Black Hornet Read Online Free PDF Page A

comes off, like it or not …”
    “Fuck that.”
    “More like fuck you, Sarge.
    “Yeah, like always.”
    He came back.
    “You’re free to go, Griffin.”
    “Just like that?”
    He nodded. I started to say something else, ask what the hell, but he stopped me. “Get on out of here.”
    The city was just coming alive outside. Soft gray bellies of clouds hung overhead, as though draped, tent-like, on the top of the buildings. Sunlight snuffled and pawed behind them.
    And Frankie DeNoux sat on the steps.
    I almost didn’t recognize him, since he wasn’t wearing his office.
    “Sweet freedom,” he said.
    “Believe it. But what are you doing here? Boudleaux finally throw you out? Whoever Boudleaux is.” Far as I knew, no one had ever seen him. “You on the streets now?”
    “Ain’t that the way it always is. Do a favor for a guy, he won’ even talk to you after.”
    “What favor’s that, Mr. Frankie?”
    “Sweet freedom,” he said again.
    I just stared at him.
    “Got me a man up there. He keeps me posted what’s going down, I slip him a fifty ever’ week or so. Las’ night he calls to let me know this woman’s been shot and the police’ve brought in this guy he knows does some work for me. But the guy ain’t been charged with nothin’, he says, ain’t even on the books.
    “Well. This, I know, is definitely not good. Bad things happen in police stations to people who are not there. I know this from working with the criminal element, and with the police element, for forty years. After forty years, I also know a few people. Favors get owed along the way.”
    Closing the rest of his fingers, he held thumb and pinky finger out: a stand-up comedian’s phone.
    “I made some calls.”
    “You made some calls.”
    “Well, really it was just one. The other guy wouldn’t talk to me. But …” He waved a hand: here’s the free world anyway.
    “I didn’t know you had friends, period, Mr. Frankie. Much less friends in high places.”
    “High, low, scattered in between. Lots of those won’t talk to me anymore either. What the hell. ’S all information, Lewis. You got information, you get things. You got things, you get information.”
    I was with him so far. But there was one point I wasn’t clear on:
    “Why?”
    “Why, you got work to do for me, don’t you. Now how you gonna do that locked up in there? Or with your mouth all busted up—you tell me that.”
    “Seems obvious, now that I think about it.”
    “Don’t it, though.”
    “I owe you. Mr. Frankie.”
    “You don’t owe me shit, Lewis. And don’t Mr. Frankie me. Back up there, that was mostly smoke. What they call a dog and pony show. But you feel like saying thank you, there’s a Jim’s right round the corner. You could come have some chicken, sit down with me. Forty years I been eating alone.”
    I said I’d be pleased to, and we walked on.
    “Man might be dropping by to see you sometime later on. He does, you talk to him for me.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Don’t sir me either.” I held the door open for him. There were a couple of people in line ahead of us. A city bus driver. A rheumy-eyed white man in bellbottom jeans, grimy sweater and longshoreman’s cap. “You know that story ’bout the tar baby?” Frankie said.
    I nodded.
    “Well, that’s ’bout how black my mother was, Lewis. Black as tar. I ain’t been white a day in my life and ever’body’s always thought I was. Ain’t that somethin’?”
    We stepped up to the counter.
    “You want white meat or dark?” he said, and laughed.

Chapter Five
    H OME THOSE DAYS WAS A SLAVE quarters behind a house at Baronne and Washington that once had been grand and now looked like Roger Corman’s idea of a Tennessee Williams set. Ironwork at gate and balcony had long ago gone green; each story, floor, room, door and window frame sat at its own peculiar angle; vegetation grew from cracks in cement walls and from the rotten mortar between bricks. Few of the porch’s floor planks