Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Authors by Eleanor Taylor Bland Page A

him the gun, the cash. “How did you know what was coming?”
    He flashed that smile of his. “You talking about Moore?” he said, referring to the cop stop. “Detective Maurice? Shit. When it comes to danger, yo, I got eyes in the back of my head.”
    He didn’t count the money. Just sort of weighed it in his hand. Must have been all right, because he peeled off a couple of bills, dropped them on my table, stuffed the rest in the pocket of his baggy shorts. Just then, as he was turning to leave, something caught his attention. On the table. It was a big manila envelope on a stack of other mail.
    Ant took a long hard look at the top envelope, then eyed me, checkedme from head to toe. Nothing in my eyes. I knew they wouldn’t give me up. No reaction, but my mind raced while he did the full-body scan. In that split-second eternity he did a flash inventory of my persona; the darkness about me—my eyes, my skin, my short dreads with just a hint of early gray. He seemed to pay special attention to the uniform. What was he thinking about me? He was standing close now, so close he had to look up at me. I was standing over him at six feet. But that didn’t affect him since he had that equalizer back under his belt again. And just like that, while I tried to figure it all out, he tapped the envelope.
    â€œA’ight, D.” He held a beat. “Be cool, yo.”
    I watched from the windows as Ant hit the street. At that moment, the black Navigator drove up, parked on the other side. The dark tinted glass slowly lowered on pace with Ant’s step. There in the driver’s seat was Terrell Reynolds, snug inside his high-powered cocoon. Terrell Reynolds. “T-Rex.” Predator-in-Chief. Unofficial mayor of Little Beirut. Ant quickly took the huge wad of bills from his pocket, handed it to T-Rex, said something, I don’t know what, but something that made T-Rex look up at my window. Maybe I was just paranoid. Maybe I had good reason to be. Ant had made me. I knew it. But, had he given me a pass? Or had he given me up to T-Rex? He had read the outside of that envelope he picked up, the one that was addressed to me at the job. And, because he had read it, he knew that my job was not with the Transit Authority.
    â€œThat’s exactly why I didn’t like this assignment for you in the first place.” Brian Jennings was pacing his office as he spoke. He was like that. Agitated. Always. Stressing. Never really mattered what he was dealing with at the time. Made me wonder how he could deal with such high-pressure issues for a living. Life on deadline. Life cut short in the process. “What if you’re wrong about his reaction? What if the kid is plotting something on you right now? Blowing this, this . . . undercover thing you’re trying to pull off.” As he spoke, he turned deeper and deeper shades of red, which was about as much color as I had ever seen on his pale face. “I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, Dash.”
    That’s what they called me. David Steven Hunter was my name, butthe people who knew me well enough knew better than to call me any of that. Dash was all the name I needed for a fast-track life, a life in perpetual motion.
    Guess he was right. I was taking a huge risk. But that’s what I did. For me, the reward was in the risk, hidden there, waiting to be cracked open. I just sat there for a reflective moment, turned away from Jennings, gazed through the wall of windows of his office, looking out at the cubicles and the late afternoon insanity of our world, the world we had chosen—a world on deadline. I pulled out the Marlboros, lit one.
    Jennings looked at me like I was crazy. Maybe I was. Just another crazy Black man raising his blood pressure. “You know you can’t smoke in here,” he said.
    I took a long draw, slowly blew out the smoke. “The way you’ve been talking, I feel like