Drive Me Crazy (16 page)

“Need to know when he’s leaving the room, if she’s clinging to him. His detailed plans. What’s security like at the hotel. How many ways in and out. When he takes that briefcase off his arm. If he has it on when he gets back in the car. How long he will be gone.”

“Uh huh.”

“I can take it from there.”

I leaned forward. Rubbed my neck. Pain in my knee escalating.

She said, “With your eyes and ears, this can be an easy one. Told you I needed to run a few short cons to finance a larger one, and this is one of the smaller ones. Work with me.”

Traffic passed by and we stared. Her friend looked back at me, then whispered something to Arizona. Arizona nodded and her friend turned around, came back toward me.

Arizona said, “I’ll make it worth your while.”

“How do you know I just won’t tell Freeman right now?”

“That book he has with him, his people cut him a check for a million dollars.”

Airport police pulled up, ready to lock and load. The look the cop gave me made bad memories sail around inside my head. I hung up on Arizona, closed the trunk, hopped in the car.

My cellular rang again. I answered with silent aggravation. Not a word.

Arizona said, “Wait.”

“For?”

“My friend has something to give you.”

“Keep it.”

“You’ll want this.”

“Look, dammit. I’m working.”

“Give me twenty seconds.”

I pulled over far enough away for the airport police to cut me some slack for at least a minute, hit the emergency flashers, picked up my clipboard, pretended I was doing paperwork.

Sade leaned forward, said, “I need Starbucks. Driver, get me to a Starbucks.”

“Yes, ma‘am.”

Freeman told his woman, “Can you wait?”

“I waited for you to finish flirting with those rude bitches.”

“Respect me,
Folasade.”
He snapped her full first name in a
Me Tarzan, you Jane tone.
“Can’t believe that you embarrassed me like that on the flight.”

“I embarrassed you? That’s brilliant. Don’t get it twisted.”

“I mean, damn.
How much vodka does it take?”

“As much as it takes, that’s how much it takes.
”

“You need to lighten up.”

“I’m stressed, Marcus.”

“Handle it,” he said, putting his foot down. “I signed a new three-book deal.”

She said, “Three more books, Marcus?”

“Did you see the interview? They’re coming to me.”

Sade’s breathing thickened. “When did you sign a new contract for three more books?”

“I’m going to be immortalized on the walls of Barnes & Noble with Kafka, Hemingway, Faulkner, Hughes, and Nabokov. I will be respected. I will not be ignored. They’re going to have to look up from their venti white chocolate mochas and see me looking down on them.”

She tightened her lips and stared out the window.

Checkmate.

He added, “And when you get to the hotel, take it easy on the mini-bar.”

Her lips tightened more. “Marcus, I demand to inspect the room before they take the luggage up. The sheets were filthy at that place we stayed in D.C.”

“Don’t complicate things with your bullshit, Sade.”

“Sheets that atrocious at a five-star hotel. Looked like bile. And there is no telling what we can’t see on these sheets. People have all kinds of sex and ... while you’re out doing your thing with your ego feeders, please be useful, pick up some sheets with a high thread count—”

“Damn. That’s why I tour by myself.”

“And if time permits I would like to tour the city, go sightseeing.”

“The book is due. I’m working, Sade. I’m not on vacation. Did you see the schedule publicity gave me? Do you know how much it costs to go to one friggin’ city? Hotel. Airfare. Transportation. We have to turn a profit. Even if I had the time, you don’t get to the top by going to museums and clubs. You don’t achieve by staying in one spot. It’s about the hustle.”

“Marcus, if we married it would be bigamy.”

“What are you talking about, Sade?”

“You’re already married to your publishing company. To your editor. To your next book. Those are your women. Snuggle up with that book and see how warm that keeps you.”

“Come here.”

“Polygamy. Our marriage would be considered polygamy, not bigamy.” “

Then Arizona’s friend was almost at my window, her hand inside her large handbag.

Lisa was on my mind. Lisa and her gun. Lisa and her lion and jackal. This woman could be part of Lisa’s crew. I put my hand on the door handle, ready to jump out if I had to, if I could before a bullet screamed my name.

Pedro had said Arizona had come to Back Biters a couple nights before I met her. I was there almost every night. That was my watering hole. Saw how she had looked at me when she walked in last night. I thought I had moved into her space. She had worked her way into mine.

I whispered my warning, “If your girl tries anything—”

Arizona replied, “Relax.”

“That’s what they told Kennedy in Dallas.”

Her friend tapped my window. Irritation painted my face. I eased the glass down. My passengers saw her. I didn’t have to turn around to see the uneasiness that painted Freeman’s face. The way Sade’s breathing changed, I imagined her blue eyes had turned green.

She said, “I think you dropped this.”

Arizona’s friend tossed a wallet in my lap and walked away. I opened it and saw my ID, cash, and cards staring at me. I patted my suit pocket. She’d lifted it when she bumped me.

Arizona’s smooth voice came alive in my ear. She said, “Merry Christmas.”

Hostile silence settled between us. I let my window back up.

The pickpocket’s sashay took her to Arizona’s side. She never looked back.

Freeman and Sade had gone back into their own world. Separate worlds. She had closed her eyes. He was on his phone bragging to some interviewer about how good his work was.

I asked Arizona, “How much?”

“Meet me and we can negotiate.” Her tone remained even, all business. “We’ll talk.”

I hung up.

Arizona and her co-grifter mixed with the crowd and crossed the street.

They vanished into the garage.

The sun was easing down, slipping from the sky.

Five bookstores and three protests later, I chauffeured Freeman and Sade to their seven-hundred-dollar-a-night hotel down in Santa Monica. A swank joint called Shutters, on the good end of Pico, not far from the Santa Monica pier. Freeman and Sade were greeted by European luxury and Mexican smiles. They had two wood-burning fireplaces in the lobby and a nice bar with an ocean view. It had to be a great spot to sit and enjoy spirits while you watched the sun set on both the privileged and the homeless people in this part of the world.

I’d only been in the lobby, never upstairs. In front of the hotel, where all the Spanish valet parkers were congregated, that was where I unloaded Freeman and his ton of bobbleheads.

Then came the insult.

Freeman tossed me a bobblehead as a tip. His woman walked away when he did that.

I needed to leave and handle my business, but this time of day traffic was thick and nonmoving. I could either sit in traffic and go nowhere fast or catch a seat at the bar. I chose to chill out. Mild chatter, soft music, and the scent of the ocean kept me company while I rubbed my temples and tried to regroup. Body felt heavy, every step like I was rolling a boulder up a mountain. Needed to eat a decent meal. Running on too little sleep to think straight. I looked around at this colorful fantasy world. European, Jewish, and Asian crowd. All of the secondary workers were from south of the border, the largest minority, what some people called the country’s new black man. A lot of celebrities hung out at this swank joint, everybody from Robert Downey, Jr., to Angela Bassett, but no shining stars were in sight today.

I ordered coffee and stared out the windows, took in the ocean and the sunset, gazed at all the people Rollerblading and jogging. Put my eyes on a couple leaning against a palm tree. First they were holding hands, then kissing soft and easy while the sun sank into the ocean.

That reminded me of how it used to be with my ex-wife. Saw her strong legs and flat stomach in my mind. Loved to run my fingers over her brown skin. Every time she passed by me and smiled I wanted to take her to the bed and fall inside her. She moaned like no other. She loved me but didn’t care for Rufus. His sexuality was in conflict with her religion. And she didn’t want her son, my stepson, around Rufus. Didn’t want her boy
exposed.
She tried to like Rufus, but she’d been brought up in a home that was heavy-handed when it came to the Bible.

What happened in Memphis was the end of six months of marital turmoil.

Part of me thought that she’d come back for Momma’s funeral. Part of me had hoped that while I sat up front next to my brother, one of the people who passed by with tears in their eyes would be the woman I had married. I should’ve buried more than Momma that day. But memories were the hardest thing to funeralize and put in the ground.

In her eyes I’d chosen my brother over her. In my mind I was taking care of family.

My six-page letter to her came back to me, unopened. The word REFUSED across the front of the envelope in bold red letters, like the last drops of blood from my marriage.

I wanted a shot of JD so bad my hand was shaking, just enough to let me know I needed to calm my nerves. Just like my wandering eye, I inherited that tension shake from my old man. Right now I could see him up in the pulpit, preaching to the congregation, telling everybody to be strong, to not be oppressed by their fears, to stand tall, to stay focused on this journey.

Momma’s brown skin and heavyset image came to mind. Closed my eyes and saw the orange and red in her skin. Saw her walking around talking on that Princess phone, rollers in her hair, flowered housecoat on, a glass of lemonade in her free hand. She made sure me and Rufus read at least an hour a day. Rufus would pick up a book and vanish into that world. He’d start a book and wouldn’t put it down until he got to the last page. My attention span was never like that. I’d read a chapter, maybe two, and would get antsy. But I’d read a dictionary or a thesaurus all day, learning words, fascinated by how many there were, how many I didn’t know.

I whispered in Reverend Daddy’s gruff tone, told myself, “Stay focused.”

And despite my problems and disposition, I smiled. In the pulpit Reverend Daddy quoted scripture after scripture, sounded like a haunted, dignified, resilient old-school brother speaking for the poor and downtrodden. His deeply lined face, unsteady voice brought tears and shouts. And when he sang, he was limited in range, but could get a shout out of the coldest heart.

In that deep and powerful voice he told us to stay focused. But in the next breath he’d tell us the rules of the street, would bark out, “Fear no nigga, trust no bitches.”

Fear no nigga.

Trust no bitches.

I nodded.

I took out my cellular, made a few more calls. I’d been making calls all day, trying to see how much money I could round up. If I could add three or four, maybe five large to what I had, maybe I could get a good faith payment to Lisa, get her off my back before this got any uglier.

The calls were a waste of cell phone minutes; everybody was two paychecks behind. With all the strikes, people didn’t have enough cash to put a bag of M&Ms on layaway.

Fifteen large. It might as well have been a billion.

I closed my eyes, tried to think, but felt like a dead leaf tumbling in the wind. I didn’t know which way to go, so I stayed where I was, hissing almost every time I inhaled, watching a room filled with moneyed people numbing themselves to their own realities.

I looked down at my suit, my shoes, my silk tie, my cuff links. When I’d been released from jail I had on two-year-old clothes, a prisoner’s paycheck, and seven dollars in my pocket. No prospects for a real job. No opportunities meant no future. Times stayed hard long enough and a man became susceptible to things that offered either pleasure or promise. Lisa had given me both. It was all about self-preservation. Then Wolf had offered me a better way. Still about self-preservation. Along the way I’d made a lot of sacrifices that added up to nothing.

Everything that was wrong in my world was bum-rushing me right now.

Sade had come back downstairs, a book in her hand. Almost didn’t recognize her. Her braided hair had been let down, flowed like waves over her shoulders, cascaded down her back. Saw her in the lobby warming up by the fireplace. I don’t know how long she’d been there. She was beautiful but something about her made her unnoticeable. She made her way over to the bar, looked surprised when she saw me posted up. Her energy changed. She smiled.

“Cheers, Driver.”

I raised my cup. “Coffee. Black. Straight. No chaser.”

“Afraid I need something a little stronger. Might have to get rat-faced.”

“It’s your face.”

Sade sat a barstool away. Did that like she didn’t want to sit by people she didn’t know, she didn’t want to get in my space. Or didn’t want me in hers. I could tell that because she rested her purse on the barstool between us, made sure it was comfortable, like it was her friend. The purse was chocolate-colored leather, looked as smooth as warm butter. Her passkey and wallet were in the side pocket facing me. Her wallet matched her purse. She was careless. Where I came from somebody would lift that wallet without a thought. But we were on the opposite end of Pico, where the land met the ocean, not where ghetto birds were a way of life.

I said, “Sheets okay?”

“Huh? Oh. Wonderful. Everything is well done. Brilliant.”

“Cool.”

“How long does rush hour last here?”