mean …? No, she’s not. But Grace, don’t underestimate her, kid. In her own way, that is one sharp young lady. And loyal? Forget it! She already knows what to do when I go. There’s enough legit stuff, keep her safe the rest of her life. Only thing is, Albie went first. Now I’ve got to shlep down to the lawyer’s and change my will, probably cost me an arm and a leg.”
The old man looked at me for a long minute. Probably trying to figure out if I knew it wasn’t this Jessop he was worried about; what he really needed was to get his hands on Albie’s book. Wondering if he was making the same mistake about me he warned me against making about Grace.
“Solly, can I ask you a question?”
“Of course. Anything you—”
“You got a book. Albie’s got a book. If you went first, Grace would give your book to Albie, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“So she knows where your book is. But Albie’s girl, she doesn’t?”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding his head like he was agreeing with himself. “Try it this way. Grace, she’s like my niece for real. Just like I told you. But Rena, okay, she calls me ‘Uncle Solly’ same as Grace does, only she wouldn’t ever be saying ‘Uncle Albie.’ She was … like his girlfriend, all right? Been with him a long, long time.”
“So you’re saying Albie, it was okay with him if his girlfriend gets all his stuff, like a house or whatever, right? But not the book?”
“I guess that’s right. Albie must have … look, I don’t know, okay? Grace, you could bet your life. Whatever she says she’ll do, it’s as good as done. Just like her father. But Rena, I don’t know her like that.
“I don’t know why Albie decided he couldn’t trust her with that book, but that’s what he must have decided. That book, it’s way more important than any money, Sugar. And it could be bad—real, real bad—if Rena managed to get her hands on it.”
“If you know where it is, why don’t you just—?”
“Are you fucking listening to me? I don’t know where it is. It was supposed to be like I said: Grace for me; Rena for Albie. But when Rena called me, not one single word about that book. Never said, ‘Come down and get it.’ Or even just FedEx’ed it. So either she doesn’t know where it is, or she’s got it and she wants to turn it into cash. That’s why I never sent her Albie’s will.”
“So Albie never trusted her with that book—which means you can’t trust her, either?”
“That’s it,” Solly said. He looked real old then. Like he could see the end of things. “Jessop, he’s not a big deal, okay? But I’ve got to have that book. Me and Albie …”
I waited a long time, but Solly didn’t say anything more. He just looked at me.
“I said I’d do it,” I told him. I hoped I said it just like Ken would have.
“This is a lot of money,” the woman who wanted me to call her Margo said.
“It’s just three months’ rent. I’ll be away for a while. It could be just a couple of weeks, but it could just as easy be a couple of months. You know how those things are.”
I said that last thing because people never want to admit they don’t know how things are.
“So I guess, if I wanted to start … training, like we talked about, I’d have to wait until you come back, huh?”
“I’m sorry. This came up real sudden. If I had even a week or two, I could show you enough to keep you going until I got back. But, the way things are—”
“Oh, I know. Especially today. Nobody seems to have any money. You can’t pass up a chance like this.”
“Thanks for understanding,” I told her.
I spent the night getting ready. I didn’t like some parts of this bus thing. They don’t let you take much luggage on board; they just check it for you. And this bus ride, it was like a day and a half long. The girl I spoke to at Greyhound looked it up for me, and said I’d have to change buses a couple of times.
The train would have been better, but the lady at Amtrak said it didn’t stop in Tallahassee. Not even close.
Everything in the refrigerator I either finished off or poured out. A lot of my dry stuff, I could take with me.