“What role did you play?” Deuce asked.
“I made videos, man. I fucked the bitches. I pimped them out to the streets. I was ground level, all the way.”
I measured his words. “You didn’t have anything to do with Nikki’s death?”
He gave me a look like I’d broken into song. “Nah, man. Nah. I fucking loved Nikki. Loved fucking Nikki. She was a good time. Got tied up with Taj, but she was good people. I knew it was Edrick when she turned up in pieces.”
“And Hector ordered it.”
“Hector didn’t have to. His boy Edrick was, like, an independent contractor.”
Deuce squeezed the pistol. Racked one into the chamber. “You deserve to die.”
“No fucking shit.” He spat blood on the ground and winced.
Deuce eyed me. Lids shaking under the weight of the rage and confusion he likely felt at that moment. Finally, he tossed the gun to me. Dropped down beside our man O.
“Get your man O and get out of here,” he said. “They’ll be hanging out here until they find their way to another residence.”
“This ain’t safe for either one of you,” O said, a lilt of concern edging into his voice.
“We’ll take our chances,” Deuce said. “Ain’t but two more people left to see before this thing is all over with.”
Deuce hung back as I pushed him out to his car, using him as a human shield, just in case something started popping off without warning.
Othello got the door opened and plopped bonelessly into the passenger seat.
“You better get far, far away from here,” he said. “The people wanting to monetize them hoes is going to try to recoup their investment in some form or fashion, up to and including feeding your guts to German Shepherds. Bye now, you son-of-a-bitch.”
I watched them leave, disappear into the distance, and then I receded back into the house.
“They’ll be back,” Deuce said. “We need to be gone when they return.”
A whiff of something unearthly caught me in the nostrils. “No problem there,” I said.
Deuce had one call to make. A friend of his showed up an hour later, rumbling to a stop in what would have otherwise been deemed a rape van by passersby.
“I don’t know where to take ‘em,” the dude behind the wheel said. He carried a towel on one shoulder, which he used to wipe sweat from his forehead.
Deuce plucked what remained of his cash from his wallet and handed it over. “Get them somewhere clean, somewhere safe, and don’t peek your head out until I give you the word.”
Meanwhile, I was sitting outside with the women, me parked on the hood of a beat up old truck, them huddled together as if I might lash out at them with a whip.
Most of them barely cleared the age of consent. Few Hispanic girls. Few black girls. Some Asians. They eyed me with distaste or distrust or maybe both.
“I got cigarettes,” I said, lifting a pack from one pocket, “if any of y’all smoke.”
The youngest of them stepped forward, but another girl stopped her. “Don’t,” she said, eyes flicking toward me.
“What you want?” another asked, stepping out of the human cluster.
Quick few motions of the hand and voila, I had two cigs lit. I held one out, proffering it to the most interested party.
“Help,” I said. “Maybe try to scrape some of the crud off my soul, if you believe in that sort of thing. But hey, no skin off my back if you don’t want a smoke. Free country.”
“I do,” the girl said, breaking free. She swung her unencumbered arm as another captive attempted to snatch her back to the fold. She flicked off the elder of them and plucked the cigarette from my hand. She leaned against the vehicle, puffed expertly.
“I don’t truck with Othello Dufour,” I said to her, just loud enough for the entirety of the group to hear it. Wanted them to. Just hoped I didn’t do something that would backfire.
“He’s a real fucking scumbag,” she said. Obviously the mouthpiece. Slender and dark-eyed, hair tucked into a bun, she was dangerously beautiful. Had the rangy look of someone who’s been through absolute hell.
I tapped the cigarette, watched the ashes flitter away. “Killed that man in there’s brother,” I responded. “Or had him killed, or was instrumental in it. Hell, I don’t know.”
The smoking girl puff-puffed and then flicked her butt into some overgrown hedges. “He’s dead,” she said. “Walking corpse, that one is.”
I snubbed the cherry on the fender and tried to replicate her toss. Didn’t quite get the height. “Oh yeah?”
“Everybody’s always getting fed to bigger fish,” she replied. “Me, to my stepdad, before I ran away. He got kneecapped by some cholos with plenty of hate to spread around. He got fed to the system, and then I did, too. If the mayete with the bloody teeth was meant to deliver us, he’s got bigger worries than the two of you.”
“Let’s hope that’s true.”
She shook her head. “Only means the big fish wants to be in your pond, too. Doesn’t that scare you? Getting chainsawed in a dank bathroom somewhere?”
“I tend not to concern myself with what could happen. What is happening tends to keep me occupied. Like, right now, I’m imagining the peanut gallery over there would like to roundly tear me limb from limb.”
“They’re protective. We’ve been kept in that basement for who knows how long.”
“You seem okay with it.”
She smiled. “I’ve been turning tricks since I was fifteen years old. Don’t a goddamn thing scare me. I had to sell my ass to keep a real Mexican gangster from putting cigarettes out on my naughty bits.”
“And the rest of them? You want to go tell them I don’t mean them harm?”
“Won’t matter. Doesn’t matter, either. You’re just a pit stop on this ride to someplace else. If they don’t get picked up within a month, they’ll end up taking up with a man wants to keep them under his thumb. The little senoritas over there don’t even know what’s going on. Look at ‘em. They’ve still got the dull glisten of hope on their eyes.”
I tried not to look directly, but I nevertheless saw two of them smile, and this wasn’t the upturned corner of a cynic’s mouth. This was pure, untapped optimism.
“They’ll learn,” I replied.
“They’re new. Fresh across the border. They think it’s, like, a few months of Hell, and then they can settle down in some American suburb. They got shit for brains.”
“You got somewhere you can go?” I held my cigarette in the group’s direction. “Somewhere to take them?”
She made a face. Stared at nothing. She shook her head.
“I could give you some money,” I said. “I don’t have much, but you remind me of this girl I tried to help and failed.”
“Don't bother,” she replied. “Save it. Something tells me you’re going to have to make it last until everything is not completely on fire.”
I looked behind me. “How’s it looking now?”
“Worse than before,” she said. “Bum me another smoke? I’ll catch you on the other side of it, all right? I’m good for it.”
“I think the smokes I can spare.”
She started to walk away.
“Hey, you,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“What’s your name?”
“Yarissa. Yours?”
“McKane.”
“Sounds like a skunky beer.”
“Most of my life has been just that, yes.”
Deuce opened the door and peeked his head out. He gave me the thumb’s up and then retreated into the residence.
She held the one she was smoking aloft. “Thanks for the cigs, yo,” she said. “This’ll transfer some good karma your way. You need it.”
“How can you tell?”
“Your eyes look like something dug out of a pile of dirty clothes this morning. You’ve got your eyes open, but you don’t see shit, do you?”
“Most times, no. I just kind of plow through everyth
ing in sight.”
“Sounds familiar. Well, McKane, you take care. I’m going to translate between the black girls and the Hispanic girls, or else they might end up scratching one another to pieces.”
“You go do that,” I said.
Yarissa smiled once, the way people with too much sadness often do, and I wished I could say more. Wished I could do more. Kick in doors and shoot up residential areas seemed like all I was good at, so I left it at that.
Less she had to do with me, the better.
Later, it was me and Deuce, stuck out in the swamp, so he just started talking.
“I think I’ve been hoping this would become more than just vengeance,” he said. “Back of my mind, I always kind of hope I’d be able to parlay this into, I don’t know, some kind of redemption.”
“You can piss and moan about the way you should have done things, but the only thing that matters is how you done ‘em. Perhaps we should just get the fuck on with our lives.”
“I came close to becoming a monster version of myself. I recognize that. I fed on it for a while. I’ll have to live with it. Doesn’t matter if I regret it or not, or if I promise to be a better man from here on in. It’s going to be my cross to bear, and I’m all right with it, if this is the outcome.”
“You got the gunny sack full of guilt to shoulder,” I said, “so you do it just how you please. Me, I’m going to get up and get on with it. I’ll be out in the shed.”
I took the next day to get the antiquated truck running. Putting my automotive skills to work was more rewarding than I thought it would be.
It was one hell of a hard time turning a screwdriver with my right hand while guiding it with my left. Little things, things I used to do so well, now took me double or triple the time to complete. Eventually, though, I got the hang of it and tinkered happily until the engine turned over on me.
Stopped at a local watering hole. Not much to look at, but the beer was cheap and cold-ish, so it would suffice. It was far enough outside the city’s perimeter that I wasn’t preoccupied with being shot in the back of the head. I could sit and stare into my liquid amber, wonder how things had gone so wrong.
Eventually, I looked up and, on the television, I saw one of my wishes had come true.
“Could you turn up the volume?” I said to the acne-scarred bartender, who rolled his eyes but did as I asked. When he turned around, a tattoo of an iron cross appeared beneath his sleeve.
According to the news, I learned our man Rich D had run afoul of the law something fierce. He had been caught securing a prostitute who happened to be an undercover officer.
Or at least that was the cover.
Not the kind of scam I’d expected to bring him down, but it was right close. Something about it smelled bad. Way he carried himself on the boob tube, it was obvious he was turning over on somebody. Had that deer in headlights look, peering over his shoulder like someone might but a couple caps in his ass. And yet, his smile concealed some deeper truth. Maybe a darker lie. If he could work his way into a Witsec program, he’d potentially avoid obligatory assassination.
I drank an extra beer for that one, and Deuce didn’t so much as roll his eyes when I ordered it. He quietly polished off two cheeseburgers and a giant basket of fries.
“What you think’s happened to the girl?” he asked.
I was twisting the paper napkin around my forefingers. “Tyra? Don’t know. Skipped town, if I had to guess. She made it seem like she was people who knows people, so I doubt she’s distraught that her current playmates got taken away.”
“Shacked up with your—”
“Brother?”
I let the word sink in. Still felt bizarre to have it in my vocabulary. Seemed to betray everything I knew, everything I held sacred.
Deuce didn’t bother to interject. He, too, seemed stunned by it.
“I don’t know,” I said. “He—it’s strange. I can’t even say I’ve met the man, but he doesn’t seem like the type to be surrounded by sycophants and schemers.”
“See, that’s precisely who I see standing around him. In fact, that’s the only kind of person I see making hay with that son-of-a-bitch.”
“I get it.”
I was turning a bottle cap over in my fingers. I dropped it on the bar, flicked it into the distance. The bartender gave me a look, but I was beyond caring.
“Feels like we missed something, doesn’t it, Rol?”
I was reminded of a dream I had once. Maybe it was a hallucination. Anyway, it had to do with my mother unraveling a baby blanket, only to reveal nothing inside. At the time, I’d thought it to be some kind of simple metaphor regarding the emptiness of my life, my upbringing. Now I knew what she was trying to tell me.
If only I could talk to her.
“Feels like we missed a whole lot,” I replied.
We stopped at an all-night diner, reeking of mildew and blood. We ate mostly in silence. Well, he did. I drank cheap beer and picked at his plate full of french fries.
Deuce, in his way, already seemed to process his brother’s involvement with perspective. I asked him about it after he ordered a second plate of food.
He responded by saying, “This isn’t the story of a boy who stole some money from a drug dealer,” he said. “It’s a love triangle. He got caught messing where he shouldn’t have been messing. Simple as that.”
His eyes never left the road. That’s how I knew he was playing it tough. He didn’t want to risk shattering the veneer.
“You feel particularly hell-bent on serving his memory by killing the guy who tortured and dissected him?”
He said, “I told you before, and I feel the same way now: he did something awful, and he deserved punishment for it. Way he was brought up should have mitigated the outcome, but it didn’t. Still, I can’t separate the fact that he did bad things from the fact that he was killed. He was trying to get out. He was trying to turn himself around. He was a young man lost, and — I can’t defend his actions. He did some horrible things. But he was my brother, and he had a good heart. He deserved no such treatment.”
We rode in silence for a time. He pulled wordlessly into a truck stop, and I went in for some coffee and cigarettes. I sat at a table in the diner area, trying not to scald my tongue.
The big man came and sat down with me. We didn’t talk at first.
Then, I said, “You sure about that, Deuce?”
“Sure about what?”
He knew. His eyes said so. I didn’t call him on it.
“Your brother. You sure he deserves cracking hell wide open?”
“Door’s right over there, Rol.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. He needs a reckoning in your eyes, I’ll play along. I’ve got no problem with that. But the trail we’ve left behind us is a messy one, and I don’t imagine the final steps are going to be any easier. You think Edrick is going to let us walk in and light him up?”
“Man, I’ve dealt with men like him. Not in Lumber Junction, but back in my ball-playing days. It was pretty common to ante up with scum. You are privy to my past ties with the human STD from UGA. They waltzed in and out of players’ lives through college, and it was even worse in the NFL. It’s a symbiotic thing. They give money and power and open doors, and in turn they get access. They get to feel, for a little bit, like they’re hanging onto the side of the jet as it’s taking off. That’s what it feels like to be on the field in the pro leagues, no shit.”
“And so you think Edrick is some kind of fame whore?”
“No, he’s not that. He walks the line in the darkness of the corridors. But he’s a petty con man. No worse than that walking pile of shrapnel you cut in half in Savannah. Not half as bad, even. That man was a monster, but Edrick. He’s a survivor. He evolves to suit his environment. We don’t catch him now, we may never see him again.”
I gave it due consideration. What would I get from meeting him? A lost link. A chance to see myself from the other side of the looking glass. Suck the fumes
of a life spent chasing family.
Then, I considered it from Deuce’s point-of-view. Here was a man on the verge of brushing off his family to complete a vendetta.
“Deuce,” I began, searching for the words, “I don’t want you to do this. He’s my problem now. You can throw a peace sign to the wind and walk away. He took your brother, but you’ve still got your mom. The rest of your family.”
He chewed at the corner of one fingernail. I could tell he was contemplating it.
I wasn’t far behind him. In my mind, I was already in North Carolina, like John Denver, using a reel ‘n rod to catch Smallmouth Bass. Allison on my arm, the troubles of the last several months a mere glimmer in my rearview mirror.
After a time of mutual contemplation, he said, “Maybe you’re right.”
The seat creaked as I shifted in it. “There’s nothing but suffering down the road we’re traveling. We can keep going, if you want. I mean, I’m here at your behest. But you’ve put some good English on the Earth’s spin, so we could call it a day.”
“There’s still this stain soaking through my head. I can see it when I close my eyes. It keeps me up at nights. I can hear the voices when I sleep. I don’t think there’s a cure for what ails me.”
“It’s called a conscience, old friend, and it’ll dog you for the rest of your days. But I hope you reach the point where you can rest easier, based on the good you’ve done for them girls.”
Deuce rubbed his hands together. He was watching them, peering at their movements like he didn’t know quite what would happen next. “Your whole life, all these forces pull at you. All directions. Like, you’re constantly between opposing headwinds. You think, ‘Man, if I could just see in the right direction, I could get out of this whirlwind.’”
He stopped with the hand rubbing. He brought one giant paw up and ran it over his shaved smooth head. “I see right now what the straight path is, the one I should take, but I can’t help but think of what it looks like down that other tree-lined road. Know what I’m saying, brother?”
I felt a twinge. Brother was not a word he threw around lightly.
“I do.”
“Makes no sense the way we’ve got to struggle to survive. Got me gnawing on the concept of faith like it’s something caught in the back of my teeth. But I reckon you’re right: you get a chance to get off the elevator heading down, you take it, even if it’s between floors.”
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