Trip Wire (10 page)

“Yeah, I take a break. But not to drink.”

“Lunch then. We could go to Champ’s and you could get something to eat there. My treat. You like their ribs?”

“They okay.”

He found a place to park on Forest Street. Just my luck.

When he stepped out of the car, he seemed to emerge in sections. His chest was massive, his thighs like pillars, canoe-size feet in dark-brown boots.

“See that next block?” I said to him. “I was born on that block. Or somewhere near. Anyway, that’s where I used to live, with my grandmother.”

He nodded.

At the red Formica table we hooked, Sim papered his starched yellow shirtfront with napkins and tucked into the ribs. I marveled at what a fastidious eater he was, not a drop, not a splash of barbecue sauce on him. I ordered a dish of banana pudding, only two or three million calories’ worth.

He never asked why I was so eager to buy him a meal. I guess he knew that I was after something. While he ate, I got up and went over to talk to the waitress and the fry cook. Sim didn’t ask why I was doing that, either.

“How long have you been with my uncle?” I said when I came back to the table.

“Since July.”

“You like working for him?”

He grunted.

“Sim. What is that short for? Simmons?”

“My mama named me Simpson.”

“Sim, you mind if I ask you a few personal questions?”

I got a few blinks out of him, but no answer. Still, I pressed on. “You do any drugs?”

“I look like a junkie to you?”

“I don’t mean that. I’m talking about grass, hash, coke.”

“Why you wanna know that?”

“I have my reasons. And don’t worry, I would never say anything to Woody.”

“I like to get high. Who don’t?”

“When you buy it, do you get it from somebody around here?”

“You wanna cop? You didn’t have to buy me no ribs for that.”

“I don’t need to—” I stopped myself. “Actually, yes. That’s what I want to do. Cop. Can you put me in touch?”

He had methodically eaten all the ribs before going after the french fries. Now he was taking care of those as he thought it over. “What if your uncle find out? Good-bye to my job.”

“He won’t. It’ll all be on me.”

“Okay.”

“Can I ask you something else? You’ve been in prison, haven’t you?”

He was using a Wet-Nap to clean his face. The little square of moistened tissue was lost in his big hand. “You say you was raised around here?”

“Yes.”

“Y’all are some nosey motherfuckers in this neighborhood.”

4

We picked our way around the mounds of filthy snow. “Your connection,” I said. “Is he just some kid who deals on the street?”

“I don’t buy from no kids.”

“All right, don’t get mad. So your connection is a little higher up on the chain. Does he work for a man named Henry Waddell?”

Now Sim looked at me with something other than that impassive stare.

I repeated it. “Does he?”

“Not much get sold on the South Side Waddell don’t have something to do with.”

“So that means yes. Your guy works for Waddell. Even if it’s indirectly.”

“Even if it’s what?”

“I’m saying your guy may not take orders directly from Henry Waddell. But Waddell will end up getting his cut.”

“Damn right he will. How you know about that anyway?”

“I’m not as dumb as I look, Sim.”

“Didn’t nobody say you was dumb.”

“Lame, then. I’m not as lame as I look. You think I’m some boogie college girl living up north and I don’t know shit about the haps around here. But I’ve actually met the famous Mr. Waddell.”

“Yeah, I believe that.”

“It’s true, I have.”

I wasn’t going to go into the story now, but I had made the acquaintance of the South Side drug lord earlier in the year. When my Aunt Ivy lay near death in the hospital, Waddell had shown up out of the blue. In a heartbeat, he and Woody were at each other’s throats. They clearly hated each other, and it was soon apparent that the enmity went back to a time long before I was born. I pestered the hell out of Woody until he leaked a few details about Waddell—his low morals and his high standing in the crime community. But he wouldn’t give up any of what I sensed was the juicy saga of their personal relationship. I just knew that Ivy figured into it somewhere. Love triangle? Secrets carried up to Chicago from someplace down south? I had no idea.

“I’ll tell you about Waddell some other time,” I said. “But for now, what’s your guy’s name?”

“Jones.”

“Now, that’s an unusual name. Really distinctive.”

Sim halted and put out his arm to stop me walking as well.

“Don’t you be talking like that to this dude,” he said.

“Like what?” I said.

“Like screamin’ on his name and shit. He ain’t gonna think that’s funny.”

I was suitably chastened. “Okay.”

Jones ran his operation out of the back of a barbershop. All four chairs were occupied. Three afros and a shaved head under way.

I waited up front, leafed through an ancient
Life
magazine, and let the four barbers check me out while Sim went on back to score. I didn’t just want him to buy grass for me; in fact, I didn’t want the grass at all. What I needed was Henry Waddell’s address.

As I waited for Sim, I couldn’t help pondering my sexual fate—again. When I wanted a man, he didn’t want me. But a guy I never gave a second thought to—he couldn’t get me off his mind. There were eight men in the shop. The younger ones had each given me a quick once-over and instantly dismissed me. The older, broken-down ones were eating me up. I thought one old coot in his barber’s smock was going to shave a path right through the middle of his client’s natural.

Sim appeared in the doorway then, motioned me back there.

Indeed, Jones did not seem to have much of a sense of humor. But he did laugh at me when I asked if he could direct us out to Waddell’s place. He stopped laughing when I dropped my uncle Woody’s name on him. He finally agreed to call Waddell and handed the phone over to me. I told the froggy-throated kingpin how grateful I would be for a few minutes of his time.

No, he said. I had it wrong. He’d be grateful for a few minutes of mine.

5

The house was just off St. Lawrence at 107th. A big place with two well-groomed, deadly German shepherds in the gated front yard. I left Sim smoking a Newport in the Lincoln.

Waddell took my arm and walked me past a huge front room with clear plastic covering every turquoise sofa, chair, and lamp. It looked frozen in time, and it was appropriately chilly in there. Cold air clawed out at us as we passed it.

“This here is a treat for sure,” Waddell said. “I don’t get many visits from beautiful young ladies now I’m ah old man.”

I laughed girlishly, as if I believed his flattery.

I caught sight of a young man in the kitchen. He had a solitaire game laid out on the table and a black gun a couple of inches to the left of the ace of diamonds. Waddell didn’t introduce us.

We took seats in another big room, near the back of the house. This one looked more lived in, and it was heated. I was offered a drink from a cut-crystal decanter with a little silver tag—scotch—on a chain around its neck. Identical containers held bourbon, gin, and so on. I said I’d take whatever Mr. Waddell was drinking.

Waddell was taken aback to hear that I was one of the hippies living in that apartment on the North Side where the two kids were killed.

“What you doing in a place like that? Woody let you stay up in there?”

“He’s never been too happy about where I was living.”

“I’m surprised he ain’t grabbed you outta there.”

“He’s about an inch away from doing just that,” I said. “I made a deal with him. I promised him I’d get out as soon as I find—as soon as the police find whoever did it. But they’re looking in all the wrong directions. They’re even trying to blame one of our roommates for the murder. I’m trying to figure it out some other way. Just so I know. I have to prove I’m right or prove I’m wrong.”

“Why? Why you doing they work for them?”

“Because the guy who got killed meant something special to me.”

“That was your man?”

“No. But I thought he was great.”

I thought he was. Past tense. Suddenly I realized how far away from Wilton I had traveled in just a few days. Maybe it was just a matter of knowing, accepting in a way I hadn’t before, that he was dead and forever lost to me. But I don’t think that was the whole answer. Accepting the death meant acknowledging how far away he had gone from me. What I was remarking on now was how far away I had gone from him. Curious that of all the friends and strangers I’d spoken to, it should be Henry Waddell who triggered this insight.

“Anyway, there’s another reason I’m doing their work, as you say. The police are jerking us around. They’re playing some kind of game.”

“What you mean? They not really trying to find out who killed the boy?”

“I don’t know what I mean, exactly. I just know they’re doing it. Which brings me around to you.”

He popped his eyes. “What the hell I got to do with any of this?”

“Well, as you know, a bunch of us lived together. We had a commune.”

“Yeah. Black and white both, ain’t it?”

“That’s right. One of the guys is the suspect the cops are after—Dan. Another one is an older man. His name is Barry Mayhew. A white guy. I have reason to believe he spends a lot of time on the South Side, back in our old neighborhood. For one thing, he likes the food at Champ’s. He’s a regular. But I also think he gets the merchandise he sells from somebody in the neighborhood. There’s a big market for that kind of merchandise these days. Everybody’s doing it.”

“Merchandise,” he said. “Um-hum.” Waddell lit a cigar, and took a much longer time to do it than was necessary.

I didn’t wait for him to speak. I went on. “Don’t misunderstand, please. I’m not here to pry into your business or involve you in any way. It’s just that I’m convinced now that Barry Mayhew’s got something to do with those murders. Wait, let me put that another way. In a million years, I couldn’t see Barry torturing and killing anybody. Not with his own hands, at least. And he’s got an alibi for the time of the murders, anyway. But I think he knows stuff none of the rest of us do—about the killings and about Dan and maybe even about what the police are really up to.”

He sat back in his La-Z-Boy, puffed expansively on the cigar.

“Sound like you onto something. Yes sir, I can see Woody didn’t raise no dumb children. But what do all this have to do with me?”

“Can you tell me—would you tell me—if you know Barry Mayhew? Was he getting his merchandise from somebody attached to you? And was Wilton Mobley in the business, too? That’s all I want to know.”

“I’d like to help you out. Out of respect for your aunt and uncle. But all I can do is tell you the way I understand how these things work.”

“That’s good enough.”

“In the business you talking about, there’s a big boss and then there’s a lot of little men below him. The man at the top got a lot on his mind—deals to make, people in high places to see, wheels to grease all over town. The boss control a lot of money, and everybody want some of it. Man at the top can’t be too selfish. He gotta give in order to get.

“But he’ll leave the drudgery to the lower men in the company. Kinda like middlemen. They got they own customer bases. White boy doing business up north, he probably selling that mind-changing shit they cook up in labs. But it’s entirely possible he’s got a source on the South Side for other goods.

“You know what else might happen? A white boy might get to thinking he’s a whole lot slicker than he really is. Might get greedy and try to short somebody. Might even try to get himself out of a jam with the law by selling out one of the middlemen. You know, anything’s possible.”

“So the man at the top wouldn’t really know a drone like Barry Mayhew,” I said. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Mighta heard the name somewhere, but he wouldn’t know him from Adam. And as for this Wilton cat, your friend who was killed, the boss probably never heard of him until he saw on the news that the boy and some white girl got themselves murdered up on Armitage. So if you think he was doing business with the company, you can forget that.”

“I see. All of that makes good sense, Mr. Waddell.”

“Um-hum. I figured you’d understand it.” He picked up my highball glass, which was still full. “Guess you not that thirsty.”

“I’m okay. I’ll just nurse this.”

He began to chuckle. “Tell me something. I bet Woody got no idea you up here. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t think so. Way we left it between us, he knew I was entertaining his girl, he probably whip you within ah inch of your life and be talking about trying to kill me.”

“He might. But you don’t seem too scared.”

I watched him roar with laughter, which turned in a minute to thoughtful head-shaking. “Yeah,” he said, “old Woody be outdone if he knew I gave you something he couldn’t.”

“What happened between you and Woody?” I asked then.

“Who you think you kidding, girl? If he wanted you to know, he’d ah told you.”

It was time for me to go. I thanked Waddell and rose from the chair. I saw him looking at me, half in the way those old barbers had done.

“You know, you do feature your mama just a little,” he said.

“What?”

“I said you kind of look like your mama. I’m telling you, that woman was fine.”

The remark staggered me. “You knew my mother?”

“Sure I did. Knew her. Knew your uncle Hero that died. Knew your grandma Rosetta. I know a whole lot about your family.”

That expression on his face was meant to intrigue me. And it did. “That puts you ahead of me,” I said. “Tell me something else you know about them.”

He only laughed, mouth opening like a new wound. “You come around to see me anytime,” he said. “I told you, I love to get female company.”

6

When you want to pick up six pairs of crew socks for a buck fifty, or maybe buy a gross of Bic ballpoints for not much more, you go to the open-air market at Maxwell Street. Poor people from every corner of the city flocked there to haggle with street merchants over baby clothes and factory-second brassieres, phony Swiss watches and shower curtains. Black folks used to salivate over the Polish sausages and the foot-long frankfurters the street vendors served up there. Of course, Maxwell Street was the polite term for the hundred-year-old bazaar. But I grew up hearing it referred to as Jewtown. I don’t know who coined that nasty bit of anti-Semitism, but the moniker was ancient and ubiquitous.