“I’d rather not.”
“And maybe you don’t make my business your business, either. What I’m doing’s the real deal. I make music. I make movies. I’m an entertainer and an entrepreneur. My business, it’s as American as apple fucking pie.”
He was speaking adamantly, like a preacher rising to a fiery, religious crescendo, but he wasn’t angry. Firm. Savvy. Defiant. But not angry.
And yet, it didn’t pass the smell test, unlike his sheets on the bed. He was hiding something, but I didn’t quite know what yet.
“There’s a difference between freely selling pussy and being forced to, and that’s some shit I’m not digging on. I don’t even like the, uh, the insinuation that’s getting laid at my feet right here. In my own house.”
“Thought it was a studio.”
“Shut the fuck up. You fucking kidding me right now? You got them boys of yours out in a car, waiting to bust up in here any minute?”
“No lies here,” I said. “No bullshit. Taj Gaines is the tip of the iceberg. At first, I thought he was killed because he was involved in the gangs, just got caught up in the lifestyle. I went from that to thinking maybe he got ahold of some money wasn’t his, and he was popped for hiding it. Now, I’m not so sure about that, either. I think — and just stop me if I get close — there is some heinous, soul-killing business happening down here in Jacksonville, the likes of which should make national attention, but nobody’s blown the lid off it.”
“That’s quite a fucking accusation you’re throwing at this fine city.”
“I’ll go you one step further: Taj Gaines was going to be the one taking the lid off it, and that’s why he was chopped into little pieces.”
“Huh. That why his brother wasn’t ballsy enough to come out and say that himself? Or is he afraid his reputation” — a little laugh — “might be dampened by it?”
“Deuce is dealing with some other issues. Nothing for you to be concerned with, of course.”
“Not that I would.”
“I’m doing this as a favor to him. He shouldn’t have to be doing this. His brother’s been slain. He’s helping to keep his family pieced together, and it’s a full-time gig.”
“You sure he ain’t hiding out from the tax man?”
“As sure as I can be.”
“Your buddy, he got a, well, a standing of ill-repute around here. Really, anywhere he went. He’d go and dry up his luck. Bet on games. Bet against his beloved Saints. Lose it all and have to be kicked on the ass to get out of town.”
At this, Rich D leaned forward, as if for emphasis. He clasped his hands together, beads of sweat forming at his temples. “You ask me, Taj Gaines is a pawn in his brother’s fuck-ups. He ended up being the collateral in a deal your friend couldn’t pay off. Gang bangers don’t chop people up. They shoot them. Drop a couple caps in a nigga’s ass, and then they disappear. They don't take the time it takes to saw a body up. That’s messy business. That’s some real gangland nonsense, you ask me.”
He leaned back, put his feet in their former position.
I said, “You know anything about that?”
He considered this. “Dixie Mafia? Greaseballs with Italian names, maybe? The white sheets and the Klansmen are getting hot down here again. Seems like they don’t take kindly to having a homeboy for president. Got the North Florida freaks, religious zealots, and Republican hit men all riled up.”
“So you don’t think this is the work of the Black Reapers?”
“Might be,” he said. “They’ve been branching out, and so perhaps they feel a specific and newfound penchant for extreme — and I mean extreme — violence. Plus, your boy Taj was having too much fun playing with the monsters to get a true wake-up call.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“TG was playing gangster like that little kid with them beasts from Where the Wild Things Are. Thought he was being real smart, thought maybe he’d get a beating and get out. He didn’t get a chance for that.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t gangs.”
He shrugged. “Niggas talk. They don’t leave a man’s reputation to simmer. If they did it, it’ll get out.”
“And so if you know that, how come you can’t lay a name on me?”
“What would be the fun in that?”
“You, not getting your skull cracked in.”
“My, that would be fun, I have to say. Can’t wait to see you try.”
With that, I got up, nodded once, and ventured back down the hallway.
“Good to chat with you,” he said, brandishing a mocking tone. “Come again, maybe we can talk music.”
Rather than exit through the front door, I turned left into the fancier of the two studios. Locked the door behind me, looked for the most expensive piece of equipment.
“The fuck you doing, white boy?” Rich D asked from the other side of the door.
“Deliberating on whether or not to stab this mic stand right here through your console. You give me a name, and that doesn’t happen.”
“It does happen, and I’m going to have my bulldog here break your arms and your legs.”
“Fine, but you’ll still be replacing a piece of equipment probably cost you — how much — ten thousand? Twenty? Thirty?”
“You won’t do it,” Rich D said. “You ain’t got the huevos.”
“Last chance.”
“Do it, then. I dare you.”
I picked up the mic stand and brought it down like an axe. A satisfying crunch of broken plastic, leaving a gash running down the console’s middle.
“Ooh,” I said, “That sounded expensive.”
“You motherfucker. I’m going to have you fed to a gator, piece by piece.”
“Give me a name,” I said. “Someone you think might have had the capacity to do this to Taj Gaines. I’ll walk out of here, no harm, no foul.”
“I won’t say you’ll walk out of here with no harm.”
“Give me a name, and you can do what you want. I’ll even open the door.”
Long pause on the other side of the door. The sound of fist on wall. “Antwan Letton.” He spelled out the name, letter by letter, and I committed the name to memory.
“What about him?”
“He makes bodies disappear for the Reapers. Open up, McKane, and I’ll tell you more.”
“No violence?”
“No violence. Just don’t break my goddamned console any more than you already have.”
Keeping the mic stand handy, I reached out and unlocked the door. Big man took a step forward, but caught him right on the chin before he was able to react. He went to the ground, spitting blood and teeth and cursing with every syllable. It was a high-pitched mewling for such a big man.
D had something in his hand, maybe a gun. I slammed the base of the stand against his chest, and he dropped the item, wheezing. He slid to the ground, wrapping one arm around his chest.
I picked up the weapon, racked a round into the chamber, and pressed the barrel against his temple. The big man behind me rolled around on the floor of the studio, moaning at the state of his ruined mouth.
“Tell me what Antwan has to do with anything,” I said.
“I worked a video shoot where Antwan was present. He’s an unmistakable dude. Got two sleeves of tattoos running the length of his arms. Got ink on his face, too, but you won’t be paying attention to that. His eyes make you think there’s a devil — a for real devil — and he lives inside that dude’s body.”
“Why do you think he might be involved?”
“They mentioned him on the set. Whispered about his predilection toward violence. Indicated how perverse he was, how he liked to cut people into pieces. He’s a real sick puppy, if what his homies say is true. He doesn’t just get rid of bodies for the Reapers; he enjoys it. Gets off on it. Whenever the Reapers need some people intimidated, Antwan is the guy to do it.”
“Know where I can find him?”
“The shadows? I don’t know, man. I just wor
ked the video shoot with him.”
“Anything else you want to tell me?”
“Yeah. Insert a rifle in your asshole sideways and pull the trigger. That sum it up?”
“I’ll be checking back in with you.”
“Looking forward to it.”
“Oh, and I’m taking this piece, just as a precaution. My name gets floated around your people, and I’ll make sure you get tied to something bad with this weapon.”
“I ain’t no fucking snitch, man. If I’m-a do something, I’m-a do it myself.”
Outside, the sun was shining down, as if nothing whatsoever was happening in the shadow’s of humanity’s back alleys.
11
Reg was a wonder to look at. Whereas most people wore their discontent like a sweater dunked in water, Reg turned his anxiety outward, into actions, into words. He was constantly moving, a one man universe expanding in all directions. When he wasn’t talking or moving, he was moving something else. Stacking papers or magazines on a nearby table, rolling up blunts for future use. He chewed his fingernails and brushed his hair incessantly, and only at times when it seemed as though he wanted to talk but couldn’t find the means to do so, so he got the calories burned in other ways.
Deuce could be described as Reg’s equal and opposite force. He moved as though being worked by internal gears. He didn’t move fast, but he didn’t stop moving, so he never came off as a human iceberg. He just kept the energy level constant, a marathon runner of daily actions. Nothing was wasted. Everything had a purpose, from the way he pressed his palms together in faux prayer when trying to get across an important point, to how he rapped his knuckles on the bar next to his beer when he was thinking.
That was changing. The man I knew was slow to reaction, slow to anger, slow to violence. That was true no longer. The calm eye at the center of the storm had begun to swirl and produce thunder. The light pouring out of him had had dimmed, making room for a different, harsher illumination, resulting from an inner brew of smoke and fire.
A few times, he lost himself around me, became distant. I’d seen people succumb to dementia, and he was sometimes possessed of that same sterile, soulless glare. Then he’d shake it off, rewind the clock a few seconds and return to his current mission, knifing some mayo onto his sandwich or whatever. Only these days, if you listened closely enough, you could hear his teeth grinding.
He wasn’t going to step right out of his head and divulge all the carrion that was hiding out in that crypt. He expected me to do the work, pulling it from him like abscessed teeth.
Reg outfitted us with gloves, caps, and weapons. I got a .38 snubnose revolver.
It was times like this I wished for my old .45. Plenty of gun for every chance encounter.
We traveled to the location where we had interrogated the two meth heads.
“You getting a fit of the heebie-jeebies here, Rol?”
“I think my heebie-jeebie-meter is running a little slow right now. What sense are you getting out of this place?”
“It’s all static on my end,” Deuce said, but the look in his eyes told me something different.
“Deuce, what have you got? Impressions — anything — will help out.”
“Something fucked up happened here,” he said. “Right over there.”
I followed where he had pointed and found myself looking at the source of the fire, the most burned-out, destroyed section of the house.
“Not likely they’ll be back?”
“Not unless it’s at gunpoint,” I said. “This is a coop well-flown, if I had to guess. Any pertinent information we might have been able to dig up is long gone.”
I covered my shoes with plastic bags I found under what remained of the sink. I only had to look underneath all the roaches. I tied them around my feet and proceeded to the center of the maelstrom.
The burned-out area was about ten feet in diameter. Someone had covered this part of the living room in lighter fluid or gasoline and tossed a match on it. Above the source of the fire, the ceiling had severe smoke and fire damage.
“Looks like they got a bonfire treatment.”
I peered around the folding chairs, looking for clues. What I at first had thought to be charred cushion or pillow material turned out to be charred human flesh. Stuck to the metal like rib meat unchewed from the bone. Through this discover, the smell became intolerable.
“Question is,” Deuce said, “if they killed them here, why wouldn’t they just leave them on the chairs? That would have been a fairly evocative image to have somebody run into.”
I didn’t know the answer to that question, but something told me it had to do with a sadistic urge on the part of the killers to scare off people like us.
We called Javvy, who met us at a run-down motel near the drug den. He was puffing diligently on a half-cigarette while a handful of prostitutes talked him up.
“Sorry to interrupt your date,” Deuce said, as he got in.
“Half those girls are trans, man, and I’m a forward-looking dude, but I ain’t that forward-looking. Still, some of the, they look fuckable, know what I’m saying, and it confuses the hell out of me. Like, there’s this one girl, Cherita, works at a titty bar down the way, and—”
“You got any bead on Benji and Yakamura?”
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, I — no. No, man. They, well, did you check the house I showed you?”
“All burnt up,” Deuce said. “Somebody took gasoline to that place and didn’t look back.”
“Probably for the better,” he responded. “I heard some real low-down shit happened in that place. Like, women getting turned out for the first time kind of stuff.”
“Any cops been by?” I asked. “Any investigation into the fire?”
He looked from Deuce to me. “This is news to me, homes. I didn’t even know it had gone down like that. I’m as surprised as you, honestly. Nobody gives two wet turds about the property on this side of town. People been wanting to gentrify it, so the sooner the ‘ethnic’ element is out of the picture, the sooner they’ll be able to make it whiter for the middle class. Turn it into a real respectable neighborhood for all the white folks moving down south.”
Deuce turned onto an abandoned street, the wind blowing a lone McDonald’s cup across the street, and said, “You said some prostitution took place at the location.”
“Right on, man. I didn’t stutter on that account.”
“What else can you say?”
“It’s like a horse stable,” he replied. “They—”
“Who is the they you keep mentioning?”
“Reapers, man. This is their hood. You want to know who is doing dirt here, just autocorrect your brain to say ‘Reapers.’ Reapers this, Reapers that. They run this neighborhood. They’re getting pushed a little ways down by the cops — trying to enforce that new property build going on down the street — but they still got a stranglehold here.”
“And this is where they do what, exactly?”
“Girls come in—”
“From where?”
“Georgia. Alabama. Fucking Ohio, I don’t know. They come to Florida in hopes of making it to Miami, getting to be Hawaiian Tropic girls and whatnot, who knows, and anyway, they get as far as Jacksonville and run out of money. They figure they can hold out for a little while, until the money rolls in, and then they can get out. Only, they don’t get out. They start stripping. Then somebody with an eye for the newcomer offers them a little extra to get a little extra, then pow — they’re in.”
“And the house?”
“They get turned out there. They get a pimp. Some of them get fucked into the gang. Can’t be gangbangers, but they can sell out to help the cause. You see the upstairs bedroom?”
I shook my head. Deuce only stared forward.
“Smells like bleach in there. They just hosed that place down, brought in the girls and the johns and let them have at it. Don’t even have to fuck with a seedy motel. The girls get turned out right there don’t get far. S
ome of them have come far, though.”
“Like, not from around here?”
“Like, run for the border, man. They get trucked in, or whatever, and they got nowhere else to go. They don’t speak-a-the-Ingles, and so they just do whatever to survive. That’s real as this town gets, fellas, and I try not to get caught up on that. Speaking of not thinking, you guys mind?”
He pulled out a j and sparked up in the car. The cab filled with a cheap dank I’d come to recognize. It wasn’t the clinical-grade weed starting to crop up in the more refined areas of the US, but a kind of skag you’d be hard-pressed to get a good, clean high from. Javvy, it seemed, wasn’t in a spot to afford the good stuff.
“So, do you know who brings those girls in?”
“Oh, they come from all over. They’re, like, you know, drugs or guns. They get hustled into this game and tossed around to be used by the underground, and then they’re thrown away.”
“Do you know where we can find one of these coyotes?”
“Not really, man. They’re shady as the underside of a tree. They specialize in not being seen, and I don’t try to be fucking with them folks. They’re right loco, homes.”
“And the girls? You know any of them?”
He held his arms outstretched, a joint-sporting Jesus figure. “They’re all around us. You know where to look and how to ask, you’ll be able to track one of them down. Don’t expect them to be telling you anything of importance, though. They’re, um, they got that thing — what you call it? Where they love the men who do that bad shit to them?”
“Stockholm Syndrome?” Deuce ventured.
Javvy broke into an uncharacteristically broad smile. “That’s right. That’s right. Except here you might call it Stockholmes Syndrome.”
“Imagine how funny you could be if you laid off the pipe, man,” Deuce said.
“I’d rather lose my sense of humor.” But he never lost that smile. “You can let me out right over here. I spend too much time with you cats, I might end up in a trash can.”
“I thought you lived in a trash can.”
“Ha. Ha. Fuck off.”
We left him on a street corner, and he disappeared into the darkness, the orange ember of his joint lighting up and going dark, just before we pulled away.
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