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I tried to call both Lorenzo and my father several times, but neither were answering their phones, which made the dull headache that had suddenly appeared intensify. I had no idea where Lorenzo was other than probably somewhere planning to kill my father. I didn’t like my father all that much, but he was my father and I didn’t want him to die. Plus, my mother loved him, and I wouldn’t want her to lose him. And hell, I definitely didn’t want to lose both him and Lorenzo, and if my father was as ruthless as Lorenzo said he was back in the day, neither of them was safe.
My hand shook as I picked up my phone and started to call Angie, but what was I supposed to say to her? That my man was a homicidal former drug-dealing maniac who already tortured Robert and believed our father killed his father and was somewhere seeking revenge? And then I’d have to tell her that evidently, our father was a damn drug kingpin back in the day. So that was what Mama had threatened to tell on Daddy when she threw him out of the house?
Shit, shit, shit!
I had been driving for thirty minutes with no destination. I didn’t know where my father had been living since my mom kicked him out. He wasn’t at our old house. I knew that for sure, because I drove back by there again. Shit!
Then I remembered him saying something about working today, but at which lot? He owned ten across the state, three here in Romey alone.
I pulled into a grocery store parking lot and decided I’d call the one lot I had a number saved for. Maybe they’d know where he was working today.
They did. He was in Romey, thank goodness, at the very first Strickland Motors location on the west side of town.
My nerves were frayed as I made my way there, and my mind started drifting to some places I didn’t want it to go. Questions plagued me like: had Lorenzo known all along that my father was Jaywalk? Was this a game, me and him? Did he use me to get close to my father? After all, I told him early on who my father was, and surely he’d seen the TVcommercials with my father’s smiling face splashed across the screen promising “luxury cars for the everyday man.”
But maybe he hadn’t recognized him. I knew the man in the picture was my father, because I knew my father. But the man in that picture wearing a huge smile and sunglasses didn’t really resemble the man who was now in his sixties. That picture was probably thirty years old, or older, and Lorenzo said that was his only reference to Jaywalk—one picture. I just had no idea that was the picture he was referring to. He’d never met him or seen him in person. His father had done them the courtesy of keeping that part of his life away from home just as my father had. But his mother knew Jaywalk. Did she tell him?
I shook my head as I pulled onto Hickory Street and made my way down the block to Strickland Motors. His mother didn’t want him to kill my father. And if he knew all along who my father was, he would’ve killed him before now, wouldn’t he?
My stomach dropped when I pulled up close to the lot’s building and saw Lorenzo’s Range Rover. On trembling legs, I climbed out, ignoring the eager salesman’s greeting as he bolted out the shiny glass doors to meet me. I didn’t visit my father at work, never had, so the salesman had no idea who I was.
I breezed past him into the building. Walked up to the receptionist, and said, “I’m Renee Strickland, Angelo Strickland’s daughter. Is he in?”
Before she could answer, I heard a voice behind me say, “Doc, what are you doing here?”
I spun around to see my father and Lorenzo standing behind me.
“Uh, what are you doing here?” I asked. Neither looked like they’d been in a fight. No cuts or bruises. They actually looked rather chummy. I thought about the picture I’d left in the car. Was I losing my mind? Was that not my father with Clarence Higgs?
“Baby girl, Lorenzo got here bright and early this morning planning to buy you a car. Now, I told him I couldn’t have that. I mean, I insisted I’d give you one as a wedding gift, but this is one stubborn, determined man you got here.”
I nodded, looked at them both warily, and said, “I know.”
“But he’s a good man and he loves you, and he just paid cash for you a brand-new Jaguar Prestige.”
Lorenzo grinned at me as he held the keys up and jingled them.
I raised an eyebrow. “Are you even gonna let me drive it?”
Lorenzo threw his head back and laughed. “Yeah, Doc. I’ma let you drive it.”
He checked his watch. “Hey, your appointment is in about an hour, right? All this negotiating has me hungry. Let’s grab a snack or something and then head that way.” He offered my father his hand. “Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Strickland.”
Shaking his hand, Daddy said, “The pleasure was all mine. You take care of my baby girl.”
“Always.”
Once outside, I said, “We have three cars here. Which one are we taking to the doctor?”
“The Jaguar, of course. Me and Rell can come get the other two later. Don’t you wanna try your new car out?”
“Yes. But I didn’t need a car, Zo.”
“Doc, yes you did. And you gotta sell that damn Honda or give it to one of your scholarship folks. That car sticks out like a sore thumb in my driveway.”
“Now, who’s bougie?”
