Shetani's Sister (20 page)

Within ten minutes, Rucker had to park before he fainted again. He knew he couldn't make it to South Central. He U-turned and headed for home. He left the Lincoln in the driveway. He disconnected his phone and fell into bed with his clothes on.

Across town, at sunrise, Shetani sat on the living-room sofa watching a TV special local newscast. His face was drawn and glistened with the perspiration of a dope fiend in need. He massaged his belly to relieve twinges of cramp pain. He leaned forward and listened intently as a file picture of Rucker appeared in a corner of the screen above the head of the newswoman.

“Police Sergeant Russell Rucker checked out of Cedars-Sinai against the advice of hospital officials. Efforts to reach him have been unsuccessful. In the meantime, one of the most intensive manhunts in the history of the city is being conducted to apprehend mass murderer Albert Spires, a native New Yorker, who police authorities believe is hiding in the South Central section of the city.”

Shetani's mug-shot image appeared on-screen. The newswoman's voice continued with voice-over. “The suspect is six four or five inches tall with a muscular build and intense green eyes. If any viewer sees him, call the number at the bottom of the screen. He is a former mental patient and is to be considered extremely dangerous.”

Shetani chanted, “The stinking bastard ain't dead. The stinking bastard ain't dead.” He picked a heavy ashtray off the coffee tabletop and hurled it into the TV screen. It exploded like a mini-bomb.

Seconds later, Maggie stumbled from her bedroom in her nightgown. She stared hypnotically at the demolished TV for a moment. Then she switched her furious eyes to Shetani. Tears rolled down her ruined doll face as she pounded her thigh blubber with tiny fists. She shrieked, “Is you done gone star natal nuts? I loved my TV. It's a Zenith! My poor dead husband give it to me for my birthday fourteen years ago. Nigger, why you mess up my TV?”

He responded with a baleful stare and one of his hideous smiles. She stabbed an index finger toward him and screeched, “I ain't afraid of your evil eye, 'cause God's in my corner. Get out of my house!”

He leveled his gun at her chest. “I'm gonna send you to meet him if you don't stop screamin' and sit down. Now!” he said in a graveyard voice that forced her to collapse into a chair beside the TV.

She buried her face in her hands and wept hysterically. He said, “Stop that cryin'. Later on you can call your TV repairman if you got one and have him bring you another TV, on me. Okay?”

She nodded and dredged her flab up from the chair. She gave him a mean look before she went back into the bedroom. He sat in her chair near the front window and surveyed the street through lace curtains. A thin young black girl with a debauched face got out of a battered Pontiac and went into the house next door. The Pontiac, driven by a teenage black dude wearing a do-rag to protect his processed curls, moved away.

Excitement rocked Shetani. He knew a street bitch when he saw one. The chances were that she would score some skag for him for a fee, he told himself.

He got up and walked into Maggie's bedroom. She was staring at the ceiling. “Say, Miss Maggie, I just saw a young girl goin' in next door. You know her?” he asked softly.

Maggie said sourly, “Yeah. So what?”

He placed a hundred-dollar bill on her chest. She swatted it off. “Miss Maggie, I want you to keep that for introducing me to her. Tell her I'm one of your son's friends from Arizona, visiting you for a couple of days.”

She glared at him. “Whatta you gonna do? Kill her?” she said as she shot a glance at the bill lying on the quilt between them.

“I ain't killed nobody, Miss Maggie. I just wounded that cop. Remember?”

She studied him. “So you said…Mavis don't want you. You're too old. Besides, she's got a boyfriend.”

He leaned toward her. “She's not my type. I just want to meet her. Tell me more about her.”

Maggie sighed. “She's really a sweet girl that got street poisoned by bad company. She stays out all night, mostly every night, and slips into the house before her father gets off the night shift. She used to be a church girl, like her father, 'fore the devil got her. I'll call her over here later today, after Mr. Owens brings me another TV,” Maggie said as she plucked the C-note off the bed.

Shetani picked a phone off a nightstand and placed it on the bed. “Call her now, Miss Maggie, and we got a deal. Introduce me as Bob Smith.”

She shrugged and dialed the phone. “Mavis, honey, duck in here for a minute,” she said before she cradled the receiver. “Lissen Mr. Spires, I ain't gonna let no rough stuff happen with that girl, and I ain't gonna let no trick be turned in my house,” she said as she extended the bill toward him.

“Keep it, Miss Maggie. I won't violate your house rules,” he replied as he left the room to sit on the sofa.

Shortly, Maggie came into the room to answer the doorbell. Mavis stepped into the house already shucked out of street clothes, into a housecoat over pajamas, to hoodwink her father.

“Mavis Lee, one of Jimmy's friends, Bob Smith from Arizona, saw you comin' home and been pesterin' me to let him meet you this early in the mornin',” she said as she turned toward her bedroom. “Now, you all behave in my house,” she said over her shoulder as she went into her bedroom.

“Sit down here, Baby Sis,” he said as he patted the sofa beside him. She had a puzzled look, but she sat down. “What's happenin'?” she asked, and lit a cigarette.

“Can you keep a secret between us from Maggie for a nice taste of bread?”

“Yeah, man, if it ain't somethin' too radical.”

He leaned toward her ear. “I got a habit. Somebody stole my bag at the airport with my works and medicine in it. Score me a gram of skag and some works and I'll lay a C-note on you.”

She recoiled and tried to get up past his restraining hand on her shoulder. “Hey, narc, let go of me!”

Shetani whipped up his shirtsleeves to show the scabrous network of crusted spike tracks on both arms. “As you can see, Baby Sis, I ain't no narc. I'm just a dope fiend that needs a fix right away. Have we got a deal?”

She frowned and bit her bottom lip. “I can't cop right away.”

He pressed a C-note into her palm and said, “I'll give you your payoff after you score.” Then he squeezed her hand so hard she winced. “Why?” he demanded.

“ 'Cause I have to make my dad's breakfast when he gets home.”

“How far do you have to go to cop?”

She got to her feet. “Not far, at the end of the block. Gotta go!”

He followed her to the door and opened it. “Can you get me some clean works?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I got an outfit stashed that I used to use to bang coke before I started to smoke crack. Bye!”

He shut the door and sat down in the chair near the window. He chewed his fingernails to the quicks and waited for an hour, with churning guts, for Mavis's father to come home. Finally, he saw an elderly man in work clothes park a jalopy and carry two armloads of groceries into the house next door.

Shetani slipped off his dripping-wet shirt. He stared out at the street, bent double by racking cramps. Finally, Mavis left the house and went down the street. Negatives ached his head. What if she ripped him off and got in the wind? What if she got busted after she copped? What if she couldn't score for smack in a market dominated by cocaine?

At last, he saw her coming down the sidewalk. He got up and flung open the front door. She didn't come up Maggie's walk! He stood at the open door, stunned with frustration. He heard the jangle of a phone. A moment later, Maggie said from the bedroom, “Pick up the phone. It's Mavis.”

He went to the phone on an end table beside the sofa. He fell onto it. “What's happenin', Baby Sis?” he blurted out breathlessly.

She whispered, “I can't bring it to you, because my dad would see me from his bedroom window and he's still awake. I've stashed the package at the end of Maggie's backyard, in a tin can under the apple tree. Oh, by the way, I copped the connection's last twenty-five-dollar bag. I put in an order for a gram that I can cop early tomorrow night.” She hung up.

He went into Maggie's room and listened to her snoring for a moment. He examined two barred windows to see if the bars had a swing-out release lever, in case of fire. They didn't. To play safe, he took the skeleton key from the lock and carefully shut the door. He locked her in and hastened to cop the stash. He came back and shot up half of the brown Mexican heroin. It was nothing compared to China white, but at least it blunted the edge of pain in his gut. He decided to leave Maggie locked in. He stretched out on the sofa to get some much-needed rest.

At noon, Rucker was driving toward South Central in an old nondescript brown van with heavily tinted windows that he had borrowed from a car-dealer friend of his in Hollywood. He thought about One Pocket Stiles's long criminal career and his wizardry at pool. He drove down South Figueroa Street. He spotted Stiles's classic '36 Packard parked in front of his poolroom. Rucker parked the van behind it. He tucked a prop briefcase under an arm before he went into the crowded poolroom. It vibrated with the profane shuck and jive of hustlers, clowns, and bums.

A lid of utter silence slammed down. His alien presence magnetized all eyes, except those of Pocket, who was bent across a front table, executing a three-cushion bank of the last ball on the table. He glanced at Rucker and put his cue stick on the table.

“Well, if it ain't my old fire-insurance man,” he exclaimed, as he pumped Rucker's hand.

Rucker smiled, and the shuck and jive resumed. “Hello, Mr. Stiles. Since I was in the neighborhood, I dropped in to say hello and pitch some life insurance.”

A dwarfish stakes holder gave string bean Stiles a small bundle of bills. Stiles tipped him a bill and led Rucker to the sidewalk. “Let's go upstairs and talk,” Stiles said as he unlocked the door.

They went up a stairway to the second floor, over the poolroom. They entered a beautifully furnished living room. Rucker was flabbergasted to see the transformation. The formal nocturnal dive had disappeared, with its jukebox, the garish montage of painted nudes on the wall, the cracked mirrored bar, and the craps table surrounded by mangy overstuffed chairs and ragged couches.

They sat down on an elegant white silk sofa. “Mr. Rucker, it's sure great to see you,” Pocket said as he crossed his pipe-stem legs. “But what happened to your face? You been roustin' wildcats?”

Rucker laughed and stroked a bandage on his cheek. “No. I fell on my face, cold-sober, after I got nicked in the back of my head…You haven't read or heard about my trouble with a psycho in Hollywood?”

Stiles said softly, with a beatific expression on his face, “I stopped reading downer newspapers and watching corrupt TV except for religious stuff on cable. I closed my after-hours joint, and I'm gonna close the poolroom the first of the year and start my own ministry downstairs. I found Christ!”

Rucker was speechless.

“Mr. Rucker, I see you're surprised like my kinfolks and everybody. I'm seventy-five, and I've been a thief, dope dealer, pimp, stickup man, and dope fiend, but I've been purified with the Holy Ghost and the fire. What can I do for you?”

Rucker found his voice. “I'm on the trail of the nut that shot me. Tell me everything you know about Tank Settles and his present activities.”

Stiles's long, wolfish black face hardened. “Did he shoot you?”

Rucker shook his head.

“Then you're not out to arrest him by yourself?”

Rucker said, “No. I need his help.”

Stiles continued, “You would need a SWAT team to arrest him now. Snot-nosed punk grew up to be a stone killer. He and his gangsters control and rule this whole section where we are. A couple of his killer punks were in the poolroom when you showed. One of 'em I had to hire as a security guard. Settles has a mob of crack dealers. He's a dope king who gets around in a red Mercedes. I've heard that he's got a machine gun stashed in a secret compartment under the front floorboards of his car. Decent people are terrorized and jailed in their homes by Tank and his gangsters.”

Rucker was thoughtful for a moment before he asked, “Where does he field his crack dealers?”

Stiles waved a bony hand toward upper South Figueroa. “In the Forties on Fig, where the ho's work at night.”

Rucker stood. “Thanks. What do I owe you?”

Stiles stood and flashed a galaxy of gold teeth. He shook his bald pate frenetically. His blue suit shimmered in the sunlight like a silk shroud on his skeletal frame. “The Lord will reward me, Mr. Rucker,” he said as he led Rucker to the door. “Don't try to talk to Tank by yourself, Mr. Rucker. He hates cops, and he's as treacherous as a rattler with the flu,” he warned as Rucker walked toward the stairway.

Rucker threw up a hand to acknowledge the caution as he started down the stairs.

At that moment, Shetani awakened to Maggie pounding for release on her bedroom door. He got up and unlocked the door.

“I'm a human being that goes to the bathroom, Mr. Spires. Don't you never lock me up again,” she hollered as she lumbered past him for the bathroom.

The doorbell sounded. Shetani, with gun in hand, peeped through the front curtains to see a fat black man bulging a faded blue uniform with
CHRISTIAN TV AND SALES
stenciled on the front of the shirt.

Shetani went to the bathroom door and knocked. “Miss Maggie, the TV man is at the door.”

Maggie screamed at the top of her voice. “Ain't you got no sense, nigger? I'm tryin' to relieve myself. Give him two hundred dollars, like you promised, and tell him to take the TV you messed up with him.”

Shetani concealed his gun and went to open the front door. He made the transaction without any sign from Mr. Owens that he had been recognized.