If I Were a Boy

ART: "Reality" By Laurie Cooper

The ambulance workers loaded Jordy into the wagon...He never said a word....he just kept staring at us...I asked him who had shot him again and finnally he whispered....

"It was a ...a....it looked like a girl, a woman...kind of homely...ugggghhhh."

Then he was unconscious as they rushed him to the hospital..Clerow and Gus dropped me off at my home and I saw Sepia, sitting in the kitchen, sobbing... She had identified Collette's body and she sobbed like a baby.. I held her in my arms....I had questions, questions I wanted to ask her, but now was not the time..all along I kept thinking about what Jordy had said...that a woman had shot him...a woman?? Could there have been another player in this little drama that nobody knew about?

"Sepia....Sepia? baby, I know how you feel right now...
but I have to ask you something...it'll help me get closer
to solving this mess." I said.

"What? WHAT Kevin?" she sobbed uncontrollably...

"Do you know......do you know ...ugh..ahhh..do you know if
Collette swung both ways?" There I had said it.

"What? Noooooooooo...definitely not, she was into
men...and men only...she didn't run with no women. she was strictly dickly...
not like that..noooooo, why would you ask me something like that?" she said..

"Because Jordy said that a woman shot him...." I said.

"So? He messes with so many women, one of em probably got tired
of his ass and dropped him...that might not have nothin to do with this.? said Sepia.

"When you saw Collette's body at the morgue...did she have both of her shoes on...?"
I asked...

"Yes she had both of her shoes on..why you askin me these wild questions Kevin?"
she said...

I pulled up one of the bags of things we collected from the SUV..There was a shoe in
the bag...a rather large ladies pump...I wondered why I didn't figure this out before...It didn't match what Collette was wearing and the shoe was too large for her little petite feet...It wasn't her shoe.....She had a struggle with someone and in the struggle, that other person lost their shoe. Could this have been a woman? Could this have been the same woman that shot Jordy?

I checked the cell phone for all of the calls made that night...26 were made by Alton to her that day...One call was made to Cock Robbins...Another call had been made earlier in the day to Jordy. I know that Cock Robbins didn't answer the call made to him..She called Jordy in the morning...so she and he had made plans to meet at that club...All of the other calls are from Alton. Not one call was made to or from a woman. The calls from Alton stop at 12:45..they were
all missed calls..She was having sex with Jordy at around this time...Jordy left and she made a
call to Cock Robbins that was never answered.....It was around this time that someone snatched her off the street and murdered her...

"Come on Sepia...get your coat." I said.

"Where we going Kevin?" she asked, wiping away the tears...

"Something I gotta know." I said.

I drove up to Club Escapades.....It was late Monday night, but a lot of these clubs have regulars that come every night...they have nowhere else to go..and I had some questions for them...
We entered the club...There were a few people around and I asked if anyone had been in the club this past Saturday night. Most said no...but like I said in my first case...there was always someone who saw something ,who knew something and was willing to talk. In this case, her name was Louise.

Louise was dark skinned, on the verge of being heavy set...a thick sister who looked like she had once been a hot number when she was young..I bought her two shots of Patron and she began to
talk-

"Yall married?" she asked

"No, we live together." I said.

"Yall make a cute couple, yall should get married..." she said.

"Okay, what did you see Saturday Night?" I asked..

"Well, your friend left out of here with Jordy...and I knew what was up,
he's a dog and he done took a many a woman out of this club before...
he's too cheap to take her to a room, he do em right there in his car or their car...
A lot of them do...any given Saturday...you walk in that parkin lot and cars
just be movin up and down,back and forth and you hear moanin an see windows
steamin up... Jordy and her was kissing, standin right up against that wall...she had
had her hands down his pants and he had his hands in her blouse...They so nasty...
Then they went over to her SUV and they was makin so much noise...you couldn't help
but notice em...This woman was standing across the street...and she dialed her cell
phone...I figured she was calling her girlfriend to talk about it. Anyhow, after about an
hour..Jordy started fixin his clothes and he got in his car and pulled off...She was on her cell
phone and the woman walked over to her car and started fighting with her, beat her good..
I think she was one of Jordy's other women." she said.

"So then what?" I asked...

"I went inside...my man Big Lenny had just rolled up...When I come back out, a half an hour later to get a smoke...the car door was opened...but there was no sign of either of them." she said.

"What did the woman look like?" I asked...

"Lawd Jesus, she was homely....if Jordy was messin with her ,he must met her when he was drunk and horny out of his mind...She didn't look like his type...but she must've caught that girl
with Jordy and beat her up in revenge." said Louise.

"You never seen her before?" I asked.

"Never...an I don't wanna ."said Louise making a face at the thought of her.

"Thanks baby." I said as I grabbed Sepia and got back in the car.

"Where we going now ? " asked Sepia...

"We are going to find Alton...if there was a woman in Collette's past he would know..or maybe
just a woman from his past that was looking out for him..." I surmised.

"I don't know about any woman." said Alton, sitting in his living room in the dark with no music
, no TV, no radio playing...just sitting.. He gave me the creeps. He was too solitary.

"Well, I'm hearing that a woman caught her with Jordy and Collette and that she may be their killer." I said.

"Hmmm, interesting.." said Alton without a hint of emotion.

"The last thing Jordy said before he died was that a homely woman shot him." I said.

"He was still alive when you found him? Aint that a bitch? Well, like I said...I don't know nothing about no woman, but if you find her..thank her for killing that son of a bitch ,Jordy."
said Alton ,laughing maniacally.. Brother needs some help, serious help.

"Yeah,man, I will and I'm gonna catch her..cause I think I know who she is and where she can
be found.." I said.

" Oh You do ? Well if anybody can get to the bottom of this , you can Kevin...you're
smart...but remember, smart could get you killed." laughed Alton as we left and got in the
car. He really gives me the damn creeps.

When we pulled off, Sepia said to me-

"Jordy isn't dead."

I looked at her and smirked-

"I know...I just said that...." I laughed....


(Conclusion Tommorrow......)