Ask the Dice Page 2

  "Is this an advance?" My grin sly, I extracted two fifties.

  "Buy a carton of cigarettes to keep you locked on this job. I want your full attention on it. Hear me?"

  "Never louder and clearer."

  "Excellent. Make the two fifties last you, too."

  Hearing that froze my hand on the doorknob. "How did you know I took out two fifties instead of two twenties?"

  Mr. Ogg smiled like a zoo carnivore when the dinner wagon rolls up. "I'm blind, but I can read you like Braille."

  His spooky cleverness left my stomach queasy as I reentered the April morning. I took down a mental note to always watch my step around him.

  Chapter 3

  When I was a kid back in the 1960s, the Zanes, my adopted family in northern Virginia, sometimes drew fierce whispers and dirty looks whenever we ventured out into public. The COLORED signs had disappeared, but racial prejudice festered on. Amanda, my adopted mother, was a laid-back soul who didn't let it ruffle her. By marked contrast, Phil, my adopted father, grew defiant. He returned hot dagger stares as if daring anybody to voice their outrage or contempt over a black kid—me—raised in their white household. Nobody ever did.

  The skin pigment issue didn't get to me until I entered junior high when the public schools were integrated in 1971. The other kids—older bullies too dense to get beyond adding on their fingers and toes—taunted me until my fists refused to back down. More than one bully got decked with a broken nose or busted jaw. Playing a psycho bad ass, I took to mumbling, touting a Hendrix Afro, and strutting with attitude. Fistfights escalated to switchblades. Before long, a .38 Special rode under my jacket.

  "Man, is that steel just for show?" D. Noble (a snappier name than F. Scott, J. Edgar, or J. Paul) Yeatman, dark, tall, and slim as a pry bar, was my main homey. We spoke at our shared hall locker.

  "The next fool who gives me any shit will find out."

  "Don't be a chump. Guns kill. Killers rot behind bars. See what I'm talking about?"

  "So, I just let the bullies and thugs beat on me?"

  "Leave the steel under your mattress. If you run into trouble, get me, and we'll go handle it. I always got your back."

  "Some trouble doesn't give me a timeout to go find you. I have to settle it on the spot."

  D. Noble tapped me on the chest. "Who else knows you carry?"

  "Just me and now you. Keep it that way."

  "Teachers might eye you funny all zipped up in May and June."

  I shrugged. "Thin blood runs in my family."

  "You just love packing your steel."

  "Next time I get cornered, I'll come out of it smoking."

  D. Noble hatched a roguish grin. "Guess what. Brilliant minds think alike." He flipped up his shirttail, and I glimpsed the black polymer grips to the 9-mm wedged inside his waistband. He'd been messing with me. Again.

  "So, bring it," I'd said, giving dap (a fist bump) with him.

  This scene replayed, ending with a guilt pang that I hadn't called D. Noble in way too long. Seeing Gwen could wait for a spell. A cell phone would make communicating a breeze, say, while I sat idling at a red traffic light. My loathing cell phones had to end if just from a practical standpoint. Sooner than later, I knew this fossil had to relent and join the 21st century.

  Until then, I kept a mental index of the city's dwindling pool of pay phones. Housing projects demanded their phones be kept operable. ABC stores were becoming less fruitful places to hunt them up. The old-line steak houses and taverns catering to the 55+ set offered their patrons the use of phones. One saloon—Lincoln's Dog Tavern—was the end unit at the upcoming strip mall. A wall phone was located inside the gloomy vestibule. While dialing, I'd a wistful remembrance of the three-slot coin (1¢, 5¢, and 10¢) phones back when a local call set you back a dime. Man, I was feeling old as the 80-foot T-Rex rack of bones collecting lint at the Smithsonian Museum downtown.

  A querulous lady jumped on my second ring. "Yeah, hello."

  "Mrs. Yeatman?" I said.

  "Might be. Who wants to know?"

  "This is Tommy Mack Zane."

  "That name rings a bell. Wait … I know you. You used to gallivant around with my son back when Hank was a pup."

  "Where does the time go? Anyways, how is D. Noble?"

  "Dead."

  "Oh. Damn. I didn't know. When?"

  "2008."

  The hot, red flush of embarrassment and shame thrashed my ears. The silence over my link with his mother stretched into a heavy awkwardness until I realized I owed her a response. "I'm sorry for your trouble. I have to tell you I'm standing here beet-faced. I've been meaning to give D. Noble a holler, but for some reason or other, I never got around to it. We sort of lost touch."

  "Folks drift apart. That's life."

  I rubbed the brambly scruff of my neck. "What became of him, if you don't mind my asking?"

  "The AIDS bug sucked the life out of him after the meds stopped working."

  "Damn."

  "When it got bad, he moved back in, and I nursed him like when he was a tyke in diapers. By the end it wasn't pretty, and then I buried my boy. Ain't that something?"

  Ain't it? I thought.

  "He was no junkie. One night he just hit the wrong yoni pot, I suppose."

  I headed off a second long silence rolling up. "Hey, it's been nice talking to you, Mrs. Yeatman. But I'm late back to work, so I better get it in gear."

  "Don't make yourself so scarce. I'm always around the phone."

  "You bet. I'll get back to you very soon. Bye now."

  I reset the phone receiver on its steel cradle with delicacy. Hoping to hear an old jiving tone, but learning your main homey had died from AIDS was a left hook to the jaw. The news couched your own fragile mortality in its true perspective. I leaned there, my eyes hazing over and scrambling to gather my wits. I was no stranger to death.

  My jobs for Mr. Ogg featured it in one version or other. Alcohol-tinged laughs bleated from the Lincoln's Dog Tavern's taproom, but I didn't want to join in this happy hour. They'd raise enough forgettable laughs without my levity. My rip tore off the Band-Aid from my earlier bloodletting.

  Should I be tested for the HIV bug claiming D. Noble? The same phlebotomist would leech out another vial. I'd no memory of when I'd last dipped into a yoni pot, but if the AIDS virus had any evil designs on me, I'd've suffered them by now. Plus Dr. Izellah had decreed my middle-aged body was as fit as an astronaut. I left the Lincoln's Dog Tavern.

  Wouldn't you know it my beeper chirped? Steering one-handed, I reached down and deactivated the noise. Mr. Ogg had the galling habit of demanding updates after he turned me loose, but I'd none to forward. He'd have to cool it until something newsworthy broke. He knew I always kept him appraised.

  Gwen Ogg made her grand entrance in my mind, and my center burned. That young lady, well, if churning out porn was my racket, she brought the right assets—flaxen blonde, stacked, and statuesque legs—to make the wares sizzle. I frowned. She was too savvy to let a run-of-the-mill bar lizard hustle a badger game on her as this one had. Excess booze has a way of fogging our good sense, but I couldn't visualize her going over her limit. As a sophisticate, she knew how to pace her booze intake.

  Her blackmailer had grubbed enough in her personal life to pick her as a mark worth putting the bite on. As Mr. Ogg's niece, she cajoled an allowance, giving her the financial freedom to skip the nine-to-five grind. I'd seen her several times at his bungalow picking up the cash envelopes he doled out.

  She dressed as if she'd the money to keep her wardrobe chic. Our twenty-five year age gap might explain why my eyes strayed more to ogle her older sister Rita, my junior by a mere twenty. I'd watched Rita and Gwen Ogg grow up, and their blossoming into womanhood. How could I not gawp a little and appreciate their beauty?

  But I understood the risks in hitting on the boss's nieces, particularly if the boss was a psycho job like mine was. On the other hand, he'd told me to tap Rita if she could help. My instincts told me
Gwen floundered in a tar pit, and I needed every advantage, including Rita's best efforts, to tow Gwen out before it was too late.

  Tickled enough to chuckle, I gloated over how I'd fix Gwen's problem, win glowing plaudits from Mr. Ogg, and nail the smoking hot Rita all in one fell swoop. Life was good. I checked Gwen's street address written on Mr. Ogg's manila envelope before I slanted the coupé to zip off in the direction of Old Yvor City.

  Chapter 4

  Gwen Ogg's persimmon brick townhouse sat tucked in a fashionable enclave of Old Yvor City a half-block from the former library now empty, its blacktop lot chained off. Scouting up an empty parking spot was my next chore. After I did, Mr. Ogg's credit card wanded into the meter kept me legal for the next 30 minutes. It shouldn't take me any longer to get the lowdown from Gwen and be off.

  Close to dinner time, the temperature still ran in the mid-seventies, and I decided to leave my jacket in the coupé. My 9-mm also remained in the glove compartment. Guns rated almost as baneful as cell phones to me. Guns made jarring noises, leaving my ears to whistle for the next week. Shoulder and ankle holsters were comical. I shied away from the Mexican carry—lodging a gun in my waistband—from the fear of flying through life with no joystick even if my sex life was a farce. Over the years in Mr. Ogg's employ, I'd acquired a bizarre skin allergy from the handling of firearms. Psychosomatic, he said. Job hazard, I countered.

  The mild weather had made the April day into a gem. The vehicles ebbed and flowed as the traffic light at the crest of the hill cycled through its intervals. The row of newer townhouses stood a horseshoe’s throw from the street, and Gwen's—13-B—sat at the furthest end. Lipstick red tulips fringed the townhouses, and the hyacinths fragranced the air. They put me on a 747 streaking for Holland, evoking my wistful sigh. Someday maybe I'd fly away and retire to a haven. I'd have the time to write my poems. Yeah, someday maybe. The sidewalk showed a chalked-on hopscotch grid, and the fire hydrant was a carnival clown. Kids lived and played in Gwen's complex. I liked seeing that.

  Apprehension over my blood work arose. If the lab results put my cholesterol over the limit, I'd have to take a daily horse pill. Popping pills was for geezers, not me. My hankering for a Blue Castle took me by surprise. My latest vice was already that ingrained. Nonsmokers could get a whiff of a smoker perched on a bar stool from across a crowded tavern.

  My new vice endangered getting my job done since stealth played a pivotal role in its success. My tobacco smell would alert my prey. I hadn't taken that in account before lighting up. Muffing my first hit would force me to arrange a second go. My next try—if one was possible—would consume more weeks of tedious planning, patience, and execution. Worst of all, my dangerous clients would grow skittish and displeased.

  My hopped up nerves got me to Gwen's slate porch where I saw no tulips decorated her yard. Her bacchanal nights rioting on until dawn left her few hours for yard work. I hoped she had black neighbors that could justify my presence here. My three polite but crisp knocks announced me, and I waited through one traffic cycle. Again I knocked, and the next traffic cycle completed its run.

  Gwen not at home was odd. Mr. Ogg had said she was expecting me. Driving out here again was a hassle. If a cell phone was handy, I'd ring her up inside. While squinting up the block, I tried to zero in on if I'd spotted a public phone near the old library. None sprang to mind. After my third knock, I clutched Gwen's doorknob and gave it a twist.

  Peculiar. Who left their door unsecured? I sure didn’t. My over-the-shoulder glance verified the street was clear of vehicles. I squeezed through her door and closed it. My heart keeled over, and my next sniff clarified why. The coppery bouquet smelled like sucking on a penny when trying to beat a Breathalyzer test. I sang out to the ground floor.

  "Gwen? Are you home? It's me, Tommy Mack Zane. Your door was open. Mr. Ogg sent me. We'll chat about your problem. I can help. Yoo-hoo there, Gwen."

  She'd jacked up the thermostat on a sultry day. The sofa, drum tables, ginger jar lamps, futon, and plasma TV welcomed me with a sullen hush. The video game console looked straight out of its shrink wrap. Her purse laying on the futon was green plaid cloth, its handle bamboo, and she kept no dope inside it. I hoped to find she slept in her bedroom up the stairway off to the side.

  "Yo, Gwen? Tommy Mack here. Your Uncle Watson sent me. Yoo-hoo, Gwen."

  I prowled on the balls of my feet over the parquet floor to the picture window and tugged up the mini-blinds. The sun-drenched street had refilled with blithe motorists. My urge was to go buckle up in the coupé and join their exodus. A half-dozen chores waited at the split-level like replacing the broken microwave and re-grouting the shower tiles. Scraping a bent wrist over my gritty brow, I headed toward the stairway.

  Here the stronger coppery reek swarmed me like ether fumes. My head turned to hock out the penny, but it felt grafted to my mouth's roof. The stairway led up to the horror: Gwen as a corpse. I was no soothsayer, but I was an expert on death.

  I made two wishes: one, I'd brought a cell phone to call Mr. Ogg, and, two, I‘d brought my 9-mm. Neither wish was granted. My hand was halfway to the wall switch to snap on the overhead, but I'd leave no prints. Tommy Mack was the ghost in and out of here. The stair carpet softened my upward trek.

  At topping the stairhead, I paused. My keen ears registered silence. Her killer had left. My wrist swabbed my perspiring brow. The heat enlivened the coppery scent from one of three entrances, all to bedrooms. The first door voided to the dust and gloom filling an otherwise empty room, and I moved on.

  Only an old CRT monitor sat on the floor in the second bedroom. The last door into the master bedroom, as I'd feared, yielded the prize. My heart slugged, each pulse splintering my ribs. The brass bed was that shiny tubular crap discounted at the big box stores.

  "Oh, Gwen… oh, Gwen… oh, Gwen. What shit did you step into this time?"

  Naked as a spanked newborn, Gwen lay, tits up, there on the bright orange spread. She now went as an airplane blonde and favored a gold pinkie ring. The specter of her last seconds alive were burned on her retinas. But CSI reaching into its bag of Felix the Cat tricks couldn't lift her killer's image off her retinas. Her painted nails—fingers and toes—matched her favorite color: sea green also going with those terror-stricken eyes I'd see flashing in my future nightmares.

  Nothing is pretty about a young lady’s corpse. This near, her coppery stench gagged me. My hand shrouded my nose and mouth like a respirator. The rage stained my thoughts red. I singled out her blackmailer as responsible, but then no smart blackmailer destroyed their ATM. So maybe her blackmailer had a low IQ.

  The fatal slug's entry point lay hidden. Her grotesque face—bugged eyeballs, portended tongue, and twisted nose—left by the slug's hydrostatic shock clued me in where to look. My forefinger slanted the lock of her dyed blonde hair away from her right ear. What I saw behind it—a pair of prim but lethal .22 bullet holes—was well-known to me. On many jobs, I'd fired twin .22 bullets in the same identical site.

  New anxiety corkscrewed my midsection, as the ugly implications grew clear. Gwen's killer had doctored up her murder to match the craft of a professional assassin. When Mr. Ogg heard she was dead, and how it had happened, who in his grief-crazed fury did he come after? Only one pro worked in his employ, me. The frame job I uncovered in Gwen's boudoir smelled viler than her corpse ever would.

  Chapter 5

  I didn't panic. I trembled as if to come unhinged, but I kept it tight. First things first. I padded downstairs and out of her townhouse. No man wanted to be caught in a lady's townhouse with her nude corpse on her brass bed, two caps pounded into her brain. My shaky legs juiced by adrenaline shrieked at me to sprint to the coupé and lope off like a raped ape. Instead, I remained cool, using a dignified pace to span the half-block along the sidewalk.

  An eyewitness had a sketchy recall of an anonymous guy walking. A man running, however, drew second looks and lingered in memories. Opening the coupé's door, I realized I'd ove
rlooked wiping my prints off her doorknob. It was too late to return. I banked on the odds they were smudged beyond recognition.

  I drove off, my quivery foot mashing the gas pedal. Each heartbeat vibrated the joints to my skeleton. My thoughts grappled for the reason why a pair of .22 caps, my signature MO, had killed Gwen. I knew I hadn't worked in a good while. I got my .22 handguns clean, did my deed, and often heaved them from the coupé while crossing Key Bridge deserted in the wee hours. The other times I returned my fired .22s to Mr. Ogg for their meltdown. Or so he assured me.

  My misfiring nerves kept shorting out, and I'd given my Blue Castles to Mr. Ogg. As I debated on where I'd buy a new carton, my beeper chortled. The phone number displayed was a mystery. I dashed into the near full parking lot to the washerette operated by a Korean dude whose surname I couldn't pronounce much less spell even if I could remember it. He'd chased off the phone company techs who came to confiscate his coin phone. He was that fond of it.

  The rows of dryers and washers made it as stuffy as it had felt inside Gwen's townhouse. Three tattooed ladies waiting on the parson's benches chattered on their cell phones, and just one spoke English. I bought my pack of Blue Castles from out of the cigarette machine. No queue formed at the public phone where I slotted in two quarters (the same cost since '01) and dialed the number given on my beeper.

  Cautious, I greeted my beckoner. "Hello…?"

  "Tommy Mack Zane?" He was a brother. "Is that you?"

  "Who is this? Where did you get my number?"

  "Be easy, Tommy Mack. You’ve got D. Noble."

  "D. Noble." I stared straight into the crypt-like darkness of the opened drum door to the nearest dryer. "D. Noble Yeatman?"

  "The one and only. I took a chance and hit your old beeper."

  "Can't be. Just can't. You're dead. From AIDS. I talked to your mamma three hours ago. Oh-oh, wait there. Hold on. Don't tell me I've got a ghost on the line. My nerves can't deal with any supernatural shit, not after the kind of morning I've had."