After another drink or two, I approached the drunkest pimp in the joint.
“What up, man?” I asked. “I’m meeting up with Hector, and I can’t find the motherfucker. Any idea where he went?”
“Man alive, if you ain’t the whitest sumbitch I ever seen.”
“I’m working with a pimping handicap,” I said. “Hector, where’d he go?”
Dude pointed upstairs, precisely where I didn’t think I could go.
“Hector don’t take visitors during these parties,” he said. He tapped his nose and gave a little cocaine snort. “He’s usually a little, you know.”
“Uh huh. Any chance he comes down soon?”
“Shit, I don’t know. Look at all this pussy wandering around. You think I’m worried with Hector Dominguez?”
He closed his eyes and bobbed his head to the music. I left him to his business and checked out the surroundings. Nobody was watching the stairwell, so I made my way over there.
I waited for a change of song, for the lights in the place to dim, and when they did, I hightailed it up to the second floor.
I explored the space. Up here, there was a whole hell of a lot more of the plantation South stuff than in the main room. Paintings of dead old white people lined the walls. Along one wall, I counted four portraits of people who no doubt fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. It was a bizarre contradiction to the modernity below.
I wondered if Dominguez kept this stuff around to mock the old way, to thumb his nose at it. Maybe it was a way to ridicule the system which had kept so many people weak for so long.
Or maybe he just thought it was funny.
I crept past Confederate flags. Saw crossed revolver pistols above me. Caught sight of a map that included only the states which had fought to maintain the status quo with regard to slavery. It was a museum for the Antebellum South. Hearing a Tupac song over the top of this scene made me smile.
I checked a few doors. Some locked, some not. The locked doors, they didn’t seem to hide anything. I pressed my ear against them and listened. Nothing inside. Didn’t matter. This wasn’t a spy mission.
I came to a spot in the hallway where I heard muttering. People talking from inside. Laughter. Mor murmuring. More laughter.
My hand quaked when I reached for my piece. This could end right here. This could all be over and done within a matter of moments. Wherever Taj was, he would be avenged, even if I didn’t think he would be at peace.
The gun slipped free of the holster. My hand balanced over the doorknob. Ear pressed against the door.
Among the gibberish and verbal noise, I heard two distinct words that stopped me cold.
Lumber. Junction.
Someone in there had said the name of my no account hometown.
Did someone in there know me, know that I was here? Was this preparatory to some violent reprisal for me savaging some people in the Jacksonville underworld?
I leaned in closer, listened more intently. Heard nothing but more nonsense, but I did pick out a few words of note.
Brother.
Georgia.
And the last part: Rolson McKane.
Someone in there did know who I was. Someone in there had my name on his lips. Right now might be the best opportunity to put the scales back at zero.
But I froze. I couldn’t force myself to elbow in.
I needed to know what was behind door number 1. If I blasted them all to human pulp, I’d never find out. I resolved to just open the door, do what I had done when barriers presented themselves and just barge right in. But as I readied myself to turn the doorknob, rustling from the other side sent me scrambling for a nearby hiding spot.
I ducked into a side room and left the door cracked.
Three men emerged, rubbing their noses and patting one another on the back. One dude was Hector Dominguez. One I didn’t recognize. And the third sent me reeling.
He was a black guy, but his face — his face — had the exact proportions and contours as my mother’s. Save for his hair and the color of his eyes, he looked just like her.
There was no mistaking it. I had dreamed or thought about my mother every single day, every single night, for the last thirty years, so there was no doubt in my mind who the man emerging from Hector Dominguez’s back room was.
This man, this doppelganger of someone long dead, snapped his head in my direction, in the crack of the door where I had taken refuge, but I had scuttled around to a dark corner of this office space. I waited there as a shadow appeared, obscuring the sliver of light from the doorway.
I held my breath, gritting my teeth against the urge to hyperventilate, to scream. I shrank back. I winced as the shadow moved. I could not stand it any longer.
And then the shadow disappeared, the door creaking in the wake of retreating footsteps. One of the other members of the crew — maybe Hector Dominguez — asked him something, and this man, he said, “Nah, man. Just a weird feeling, I guess.”
After that, it was just me, cowering in the corner of the room.
I was taken back to the night my mother died. I was six, cowering as I had tonight at the Player’s Ball, but instead of the sound of men murmuring, it was the screams of a woman struggling with the birth of a child that kept me grounded in my spot.
At a certain point, the screams stopped.
Or, at least, the screams of my mother stopped.
My father, however, he didn’t stop screaming. In my mind, in my memories, he didn’t stop railing against God and humanity until the night he was taken away in cuffs for the murder of my mother’s secret lover.
He despaired over my mother. He despaired over the cosmic irony of being bested by the kind of man he considered beneath him. He despaired over the doctor who couldn’t save her. He chased this man, this Dr. Sutton from the house with a shotgun, the man carrying the dead child with him.
Or, that’s what I had assumed all these years.
My presumption was that the act of giving birth had killed him, killed her, and subsequently killed my father and the father of the dead child.
Sometimes I wondered what it might have been like to grow up with a brother, someone who understood my particular plight. I never thought it could even be a possibility. Not once did it ever cross my mind. No one had ever mentioned Dr. Sutton after that, and he had shortly after the incident at my house retired down to…Florida.
Through sheer force of will, I pulled myself to my feet and stumbled out into the hallway, which felt as though it tilted in both directions at once.
Music thrummed rhythmically in my chest as I made my way downstairs. I knocked back shots of Crown Royal and struggled to keep my feet.
The room was empty. All these people dancing and drinking and laughing, and it felt like no one was there. The three people I most wanted to see were absent.
And then, as if out of nowhere, they appeared.
It was then I managed to get a good look at Hector Dominguez. Just like my brother, he was dressed seriously, in a dark navy suit, pressed shirt, and simple red tie. His jaw was set in such a way that made his face look chiseled from ebony marble. He was no joker. He was no pushover. He was the real deal, and I imagined he was near-to-impossible to reach. I’d need to get him back here, where there weren’t so many people.
After I scoped out Dominguez, I noticed his companion. She was beautiful, young, familiar.
It was Tyra, Taj’s old girlfriend.
The hell was she doing here, and how had I not seen this coming?
I ignored the fact that she had played me like fresh records, but just how manipulative she was numbed my drunken brain. If she was here at the party with this man who looked nothing and everything like me, then certainly she knew about the two of us.
All those times she’d slid next to me in the booths at the clubs, it was a ploy. A simple trick. She was not interested in me, in helping the cause, and I had fallen for it, because of course I had.
Stupid.
Stupi
d.
Stupid.
It wasn’t just the deception. Part of me knew she was playing me, but I’d hoped to squeeze some information out of her before the other shoe dropped.
Well, Rolson, meet the fucking shoe.
After I was able to rip my eyes away from her, I noticed another figure moving nimbly through the crowd. It was the host himself, Hector Dominguez, not ten feet from me.
I could have shot him right there. Just up and ended the whole goddamned affair.
Did I do that? No.
My brain was caught in a perpetual loop relating to my newfound revelation. It was practically stuttering over the information, and I had a devilish time getting it back on track.
Kill Hector Dominguez. That was the operative sentence for the night. This had turned from a reconnaissance mission into an assassination.
All I needed was a few hundred witnesses to disappear, and everything would be peachy keen. Unless I wasn’t concerned with getting taken down myself, how I killed Dominguez didn’t even matter.
Dominguez and this man who was my brother met at the center of the dance floor, where half-wits in coats pretended they were too cool for the room. They leaned in to speak a few whispered words, and then they parted.
Simple as that.
My brain practically caught on fire.
Two men heading in different directions. Two men who most definitely had something to do with our ultimate purpose.
Hector Dominguez ran women. Dominguez had people disappeared. Hector Dominguez was in the process of taking Jacksonville over from the old white aristocracy.
This man who looked like — no, was — my brother, held with him the secrets to a whole different world I’d never known existed.
If I followed Hector Dominguez, I could help absolve Deuce of the guilt he felt over being helpless to save his little brother.
If, instead, I took up the search for my brother, I could open an envelope, the contents of which would connect some dots which had remained blank for decades.
I balked. My two most prescient desires were eat odds with one another, and I couldn’t force myself to move. Which way to go? It was like that old Robert Frost poem every high school kid is made to ponder.
Tyra glanced in my direction, and I shielded my face with one of the nearby champagne glasses. She and her “date” sauntered by, none the wiser.
I hoped.
With this sword hanging over me, I watched my brother disappear through the front door, stepping out onto the patio and presumably away from the party.
Hector Dominguez was still in sight, and I decided to make him my definite target.
Deuce deserved this. Everything I needed, all these broken pieces of a fucked-up puzzle, could wait until another time. If I happened to survive this hellish storm, I could spend the rest of my life tracking down my elusive kin.
Another time, I thought.
So, instead of reaching my familial destiny, I took up the trail of one Hector Dominguez, who had ventured down the length of a well-decorated hallway.
I lost him but found a seeming stronghold at the house’s center.
One dude held position outside a door. He was clad in dark clothes and dark shades and looked like one not to be fucked with.
I waited.
Eventually, he stepped aside as the door opened. Dude in an open-necked shirt stepped into frame, rubbing his knuckles. He’d quite obviously been tuning up somebody inside that room.
Perhaps, I thought, at the behest of one Hector Dominguez.
Well, I figured I wasn’t getting any deeper into the house, so I thought I’d check out the room. The whole situation opened up for me when the monster in the shades took off, locking the door behind him.
I needed to see what lay in there.
Could’ve been more evidence. Could have been some of what Hector Dominguez was into. Women. Sex slaves. Shit I couldn’t even imagine. I was basically prepared for anything.
I slunk down the hallway and came to the locked door. It wasn’t an elaborate lock, so I had no trouble jimmying it open with a credit card.
Inside, the room was lit by a half-dozen or so computer screens on either side. Sitting in the middle, bound to a chair, was none other than Victor. They’d given him a good once over, and he was leaking from every orifice that could bleed.
“I told you,” he said. “Tyra is bad news. She’s the one got me put in this chair. She’s the one’s going to get you ganked, if you’re not careful.”
I rested my hands on my hips.
He continued his rant. “You going to help me out of this shit, or are you going to stand there and fucking stare?”
“Can you tell me why Tyra was with Hector Dominguez?”
“I can help you with all that shit. Just get me the fuck out of here. The meatheads told me they was going to give me a break, that if I didn’t please them when they returned, they’d knock me down like an old house.”
“You’re lucky they let you live this long.”
“How optimistic of you.”
“I mean, they’ve been mowing down everybody else. Why not you?”
“Because I’m not a crackhead or a snitch. Or else they think I’ve got some influence Either way, it’s probably what kept me alive tonight. Otherwise, I’d be headed for the sawblade.”
“Tyra ain’t the only question on my mind,” I said.
Victor eyed me. “I figured as much. You must have seen Edrick.”
“Why—”
“Oh, hell, Rolson. Untie me, and I’ll tell you everything. But we don’t have time to sit here and dick around. Now, let’s go.”
We managed to get out of the room without incident. I helped him navigate the main corridor. I lowered him in a chair when he collapsed on me. He’d suffered a concussion, best case scenario, and some pretty considerable trauma, at the worst. He looked as though he might keel over at any moment.
I had to keep him alive. Had to get him to the car. Had to figure out who the hell...Edrick was.
I felt the walls closing in.
“We’re going to take a break,” I said, “and then we’re heading straight for the car. Is that all right with you?”
“And miss dessert? You must be crazy, white boy.”
“Wait right here,” I said. “I’m going to grab Deuce. He’s a hell of a lot stronger than I am.”
“I’ll just sit here and count the seconds draining off my life,” he said. Then he laughed discontentedly.
I slipped along the hallway, listening to the swelling bump-bump-bump of bass and the clink of glasses. The plantation house was labyrinthine, with elaborately decorated walls, covered in expensive-looking paintings.
I ran smack-dab into Hector Dominguez.
Hector fucking Dominguez.
Entrepreneur.
Pimp.
Slaver.
Sadist.
“You enjoying the party, my man?” he asked. His smile was fake but gracious, and his eyes seemed to be searching me, looking for a note of recognition.
“Yeah,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else.
“You’re sweating,” he said. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” I said, repeating the word when I couldn’t think of a response.
Dominguez rubbed one finger under his nose and raised his eyebrows, as if to convey some hidden meaning. I took him to imply he wanted me to share the coke I was obviously doing, and so I nodded and started back toward the party.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said. His two bodyguards flanked him, crowding close to him. He turned and waved them off. “Can you give me a little privacy? I’m trying to welcome this distinguished, if unkown, guest to our little shindig.”
They hesitated, but when he flicked his wrist, they departed and took up shop in a nearby corner. Hands crossed in front of them, eyeing me as a lion watches kids across the barriers at a zoo.
“Forgive me,” he said. Voice smooth as the wine being served at the bar. Up c
lose, he was a bit more unique looking than he was from a distance.
He wasn’t a common criminal. He carried himself like a boxer, light in the shoes and heavy in the shoulders. He was light-skinned and donned a gold grille, so that his smile shone light headlights on a dark road.
“Anybody ever tell you that you look like an associate of mine?” he asked.
“Oh yeah? Who?”
“Oh, I don’t name names,” he said. “Bad business practice. Plus, I don’t think either of us is in a position to start discussing business, am I wrong?”
“I’m K. Laveau,” I slurred, regurgitating the first name that popped into my head.
I suddenly realized I was way more intoxicated than I first thought.
“Well, K.,” the architect of the party and likely human trafficker said, “I am Hector Dominguez. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
He shook my hand with a force I wasn’t prepared for, and then he patted me on the back.
“Now that we are well met,” he said, “shall we get on with the fun before my guests begin to miss me?”
“Sure,” I said. “Absolutely.”
Victor’s fate concerned me. I thought of him lounging on a seat out in the open of this party, just waiting for the wrong person to walk by.
He escorted me through the house, the two of us turning corners and rambling toward some seemingly far-off destination. I was distracted; my breathing was uneven. I panicked, thinking maybe I’d pass out.
This was it. The moment I’d waited for, rapidly approaching in the back room of an old plantation house. Even if it meant taking a bullet in the process, I intended on killing Hector Dominguez right here, right now. No hesitation. No problem. Just death dealt quickly.
We’d left the bodyguards behind, so all I needed was an opening. I had the piece in my back pocket. If we stopped off to do some lines, I could end him and be out of the house before anybody suspected.
Part of me wished it didn’t have to be that way. Deuce yearned to put an end to the business himself. But he’d forgive me. Put a clip in this monster and then slip out the back, never to be seen again. Then, I could get on with my life, pick Jess up from Savannah and take her to a place where we could settle in and become completely anonymous.
He stopped outside a door just off the back main bedroom. Inside a nearby room, moans of pleasure emanated out to us, punctuated by a headboard clacking against the wall.
Dirt Merchant Page 41