More Money for Good (10 page)

Tavious remained in the kitchen after his conversation with his Grands. He wanted to relax and take in his grandmother's thoughts while enjoying the light breeze wafting and bouncing through the windows. Gospel music—inspirational to some—was blaring throughout the house. “No Weapon Formed Against Me Shall Prosper.” Tavious was at ease of sorts despite the revealing news article about Amara's death written by this Saadia Eussit.

Unannounced or planned his mother Joyce came into the kitchen. Seeing her was not on his agenda. Seeing her at the Waffle House and outside in the parking lot was cool enough. His plan today was to sit back, focus, and think of an idea to get his two million, then live comfortably without her in his life at all. That's it.

“It sure is good to see you, baby,” she said.

Her voice was agitating. Tavious didn't want to do this now. His group therapy sessions in prison with detailed ways to deal with negative distractions were going to help him with this stress. He turned them on. His old, bearded counselor's voice appeared in his head. It reminded him to control himself. He remembered how to do just that.
Breathe.
It was going to be difficult though. He had years of built-up electrons bubbling inside his body. They were close to spilling over. He still couldn't believe she didn't come and see her own son in prison.

Tavious suppressed everything running through his mind with silence.
Not a word. Steady, deep breaths.

“You barely said a word to me the other night,” his mother pushes.

The second sound of her voice is even more irritating. It rattled his brain more than her words. He remained silent but pushed and tapped his foot under the table akin to stomping down on a kick drum pedal in a concert for a rapper where it needed to be loud as can be.

“Tavious, I know you're upset with me. And you have every right to be, but we have to talk sometime,” she pressed.

Tavious doesn't respond. He was still working on his breathing technique and still recoiling with his leg. But then she placed her hand on his shoulder while he sits. Tavious stood up quickly and his system was on fire.

“Don't . . .” Tavious requested. He wanted to say more. Much louder. But he mumbled that it was enough and that he wanted to be left alone.

She moved back a few steps and was surprised that he didn't say more. She expected that he would have had said more to her. She was ready to hear it all. She was more than ready to tell her side. She couldn't wait to inform him that when he was eighteen she finally opened her eyes from the distance they shared and noticed that he was always with money. Had a car without a job. She was scared for him. She wanted to remind him that she promised God that if he was caught selling drugs she would have killed herself first before she would see him locked up like an animal in a cage. She wanted to remind him that she told him that. She wanted to enlighten him and thought he should know that Amara kept her informed of his well-being more than he would ever know during those twenty years behind bars.

Another minute had passed by now. All silence. She was in tears thinking about the things she did wrong up to this point regarding her son. All the years she spent chasing men.

Just every freakin' thing she did wrong.

“Are you just going to stand there?” she asked.

Tavious felt a spike. The uncontrollable spike that was spoken about in his counseling sessions in prison. He smiles and suppresses it for a few more minutes but just has to let it go.

“You think it's that easy? I'm standing here pushing forty years old and haven't laid eyes on you in twenty—and what? You want a kiss and a hug?”

Tavious turned around slowly and for the first time he looked at his mom only because she didn't respond. It was his first good look at her. No darkness. After all this time. He noticed the tears rolling down her face. She is twenty years older but her eyes hadn't changed a bit. Tavious focused on the tear tumbling down her cheek. Her eyes looked exactly the same as the day she dropped him off at his grandmother's to live a better life when he was seven.

Mrs. Bullock had been just outside the kitchen in the dining room, listening to every word. The room still had the oak wood cabinet record player with the vintage Stevie Wonder albums and Jackson 5 forty-five discs on the bottom shelf that they would listen to back in the day.

Tavious was exhausted by now. He didn't want to say the wrong thing. He could see her pain but still he wanted to say everything. He couldn't dismiss the words from his mouth of everything that was on his mind. It wouldn't be productive. It was against the rules of staying cool, calm, and focused. His mother doesn't move or speak. She was ready for his onslaught of words. She is tight, as though she had been sitting on death row for years. She wanted to hear it all. They stand eye to eye waiting for what was next.

Suddenly there was a never-forgettable crackle, hiss, pop, and scratching sound that could have only come from the needle on a vinyl record on the old but functional oak wood record player. It was Mrs. Bullock's favorite song, by James Cleveland, “Peace, Be Still.”

I was surprised to see Tavious walk into the shop Monday morning with his mother and her husband Ely. They followed him over to his bay and from my office it looked as though he was giving them the royal tour. When they made it over to my office they were all smiles.

His mother extended her hand out to me. “West, thanks for putting Tavious in charge of your lean program,” she said.

I let her know it was my pleasure right after Tavious winked his eye at me.

“You sure have a nice shop here,” Ely said. “If you're ever in need of a guard dog I'm your man,” he let me know.

Tavious said good-bye to them a few minutes later and when they were out the door he followed me into my office. I sat behind my desk and Tavious took the chair directly in front of my desk.

“Sometimes you have to let some things go, West,” Tavious said. “All these years, man, and no matter how mad I thought I was . . . A moment can put you in a place where you can move on and live life.”

I smiled at him and nodded my head in agreement. I knew exactly where Tavious's head was because Mrs. Bullock had called me bright and early just to let me know that he was in a better place.

“So, you talk to Grands?”

I nodded again.

“She thinks I need to go talk to this reporter named Saadia Eussit because she wrote an article about Amara's death.”

“Couldn't hurt. But what do you think about it?”

Tavious swiped at his face and exhaled. “I don't know, man. I don't know this woman. What if she is working with the police, trying to get some kind of statement out of me.”

“Well, when you talk to her it's almost going to be like a statement.”

Tavious pointed toward me. “Exactly.”

“What if you tell her you'll speak with her off the record?” I told him. “That way, they can't use anything you say.”

Tavious kept his eyes on me and decided that he could do that, but very cautiously.

I asked him, “When does she want to meet?”

“Grands set it up for later today after work at Gladys Knight's downtown. You're going with me right?”

Aa usual, the restaurant was packed. Mrs. Bullock and Saadia Eussit couldn't have picked a better place to meet because I hadn't had a bite of chicken and waffles and an ice-cold sweet tea in much too long. The restaurant was the type of establishment where you didn't make reservations, but Mrs. Bullock told us to give the head waitress our name. With the quickness they led us back to a table where a lady was sitting, wearing a blue blouse and black pants, with a notebook sitting in front of her. We presumed her to be Ms. Eussit and we were right.

After she introduced herself, Ms. Eussit let us know up front the “U” in her name was silent—“Esit”—and she was not there for any small talk by getting straight to business. We barely had a chance to sit down before she started in. By chance I noticed Tavious gawking at her iPad.

“So, I understand”—she looked at me then Tavious—“that you wanted to see me,” she said. She was already in her notebook and we hadn't said a word.

Tavious answered. “I'm Tavious and this is—”

I cut him off. “My name is Pete,” I informed her. There was no way she was getting any information about me. I had never read my own name in the newspaper except on a small ad in the paper about my shop, and that's the way I wanted to keep it.

The light-skinned woman peered over her reading glasses at me. “Uh . . . okay, right.” She adjusted her glasses, then looked at Tavious still peering over her lenses. “You wanted to talk about the murder of Amara, I take it?”

Tavious paused, then he cleared his throat. “Yeah, yeah, that's it. I wanted to tell you . . . Wait a minute, this is off the record—right?”

She confirmed with a nod, then Tavious looked at me before he continued.

“Well, yeah, I knew her. I spoke to her while I was in prison. We were supposed to meet up when I got out but I never got a chance to talk to her.”

The reporter had an oversized black leather carry bag with her and we watched as she dug into it deep. She finally brought out a folder. She looked at me for a brief second, then quickly at Tavious before reading something inside. “Do you have a phone number with the last four 6767?”

Immediately that number stood out to me as being his cell.

Tavious was close to answering. “Uhh . . .”

I cut in. “Nope.” Tavious was so green to technology and knew absolutely nothing about how numbers could be traced. I just couldn't let him put himself out there like that.

Tavious looked at me and so did the reporter.

“Okay . . .” she said.

“Good,” I said back.

She gave me a sharp look, then put her attention back on Tavious. “So, tell me about the relationship you had with Amara.”

Tavious began to speak again. And once again I cut him off. “They were friends,” I told her. “Nothing more, nothing less.” I gave Tavious a nudging look to tell her more during the brief pause in the conversation, because I was sure Saadia Eussit had had enough of my interruptions even though I couldn't care less.

“Umm, yeah, he's right. We were friends. I knew her before I went to prison and we stayed in touch,” Tavious explained to her.

“Only a friendship?”

“That's all it was,” Tavious responded.

“So, you two didn't have any type of disagreements pertaining to anything?”

Tavious shook his head no. “Like what?”

“You tell me.”

“No, we didn't.” Tavious was very blunt.

“The police said her death was caused by beating and shot to the back of the head. Do you know who or why somebody would want to hurt her? Did she ever tell you someone was a threat to her?”

“Never. We talked all the time and she never said anything like that to me.”

“And you talked to her how?”

“Over the phone,” Tavious said.

“Over your cell phone?”

“Let me interject. You mean while you were in prison—right?”

Tavious shot me a look. “Right. That's right.”

Once again the reporter tightened her eyes toward me.

Tavious turned to her. “Look, I didn't come down here to answer a bunch of questions. You're almost like the police,” he tells her. “The only reason I'm here is to tell you that I didn't have anything to do with the murder of Amara. She was my friend,” he said. “I wanted to let you know this firsthand because I knew it was only a matter of time before you found out that the police questioned me, and I don't want my name in one of those news articles you write.”

“Well, I had that bit of information already, Tavious,” she said.

“So, why didn't you print it?” I asked.

“I've been around the block a time or two, Pete. That is your name?”

“Yeah, you got it,” I hit back.

“Well, Pete, I know when APD is jerking me around. They gave up his name too easy. They were trying to play me into putting his name in the paper to add pressure. I rarely do such a thing—matter of fact, I've only done it once and I was more than sure I was right,” she tells us. Saadia removed her grandma, professor, really stuck-up, reading glasses from her face. It was the first time that we could see that she wasn't bad looking—beautiful even. She picked up her phone. “I just remembered, I have to make a call,” she said, then got up from her seat and walked near the restroom to make her call.

Tavious followed her with his eyes. “Okay, you can go now,” he told me in a low tone, almost whispering.

“What?”

He looked around the restaurant. “Yeah, you should leave now, West.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked him again. I looked over at the reporter and she was deep into her call. “Are you crazy? She will eat you alive if I leave you two alone.”

Tavious's tone was still lower than normal. “Don't count on it. I'm going to say very little.”

“Tavious, what are you talking about?”

“She needs to know that I don't need you here to be a buffer, man. C'mon, I'll catch the train back or something,” he declared.

I looked at Tavious, then back at the reporter. “Are you sure?”

“West, I got this, man.”

When Saddia Eussit the reporter extraordinaire returned to the table she was ready to get back to business.

She noticed within seconds. “Where's Pete?” Her tone was very sarcastic.

“Oh, he had another meeting. He's a real busy man,” Tavious said. “So, I guess it's just you and me.”

Saadia put her glasses back on then wrote down something in her notebook. She looked at Tavious over the rims of her glasses. “Do you think you're up to it?”

Tavious smiled for the first time and she noticed. “A man who has nothing to hide is up for anything.”

 

Tavious left the restaurant feeling better than he did going in about his conversation with the reporter. There wasn't a question that Saadia asked that he didn't answer that could have implicated him in the murder.

Ms. Eussiet was especially interested in their relationship. Tavious didn't mind answering those questions because in his mind there was nothing to tell.

Tavious realized without delay that the reporter's angle was to show that Amara was murdered because some mad, deranged fool was madly in love with her and became upset about something and therefore killed her. But Tavious knew better and let her travel down her own road. He knew it was the two million for sure that killed his friend. When Saadia asked Tavious if he thought she was in love with him, it was really the first time he thought about it instead of dismissing it. He disclosed that it could have been a possibility even though she never directly said that she was.

When Saadia didn't let go of the love-behind-bars angle Tavious wanted to know if she was writing a romance novel instead of newspaper articles. He mentioned he was probably blind to Amara's feelings being behind prison walls. He proclaimed without glorifying any aspect of his twenty years behind bars that he was more worried about watching his back than being in love with someone on the outside he couldn't see whenever he wanted.

Soon after, Saadia began talking about her own career and some of her articles that had both helped put criminals behind bars and free some others just as well. Her degree from Penn State and the graduate work she did there was what got her thirsty for investigative reporting.