Unexpected Dismounts (10 page)

“Tell me what?”

“I finally found the right person to talk to.”

“About?”

“Jude Lowery. Sultan.” Chief winced. “He hasn’t been declared legally dead, and he won’t be until either they find his body or seven years have passed.”

“No! He dead! That man
dead!”

My head jerked so hard toward the figure in the dining room doorway, I could feel the tendons in my neck wrench. Desmond’s normally creamy face was bleached, and his mouth couldn’t seem to hold itself still. The newly prominent Adam’s apple worked painfully up and down his neck.

“He
is
dead,” I said.

“Then why you sayin’ he ain’t?”

“Come here, buddy,” Chief said.

Chief held his arm out and waited until Desmond crossed to us. I moved over to make room for him in the chair with me, but he just stood there.

“I know he’s dead too,” I said. “I was there, remember?”

“Then how come they sayin’ he might not be?”

“Because somebody took the body,” I said. “But don’t worry about it, okay?”

I was apparently completely unconvincing because he swallowed hard again and turned doubtful eyes to Chief. “How come somebody took him?” he said.

“Because they’re cowards,” Chief said.

I sat up straighter in the chair. Chief’s voice had an edge I hadn’t heard before.

“Sultan had a bunch of losers working for him. They knew as soon as Sultan was gone somebody else would take over their territory because they don’t have the goods to protect it. You see what I’m saying?”

“Maybe.”

“If they made it look like Sultan was still alive, somebody else, somebody stronger, wouldn’t be so likely to try a takeover.” Chief nodded at Desmond as if they were both man enough to get this. “Sultan was a bad dude. Nobody’s going to try anything like that until they’re sure he can’t come back and mess them up. That make sense?”

Desmond pressed his lips together. The color still hadn’t returned to his face. I’d seldom seen him take this long to snap his coping mechanism back into place.

“What about Zelda?” Desmond said, to me this time.

“I told you she left.”

“You didn’t tell me she flip out in the street and got busted. I hadda hear you talkin’ about it when Barnum and Bailey and them was here.”

“What are you, half bat?”

“What kinda drugs make her lose her stuff like that?”

I looked at Chief, and he nodded.

“It was a speedball,” I said. “That’s—”

“I know what it is,” Desmond said. “And ain’t nobody can get that on King Street ’cept Sultan.”

“Or one of his lackeys now that he’s gone,” Chief said. “Look, I’ll tell you what. I’ll do some investigating and see if I can find out what’s going down on West King right now—who’s controlling what, who’s getting what, all that. Then you can let your mind rest. Sound good?”

“How long you think thatta take?”

The waver in his voice caught in my own throat. The kid was genuinely scared, and even Chief wasn’t able to chase that fear away.

“Give me a week,” Chief said. “Meanwhile, just so you know, nothing is going to stop the adoption. You’re going to be stuck with Big Al no matter what.”

“Bummer,” I said.

Desmond finally made an attempt at a smile, and his Adam’s apple stopped bobbing. It would only be a matter of time now before he’d be suggesting that a package of Peanut M&M’s would set the whole matter to rest. I beat him to it and told him to grab something from the drawer before he went back to studying.

“Imma ace the test,” was his parting shot. “Then we goin’ all the way to Miami.”

“I hope that test happens soon,” Chief said when Desmond was as safely out of earshot as he was ever going to get. “Or we’re going to wind up in Key West.”

“Chief.”

He sat back down on the ottoman and parked his forearms on his knees.

“You’re still not okay with this,” he said.

“No, and neither is he.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “You have to tell me if you really believe this is just Sultan’s people protecting their turf.”

“I’ve got my eye on it, Classic,” he said. “I have ever since the night he was shot.”

It was almost as good as the kiss I wanted. Another almost.

Bonner had yet another almost for me when he called Friday morning, just as I was heading out the door.

“I’m going to walk while you talk,” I said into my cell. “I’m already late meeting Hank at the Galleon.”

“She gets you every Friday,” Bonner said. “She can spare me five minutes. Besides, you want to hear this.”

I hoped he was sure about that. People were telling me a lot of things lately that I didn’t want to hear.

“I talked to Dexter Taylor.”

“Who’s that?”

“He owns the place across from Sacrament House.”

I stopped at the corner of Palm Row and Cordova and sat on the low wall that ran along the sidewalk. The palm trees along the side of the Lightner Museum slapped their fronds together in the March wind. “Talk to me,” I said.

“He said his original plan was to rent it out again, but somebody told him the house across the street—ours—had a bunch of hookers living in it, so he decided to sell.”

“I hope you set him straight.”

“I did.”

“And unlike me, you did it without making him want to press charges.” I let a half-empty sightseeing trolley pass and crossed Cordova.

“He said he’s definitely selling, and … are you close to anything breakable?”

“Why? Am I going to want to throw something?”

“You might.”

“This has something to do with Troy Irwin, doesn’t it?”

“Taylor told me that the Chamberlain Foundation just bought another house down the street and he was hoping maybe they’d make a bid on his once he put it up for sale.”

“He can’t.”

“There’s nothing stopping him, Allison. I couldn’t even ask Taylor to hold this house because we don’t know if we’re going to have the funds to make an offer. He did say he wasn’t going to list it until he fixed it up some. Evidently the last tenants were pretty rough on it.”

“How much time does that give us?” I said.

“Not much. When’s the fund-raiser?”

“The seventeenth—two weeks.”

“Then let’s just do what we can with that window, okay? Don’t hurl any projectiles yet. Are you at the Galleon now?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Hank’ll keep you in line.”

As I hung up and shoved through the door into the coffee shop, I wasn’t sure even Hank could keep me from erupting. She took me in with a glance from our usual table and called over her shoulder, “Patrice, we need an emergency chamomile tea out here. Make it a double.”

“It’s a personal vendetta now, Hank.”

“You talked to Bonner.”

“You know.”

“Sit.”

I wanted to pace around and throw random pieces of reproduction armor, but I punched myself down onto the chair and proceeded to shred a carrot raisin muffin.

“It’s not enough to redline all of West King. He’s got to take our street. He doesn’t need it. He’s not going to get investors to open restaurants and bed and breakfasts back there. This is just to get to me.”

“We
are
talking about Troy Irwin.”

The lion-haired woman who owned the Galleon placed a cup of tea at my elbow. “You sure you don’t need something stronger than that?”

“Am I making too much noise?” I said.

She looked around at the empty tables. “Yeah. You’re disturbing all the other customers.”

“Business not good?” Hank said.

Patrice shook her head. “We’re closing the fifteenth of this month.”

“Tell me she isn’t selling to Chamberlain too,” I said when Patrice returned to the kitchen with the decimated muffin.

“What are you going to do, Al?” Hank said.

“Not what I want to do.”

“Which is?

“Blow into his office and tell him what a heinous pile of garbage he is.”

“You tried that before.”

“I did.”

“And how far did it get you?”

“It sent me backward.”

“Then there you go.” Hank folded her hands neatly on the map-of–St. Augustine placemat. “So what else you got?”

“I don’t know, Hank. I don’t know anything anymore, seriously. And this feeling.” I plastered my hand to my chest. “This is creeping me out.”

“Tell me some more.”

“I’ve never felt hate like this before, and that’s what it is, just pure hate.”

“Of course it is. Not to beat a dead dog, Al, but you
are
a prophet. Prophets hate injustice, and they feel it a hundred times more deeply than the rest of us.”

“Willa Livengood is just as callous as Troy Irwin. So’s the Reverend Garry Howard, for that matter. But I don’t hate them, not this way.”

“You don’t have the history with them that you do with Troy.”

“I’m over that, though.”

“Really.” Hank’s bob of dark hair splashed across her cheek as she tilted her head at me. “Let me ask you this: If Troy Irwin completely backed out of West King Street and left the whole thing alone, would you still want to spit every time you heard his name?”

“Yes,” I said.

Her mouth did its twitchy thing. “You don’t even have to think about it for a second?”

“No, and I don’t even know why.” I shoved a hand through my hair. “I told you, I don’t know anything for sure anymore.”

“What don’t you know about this?”

“I don’t know why, after God has completely turned my life around, and I feel like I might be actually living the way I’m supposed to—why I’m still hung up on something that happened twenty-five years ago. My head has let it go. Troy Irwin, high-school lover, hurt me, blah, blah, blah—done—over it. But it’s still on me like some kind of oozing … thing.”

“It’s not just on you,” Hank said, “it’s in you. And you’re not used to things being in you.”

“What things?”

“Whatever it was you were experiencing Wednesday night when you blurted something out about feet and then covered it up with some fund-raising idea.”

“You don’t like the Feast idea?” I said. “India does.”

“I like it fine, but that isn’t what you had going on inside you. Am I right?”

“Yes.” I shook my head at her. “Do you lie awake at night thinking of things I don’t want to look at so you can put them in my face?”

“Pretty much.”

Patrice produced another muffin.

“Eat this one,” Hank said to me, and waited until I’d chewed and swallowed a bite that went down like a wad of sawdust.

“So, Wednesday night,” I said. “It was all these emotions, and it was the same way when I saw Zelda all wigged out—feelings that don’t have any connection to anything. And that’s like with Troy. I have all this hate, and it makes me wonder if that clouds my judgment. I don’t know. I’m not used to this.”

“Not used to feeling?”

“I have always
felt,
but …”

“But not like you wanted to throw body armor or pull some police officer’s larynx out.” Her mouth gave its signature twitch. “Or jump a man’s bones, so to speak.”

“Tell me we’re not still talking about Troy. That just makes me want to barf.” I looked distastefully at the muffin and pushed the plate away.

“No, it wasn’t Troy’s bones I was referring to.”

“You’re talking Chief.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I don’t want to jump Chief’s bones.”

Hank chewed.

“Okay, I do, but I can’t.”

“Because of Troy Irwin.”

“
What?
No, not because of him!”

Hank considered the whipped cream on her Belgian waffle. “Who was the last man you trusted before Chief?”

“We were eighteen.”

“That’s a long time not to be able to enjoy a relationship. I’d hate a man too, if he was responsible for me living half a life for twenty-five years.”

The muffin blurred in front of me. I swallowed so hard I reminded myself of Desmond, choking down his fear.

“How is it that you know more about me than I do?” I said.

“I don’t think I do. I just yank the covers off of you so you have to look at yourself.”

“No, really, Hank, you’re the prophet.”

“And you?”

“Let me get back to you on that,” I said.