All Things Blue - page 4

that nothing I could say  or do would change that.

"You see, Marcus," Jean started, "I need help."

"What kind of help are we talking about, Jean?"

"The kind of help that very few can or are willing to offer. It's got to do with my nephew, Jeremy." My eyes darted to the dolphin.

"Is he in trouble?"

"I just found out that he was shot tonight."

"What? Did you call the cops? Where is he?"

"That's just it. I don't know." 

"You don't know? Who told you he got shot?"

"His ex-girlfriend. But even she doesn't know where his dumb ass is." 

Jean told me that she and Jeremy had been arguing for a while. He had an apartment off of Cobb Parkway, but he spent so much time at her house that he might as well have lived there. By trade, Jeremy was a heating and cooling technician but he was also an an accomplished painter. He was also a ladies man and an ex-convict, having done two years for possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. That was why she was reluctant to call the cops. I didn't blame her. I wasn't too cool with them myself.

Jeremy was also an orphan. He had lost his parents when he was eight to a car accident and Jean had taken him in as her own. He was like a son to her. He was her child. Her only child. And Jean would die from grief to lose him. I understood only too well.

Jean and Jeremy argued over his choice of women, money and the overall direction of his life. She had had to bail him out of jail twice and and rescue him from a night club after he had been robbed at gunpoint. Jeremy Banks to me was sounding more and more like the posterboy for Trouble in the Hood.
She had seen him last three weeks ago. He said he was going to "handle some business."

"I gave him a hundred and fifty dollars." Jean said. "He took a duffel bag and a few clean clothes and that was the last I saw or heard from him." She took her view off the floor and gazed at me with those red eyes.

"I want you to find him," she said with a bizarre firmness in her tone. "I'm hiring you to do this for me. I do not want the police involved. They've caused me and my boy too much pain as it is. I will pay your fee right now, if you like."

She rose from her seat and looked me dead in the eye, expecting an answer. I remember thinking that if I saw this woman anytime from that moment on and her nephew was dead (if he wasn't already) that she would somehow blame me.  I would be sorry to hear it. And probably regretful that I could've done something to help and did nothing. But Jean Masters wasn't going to bogart me into doing anything I didn't want to do, on my own terms at least.

"Seventy two hours," I said. "After seventy-two hours from now if I don't have a lead on him, call the cops."