Chapter 5

Harold called. A first. A dubious first from my point of view. Do I really want to be in a pimp’s cellphone directory?

He asked me to come see him. Another first, but an intriguing one. He sounded terse. Like he was trying to conceal his nervousness.

It was Tuesday morning around 11. Harold is turning into an early riser. I parked my F-150 in front of his house. He and Columbo were waiting on the porch. The front door was closed on this late Spring day, they didn’t want any of the whores to overhear this conversation.

I was still on my way up the steps when Harold couldn’t wait any longer. “The Chink! Gin. He come here, come in my fucking house. My house!”

He was visibly upset. Columbo didn’t have on his usual Winter-sneer. Something was up.

Harold was practically frothing, pacing back and forth, his skinny black body hunched over like he was in pain.

“He took Celeste! Come in my fucking house and take my fucking whore. Youngest looking one I got.”

I looked at Columbo. Over 250 pounds. Looks fat, looks soft. Isn’t. He looked away.

Harold said, “Shoulda killed the cocksucker.”

Strangely, I felt a little sympathy tug. I guess the pimp you know...

“Cocksucker.”

“Why didn’t you? Kill him?”

Well, this is the life I’ve chosen for myself. Standing in the sunshine on a pimp’s porch talking about murder.

“Should have.”

“Harold.”

He sighed. Weight of the world. Frowned. Dropped his voice to almost a whisper. “Something about that cat. Not right. Not even for a Chink.”

Columbo, who obviously hadn’t stopped the abduction, nodded.

Two grown men. Harold tall, skinny and quick. Columbo, squat, thick and strong. Both had let Jin walk away with a whore.

I didn’t care much for Harold and Columbo. But I did care about Celeste. A girl I had never met. But one whose fate I feared. I got a description of the girl. Small, black, skinny, pink hair. Could be any young age. No birth certificate.

At the station, Sergeant Finch shook her head. “Jin took a whore from Pantone too. No, she wasn’t even a whore. Not yet anyway. She was the sister of one of his girls.”

“Pantone didn’t resist either?”

“Nope.”

I don’t know about other cities, but Taco Tuesdays hit KC in a big way. A number of joints offer 99-cent tacos and it’s a popular promotion. One of Walker’s favorites, and mine, and now Vanessa and Mindy’s, is a little joint called Cancun.

Like Town Topic, there are two versions, just a couple of blocks apart. We usually go to the newer one on Broadway, not that far from BEAR’s. All four of us go with the VERY HOT salsa. There’s also HOT and MILD for the faint of taste buds.

What we noticed is that the VERY HOT varies from week to week. Sometimes it’s so volcanic that I have tears running down my cheeks. Other times it’s a bit less incendiary.

Vanessa pointed out that that is a good thing, “They make it fresh every day. It’s not formulaic, there’s a human in the kitchen.”

I was having a late lunch at Cancun with my ex, Richie. It’s one of the rare times I don’t drink beer with Mexican food. I prefer, with the VERY HOT, to drink ice water. Several glasses from the soda machine. It doesn’t really put out the fire, but it feels good anyway.

Richie reached across the table of our corner booth. The one where you can see the huge billboard across Broadway. An attorney who’s also a medical doctor. Perfect for personal injury lawsuits.

Richie placed his hand over mine, “I’ve been having a pretty good run. I set up a scholarship fund for Walker.”

I was touched. Such a Richie thing to do. “Thanks, honey. What about Janice?”

The new Winter version. The girl he’d left me to marry. Well, actually he’d left me for a different girl. Janice was the third, maybe fourth, iteration.

“Janice is fine. She understands, Walker is my son.” He smiled, “Of course I have to put more in our kids’ accounts.”

“Of course.”

I used to think about winning Richie back. Pretty sure I could have done it. Before he met Janice, before he got her pregnant the first time. But I have my own silly pride. Don’t we all? I convinced myself I didn’t want him back, didn’t want the man who had left me for another girl.

Of course, now everything is different. Vanessa.

Bear is huge. But he’s also thoughtful, insightful. Smart. To save the Unicorn, he and Vanessa brought an entirely new cuisine to Kansas City.

Gullah.

West African slaves carried their recipes, many of them thousands of years old, in their heads. Remembered them on slave ships headed for the South Carolina low country in the 1600s.

Gullah food. One-pot wonders.

Vegetables that stew all day.

Squash, zucchini, sweet peas. Rice and benne seeds. Local fish, meat, shellfish.

Everything fresh, everything in season, everything from nearby. Centuries before the venerable Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley and kicked off the local sourcing craze.

Cooking like nothing Kansas City had tasted. Except perhaps for visitors to Charleston. And even there it isn’t that common anymore. Gullah preparations had morphed in other directions, been subsumed into soul food, barbecue, and the various international flavors, spices, and cuisines that a port city draws on.

Gullah and Kansas City, a most unlikely marriage. One made possible only by a unique family, the Cuthberts.

Bear and Vanessa traveled to South Carolina several times and eventually convinced a family of color to uproot. To leave their ancestral low country home of hundreds of years. To move to a city the Cuthberts probably hadn’t really heard of.

The 55-year old mother, Lucy Cuthbert, is tall, regal, proud, black. And firmly in charge. A forceful personality, she reigns over the dining room. Which needed reigning over. Some of our boisterous young crowd had become pretty full of themselves.

There was some give and take, an adjustment period, but Lucy and her customers have, mostly, reached common ground. She isn’t a killjoy and allows the frequent shrieks of laughter to build, the gaiety, the revelry to rise as the night goes along.

Within reason. She’ll 86 a groping loudmouth. Or some shooter-fueled girls about to reach the point of no return -- kneeling to worship at the porcelain throne.

Lucy’s husband, Mingo, is our cook. He has a friendly demeanor, but he rarely speaks. And when he does, he’s deferential to Lucy. Hangs mostly in the kitchen. Which is small, but trig.

Their daughter, Bess, is sassy and flirty. An ideal waitress. 27.

The son, Tom, 25, has a completely different personality from his sister. He is quiet, bespectacled, studious. Working behind the Unicorn’s busy bar he is courteous without being obsequious.

The Cuthberts, thanks to Bear and Vanessa, turned the Unicorn Club around.

I was relieved of course, as were the other five founders. And grateful. I wouldn’t have to face my mother’s, “I told you it was a crazy idea.”

I told Vanessa, “I feel so good I may make Uni’s cock bigger.”

“You should do, Winter.”

The new snuff DVD was on my office desk, centered neatly. The papers and files that I had left there Friday night were scattered on the floor. It was Monday morning, a little after 8.

I had my .38 in my hand without consciously pulling it from my holster on the left side of my belt.

First, I nudged the bathroom door open with a toe, both hands gripping my pistol. Overly cautious? Hardly. I knew it was snuff, knew it in my gut. Jin.

Walking carefully, gun pointed out, still in both hands, l left the office, my little reception area, checked both ways in the hall. I called Sergeant Louise Finch and stood with my back to the office, waiting.

One of the interesting personality dynamics is the relationship between Daddy and Phillip Montgomery.

A policeman and a banker. Kansas City and Mission Hills. High school grad and Masters degree. Middle class and wealthy.

Their paths would probably have never crossed hadn’t it been for me.

I noticed they spent a lot of time talking with each other at The Wedding. Vanessa and me. Mindy told us that Daddy and my mother were occasional dinner guests in Mission Hills.

Which meant the Montgomerys would be guests in my parents’ Myers Boulevard home.

I imagine the two men had a cautious respect for each other. And that the caution would dissipate as they got to know one another. At least, that’s what I hoped.