Strange Brew Part 20

"s.h.i.+t," I said. "Neva Jean McComb with Edna Mae Garrity riding shotgun. This is not good."

"I'm sorry," Cheezer said. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I'm thinking you better meet me at Little Five Points."

When I got to the PitStop I decided to have another quart of oil put in the Lincoln's crankcase. The Iranian clerk, who sat behind a bulletproof gla.s.s booth, went so far as to offer me a paper towel to clean up. The guy must have had an owners.h.i.+p interest in the place, because I'd never seen anybody else working the cash register there.

I put my money in the retractable slot in the window, then tapped on the gla.s.s.

"Jess?"

"Were you working here last Monday night?" I asked.

"Jess. My wife, she works Monday mornings."

"Do you remember Wuvvy, the woman who owned YoYos, over there in Little Five Points?" I pointed toward the store.

He shrugged. "She does beezness wit me."

"I heard she bought gas here that night, a full tank. Was that unusual for her?"

Another shrug. "She buy five dollars gas, a wine cooler, cheeps, that's all usually."

"But last Monday?"

"Beeg night," he said sarcastically. "Full tank of gas, winds.h.i.+eld wiper blades, ham sandwich. I have to change fifty-dollar bill for her." He scowled. "Sign say no bills over twenty dollars."

Deavers had told me Wuvvy'd bought a full tank of gas that night. He'd a.s.sumed she'd wanted to make sure she didn't run out of gas before the carbon monoxide fumes did their job. But the last time I'd seen her at YoYos she'd told me she was leaving town. Maybe she really had intended to leave town, to literally keep on truckin'.

"Did you tell all that to the police?" I asked.

"I answer the police questions," he said. "You want anything else?"

Cheezer walked up as I was walking back to the Lincoln. He was dressed in green army fatigues three sizes too big for him, and he was sipping from a quart bottle of Gatorade. He jumped in the Lincoln's front seat. "What was that all about?" he asked.

"Nothing," I said. "Let's go find Edna and Neva Jean."

"You think Neva Jean might have a gun?" he asked.

"This is a woman who wore a derringer tucked into the garter belt at her own wedding," I said. "Let's just hope Edna and Neva Jean don't find the guy who mugged Edna before we find the two of them."

We cruised the Lincoln across the street to Euclid Avenue, turned down the alley behind the organic food coop, and cruised slowly back up Moreland again.

"Right there," I said, pointing to the left, toward the parking lot in front of the Junkman's Daughter, a sprawling vintage clothes boutique located in an old supermarket.

Swannelle's battered truck was parked with its nose facing Moreland. But it was empty, no sign of Annie Oakley or her sidekick, Ma Barker.

"What now?" Cheezer asked.

"Let's walk down Moreland," I suggested. "They couldn't have gone far."

As we got closer to the point where Euclid, Moreland, and McLendon intersected, we could hear music pumping out of the Vortex. A low, tw.a.n.gy baritone backed by steel guitar. People were spilling out of the Vortex and onto the plaza beside it. There was a long, final wail, a prolonged riff on the steel guitar, and then a crescendo of applause for the big finale.

"Ed's Adenoids and Concrete Dreams," Cheezer said, nodding at the marquee announcing the night's double bill. "They rule."

Cheezer picked up the pace, and I struggled to keep up with him. "Hey, uh, Callahan," he said, craning his neck to see over the throng. "You, uh, don't really think they'd, uh, do anything if they saw the guy who mugged Edna, do you? I mean, they wouldn't really shoot somebody, would they?"

I was so tired I could barely pick up my feet and put them down again. "Maybe not."

Cheezer plowed into the crush of people departing the Vortex. I had to hang on to a fold of his baggy pants to keep from getting separated from him.

"Hey, Cheez," I heard somebody exclaim. Cheezer offered a high-five and a "How's it going, man?" but he kept moving.

"I can't see anything," I complained.

"This way," he said over his shoulder, shouting to be heard in the din. Somebody stepped on my foot, and somebody else jostled me. The combined aroma of incense, dope, beer, puke, and sweat made me feel giddy and slightly nauseous.

"Look," Cheezer said, pointing toward the tiny roped-off patio outside Fellini's Pizza. All I could see was a yellow-gold bouffant hairdo. It was enough.

They'd staked out a table at the edge of the patio. A cardboard box held remnants of pizza crust, and there was a half-empty pitcher of beer on the table. Neva Jean had a pair of binoculars trained on the crowd coming out of the Vortex, and Edna was busy scribbling away on a notepad. They didn't notice me until I pulled out the vacant chair at the table, sc.r.a.ping the metal legs against the concrete.

"Jesus!" Edna said, doing a double take. Her hand fluttered nervously in her lap. Neva Jean dropped the binoculars and grabbed for her suitcase-sized purse.

"Hi, girls," I said.

Cheezer smiled nervously. "h.e.l.lo, ladies."

"What do you want?" Edna glowered at Cheezer.

"First, I want Neva Jean to take her hand off that gun," I said. "Then I want you to call off the dragnet and go home before somebody gets hurt."

"It's not a gun," Neva Jean said. She reached in her purse and brought out a blunt black object. "It's my phone. We were gonna call the cops when we spotted that guy who robbed your mama. I wouldn't bring a gun over here to this neighborhood. Somebody might try to steal it."

"What about you?" I asked Edna. "What are you so busy writing down?"

"Descriptions," she said. "That nice Detective Kaczynski told the Commandos tonight that if we wanted to clean up this neighborhood we had to be on the lookout at all times for criminal activity." She held up the notebook and leafed through three pages of notes.

"Jaywalking, underage drinking, dope dealers, public intoxication, public indecency, prost.i.tution...it's all right here. Time, date, and details."

I peered over her shoulder at the notations.

"Very nice," I said. "But I don't think this is exactly what Kaczynski had in mind. He probably didn't mean for you to go out on patrol looking for crime."

Edna snapped her notebook shut. "I don't care what he meant," she said peevishly. "I'm not going to just sit around the house and wait for something else bad to happen. Those cops are nice and polite because I'm an old lady and because they know you used to be a cop, but I know d.a.m.n well they're not going out looking for the kid who robbed me. So I will," she said, slapping the table. "And you're not going to stop me."

Neva Jean and Cheezer both waited to see what my reaction would be. I pulled up one of the empty chairs and sat down.

"All right," I said, my voice calm. "You're right, Ma. You're an adult. I can have Cheezer babysit you and have C.W. install all the burglar alarms and video cameras in the world, and there's still no guarantee it'll keep you safe. And I can carry a gun, and you can get another gun. But it doesn't make a difference. Bad people are out there. If they want to take something, they will. If they want to hurt us, they'll do that, too, if they really want to. All I'm asking is, don't go looking for trouble. Kaczynski's right. You should be watching and paying attention to what's going on around you."

Neva Jean was nodding her head vigorously in agreement. "I told her she shouldn't carry that gun in her purse," she said. "Ought to have a bra holster, like the one Swannelle got me."

Her hand went to her bra strap, and I looked at Cheezer to see what his reaction would be. But Cheezer wasn't there.

I swung my head around to see where he'd gone. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of green camouflage melting into the crowd.

"Where'd that boy go to?" Edna said. "There's plenty of pizza and Neva Jean just ordered another pitcher of beer..."

"Take her home, Neva Jean," I said, and I plunged into the crowd after Cheezer.

The streetlights blinked on at dusk. But most of the storefronts in L5P were dark after six P.M. on Sunday. People still milled around, cars drove past, and every other human being I saw, male or female, seemed to be dressed in baggy green fatigues.

I searched the faces for one that looked familiar. And for the first time, I noticed that the lost children of Little Five Points weren't all alike and anonymous after all. They could have been faces from my own high school. Teenage boys with bizarre haircuts and cheeks rosy from the cold, sallow-faced girls with heartbreaking acne, dyed blond hair, short butch cuts. Blue-eyed, brown-eyed, bloodshot-eyed. The main difference, aside from the shocking shaved heads, was the number of multiply-pierced ears, nostrils, eyelids, and upper lips.

But none of these kids was Cheezer. I pushed through the clots of people on the sidewalk, got pushed back, shoved a little harder, watching, scanning faces for the right one. I was in front of the incense store when a kid on a skateboard careened directly in front of me. Moments before we would have collided he hopped off the back of the board, flipped it, and caught it in midair with one hand. "Get the f.u.c.k outta the way," he growled at me. I bared my teeth and snarled, but he put his board down and continued down the middle of the sidewalk.

I hurried into the Yacht Club and caught Hap's eye as he was filling a gla.s.s from one of the taps. "Callahan!" he said, surprised to see me twice in one day. "You meeting somebody?"

"Cheezer?" I said urgently. "Did he come in here just now?"

"Haven't seen him," Hap said. "You want me to tell him you're looking for him?"

"I'll find him," I said, and raced back out.

I stood in front of the bar, facing the street, trying to decide which way to turn.

Suddenly, I heard the squeal of tires, a burst of acceleration, and then a blur of black paint and s.h.i.+ny chrome shot out of the parking lot across the street and veered hard right, across Euclid and down Colquitt. A truck. s.h.i.+ny. Black. I ran to the corner of Colquitt, but all I could see was the truck's red taillights speeding in the other direction.

A black truck. I ran across Euclid, darting between cars, ignoring shouted insults and blaring horns. The parking lot beside Sevananda was half-empty, the attendant's booth abandoned.

"Cheezer?" I shouted. The name came echoing back from across the asphalt and concrete canyon. "Cheezer?"

A pair of androgynous black-clad kids Rollerbladed up the hill toward me. "Have you seen a guy in green fatigues?" I asked.

They looked at me blankly, locked arms, and kept rolling, headphones firmly in place.

The parking lot sloped down at the back and was lined with rows of tractor-trailer-sized recycling containers. I was running toward the bins when he called me. "Over here." The voice was faint, but unmistakable.

I veered to the right. The back of the old Euclid Theatre faced the parking lot. A high chain-metal fence had been erected outside the rear entrance to what was now the Variety Playhouse. Even the avant-garde need to fence out the riffraff.

Cheezer had managed to pull himself up to a sitting position, his back propped up against the chain-link fence. His eyes were closed, his head tilted back, knees bent double.

He was breathing, I noticed. No visible blood. His hands were clamped on his knees.

"Cheezer?" I knelt down in a greasy puddle beside him. His eyes fluttered, then opened. When he smiled, I saw the missing tooth and the split lip. He held something out in his hand. It was dark, but there was a little moonlight, and it shone on a thin gold chain with a small oval medallion dangling from it.

"St. Christopher protect us," he said. "And f.u.c.k all the bad guys."

28.

We found Cheezer's missing tooth in a rain puddle. I picked it up and handed it to him. "I heard that if you lose a tooth and put it in milk, the dentist can put it back in," I said, pulling him to his feet.

"Hey, it's no big deal," he protested. "Besides, I think that's only good for baby teeth. Man, you should see that other dude, the one that beat up Edna. He's toast, Callahan." He wrapped the tooth in a bit of tissue and tucked it in the pocket of his fatigues.

"If his buddy hadn't come along in that truck, it could have gotten radical," Cheezer told me. "I mean it. He was walking along, like he was some bada.s.s or something, and he didn't even see me come up behind him. I waited until he was on this side of the street, by the juice bar. n.o.body around. Put him in a neck lock, he didn't know what hit him."

"He wasn't armed?" I asked. "No gun? No knife?"

Cheezer reached in the pocket where he'd just stashed his tooth and brought out a small ugly chrome-handled knife. "Not any more he ain't."

"I thought you were nonviolent," I said. "I can't believe the risk you took confronting that thug. I can't believe you took off like that on your own, without even telling me."

"Violent times call for violent responses," Cheezer said serenely. "You were talking about bad people doing what they want to," he said, "and it was p.i.s.sin' me off. I look up, and there's the guy, the same one I saw beat up the s.p.a.ceman, coming out of the Star Bar. I saw the pictures that cop showed your mom, and it was definitely him. And the dude had a gold chain around his neck. I just started following him."

"You couldn't have told me what you were doing?" I groused.

"There wasn't time," Cheezer said. "I didn't want him gettin' away. And I didn't want to get Edna involved. Like you said, there's no tellin' what she'd have done."

I put my arm around his child-sized waist, and we trudged up the slope from the parking lot, toward my car.

"And you just took the St. Christopher medal away from him, and the knife? So how'd you lose the tooth and split the lip? Did you forget about that part of the incident?"

Cheezer blushed. "I ripped the medal off his neck while I had him in the head lock. That's when he brought out the knife. I, uh, got mixed up with knives a couple times when I lived in New Orleans. And the main thing I learned there was, if somebody's concentrating on stickin' a knife in you, they might not be payin' attention to what else you're doin'. First, I bit him on the knife hand. That's when he hauled off and slugged me in the mouth. So I kicked the dude in the, uh, the nuts. And while he was dealing with that, rolling around on the ground, I stomped on his hand four or five times."

Cheezer raised one of his feet. His fatigues were tucked into Doc Martens, the favored footwear of Little Five Points.

"I got the knife, and I was getting ready to see if he had Edna's pistol on him, when the black truck comes out of nowhere. It pulls up right next to us, and the driver's-side window rolls down, and there's a gun pointed at me."

"Was it the same guy you saw the other night?" I asked. "The cop?"

Cheezer shook his head. "The windows were tinted, and you saw how dark it is back there. I saw the barrel of the gun. I backed away, the kid got up and got in the truck, and they peeled off."

"And it headed down Colquitt," I said thoughtfully. "These guys know the neighborhood. Come on, I know you don't much like cops, but I think we ought to have a conversation with Bucky Deavers."

After I told him what had been going on, Deavers reluctantly agreed to meet with us. "Starbucks?"

It's sad when a street cop tries to be what he ain't. "Someplace else," I suggested. "I don't do cappuccino. I need grease and grits."

We agreed to meet at the Majestic, a diner on Ponce de Leon whose rooftop sign proclaims it to have the world's finest apple pie. I've never known anybody who ever ordered pie at the Majay. We got there first and ordered the works: eggs, bacon, grits, toast, hash browns.

Bucky had bags under his eyes, but he wore a snowy white dress s.h.i.+rt and a lime green necktie with acid yellow daisies. His hair was still damp from the shower. He gave Cheezer a curt nod, then sat down at the booth with us.

"What's this about some bad cop in a black truck?" he asked. "I thought you were going to stay home and keep your mother from getting murdered in her bed."