Hair of the Dog

by Gordon Carroll

  “Then how about we go to where she is.”

  He un-steepled his fingers and lay them on the desk. “Keisha is with her aunt and uncle; her legal guardians. She’s safe and getting on with forgetting the horrors of the past few years. The less she has to remind her of those years, the better.”

  “Who did you say her aunt and uncle were?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Oh, that’s right. So what are their names?”

  “I don’t want you bothering them… or Keisha.”

  “You know what I do, right? I mean you did hire me. I find people.”

  “Let me reiterate, Mr. Mason, I don’t want you bothering them.”

  “I won’t bother anyone. I just want to make sure she is safe.”

  “And why in the world do you think she might not be safe? Just what exactly are you accusing me of?”

  “I’m not accusing you of anything, Senator. But try and see it from my side. I took a job from you to find this little girl. But finding a child isn’t like finding a lost purse. I find an object and turn it over and my part is done. But finding a little girl is different. I have a responsibility to make sure she is safe and that my finding her was the right thing to do. Now as soon as you hired me, things started getting weird. Soon as I find her, the Bloods show up… twice. You say you’ll check for leaks, but then never mention it again. When I press you, two carloads of mercenaries with fully automatic weapons show up at my doorstep and try to take me out. And of course there’s the matter of you running for POTUS, so then I think maybe you want Keisha for a trophy to wave in front of the media. But then you don’t wave her in front of the media. You keep her completely hidden from the media. Then I find out your charity organization, which is how you say you became aware of Keisha’s plight, is really just a money funnel to your bank account and that makes me wonder why you really wanted me to find Keisha in the first place. So, you want to know what I think you’ve done and what exactly I’m accusing you of? I don’t know… not yet.”

  I stepped up to his desk.

  “But I promise you this much, if you don’t show me Keisha, I will dig and dig until I do know what I’m accusing you of.”

  And then I think I saw the real Alvin Marsh for the first time since I met him. Not the posturing politician, not the charismatic actor. But the man from the streets that never really went anywhere. The gang-banger, the street-tough, the survivor.

  “Who do you think you are?” his voice was nearly a hiss. “Some two-bit private eye wanna-be cop that I hired for a bag job. Well you did what I paid you to do and that, Mr. Mason, is all. Your services are no longer needed or wanted. So you turn your lily-white butt around and get back in your car and drive yourself back to Denver and don’t you ever…ever call me or venture back into my town again. Do you understand me?”

  “Or what?” I asked, all innocent-like. “Another batch of killers gonna come my way?”

  He just stared at me with those unflinching eyes, but his lips twitched up at the corners and I thought maybe I was suddenly looking at the devil instead of God.

  “You are an interesting study, Mason. I haven’t been really angry in a very long time, but I believe you have pushed me to it. The girl isn’t your concern. She was a paycheck to you and that is all. Now drop it.”

  “Finally I get to see the real Alvin Marsh. You know what? I don’t think I like you, and more… I don’t think I’ll vote for you. Now, you want me out of your life? Let me see Keisha. Let me vet her aunt and uncle. Once I do that, I’m gone for good.”

  “No, Mason. You are already gone for good. Now get out of my office or I’ll have you tossed out. Like the trash.”

  “So, you wanna play rough? Have it your way. But you’re making a mistake. Something’s dirty here and I’m going to expose you.”

  Marsh picked up the phone as if to call for security.

  I held up a hand.

  “No need, I’m leaving. For now.”

  I walked out of his office and went back to my car in the underground garage. Marsh didn’t seem to like me anymore either. Of course, I had sort of accused him of some pretty nefarious deeds, not to mention the fact that I’d sicced the press on him.

  Now, what to do from here? Go to war or play an end-around. I decided on the end-around. I called Sarah and told her what I needed. She said she’d make a few calls and get back to me. Before she could, I saw Clyde walking towards my car from the left. I made a quick scan, but didn’t see anyone else.

  I opened the door and stepped out, leaving it open. Maybe Marsh had decided to have me killed here and now. Max lay quietly in the back seat watching everything. Nothing like having a big brother with monster teeth looking out for you.

  “Clyde,” I said.

  “You like to live dangerously, Mason.”

  “Not at all, I said. But I need to know everything is okay with that little girl.”

  “And so you harass a man as important as the Senator?”

  “Just trying to get the information I need.”

  “I believe that the Senator made it clear that if he wanted to speak with you, he’d initiate the conversation.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but this was important.”

  “The Senator is a very busy man.”

  “I’m sure he is, what with going for the presidency and all.”

  I thought that might rattle him. But good old Clyde proved to be un-rattle-able.

  “What is it you want? Really?”

  I decided to be more direct.

  “I want to know if Senator Marsh knows that you had the Bloods come after me in Colorado? I want to know if he knows that you hired a bunch of mercenaries to take me out at my home?”

  We were standing close. About ten inches between us. He looked down at me, his face as expressionless as always, but his eyes, oh yes, his eyes told the true story.

  “If I wanted you dead, Mason, you’d be dead. And I wouldn’t need mercenaries to do the job.” He head-bobbed toward my car. “And your dog wouldn’t be able to save you.”

  “Oh you want me dead. I see it in your eyes. You do a good poker face, but you’re no pro. The eyes give you away. If you had Superman’s heat vision, I’d be a puddle right now.”

  He dragged those eyes away and looked around the garage.

  “You know this isn’t Denver, Colorado, the friendly Mile High City. This is my town. This is Chicago. We average thirty murders a week. Here you can get gunned down eating breakfast in a diner or watching birds in a park, or…” those eyes, those hot eyes turned back on me, “…talking to the wrong man in an underground garage. And wouldn’t no one take much notice of it. It wouldn’t make headlines. The press wouldn’t swarm all around. The local PD wouldn’t start a manhunt. Here, we just throw a tag on your toe, stack you up like cord wood down at the overcrowded city morgue and call it another day. So my best advice to you is that you get in your car with your little doggy and drive on back to the mountains and forget you ever heard of the Senator or me or that little girl. You do that… you do that right here and now and we will consider this done and over with.”

  He was offering me a deal, and in so doing, practically admitting his involvement in the attempted hit at my home.

  “Would the Senator go along with that?”

  “This has nothing to do with the Senator. This is between you and me.”

  I took a step closer and I let him see into my eyes. He may have heat vision, but I have something else. I’m actually a fantastic poker player and that’s because the real me never makes it to my eyes unless I let it. In that respect, I’m like Bruce Banner in the movie The Avengers, who tells Captain America that his secret is that he’s always angry. I let him see the real me. The me I showed to Majoqui Cabrera, the man who murdered my wife and daughter as I stood over him, beating him to death.

  “I’ll tell you what’s between you and me. That little girl. And until I know she’s safe, I’m not going anywhere. And if anything happens to her…
anything… you’ll pray to be lying on that slab in the morgue with a toe tag.”

  He didn’t move. The man was a rock. But he wanted to, oh yes he did.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You do real good saving the ladies in your life, don’t you? Like your wife. Like your daughter.”

  Without conscious thought, the palm of my right hand slid around the butt of the 4506 in its holster snugged in my back waistband. My thumb popped the safety snap.

  “Go home, Mason,” said the man I wanted to kill. “Go home. Last warning.” He turned and walked away, not looking back once. If he had I think I might have shot him, Secret Service agent or not. But he didn’t, so I took a few deep breaths and got into the car and drove back to the motel.

  34

  Ziggy paid the man behind the bullet-proof glass the hourly rate for the room and walked up the dingy stairs with the woman. She was young, twenty-three, still not bad looking, although the meth had already begun to take its toll, corroding the skin from the inside out, blistering the flesh of her cheeks and forehead and leaving small bloody scabs. Her dress stopped just past her bikini line, clutching her thin frame like bony fingers. Her skin was light, vanilla latte light. Her teeth were still very bright and even; unusual for a mether. The drug often ate away at tooth enamel, leaving blacked-ribbed spikes. But there was plenty of time for that. Her hair, jet black, straight and full of product and weave, reached to the top of the swell of her buttocks. It was one of her bestselling features. The girl said her name was Rockeeta, but Ziggy knew her real name was Janel Barker and that she lived on the south side. He also knew she had two daughters, four and three, and that her baby’s daddy was her pimp and that he would be somewhere close by. But most importantly, Ziggy knew that she was the niece of Nora James and that Nora James was the mother of little Keisha James who Jerome had killed, leading them all down this strange rabbit hole. Oh yes, Ziggy knew all of this, he surely did, because Mr. Diamond had told him so and Mr. Diamond was never wrong. His information was one hundred percent accurate one hundred percent of the time and that’s why he was still alive, even after all these years when oh so many others weren’t.

  Ziggy and Rockeeta got to the room and she started to undress, but Ziggy stopped her with a shake of his head and a smile.

  “No, no, sweet thing. Ziggy says he’s too old for all that kind of foolishness. Too old and already married to a very jealous lady who shows me her love with a needle and spoon.”

  Rockeeta stopped and smoothed her short dress back down over her upper thighs. She canted her head toward him.

  “No refunds, old man,” she said.

  “Ziggy says he don’t want no refund, darling. No ma’am what Ziggy wants is some information.”

  “What kind of information?” she asked, a wary slyness coming to her voice.

  “What Ziggy wants to know is why someone would want to find a little girl named Keisha James?”

  The girl’s face went pale, her eyes wide, but like the natural street animal she had been forced to become in order to survive, she recovered quickly.

  “Don’t know nobody by that name,” said Rockeeta.

  Ziggy pulled out his wallet and removed three of the ten one hundred dollar bills that Gil had given him to buy information. He tossed them on the bed.

  “Ziggy says he think you do.”

  Rockeeta looked at the money, her tongue unconsciously darting past her lips before slipping back inside.

  “Why you want to know?”

  “Ziggy say he trying to help her; that he is. You’re her blood, so you should want to help her too, seeing how she’s family.”

  “How you know that, old man?”

  “Ziggy say that ain’t important. What is important is that if Ziggy can know it, then somebody else can know it too. And that somebody might not like the fact that you know and do something real bad about it. Now if Ziggy find out what he needs to find out, then he can take care of that somebody permanent like and then you won’t have to worry ‘bout Mr. somebody ever again. That, and you get to keep the money.”

  She licked her lips again.

  “An old man like you gonna take care of some real bad men? Because that’s what they be.”

  “Ziggy got some real bad men of his own working this. The baddest men you ever saw. That he do. Either way, ain’t nobody ever gonna know where the info come from. That, Ziggy will promise you, darling.”

  “Well, she is family,” she said. “Throw another three bills on there and bump me a hit of H and I’ll tell you what I know.”

  “Ziggy says he’ll share his H with you now, but the rest of the bills will wait till he hears what you gots to say.”

  “Rockeeta says she thinks she likes you, old man. You sure you don’t want nothin’ else?” She tugged up on her dress again in invitation.

  “You tempting, darling, Ziggy say that’s the real true truth. And if Ziggy was ten years younger or if his lady was a little less demanding, then Ziggy would take you up on that, and Ziggy thank you kindly for the offer, but…no.” He pulled out his kit and unzipped it showing her the makings. “We gots a deal?”

  Her tongue made that darting movement again; in and out.

  “Deal.”

  Rockeeta felt good. The old man had left and she’d gotten a free fix to boot. And better than that, she was pretty sure she’d hit the jackpot here. Word on the street was that there was big money for anyone trying to get info on a little girl named Keisha James. Her mother, Rockeeta’s aunt, had been killed a while back and Keisha stolen.

  Everyone knew it had been a hit by the Bloods, but no one knew why. Well, most people didn’t know why. But some people did. Some of the freelancer ho’s on the street knew. Rockeeta knew. Of course there’d always been rumors, plenty of those going around. But Rockeeta knew for sure. Her sister told her herself. From her lips to God’s ears, as her dear dead mommy use to tell her when she was just a kid.

  But now that the man was a big shot, all this could pay off big. She wasn’t sure who to tell though. She didn’t want anyone cutting in on her deal. She thought of her brother, Samual. He was a good kid. He’d escaped the hood through a church organization that helped him with a scholarship and he was doing real good. Yes, she thought he might know what to do. Of course she’d have to tell her man too. He’d kill her if she didn’t and he found out later. But she thought telling her brother might still be a good idea, just in case her man, Dilly, got to being stupid and got the wrong people mad at them. Dilly had done that in the past; lots of times. So, yes, she’d tell Dilly, but after she told Sam. That made everything easier. She called Sam and told him what she knew and asked him what he thought she should do. He told her not to tell anybody, especially Dilly, and to never bring the subject up to anyone ever again. That made her mad and she told Sam he was just being jealous and she hung up. Now she was mad… mad and frustrated because the drugs were beginning to wear off a little and she still wasn’t sure what she should do. So she decided to do what she always did in the end and call Dilly. Then she could just fill him in on everything and let him take over like he always did. Some of that good feeling was coming from the drugs, but the rest was just the release of responsibility. Once her man, Dilly, took over, everything would be fine and they’d be sitting on easy street. The both of them. That would show that snooty brother of hers. She should never have even told him anything.

  Rockeeta took out her phone and made the call.

  Jerome stood outside of the City building that Gil had just left, watching both the front doors as well as the exit to the parking garage. The sun blazed high in the sky, fading the blue to a whitish haze. The humidity hung heavy and thick, making his shirt stick to his chest. But it didn’t bother him in the least. This was home. He’d lived here his whole life till he moved to Colorado with Clair. The dessert climate didn’t suit him at all. And the altitude still hit his lungs and endurance. Even the air felt and smelled different. Dry and thin and unsatisfying.

  Clyde
stepped outside with three other men, all brothers and all dressed pretty much the same as they had been in Colorado. Suits, ties, fancy shoes, and those squiggly wires going from their collars to their ears. A few seconds later, a car pulled up and five bangers got out. Bloods, no doubt about that. Clyde spoke to them for a few seconds and they piled back into their car and drove off. The three men that had come out with Clyde followed them in a black SUV. Clyde went back inside.

  Jerome got into the car he’d stolen the night before and followed the SUV. They wound their way through the city and finally stopped at a block of Section 8 houses in a not-so-very-nice part of the city.

  Two of the fancy-dressed men went with the five bangers into a building, while the last man stayed with the car, standing outside smoking a cigarette.

  Jerome stopped down a way and parked. He made his way behind the building and hopped a broken-down fence. He went through a yard, with rusted out cars littering the dirt, and rounded the apartment building. The man guarding the cars rested against the driver’s side door, still smoking and looking at something on his phone. Jerome sauntered quietly up to him and, as soon as he turned, clouted him full force on the chin. The man went instantly limp and started to crumple, but caught himself and tried a weak punch, which Jerome easily deflected with his forearm before hitting the man again in the side of the head. The punch was hard and made a meaty smack, but still the man shoved into him, wrapping his arms around Jerome’s waist and trying for a leg sweep that wasn’t about to happen. Jerome clubbed down with his elbow five swift times, smashing the man’s head, neck and shoulders. He went out, hitting the pavement hard with his chin. A small puddle of blood began to spread beneath his face. Jerome did a quick pat-down, taking his wallet, keys, gun, spare magazines and radio. He clipped the ear piece in, once he figured it out, and dumped the man into the back seat of the car after handcuffing him behind his back with his own cuffs.