Prudence Couldn't Swim (26 page)

T
he following morning I popped four Motrin, pretended that the stabbing pain wasn't there with every breath and made my way to the post office. I had to mail two things, just in case it all blew up in my face. I sent Tsiorpoulos the envelope Mandisa had dropped off. At least if the cops searched my house, they wouldn't find it. Then I counted out $2,000 in fifties for the bright-eyed young clerk and asked her to make out a money order to Garikai Mukombachoto. I handed her a piece of paper with his address on it and an extra hundred bucks for postage.

“Just make sure it gets there as soon as possible and keep the change,” I told her and walked away.

“But, sir, we're not allowed to take tips,” she shouted at me as I left the building. She'd figure out what to do with the money.

I got back home just in time for the phone call from Red Eye that would kick our plan into action. If someone was listening they were heading for a dangerous rollercoaster ride.

The first step was to lead the person listening in astray. Red Eye gave me an address off Ninety-Eighth Avenue. East Oakland, just as our script called for. That was the spot where we would pick up our supposed copies of the tapes, the only ones in existence outside what Jeffcoat had stolen. If Newman was listening, he'd definitely be interested. If it was someone else, Red Eye had added a kicker to the dialog—that his buddy had worked his computer magic on tape number nine and the face could now be identified.

We played it out, me driving to E. Ninety-Eighth, then complaining to Red Eye on the phone about how dangerous the neighborhood was and redirecting him and his imaginary buddy to Mandisa's. I knew
she was working double shifts these days. Maybe not the reason she gave me the key but what the hell. We'd be waiting for our mystery man there.

Red Eye met me in front of Mandisa's building. I told him to let me go in first.

“Just to make sure Mandisa's not there,” I said. “I'll signal you from the window.” I pointed to the third floor where she lived, “keep an eye out.”

When I opened the door, Carter was sitting on one of the couches in full uniform, 9 mm drawn. He'd come a long way since his days of being the short chubby kid on Jeffcoat's high school football team. The scheme Red Eye and I had cooked up had worked perfectly, except for one detail: we were supposed to get there before him.

“On the floor, hands behind your head,” he said. I had the Walther tucked in my pants but he had the drop on me. Red Eye was my only hope. I just had to believe that if I never got to that window, he'd figure something was wrong before it was too late. I sunk slowly to the floor. When I got one knee down, Carter put his foot in the middle of my back and drove my nose into the carpet. I was getting a little tired of getting kicked around. Then he patted me down with his loose hand, pulled out my gun, and threw it across the room.

“Wanna make a move for that little piece-of-shit handgun of yours?” he asked. “Go ahead.”

He sat back down in the chair.

“By the way,” he added, “I've taken care of your pal Red Eye. Reported he was seen driving a stolen car in the neighborhood. The black and whites will keep him busy for a while.”

“What's up here, Carter?” I asked. “Your promotion can't be that important. So you bungled an investigation.”

“That bitch wife of yours tried to blackmail me like the others. We had such a good thing going, then she had to go and fuck it up.”

I licked the sweat off my upper lip and gazed at Carter's foot. He wasn't really watching me now. If I struck quick I might be able to grab him by the ankle.

“We had a sweet thing, me and her,” he said stepping back out of my reach. “I was the security and she was the bait. We split the profits. We
could have squeezed Jeffcoat and that black dude for life. But she tried to cut me out.”

“Then it wasn't Jeffcoat?”

“He wanted to get rid of her as bad as I did but he doesn't have the stomach for killing. A quarterback always needs a lineman to do the dirty work. He didn't even know I was in on the scheme.”

I couldn't quite believe Carter's tale. He was the partner—banging Prudence, helping her film the other guys and splitting the take. An ugly devil like Carter could never have created a match made in heaven like that one.

“She only made one mistake, Winter. One time she let me know she couldn't swim. Oops. Had an accident. God, she loved it with me, Winter. She just got greedy. I told her not to fuck around. I had no choice.”

“So you iced her.”

“She would have been biting me in the butt for the rest of my life. I thought I could trust her but I was wrong. It's sink or swim in this world. Washky will snatch up the tapes when they get here. I'm not just any old fool, Winter. You forget that. I've got friends in high places.”

“We've got another copy of the tape,” I said.

“Don't bullshit me. I heard everything you said on the phone.”

“We lied. We set you up,” I said.

“The question is who set up who here? I'd say you're looking like the one with the boot on your throat.”

He was right. He held all the cards now. Red Eye and I were like Larry and Curly playing detective. All we needed was a Moe to round out our team. Carter had to kill me now. He'd told me everything.

“Lucky me,” said Carter, “I interrupted a burglary in progress. The intruder was armed. When the intruder fired two rounds at me, I had no choice but to return fire. One more scumbag bites the dust.”

Carter stood up and walked over to pick up my pistol. He kept his eye on me, losing sight of the front door. I could see the knob turning. I coughed to cover any noise. Red Eye had arrived in the nick of time to save me. I hoped he had a gun. The door opened slowly. I coughed some more.

“Shut up,” said Carter. His cell phone rang.

“Great job, Washky,” he said. He put his hand over the speaker.

“Washkowski's got your punk friend Red Eye in front of the building. I smell the sweetness of revenge right around the corner.” He went back to his phone conversation.

“I've got the rest of it under control,” Carter told his spiky-haired former teammate. I wondered if Washkowski was still tweaking. The only other question I had now was if it was Carter or Washkowski in tape number nine. I couldn't really decide which one I preferred to have been humping my wife. Suddenly I saw the bare feet of a black woman tiptoe into the doorway.

“Impound the car and wait for me at the station,” Carter said, “after you finish your business with that piece of shit.”

Mandisa stood in the doorway, her 9 mm held in both hands right in front of her. Perfect form. Those shooting lessons had paid off. And I thought she was at the IHOP worrying about inventories and work schedules. She looked calm but her eyes didn't blink.

Carter slapped his phone shut.

“Drop it,” she yelled.

“I'm a police officer,” he said, “can't you tell by the uniform?”

She took three steps forward. The barrel of the gun was no more than four feet from his head. She'd gotten too close.

“If you don't drop that gun you're going to fulfill one of my dreams,” she said. “All my life I've wanted to kill a white man, especially a cop.”

“Don't do it,” he said, “you'll rot in jail forever if they don't execute you.”

“Either way I'll die with a smile on my face,” she said. She took a step back.

The usual twinkle in her eye had grown to a glow. Her life was coming to a head here right along with mine.

“I heard everything you just said,” she added, “and you're the one who'll rot in prison.”

“They'll never believe an African girl,” he said. “I can get you as easy as I got your friend.”

“You have a three count,” she said, “or you'll go out in a blaze of glory. This African girl will take her chances with the great American justice system.”

Carter's gun and my Walther clanged to the floor.

“Take two steps forward and get down,” she ordered.

I leaped to my feet, sweat sticking to my shirt. Mandisa tossed me her cell and told me to call the police. They were there in ten minutes, put all three of us in handcuffs and took us to the station. Now the lies and counterlies would start flying. The old saying holds that the truth shall set you free. The truth, in this case, would set no one free. No one at all.

Harare, Zimbabwe, 2002

A
s the new millennium arrived, Tarisai was shopping in the global mall of Internet matchups. She found her fate tied to one Calvin Winter, a homely-faced man with a huge scar on his upper lip. When she first saw his photo, Tarisai thought maybe he'd been sliced with a knife. When she looked closer she remembered a condition she'd read about in university: cleft lip. Mr. Winter's was not as serious as some she'd seen in her textbooks or even among the rural people in Zimbabwe. She found it difficult to think of kissing those deformed lips.

But then she wasn't doing this for romance. He'd pay her $5,000 and all her travel expenses to Oakland, California. More importantly, marriage to Mr. Winter would get her that precious green card which would allow her to work in the United States. Maybe one day she could become a citizen. People told her that after a year or two she could leave this ugly man and launch out on her own. She hoped she'd only have to stay with him for a few weeks.

A friend of hers had a sister who lived in Colorado.

“It's a lonely life there,” she told Tarisai, “but there's money. Zimbabweans are hard-working. With our good education we always succeed.”

Her words filled Tarisai with confidence. She still dreamed of returning to university, of leaving behind a life of chasing men. Once she'd gotten rid of Mr. Winter, she'd send for her daughter, Netsai. Her child had to grow up somewhere with opportunities for all people. Zimbabwe was like that in the 1980s, just after independence. That was before President Mugabe went off the rails. In those days the government built schools and clinics to serve rural families like the
Mukombachotos. Children like Tarisai had a chance to reach university. Now it was only for Mugabe and his cronies. He'd declared war on the poor. In her community people went in the middle of the night and stole the doors and window frames off the school buildings to sell them for food.

On the appointed day Tarisai took Netsai to her rural home and explained to her relatives what was going to happen. She'd never told them what really occurred at the university. They believed she graduated. She even had a friend print a diploma with a gold seal to show off to her parents. As long as it had the gold seal, they wouldn't know the difference.

Tarisai's mother and father embraced Netsai wholeheartedly. They would look after her until their daughter found a place to settle in America. Besides, they saw it as a chance to teach the young girl some proper African values. Children who grew up in the city didn't know how to respect their elders and often preferred speaking English to Shona. They'd put Netsai on the right path.

“I've been offered a job as an architect in California,” Tarisai told everyone. She didn't have to explain that an architect in America made more money in a year than anyone in her village would ever see in a lifetime.

Her parents were as pleased and proud as the day she graduated from Mutare Girls' High School. To top it off, their daughter had brought them dozens of presents from Calvin Winter's advance payment. Everyone in the family sparkled in new clothes, shiny leather shoes, and fancy hats. The family slaughtered a cow and Tarisai bought twenty crates of beer from the local bottle store. The day of her departure would become a major event in village legend, the day “we ate until our stomachs burst,” her mother called it, “like we used to do when independence first came.”

Tarisai was elated to bring a little happiness to her family in these hard times, even if it was based on a lie. Ever since the drought a few years earlier her parents had spent most of the year working on Mr. McGuinn's farm. They couldn't squeeze a living out of their meager plot any longer. The soil was exhausted. Their survival depended on the few dollars a month the white man paid them for planting,
weeding, and harvesting his maize. Her mother and father were old, too old to still be laboring as farm hands, but nowadays things seemed to get harder each year for the people in their area. Worst of all, both of Tarisai's sisters were ill. Sores covered their arms. Their eyes had sunk deep into their sockets. Her youngest sister, Chiedza, had a huge lump behind her right ear. Tarisai was once a prize science student but it didn't take a scientist to see that AIDS was taking her sisters. Each had small children who the fathers had abandoned once they learned of the mother's sickness. All the more reason for Tarisai to go to America. There would soon be more young Mukombachoto children with no parents to support them.

With the image of Netsai and her hollow-eyed sisters in her head, Tarisai boarded the blue and yellow bus back to Harare. Tears trickled down her cheeks the entire journey. Life was unfair. She'd made one mistake and she had to keep on paying and paying. This was nothing like the future she dreamed about back when her grade seven headmaster told her that one day she would go overseas.

Two days later Tarisai was sipping Johnny Walker Red Label on the Air Zimbabwe flight to London. Once she landed in Britain, she'd spend two days in the South End where some connection of Calvin Winter's had arranged a British passport for her in the name of Deirdre Lewis. From then on, Tarisai would be a Briton. Everyone said it would be easier that way. She was thankful that her teachers at Mutare Girls' High had taught her what they called a “Cornwall accent.”

New passport in hand, she'd take a Northwest flight to Oakland, California. In thirteen hours she'd arrive at the house of her husband to be. She hoped she could avoid consummating this marriage. With a daughter living thousands of miles away, a host of financial responsibilities, two sisters dying of AIDS, and the complex network of lies she'd knitted for herself, Tarisai Mukombachoto a.k.a. Deirdre Lewis a.k.a. Prudence already felt like she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders. The last thing she needed was to worry about the sexual urges of an ugly American husband.