Little Black Girl Lost 3

by Keith Lee Johnson

Genres: Literary Fiction; Mystery

Synopsis

Acclaimed author Keith Lee Johnson evokes the dark and deadly world of 1950s New Orleans in this third novel from his popular series featuring street-savvy Johnnie Wise. Unafraid to use her assets, young Johnnie has wiled her way into the lives of several dangerous men. She also happens to be connected to three murders. Now that her enemies are closing in from all sides, it seems her luck may run out.

Release date: September 1, 2014

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

Someone was knocking on Johnnie’s front door. She was still wrapping the last minute gifts she had purchased, putting them under the tall Christmas tree she had carefully selected in Zachary, Louisiana, where the trees were grown. Most of the presents were for Sadie and her kids, who were coming over for dinner. They planned to sing Christmas carols, drink eggnog, and spend the night. This would be Johnnie’s first Christmas without her mother, who she now had mixed feelings about. She missed her now that she was dead. Were it not for Sadie, it would have been a very lonely holiday season with Lucas still 135 miles away at The Farm in Angola.

As she walked to the front door, Johnnie wondered why Sadie and her children hadn’t come to the backdoor as usual. She opened the door and her mouth fell open when she saw Earl Shamus standing there. Madame DeMille, the fortuneteller who performed her abortion, had told her he would arrive when least expected. Ironically, it was two years had passed to since the day that he had stripped her of her virginity.

The fulfillment of another prediction scared Johnnie. Her heart was pounding. Anxiety saturated her mind. There she was, looking at the man who had ripped away her innocence, humbling her, removing her purity, turning her into a woman long before her time.

Madame DeMille said I had to confront him and I will. I guess it’s time for me to take care of this shit now. She told me I would experience many hardships and obstacles, but I would triumph over all my enemies because my hardships would open my eyes. I wonder what that last part means.

Johnnie opened the screen door. “Long time no see.”

“Can I come in?” Earl asked respectfully.

“I’m expecting company. How long is this going to take?” she asked, having made up her mind to make every effort to speak proper English from now on. She looked at her watch.

“You expecting that boyfriend you deceived me with? Or are you expecting Martin Winters, my former friend?”

“Come on in, Earl. I see we’ve got some things to say to each other.”

Earl walked in and closed the door. “So you don’t deny sleeping with Martin?”

“I only did what you and my mother taught me to do when she sold me to you. Are you really going to stand there and blame me for what you did?”

“What did I do besides get you this wonderful house, and put beautiful clothes on your back? What did I do besides get you stock in a company that was flourishing? What did I do, Johnnie, besides love you the best way I knew how? And how did you repay me? By fucking my friend!”

“How dare you come to me, blaming me for some shit you did?” Johnnie shouted. “I was fifteen goddamn years old, Earl! FIFTEEN! Don’t come into my house yelling about all the shit you did for me. You should have done that and more. As a matter of fact, they should lock your ass up for raping a minor! What you did is called statutory rape, Earl!”

“But I—”

“SHUT UP! I don’t wanna hear your bullshit! You’re not getting out of this! You came over here! You came to my house!” She folded her arms. “So I’m going to tell you the truth about you, Earl! The truth is you didn’t just want some pussy, did you? You wanted to fuck a child, didn’t you? How would you like it if somebody fucked all three of your daughters, huh? Would it be okay if a sex-crazed insurance man fucked Janet, or Stacy, or Marjorie? Oh, and on Christmas Eve at that! Do you even remember what you did two years ago today; that you fucked me in my mother’s bed? Do you remember me saying the Lord’s Prayer while you pumped me?

“So yeah, I got what I could get out of you! Yeah, you bought me this house! You bought me just about everything I own. But guess what? None of it, and I mean none of it, can replace what you took from me!”

“I’m sorry, Johnnie,” Earl offered without contrition, which was indicative of a conscience that had long since been abandoned.

“I’m not finished, Earl! You know you’re partially responsibly for my mother’s death, don’t you?”

“What? How can you possibly blame me for that? I had nothing to do with that, Johnnie! You’re being totally unfair to me!”

“I can and I do blame you, Earl, because you gave me a taste of the good life.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? I took you out of a rattrap Marguerite called a house and you blame me?”

“You’re too blind to see your own bullshit,” Johnnie said, calming down. “My mother was trying to blackmail Richard Goode because you had given me so much. Don’t you see? A mother’s jealousy often overshadows her love. By doing all you did, by giving me all you gave me, by helping me make some real money, my mother saw her own failure as a whore. Like you, she was blind to her own bullshit, too. Now she’s dead, Earl . . . dead and gone, all because you wanted to fuck a child.”

“What can I do to make it up to you?” Earl said sincerely, finally coming to grips with what he’d done.

Johnnie shook her head in disbelief and compassionately said, “Do you really think you can make it up to me, Earl? Do you really? People are dead because of you—lots of them.”

“You mean the riot? You’re blaming me for that too?”

Enraged again by his need to deny his complicity in the murders, Johnnie screamed, “You goddamn right I blame you for the riot! But I don’t just blame you for that. I blame you for the death of my white uncle and his two sons. See, your sin has spread through the whole damn town. You corrupted me, and now lots of people are dead.” She stopped short of telling him about the murder of Sharon Trudeau, the stockbroker who was murdered by Napoleon’s hitmen after she stole $250,000 of Johnnie’s investment money. Tears formed and dropped. “I watched my cousin Blue kill his brother Beau in a fit of rage. Then I watched Blue put a gun to his head and blow his brains out.

“After that, my uncle tried to choke the life out of me, and my aunt, Ethel Beauregard, shot him in the back of the head and blew his brains and blood all over me. All of this because my uncle Eric didn’t know he was calling his half sister, the woman you knew as Marguerite, a whore that got what she deserved. When he called my mother that, when he talked about her like she wasn’t even a human being, I told him about the whores in his own family, and that’s when the killing began. So yes, you caused their deaths too.”

Crying now, Earl asked, “What can I do? How can I make this right?”

Calm again, Johnnie said, “Go home, Earl. Go home to Meredith. She loves you and only God knows why. Don’t ever come here again. If you return to this place, I won’t be responsible for what happens to you. If you see me on the street, act as if we are total strangers. And in time, perhaps I can forgive you for all that you’ve caused because you didn’t have enough self-control to keep from fucking a defenseless child, a fifteen year old church-going, Bible-believing Christian girl.”

She walked past a whimpering Earl Shamus, whom she had completely dismantled with her truth, and opened the door. “Get out,” Johnnie said in a genteel voice that would otherwise be soothing. “You can cry out there if have to. But this is Christmas Eve, and I won’t let you ruin another one for me.”

Earl turned around and walked out. He stopped in his tracks and turned around to say something, and Johnnie slammed the door in his face. Feeling good in her soul for the first time in two years, she walked over to the sofa, sat down, picked up the phone and called her best friend, Sadie Lane, and cheerfully said, “Everything’s all set! Bring your kids over. This’ll be the best Christmas they ever had!”

After she hung up, Johnnie realized it was time to visit Marguerite in her mausoleum. She had a number of things to say to her too. Earl Shamus was wrong, but so was her mother. The things she had to say to her mother could wait. Christmas Eve was supposed to be fun and when Sadie and her children came over, fun, was what they were going to have.. . .