Black 01 - Black Rain (12 page)

I adjust the volume of the stereo system in the black Corvette I picked up from the FBI compound. It is equipped with two automatic short-handle rifles, a thirty-ought-six and a twelve-gauge, a semi-automatic Smith and Wesson rapid-fire .45 and a silver snub-nose Berretta .38 with infrared sight. All are in a fitted hidden compartment in the trunk. Speeding up the I-70 highway turnpike toward Topeka, I put in the Marcus Miller CD and turn it to “Amazing Grace.”

“Man, this thing sure can move, but it feels like your ass is being dragged across the ground. It sits low, but it has a good ride,” Vernon complains.

I turn down the volume and glance at him. “Vernon, thanks for coming along and understanding my position.” I’m not sure if Vernon coming is the right thing to do. So much could go wrong and the thought of him
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getting hurt or killed stays in the back of my mind. I have to stay on top of my game and make sure nothing happens to him.

“Look, Joe, I’m your partner. I still don’t like this one bit. What you got yourself into, I’m not sure, but this stinks to the high heavens and I don’t want to lose another partner like I did to that ice cream-truck-driving serial killer years back. I contacted a couple of friends in the Bureau to see if all this is legit.”

“Vernon, this is legit, but I feel there is some shady business going on, as well. I’m trying to put my finger on it, but haven’t been able to do so. Maybe together we can figure that part out.”

Vernon shakes his head. “Yeah, maybe so, but I can’t believe you were going to try and leave me behind. You know I wasn’t going for no shit like that. I ought to slap your ass right now for even considering it.” Vernon fakes like he’s going to backhand slap me, but runs his hand over his head.

“Vernon, see, you play too much, I almost just elbowed you in the head. You know I don’t like that sudden-movement stuff. Keep playing and I’m going to taser your old ass. I’m glad you’re here. You’re my in-surance policy.”

“You always have to remember to keep an ace in the hole, and I’m your ace in the hole, my friend. What Agent James don’t know won’t hurt his ass. I still think something is fishy about this. Remember, you got that tracking device in your ink pen, so don’t leave it behind anywhere. Keep it with you at all times, so if we get separated I can find your punk ass, okay?”

“Yeah, Vernon, I will, partner.”

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Good thing I took Dino’s advice and brought Vernon along. It also made Sierra feel better about me taking the case.

“Thanks for having my back.” I punch Vernon playfully in the arm.

“Look, Joe, I got a bad feeling about this. I’m still trying to get an angle on Agent James and why he would want you for this case. I just feel like we’re being set up, dude,” Vernon says as he puts a cigar in his mouth.

“Damn, Vernon, we’ve worked with this guy for over five years. He hasn’t given us
any
reason to doubt him.”

“Yes, until now. My momma used to always say, ‘A man that tells you where he buries his money ain’t the fool. The fool is the one who tries to dig it up.’ See, we never know why a person tells us something, but no one risks what they’ve worked all their lives for. It would have to serve their purpose.”

I rub my eyebrow and bite my bottom lip and let it mull over in my head. “Vernon, do you really think that someone as square and by the book as Agent James could be jacking me around? What’s his motive?” I look at Vernon and he just bites down on his unlit cigar.

“Vernon, dude, I think you’re just tripping. You my dawg and all, but I just don’t see it. He’s got too much to lose.”

Vernon takes the cigar out his mouth and shakes his head at me. “And how would you know what the hell he has to lose and what he has to gain?” He rolls his stern elder eyes, puts the cigar back in his mouth, lets the window down in the Corvette and stares out the window.

“Whatever, dude, you just plain tripping,” I respond as I turn up the music on the Marcus Miller CD.

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I pull off Interstate 70 and pay the toll. Nightfall has greeted us as we reach the east side of Topeka and drive into the Ripley Housing Project off Fourth and Lake Street.

The area looks dangerous—brothers hang on the corners as their jeans and khaki pants hang off their rear ends.

Children run under the streetlights playing, riding their bikes and scooters, but no adult supervision is visible. The houses are so closely assembled it looks like they were cramped together. The fronts of the yards are scattered with broken bottles, crumpled potato-chip bags, soda-pop cans and beer cans. They lie there as gentle reminders of broken dreams and crumpled hopes, lying on unforgiving ground that doesn’t ever give way to green grass and dandelions.

The young men and women are in clusters of six to eight scattered throughout the neighborhood, and they eye the Corvette like we’re Ed McMahon and the Publisher’s Clearing House team. Vernon quickly locks and loads his gun and rolls up his window. I do the same, not sure what to expect from our seemingly socially deviant brethren.

We pull in front of 422 Locust Street, the duplex address Dino gave us for Mo-Mo and St. Louis Slim. The dilapidated duplex sits off the street. About five men are in the yard and more start to gather around the car.

Vernon smiles as he looks at me. “I bet you’re glad I came now, aren’t you?”

“You know I am, partner.” I load the gun in my ankle holster. “Watch my back and follow my lead.”

We get out and I hit the silent alarm on the car. We approach the house and it smells as if my boys are barbecuing. The sweet smoky smell of grilled meat makes
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my hungry stomach growl. The gang of curious on-lookers surrounds us.

“Damn, yo, that sure is a nice car. Let me drive it around the block?” a big burly, gheri-curl-wearing albino-skinned brother asks.

“Nah, yo, I don’t want that gheri-curl juice all over my leather seats. You can watch it for me though and I’ll throw you out twenty when I get back, aww-wrriiight?” I negotiate in my coolest homeboy voice.

The group busts out laughing and starts jeering on the pigmentless brother.

“Damn, Yellowman, you gon’ let him yank on you like dat?” a skinny murky-brown, ashy-skinned teenager screams, showing his yellowing, buck-toothed smile.

The albino brother they call Yellowman starts to sway and swagger, then steps up to me. Before he can bring his hands from his waist to his chest, I pull my snub-nose .38 from the holster against the small of my back and place the barrel of the pistol in the young man’s flared nostril.

Vernon pulls both his guns and keeps the other men at bay. He says, “All right, everybody take it easy and go back to kicking cans, playing who can gulp the forty-ounce or whatever you homeboys do up here in Kansas with Toto, the Wizard and Dorothy, and let us do our business.”

The crowd just looks at each other, shuffling.

I say, “Look people, we don’t want any trouble.

We’re just here to visit our friends and eat some of that Topeka barbecue we smell cooking in the backyard. So we’re just gonna have Yellowboy here walk us on up to the front door like the nice young man he is. We’ll say hello to our friends, get some information and be on our
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way. Then y’all can go back to terrorizing the neighborhood. Okay?” Smiling, I nod to Vernon.

I lead my obedient newfound friend toward the door.

I pull my gun from his nose, wipe the barrel off on his T-shirt and have him knock for us.

“Who is it?” a husky booming voice asks from behind the wood door. The boy just stands there, so I slap Yellowman behind the head to respond.

“Yellowman!” he answers hesitantly.

The door swings open and a six-foot-two, almost blue-black brother with silky skin and a frame like he plays in the NBA stands in the doorway. Bald headed, he has a slightly graying goatee. His shirtlessness reveals his rippled abs and a Glock pistol in his belt strap.

It has always been his weapon of choice. He pulls the half-smoked cigarette from his thin lips and blows the smoke into the young man’s face.

“Boy, didn’t I tell you kids to stay the hell out my yard!” Mo-Mo yells, and then looks at me curiously.

I say, “What up, Black man?”

Mo-Mo squints to make out the face he hasn’t seen in ten years. “Joe Johnson, what the hell? Man, c’mon in. St. Louis Slim ain’t gonna believe this shit,” he says, smiling as he ushers Vernon and me into the duplex and pushes Yellowman toward his friends. “Get out my yard, and y’all better not fuck with my friend’s car or there’s gonna be hell to pay. He’s a Kansas City detective and got a license to kick all y’all’s ass, and when he gets through, it’ll be my turn. Gon’ get to steppin’.”

The kids slowly disperse, mumbling barely audible profanities.

He closes the door and sticks his hand out to Vernon
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as we put our guns away. “The kids these days ain’t got respect for shit. How you doing, friend? And you would be?” He grasps Vernon’s hand and shakes it.

“Mo-Mo, this here is Vernon, my partner.”

Vernon smiles at him and they shake hands and embrace. I can tell Vernon likes him by the expression and slight smile on his face.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Mo-Mo. I like the way you handled them kids.” Vernon laughs. “So,
Mo-Mo
stands for?”

Mo-Mo flashes his gold-toothed smile. “Damn, Joe.

You slippin’, dude. You ain’t told the man about me.

Well, Vernon, I was MVP of the Kansas City Central Blue Eagles 1960 Missouri basketball and football teams. My friends started calling me Mo-Mo ’cause I gets mo’ of what the average man gets or wants, and the ladies think I’m mo-licious, because I mo-mo-rize them.”

Vernon smiles and shakes his head.

My friend’s not lying because women would just throw themselves at the fool, and he took everything they gave and more. He had it like that and he knew it.

Mo-Mo was a nice guy and all, but he took every opportunity and favor that women offered him. They loved him and wanted to show it in more ways than one. He was just a ladies’ man and never took advantage of them, but let them share whatever they wanted with him.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, brother,” Vernon says.

“Man, y’all have a seat and rest yourselves. Let me get y’all a beer. I got some pimp steak on the grill, and if I say so myself, it’s off the chain, man.”

Mo-Mo walks to the kitchen as Vernon and I take a seat in the spacious living room. The inside of the house
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is well kept, clean and neat. Mo-Mo and St. Louis Slim have moderate taste in furniture, and a picture of our old lip-synch group, the Time Revue, hangs on the wall. I get Vernon’s attention and show him the picture as Mo-Mo comes in with three cans of malt liquor beer and three pimp-steak sandwiches.

“Here we go. Here’s just a little something to feed your soul and wet your whistle,” Mo-Mo states as he hands us the cold beer and sandwiches.

Vernon looks at the beer before he opens it, sniffs its contents and frowns. I can tell he wants to complain about something. Then he takes the bread off the sandwich and smells and looks closely at the meat.

“Damn, Mo-Mo, I thought you said you gets mo’

than the average man. You gonna get mo’ drunk drinking this malt liquor. This stuff will kill you, brotha. I’m real thirsty and I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful,

’cause I am. But a beer says a lot about a man and this looks like barbecued bologna, dude.”

Mo-Mo looks at the beer can, takes a huge bite of his pimp-steak sandwich and then gazes at Vernon. “I just like it, man. Pimp steak is a bologna roll barbecued on the grill. It’s a poor man’s steak and a delicacy in India-napolis, Indiana, where my old lady was from. First time I tried it, I got hooked, brotha. It’s mo’ better than a fried bologna sandwich. It got a lot of kick to it, just like the beer, my man,” Mo-Mo explains after taking a long sip.

“It’s got kick for sure. Remember man, we’re driving.

We can’t have this beer kicking our asses and getting us killed. The pimp steak tastes good though.”

“Whatever, dude. This is some real good shit,” Mo-Mo brags.

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Vernon holds up the can like he’s doing a commercial. “Yeah, but it has a terrible bitter aftertaste.”

Mo-Mo smirks and just waves us off as he picks up the picture. “Man, those were the days. Y’all had it going on. We all got some after these dudes would do their act. I just stood by and got the overflow chicks. Joe, you know, your boy still mad about y’all breaking up the group.” He tries his best to hold a stern look and we both burst out laughing.

Those were the days. We would practice three times a week and we were very good. From the time we entered the club until the time we left we would act the part of Morris Day and the Time. The women loved us and the men envied us. We had the laughs, jokes, com-edy and arrogance down pat, but when we performed we mesmerized the crowd with precision steps and dancing. We always got standing ovations. I met Sierra after that. We broke up because St. Louis Slim wanted to go solo, go figure.

“What’s so damn funny?” St. Louis Slim asks from the doorway of his bedroom in red paisley silk boxer shorts, slippers, a matching robe and a scarf that’s wrapped around the back of his hair and tied in a knot in the front.

He is of high-yellow complexion and stands about six feet, his hair is long, processed and he is the splitting image of Morris Day of the old school R&B

group, the Time.

“Sweet St. Louis, I see you haven’t grown out of your childhood fantasy of going solo,” I tease. “Vernon, this is St. Louis Slim. Slim, this is my partner and best friend, Detective Vernon Brown.”

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Vernon goes over and shakes hands with my good-looking friend.

“Nice to meet you, brother. Chili sauce!” Vernon says as he side steps imitating the dance moves the Time performed for the song, “The Bird.”