Seen It All and Done the Rest (32 page)

SEVENTY-FOUR

Z
ora was at home, working on her computer, when I got there. She took one look at my face and knew something was up.

“What’s wrong, Mafeenie?”

There was no way to tell it but to tell it. “I just met with one of Greer’s partners. They’ve got a video of you. In Birmingham.” I took it out of my jacket pocket and handed it to her the same way Duncan had handed it to me, gingerly.

She turned it over in her palm while I told her what he had said. When I finished, she looked at me, but I couldn’t read her face.

“Do you think she’d really do it?”

“Yes,” I said.

She was turning the disk over in her hand slowly. “Did you see it?”

“No, darlin’,” I said. “I didn’t see it.”

“Well, you know what?” Her voice was soft but not shaky. “I’m not going to see it either.” She sounded strong. Determined.

“Are you sure?” I hoped she was. Once you start running scared, it’s hard to slow down.

She laid the disk down on the desk like it was too hot for her to hold anymore. “You know, a couple of months ago, I would have said take the money. Tell them we’ll give
them
money, anything they want, just don’t…
don’t ever
put this out there where people can see me on the absolute worst night of my life. Don’t let people see me drunk and crazy and nasty and stupid and sad. Don’t let strangers make judgments about who I am because of who I was.”

“What would you say now?”

She looked at me and I was amazed to see that she was smiling. “Well, my grandmother taught me that if you let them run you off, you’re just a scared rabbit looking for another place to hide.”

“Your grandmother is a wise woman.” Zora didn’t want to agree to this blackmail any more than I did. I’d never been prouder of her. “So what do you say?”

“I say fuck them!”

“Are you absolutely sure?” I said, wondering suddenly if maybe we should look at it before she made a final decision. “It might be…”

Zora held up her hand. “I know exactly what it is. I was there, remember?”

I nodded.

“I’m sure,” she said.

I hugged her. “Then I say fuck them, too!”

She laughed and hugged me back. “Nice language from a grandmother!”

“Okay,” I said. “But if we’re going to do this, I think we should call your mother so she’ll know what’s coming.”

“No way,” Zora said.

I was surprised. Jasmine is not a technophobe like me. She might actually see the footage somewhere and that would be awful.

“Don’t you think you should warn her?”

“Remember what I told you about flash mobs?”

“I think so.”

“You will. Call Greer. Tell her you’ll come by tonight around seven to make the deal.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Don’t worry. They’re the ones out of options. Not us.”

“But we can’t really prove anything,” I said.

“We don’t have to prove anything. All we have to do is shine the light.”

SEVENTY-FIVE

W
hen I got to Greer’s office, everyone had been sent home as I requested. I told her I didn’t want anybody to see us together. I had built up a certain image, I said. It wouldn’t help it to see me selling out. Since that image is all I’ve got left, I thought the least she could do was allow me to be discreet. She agreed, sounding smug that she had finally brought me around to her way of thinking. It was almost seven. She met me at the door without a smile and got right down to business.

“Let’s go in the conference room, I’ve got the papers all laid out.”

I followed her down the short hallway and she closed the door behind us. The large window looked out over the parking lot, but Greer walked over and closed the blinds. That was fine with me. I was the one who had said this kind of deal was one that was better done in darkness. Besides, if Zora was right, she’d be opening them again soon enough.

“Have a seat,” Greer said, and sat down herself, opening a folder full of papers.

I took a chair across from her and put my purse on the table exactly as Zora had told me to do. I hoped my brilliant granddaughter knew what she was doing, but if she didn’t there was nothing I could do about it now. My job was to stall Greer Woodruff as long as I could until our troops arrived. I wasn’t sure yet how I was going to do that, but I was sure something would come to me.

“I am so pleased that we’ve been able to come to terms,” Greer said, when she seemed satisfied that she had the necessary papers in front of her.

“I wouldn’t call this coming to terms,” I said. “You’re a blackmailer doing business with drug dealers.”

“I’m a black woman doing business in America,” she said.

“What does that have to do with it?”

Her non-smile was closer to a sneer. “That’s a funny question coming from a woman who had to leave the country to find work.”

“So if I had stayed, I’d have the right to be a blackmailer, too?”

“No, you’d have the right to be self-righteous. But you didn’t, so you don’t.” She pushed the papers across the table along with a fat black fountain pen.

“Do you have the disk?” I said.

“Of course. I have it right here.”

It looked just like the one Duncan Matthews had. I took it and dropped it in my purse.

“You should be glad you took the deal,” she said. “Some of my partners had a real interest in this disk. Your granddaughter is a beautiful girl. Even when she’s drunk.”

I swallowed hard. Only a few more minutes to go.

“This is the end of this neighborhood,” I said. “Don’t you even care?”

“This isn’t the end of this neighborhood,” she said. “You missed that by a couple of years. You were just too far away to notice. And whether I care or not is beside the point. If I don’t do it, somebody else will.”

“What happens to Betty Causey?”

“She’ll get twenty thousand for that little beat-up house she’s got.” Greer leaned back in her chair. Now that she had me in her office, she wanted to toy with me for a while like a cat before it eats that mouse. “See, I do have a heart, Ms. Evans. I added five thousand dollars for her pain and suffering. She can go find some relatives in the country who will be glad to take her and her crackhead son in for that kind of money.”

“He’s not a crackhead.” I couldn’t let that go unchallenged. “What about the others?”

“They’ll get fifteen apiece. All in all,” she said, “it’s not a bad deal. They were going to have to go sooner or later.”

“Because the cocaine dealers need the money you borrowed?”

“I didn’t borrow it. I agreed to perform a service vital to anybody who does the bulk of their business in cash.” She twisted her mouth into a smile. “Besides, it’s not my fault they lived longer than they were supposed to.”

That’s when we heard the first horn. It was one long blast and then two short ones. It sounded like a signal and it was. Greer frowned slightly. There was a moment of silence and then, out of nowhere, an explosion of horns, a cacophony of horns. I stood up. Greer took three short steps over to the window and raised the blinds with one angry motion.

The parking lot was full of cars. They were all blowing their horns and flashing their lights and the noise was deafening. I could see Betty and Daisy standing beside Abbie, who was leaning in her own car window, blowing the horn for all she was worth. Thelma and Juanita were standing with Victor, who was leaning on Aretha’s truck while she laid on the horn like a champ. Zora was standing in the back of the truck with her camera pointed toward the window where we were standing.

Greer turned to me. “What the hell is going on?”

“We’re just doing business,” I said, reaching into my purse and pulling out Zora’s other little camera. I set it down on the table, out of her reach, able to get a shot that included us both. “Twenty-first-century business. It’s called the Internet.”

She stepped away from the camera like it was about to explode. She was as clueless about this stuff as I was, but she knew this was bad. Very bad. “You sent this out live?”

“Live and in living color, but don’t worry. You didn’t say anything incriminating. You were just being yourself.”

“You can’t prove a thing! Not a thing!”

“I don’t have to prove anything,” I said, pointing to the parking lot. “As far as they’re concerned, you’re guilty as sin.”

I picked up the unsigned contracts and tore them in half. I knew it was corny, but I was on a roll. Zora had sent the feed out live and asked people to come and bear witness and blow their horns at her signal. And they did it! They actually did it! At the very least, Greer Woodruff was going to have some explaining to do.

“Guilty of what?” She snarled, too mad to realize this was still going out live. “Trying to buy up some houses from a bunch of scared old women? Trying to hang on to a business I built from the ground up?” She raised her voice to be heard above all those horns blaring outside her window. “For doing what the white boys do every day of their lives and nobody says a thing about it?”

“There aren’t any white boys here,” I said. “Just two black women doing business in America. And for the record?
Ain’t nobody scared around here but you!
”

SEVENTY-SIX

T
he next day, we made the cover of
Dig It!
again, and we led the six o’clock news on all three local stations. Zora and I held hands on the couch as the anchorwoman smiled her best you-won’t-believe-this smile.

“Good evening. Our top story is one for the books,” she said. “Or maybe for the movies. A prominent local businesswoman is being accused of money laundering and an array of related charges stemming from a local reality show exposé that has become a cult favorite on the Web.”

We grinned at each other and I squeezed her hand. Zora had just thrown a big old bucket of water on the witch. We could practically hear her melting.

“Called
Rescue on MLK,
and featuring the reclamation of a corner lot on the historic thoroughfare, the show’s regular live video feed featured a meeting last night between Greer Woodruff, owner of Woodruff and Associates, and the show’s star, Atlanta actress Josephine Evans. Let’s take a look.”

“They’re going to show it, Mafeenie!” Zora said. “Now you’ll get to see the woman the world has been looking at all these weeks.”

It was finally time for me to look, so I did, and there she was, Citizen Evans, reporting for duty. A wild woman with wild eyes, a wild face, a wild gypsy heart that had finally found a home where she least expected it.
Is that what I look like now? Full of righteous indignation and courage and joy?
I leaned closer and what I saw was an absolutely free woman looking back at me. And I loved her. I loved her fiercely.

SEVENTY-SEVEN

Y
ou are fabulous!” Howard’s voice on the other end of the line was falling all over itself with delight. “Beyond fabulous! Everybody saw you in that scene with that awful woman last night. The way you tore up those contracts! All those horns blowing. My God, people were calling me all night. They can’t get enough!”

“That was no scene,” I said, laughing at his excitement. “That was my life.”

“
Was
your life is right,” he crowed. “It’s time to come home in triumph!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I talked to François a few minutes ago. All is forgiven! The theater is prepared to pay you whatever you want for as long as you want. Come home!”

Home.

“Why the sudden change of heart?”

“Because you are the toast of the town, honey! The absolute, hot buttered toast! Anything you put your name on is a guaranteed hit! Open the season, close the season, pick a new season. You’re free to do whatever you want.”

And suddenly, there it was. The moment when what you want is the only real question, and you absolutely must know the only real answer because you are the only one who can, and, of course, you do.

“I’m not coming back, Howard,” I said.

“What do you mean ‘not coming back’?”

“I’m going on tour.”

“On tour?” His voice was incredulous. “On tour where?”

I hoped he was sitting down. “Would you believe Amarillo, Texas?”