Swan Dive

morning.... A lawyer I know asked me to bodyguard against him....”
    Terdell giggled and spit.
    ”…Marsh killed his little girl’s cat, and I called him on it.... I left him at his house on Friday afternoon, alive and well.... That’s the last I ever saw of him.”
    ”Street say your gun was in the hotel room.”
    ”Somebody mugged me that afternoon. Took cash and the gun.... I was never in the hotel room and never even met... the girl he was with.”
    ”I’m supposed to believe that?”
    ”If you’re smart.”
    ”Why?”
    ”Because if you’re right, if I did kill Marsh and take the coke, I’d sure as hell... have planned it better and cleaner. And I would have had twenty-four hours to come up... with a better story than this.” Braxley slapped the barrel of the Colt lovingly in the palm of his off hand. ”Mon, you know what that stuff worth, street value out in the ‘burbs?”
    ”Where the users can get it without risking a drive into... the wrong parts of the city?”
    ”You got it. Two-fifty easy, maybe three, if Marsh know his customers and step on it different for each.”
    ”Why is that your problem?... You can get another delivery boy up there, can’t you?”
    Braxley fumed. ”It is my problem—shit, Terdell, hit this mon another one.”
    I wasn’t near ready. I stumbled on the way up, and took a solid thump just at the tricep-shoulder intersection on the right side. It spun me around, with Terdell thrusting to my stomach as I squared up with him again. I dropped to all fours, quelling the shudders I felt starting inside me.
    ”Like I was saying, it is my problem because I give Marsh the credit. I ought to kill you now, letting you hear that, damage it would do to my reputation, word gets out. But Marsh, even with all his shit, he been steady for two, three years, which is a long time in this business, and the one time he step out of line, Terdell, he put Marsh in the hospital and Marsh, he learn his lesson. So when Marsh tell me he going through the divorce shit, and ask me for credit, I get the dumbs and let him have the stuff without the buy-money. Now I don’t have the stuff, which I have paid for, and I don’t have Marsh’s buy-money. I have suppliers that expect me to take on more stuff next week, and I was counting on Marsh to pull me through.” Braxley recocked the Colt and pointed it at me. ”Now I’m counting on you.”
    ”I don’t have the stuff... and I don’t know who does.”
    ”You still got it wrong, mon. I don’t have the stuff, and I expect you to get it for me.”
    ”Somebody ransacked Marsh’s house....”
    ”Stuff wasn’t there. Video case he carry it around in gone, too.”
    That didn’t sound right. ”What about the camera?”
    ”Terdell?”
    I braced myself, but Terdell just talked. ”I was looking for the case, but I don’t remember seeing no camera, neither.”
    J.J. said, ”Detective mon, you blowing smoke. That camera case was with Marsh when I seen him Monday before he got done. He put my stuff in it, like always. I didn’t see no camera with him.”
    ”What about a suitcase?”
    ”Suitcase?”
    ”Yeah. Cops said one of the hotel people... saw Marsh come in with a suitcase that night.”
    ”They did, be the first time anybody ever check into the Barry with luggage.” J.J. and Terdell laughed. Then J.J. said, ”Terdell, I’m going up to the car for a toot. Then we going to find out just how much more he know. Give this mon another tap, hold him while I’m gone.”
    Braxley holstered his piece while I tried to straighten up and parry. Terdell was already over me, this time using the wood just to push me onto my back. Then he put the end of the two-by-four squarely in the center of my chest and leaned into it. My breastbone bowed with the pressure, and I thought crazily about biology class and how the butterfly must feel when the needle is going in. Then Terdell eased off, suddenly driving the end of the wood to my jaw. I almost lost consciousness, and the stink from his being so close wasn’t helping any.
    I heard Braxley open and close the car door above us. Terdell said, ”Honkie, you make it through this here, and somebody ask you what the closest you ever come to dying, you tell ‘em about tonight, huh?”
    Lifting my head was the best I could manage, but through the parade-rest space between TerdelPs legs I saw a mirage. Or better, a hallucination. A short, skinny man shot out of the pipe mouth behind Terdell,