Prudence Couldn't Swim (23 page)

“You have the right to remain silent,” said the Weasel, “you have the right to an attorney. And I have the right to kick your fuckin' ass.”

“What's the charge?” asked Red Eye.

“Shut the fuck up,” was the Weasel's only reply.

Washkowski had found my garden hose and was washing himself down on the front lawn. Red Eye and the cop marched past him. Then Washkowski threw down the hose and trudged a pukey path back
to the patrol car. I heard him mumble something about letting that “fuckin' asshole clean up his own messes.”

I closed the door behind me, got my car keys, and headed for the local U-Haul rental center to get a carpet shampooer. It would take a couple of hours to process Red Eye at the station, maybe longer. Time enough to get out the worst of the stains. That carpet would never be the same. I should have stuck to hardwood floors.

I phoned Tsiropoulos on my way to U-Haul and summarized the day's events. I don't think I made that much sense but at least he got the important thing straight: he had to get down to the police ASAP to check on Red Eye.

“He's a candidate for a serious beating,” I said.

“I wouldn't want to say he made a bad decision,” said Tsiropoulos.

“You had to have been there,” I said. “Red Eye didn't have a choice.”

It took me three hours of vacuuming, shampooing, and scrubbing to remove most of the stains. I figured it would get rid of any evidence that might incriminate Red Eye plus the Right Guard stench from the Weasel. I expected more cops to come and search the place but they never arrived.

I doused every room with Hawaiian Hurricane and Pine-Sol and left three fans blowing, This house of mine had to be cursed. Karma was coming to get me I guess. I strove for suburban tranquility and order. Yet there was always some unwanted invasion from somewhere. Maybe I wasn't meant to live this kind of life. I'd have to give it some thought. In the meantime, I hoped they hadn't beaten Red Eye to death.

O
ne of the conditions of my bail was no contact with “known criminals.” Since Red Eye was now in jail, presumably visiting him would be classified as “contact.” Probably living with him was also an issue, but they hadn't said anything about that. I thought of using one of my fake IDs with a disguise to visit but decided I wouldn't fool anyone. I had to wait for Tsiropoulos's report and hope no one arrested me first.

They'd picked up Red Eye for violating parole. He wasn't supposed to leave Alameda County without permission. He'd reportedly been sighted somewhere near San Jose. How could they have known that? I was sure I had ditched the car that followed us out of DeFremery. Had to have been the cellphone after all. Or maybe they stuck some device to my car. I still lived in the eighties when you could rely on your senses. I used little tricks like driving around the block three times to find out if I was being followed. Or making ten consecutive right turns. But in the new millennium our senses were useless. Technology had left them behind. If someone really wanted to track me, they could do it from an armchair. Whatever tricks they were using, someone was watching. Still, if they were watching that closely they would have made Olga tell them everything. Then they would have just come and got me for kidnapping. To my surprise, she seemed to be holding her mud.

I met Tsiropoulos as he came out of the courthouse after his visit with Red Eye. The wrinkled suit pants were a bit of an irritant but I'd rather have integrity than finely pressed Gucci. Tony Serra was one of the great defense lawyers of all time. They even made a movie about him, but his shoulder-length hair always flew in ten different directions and he rode a bicycle to work. A courtroom is not a catwalk.
The dump truck defense attorneys of today have forgotten this is an adversarial system. They eat lunch with the prosecutors, play golf with them on the weekends.

At least if Tsiropoulos wasn't shooting straight, it was because he had too much whiskey the night before, not that he'd sold you to the D.A. to save some rich bastard whose son got caught with a bag of coke in his college dorm room. The best things in life don't always come in neatly wrapped packages.

“They've just got Red Eye on a violation at the moment,” Tsiropoulos told me, “but they're asking him a lot of questions about you.”

“What kind of questions?”

“About bringing people into the country illegally, arranged marriages. That kind of stuff.”

“I don't do that anymore,” I said. “Well, not the coyote stuff. Just a bit of matchmaking on the side to kill the boredom. Plus, the occasional fake ID.”

“Red Eye's little stunt with the PO will probably get him an assault charge, though I've never heard of vomit classified as a dangerous weapon. I guess it's a toxic substance. God, you guys live in a different universe.”

“We have our moments,” I said. “The cops should know not to mess with an eating champion right after a contest. It's like playing with an angry bull.”

“And that PO said a lot of nasty shit to Red Eye in the car. Tried to scare him into telling.”

I wasn't interested in what a vomit-soaked PO had to say, though I did take the time to tell Tsiropoulos about the high school football team connection between Washkowski and Jeffcoat.

“So you're telling me this now?” he said. His face was turning a deep red. He didn't believe me when I told him I'd just figured all this out.

“You haven't figured out shit,” he said. “You got no idea who killed the girl, no idea why you or Red Eye got picked up and you still want me to save your ass. Jesus.”

I didn't know what to say. Sometimes keeping quiet is the best reply to a lawyer. They can always out-talk you, even when you're a con man. I finally promised him there wouldn't be any more secrets.

He laughed and started telling me what the next steps were. Red Eye would have to wait ten days to get a decision on his parole violation. They could give him up to a year. His bucket toss wouldn't yield any generosity.

“His real PO is a brother named Kirkland. I left a message on his voicemail. Red Eye says he's cool.”

I laughed at Tsiropoulos calling Kirkland a “brother.” I never quite got used to it all when it came to racial terms, though I knew which ones not to use. Still, there was no way I could bring myself to say “African-American.”

“They beat the hell out of him, too,” Tsiropoulos said, “kicked his ribs and knees. He could barely walk.”

“Why doesn't that surprise me?”

Tsiropoulos shook his head told me he had another meeting inside the courthouse. As we parted he advised me that maybe when I grew up I should learn to only fight battles I had a chance to win.

“You don't get it, do you?” I replied. “I'm not Vince Lombardi. I don't fight to win. I fight because that's what life is all about. What else is there?” I stuck my chest out a little but me and Red Eye were in just about the deepest shit possible. And now all I had waiting for me at home was a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey. I was almost missing the late-night soccer games.

I drove home to the Eagles' “Life in the Fast Lane,” feeling a little less eager for this game Red Eye and I were playing. I was counting on the Wild Turkey to restore my zeal, but before I had a chance to knock back more than a couple of shots Tsiropoulos was at my front door. I didn't even know he knew where I lived. He was out of breath and looked a little confused. I offered him a hit of the Turkey but he declined, said he was on the wagon.

“I just came from a meeting with Jeffcoat and some slick-ass attorney of his named Jarvis. Young dude, $400 haircut and all.”

I took a swig from the Wild Turkey bottle. Lawyers' haircuts didn't interest me.

“This is the story. Jeffcoat's got all kinds of connections with the cops. If you and Red Eye keep pushing this, he'll make sure you get put away. If you agree to back off, forget about the tapes and this Margolis, they'll leave you alone. I promised them an answer by tomorrow.”

“What about the murder?”

“Jeffcoat swears he knows nothing about Prudence's death and that none of what he calls his team does either. They were all bonkin' her, getting blackmailed by her. But he said murder was not part of his repertoire.”

“You believe that?”

“Don't know.”

Toodles started meowing from the other side of the sliding door. I got up to let her in. She'd been hanging out at my place more and more lately. Could be it was the fresh halibut I kept giving her but I liked to think it was the company.

Maybe we'd been barking up the wrong tree all along. As much as I loathed Jeffcoat and all he stood for, he never felt like a murderer to me. I was getting confused. Then there was Newman, or could Prudence have had a whole other set of tricks we hadn't even stumbled on? Clearly she got around.

“Tell him we'll back off,” I said. “The test will be if Red Eye gets out and they drop his charges.”

“So I should phone Jarvis and tell him the deal's on?”

“Yeah. I'm sure Red Eye will go along with it.”

“But does this mean you really are going to back off?”

Toodles jumped up on my lap. She was purring like my Volvo right after a tune-up.

“The official answer is yes. That's what I instruct you as my lawyer to say. Of course, under the protection of lawyer-client privilege my answer could be slightly different, but we won't go there, will we?”

Tsiropoulos shook his head as he opened his phone and speed dialed Jarvis. The deal was done.

An hour later Red Eye phoned me from his cell phone.

“My PO cut me loose,” he said. “He was pissed as hell. I need a drink.”

“How's your stomach?” I asked.

“The least of my problems,” he said. “Come and get me. I'm thinkin' seriously about Rio.” I couldn't wait to give him all the news.

Harare, Zimbabwe, 1997

T
hursday nights belonged to Nhamo Nyakudya, also known as Baba Charity, which meant “Father of Charity” in Shona. Charity was the name of Nyakudya's oldest child. This rotund man was one of a handful of black Chartered Accountants in Zimbabwe. A whiz with all things financial, he also used his acumen with money matters to secure the company of beautiful young girls like Tarisai Mukombachoto. Baba Charity was far from handsome. He wore black-frame glasses and wide ties, both of which had been out of style for at least a decade. Due to some disorder his doctors could not identify, he'd become afflicted with a rash of hairy facial warts as he entered his fifties. At first he had them removed with liquid nitrogen but after a while he just gave up. He didn't even bother doing anything about the one that had sprouted up two millimeters from the tip of his nose. He was letting nature take its course.

Luckily for Baba Charity, avenue girls didn't choose their partners for good looks or sexual prowess. Baba Charity understood that he was in a marketplace where the best product went to the highest bidder. He had the resources to secure Tarisai. She was top of the line.

Baba Charity didn't like those thin-as-a-fence-post fashion models, though a few had made themselves available. But neither did he look for a figure that was too traditional. His wife had one of those and then some. Tarisai was trim but had developed an extraordinary curvature of the lower spine, which allowed her most outstanding physical feature to provide a well-rounded display. As she became more versed in the avenue girl world, Tarisai acquired a keen sense of the power of her buttocks to open a pathway to the wallets of wealthy men. Through the gifts from her various partners, she'd compiled a set of skin-tight designer jeans and African-style dresses which emphasized the perfection of her
backside. Not that the rest of her was anything less than astonishing. Her hair was always done meticulously with the smallest of extensions. She sometimes spent a whole day in the same chair to give her hairdresser time to achieve perfection. Her skin bore a translucence, as if she could glow in the dark. She used nothing but the finest imported creams and lotions from Europe. She'd come to abhor the slimy feel of the Vaseline she'd rubbed on her skin as a youth. She told her friends the petroleum smell of Vaseline was worse than the stink of rotten meat.

Just a little over a year as an avenue girl had brought Tarisai the façade of prosperity—a seventh-floor apartment overlooking the city with the rent paid in advance for three years by Baba Charity; a double sofa lounge suite from Mod Con, Harare's most exclusive furniture store, a massive Sony color TV and VCR plus a JVC stereo system with cassette, turntable, and CD player. Alberto Andireya, one of her suitors brought the stereo back from Germany, along with a Siemens stove. He was an airplane pilot. She dumped him after cooking him one meal on the stove. He was no competition for a chartered accountant.

On this particular Thursday Baba Charity showed up a little late and very drunk. She'd never seen him this intoxicated.

“Daddy,” she said, “why do you come to my house stinking of this Chibuku? You know I don't like that smell.”

The traditional sorghum beer called Chibuku had a sour odor. Tarisai said it smelled like a “baby's dirty nappy.”

“I'm an African man,” he reminded her. “An African man must drink African beer, not this clear urine the Europeans make.”

“That's right, Daddy,” she said, “you're my big strong African man.” She knew that an ugly old creature like Baba Charity liked nothing more than to hear how good-looking he was. Money could buy the most marvelous words of false praise.

In some ways, Tarisai liked him better when he was drunk. He didn't last long. Sometimes she could get him to squirt with just a few quick flicks of the fingers, saving her the discomfort of him fumbling around trying to find her “sugar plum” and the snorting, grunting, gurgling, and slobbering that followed.