The Man Offside

by A. W. Gray

  I couldn’t argue with his logic. Principles? I was pretty sure that Snakey wouldn’t know what they were. I might have been better off if I didn’t have any principles. But I just didn’t like getting people killed, even slime like Skeezix. It went against my grain. I said, “Am I going to see Muhammed, or are you and I going to draw on each other right here?”

  “Oh, you goin’ to see him,” Snakey said. “‘Co’se, I ain’t sayin’ what’s goin’ to happen when you do. Muhammed might talk. He might jus’ off you, too. I hope he don’t. If he off you, I got to find a place to dump you.”

  I finished my Coke, took a final mouthful of crunchy ice, and set the glass on the table. “Well, lead the way. We going to ride or walk?”

  Snakey didn’t answer me. He got up and went to the door, jerked his head in a follow-me gesture, and left as quickly as he’d come in. I followed him as “Love Potion Number Nine” throbbed from the jukebox; the door closed behind me and muffled the sound of the music. Snakey was a half block ahead of me, strolling casually among the dudes and chicks of Oakland Avenue after sundown. I thought fleetingly about going over to the ‘Vette and getting the Smith & Wesson, then forgot the idea. Snakey would never let me within a country mile of Muhammed if I was carrying a piece, and letting him find one on me was just asking for trouble.

  A white Eldorado waited at the end of the block, and Snakey glanced at me over his shoulder just before he climbed into the driver’s seat. I quickened my pace, drew alongside, and climbed in. He was waiting for me with a big red scarf in his hands. “Look out the window,” he said. “I going to blindfold you. Iran hostage kind of shit.”

  I watched the neon sign over the Green Parrot until the scarf blotted out all sight. He tied the knot firmly at the base of my skull; the fabric dug sharply into the bridge of my nose. I moved my eyes upward, then down; I couldn’t see anything except for faint brightness at the top of the blindfold. “I’m not tying yo hands, Bannion,” Snakey said. “But if you touch the rag I’m going to shoot you.” He sounded as though it didn’t matter to him whether I tried anything or not. The Eldo lurched as he dropped the shift lever into drive.

  The ride was about ten minutes, though I didn’t have any idea how far we traveled. I was pretty sure that Snakey doubled back at least once in order to throw me off; for all I knew, Muhammed’s place was within a hundred yards of the Green Parrot’s front door. Not that it mattered; Muhammed Double-X’s address was something I was better off not knowing.

  My weight surged forward and then back against the seat as Snakey applied the brakes. He shut off the engine. His breathing was calm beside me. His door opened, then closed with a solid thunk. In less than a minute my own door swung outward; a strong hand on my elbow helped me climb out of the Eldo and stand up.

  We moved a short distance on concrete, then took twenty counted steps on sparse grass over grainy dirt. My foot collided with a stone step; I stumbled and nearly fell. Snakey aided me up four stairs, one at a time, then my feet thudded on wooden planks. Smoke from someone’s cheap cigar stung my nostrils; someone nearby on my left said, “Ain’ nobody up there with him. You go on up, bro.” A screen door creaked in front of me, and a heavier wooden door swung away. Snakey guided me over a threshold; the wooden door thudded behind me. Snakey fumbled at the nape of my neck, undid the knot, and my blindfold fell away.

  I said, “Some digs.”

  “What you ‘spect?” Snakey said. “A dirt floor and a pile o’ chitlins? You ain’t calling on no people from ‘Roots.’”

  We were in the entrance hallway of an old home that had been restored. There was a thick beige carpet on the floor. Yawning double doors on my right opened into a mammoth living room with a fireplace that would accommodate a pep-rally bonfire. In the living room was a long, overstuffed divan on which a white girl sat. She was a compact brunette wearing a tennis dress, watching television with one leg drawn up underneath her and one foot swinging to and fro. The TV set was a console with a forty-inch screen; a mellow piano played the theme from “Hill Street Blues” as squad cars peeled out of the station parking garage and splashed through mud puddles. The girl on the divan was chewing gum, her jaw working slowly.

  Directly in front of me in the entry hall was the foot of a carpeted staircase with a polished mahogany bannister. Snakey told me to go upstairs, which I did with him following. On the way up, I passed an oil painting of Martin Luther King, Jr., his eyes wide, his clenched fist raised in a salute. Another hallway ran perpendicular to the head of the staircase; the wallpaper was pink with a rosebush pattern. Snakey motioned toward a closed door at the end of the hall. “Wait in there,” he said. “If Muhammed don’t off you, I see you later.” He went downstairs and left me alone. I swallowed a lump in my throat and went through the door.

  I entered a converted bedroom with a portable bar against one wall and a green felt poker table directly in the center of the floor. Honeybear was leaning on the bar. He was wearing a black mesh muscle shirt, and he looked like an ad for Joe Weidner’s Gym. One hand was in his pocket and his ankles were crossed.

  I said, “Hi.”

  Honeybear grinned, straightened, and punched me in the stomach.

  I’d taken a lick or two in my time—one in particular that crossed my mind was a submarining, assassin blow from a Pittsburgh linebacker named Jack Lambert as I’d pulled to lead the blocking on a wide sweep—but nothing like this. Or maybe time had dulled my memory.

  Honeybear didn’t seem to put much effort into it, either. One second he was standing there, relaxed and grinning; in the next instant he hammered his clenched fist into my midsection. The punch couldn’t have traveled over eight inches, but it felt as though it had come from the end zone. All of the air whooshed out of my lungs; stunning pain shot upward into my shoulders and down into my ankles. I sat down hard, and more pain jolted through me as my rump collided with cushioned hardwood. I doubled over and clutched my belly. Hell, I wasn’t just hoping that Honeybear wouldn’t hit me again. I was praying that he wouldn’t.

  Through a red-tinted haze I watched him rub his knuckles. “Man,” Honeybear said, “you need to do some working out. Work on yo ab muscles. Shit, you like a bowl o’ jelly.” He reached down, bunched the front of my shirt in his fist, and hoisted me to my feet. One-handed, as though he was lifting a bag of feathers. He held me that way and patted me down with his free hand. Then he let go and took a step backward. I resisted the urge to sink back to the floor. He said, “Shit, you ain’t got no piece. I was gonna break yo arm if you’d had one.”

  I could barely drag enough air into my lungs to speak. “Sorry to mess your plans up,” I said.

  Honeybear’s dull eyes narrowed. “You ain’t being funny, are you?”

  “No. I’m being sick,” I said. And I was. With most guys I’d have been looking for a chance to bore in and whale the daylights out of them. Not with this guy. I’d had more than enough of Honeybear. Hell, I was wondering what it would take to hire him away from Muhammed. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

  “Well, you clean,” he said. “You ain’t funny, but you clean. Boss man, he in there.” He jerked his thumb toward another closed door, this one at the rear of the room behind the poker table.

  I wasn’t too crazy about seeing Muhammed at this point, but I’d gone this far. I said to Honeybear, “I’m with you.”

  He led the way around the table, opened the door, and stood aside. I went past Honeybear with my knees clanking like the Tin Woodman’s on his way to see the Great Oz. I wondered briefly if I should ask Muhammed for a heart. Maybe Muhammed would think I was funny.

  Muhammed’s office surprised me. No skull and crossbones, no shrunken heads. Just a black-and-white aerial photo of downtown Dallas on one wall, a painting of two white-maned black horses charging across a meadow on the other. Muhammed’s desk wasn’t much bigger than the Green Parrot’s dance floor, but the wood was in a whole lot better condition. You could have used the surface of the desk as a mirro
r. Muhammed was reared back in a stuffed leather swivel chair with his feet resting on one corner of the desk, his ankles crossed. His black shoes were spit-shined. He wore a charcoal suit, white shirt, blue tie, and his trademark mirrored shades. There was a two-shot derringer lying on the desk just inches from his elbow. He was smoking a cigarette through a long plastic holder that was encircled by two gold rings. He set the cigarette in a round glass ashtray and touched his fingertips together.

  “How you like my honky downstairs maid, mothafuckah?” Muhammed said.

  “Is that what she is?” I said. “I thought she was Martina Navritalova.”

  “Martina Navritalova? Shit, I don’t need no ballet dancers,” Muhammed said. He motioned to Honeybear. Behind me, the door closed with a soft thud. Muhammed scratched his cheek with the nail of his little finger. “So, Bannion. You got fifteen seconds to tell me a good reason not to kill you. You got me curious is the only reason you got the fifteen seconds. You make me mad the other night. But now you down here in my town hunting for me. So what you want, boy?” He picked up the derringer, pointed it at me, and sighted down the barrel. Wearing the mirrored shades, he looked like Ray Charles.

  I was rubbing my midsection. I was going to have a nice blue and green and purple bruise there in the morning, if I lived that long. The sight of Muhammed squinting at me down the barrel of the Derringer raised goosebumps along my spine the size of robins’ eggs. “Hey,” I said. “Let me sit down and catch my breath for a second.”

  “Sho,” Muhammed said. “If it take you five seconds to catch yo breath, that mean you got ten seconds left. My baby brother, he sweating in a cell down at Bastrop right now ‘cause of that fat stoolie you palling around with. So like I say, boy, what you want?” He aired back the hammer. He wasn’t kidding.

  I sat in an overstuffed chair across from him. “I have to find some guys,” I said. “The law’s putting heat on me.”

  “So that ain’t nothing. The law’s been putting heat on me fo years. What guys an’ what you want ‘em for?”

  “Jack Brendy. The guys that of fed him.”

  “Bannion, you really gone crazy, man. What I give a fuck about who offed Jack Brendy?”

  I draped a leg over the arm of my chair, being careful not to put too much strain on my stomach muscles. They were really beginning to throb. “Muhammed, believe me, if I don’t come up with the guys that offed Brendy in the next few days, you’re going to see heat like you’ve never seen. Federal heat. State heat. You got a man shot down on the streets right in front of TV. The law is serious about it. If somebody doesn’t go down on the Brendy hit, and fast, heads are going to roll. My head. Your head.”

  He laid the derringer down and looked thoughtful. He picked up the holder, puffed on the cigarette, watched the smoke drift upward toward the ceiling. Finally he said, “Yeah, stupid mothafuckahs. You don’t make no hit in broad daylight. Dumb. Dumb.”

  “Not only dumb for them, dumb for everybody else.” I decided to try flattery. “So that’s why I’m coming to you, you’re number one. If anybody knows who did Brendy, you will. Maybe not who had it done, but at least who pulled the trigger. I was right there, saw the hit with my own eyes. Hell, the guy with the Uzi had on some kind of flour sack mask. I wasn’t looking at the other guys in the car, so I don’t know if they were white dudes or black dudes.”

  Muhammed began to wave the cigarette around, making trailing circles of smoke in the air. He seemed to have forgotten the derringer. I hoped it stayed that way. “That Mercedes them dudes had,” he said. “They stole it off a cat I know, out on Illinois Avenue. I’ll tell you one thing, it wasn’t no black dudes did it. Black dudes, they dumb as shit about offing anybody, but they got more sense than to do it in broad daylight. I’d never hire no black dudes for no hit, they too much jive-asses. They’d have been black dudes somebody would have hollered, ‘Death to white mothafuckahs,’ given some black power salute, some shit like that. Them dudes that done it, they probly . . . lemme see.” He raised his voice. “Bear. Yo, Honeybear. In heah, boy.”

  The door behind me opened. There was the sound of heavy breathing and wind blew against the back of my neck. Honeybear displaced a lot of air. He said, “Yeah, boss.”

  “Bear, what that cat’s name been hanging on the north side? Been putting the word out he available. Crazy white mothafuckah, just up from Texas Penitentiary.”

  “Aw, you mean that Catfish dude,” Honeybear said.

  “Yeah. That the suckah. He still been hanging up around Harry Hines Boulevard?”

  I sat up straighter. “Up where all the titty joints are?”

  “Naw,” Muhammed said. “Further north than that. This dude’s a cowboy, hangs out where they play Willie Nelson shit. Longhorn Ballroom shitkicker. He’s probably you boy, Bannion. Ain’t too many guys around talking about doing hits. Catfish been soliciting.”

  “Seems to fit,” I said. “Evidently he found somebody that was buying what he was selling. You got more of a name than just Catfish?”

  “Shit, I don’t know nobody’s name,” Muhammed said. “I don’t even know Honeybear’s name.” I thought fleetingly about Muhammed’s name, Porkpie, as he went on. “I think I give you a break, Bannion. I ain’t going to kill you, how about that?”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said.

  “Catfish probly going to kill you if you find him, but if he don’t, then it’s good for me if he’s out of the way. If he kills you, I don’t have to fuck with you. If you kill him, I don’t got no heat from no law over Jack Brendy being dead. That I like.”

  “You ought to like it,” I said. “Either way you win. I need something more definite to find this guy. I can’t just walk up and down Harry Hines Boulevard yelling, ‘Anybody seen this Catfish?’”

  Honeybear loomed over Muhammed’s desk; even Muhammed looked just the slightest bit jumpy when Honeybear came close. Honeybear said, “You could go talk to Catfish lady.”

  “Who’s that?” I said.

  Muhammed pushed his shades up on his nose with his middle finger. “Dude like Catfish don’t keep no lady for long. The one he’s seeing now name Candy. She waits tables at Bullrider Danceland—it’s a hillbilly joint a mile off Harry Hines, out on Northeast Highway.”

  “I know the place,” I said. “I’ve been by it.”

  “Well, that where you find Candy, till two. Catfish might even be hanging around there waiting for her. You kill two birds with one stone, if one of the birds don’t kill you first. I wouldn’t be asking this Catfish about no hits he did unless you got a gun on him. He’s one crazy white mothafuckah.”

  “Well, I’d better get going,” I said. “Can’t tell you how much I appreciate the help.”

  “Hey, no problem,” Muhammed said. “Just go downstairs and get Snakey, he take you back.”

  I got up and walked toward the door. As I reached for the knob, Muhammed said, “Ho, Bannion.”

  I turned.

  “You still owe me that Skeezix,” Muhammed said. “I ain’t forgetting that. No matter what happens with Catfish, you and me going to talk about you giving up that fat mothafuckah.”

  The honky downstairs maid rode along with Snakey to take me back to the Green Parrot. She sat between us in the front seat as I leaned on the armrest and forced myself to keep my hands away from my blindfold. The girl changed the station on the radio five or six times before settling on “Material Girl” by Madonna. She leaned back and smacked her gum in rhythm to the music. She smelled like Juicy Fruit.

  Finally, Snakey pulled the car over, stopped, and said, “Here, man, you can take yo blindfold off yoself.”

  I did, fumbling with the knot for a few seconds before finally getting the hang of it. When the blindfold came off, I blinked my eyes a couple of times. We were idling at the curb across the street from the Green Parrot. The night had come alive and black dudes and hip-swinging, finger-popping dark-skinned women were now filing into the nightclub in a steady stream. I said to Snakey, “Thanks f
or not killing me.”

  I waited for him to deliver the punch line. He simply raised and dropped his shoulders, tugged on his eyepatch, and said in a bored tone, “Yo welcome, man.” The guy had to have a sense of humor of some kind; maybe it was just that I was a flop as a straight man. I got out of the Eldo and they drove away. As they rounded the corner the girl slid over close to Snakey and draped her arm around his shoulders. I went across the street to get my car.

  Someone had plastered the upper right portion of the ‘Vette’s windshield with an egg. Pieces of shell had stuck to the glass and gooey yolk had dripped and oozed down into the windshield wiper compartment. I gingerly touched the sticky stuff. Some of it was already dry. I started to get mad, then cooled off; I supposed I was lucky that this was all that had been done. The kid I’d seen earlier was still lounging against the wall in front of the Parrot as I drove away. His hands were in his pockets and he was chewing on a toothpick.

  I stopped for gas in a Gulf self-service on the corner of Martin Luther King and South Central, and used the water hose along with an ice scraper to clean the egg off of the car as best I could. Some of the spots had hardened to the point that I had to leave them alone for now. The attendant, a round black guy with a bulbous nose, gave me a curious sideways glance as I paid for the gas. I got four quarters from him in change for a dollar and went to the pay phone at one corner of the gas island. I’d spent three of the quarters before I located Breaux at Humperdinck, Hornblower, and Witts, a bar on Greenville Avenue.

  Bodie said over the phone, “I don’t want to go to no hillbilly joint. I don’t know about you, Bannion. I should have steered clear of you the first time I met you in the hole at El Reno.”

  I told him what Muhammed and Honeybear had told me about the guy called Catfish. He didn’t say anything for a moment, and I listened to the rumble and click coming from the pool tables in the background. Finally Breaux said, “I ain’t sure if I know any Catfish. I might.”