As the doors opened, I felt a shift in the air. We were not alone.
The bodyguards smiled and snatched me into the room, a museum of an office space. I got one to the face and a bomb blast to the gut. I toppled forward and felt the nine slip free of my pants.
“Something told me that wasn’t cocaine in your back pocket,” Dominguez said, and he took his turn, kicking me in what had to be the tenderest spot in my ribs.
“Wrong pocket,” I said, and Dominguez laughed.
“Pretty funny guy to be on the brink of death,” he said. “What brings you here?”
“Figured you already knew. How’s business these days?”
I smiled, my blood-red teeth showing, and one of the giants flanking Dominguez swung a glancing blow across my eye. That one would hurt like a bastard in the morning.
“Oh, so you’re the insurgent embedded in the weeds of my private dealings?”
“When bodies turn up half-eaten in the swamp, I wouldn’t consider those private, you sadistic fuck.”
“Did I cancel out a friend of yours?”
I wanted to spit Taj Gaines’s name onto his thousand-dollar shoes, but that’d do no good. It’d only get me killed and the Gaines name on his radar.
With that in mind, I shut my mouth.
“I’m going to assume silence signals assent. Believe me—”
“K,” I said, my mouth bubbling over with blood.
“K? That really what you’re sticking with? Okay, whatever. Anyway, you can’t know how difficult it is to be in my shoes, though I guess you got a little taste of that tonight.”
“You’ll know what it’s like to be in my shoes, soon enough.”
Dominguez smiled at his accomplices. “This guy. Tough as a box of penny nails. Listen, man. I am in the business of protecting myself. You get to a certain level, people want to knock you down a few pegs. It ain’t easy. It ain’t bloodless. But it’s necessary.”
“To chop people into little pieces? To throw their bodies into the swamp, where they get mauled and dismembered?”
“Short-sighted. I am creating my own economy here, and it’s not just benefiting me. I’m bringing people to this country, to this land of bounty, where they can make their own way.”
“By selling their asses to strangers?”
“It ain’t the world’s oldest profession for nothing,” he said. “Don’t give me a sob story. These women, they get the freedom to choose once they’re here. People always be throwing around the word ‘human trafficking’ and ‘sexual slavery’ like I’ve got them in chains. No damn such thing.”
He turned and held a finger in the air, as if he’d just discovered something. “If I wanted to do that, I certainly could. It’s a fine balance, and I’m the man toeing that line. I do what I must for my own benefit and my own safety, but everything else is beyond my concern.”
“I think you’re concocting bullshit to make yourself feel better.”
He shrugged. “Haters gonna hate, I suppose. Anymore questions before we get this thing on the road? I’ve got guests to entertain, and they get rowdy, once the night wears on.”
Then everything went apeshit.
Off in the living room. bbShots fired. Someone screamed, and then a whole group of people screamed, and then everyone was screaming. It wasn’t quite a stampede, but people moved with some urgency toward the exits.
“Take him out back and put one in the back of his skull. You know what to do after that. Heads and hands, and then, whoo-whee, out into the swamp he goes.”
The two goons led me toward the rear of the house, where Victor was supposed to be waiting. The two big bastards had my gun and my arms pinned up, so there was little to nothing I could do to get them the fuck off of me.
One of them slipped away and banged against the wall, knocking an expensive-looking painting to the floor. The dude unknowingly sent one foot through it as he pivoted toward a fist that knocked him clean to the ground.
The other bodyguard let me loose, and it was then I saw my savior. Deuce, as always, had my back. He must have seen them dragging me off to my imminent execution.
The one that looked like Ving Rhames went for his pistol, and Deuce punched him in the throat. He dropped the .45 like it was possessed and brought his hands to his neck, but Deuce was already in the process of slinging an elbow at him.
Meanwhile, I was dealing with the older, thinner yes man. He managed to get his gun shucked from the holster, but I caught his hands and slammed his fist against the wall. A second and a third, and he grunted. Something in his knuckles tore free.
He forced the gun-butt forward, smacked me on the face. Blood welled on my forehead. He clenched his teeth, straining the barrel for a shot at my head.
Had to keep his hands off the trigger. I pushed with all my weight, lunging with my legs. We toppled forward, me pushing the gun out and up, toward the floor. Landed knee-first, crushing his man-goods. He screamed, blew a mouthful of whiskey breath on me. He was drunk. He was shit-faced, and he was going to lose this.
He managed to pull the gun back in my direction. Popped me again, sent my nose sideways with a glancing blow. Drip drip drip of my nose letting loose.
I snapped my head forward, trying to break his face. It opened my split forehead a bit more, but I crushed his nose like a full pimple. His grip went limp. I snatched the gun free and pistol-whipped him until he gurgled a muted surrender.
I caught sight of Deuce manhandling the bulky, tatted strongarm. Slugging him in the guts. Working over his face. Shaving him down to a nub of a human being, so he wouldn’t be able to get back up.
Maybe we’d have to kill these two. Maybe they’d have to go down completely. The house was clearing out, and if we didn’t make it out with them, we might end up getting tossed aside and forgotten completely.
But the guy wouldn’t give up.
I brought the butt of the pistol hard down on the side of his head, then aimed directly at his temple. “Another move, and they’ll be washing your brains off the walls with a water hose.”
He crumpled, defeated, and expelled a disappointed breath.
“Y’all can have it,” he said, huffing and bleeding all over himself.
I ejected the clip and pocketed it before tossing the weapon down the opposite end of the hall. Deuce did the same for the other weapon, and then we made our way for the exit.
People were everywhere, which was good. They didn’t seem to notice me sweating and bleeding. People had their handguns drawn. Pimp cups littered the ground. Women pressed against one another, trying desperately to head for the doors.
Someone yelled. Another shot fired off nearby, and the stampede resumed.
I fought the crowd, trying to get a good look. I caught an elbow to the chin and dropped. People stepped over me. People stepped on me. I covered my head and waited.
More gunshots, this time fired into the air. I heard a guy screaming, gurgling, trying to hold his blood in and doing a pretty shitty job of it.
I caught a few more incidental kicks to the head and legs and then managed to scramble away. The room was filling with bodyguards and other gat-carrying folks.
Hurrying back the way I came, I found Victor nodding off where I’d left him. I threw one of his arms over my shoulder and helped him out through a side exit.
Amongst the crowd, I searched for my brother and Hector Dominguez. I figured with all the commotion, I could put a round in each of them and be done with this business.
I peered up at the backlit second floor windows. The gunshots might have been a ploy, a smokescreen so they could reset.
A human flamingo jumped atop the trunk of somebody’s Cadillac and thrust his cup airward. “Looks like we had to make a little bit of a sacrifice to the Gods of Pimping,” he said, revealing a mouthful of gold teeth. “Little price to pay for the pleasures of our business, am I wrong?”
A smattering of cheers.
“I said, ‘Am I wrong?’”
A slightly m
ore enthusiastic response.
“Now, once they get that nigga’s skull cleaned up off the floor, we gon’ head back inside and finish up the good time we started. Ain’t we?”
A widespread collection of cheers.
“I said, ‘Ain’t we, motherfuckers?’”
A huge cheer this time. A random partygoer yelled out, “What about five-oh?”
The human flamingo laughed. “Nigga, we a bunch of black men on a plantation. The only difference is, we own this son-of-a-bitch.”
He drew a small caliber pistol with a pearl handle and fired into the air three times in quick succession. He said, “We got nothing but air and space as neighbors. So long as you sons-a-bitches haven’t called the cops, ain’t nobody called the cops. Y’all the cops, niggas?”
“No!”
“Then let’s get our black asses back inside and pop the Cristal.”
“Hold up!” somebody said.
“We got some double-oh-sevens inside, trying to make a mockery of our get-together. They been tampering where they shouldn’t be tampering, and so it’s time for us to head back in and settle up.”
Every exit was blocked by either a crowd of people or a gun-toting bodyguard. People were moving tentatively in that direction. It seemed no one actually wanted to continue the party.
“Come on, honkey,” Jermaine said, snatching at the corner of my velour jacket. “You don’t get your ass in the car, I’m-a leave you here with these motherfuckers, I swear to God.”
As I slipped into the backseat, I took one last glance at the house. Deuce dropped heavily into the front seat, and we were off. Victor slid into the seat beside me. Jermaine kicked the car into drive and pulled away.
At the residence’s outer edge, we approached a closed gate. Jermaine rolled down the window, and a dude in all black stepped out to greet us, although greet seemed like an inopportune word.
“We headed out,” Jermaine said. “Somebody fired off some shots, and we ain’t about that shit. We’re going where we don’t have to risk our lives for some of that good-good, know what I’m saying?”
He pulled a Mag Lite and flicked the button, peeking into the car. He pointed the beam first at Jermaine, then at Deuce, and finally at me and Victor. He didn’t appear to buy our bullshit excuse, but we held quick to the idea.
He stepped away, pressed his finger to his ear and engaged in a brief conversation with someone on the other end. Then he came back to the car.
“All right,” he said. “Y’all go ahead.”
We pulled forward and waited, but the gate didn’t open.
After a minute or so, Jermaine honked the horn and held both of his hands out, stretching one out of the car window, as if to say, “What the hell?”
“Calm down, man,” I said cautiously. “I don’t know this is going to end well for us.”
Jermaine said, “Trust me, homie. I got this.”
He honked the horn again, and the security guard appeared at the door.
The guy, who was as big around as he was tall, strolled out to the car. He knocked on the window, and as Jermaine rolled it down, the cab exploded with light and sound. I ducked down into the floorboard and listened.
Two more shots. The engine revving. Tires barking as we slammed into the gate.
Shots echoed from behind us, and one round glanced off the car. We disappeared into the wooded path before any real damage could be done.
Jermaine tried to talk, but all that came out were gurgled consonants. Deuce turned and pointed at his throat. Jermaine had been shot in the neck.
Deuce lunged into the driver’s side and pressed both hands to the wound, trying to staunch it. “Just keep driving,” he said. “Once we get out of the woods, we can get somebody to fix you up. All right? All right, man?”
Jermaine nodded, but the sounds coming out of him made it impossible he’d make it anywhere at all. He tried to keep his foot on the pedal, but it was not a long-term solution. He was fading fast, and the gurgling slowed to a low, sonorous rasp.
I could only clench the backseat and hope for the best. I turned and looked for approaching cars, and though headlights flashed through the night, they didn’t appear to get any closer.
We pulled to a stop a mile down the winding path leading out to the main highway, and Jermaine slid bonelessly to one side, trying without much luck to communicate with us. It was all broken consonants, and I tried to make it better by repeating “I know, man. I know,” over and over to him as the car rolled forward.
Deuce pushed Jermaine out of the car and slid into the driver’s seat.
“Christ, this whole side is covered in blood,” he said.
He shut the door and stomped the gas, the whole car filling with a harsh, coppery scent. I turned and looked. A faint lump lay in the road behind us.
Poor Jermaine.
“We need to get off the road,” Deuce said.
“This is as secluded as it gets. We could pull off the road—”
“And have them set up shop and wait for us? Nah, Rol.”
“Then drop the hammer.”
He did, and the trees skipped by at a near-hallucinatory rate. I climbed into the front seat and pulled my phone from the glove box. I texted Reg: Drop out of sight. Distance yourself from Jermaine. Don’t meet up with anybody who gives you the heebie-jeebies.
I got no response, but then again, I didn’t wait for one, either.
I tried to get Victor to rouse so we could discuss, among other things, the existence of my brother. Unfortunately, he was out. Eyes closed and drooling. Probably had a concussion, which wasn’t good, but there was nothing I could do right now, so I let it go.
I’d just have to ask him later.
“Dominguez,” I said, noting the name with a smirk. “Hector Dominguez was there, and we didn’t get him.”
Deuce called his mother from my throwaway. We’d stopped at an all night truck stop, parking around back so people couldn’t see the blood.
I gave my friend his privacy and perused aisles upon aisles of useless garbage people think is necessary on road trips. I got bored with checking nutritional facts on chicharrones, so I bought a pack of smokes and puffed meditatively on a cig as I watched people enter and exit.
It was inevitable that my mind play the incident from the plantation house over and over again, like a busted DVD trying to skip over scratched scenes in the movie.
I could justify it being coincidence here, save for one salient fact: he looked just like my mother. He had inherited her eyes, her cheekbones, the gentle slope of her nose. Put a wig on him, and he’d pass pretty convincingly for her, save for the skin color.
Other people had intimated someone who favored me was bouncing around Jacksonville, but I considered it the kind of coincidence that doesn’t bother most people. “I feel like I recognize you” is a statement not too uncommon these days, especially with the internet putting more people and more faces in front of us.
The idea itself filled me with equal parts intense loathing and hope. I had wandered unattended by familial love for decades, at this point, so even for a prospect of him being family to exist gave me a weird, existential jolt. The chance, I was convincing myself, was infinitesimal, but it existed. He could be a stranger who only favored my mother, and it would have given me similar feelings.
So I allowed myself to bask in this remote possibility.
At some point, Deuce returned. He looked terrible. “They’re going to stay with a cousin up near Atlanta.”
“When?”
“They’re leaving right now.”
“Good.”
“She didn’t even ask any questions. Just ‘okayed’ every time I said something, and then the conversation was over. Told her I’d call her when I thought it was safe, and she just said ‘okay’ to that, too. I asked her what was going to happen with Uncle Mino — the funeral arrangements — and she didn’t even sound like she understood. She’s in a bad way, Rol.”
“I imagine she i
s.”
I tossed my cig on the ground and stepped on it. “Well, let’s go ahead and get this shit over with. I’ve got a date with a pretty girl to attend to.”
“She’s got Willie with her,” he said.
Deuce’s mother had gotten attached to the rug-soiling machine. Whenever she left the house, he obediently jumped in the car, turning around and staring out the window at me, as if to taunt me.
She fed him and let him out. Before the house had been shot to hell, she’d discussed installing a doggie door. He normally looked so miserable, but recently he bounced around like a puppy.
“I’m all right with that,” I said. It seemed like that damned had chosen me, more than the other way around, so if he decided to wander off with someone with a more stable life, I couldn’t resent that. He’d probably outlive me, at this point.
Deuce exhaled. “Let’s put Victor somewhere safe and get off the road ourselves. That all right with you?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You got anything to add to that?”
I considered it, then started walking off toward the car. “I think I have a brother,” I said.
4
It was not without reservations that I called Detective Hunter. He was my lifeline to the straight world, I supposed. I started by asking him if I had a brother, but when he responded by laughing and asking if it were a joke, I pushed that particular concern aside.
He got right down to business with his conversational hobby horses. I wondered how long he had been waiting to unload all of this on me. “I’m going to be honest with you,” he said. “They’ve got your blood at a Savannah crime scene. There’s plenty of it in the basement of the Bellerose compound. How’s your hand?”
“It’s not news to you, I guess.”
“No. I thought maybe you would get to it on your own, but you’ve proven exceptionally dense in ferreting out information that’s out in the open.”
“What’s your take, Hunter?”
“I’m not convinced you killed a whole room of people while losing some fingers in the process. There’s a whole host of people itching to talk to you, so please don’t misinterpret my casualness as some acceptance of your status as a fugitive.”
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