hands, as if getting ready to say grace
after
the meal. “You’re Mr. Blake. I’m afraid I’ve been negligent where you’re concerned.”

“You have?”

He nodded. He was very black in that way that makes some white people uneasy. Not me particularly. Maybe when I was younger and too stupid to know better. Or maybe he just reminded me of somebody I’d known well, somebody who had flushed whatever residual prejudice I might have had out of my system.

His sigh damn near ruffled the curtains over the sink. “I’ve been busy, Mr. Blake. Preoccupied. I want to do everything I can to see that the right man gets into the White House this time around.”

“Afraid it’s an uphill battle, Reverend.”

He smiled, the whiteness of his teeth almost startling against that smooth black skin. “Why don’t you call me Raymond…and is John all right?”

“Make it Jack.”

He leaned back in the kitchen chair, folded his arms. “Oh, I know. ‘Raymond,’ not ‘Ray,’ must sound pompous. I admit to a streak of that. But my momma used to call me ‘Ray Ray,’ and it stuck and all my friends got to calling me that, and I hated it. Grown man called Ray Ray.” He shivered at the thought, then smiled again. “So you’ll have to put up with calling me Raymond.”

“Okay, Raymond.”

“And you’re right, it’s an uphill battle. McGovern comes across weak when really he’s strong, and then there was that lousy break with his V.P. pick.”

The guy McGovern had chosen for vice-president had a hidden history of mental problems, including electroshock therapy and suicide attempts. He’d had to replace the guy with a Kennedy in-law.

“What I’ve been meaning to say to you,” he said, his dark eyes holding me so tight it was as if his hands were doing it, “is that I greatly appreciate you joining this campaign. Coming on board like you have. I’m aware of your military service, and I value that service, beyond anything you might be doing for the Coalition.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Half a smile formed. “You may lose respect for me when I tell you that I didn’t serve. I tried to. But I was a felon, and they wouldn’t take me. That was what you’d call a wake-up call. I was already clean, but the bad things I’d done…well, there’s always a price to be paid, isn’t there?”

“There is.”

“I have to admit that I came around to realizing I’d been lucky not to go. That Vietnam was a bad war, an immoral war, but I came to that realization from a distance. You were on the scene, Jack.”

When the VC rushed Hill 55, trying to take out the First Division Sniper Platoon, I found myself in my first firefight. I’d never seen anything like it, never been in anything like it, but my buddy Bill helped me survive it. He was killing them as fast as they came at us, and while I only froze up for what was probably seconds, that was long enough for Bill to take that bullet for me. Bill Young, who never got older. He had that blacker-than-black skin, too. The red stood out so vividly on flesh like that.

“It means so much to us,” Lloyd said, “having you stand beside us. Providing us with the credibility you bring to the protest.” He unfolded his arms, leaned elbows on the table, raised a palm as if he were swearing in at court. “Now I understand that you don’t feel comfortable with public speaking, that you don’t want to be singled out. But I wish you’d reconsider, Jack…though I will respect your decision otherwise.”

“I’ll think on it, sir.”

“Please, just…Raymond.” He swigged some more Bud; he was getting used to it. Funny what you can get used to. “And, uh…about you and Ruth….”

He’d shifted gears so fast I could hear them grind.

That resonant voice became more intimate. “She’s a wonderful young woman, Ruth. I’m glad to see that you two are…getting along so well.”

He’d been keeping a closer eye on me than I could ever have imagined.

Too casually, he asked, “Has she…has Ruth…discussed with you…?”

“I’m aware of your relationship, Raymond.”

He lowered his gaze. “I can tell that you disapprove. You were talking to my wife, earlier.”

Jesus!

“Marianne is a wonderful woman,” he said, his smile sad now. “The best wife, the best mother…and, I don’t have to tell you, lovely. So very lovely, and I am so very lucky. But I am weak and the Lord is strong.”

“That’s quite a cop-out.”

Another half-smile. “Yes, I suppose it is. I grew up on hard streets, but that’s no excuse. I was sold poison and later I sold poison. My life in those days was all about two things—poison and pussy. I shook the first habit, but I’ve always had that weakness for the second.”

Maybe I was nobody to judge.

“Of course, Jack, after a while, riding the horse, you don’t even
care
about pussy. Just that spike in your arm. If they hadn’t busted me, I’d be long dead. If I hadn’t met Jesus in prison, I’d be dead, too.”

I resisted asking what Jesus was in for.

“In a lot of ways…in most ways, if I might brag a little…I have turned my life around. I serve the Lord and serve my black brothers and sisters. You know, I do a lot of traveling, Jack. When I’m home, with Marianne at my side, around me here at home, I might be tempted but I never give in. But when I’m on the road, spreading what I hope is a message of faith and freedom and non-violence, away sometimes for weeks…I have on occasion…slipped. With Ruth, her keen intelligence and her remarkable beauty…”

Not necessarily in that order.

“…I was too weak to resist. I’m struggling now, to hold onto my marriage. I told Ruth what we had just had to be over, that it could not go on, and she was hurt, of course…but at the same time she has been understanding. More than I could ever hope. But Marianne is
still
hurt, so terribly hurt, and I have so much rebuilding to do. So I tell you, frankly, that it’s a relief to see Ruth with a nice young man like yourself.”

Okay, this was a little creepy. He was basically saying,
Thanks for fucking my girlfriend so I can maybe get back with my wife.
But he had a way of making it sound noble. With that voice, and all that damn charisma, he could read you a grocery list and you’d say, “Right on, brother!”

I’d had enough of this, so I asked, “What are you working on so hard in your study?”

“What am I writing? My speech for Saturday. It’s so very important. Missouri could be in McGovern’s column, I just
know
it could. And the eyes of America will be on us—the media’s taking a great interest.” He sighed. “It’s just too bad such a dark cloud hangs over us now, what with André’s death.”

“He didn’t die of a heart attack, Raymond. His throat was slit. That was a drug deal gone wrong. With your background, surely you must know that.”

He nodded, his expression grave. “André saved my life in prison. Do you know what that feels like?”

His name was Bill Young.

“Yes,” I said.

“I tell you, André took the Lord into his heart, too. He was born again inside that terrible place. I thought he’d really straightened himself out, broken out of his personal prison. I’ve tried to help. Given him a place, a role, where he could become a different person, a
good
person.”

“But he stayed the same person, didn’t he, Raymond? I spotted him the first afternoon at the Coalition. In country…” Nam. “…I was around a lot of guys using, as you might suspect. And he had all the signs.”

Lloyd was shaking his head, not looking at me. “I know, I know…and his death will dredge up all of my past. Turn it from something I triumphed over into a wretched thing that will make people think I am still part of that world.”

“But you’re not?”

The question surprised him. Maybe hurt him.

“Of course not, Jack.” He swallowed, looked away. “But the timing is unfortunate. After the speech, it was my intention…well, never mind.”

“After the speech what?”

His shrug was barely perceptible. “I was about to clean house. Staffers have reported…
suspicious
behavior…and I’d resolved to let André go. And someone else has to go, too, but I’d rather not go into that. It’s too…hurtful.”

I knew who that someone must be.

“Raymond,” I said, “when you say you planned to cut them loose…would you have handed them over to the police or the federal authorities?”

“I would have cut ties with André and his co-conspirator. And I would have shared my
suspicions
with the authorities, yes. The sooner they could be stopped, the better. Street drugs are a kind of self-genocide for my people, Jack. The one thing my sorry background does for me is that I can speak with authority on this subject. When the presidential campaign is over…well, a major change will be made at the Coalition. That I promise you.”

He offered me his hand and I took it and shook it.

“Thank you, Jack,” he said, getting up. “I mean that most sincerely. And thank you for the frank talk.”

He put the empty Bud can in the trash and headed back to his study to work on the speech.

He was right to thank me.

I had decided not to kill him.

But somebody else wouldn’t be so lucky.

Three in the morning wasn’t the best time to take in St. Louis’ Forest Park, its fourteen-hundred or so acres home to several museums, a planetarium and a famous zoo—unless a lack of company was what you were after. The municipal theater would be empty, the golf courses and tennis courts and boathouse, too. No one was likely to be taking in any of the statues or paying respects at memorials, either.

That made me a rare moonlight visitor to the park’s Korean War Memorial, a giant floral clock maybe thirty-five feet in diameter, formed by thousands and thousands of colorful flowers, mums and sunflowers and more, looking muted in the full moon’s glow, like a hand-tinted photograph, and spelling out below

HOURS AND FLOWERS SOON FADE AWAY.

Curving around the memorial were a number of stone benches to sit and reflect. Also a number of substantial evergreens to stand behind and wait.

Nearby was the fifty-foot high, glass-walled, steel-skeletoned, stone-fronted Art Deco greenhouse known as the Jewel Box, a big tourist destination and frequent site for weddings; but not at three in morning. My instructions had been to enter the park from Hampton Avenue, take a right on Wells Drive to a round-about where the Jewel Box would be on my left. That promise had been kept. The money would be waiting at four
A.M.
That promise, not just yet.