Drumsticks by Charlotte Carter Page A

didn’t see Ida Williams in the phone book at that address.”
    â€œPoker?”
    â€œYeah. You know, raise the stakes.”
    â€œTo what?” I asked, my voice steely.
    â€œDinner. Instead of lunch.”
    â€œDone. Tell me why she’s not in the book.”
    â€œWhen I delivered the sewing machine, the name on the bell wasn’t Williams. It was Rose. Alice Rose. I figured Ida lived with a friend or maybe she was a sublet.”
    â€œExcellent,” I said, writing the name and street address down.
    â€œYou like spicy food?”
    â€œNot at all,” I said. “I’ll call you.” I handed him the pen and paper so that he could write down his name and number.
    He handed them back. “Howard? You do not look like a Howard.”
    â€œI owe you big time, J.”
    â€œThat’s okay, Smash-up. There’s nothing I like better than calling in favors. And this gumball owes me big time, too.”
    Justin and I stood just outside a cavernous no-name bar on Amsterdam. Foreign territory to me. I knew Manhattan below 34th Street like the back of my hand. I knew parts of Harlem—fellow musicians’ apartments, the Studio Museum, a couple of bars, and of course the faded glory of Sugar Hill, where Aubrey had once lived in a glamorous sublet. I even had some familiarity with a few neighborhoods in Brooklyn. But the Upper West Side—north of Lincoln Center and south of Harlem—was not my beat.
    J and I were waiting for Lefty. Not that that was the gumball’s name. I didn’t know the gumball’s name yet. Only that he was one of many less than upright characters from Justin’s world—and Aubrey’s world, if one is to be honest about it. Low-level wise guys and coke dealers, strip club employees, fixers, bartenders who also acted in porn movies or ripped off warehouses in their spare time. Lefty was from that world.
    He drove a damn pretty car, though. Pulled up in it a few minutes after we arrived.
    â€œYou’re sure this guy knows what it is you want him to do?” I asked as we watched the driver approach.
    â€œOh yeah.”
    â€œThat favor he owes you must be a motherfucker.”
    â€œA little matter of an alibi. Let’s just say it made about twenty-five years’ worth of difference in his life, and leave it at that.”
    â€œI’m leaving it even as we speak.”
    â€œYou can pay me back too, Smash-up. And you don’t have to break no laws to do it.”
    â€œAnything.”
    â€œMy boyfriend Kenny wants to take us to lunch—a crab cakes and champagne blowout.”
    â€œThat’s all I have to do?”
    â€œThat’s all. Favor repaid.”
    â€œI’m there, buddy.”
    Once he got up close, Lefty wasn’t such a bad-looking white guy—not a gorilla at all. The ponytail was a mistake, but not, as it was with some men, a capital offense. He was on the short side; Justin and I both towered over him.
    Lefty wasn’t very polite to Justin. His jaw tight, he nodded perfunctorily at him and refused to meet his eyes while Justin was reciting Ida’s address.
    â€œGot it,” he muttered. “Let’s go.”
    â€œJust a minute, you rude thing!” Justin ribbed him. “There’s a lady present. This is my friend Thelma. Thelma, this is, uh, Mark.”
    â€œMark” may or may not have been Lefty’s real name. But Thelma as an alias for me? Puh-leeeze. Thanks a lot, Justin. Why not Shaneequa?
    Mark barely looked at me, obviously eager to be somewhere else. But then, when he finally turned his eyes in my direction he did a double take.
    I could see him seeing me without my blouse, writhing up there on that stage under all the blue and orange light-bulbs.
    â€œNice to meet you, Thelma. You work at Caesar’s?”
    â€œNo,” I said, “but I’m thinking about auditioning. I’ve got an act with a live