LaToya: Episode XXIII – Secrets and Negronis

 

It wasn’t until Latasha and I had been dancing for some little time and had broken off  to go to the bar for a drink that I brought Mrs. Tara Graves up again as a subject for conversation.

Latasha had discovered I could dance. I must confess that I haven’t a lot of talents beside doing my regular work as a journalist intern. Dancing is, however, one of my specialties. Latasha was pretty good herself, and after we have danced for a while, she told me that I was indeed a great dancer. This made her to more friendly and relaxed.

“Let’s get more drinks and take a short break outside,” I said, “then we will come back and show them more dancing tricks.”

“Where do you learn to dance like that, Emeka?” she asked, linking her arm through mine.

Emeka?

Well, it takes different ways and means to break them down. I wondered under what conditions, if any, Mrs. Tara Graves would break down.

“Sweetie,” I said, smiling. “It is not something you learn. It is something you do.”

Latasha giggled.

“I’m okay with that,” she smiled back. “All right, I apologize for being rude to you earlier. Please don’t blame me so much, because the men Powell asks me to take out sometimes are really assholes. You can’t imagine.”

“No harm is done,” I said. “So, don’t worry about it. Every woman has the right to keep their dignity, even if they don’t keep anything else.”

“What do you mean?” she said.

“I mean, this is America,” I replied. “No woman should be forced to keep any man company unless they love it.”

She gave me an old-fashioned look.

“Now don’t think I have fallen for you and will give it to you just because you can dance,” she said. “Because I haven’t.”

I pushed open the bar door.

“Take it easy,” I said. “I was just talking.”

“I can tell when men start getting ideas about me,” she returned and climbed up on a stool and flapped her hands at the barman.

“Two Negronis,” I said, climbing up on the stool beside her.

I took a quick look around the crowded bar in the hope of seeing Mrs. Tara Graves, but she wasn’t in the room.

“I’ve always wanted to become a millionaire,” I said after I had paid four times too much for the Negronis. “But I am damn too lazy to do something about it. Take Mrs. Tara Graves as an example. How much would you say she is worth?”

“I have no idea,” Latasha said. “Her husband is supposed to have left her forty million, but everyone thinks there was more than that. He invented some gadget that is very useful to the oil and gas industry, and they say that the royalties on that alone are worth hundreds of thousands a year. Mrs. Tara Graves is lousy with money. Her husband, Mr. Anthony Graves, put the money up for this club. He had a controlling interest in it, but when he died, Mrs. Graves sold out to Saul Bolton. He owns and runs it now.”

“I wonder what he offered her to convince her to sell her husband’s share?” I said, looking around the plush bar.

Latasha shrugged.

“Plenty, I believe,” she said. “She wouldn’t part with anything for nothing.”

“You said Mr. Graves died last year?”

“Yes,” she replied. “He was murdered.”

I nearly dropped my Negroni.

“Murdered? Really? How did it happen?”

She starred at me.

“It was all over the news,” she said. “Don’t you read newspapers or watch the news on TV?”

“Well,” I said. “I guess Baltimore papers didn’t carry the news. Anyway, I will admit it: I’m not a news junkie. Who murdered him?”

“A hunter,” she said. “Mr. Anthony Graves hated hunters who comes into his estate to kill birds. He used to ride over his estate every morning before 7 o’clock, and I know it will be strange to you. Anyway, if he caught any hunter during those rides he set about him with his riding whip. Well, he soon overdid it and was shot by one of the hunters. To me, that serve him right.”

“He reminds me of Feudal lords,” I said. “What happened to the hunter?”

She shrugged. It was very obvious that this subject didn’t interest her.

“Who knows?” she said. “I guess he got away because the police never found him.”

She finished her Negroni and slid off the stool.

“Come on, Emeka,” she said. “Let’s dance. I can’t stay up too late tonight. I’ve got to pose for Powell tomorrow around noon, and I don’t like to look like a moron.”

“You will always look cool, ma’am,” I said jokingly, and followed her back to the restaurant.

We danced until 1 o’clock, and then Latasha said she had to go home.

All the time I had been in the club I had kept my eyes open for Saul Bolton, but I didn’t see anyone who looked like what I imagined he would look like. So, as we were leaving the restaurant, I said, “Isn’t Saul Bolton on show tonight? I would have loved to meet him.”

“I haven’t seen him,” Latasha said indifferently. “He’s not always on show anyway.” She paused on the lobby, and then said, “Wait for me here, Emeka. I will be back in a minute.”

I watched her disappear into the Ladies room. By now, a lot of people were leaving the club and the lobby was pretty congested. It was so crowded that I sometimes had to back against the far wall to get out of the way for the people leaving the club. To my right was a passage, and at the far end, I saw a gold-colored metal door. It was a pretty plush looking door and, naturally, it aroused my curiosity. I was convinced that the owner of a nightclub as exclusive as the Golden Triangle might have his office behind such a door. I had come to the club for the express purpose of getting a look at Mr. Saul Bolton, and so far I had been unlucky.

I didn’t hesitate for more than a few seconds. I told myself that if any of the security men catches me, I could always say I thought the door leads to the club’s snooker room.

I looked quickly around the lobby. The receptionist was the first person I noticed, and she to be busy writing something on a notebook. The hat check lady was surrounded by departing club members, who wanted to collect their hats pronto. Hwang, whose eyes were flashing like knife blades, was bowing to a fat, seemingly important looking man, obviously a state senator, who was leaving. There are three other security men there, but they were occupied on the steps of the entrance, whistling up cars.

So, luck is obviously on my side: no one was paying me the slightest attention.

First, I edged to the opening of the corridor. Next, I walked as nonchalantly as I could, towards the gold-colored metal door. Turning the door handle and pushing gently, I silently  opened the door and looked into a big, luxuriously furnished room. It is indeed a rich man’s room – the kind of room that you will see in the house of a man with plenty of money to spend on his comforts and pleasures. As I was roaming my eyes  around the room, I saw a man and a woman struggling by the fireplace, and that caught and held my attention.

The woman was Mrs. Tara Graves. The man was a white man – one of those white men that one can describe as being handsome.

He had hold of Mrs. Tara Graves, the way Sean Connery used to get hold of his women in the old James Bond movies. He held her two wrists in one hand, his right arm around her waist, and he was bending her back while he tried to kiss her.

She was struggling to break free, but he was too strong for her. Where I come from, Nigeria, we believe that a man should not force himself on a woman like that, particularly if the woman is not his wife. When a man forces his attention on any woman that is not his wife, it means that he is presenting himself as a target for violence.

I don’t often use violence since I came to America because I’m too lazy to make the effort. Besides, I don’t want to get in trouble with the law because that might prevent me from getting my Green Card. However, years back in Nigeria when I was in high school, I was the undisputed king among my fellow students when it comes to combat. Fighting off bullies was like a trip to Six Flags to me at the time.

But I was different tonight, perhaps because I had taken a couple of drinks. Without considering the consequences, I took two quick steps into the room. The white guy let go of Mrs. Tara Graves and faced me, his eyes glittering with fury. To ease his embarrassment, I hit him hard on the side of his jaw. It was a good punch and he shot backwards, thudded against his desk, swept some glasses and bottles of gin to the floor and slid down on top of them.

“I’m sorry I didn’t show up sooner, ma’am,” I said to Mrs. Tara Graves, who was adjusting the top of her  red-colored evening gown that had slipped a few inches during the in-fighting.

She didn’t even thank me.

I’ve seen angry women in my time, but never one as angry as Mrs. Tara Graves was at this moment. She looked as alarmed and angry as a virgin who has found a man under her bed, and her eyes blazed like red hot embers as they say in Victorian novels.

She looked at me as if I was something that fell from the Space, and then at the white man who was still lying on his back. Though he was looking very disoriented, he continued to shake his head while trying to get life back once more into focus. At that point, Mrs. Tara Graves went out of the room, and as she passed me I felt scorched by the white-hot blast of her rage.

To relax myself, I dipped into the gold cigarette box on the desk, took a cigarette, and lit it. One drag sent a tremor up to my memory. British Benson and Hedges. I looked at the cigarette to make sure, then looked at the white man who was by now dragging himself to his feet. I remembered Medgar’s description of the mysterious Eddie Peterson:

…a British guy…over six foot, lean, with an eyebrow moustache and  a tattoo in his forehead. He had on a sparkling blue jeans jacket, a white t-shirt,  and a gold chain on his neck. … He also wore a tight black rubber band on one wrist and a gold Citizens watch on the other.

This guy is a white guy, though I’m not sure if he is British. He, however, is  over six foot, lean, with an eyebrow moustache and a tattoo in his forehead. He also wore a tight black rubber band on one wrist and a gold Citizens watch on the other. Even without a gold chain on his neck, the description fitted him like a glove.

But this seemed scarcely the time to step up, shake him by the hand and say, “Eddie Peterson I presume.” To me, this is the best time to sneak myself out of the room, ponder about my discovery, and decide how best to make use of it.

As Saul Bolton staggered to his feet, clutching on to the desk for support, I took two steps towards the door, then paused. The door had opened silently. Standing in the doorway, his Korean face hard and set was Hwang. In his right hand he held a .36 revolver and it was pointing at me.

 

 

 

 

 

END OF EPISODE 23

P.S. Stay tuned for Episode 24, which  will be published here next Sunday.