by Jack Ketchum
“He’s right,” I said. “I’m actually looking for Yemmi. And not for the usual reasons. His sister is worried. She’s tight with Marty C so he asked me to help her out. Yemmi has gone missing.” Like my own brother, I didn’t say out loud.
Flex grinned. “Marty C? Can’t believe that weasel helping somebody out. But, yeah, Yemmi stopped by here Sunday morning and stayed for lunch. He’s a standup dude and him and me, we go back a long ways. He came by to see if I might front him some cash to produce his next disk.”
“Yemmi your homeboy? Did you take care of him? ”
“Of course. Like I said, we go back a long ways. Ran the streets together when we was kids. Look, he brought me his latest joint.”
He tossed me the CD with its black marker inscription:
We got to pop the cork,
You had to mad kervork,
Words spun, we won,
Now we take New York.
“If he’s rhyming at you I guess he is your boy. What’s this about New York?”
Flex sipped his cognac. “Yeah, we was talking about setting up a tour up there. Guess if he don’t turn up that ain’t happening.”
I was thinking maybe Yemmi took off to New York on his own, and what a pain it would be to track him there, when my phone rang. I turned to face the pool as I pulled it out. It was Marty.
“Hey, Skye, I wanted to tell you, you can stop looking for Yemmi. They just found him in a stall at Union Station with a knife sticking out of his ribs. No money on him, looks like he was mugged. Wherever he was heading, he won’t never get there.”
It was the flip opposite of the last time I saw her. I stood in the shadow of the Ferris wheel at National Harbor, but Carmen approached while Marty hung back. When she was close enough to talk without shouting she got right to the point.
‘It was Marty, wasn’t it? He killed my brother, didn’t he?”
“How the hell should I know?” And if she thought that, I wondered, why was she still hanging with him?
“But he’s capable of it, isn’t he?”
I shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first nigga Marty capped. But why would he go after Yemmi?”
“Because,” Carmen said through clenched teeth, “Yemmi disapproved of Marty. And Marty knew I’d never stay with a man Yemmi didn’t think was good enough.”
I had to admit I could see where Yemmi was coming from. “What does Marty say?”
“It wasn’t me,” Marty said, stepping closer. “I swear to God it wasn’t me.”
I turned to Carmen. “So what do you expect me to do? This is police business now. Go lean on Metro PD to find out who did Yemmi.”
Marty stepped forward, getting uncomfortably close to me, and lowered his voice. “Look, you know that’s bull. If them clowns was any good you and me wouldn’t be standing here. I got people inside feeding me all they got, which ain’t much. But look, Skye, Carmen won’t hardly talk to me until she’s a hundred percent sure I didn’t whack Yemmi.”
“Look, like I told her ...”
“No, you look,” Marty said. “I trust you. More important, she trusts you. And you may not know for sure who done this, but you know how I work and you could prove it wasn’t me. It’s worth a lot of money to me ...”
“Double my usual fee?”
Marty hesitated, but only for a couple seconds. “Sure. Sure. Damn, you some expensive help.”
“Okay. It’s clear Yemmi was into something that got him taken out. Maybe if I can find out what that was I can track back to who. Meanwhile, you get me everything you can from the cops in your pocket.”
It was pushing toward midnight: no moon, overcast, cool with a bit of a breeze to make nearby trees rustle for cover noise. In other words, my kind of night.
I had talked to Scratch Daddy and saw he wasn’t really a player. But Yemmi’s other two friends, Jimmy and Smuggla, they were serious Gs. I knew Jimmy was a pretty good shot. Smuggla was a well-known blade man like Mack the Knife, a heartless killer they made a song about. If Yemmi made a bad enemy it would be through his association with them.
That’s why I was slipping in through the narrow street-level window. Jimmy and Smuggla stayed in the basement of one of the row houses in South East DC, just off New Jersey Avenue. I dropped to the floor of their backroom, quiet as a rat pissing on cotton, just a shadow among shadows. I moved across the darkened room with my little .32 auto in my right fist. Stepping in the next room I found the boys watching TV with their backs to me. Jimmy sat on a beat-up sofa. Smuggla was in a leather recliner to my left. I took two steps to the right so they were both easy targets without moving my arm much.
“Evening, boys,” I said in what I hoped was a nonthreatening tone.
Smuggla’s hand whipped toward his pocket but froze when he saw my pistol. Jimmy had his hand on the gun at his back before he realized who I was. He knew that at that distance I’d have no trouble putting one of those lead pellets in his eye. His face flashed surprise, rage, and finally grim acceptance. He really was a G.
“Okay,” he said. “Just ... be nice to know who sent you.”
I smiled and moved closer. “I’m not here for you guys. Just want to conversate a bit. How ’bout it?”
In response, Jimmy pulled his piece out with two fingers and dropped it behind the couch. “It’s your world, Skye. I don’t want no shit with you.” Smuggla nodded, resting his hands on the arm of the chair.
“Good. You don’t start no S-H, won’t be no I-T. I just figure y’all two the most likely to know why somebody thought Yemmi should be dead. What was he into?”
“I got nothing, Skye,” Jimmy said. “Honest to God.”
“Maybe he just got mugged,” Smuggla said. “He liked to carry a lot of cash ...”
“Like any of us,” Jimmy put in. “But these days he been pretty broke.”
That got my attention. “You mean he wasn’t burning it up rapping?”
“Well ... there’s a lot of expenses,” Jimmy said.
“You his posse. You must know if he was doing something shady to pick up some ...”
Both men froze when the knock came at the door. I crossed the room to look through the peephole. When I turned to my hosts, I was grinning.
“Well this is interesting. You guys gonna be good?” When they both nodded I slipped my piston into the paddle holster at my back in my waistband and pulled the door open. Junior stepped in, looked around, nodded toward me, and moved to the side. Flex walked in and took in the room in one wide-angled glance. When his eyes settled on me he was still trying to decide what he should think.
“Based on your rep, I didn’t think this was your kind of thing. But I brought the cash. You send the text?”
I glanced at Jimmy and he looked downright embarrassed. “Text? I didn’t send you any text, Flex. What did it say?”
Flex whipped out a phone and held it up for me to see the screen. We know what he knew. Be here by midnight. Same amount. Then there was an address. The one I was standing in. Watching Flex, in his two-thousand-dollar suit and shoes that probably cost more, the tumblers began to fall, as if my brain was an old-fashioned combination lock.
“Well, damn. Yemmi was hustling you. Blackmail.”
“Where the hell did you get that?” Flex asked.
I hooked my thumbs in my belt. “First of all, the note on your CD. He sent it ahead to make sure you’d let him in when he got to the door. You took somebody out, back when you used to run with Yemmi. Maybe he was the only one who knew.”
“What?” Smuggla asked. “Flex was a killer?”
“Must have been, back in the day,” I said. “In the rhyme. ‘You had to mad kervork’ he said. Like that crazy doctor Kevorkian, right? You helped somebody die. At the time it probably gave you street cred. But you a legit businessman now.”
“That’s right, “Flex said, pulling a fat envelope out of his inside jacket pocket. “And I ain’t trying to do no time. So take the ten K, same as I gave Yemmi, and let’s all just go on a
bout our business.”
“You saying you paid him off? Or was it cheaper to just kill him?”
“Are you serious?” Flex looked honestly hurt by my accusation. “The brother was broke and needed operating capital for a video, studio time, and promotion to make a splash at some New York gigs. He only asked for ten large. That ain’t the kind of cash I’d kill somebody for. Hell, the sad thing is, I’d have fronted him the money without the whole blackmail bullshit. Yemmi was a good investment.”
I was just shaking my damn head. “So I guess that means one of these chuckleheads sent you that text. And that means they knew what Yemmi was doing, even if they didn’t know what he had on you.” I gave Jimmy the evil eye and he crumbled. Then I turned to Smuggla and stared him down. He didn’t even try.
“Alright, alright, can’t a brother try to make some dough?”
“YOU tried to hustle me?” Flex said. Junior hovered over Smuggla like he was about to push his head down into his body.
“Hey, we was Yemmi’s posse, his roadies and I scored dope for him. Of course we knew he was running a game on Flex. We all sort of got the idea together.”
“You mean when you found out Yemmi had something on this brother whose wallet’s fat, you talked him into taking advantage,” I said. “And then you figured you’d go back to the well and tap him again.”
“I’ll cop to the first part,” Jimmy said, “But I wasn’t after no money. All I know is, we sent Yemmi to pull some cash out of Flex here, and we never saw him again. I wanted to get this nigger over here so we could maybe find out what he did to our boy.”
“What I did?” Flex clenched his fists, trembling with rage. “Now I get it. You both knew Yemmi left my place with ten large in his pocket. And now I see how you niggas live, how do I know you didn’t snatch him up, grab his stash, and leave him bleeding in a gutter somewhere?”
Junior, reading his boss’ intent, reached under his jacket. Before things got out of hand I had my pistol out, knowing if I aimed at Flex, Junior would cool out.
“All right, let’s all chill.”
It seemed like an odd time for a knock on the door.
“Who the hell?” Flex shouted.
From the hall we heard, “It’s Marty, bitch. Open the goddamn door!”
Keeping my front sight on Flex’s heart, I slid to the door and pulled it open. A trim brother in a tailored suit with a bulge under his left arm walked in and stepped to the left. Another man pressed from the same mold came in behind him and stepped to the right. Marty followed, closed the door behind himself, and leaned back against it as if sealing the entrance.
I did a slow pan across the room. By my count, I was in there with six stone killers and one loudmouth producer known for keeping things popping. And the magazine in my little Beretta Tomcat only holds six rounds.
“Yep,” I muttered under my breath. “Shit just got real.”
Marty had been thinking it through too. When he finally spoke it was to me. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I might ask you the same question,” I replied.
Marty took a deep breath. “While you been checking around so have I, and I came up with something. We need to talk.”
I nodded. “There’s a backroom. If your boys can keep it cool in here.”
Over his shoulder Marty said, “Anybody gets frisky, control the situation.” Then he followed me into the back. I flipped the light on. The backroom turned out to be a small kitchen. I pushed my pistol into its holster, spun a chair around so its back faced the table, and dropped onto it. Marty sat down the usual way.
“I came by to question Yemmi’s crew,” I said, and pointed to Marty.
“You’re ahead of me,” Marty said, pulling a photo from an inside jacket pocket. “I’m here because of I got some good dope from my cop on the inside and just couldn’t wait until morning to grab the guy who can clear my name with Carmen.”
Marty laid a photo on the table and spread it out flat. It was an open folding knife with a four-inch blade, according to the ruler beside it.
“This is what they pulled out of Yemmi’s ribs. You recognize it?”
It was a distinctive piece with a slim, sinuous outline. It’s called a Laguiole, a folder with a narrow, tapered blade and a cutaway handle shaped kind of like a woman’s leg. It was an artist’s tool.
“Yeah, I recognize it. But we got to be sure.”
“Of course. You need to be sure, because you’re the one Carmen believe.”
Returning to the front room I saw that Marty’s two men were controlling the situation by displaying their nine-millimeter attention getters. It was time to decide who the danger man was. Smuggla and Jimmy were unarmed. Flex would be slow. His man didn’t have any skin in the game. Having put the risks in order in my mind I walked straight over to Smuggla, who looked up as if he was expecting me.
“Okay, Smuggla, where’s your knife? You know, that sweet little Laguiole you carry.”
He turned his eyes away from mine. “I don’t have it with me right now.”
“No? I bet you know where it is, don’t you?”
“Kind of. I gave it to Yemmi.”
“What?”
“Look, he was scared,” Smuggla said, warming to his story. “Guess I understand why, now. He knew he was going to try to hustle a known killer. Anyway he wanted to have something with him, just in case, so I loaned him my knife.”
“Seriously?” Marty said. “That’s what you’re going with?”
I backed away, starting to circle the sofa. “So what happens now? You turn Smuggla over to your cop friend?”
Marty waved the comment away. “I could care less what happens with this idiot. All I care about is you telling Carmen that you know who killed her brother, and that it ain’t me.”
It was a tough spot. There was a best way to handle it, a smart way, but that just wasn’t me. I looked back at Smuggla.
“So how long you been on Marty’s payroll?”
“What you talking about now?” Marty asked, with an edge in his voice. I walked back toward Smuggla, keeping my focus on him.
“I know you, man. You one of us, a pro, and that’s your signature blade. No way in hell you left it behind in a vic, knowing it would point right at you.” Then I turned to Marty. “He gave you his knife, didn’t he? You know, I might have went along with your silly-ass story if you hadn’t tried to play me.”
“What are you talking about?” Jimmy asked. “I mean, I know we didn’t take Yemmi out, but how do you?”
“You mean aside from what I just said?” I hooked my thumbs into my belt. “Well, for one thing, I believe you that you wanted to get Flex here to tell you what happened to Yemmi. If you just wanted to hustle him, why wait until Yemmi’s body turned up? I mean, if you killed Yemmi you would have already known he was dead, but you could have made Flex think he was being hustled by the same guy. And seriously, would you have tried to make his death look like a mugging? I don’t think so. If you didn’t have time to grab that knife, you sure as hell wouldn’t have taken the time to go through his pockets to take his money.”
“So we was right?” Jimmy asked.
“Oh yeah,” I said, cutting my eyes toward Marty’s gunmen. “Flex did it.” The two guns swung toward him.
“You ain’t putting this on me,” Flex snapped. But Junior eased away from him.
“Like hell I ain’t,” I said, standing behind Jimmy on the couch. “And so would everybody else I know if not for all this static Marty was throwing up. You the only one who was all about what great friends you and Yemmi were. Nobody else really cared what I thought about that, but then, they wasn’t trying to make me think they wouldn’t hurt him. And just being the last one who saw him alive puts you at the top of the list. But most important, these boys confirmed the blackmail scheme, and that makes you the nigga with the only real motive.”
“Then why’d Marty try to throw Smuggla under the bus?” Jimmy asked.
“Well, a
t first I figured he just wanted to clear his name with Carmen as fast as he could, and this was an easy story I could back up. But now I’m thinking how Flex told me he knew Marty, and knew he was a snake. Now I’m thinking Flex went to Marty after he killed Yemmi. He’s not one of us, you know. He don’t really know how to cover up a murder, how to get himself clear. And Marty here, he sees a way to kill two birds with one stone.”
“You on drugs or something?” Marty asked.
“Come on, Marty. You needed somebody to testify to Carmen for you. A cop or even a private eye would have dragged Smuggla to jail, and a real investigation might have turned up the truth. You knew I’d never get one of us arrested. But you could convince Smuggla that the evidence was against him. He’d think you were helping him if you got him out of the country. Then you just convince the cops it was Smuggla. Flex is in the clear, and you get the girl. It was a pretty slick setup. You just shouldn’t have tried to play me.”
“Easy, Skye,” Marty said, stepping back between his two gunmen. “You don’t want to be on my bad side.”
“You know I won’t lie for you,” I said. “But there’s still two ways this can go.”
“No,” Marty replied. “There’s only one way this can go.”
I took his word for it.
I maintained eye contact with Marty while my right hand yanked my silver belt buckle free and flipped the throwing star into Marty’s throat. At the same time, my left yanked upward on Jimmy’s belt, helping him flip over behind the sofa with me.
Marty’s boys lost two tenths looking at their boss. By the time they were back on task I had dropped the dagger out of my right sleeve and thrown it into the gunman on my left. His mirror image managed to get off one poorly-aimed shot in my direction before Jimmy came up with his gun and double-tapped him up against the wall.
I wasn’t thinking about him. After my throw my attention went to Junior. I had dropped low before he managed to decide where the threat to his boss would come from. He put two into the sofa before I brought my Beretta on line and shot him in his right bicep. He’d live, and might even stay in his line of work.