“What is bolita?”
“The numbers.”
I gave Moses a puzzled look. He held out his hand and rubbed it. “You tell me two numbers and give me a dime. If they be right, I give you five dollars the next day.”
“Gambling?”
“Yes, missy. But I never did sell bootleg. I drink it way back then, but I don’t haul it. That be my brother. Only ways I go to jail for half a year instead of him.”
Moses’ connection with the sale of untaxed alcohol wouldn’t help me find out what I wanted to know.
“Why did Floyd Carpenter want to talk to you about Lisa Prescott?”
“I be thinking they call me a thief, but I turn in all my money. But all the talk is about the little girl, asking me what I saw, where I been. I be scared and say nothing. Mr. Tommy Lee, he holler at me and lift up his fist, but he don’t mean it. Next day, I on the street running numbers, just like before.”
“Did Floyd Carpenter suspect you found her on the riverbank?”
Moses shook his head. “I don’t be knowing, only I see his face to this day.”
“Where?”
“In the water. Why do you think that be so?”
It was an unanswerable question.
“Didn’t you tell me Floyd Carpenter gave you a dollar that you threw in the river?”
“Later, he come all the way down on the river where I be staying. I was eating my breakfast when he walk out of the woods with a long rifle on his shoulder. ’Bout scared me half to death. But he talk soft. Give me a shiny silver dollar.”
“Why did he give you the money?”
“He say if I be telling the truth, that dollar will make me a rich man. If I be lying, then I won’t never have nothing. I be poor my whole life except I got my boat.”
“Telling the truth about what?”
Moses pointed to the picture in the paper. “That girl with the yellow hair and blue eyes.”
“Did you tell him then that you found her on the bank and tried to save her?”
“No, the voice in my head tells me something ain’t right. I just shake my head and act dumb, but I be scared if ’n he don’t believe me. So I start sleeping more on the river, but he find me there.”
“He came to see you in a boat?”
“No, missy. Ain’t you listening? His face. It don’t need no boat.” He pointed again at the newspaper article. “He be like her.”
I sat back in my chair and studied Moses Jones in a different way. The old man had lived most of his life haunted by people he’d never harmed.
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” I said after a few moments passed. “All of it.”
He looked at me and bowed his head slightly. I started to offer another consoling word, but the horrid, unjustified malice directed against Moses by Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Braddock hit me.
“Moses, did you know Mr. Floyd Carpenter had a son?”
“Yeah. He be a big-shot lawyer.”
“He’s my boss. And he wants to know everything you’ve been telling me.”
Moses gave me a puzzled look. “Why he care about me after all these years done flowed by?”
“Because of Lisa Prescott. He and another lawyer named Samuel Braddock believe there is a connection between you and the little girl. They see you as a threat.”
“What you mean?”
“You were scared of Mr. Floyd and his gun. They’re scared of you and what you know.”
“Why? I be sitting in this jail and can’t hurt nobody.”
“That’s true. But they think you can harm them by changing the way people in Savannah think about them. The guilt of past generations is chasing them. And that guilt doesn’t ever get tired.” I paused. “Floyd Carpenter was the person responsible for Lisa Prescott’s death.”
Moses’ face revealed his shock. “Why he do that? She not be more than a little thing.”
I rubbed my hand as he had earlier. “For a lot more than a chance at five dollars.”
27
MOSES SHOOK HIS HEAD AFTER I SPENT ALMOST AN HOUR explaining as best I could what I’d uncovered.
“That be too much old thoughts for my brain to hold.”
“I know it’s complicated, but what I really need is your permission to talk to the district attorney’s office about the possible danger to you. The DA’s office could call in the police to investigate, and you could tell Detective Branson what happened that evening on the river. He seems like a good man.”
“You be a nice’un, but out there”—Moses gestured with his arm—“ain’t nobody gonna believe me. Nowadays I may not be strung up on a tree limb, but I never get out of this jail. No, missy, you best keep this to me and you.”