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Ed took a big swig of water and then smiled, just a little. It made me think of how he had always been known for that big Cheshire cat smile and how I hadn’t seen much of it this trip.
“You don’t look so hot, Ed,” I said. “How’s business?
He just looked at me. There might have been some good humor left in him somewhere, but I couldn’t see it. “This keep up, I be on the boat next to yours, Billy. They got Thai food in Key West?”
“I thought you were almost a lieutenant. What’s the problem?”
“Shit floats, man. The closer I get to the top, the more of it sticks to me.” He pointed a large finger at me, thumb cocked. “You got out just in time, boy. Things going straight to hell since the riots. Awful lot of guys thinking about early retirement all of a sudden.” Ed pushed another hunk of eggroll into his mouth, followed by a forkful of peppers. “Oo-ee,” he said softly, happily, as he chomped down on the peppers.
“Come on, Ed. It couldn’t be that bad.”
He gave his head a half-shake. “The fuck it can’t. We still not back on our feet from the riots. Not just what happened, but how it happened. Like somebody tried to fuck us up on purpose.”
He ate a couple of peppers all by themselves. “Fact is, Billy, morale is so bad, I’m just not having any fun lately. Everybody running around trying to catch everybody else doing something or other, and staying out of it their ownselves at the same time. My ass is out the window if they find out I’m letting you see the files.”
“Is that them?” I asked him, nodding at the seat beside him. There was a brown paper grocery bag, wrinkled and folded over, sitting beside him. It said RALPH’S on the side. It was nearly full.
“That’s it.” He popped in the last bite of eggroll, finishing the pot of peppers with it.
I stood again and leaned across the booth, snagging the brown bag and sitting down with it on my lap. I wanted to tear it open and start reading; that surprised me. I had not expected to be so eager.
I put a hand on the top of the bag, then rolled the paper over tighter and placed it beside me. “What can you tell me about Hector?”
Ed swallowed, took a sip of water, and leaned back from his empty plate. “Roscoe was very damn proud of that boy.” He wiped his forehead with a napkin. The napkin came away soaked. “Hector didn’t have to hang out in that kind of ’hood, you understand. He made that choice for himself.”
“Why?”
Ed saw the waitress across the room and raised a finger to her. “He was his daddy’s boy, Billy.”
The waitress arrived. I thought about what Ed had said while he ordered dinner. Then I ordered, too—a Thai beer and a special hot-and-sour soup Mama Siam makes that is the best I’ve ever had. When you’re sick, whatever you’ve got, it cures you. The waitress, a middle-aged Thai woman, looked at the lump on my head and nodded approval. She made a few of the mysterious, elegant marks that are Thai writing and vanished into the kitchen.
Maybe my head was still working at half-speed, but I couldn’t quite figure out what Ed was hinting at. Roscoe had been making decent enough money—and his wife was an attorney. They could live where they wanted, and Hector could have gone to private schools, or Beverly Hills High, or whatever he felt like. So why would he choose the inner city?
“His daddy’s boy—” Did Ed mean that Hector was a political animal? Then why—
“Are you saying Hector hung out in the inner city just to get a political background? So someday he’d be, what, authentic?”
Ed looked very serious. “Yes, Billy. That is what I am saying.” He said it in a kind of low, Presbyterian voice with no accent and no inflection. Then he laughed, the first real laugh I’d heard from him since I’d been back. It was a deep, raucous yell of joy. A few of the other customers looked up at us, then looked away. “Shee-it, Billy. You been away too long.” Still laughing, he shook his head some more. “I thought eating a lot of fish supposed to make you smart—man, that bump on the head must of got you all stupid.”
“I guess so. What about Hector?”
He pointed a long finger at me. I could see where the nail was chewed all the way down to the quick. “You know what Roscoe was like—coldest black man I ever met. Never did a thing unless it was for a reason he’d thought out years ago. Boy started out the same way.”
“But he changed?”
He gave me all those teeth again. “Good for you, Billy boy. Good for you.”
“What changed him?”
The waitress set two beers on the table and poured half of each one into the two glasses, pushing one to me and one to Ed.
Ed took a big sip, then poured the rest of the beer into the glass. “The ghet-to changed Hector, Billy. It marked him like it marks everybody. It made him care.” He took a big swallow of beer. “Worst mistake he could’ve made.”
I didn’t say anything. If Ed wanted to be cynical and mysterious, I’d let him. If he wanted to dance naked with a rose in his teeth I guess I’d let him, too. He had been my partner for two and a half years and in some ways he still was.
He finished his beer and waved for another one.
“Then there was this girl, too.”
