I pulled out my phone and summoned an Uber. A round freckled face appeared on the screen. “You know I can do that for you, and rig it so you don’t have to pay, right?”
“I know that, Dennis, but I would prefer to save your interventions for when I actually need them. I am perfectly capable of paying for a taxi service.”
“Sure, whatever, bro. Just saying, if you need anything done on the internet, I’m your guy. It’s not like those fingers of yours are the nimblest things in the world. Your ride’s almost here. Later.” Dennis’ face vanished into the maze of electrons connecting almost every digital device in the world. When his body was murdered close to a decade ago, Dennis’ soul had been cast into a cell phone. The phone had an internet connection, and in a real-life version of Tron, Dennis became truly a ghost in the machine, and an invaluable, if temperamental, asset to me and the other members of the Shadow Council.
A black SUV pulled up to the corner, the familiar black and white sticker on the windshield marking it as a car for hire. I opened the door and leaned in. “Are you Matt?”
The man behind the wheel looked me up and down and said, “I am. Are you Adam?”
I slid into the front seat, pushing it as far back as possible. My knees still pressed up against the dash, a situation I was well-acquainted with. “I am Adam. Do you know the address?”
“Not really, but the GPS will get us there,” the man said. “It looks like it ain’t the best neighborhood. You sure that’s where you want to go?”
“An old friend lives there. It was a very different place when he first moved in.” I didn’t mention that my friend first moved to the neighborhood in question over fifty years ago or that he cared little about the condition of the sidewalk or the dilapidated state of his eaves and shutters. My friend was a blind sorcerer and saw the world only through his Second Sight. He was also one of the most dangerous practitioners of battle magic I had ever known, so I was not at all concerned about a few drug dealers and gangbangers on his block.
The driver was correct, though. The neighborhood had declined precipitously since my last visit. There were several cars on blocks stationed along the street, and a collection of young men sat on the stoop and porch of the house across the street from Oliver’s home. They watched my approach with undisguised mistrust, and I saw one step inside the house and return with a sawed-off shotgun as we pulled up to the curb.
“Look, man, no offense, but I don’t think I’m gonna wait around for you. If you wanna bail and have your friend meet you someplace else, we can cruise outta here right now, but if you need a pickup out of here later, I ain’t taking the fare,” the driver said, his head on a swivel as he tried to talk to me and watch the men on the porch at the same time.
I opened the door and got out. “That is fine,” I said. “I will make other arrangements for a ride. Thank you.” I closed the door and pulled out my phone.
“Dennis?” I spoke into the phone.
“Yeah, Adam?” Dennis appeared again on the screen, this time represented by his favorite avatar, a unicorn with a rainbow mane and blue eyes. I did not pretend to understand this appearance, but he held that it annoyed our friend Quincy Harker, and that was enough for him.
“Please see to it that the driver has a generous tip added to his fare.”
“Will do. I’ve also rerouted three NOPD patrol cars to be within two blocks of the address you’re in front of. The guys across the street? They’re Gulf Coast Bloods, an offshoot of the LA street gang. They run the coke and weed trade for five of six blocks around you.”
“I need neither cocaine nor marijuana, nor do I care about the dealing thereof, so I have no reason to interact with those young men,” I replied. I turned and walked up the steps to Oliver’s door.
I knocked, and after a few moments, I heard the click of several locks on the other side of the door. A young woman’s head appeared in the crack between the door and the jamb, looking up at me. Everyone looks up at me. Sometimes I am gripped by an almost irresistible urge to get down on my knees before I knock on a door, just to see someone look down at my eyes for once. I never have. Perhaps someday, when I am feeling particularly frolicsome.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked.
“Hello,” I said. “May I speak with Oliver?”
Her guarded expression shifted in an instant to defensive, with a hint of anger. “No, you may not. But you know that, don’t you?”
I was taken aback, literally, as I took an involuntary step back. “I’m sorry, miss. I don’t know what you mean? Is Oliver not home? Does he no longer live here? It has been some time since we last spoke, but I heard nothing of him moving.” I kept my voice soft, both to keep our words guarded and to not sound monstrous.
She cocked her head to the side and gave me an appraising look. I took the moment to examine her as well. She was young, in her twenties, but with the eyes and set of her jaw that said she had seen many things in her years. She was a solidly built woman, with broad shoulders and thick wrists. She looked like someone who knew what work looked like and was unafraid of it.
“I’m sorry,” she said after she looked me up and down again. “My grandfather passed away two weeks ago. If you hadn’t talked to him in a while, I guess you might not have known. I’m Eliza, his granddaughter. Is there something I can do for you?”
I sighed and stepped back from the door. “No. Thank you for the kind offer. I am very sorry for your loss. Your grandfather was fine man, a man of strong principles and fierce love for his family.”
“Yes, he was,” she agreed. “How did you know him? He didn’t have many…friends outside the neighborhood.”
I smiled at her very polite way of saying that Oliver didn’t have many white friends. “That’s true, I suppose. When you grow up in the time he did, you are unlikely to be very trusting of…people outside your neighborhood.” I took down my hoodie, showing her the full landscape of my scarred face. “We both had some experience with people judging us on the basis of our appearance. That made for a common bond that grew into a strong…mutual respect, if not friendship.”
“Are you…Adam?” the young woman asked, her eyes wide.
“I am.”
“You should come in. Papa O told me about you. He left something for you if you ever came back again.” She pushed the screen door open and stepped back to let me into the house. I went inside, curious to see what Oliver thought was worth my having after his passing.
I followed the young woman into the house through a maze of boxes labeled “Goodwill” and “Keepsakes” and “Terry.” Black plastic garbage bags sat piled in the corners of the living room, and I moved a cardboard box full of books onto the floor and sat in the chair she indicated.
“I’m sorry for the mess. You knew Pop, he was a bit of a hoarder,” she said, sitting on a couch opposite me. There was just enough room on the couch for her wide frame between a pile of papers and another in a seemingly endless cavalcade of brown boxes.
“He was that,” I said with a smile. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know much about Oliver, really. I have made very few attachments as I have meandered through my long life, avoiding too many connections with people destined to die long before me. I had never been inside Oliver’s home before today, always meeting with him either on his porch, where he loved to sit, or at the library to research some threat or another.
“He didn’t speak of you often, but he seemed to like you. He said you were a good man, and that was high praise from Pop.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I had a great deal of respect for him as well. He was a stalwart companion and possessed a very sharp mind.”
“I guess you want to see what he left for you,” Eliza said, standing. She walked to the mantle and took down a wooden box. She handed it to me, and I turned it over in my hands. I had not seen the box before, nor its contents. I opened it to reveal a silver cross on a long chain, with an unmistakable purple heart-shaped medal affixed to it.
; “This is his Purple Heart,” I said, giving the girl a questioning look. “He once told me he was wounded in Korea, and that injury probably saved his life.”
“That’s what he told us, too. He got shot in the leg, ruined his knee, and came home after just a month over there. He never walked right again, but three weeks after he got home, most of his unit was wiped out by mortar fire. He said that’s when he learned to never assume anything is all bad or all good, that you have to—”
“Look below the surface of a thing,” I finished with her. We shared a smile, and I remembered sitting in rocking chairs on that porch watching the sun set and drinking cheap domestic beer after a bad fight with a nest of vampires, and Oliver telling me that very thing, only about myself.
I stared down at the medal, wondering how often Oliver thought of our adventures together. Eliza cleared her throat, and I lifted my head. She had an expectant look on her face, and I stood. “I will have to be going. I am very sorry for your loss. Thank you for keeping this for me. I appreciate it very much.” I turned, then paused. “How did Oliver die? Did he have a heart issue that no one knew about, or some health condition?”
A shadow fell on the young woman’s face, quickly wiped away by a flash of anger. “He was killed,” she said. “Some of those bastards from across the street, probably.”
I made the conscious effort not to clench my fists. I didn’t want to damage the medal. “What happened?” I didn’t bother with the platitude of whether or not she minded my asking. I didn’t care. If those thugs harmed my…friend, there would be hell to pay.
“I don’t know, honestly. I came over to visit him a week ago Sunday, like always. I’ve been bringing him Sunday dinner every week for a while now, since I moved back to New Orleans. I got here with supper, and he was on the floor, dead.”
“Shot? Stabbed? Beaten? What made you feel that the men across the street were responsible?” It sometimes surprised me how quickly the old instincts Vlad and Abraham instilled in me came back to the fore when I needed to investigate something.
“No, there wasn’t a mark on him. The coroner didn’t find anything, ether. Said it just looked like he decided it was time to go, and he died. I thought that was really strange. But I know those thugs had something to do with it. Look at them, just sitting around on the porch drinking beer and smoking weed all day. You know they sell drugs. And Pop had a couple run-ins with them the past few months, too.”
That death didn’t sound like gang violence to me, but there was no point in trying to convince Eliza of that. Her mind was made up, and I saw some of Oliver’s stubbornness peeking through under her curls. It was prettier on her, but her resolve was no less steely for being sheathed in an attractive wrapping.
“That sounds very odd. I had not seen Oliver in some time, but the man I knew was not the kind to lay down and die. He was the kind to battle the Reaper with every fiber of his being.”
“I know, right?” she agreed. At least, I thought it was agreement. I sometimes have difficulty parsing the grammar of young people. “That’s how I know it was those Blood bastards. They won’t tell me nothing, and I can’t get the police to even question them, on account of there not being any evidence of foul play. Hell, the fact that my pop is dead seems pretty damn foul to me.”
“I agree that something seems amiss about his death. I shall go speak to the young men across the street. Perhaps they will be more forthcoming with me.”
“What makes you think they gonna tell a giant white boy anything? I mean, no offense, but you ain’t exactly who they’re used to having a conversation with.”
I gave her a small nod and my most vicious smile. “I can be very persuasive.”
3
There were five young men sitting on the porch across from Oliver’s house when I stepped out his front door. One of them watched me, his baleful guise tracking my every movement as I walked down the steps and across the street. His hand drifted to the waistband of his pants as he shushed his friends and nodded in my direction.
“Hey, shut that shit off, we got us some company,” he said. Another man, late teens or early twenties, reached over and turned off a speaker that was connected to someone’s phone playing music.
“I need to speak to you gentlemen for a moment,” I said. I stopped at the foot of the steps, still several feet away from the nearest man, but close enough that my presence could not be mistaken for innocuous. They were sitting on steps, which made them taller than me, but only just. I could still easily look them in the eye, except for the man I deemed to be their leader, the one who kept his eye on me my entire trek across the street.
“What you wanna say?” he said, standing up. I took a step back to be able to look at him more comfortably, and he took two steps forward, coming down the steps to my eye level and staring at me, asserting his dominance. Or attempting to do so, at any rate.
“I have some questions about Oliver’s death. His granddaughter seems to think you or your men may have contributed in some way to his demise.” I kept my tone mild, as mild as possible when your voice sounds like a bass hum through gravel.
“What you trying to say, man? You think we offed the old man?” He pushed forward at me, bumping chests in a display of aggression and dominance.
It often amuses me how humans revert to their gorilla ancestry when threatened or threatening. The bared teeth, the metaphorical chest-thumping, the thrusting themselves against their opponent: it’s all very primal. And all completely ineffectual against someone who has no primal instincts, no participation in the collective unconscious.
“I do not,” I replied. “But Eliza does. I would like to know which of us is correct. Would you be willing to answer some questions for me?” I have often found that exceeding politeness in a fraught situation can defuse an adversary’s anger. That was not the case here.
“I ain’t answering shit, man. Now you better fuck off back to whatever white boy tower you climbed down and don’t ever let me see you on my street again!” He pulled up the front of his New Orleans Saints t-shirt to show me the pistol wedged into the waistband of his pants.
Growing tired of this charade, I reached down and grabbed the butt of the pistol. “I’ve always wondered exactly why so many people seem to want to carry a gun there,” I said. “It seems very dangerous.” I angled the gun to the right, then to the left. “It seems like it would be very simple for someone to make a mistake and shoot themselves in the leg, perhaps severing the femoral artery. If that happens, you’ll bleed to death before an ambulance ever arrives. Even if you don’t hit an artery, shooting yourself in the leg promises to be both embarrassing and painful, and that’s if you manage not to destroy your knee in the process.”
I turned the gun slightly to angle the barrel straight down. “And that’s without even mentioning perhaps the most nerve-wracking of all possible occurrences when carrying a gun in the front of your pants, the direct downward misfire. I would certainly be concerned for my own genitals if I had a loaded handgun just inches above my private parts.”
I pulled the gun from his waistband, and he let out a sigh of relief. I ejected the magazine and tossed it back over my head. I ran the slide to clear the chamber and tossed the gun aside to lie in the grass. Then I reached forward and grabbed the man directly in front of me by his testicles. “I can only surmise by the bulging eyes and the fish-mouthed gasping that you are in significant pain right now. Good. That was my intent. But just imagine how much more it would hurt if I came back here and shot your dick off.” I generally dislike resorting to colloquialisms, but it seemed appropriate for the situation.
“Now, let’s answer my questions, shall we?” The young man’s eyes got huge and he nodded.
“What about your friends?” I asked. “Would you like them to cooperate as well?” He nodded again, then croaked out instructions for everyone there to answer my questions, no bullshitting around allowed.
“Did you or any of your people hurt Oliver?”
&
nbsp; “Nah, man, we liked the old dude. He was kind of a dick, but he was a funny dick. We had a deal. We’d sling weed and pussy and make sure nobody fucked with the kids in the ‘hood. We didn’t bring nothing harder than weed onto the block, and he didn’t call the cops on us. He was a cool old dude. I was sorry to see him go.”
That was what I had expected. Oliver was no prude, but he did not tolerate fools lightly. He would have brokered a peace with the local thugs, and he would have kept his part of the bargain as long as they did. That meant he either died of natural causes, or someone else killed him. “Did you see anyone go into his house in the days before he died?”
“What I look like, the fucking neighborhood watch?” he asked, and I squeezed his crotch. His legs sagged, putting even more pressure on his testicles. He struggled to get his feet under him and shook his head. “I don’t know, man. I don’t even know when the old dude died.”
“It was Wednesday a couple weeks ago, homes,” one of his companions said. Every head turned to him. He was the youngest-looking of the Bloods, only the tiniest hint of a mustache shadowing his upper lip. He wore a red track suit and an Adidas t-shirt, looking like he stepped off a vintage Run-DMC album cover from before he was born.
He looked nervous at the attention, but continued. “I saw this other dude go in there Tuesday night. He was like some middle-aged white dude, maybe forty. Drove a sweet ride, a Maserati, man. He went inside, and I heard some yelling, then some shit lit up in the window like fireworks and shit, and the white dude came out. I didn’t see Pops after that.”
I tilted my head to one side and looked at the boy. “You called him Pops?”
“We all did. All us that grew up here, anyway. He was Pops. He took care of you, but don’t let him catch you fucking around, he’d whoop your ass, then call your mama and she’d whoop your ass.” The kid sitting next to him on the porch nodded, and they bumped fists.
Angel Dance: A Shadow Council Case Files Novella: Quest for Glory Part 3 Page 2