Someone special. Who was Billy’s latest prospect?
“But speakin’ of someone special,” Billy went on, “I been meaning to talk to you about your little lady friend.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, sure you do! You think the Impressionist was runnin’ around Lobo’s Nod all that time, spying on you, without stuff getting back to me? You got jungle fever, Jasper! You got yourself some dark meat!” He sounded highly amused. Almost giddy.
Jazz gritted his teeth. Billy knew. About Connie. The thought terrified him more than anything else had in his life. It frightened him more than the power he knew he possessed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lied, amazed that he could keep a tremble out of his voice.
“Oh, yes, you do. Oh, yes, you surely do, young man!” Billy sounded like a parody of a lecturing schoolmarm for a moment. “You know precisely what I’m talking about. That girlfriend of yours.”
Jazz glanced around wildly, as though Billy were spying on him right now. He had to leave. Now. He made for the door and slipped out into the hallway. “What do you mean? What girlfriend?”
Now Billy’s voice turned stern. “Don’t go lying to me, boy. You ain’t so big and so old that I can’t whup you with my belt like my old man done to me. Or maybe I’ll just cut off one of your girlfriend’s fingers for you. Sort of like old times, you know?”
“Stop it.” He was outside by now, back in the alley. Belsamo was nowhere to be found.
“I gotta admit, after the last time I saw you, I was curious about your love life, son. The way you went to all that trouble to misdirect me and mislead me when I asked about your—whatchacallem?—romantic prospects… I never thought you’d be with a colored girl.”
“No call for that kind of language,” Jazz said, his jaw tightening. He spun around suddenly. He was back on the main street now—What was it called? Where was the sign?—and darkness had fallen. The sidewalk was thick with pedestrians. Baby carriages. Dogs on leashes. Jazz couldn’t help thinking that Billy was watching him. But there were a dozen buildings within visual range. All those rooftops… more than a hundred windows…
“I don’t mean nothin’ by it, Jasper. You know that. I’m just from a, you know, a different generation. I was raised by a woman who didn’t have no appreciation for, well, for diversity, let’s say.”
“I know. I’m the one who’s been taking care of her since you got yourself locked up.”
“And I surely appreciate it. Just like I appreciate the, well, the poetic justice of you dating a black girl. Given that I never killed no black girls. Is it okay to say ‘black girl,’ Jasper? Or does that offend your sensibilities? Is it ‘African American girl’ instead? ‘Girlfriend of color’? So many things to keep track of, and I’m such a busy guy to begin with. Things slip through the cracks.”
“Say what you need to say.”
“I just think it’s pretty damn ticklish. I don’t suppose… Oh, Jasper,” he gasped, as though something had just now occurred to him, “you didn’t go and put love in that poor girl’s heart just ’cause I ain’t never killed no one looked like her, did you?” When Jazz said nothing, Billy roared with laughter. Jazz could picture his father’s head thrown back as he howled. “Did you think that magical black skin, that kinky hair, those big brown eyes were gonna save your soul? Did you think somehow being with her would stop you from turnin’ into me?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Jazz used his very best annoyed voice.
“You did!” Billy wasn’t buying it. Of course not. “You thought that. Oh, Jasper. Oh, my boy, my son. Thought I raised you smarter than that. Thought a lot of things, I guess. So tell me, Jasper—what’s it like, being with a black girl? She go all ghetto in bed with you? What’s it like down there? Never had the pleasure myself, you know.”
“Don’t have anything to compare it to,” Jazz told him as officiously as possible. Trying to put Billy off balance. Shake him.
Impossible. Billy just laughed again, was all. “That what you think? You go on thinking that. Go on livin’ in denial.”
“I got your message,” Jazz said. “ ‘Welcome to the game.’ What was that about?”
“Don’t recall sending you a message,” Billy said, and as he did so, it finally occurred to Jazz that he should be contacting Hughes. He fumbled his own cell phone out of his pocket.
“You sent that message, didn’t you? The one welcoming me. You used the Hat-Dog Killer to get in touch with me. How long have you been in New York?” Stabbing in the dark, blind, but not deaf.
Something was wrong with his cell. It wasn’t working.
“Long enough, son. Long enough.” Wistful. A man on a diet, watching the pile of fries delivered to the next table over.
“And you’re controlling Belsamo, is that it?”
“Is that his name?” Billy asked. “I suppose you’ve already got him all trussed up for the bastard cops.”
“No. He wasn’t home.” Oh, damn! Why did I tell him that?
He expected one of Billy’s low, gruesome chuckles, but instead there was nothing. And then: “I see.” Icy.
Jazz pondered that even as he realized why the phone wasn’t working—that cop had turned it off during the interrogations and Jazz had forgotten to turn it back on. While he waited for it to boot up, he said, “You were expecting him—” And then stopped. The cell phones. Disposables. Of course Billy hadn’t known Jazz would answer; he’d expected Belsamo to answer….
He spun around and ran back to Belsamo’s building. A man was leaving just as he arrived, and Jazz slipped in past him and charged up the stairs.
“You’re breathin’ all heavy,” Billy said. “Forget something back in that apartment you illegally entered? Been there. I empathize.”
Jazz hadn’t locked the door when he left Belsamo’s, so he had no problem getting back in. He made a beeline for the end table, the one with the mail on it. He hoped what he was looking for would be there….
It was.
He couldn’t believe it. It was.
“Kinda quiet there, Jasper,” Billy needled. “You findin’ what you need there?”
Jazz stared at the envelope in his hands. The one with the wrong name. “C. D. Williams.” A mash-up and switch-around of Billy’s own name, William Cornelius Dent. It wasn’t a misdirected piece of mail or something for a previous resident. It was an alias.
The return address said it was from something called U-STORE-IT-ALL.
I was wondering where his trophies were. Not enough room here. And we might come here. So he stored them somewhere else. That’s where he is now.
“He’s not here,” Jazz said. “We spooked him today. At the precinct. So he went to visit his trophies, didn’t he? It calms him, I bet. Always worked for you.”
“We? You still thinkin’ you’re on their side, Jasper? Not enough to catch that poor jackass thought he was me? Now you gotta come here and catch this other guy?”
“That’s the game, isn’t it?” He caught Belsamo’s laptop out of the corner of his eye, still open on the floor. He closed it with his foot and nudged it back under the bed. He contemplated tucking the envelope into his pocket, but realized someone as OCD as Belsamo would notice it missing. He snapped a quick picture of it with his phone, which had booted up by now.
Then, just out of curiosity, he squeezed the envelope, just enough to get the plastic window to lift away from the contents so that he could get a peek inside. All he saw was another line of text: Re: Unit 83F.
Good to know.