Read Online One Dead Lawyer by Tony Lindsay - Free Book Online Page A

female’s was not. I hesitated at the first-floor bathroom and heard the shower running full blast. If Daphne was in there, who was in with Stanley? I walked up to the bedroom door and boldly pushed it open.
    Hugged together, butt-naked in my childhood bed were Stanley and Mitch’s daughter, May. Obviously frightened, May tried to roll behind Stanley and hide. He only grinned.
    To me he said, “Man, D, don’t you knock first?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYa heard me, partner! Ya supposed to knock on a closed door!”
    The toothpick-thin irritant got out of the bed and slammed my door, in my face.
    â€œWe be out in a minute; we wasn’t finished. Didn’t nobody disturb you and my mama! Why you come down here bustin’ doors open? Old people be trippin’.”
    I was too taken aback to move. The slammed door froze me, but his words wrapped around me like duct tape. When anger finally freed me from my immobile state, I drew up my knee and readied to kick the door down until his mama, wrapped in a towel, jumped between my foot and the door. “Wait! Let me handle it, David, please.”
    â€œNo. That’s okay, I got this one.”
    I moved Daphne aside and opened the door just in time to see May scamper through the window with her blouse halfway down and shorts halfway zipped up.
    To her fleeing back I said, “You better tell ya daddy before I do. You don’t want him to hear my version!” She landed soundly on the wraparound back porch I had built in the spring. If the porch hadn’t been there, she would have had to jump to the sidewalk. I stuck my head out the window and yelled. “I’m not playing, May. Tell your daddy something!”
    There was no way I could tell Mitch I saw his daughter’s half-naked ass climbing out of my window. However, I wanted to embarrass May enough to be afraid and feel a little shame, because my house is not to be mistaken for The Kiddy Motel.
    The boy was standing there in his checkered boxers with an “I can’t believe you just did that” look on his face.
    â€œYou shouldn’t have barked at her like that. You got her all scared and crying. Man! She probably won’t come back over. Damn! Why you do that?”
    The kid really didn’t have a clue. He didn’t see a thing wrong with what he did, which made me turn my head to his mama. She avoided my look as she walked into the bedroom. A foot belonged up that boy’s disrespectful behind. The thick skin of a leather belt should have met his hind parts. He needed a whipping. His mama should be going to the “country” on his backside, ripping off a tree switch and getting busy.
    Deciding they needed some time alone, I was leaving the room until Daphne tightly grabbed hold of my hand and asked, “Will you stay David? I think we need to talk to him together. It was us he saw.”
    She was tripping; the terrible teen was hers, not mine. What he saw or heard was his mama getting her swerve on. It was a family incident.
    I was intent on leaving until the kid said, “Ain’t nothing to really talk about, Ma. We all adults here. I understand needs.”
    To that I answered, “Only two adults here, boy; that’s me and your mama. You are a child, and you understand nothing of adult needs.”
    â€œI understand enough to know that both of y’all was knocked out, slobbering and snoring all over each other and that didn’t happen because y’all got exhausted watching Oprah. Now did it? The trip is, y’all got y’alls and don’t want me to get mines. Now what’s up with that? From one playa to another playa, Mr. Price, is that right?”
    I was about to tell the minor I wasn’t a player, but his mother once again had the better words.
    â€œPlayer! David is no player! To be a player he has to have played on someone. Do you feel he has played on me?”
    Right before my eyes Stanley went