Tamika Jade: The Case of the Girl with the Rose Tattoo, page 1
TAMIKA JADE:
The Case of the Girl
with the Rose Tattoo
by Rachel E. Rice
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Cover by Carey Abbott
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©2012 by Rachel E. Rice
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Published 2012 by Rachel E. Rice
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Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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This Book is dedicated to Grant L. B.
Chapter 1
It’s the month of July, 1969, and I’m watching my black and white television, which I had to haul down a flight of stairs and set on a crummy old wooden desk, that needed a paint job with its swollen drawers that couldn’t close. I asked my boss and friend Johnny Le to replace all of this junk so we could get respectable clients. He asked, “Are you crazy?” Then he gazed at me with suspicious half closed eyes. “We don’t need respectable, we need money.” His glance moved to the TV. “Why would you want to watch a man walk on the moon, when everyone knows it’s impossible?” I had to listen to his lectures and all his conspiracy theories.
I thought that was a strange statement coming from him, considering he’s an educated man. I guess he never took a minute to think, and if he had, he would have known that what he said was stupid. Why would the government spend millions of our dollars to fool the American public? I rolled my eyes.
My thoughts were really on how long it had been since anyone had walked into the office, and whether I should have Chinese or Italian food.
It’s not an easy job—thinking. But here I am gazing out of a small window into an alley counting the dirty garbage cans and loose paper plates blowing aimlessly, making me hungry, wondering about the people behind the garbage, and thinking about why I took my crazy ass to San Francisco, which could tumble down on me at anytime.
July is hot everywhere except San Francisco. My mind switches from the weather and back to sex and food. Not necessary in that order. My last memory of a sexual encounter with the opposite sex, I heard a helicopter overhead and thought it was an earthquake.
I freaked out, jumped out of bed screaming, “We gonna die, we gonna die.” I dashed into the closet in the middle of an important sexual moment that what’s his name described as, his moment of discovery. I don’t remember his name because that was the first time and the last time I laid eyes on him. It was a mutual agreement. And that was my moment of discovery.
I discovered for the first time in my young life, men were a waste of time. Well some men.
I guess I wasn’t use to all the going on of big city life coming from a small town in Texas. I moved from the South where the living is easy at least that’s the lie everyone wants to believe. If that’s the case, then why did so many people pack up and move west and east of the Mississippi River?
There was nothing easy about being a black woman and living in the South in the 60s. Grant you, there was a lot going on after the march on Washington, and black folks getting there freedom and all, but not enough for me to stay there. I had big plans. I headed straight for a big city.
My name is Jade, Tamika Jade. I was born in Louisiana but raised in Texas. I woke up one cloudy rainy day and found myself in San Francisco. A long way for Texas. Yes, San Francisco, California the place Tony Bennett sang about losing his heart; or was he singing about leaving his heart somewhere? The place with the Golden Gate Bridge, the place where some strange people go to end it all, the place where Black people go to be free to end it all—California. I bet a slew of people left their hearts and minds there.
Oh, and the infamous Alcatraz, the place where Al Capone ended his career as a notorious criminal. The place where there was the worst earthquake disaster in history. I didn’t read that in any history books in my segregated school until I got here. Now I’m here to stay. You see I’m a private eye. I even went to night school and got my degree at the community college. Got it tacked on the wall for everyone to see that I’m an educated woman.
When I told my mama about my work, she stated that she had dreams of me becoming someone important, like a doctor or lawyer. I had to ask her, “Mom, did anyone in our family ever go to college, or finish high school?” Her answer was “nope, they had to work in the fields.”
I hated to break the news to her, “case closed, you had better be glad that I’m working somewhere and not married with six kids like some of my friends.” I think she was happy because no one in the immediate family had ever finished elementary school no less high school, she just held me to higher standards… what can I say?
* * *
It was June 1967 when I graduated from high school, and most of the country was now integrated. Well, what now? We black folks had just gotten a little hard earned freedom, so we began to move all around the country. Some of my friends were going to Chicago and some went to New York. I thought that those places were too cold because of Texas being hot and all. And it’s true about frying an egg on the sidewalk in July. I know. I tried it when I was a kid. I took our last egg, even though we couldn’t afford a stick of gum and dropped it, and sure enough, it began to cook. I was just curious. I wanted to know the why and how of things. Why the hands of the clock moved; I ruined every watch and clock in the house because curiosity got the best of me.
I guess that’s why I became a private eye.
After high school, I packed my bags and headed for Los Angeles, California with a friend named Kesha. I should have stayed there, but I had this bright idea to keep driving west. I wanted to see the Pacific Ocean and the California coast. I wanted to see the places I had seen on television. I wanted to wear a bikini and see the Golden Gate Bridge, but not in that order.
I tried wearing a bikini in Galveston, Texas on our segregated beach in 1964, and the beach patrol kicked me and my friends off the beach. Maybe they were not use to colored girls showing their full figures. They said something about us not being Christian. We just wanted some sun we weren’t going to church. I just knew that some of the old church ladies were around somewhere pointing their fingers at us and calling us heathens because we wanted to be like girls in the movies who lived in California.
When we arrived in Los Angeles, Kesha wanted to stay, but the minute I took a look at her criminal brothers, I knew that eventually we would end up in jail from just knowing them. We drove to her aunt’s house to stay a few nights. The white frame house was large with a front porch, with green trim, and two large green metal chairs setting on it. Kesha’s family could not wait to greet us because they wanted to see the dam fools that drove nearly two thousand miles without a man to help them.
Women were not driving as much as they are now. We were into women’s lib long before anyone else. I had been driving since I was fifteen, when I stole my mother’s car while she was asleep. I waited all night to sneak out of the house. The first person I called was Kesha because she was game for anything, and we were bored as hell in that small town with no where to go, and hardly any boys around. Everyone was off to Vietnam and Houston, Texas.
As we drove up to Kesha’s aunt’s house, in my yellow Dodge Dart convertible, all eyes were on us, especially the boys that lived there. I later learned that only one of the guys living there was her brother. The other four were foster kids. One tall over grown boy had burns all over his body. I asked about the burns and through my interrogation of the younger boys, they spilled their guts. He had burned his family’s home down. That did it for me, we stayed one night, and I didn’t sleep the whole night.
I finally got up and locked the door to the room where I slept; it was about five in the morning. It was only then I was able to get some rest before we started on our way the next morning. Kesha mentioned something about staying a couple of months. Well that did it for me a second time. I told Kesha that I was going on to San Francisco with or without her.
I overruled her because I had the car and the money, saved it from my graduation presents.
All my family members came down from Louisiana and brought presents, fruit, and money, thinking I was going to stay in Texas and become a doctor or a nurse, buy a big house so everyone could come eat, visit, and never go home. I never did understand why my aunts and uncles always brought us fruit. Those days you couldn’t travel with food in your car the inspection station would stop you and take any vegetables you were harboring for a meal. I didn’t understand until I grew up. I guess you could say they could smuggle anything into Texas if they hid it in a crate of bananas, or the inspectors just didn’t care what poor black folks had because it didn’t amount to anything.
As soon as I got the money, Kesha and me packed our bags, loaded up the old Dodge Dart, and ran for the hills. Now normally I would listen to my mother because of h
My mama also said, “This girl won’t take no shit. She don’t need no gun, all she need is her bad attitude. That was back in the day. Now she might say all I need is a 38 revolver.
I took her advice. I thought Mama’s were never wrong, but what do I know, mama was wrong as hell. She was so wrong that she almost got my crazy ass killed with her bad advice. Now I carry a .22 Saturday night special, a knife, a .38 snub-nose, and a .45. The .45 in case the bad guys are immune to lead. The .45 never disappoints.
In Texas, we’re always packing. We sleep with guns under our pillows. Got my training every New Year’s Eve when we got to shoot up in the air. Now a days I think it’s outlawed. The state claimed too many people are killed from stray bullets. That didn’t seem to matter much when on a Saturday night black folks would party, and there was a shooting and a stabbing every Saturday night. The state didn’t out law beer joints and saloons.
* * *
In the late 60s, the country was depressed over Vietnam. Janis Joplin had just arrived by way of Port Arthur, Texas, and so had I. Isaac Hayes was in chains, and Billie Paul was singing “Me and Mrs. Jones. It was blasting on the radio as I drove to China town to drop off my sidekick Johnny Le. I picked him up from jail where he was spending a few months for illegal gambling. I had been all day waiting for him to be released. This was new to me. Never been to jail before, Johnny Le, well, this was his third time. He lost his private eye license and I had to take over, sort of pick up the slack, and run his private eye business. That’s why the sign read Jade and Le Detective agency.
When customers first walk into the agency, they think I’m the secretary. I let them think what ever they want to get the job done and put some money in my pocket. Johnny lets me have most of the money from the cases because he gets his money from gambling. I’m sort of a cover for his real business.
Johnny was always quiet, went along with whatever I did. He even listens to black music, but I couldn’t take his music. I didn’t understand it, but music is music if it’s good, Johnny Le says. He always had a wise saying for everything. Johnny had a sheepish grin with small almond eyes and a Roman nose he claimed he got from his father who was Italian.
He never knew his father. His father died when he was born, died in one of the wars, but that didn’t stop him from being aggressive and outgoing. He looked twenty-five, but he was probably forty-five. Chinese people, like black people hide their age he always said.
When I first walked into his office in a building behind an Italian restaurant, I thought he was my favorite actor, Bruce Lee. I fell in love with him immediately until I found out he had kids, a wife, a mother, and uncles and aunts to support. I guess that’s why he was gambling after hours. He never looked at me the way I looked at him. I figure he would come around. I guess he wasn’t use to black women. Some say we are too pushy and dress too loud. We are just stylish, doing the best we can with the money that comes our way, which an’t much.
I guess I made him nervous being built like a brick house. Well that’s what my new boyfriend says, well he’s not really a boyfriend yet, but I have my eyes on him. I had the biggest smile when he compared me to a brick shithouse, although I have never seen one myself. That was the best compliment I had heard in a long time. I guess I’m like most women, love the compliments even if they are stupid.
Derrick, my new boyfriend, my future boyfriend, our new client, walked into the Jade and Le detective agency one summer evening just as I was closing, and we fell in love at first sight. At least I fell for him. He had on this white suit, with red, white, and blue shit kickers, those are called boots in Texas, and there he is sporting a gold tooth. I looked up from my desk and he stood flashing a gold tooth with a smile as wide as the Mississippi River, and a fist full of dollar bills. It was love at first sight. He opened the door and peeped in:
“Is this a detective agency?”
“Yes, the signs say so, can’t you read?” I said with my head down.
“Yeah, but I’m a little ignorant,” I quickly raised my head.
I thought that was so precious for a man to admit that he didn’t know too many things, but I didn’t realize that he was as dumb as a rock.
“Come in and tell me what the problem is?” I stood up behind the large desk Le gave me to make me feel professional. I had to twist his arm literally to get him to put one in. All that was in the office was that worn out desk, a sofa, a vase, and a Chinese rug and since I didn’t have a rug I took it upstairs to my apartment, but Le repossessed it and packed it back down to the office. I guess he thought I would take the desk too, but that would be more difficult to bring up the stairs.
* * *
Derrick looked around and walked through the door; it was wide open because it was a little stuffy inside. Black folks like to keep the doors open to let the air circulate, or maybe it was always so darn hot down south and we just couldn’t get that stifling heat out of our brains. I should have closed the door because you can get all kinds of unsavory characters coming in with the door wide open. We use to sleep with the doors open and the windows open at night in Texas in the 60s, until the town peeping Tom climbed in through the window. Well mama pulled her gun and shot at him and he never jumped into another window again.
As Derrick entered the small office, he tripped on the Chinese rug, fell to the right, and broke my favorite blue and white Chinese vase that I bought myself for Christmas. I used it to decorate the corner of the room. I wanted to give the office a little class, and now that gorgeous hunk with his stupid clumsy blind ass broke it. He rushed to pick it up and tell me he could pay for it. So I smiled and pretended that it didn’t matter. I guess he mesmerized me with his sincerity and good looks.
How precious, I thought, dumb, clumsy and sincere. Maybe he is good for something. Looking at his physic, he carried around the best body I had seen in years, but you couldn’t tell with that stupid grin and that white suit. He looked like he sold ice cream from a truck. The kind that goes through the neighborhood, where children would run up and scream for their mothers to give them money for a freeze pop, or ice cream cone. All kind of salacious thoughts raced through my mind, but I didn’t entertain them further. I was excited to see him and find out if I could help him with anything.
Derrick gazed down at me. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.” I looked up and my mouth fell open and I could not get out a sound. He continued, “I’m here because I need to locate my girl. You see I just got out of the army and I can’t find her. She moved from the projects.”
Relieved to know that he didn’t have any children or a wife, I decided to stake my claim. I would concentrate on that aspect of his life later, because now I had to focus on the money. That was another thing my mama told me, “If you can’t spend it, it ain’t worth nothing.” Now I was planning on spending every imaginary dime in his pocket and then some. First, I had to ask him a series of questions.
I pointed to the sofa. Derrick sat and placed his large hands on his knees. I picked up a pad and pencil from my desk and sashayed across the room. I squeezed next to him on the old black leather couch that Le hauled in to impress our clients. Crossing my legs, I leaned closer to let him get a look at my breasts and smell the scent of my perfume. The perfume was Joy and at the time it was considered the most expensive and exotic perfume in the world.
Uncle Grant brought it back from Paris. He was a merchant seaman that had been all over the world. He was convinced that if a woman put that perfume on, a man was a goner. Well I had to test it out. Coming from Louisiana, we believed in that kind of thing. I remember my uncle went all the way in the bayou to get a portion to make a little gal fall in love with him. He is still waiting. I realized then that this was just an old wives tale. However, I believed in backing up my bets, so everyday I put some Joy on.
His eyes turned to me, he smiled. “You smell pretty. I’ve never smelled that perfume before.” Now how does a person smell pretty? Well I wasn’t going to say anything because I haven’t had a compliment from an eligible man in years. And if it wasn’t for that goofy smile and that suit, he’d be a keeper.
