The Good Boy (38 page)

“Where is Elgin?”

“What he do?”

“That’s what I want to know.”

She offers her hand. “I take you by Elgin, you buy me a piece. That’s the deal.”

“Tell me where,” Pete says, because he doesn’t want to shake on it: maybe the cops she knows trade favors, or her addict logic keeps her hopeful, aiming for another high.

*   *   *

Addict logic must also be the reason why Elexus wastes plenty of time finding Jay Payne, Elgin’s high-end dealer and longtime pal who’s supposedly been letting him crash post-clink.

By the look of Payne’s house, he seems to be doing his thing pretty successfully in the better part of Auburn Gresham, the worse part being a bunker for the neighborhood cops on the front line of Englewood’s ghetto. When Pete cases the place, he finds no sign of Elgin, and no Mizz Redbone. He is, however, reminded of LaFonda’s, except that Payne favors tropical fish over cats, and his mortgage is most likely paid in cash.

When Payne answers the door, he plays it straight. “Look, man, normally I wouldn’t help you if I could, but I really can’t. I haven’t seen Elge in weeks. Not since he went fishing in my aquarium and fixed himself a two-hundred-dollar plate of fried Discus fish. He thought it was funny.”

“You kicked him out?”

He reties his bathrobe. “I loved those fucking fish.”

“You know where he went?”

“Last I saw he was standing out in the street yelling about being ‘misrespected.’ Last I heard, he was on a crack bender, talking about collecting on his debts.”

Pete wonders what Elgin thinks Pete owes him. If Joel is some kind of collateral.

The possibility makes Pete feel pushy. “Maybe I could come in, look around, see if Elgin left anything behind.”

“He didn’t have anything to leave. Let me make some calls.” His willingness to help means he’s either become too big a fish to let Elgin cause him trouble or that he’s one of those guppy fuckers who’s made his way by giving everybody else up for bait. Even his old pal.

Pete doesn’t care why Payne will help; just that he will.

Back out in the squad, Elexus is waiting for her dope. Not patiently.

“What the shit, pigfucker?”

“Where’s the South Way Lounge?”

Elexus tries the door handle, which is still locked. “The South Way is not part of the motherfucking deal.”

“Actually, the motherfucking deal is that I can arrest you right now because I am a cop and you solicited me for drugs.”

“Are you kidding? You gave me money for sex.”

“I tipped you for your wonderful dancing.”

“You invited me to a hotel! You said we were going to get coke.”

“We were never in a hotel and I think what I said was that I was going to pick up my friend Jim.”

“You promised me room service.”

“What I actually did was just confirm that you wanted room service.”

“Aw fuck. I don’t remember how you said what. Unlock this mother-fucking door.”

“I don’t think so.”

“But you
said,
if I take you by Elgin—”

“So take me by Elgin. Or, I can take you to jail.”

“Dammit. Buy me a drink when we get there.”

“Tell me how to get there.”

“No sir, you
promise
to buy me a drink first.”

“I will buy you a drink.”

“Promise, motherfucker!”

He promises.

When they get there, there’s no Mizz Redbone on the street, and inside, the bar doesn’t have the glitz he expects for a big-time banger like Elgin, but for ten
A.M.
on a Sunday, it’s doing decent business—four of the place’s eight seats are occupied by old black guys from the neighborhood, crumpled dollars on the bar while they clear-liquor cleanse their palates.

They call the woman tending bar Miss Josie, a den mother who takes as much care washing glasses as she does helping one of the old men back onto his bar stool when he comes out of the can. Her heart must have a lot of bend, if this place hasn’t broken it by now.

Pete puts Elexus on an end stool and stands between her and the door.

“Hey Miss Josie,” she says, “I’d like a tall vodka cranberry—”

“Lime and two straws,” Miss Josie finishes; she knows the order, and is generous with the pour. Pete figures it’s okay; anything to bring Elexus down a notch.

“For you?”

“Elgin Poole.”

She doesn’t seem surprised. “He was here a week ago. Wasn’t himself. He seemed drug-drained; it looked like it hurt him to smile. After I served him a gin cocktail, he warmed up some, but by the time he finished the second one, he was hot. Said he was tired of being the only one who put the hustle in Hustler. Said it was time for some
seriosity
.”

“That’s Elge,” Elexus says.

“After that he started in on the customers, telling some of them he wanted to even the score, some of the others that he just wanted to score. By then, I knew the gin was no tonic. I cut him off. That was when he reached across the bar and put one hand over my mouth and the other in my tip jar. He took a handful of bills and said I must not remember how generous he’s been over the years. He said I could just go ahead and forget. Then he finished someone else’s drink and left. I haven’t seen him since, but I heard he’s been hanging around Margaret’s.”

“Where’s that?” Pete asks.

“Englewood. Most who jump there hit a hard, empty bottom.”

Pete thanks Miss Josie, puts a little something back in her tip jar, and offers an elbow to escort Elexus out of there. “You ready?”

Elexus chews on her straw. “You dumb motherfucker,” she says, “I know who you are now.”

“Let’s go,” Pete says, smiling at the old guys as he slips a hand around her waist to get her out of there before she says too much.

But she says, “You fucked the judge who got my brother killed.”

“That’s not, ahh, no,” Pete says to Elexus. And to Miss Josie, and the guys, all four of whom seem much younger and more agile when they stand and face Pete.

“I’ma finish my drink,” Elexus says, now that she has backup.

Pete’s gear is still in the squad so he excuses himself and goes out to get his gun and the cuffs from the trunk.

When he returns, he tells Elexus, “You have the right to remain silent,” and cuffs her; his gun tells everybody else he isn’t fucking around.

“You can’t arrest me—” she starts to protest, but he drags her out the door anyway, and nobody follows.

Outside, Pete knows the South Way crowd is watching from the window, so he keeps on with the show, her Miranda rights revised: “You have the right to keep running your mouth, too, but everything you’ve already said will be used against you, so even if you quit now, Elexus, you’re pretty much fucked.”

In the process of being forced into the backseat, Elexus loses what little is left of her composure, her wig, and a fingernail. Pete feels kind of bad, it being Butch’s cage and all, but it’s probably cleaner than the stage she rolls around on, and once she’s in there, he decides it’s as good a place as any for her to come down from what’s left of her high.

On the ride to Margaret’s, Elexus wears herself out pretty quickly trying to kick out the cage’s backseat windows. That mouth of hers, though—it keeps on long after the rest of her quits.

“I know the truth. You didn’t arrest me. You can’t. You set me up—yes, it’s called motherfucking
entrapment,
like I said, and you won’t get away with it, you pig fuck.”

Pete doesn’t argue with her; she won’t hear him and besides, she isn’t completely wrong. There isn’t much she’ll be able to do about it, though; they’ve both been operating at a considerable distance from legal.

On and on she goes,
pig
and
fuck
used interchangeably and often as Pete pulls up to the dive, the destination marked by a red-and-white awning that says
MARGARET’S FILLING STATION
AKA GOAL POST. The place is open for business, the window’s Pabst sign turned on, but all the action seems to be outside in front, where a handful of shitbirds stand around smoking squares.

While Elexus keeps talking, Pete watches a girl in a velour tracksuit high-heel it past a guy in flip-flops who’s stumbling back from an old Buick Riviera parked in the adjacent lot; not very well stashed there, behind the front tire, is the communal bottle of brown-bag liquor. Cheaper than any drink at the bar.

Elexus says, “Oh my god, oh, my god. That’s Francis.” And then she shuts up, which is what gets Pete’s attention.

“What?”

“Francis,” she repeats, and slides down so her head is below the guarded window.

“Which one’s Francis?” Pete asks, since Francis could be any one of them.

“In the flat cap.”

The man she’s talking about has just pushed his way out Margaret’s front door and he looks like he has the cash for a real cocktail. He has to be about fifty, but damn fit: underneath his wool vest, his pecs and shoulders are jailhouse-built, hard from years of reps. A thin beard runs along his jaw; the silver in it is what puts time on his side. And he looks booze-smooth, his smile engaged even if his mind isn’t.

“What is he, one of your johns?”

“Don’t let him see me. Please.”

When Pete doesn’t see her in the rearview, he turns and finds her curled up on the cage floor like a pill bug.

“No,” Pete says, “that guy is no john. He’s definitely a pimp. Is he your pimp?”

“He is my father.”

“Your father,” Pete says. The only visible resemblance is his high.

“Please, let’s go. I promise you, if Francis is here, Elgin is not.”

Pete could argue that her promises thus far have been bullshit, but the way she broke—cracked open at the sight of him—Pete knows Francis is the one deal she hasn’t been able to break, no matter how she tries to hide.

“I can find Elgin,” she says. “Let me make a call.”

“Who, exactly, is going to know where Elgin is all of a sudden?”

“If I can get you to him, does it matter?”

Pete parks the squad in front of Margaret’s and he hopes keeping Francis within range will also keep Elexus honest. He holds her phone through the divider and lets her make the call and she plays supreme bitch with whoever answers. When she says goodbye, she slumps back like she just came off stage. She says, “Elgin is at Bastian’s. End of the line.”

“I’m supposed to know Bastian?”

“He’s the guy you go to when you’ll do whatever it takes to get high. He loves to party, but you party with him, you go from owing ten dollars to stealing a car.”

“Why can’t Elgin afford his own habit? I thought he was flush.”

“He was. But since he got out, all he cares about is getting back to the way things were when he was famous. That’s the high he’s been chasing. If he’s gone to Bastian’s, he’s definitely lost control.”

“Where’s Bastian’s?”

“Over on Drexel. Behind Harold’s Chicken.”

Back across town. Again.

“You’re sure about this?”

“No, I want to ride around in this damn car some more.”

As he pulls away, Pete checks the rearview and sees Francis getting friendly with the girl in velour. Elexus doesn’t look back.

A few blocks later he checks the rearview again and Elexus is wiping her eyes, so Pete pushes her handbag through the divider.

“Here, how about you fix your eye makeup. I think you’re real pretty without it, though. And without the wig.”

“You can pay me compliments,” she says, wiping her nose, “but they ain’t gonna buy you no blowjob.”

She catches his smile in the mirror.

*   *   *

“Does this look familiar?” Pete asks. They’re in West Woodlawn now, entering a tight pocket of Hustler territory.

“Yeah,” Elexus says. “Turn right.”

After a lap around the block, still no Mizz Redbone in sight, Pete double-parks the squad on Drexel. “Which one is Bastian’s?” he asks about the bank of mid-rise apartments on the corner.

“The middle building. Ground floor, unit B.”

“Good girl,” he says. “Be right back with those illicit substances I promised you.”

She sits forward and barks at him like a strung-out Pekingese.

The curtains in Bastian’s front window move when Pete knocks.

“Hello?” a young-sounding girl asks from the other side of the door.

“I’m looking for Bastian.”

“He’s not here.”

Pete tries the knob and it turns so he draws his gun and pushes the door open and steps inside and says, “You’ll do,” to the girl, a rail-thin pale-skinned blonde wearing nothing but tight pink bikini underwear and crew socks. She backs away from the daylight, one forearm over her breasts, the other shielding her eyes.

“Hey man,” she says; it sounds as much like a hello as it does a protest.

“Are you the only one here?”

“You’re here,” she says, arms up and breasts out when she registers the gun.

Pete shuts the door and scopes the room: it’s addict-ergonomic: tables set up to cook and cut, a couch for shooting and crashing. It’s a shithole, for sure, but it seems to serve its limited purpose. He asks, “Where is Elgin Poole?”

“The neurotical Elgin Poole?”

“Where is he?”

“Not here.”

“I can see that. Where did he go?”

“Where did Elgin go?” She asks like she’s the one asking.

Jesus,
he thinks,
I’m talking to a parrot
. He stops himself from looking directly at her breasts. He wants to ask her to find a shirt but instead he asks, “When did he leave?”

“He left, well, what’s today? Wednesday?”

“Sunday.”

“He left Thursday.”

“What day is it today?”

“You said Sunday.”

“And he left Thursday.”

“Seems like it.” She gets tired of holding up her arms and standing up, too, so she tumbles onto the couch and finds a pack of Camels. “You’re not going to shoot me, are you?”

Pete holsters his gun. “I want a straight answer.”

“You don’t understand inebrionics?” she asks, head held at the same satisfied tilt as her smile. “You must not be a friend of Elgin’s.” She puts one foot up on the back of the couch, her legs open. The tattoo on her inner thigh says
SLAVE
.

“Are you Bastian’s girl?”