just took a step back, confusing him. He snuck another look but had to twist around to find me. His eyes were holding that I-don’t-give-a-shit look and they were aimed at my hand where his roll was still in my palm.
“You can keep that, walkin’ man.”
I lifted my arm like I was shooting a free throw and bounced the wad off his head, and the bills separated and spilled down around his feet.
“No, Hector,” I answered, using his own words. “You got me all wrong, man.”
I’d left him alone for four days and now he was leading me to the stash house Mamma Blue had told me about. Four doors down from Mamma’s Down South Country Kitchen, Hector checked the traffic and skipped across the street and disappeared into the alley between two boarded-up storefronts. I waited a couple of minutes in case he was smart enough to check for a tail and then continued down to Mamma Blue’s.
A woman with a lot of hard years behind her eyes and a magical way with smothered pork chops and pan-fried chicken, Carline Dennis had opened her little restaurant years before the revival of South Street and had refused to move east to join the new current of money. She had built a clientele that cut across all racial and socio- economic lines because her place was friendly and courteous to everyone who walked across the threshold and her food was unmatched anywhere north of Savannah. The cars on the street in front included a BMW, two Mercedes, a sprung-bumper Cadillac and a sagging Corolla. I had been slipping in and out of her place since I was assigned to the district and twice had spotted the mayor inside having lunch.
When I stepped in tonight I was greeted by Big Earl, a man with mahogany-colored skin and hooded eyes who went about 320 pounds or more. It was Earl’s job to deter any riffraff from entering or panhandlers from hitting on the patrons at the curb. He stuck out a ham-sized fist and we touched knuckles.
“What’s up, boss?” he said in a burbling baritone.
“Mamma in back?” I said. “I need to use the phone.”
Big Earl tilted his head straight back but the pupils in his yellowed eyes never moved, just rolled with the movement like buoy markers in water. With that permission I walked back through the full tables of diners, trying to be as unobtrusive as I could.
The kitchen was filled with the sound of crackling grease and the odor of seasoned steam. There was a high-rhythm dance going on between cooks and prep workers and busboys and dishwashers and in the middle of it all was Mamma Blue, sipping at a wooden ladle and looking like hurry-up was not a characteristic she ever wished to possess. The woman was as thin as a broomstick and her back was similarly straight. When I excused myself from the path of a waitress with a saucer of gumbo balanced on her palm, Mamma turned at the sound of my voice in her kitchen and gave me a full measure with her dark eyes.
“You ain’t back here for no donation to the policeman’s ball, baby,” she said.
“No, Mamma. I need to use your phone, ma’am.”
Her hair was steel gray and her pinched and leathery skin was so black it gave off a bluish hue just below the surface.
“You know where it at, Mr. Max,” she said and turned back to the large pot of bubbling gravy she was doctoring.
As I slid past I touched her small crumpled ear with my cheek and whispered thank you and she smiled, but just as quickly a shadow of concern came across her face.
“You ain’t doin’ nothin’ gone cause problems for my people in here now, Mr. Max?”
It was Mamma who had tipped me to the comings and goings of known crack dealers and runners from the building across the street. She had surmised that the suppliers had picked the location because of the block’s eclectic mix of rich and poor diners. A fancy car here drew no second look, or a young man sporting a new Nike warm-up.
“Right under they nose,” she’d said. “Lord, your own police commissioner eat here twice a week.”
I had asked her why Big Earl hadn’t told me. The man surely would have picked up on the action.
“Earl don’t care ’bout nothin’ cept me an his own self. What them boys doin’ over there ain’t his concern,” she said.
Then why did she care?