Out of the Blues Read Online Free Page B

remember if I heard any other name he was called.
    Q: Please describe the man you know as John.
    A: White, tall.
    Q: Any marks or scars?
    A: He look just like anybody.
    Q: How did you come to know John?
    A: I was hungry. He got me in back of Sam’s trying to get some bags of peanuts off a truck.
    Q: How old were you then?
    A: I guess about twelve.
    It would have been right around the time she’d first encountered him, when she was a rookie. Christmas, him in his thin sweatshirt,his shoulders like the unfolding wings of a vulture. She’d tried to find his guardian instead of taking him to Juvenile and found only a dreadful, sad apartment where he and other children were neglected. Salt pressed the length of her palm to the scar.
    Q: Who did you live with?
    A: I stayed with lots of people.
    Q: What did he do when he caught you?
    A: He said I had to work to pay for stealing.
    Q: What kind of work did you do for John?
    A: Work around the bars.
    Q: Did you go to school?
    A: Sometimes.
    Q: What work did John have you doing?
    A: Whatever he tell me to do.
    Q: What did he tell you to do?
    A: Clean the bathrooms, sweep, pick up trash.
    Q: What else?
    A: Go with men.
    Q: Do you mean you had sex with men for money?
    A: I didn’t have no sex with them.
    Q: What did you do when you went with the men?
    A: They gave me blowjobs.
    Q: Are you saying that they performed oral sex on you?
    A: Yeah.
    Q: Did you do oral sex on them?
    A: If I had to.
    Q: What about anal sex?
    A: What about it?
    Q: Did John send you with men that wanted anal sex?
    A: I’m not that way.
    Q: Did some men put their penis in your anus when you were twelve years old?
    A: Yeah.
    Salt looked away from the file again, stood, and strode to the back wall that was lined with file cabinets labeled by year. “Damn.” Shedrew a breath, looked down the long wall of file cabinets, then turned back to the flickering cubicle.
    Q: Did John have other people who exchanged sex for money?
    A: He had hoes, some of the dancers.
    Q: How long did you work for John?
    A: Until Man let me stay with him.
    Q: By Man you mean James Simmons?
    A: Yeah, he hid me from John. He looked out for me and had his boys look out if John came around.
    In The Homes the gang was headed by charismatic, handsome Man and included his brother and others, mostly young men who’d grown up together in The Homes. Some were now dead and some, like Stone, were in prison, put there by her. Man had always kept a safe distance from direct contact with the drugs and guns. Man, with his wide smile, and Lil D, with a birthmark the shape of a continent on his neck. Lil D, whose mother’s murder had, in part, led to Salt’s assignment to Homicide.
    Q: Did John sell drugs?
    A: Yes.
    Q: Did you see drugs?
    A: Yes. He the head junk man in this city then.
    Q: By junk you mean heroin?
    A: Yeah, H.
    Q: Do you know if he still deals?
    A: Word that he don’t have no direct connection after them Black Mafia brothers moved in. But back then he deal some H. He still run hoes, but he big money now, runnin’ high-dolla bitches out his clubs.
    Q: What other businesses is he involved with?
    A: Now he got dealing with Sam’s and the Blue Room, Magic Girls, and maybe some white club somewhere.
    Q: What do you know about the death of Mike Anderson, the singer and guitar player?
    A: I know Tall John give that blues boy a hot pop.
    Q: How do you know that?
    A: ’Cause he told me. He said that’s what he do when people that work for him don’t do what he say.
    Q: Did you see him give heroin to Mike Anderson? How did he know Mike?
    A: That blues boy worked in one of the clubs, singing and playing the guitar. Got his H that way. I didn’t ever see Johnchanging junk for cash personally. Just saw the product in his office.
    Q: When was the last time you had contact with or saw John?
    A: Right before I was locked up last year. He pass by me all the time in the street.
    Q: You said you hid