7

Althea wanted me to leave immediately, but I couldn’t go until I knew how Lacey was. I also couldn’t stay in that waiting room much longer. I needed to pace. I was about to step outside when my neighbor, Marvella Walker, showed up.

Marvella was tall and stunning, the kind of woman every man noticed when she walked into a room. On this afternoon, she had pulled her afro back with a red headband, revealing her majestic features. She looked like an African tribal goddess, even in her long white winter coat and bright red scarf.

She nodded an acknowledgement at me, then looked at Franklin, who hadn’t gotten off that couch.

Althea stood, looking short and matronly next to Marvella even though they had to be about the same age.

“Tell me what happened,” Marvella said to Althea.

I slipped out the door, unwilling to go over it all again. I leaned against the green industrial wall, wishing I smoked so that I would have something to do with my hands.

A moment later, Jimmy and Keith left the waiting room.

Keith looked exhausted. Jimmy’s eyes were still red-rimmed.

“We couldn’t take it again,” he said to me. “You gots a five? We didn’t have lunch.”

“Better yet,” I said, “let me buy you both lunch.”

“I think you gots stuff to do,” Jimmy said. “Like detecting.”

“It’ll wait,” I said.

“Well,” Keith said, glancing down the hall, “one of us has to wait for the doc and he won’t talk to us.”

I finally got it: The boys wanted to be alone.

I grabbed my wallet and pulled out a ten. “Bring me back a cookie or something.”

Jimmy was frowning at my wallet. He looked up at me, then looked over at Keith.

“I’ll meet you, okay?” he asked.

Keith took the ten from me. “Okay,” he said, apparently

expecting one of us to protest. When we didn’t, he meandered down the hall.

Jimmy watched until Keith turned a corner and disappeared.

“When you go,” Jimmy said softly, “I wants to come with you. I wants to see how bad I hurt this guy.”

I knew better than to protest that Jimmy couldn’t handle himself. Given the right circumstances, he obviously could.

“I’m not sure I’ll find him, Jim,” I said.

Jimmy grinned at me. I braced myself for one of those

hero-worshipping sentences, something I truly did not deserve.

Instead, he reached into the front pocket of his pants and with two fingers, pulled out a wallet.

He handed it to me.

I took it gingerly. I didn’t recognize it. It was made of cheap leather and had been rubbed along the back where the coin compartment was. The brown had rubbed off in the outline of a quarter.

I looked up, not entirely understanding. Jimmy was still grinning. It wasn’t his wallet. I knew what his wallet looked like. I also knew that it rarely held more than a few dollars, a note with his name on it, and a battered picture of his mother.

I slipped my fingers between the wallet’s edges, letting it fall open in my palm. An Illinois driver’s license, creased and battered, was half-shoved into the front plastic divider. It read Clyde Voss, who was born in 1940, and didn’t live too far from the Starlite.

The address made me realize what I was looking at. I let out a small chuckle. “This is the guy?”

Jimmy’s grin widened. He nodded.

“You got his wallet?” It must have fallen out of his pocket as he struggled with his pants. “Son of a bitch.”

I pulled Jimmy close. He let me, which showed how shaken he still was.

“You’re one incredible kid, you know that?” I asked. He shrugged against me.

I was greatly impressed. He had enough presence of mind to grab the guy’s wallet, even after breaking into the room, stopping the assault, and rescuing Lacey.

I had no idea what to say or how to let Jimmy know how impressed I was.

After a moment, he pulled back, just enough so that he could see my face. “So,” he said. “I gets to come, right?”

I stared at the license, wondering if the address was fake.

At least it was a place to start.

“Let me find him first,” I said, unwilling to promise anything right now. I had set aside my own anger, but I could feel it, lurking inside me, threatening to get out.

I couldn’t remember being this furious, not ever. The times I’d had to defend people I loved, I simply acted. An assailant was in front of me, and I dealt with him.

I hadn’t had to deal with the crisis and then find the assailant before.

Something must’ve crossed my face, because Jimmy’s expression got very serious.

“Whatcha gonna do to him, Smoke?”

I would have liked to think I would make a citizen’s arrest.

I would have liked to believe that I could give him to the police and they would take care of him, not just by imprisoning him, but by shutting down his entire operation.

But that wouldn’t have even happened in Memphis, which was infinitely less corrupt than Chicago. In Chicago, the police were still trying to cover up their murder of two Black Panthers. In Chicago, more than forty blacks were killed by police last year alone.

In Chicago, blacks ducked when they saw a police car.

They didn’t seek one out.

Jimmy’s question was a good one. What was I going to do?

When I tried to mentally answer that question, the anger waited. Dark and huge and more powerful than I was.

What was I going to do?

I was going to be exceedingly cautious, that’s what I was going to do.

I was going to make sure I would not get caught.