Читать книгу Bluff Walk - Charles R. Crawford - Страница 9

3 _____________________

The heat wave broke the second week of September, bringing the highs down into the mid-eighties and lowering the humidity. It was a temporary respite, and there would be more days in the nineties, but the emotional worst of summer was over.

I had the windows open in my office and was sitting at my desk on a fine blue sky Thursday morning, sipping coffee and watching a barge of gravel work its way up the river when Amanda called. I hadn’t heard from her since she had delivered the news of Jack Jones’s death, and I knew it would be at least several months before Betty Jo, then Amanda, then I received any money from his estate.

“I’ve got a case I want you to take, Jack,” Amanda said. “Don’t worry, it’s not a divorce. It’s a missing person case.”

“Who’s missing?” I asked.

“The son of a client,” she said. “She’s sitting here in my office. I was wondering if you could come over now.”

“Now? You must think I’m not very busy,” I replied.

“Can you come or not, Jack? It’s important,” Amanda said.

“No time for levity this morning, huh? Give me fifteen minutes.”

I was wearing khakis and a white buttondown shirt, and added a tie and seersucker coat before heading out. Amanda was not a believer in casual day.

Ten minutes later, Amanda’s receptionist led me into her office. Amanda was seated behind her glass-topped desk, and in one of her red leather client chairs sat an overweight black woman who appeared to be in her forties. She was wearing orange stretch pants that didn’t look like they could stretch any further, and a t-shirt with a picture of a basketball star dunking the ball. For shoes, she was wearing purple house slippers without any heels.

“Ms. Tuggle,” Amanda said formally, “this is John McAlister. John, Ms. Tuggle.”

“How do you do, ma’am?” I said.

Ms. Tuggle nodded at me, but didn’t say anything or offer her hand. I sat down in the other chair and waited.

“Ms. Tuggle’s son, Thomas, is missing,” Amanda said. “Ms. Tuggle, why don’t you tell John about it.”

“I done told you, why I got to tell him, too?” she asked.

“Because,” Amanda replied patiently, “John is the one who will look for Thomas, not I.”

Ms. Tuggle took a deep, ragged breath, and began to speak in an angry voice. “I never had nothing good in this life but Thomas, and now he gone, too. How this white man going to change that?”

“I don’t know that I can, but I’m sure that I can’t if I don’t know what’s going on. If you don’t want to tell me, I’ll go enjoy the rest of my day. It’s entirely up to you,” I said. I looked across the glass at Amanda and shrugged with my eyebrows.

“Goddamit, Lucy, tell the man the story,” Amanda said, in a voice that had made more than one philandering husband fear for his retirement plan and club membership.

“Fuck you, Amanda, don’t you be cussin’ me,” Tuggle hissed back.

“I see you girls know each other already,” I said.

“You shut up,” Amanda said to me, “and you quit being so pig-headed stubborn and tell the man what you know,” she added, jabbing her finger at Amanda.

“I know he gone, and he ain’t comin’ back, that’s what I know,” she said, her eyes still defiant but her voice breaking.

“Tell him, Lucy, just tell him,” Amanda said quietly.

“’Bout three weeks ago, Thomas was over at my house on a Friday night like always, eatin’ supper and drinking wine with me when the police come knocking on the door. They said Thomas been dealin’ crack, and started to read him his rights, like they do on TV. Thomas, he been drinking a lot, and he say he ain’t had nothing to do with crack, and that the policeman is a lying nigger. The other police, he white, he shoot Thomas with one of them cattle prod guns. Thomas jerk like he havin’ a fit and fall down on the floor and start throwing up on the black cop’s shoes, and so he get mad and whack Thomas on the back two three times with his night stick. I started in after him with the bottle of wine but the white cop pull his gun and say “freeze, nigger.” I know I ain’t doing no good against a gun with a bottle of Thunderbird, so I do what he say. Then they each grabs aholt of Thomas and drag him out my house and th’ow him in the police car.”

“When did you see him next, Ms. Tuggle?” I asked.

“I ain’t never seen him again,” she said with a sob. I was afraid for a moment that she was going to break down, but she pulled herself together and went on without any prompting.

“He called me next day and said they set bond on him of twenty thousand, and he already paid it and was out. He said he be over the next Friday night like always for dinner, but he didn’t come. I tried to call him three four times, but he never answer, and when he didn’t come over the next Friday night, I got my friend to carry me over to his house. Thomas wasn’t home, and his neighbors say they ain’t seen him in a couple of weeks. “

“I’ve been over to the neighborhood and asked around, too. Nobody has seen him,” Amanda added.

“Have you called the police,” I asked, “or is that a stupid question?”

“You’re right, that’s a stupid question,” Amanda said. “They are obviously looking for Thomas, too. He missed his first hearing.”

Ms. Tuggle spoke up, “No, I ain’t called the police, ‘cause that sho’ wouldn’t be what Thomas wanted me to do and they ain’t nobody else to call cept Amanda.”

“When you went over to the house, did either one of you go inside?” I asked.

“I don’t have a key,” Ms. Tuggle said.

“What about a court order to get in?” I asked.

“Another stupid question,” Amanda said. “That would involve filing a missing person’s report with the police.”

“And the police would want to come with you to the house, right?” I asked them both.

Now they both gave me the blank stare.

“Look,” I said, “if Thomas is wanted for crack dealing and bail jumping, the cops can get into his house anyway. We might as well go in and see what we can find.”

Lucy looked at Amanda, and Amanda said to me, “No cops.”

“Okay. What line of business is your son in, Ms. Tuggle?” I asked.

“He’s in a good line of business, but I don’t know what it is. I know it ain’t no crack business.”

“Do you know the name of his bail bond company?” I asked.

“He probably used Ajax Bond, that’s who he got to help me last year when I got in a fight with that woman who used to stay next door. She a crack ‘ho and the police arrest me for assault. What kind of justice is that?”

Lucy Tuggle was obviously a member of that large subculture who knew the practical aspects of the criminal justice system from personal experience. A good bail bondsman was an essential part of existence, and probably sent a card at Christmas.

“What about a lawyer, Ms. Tuggle? Had Thomas ever used one before?”

“The last time he was in trouble, he had some no account cracker who didn’t know what he was doing. I went down to the trial to testify as a character witness, and he wouldn’t even put me on the stand, made me stay out in the hall. I don’t even remember his name, but Thomas promised me when he got out of the penal farm that he wouldn’t never use him again.”

I could imagine Lucy Tuggle’s effect on a jury, and knew that Amanda could, too. I purposefully did not look at Amanda as I asked why Thomas had been sent to the penal farm.

“I don’t remember,” she answered.

“You don’t remember?” I asked. “It might in some way help me find Thomas.”

“No, I don’t remember.”

I looked at Amanda for help, but she offered none.

“Is there anything else you can tell me that might help me? Names of friends, other family, business associates?” I asked.

“I don’t know his friends and we got no other family. I don’t know nothing about his business.”

“Ms. Tuggle, you understand that I’m not a policeman. If there’s anything that might help, I would like to know it,” I said.

Apparently, she had not heard me.

Before I could say anything else, Amanda added, “I have Thomas’s picture and address, John. I’ll give them to you before you leave. Lucy, I’m sure John will do everything he can to find Thomas.”

Lucy conveyed her doubts in my ability by snorting, heaved herself up out of her chair, and shuffled out of the office.

As the door closed behind her, Amanda turned to me and said, “No cracks from you, buddy.”

“You don’t know me as well as you think you do, Amanda,” I said. “If we were having a be polite to Ms. Tuggle contest, I’d be the clear winner. I believe you were the one who called her pig-headed.”

“It’s one thing how you treat her to her face, it’s another what you say after she’s gone,” Amanda said.

“Well, I won’t say she’s a vision of loveliness and I plan to ask her out,” I said, “but she is a mother concerned about her son, and I feel bad for her, even if I can’t relate to sitting around with my mom getting shit-faced on cheap wine. Maybe with Dad.”

Amanda curled one side of her lovely lips, but only asked, “Do you feel bad enough to look for Thomas?”

“First, tell me how you know her.”

“Lucy and I grew up together,” Amanda said. “She comes to me when she has a problem.”

“You mean you went to private school together and swam at the country club while your mothers played tennis?”

“You know what I mean, smartass. Lucy’s mother was our housekeeper. We’re the same age and played together when we were kids.”

“Sort of like in Gone with the Wind, huh?” I asked.

“Yeah, just like that. Now, I have to be in court in thirty minutes. Will you help Lucy or not?”

“I’ll see what I can do. But you know the two likeliest scenarios as well as I do. First, Thomas has skipped town for a while. He’s in Chicago or Detroit and he’ll be back for Christmas. Second, his crack buddies have killed him. If so, his body will show up any day and the case will be solved, no thanks to me.”

“Maybe you can find out if he left town. That would ease Lucy’s mind,” Amanda said.

“Everyone I talk to about Thomas will be about as forthcoming as Lucy. Besides, if he’s alive, he’d have gotten in touch with her.”

“Well, he hasn’t.”

“Which means…”

“Not necessarily,” Amanda said.

“99% is not enough?” I asked.

“John, I’ve given you a lot of good business over the years. You owe me this,” Amanda said with a look that was both exasperated and pleading.

“Amanda,” I said, “you know I’ll do it. I just hate to see us both waste our time.”

She gave me a relieved look, and murmured a quiet thank you.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “So tell me what you know about Thomas.”

“I don’t really know much,” she said. “Lucy had him when she was fifteen, which would make him about twenty-seven, since she and I are the same age. Her mother quit working for us right after Thomas was born, and we didn’t stay in touch. I was a freshman in high school, and I remember feeling that Lucy was much older.”

“When did you see her next?” I asked.

“Not till I was in college. My mother heard that her mother had died, and she asked Lucy if she wanted to work for us. I was home one summer while she was our maid, and she brought Thomas over now and then. He was a cute little boy. But by the time I came back for Christmas break, Lucy was gone. Mom said the silver and booze kept disappearing, so she finally let Lucy go. Lucy ended up the way you saw her today.”

“I bet I hadn’t thought of Lucy in ten years,” she continued, “when she called me one day after I had started practicing law. She said she had heard I was a lawyer, and asked me if I would help her in a dispute with her landlord. Since then she’ll call me every two or three years with some problem.”

“Did you get her off the assault charge she mentioned?” I asked.

“No, that’s the first time I heard about that one, but it doesn’t surprise me. She’s always had a temper.”

“What did Lucy tell you about Thomas?”

“Not much. I know he graduated from high school, she was real proud of that. The last time I saw her she just said he was a businessman, and doing real well.”

“What’s going on with the Jones estate?” I asked, changing the subject. “Do you see any problems?”

“No, but it won’t happen any time soon. What does that have to do with Lucy?”

“I don’t expect to get paid on Jones till you get paid, but I’ll make you a deal. You pay me for Tuggle, and then when Jones comes in you deduct the Tuggle fee and pay me from that.”

“I’ll pay you for Lucy anyway,” she said. “I’m not asking you to work for free.”

“I know you’re not, but this is the way I want to do it. Maybe the PI society will give me the do-gooder award.”

“You’re not the one feeling guilty about Jones now, are you? Is this atonement?” she asked.

“That’s just the way I want to do it, okay?” I said.

“Okay, would you like an advance?”

“An advance is always nice.”

“How about a thousand?” she said.

“A thousand is always nice.”

She pulled a checkbook out of her drawer and wrote a check. She handed it to me along with a legal sized envelope and said, “Now I have to go to court. You find Thomas, Jack. I’m counting on you.”