Till You Hear From Me: A Novel (27 page)

When Wes had called him out of the blue to set up this meeting, Major had hoped this would be one of the outcomes. If he could get five thousand dollars in his hand, he could relax a little, stop looking over his shoulder all the time.

“Five grand?” It was a question, but he whispered it like a prayer.

Wes reached in his pocket and pulled out an envelope, his judgment vindicated again, as if he needed any further proof that he knew what the fuck he was doing. He slid it halfway across the table toward Major and stopped, tapped it with his finger. “I’ve got ten in this envelope.”

Major’s eyes widened like a kid who wakes up on his birthday and sees a pony in the backyard with a big red bow around its neck.

“It’s not part of any arrangement you have with Oscar. It’s because you’re a vital member of this team and I can’t afford to let you fuck everything up because you’re distracted about a couple of dollars.”

Major’s eyes flickered down to the envelope. If he could have figured out how, he would have picked it up, stuffed it in his pocket,
and made a run for it before Wes changed his mind, but he wasn’t that fast or that crazy.

“I won’t fuck it up,” he said softly, scared to say more. “I’m cool.”

Major Estes was many things, Wes thought; bad gambler, loving if distracted father, computer genius, but cool was nowhere on the list.

“Because if you do fuck anything up,” Wes said, his smile nowhere in sight now, “jail will be the least of what you’ll have to worry about. Do you understand me?”

Major nodded, although he didn’t really have a clue. “Yes.”

“Good.” Wes slid the envelope across the table and stood up. This meeting was over. “Take care of the check, will you?”

Major restrained an impulse to withdraw the bills and fan them out like a winning hand, but even he knew better. Time for that later.

“Yes,” he said. “I will.”

Wes rewarded him with one last smile. “Don’t forget to leave a tip.”

THIRTY-FIVE

T
HE
R
EV AND
M
R
. E
DDIE HAD CHECKED IN FROM
S
OUTH
G
EORGIA
, and my next appointment with Flora wasn’t until tomorrow night. I had called Miss Iona to tell her my D.C. contact had said we didn’t need to worry about the plot, as she was heading out to her book club meeting. She had invited me to join them for their Black History Month discussion of
The Hemings of Monticello
, by that black woman lawyer who confirmed once and for all that Thomas Jefferson had a complex, long-term, sexual relationship with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, without ever freeing her.

“And she’s got the DNA to prove it,” Miss Iona said, which only conjured up a picture of the author striding up to the front door of Monticello, holding up a little vial of DNA, and demanding an explanation and an apology, not necessarily in that order. Tempting as it sounded to spend another evening trying to figure out the strange workings of wealthy white men’s minds, I declined.

“Suit yourself,” she said, leaving me officially on my own. I decided to try the new burger joint that people kept telling me about.

It was just a few blocks away, so I grabbed my coat and headed over there. I could see the flicker of the evening’s cop shows or medical dramas at the houses where nobody had shut the drapes yet. It’s a mystery to me why people are drawn to shows featuring sex crimes and terminal diseases, but to each her own. I missed the Rev’s company on my ramble, but walking alone gave me time to try to sort out some things in my head.

Even though I wasn’t sure I could trust Joe Conner’s easy dismissal of the anti-icon plot, I knew he was right on the money about the loop. Things always move fast in Washington political circles, but with the twenty-four-hour news cycle, it’s gotten ridiculous. A day is a week and a week is a lifetime. The longer I was away, the less I could claim to have the most accurate reading of those two most critical constituencies: the people and the press.

On the other hand, if I could come up with a good reason to be spending time here, something not connected to the Rev, or having to go to any kind of rehab, it could be a plus. Consulting with Precious Hargrove, for example, would be a perfectly respectable reason to leave town for a minute. Precious was a rising star in national Democratic politics. Helping her get elected wouldn’t be like being in exile. It would be like being in the vanguard. But working with Precious meant coming back to West End just in time to meet my mother at the airport and get sucked back into the latest saga of the reluctant soul mates and that was not an option.

I could see the neon sign for Brandi’s Burgers & More on the front of what used to be Montre’s, a notorious West End strip club that claimed to be the first to offer a five-dollar lap dance. Those days were long gone now. Someone had given the place a complete makeover, and nothing remained of the past except a small stage and the new owner, Brandi herself, who had once been a featured dancer here in the bad old days. She greeted me, fully clothed, and took me to a table near the tiny stage.

“This is our karaoke night,” she said, handing me a menu and an
extensive list of songs I could choose from should the spirit move me. I smiled back and shook my head.

“Not me, but thanks.”

“I heard that,” she said. “I don’t do it either, but these fools love it. Soup tonight is Chef’s Choice vegetable. American beer is two for one until the music starts.”

I wondered if her spotlight on American beer reflected patriotism or the preferences of her regulars.

“I’ll take a Beck’s,” I said.

“Coming up.”

I was amazed at how good the place looked. Not that I ever saw the inside of it before. Strip clubs were never my cup of tea, even when a lot of my girlfriends started going just for a hoot. No way I wanted to tuck a dollar bill into the G-string of a woman who was probably just trying to feed her kids. There were tables up front, booths in the back, and lots of framed photos of Atlanta’s music business luminaries, many signed to Brandi herself, and some of which included her standing beside them, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

I wondered how she had made the transition from her old life to her new one. However she had done it, she seemed to be thriving, which is, of course, all I wanted to do:
thrive
. The question was,
where
. If it wasn’t D.C., where was my place? I needed a sign. Something to push me in the right direction. I didn’t think that I was asking too much. After all, this was West End, home to mystical women from Abbie to Iona. Seemed like the least the sisterhood could do during my moment of transition.

I opened the menu and turned to the offerings of every kind of burger you could think of, including veggie burger, turkey burger, and a four-pound beef behemoth that you got free if you could finish it in an hour. Health food or heart attack, at Brandi’s, it was your choice. I had just about decided on a classic cheeseburger, when I glanced up and saw Wes Harper walk in the door.
Did somebody order a sign?

THIRTY-SIX

H
E COULDN’T BELIEVE HE HAD LEFT HIS BRIEFCASE AT HIS FATHER’S
house. Trying to wrap his mind around that closet full of cards and get a handle on Major Estes’s spy versus spy act had distracted him. Wes Harper was not a man who forgot things. A firm believer in a place for everything and everything in its place, he had once broken up with a woman because he loaned her his car and she lost the keys.

He hadn’t even missed the damn briefcase until he went back up to his suite after he left Estes and realized it wasn’t there. He had been working on a proposal for another client last night after his father went to bed and when he closed his eyes, he could see his Coach case, sitting there in his boyhood room, looking sleek, expensive, and out of place, like a Maserati in the Kmart parking lot.

He intended to spend the night in midtown, but he still had a few things to finish up on that proposal, not being a man to put all his eggs in one basket, so he decided to drive across town, pick it up, and get back in time to give Toni some very special room service. He cruised past the Rev’s house, half hoping to run into Ida to confirm
their appointment for tomorrow, but the place was dark and nobody seemed to be around. Then he turned onto Abernathy and saw a woman he was almost certain was her disappearing into something called Brandi’s Burgers & More. On a whim, he circled the block, pulled into the lot, and stepped inside. Even if it wasn’t her, he hadn’t eaten all day and his stomach growled loudly.

She was sitting alone at a table near the tiny stage, studying the menu like it was a practice test for the SATs. She looked smaller than she had the other night and softer. The hostess, who looked somehow familiar, greeted him pleasantly, but before she could offer him a table, Ida looked up and smiled in his direction. He smiled back and she waved him over.

“Hey,” he said. “Small world.”

“Smaller than that,” she said. “If you promise not to sing, you can join me.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Karaoke night,” said the smiling hostess, handing him a menu and the night’s playlist. “You say it, we play it. American beer two for one until the music starts.”

“Jack Daniel’s,” he said. “On the rocks.”

“Coming up.”

Wes took off his coat, pulled out a chair, and looked around slowly, trying to remember. “Didn’t this place used to be a strip joint?”

She nodded. “Montre’s, home of the five-dollar lap dance.”

“That’s where I’ve seen her before,” he said, looking in the direction of where Brandi was pouring his drink. “She used to be a dancer.”

“So you’ve been here before?” Her voice was suddenly icy.

Oh, hell
, he thought. “No, not here,” he said quickly. “Of course I drove by it, but I saw her dancing at a bachelor party a couple of years ago. A buddy of mine from back in the day. She was good, too,” he added admiringly.

Brandi sent a waitress over to bring the drinks and take their food order. They both opted for the traditional cheeseburger. He took the fries and Ida got the onion rings, but the whole time he could tell she was waiting to jump on his ass for saying he’d seen Brandi doing her thing. He saved her the trouble of having to bring it up.