Half-Resurrection Blues_ A Bone Street Rumba Novel - Daniel Jose Older Page 0,31
for it. The Creator wants us to use our complexness for the good of our people. Reconnaissance. You feel me?”
I nod because I do, I really do. I’m not sure how it applies to my life yet, but I definitely feel him.
“And I was like, fuck: I have a mission. A divine motherfucking mission, no less. All right.” Russell struts a few times and adjusts his slick blue suit like he’s just now coming into the glorious realization of who he is. “That’s some shit I can deal with. Let me tell you something.” As if I could stop him at this point. “I never drank again. I sold all my coke.”
“You sold it? Most people just flush it.”
“I’m a businessman.”
“Understood.”
“And I never looked back.”
“Damn.”
Russell nods endearingly and swoops into the store on the wings of his own self-generated momentum. I stand there for a few seconds trying to puzzle out whether the dead are the white people or the Indians and then Baba Eddie pokes his head out. “You wanted something, Carlos?”
“Oh, yes! No. Wait . . . Hang on.” I’m all turned around from Russell’s speech.
“Hanging.”
I see Eddie make for his pack of smokes and stop him. “Wait—let’s go inside.”
He looks disappointed but shrugs and leads me to the back room. Baba Eddie divines with a bunch of cowry shells, a piece of chalk, and a pebble, from what I can tell. I’ve never actually gotten a reading from him, but I get the feeling he knows what he’s doing. His reading room is tiny, possibly a converted broom closet or bathroom, with a little foldout table and a chair on either side. A Ferrari calendar from 1993 hangs on the wall as if it belongs there, and there’s a little shelf with various spiritual knickknacks in the corner. That’s about all that could fit in the place anyway.
“You want a reading?” Baba Eddie says with a mischievous grin. Maybe one day I’ll get one, but this isn’t the moment. Part of me just doesn’t want to know what kind of spiritual mess is going on with me right now; I think it’d be too depressing. Part of me just can’t be bothered.
“I’ll let you know.” I take a seat in the client’s chair. “Things’ve gotten hairier.”
“Hairier than ngks in Mama Esther’s hood? Do tell.” Baba sits in his spot and listens attentively as I run down the events of yesterday, glazing over certain details around the Amanda situation. When I finish, Baba just sits glumly for a few ticks of the clock and ponders.
“That is hairy,” he finally says.
“Indeed.”
“Riley thinks the guy’s building something?”
“Well, plotting. Maybe building. We have no idea, to be honest.”
Baba Eddie lets out a sustained hmmm and unconsciously fondles his cigarettes. “I wonder.”
“Do you wonder something in particular or just wonder?”
“I wonder . . . I wonder if this character, this naked fellow, is actually trying to get your attention more than anything else.”
“Excuse me?”
“Yes. You said his massacre had an air of performance to it, no?”
“Well, he waited till we were all there, certainly. And”—I shiver a little somewhere deep inside—“he looked me right in the eye when he did the real estate Hasid.”
“See. He could’ve killed you, no?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that necessarily.”
“He certainly could’ve tried. Had ample opportunity. But instead he killed someone in front of you.”
“I suppose so, yes.”
“He was showing off,” the santero says with finality. Then he puts a menthol in his mouth.
“If you light that, Kia will fuck us both up on behalf of her uterus.”
Baba Eddie nods, showing a generous amount of restraint toward his young office manager, in my opinion.
“And this other partially dead fellow—Trevor, you called him?”
“Yes.”
“A minion of some kind, perhaps. Maybe even a reluctant one.”
“Why reluctant?”
“He also could’ve at least attempted to kill you, save his own life. Was he even armed, Carlos?”
That hadn’t really occurred to me in the frenzy of the moment. I’d just been glad the kill was clean. “No,” I admit.
“There’s a missing piece to this equation.”
Sasha. “You think?”
“No doubt.”
“Eddie! You comin’?” Russell calls from the front. “Reservation’s for eight. I don’t wanna be fuckin’ late.”
Baba Eddie rolls his eyes and stands. “Such a poet, that one. The trials and tribulations of a domesticated santero, Carlos. I swear . . .”
“True love is a feisty bitch.”
“You have no idea.”
“I really don’t,” I say and follow him out through the curtain.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
She’s here. Sasha. The missing piece. Looking sullen again, but she lights up when she sees me.