Black Water Rising by Attica Locke Page B

some money and after this we’re gonna be square. So you might as well just tell me what it is you’re looking to hear.”
    Jay sighs and looks at his watch, feeling this was a waste of his time. “You have any personal knowledge that Miss Moreland was on a date with Mr. J. T. Cummings on the night of June twenty-ninth of this year? Other than what she told you?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou have any personal knowledge that she was in Mr. Cummings’s vehicle?”
    â€œNo.” She puts out her cigarette, then picks up the gum on her knee. She’s about to pop it back into her mouth when she stops, smiling all of a sudden. “But she did give me a handkerchief she got out of the old man’s car.”
    â€œYeah?” He’s skeptical, but also a little desperate.
    â€œIt was real silk, red with gold paisleys on it. She lifted it out of his jacket pocket. I used it in my stage show a couple of nights ago.” Her smile widens. “That personal enough for you?”
    He makes her write down her address, tells her he needs to see the handkerchief. When she asks him if she should wash it, he tells her no, that won’t be necessary. He thanks her for her time, and is about to grab his wife and get the hell out of there when Starla says softly, almost reluctantly, “Wait.”
    She sits up in her chair again, popping the wad of gum backinto her mouth, shaking her head, kind of. “Dana’ll kill me if she knows I told you.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWell, I’m not the only one knows she was with Cummings that night.”
    â€œI need a name,” Jay says, inching back into his seat.
    â€œThere’s a bouncer out at Gilley’s who sometimes sets up dates for girls like me and Dana. When those roughnecks come in off the oil fields or the rigs out in the Gulf, first place they go when they get a dollar is to Gilley’s. And the ones that ain’t married or got girlfriends or whatnot need a little company, you know? Girls like me and Dana can make a lot of money out that way.”
    â€œThe bouncer is a pimp ?” Jay asks.
    â€œWell, I wouldn’t put it that way.”
    â€œWhat’s his name?”
    â€œClyde.”
    Jay pulls out his pen. “Clyde who?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Starla shrugs. “Clyde.”
    Jay writes down the name and underlines it.
    â€œHe gets kind of funny about us bringing in our own dates, you know,” Starla says. “He don’t much like us working on our own. Dana told me Clyde threw her and Cummings out of Gilley’s the night they had the car accident. If he wasn’t getting paid, he didn’t want her on his turf.”
    â€œSo the bouncer saw them together?”
    â€œOh, yeah.” Starla nods. “And Dana said he was some kind of pissed.”
    â€œI don’t understand…if this Clyde guy corroborates her story, why wouldn’t she want me to know about it?”
    â€œOh, Dana don’t want him having his hand nowhere near a lawsuit. This is her deal, through and through. She’s probablyafraid Clyde’ll try and take a cut. I mean, she’s already paying you, what, twenty, thirty percent, right?”
    â€œRight,” Jay says, rolling his eyes at being compared to a pimp.
    Â 
    Outside in the parking lot, Bernie asks, “How’d I do?”
    The Big Dipper sign is flashing over her head, next to an animated neon painted lady who’s opening and closing her legs, on beat, every three seconds.
    â€œYou were perfect,” he says.
    She eases her way into the Buick, balancing one hand on the car’s frame.
    â€œYou washed the car,” she says, noticing for the first time.
    â€œThis morning.” He shrugs coolly. No big thing.
    He closes the car door and walks around to the other side.
    There’s a late-model Ford LTD on Jay’s side, black and long. Jay is careful not to scratch it with his door.