Fire and Rain

by Katy Munger

  “Hello,” I said warily, sure I was about to hear a pitch about affordable healthcare options.

  “Is this Casey?” a confident male voice asked. It sounded familiar.

  “Yeah. Who’s this?” I was trying to place that voice.

  “This is Cody. Cody Sherrill.”

  I was silent for a moment. “How you’d get my number?” I asked.

  “Does it matter?” he countered and managed to make it sound as if he was asking me to take off my clothes.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “I need to see you,” he said.

  “About what? I’m on a case here.”

  “It’s about the case. I’ve got some information for you. Meet me outside on the patio of the Blue Note Grill tonight at 8:00. Come alone.”

  “Come alone?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral.

  “I want to talk to you alone. It’s confidential.”

  “And you’ll be alone as well?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he said.

  I thought about it. I didn’t trust the guy any further than I could throw him and his ego, but it wasn’t like I had a whole lot of leads. And the patio of the Blue Note Grill was about as public as you could get. At this time of year, there was likely to be a North Carolina Central baseball game being played across the street at the old Durham Bulls stadium, which meant there’d be dozens of witnesses looking on in addition to all the old hippies drinking their pints of microbrewery beer under the stars of a Carolina night.

  “Fine,” I said, ignoring the voice inside my head that was telling me I was playing with fire.

  He answered me with a confidence that made me suspect he had been absolutely certain I could not resist his charms, saying, “Good girl.”

  I resisted the temptation to bark and ask if I should roll over and beg, hanging up on him instead. A cocky bastard is still a cocky bastard, no matter how good-looking he is on the outside—and the same goes for killers, too.

  Chapter Seven

  Over the past five years, while Durham’s supposedly progressive city council was busy issuing proclamations and tweeting their outrage over human rights violations half a world away, the city had been sold to real estate developers block-by-gentrified block, pricing out many of Durham’s oldest residents. As a result, there were four different luxury skyscrapers going up within a six-block radius surrounding the Blue Note Grill, where I was slated to meet Cody Sherrill. One day soon, 10-story balconies would tower over the ballpark that had been made famous in the movie Bull Durham and, soon after, the mom-and-pop shops would disappear in favor of hipster coffee shops and bars where you could throw axes for fun while sipping overpriced lagers. But for the moment, downtown Durham resembled Aleppo more than a blue collar southern town on its way up the economic ladder. It was a war zone and Durham’s citizens were the casualties. Bulldozers and cranes blocked nearly every intersection and winding your way to a downtown destination required a minimum of three different detours. Frustrated, I finally gave up, parked my car three blocks away, and hightailed it over to the Blue Note on foot.

  The walk was creepier than I had expected. The old Durham Bulls stadium was empty and the lights were off. Construction machinery clogged the roads and sidewalks around it, creating deep shadows that, at least to my fevered imagination, could hold entire gangs of muggers. Or worse, I thought to myself: bikers. Because, as I passed by a sewage pipe bigger around than I was tall, I saw the tail end of a chopper poking out from behind an industrial-sized dumpster that was wedged in between Stone Brothers Nursery and King’s Sandwich Shop. It was on odd place to park a motorcycle. But half a block later, I saw another one hidden in a narrow space between the fencing of the old ballpark and a bulldozer.

  This was not good. Cody Sherrill had said he was going to be alone. But the cheery lights of the Blue Note Grill across the street beckoned and I continued onward.

  As I reached the Blue Note, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia when someone opened the side door that led to the patio and the music of my long-forgotten youth poured out into the night. It was a Wednesday and I knew that the R&B jam was about to kick into high gear. Once a week, Durham’s black community stopped everything to gather at the Blue Note Grill and worship the soul songs of decades long gone. Some in the crowd were touring musicians stopping by home while on a break. Others were professors, business owners, government employees, and staff from nearby Duke University hoping to relive their glory days by taking their turn on stage belting out what had inexplicably become golden oldies to the rest of the world. I'd been there several times for the jam and there had been nights when I was only one of a handful of white people enjoying the show.

  Come to think of it, it was an odd choice for a white boy like Cody Sherrill to pick for our meeting. Did the wasteland surrounding us have anything to do with his choice? Was I walking into an ambush?

  A family of four was sitting at the far end of the patio, enjoying a basket of fried pickles while playing cornhole. The adults had pints of beer while the kids were enjoying ill-advised sodas, given the time of night. They had a little girl who looked to be about eight years old who was kicking all of their asses at cornhole, sinking one beanbag after another dead center in the middle of the board’s opening. Oh, to have the hand and eye coordination of youth back again. And the speed. The moment her parents’ backs were turned, the little girl grabbed the nearest glass of beer and took a healthy swig. Well played, you little rascal. Well played.

  Cody Sherrill sat alone at a picnic table as far away from the family fun as he could get. He cut a handsome silhouette in the gathering September twilight, his muscular frame, thick hair, and leather jacket a stark contrast to the tubby hipster chic of the nearby family.

  "I was beginning to think you weren’t going to come," he said.

  "So was I." I sat down next to him, careful to leave plenty of room between us, and stared up at the stars starting to glow in the pale azure sky. "It's funny. I saw a couple of motorcycles hidden behind construction equipment on my way over. But I don't actually see any bikers here."

  Cody shrugged, unconcerned. "I may lead the Panthers, but I'm not exactly the Grand Poohbah of every biker in the Triangle."

  A waiter approached us. He was a slender man with light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and an intelligent, kind face. "Get you anything?" he asked. I resisted the urge to order back-up and a Colt .44, not the malt liquor kind, but settled for a White Street Kolsch instead. No hard stuff for me tonight. Cody shook his head when the waiter looked at him. His bottle of Bud Light was still three-quarters full.

  Nursing his drink? I made a mental note to make sure I stayed sober as well.

  "What you want?" I asked him, cutting to the chase.

  "Well, aren't you all about business tonight?” he said, trying out his wolfish grin.

  "Cut the crap. You're in this up to your neck. I just can't figure out how."

  "Now, now. There's no need to get ugly. After all, I’m here to help you."

  "Are you now?" I said, sounding as unconvinced as I felt.

  "Did you know that Rodney Salem was a snitch?"

  I paused to think about it. "I don't believe that," I finally decided.

  "Suit yourself." He shrugged and took a sip of his whiskey. "But your Mr. Salem has been a narc from way back when. That's why he's bounced around. When people start to catch onto him, he moves to another club. He's been turning people into the cops all the way up and down the East Coast for decades, I’d estimate."

  "You seem to be staying out of jail just fine," I pointed out.

  His smile was enigmatic. "Maybe I'm not in jail because I don't break the law."

  "And maybe if we sit out here long enough, pigs will fly overhead and drop bags of pork rinds into our laps?” I suggested.

  When my beer arrived, I resisted the urge to drain it in a single gulp. Somehow, my hormones had taken a left turn. What once had excited me about Cody Sherrill now irritated me. B
ecause I realized that every time I saw him, he was playing a part. He was being who I wanted him to be. Was there even anyone real underneath all that macho swagger?

  Maybe. He was clearly irritated at my lack of enthusiasm. "If you don't want my help, just say so,” he said in an abruptly aggressive tone of voice.

  "What do you really want from me?" I asked, aware we were attracting attention. I glanced around to see if anyone could overhear us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cody nod ever so slightly at a behemoth dressed in a white T-shirt and black leather vest hovering near a side entrance. The man turned and was gone before I could see his face. But all of a sudden, I could feel it in every cell of my body: I was a lamb surrounded by wolves. I knew with absolute certainty that there were a half dozen of Cody Sherrill's buddies, just like that one, circling me in the darkness, using the shadows of the construction equipment and abandoned railway trestle that cut through the parking lot of the club to conceal their hiding spots.

  I was a fool to have trusted Cody Sherrill, even for a public meeting. And with the music pounding away inside toward a deafening crescendo, no one would hear me call out for help if they grabbed me and dragged me into the darkness. If I didn't do something quick, I'd be erased off the mean streets of Durham faster than a nun cleaning a chalkboard.

  "I need to shake the dew off my lily," I told Cody, standing up abruptly and placing my beer on the picnic table. He stared at me blankly.

  "I need to pee," I explained. He nodded. "I guess you just have that effect on women," I added, deciding that pathetic flirting might divert him from realizing that I was on to what he had in mind.

  "Don't keep me waiting," he said. “Once you get that bee out of your bonnet, my guess is that we’ll have plenty to talk about. Or not talk at all.” He flashed a hopeful grin at me again.

  Good grief. The clumsy flirting had worked. I had bought myself a short reprieve.

  I walked away as calmly as I could, pretending not to notice a third biker nursing a beer on the side porch. I pushed through the door into the music hall and Just My Imagination by The Temptations washed over me in a tidal wave of pathos. My heart was beating so fast I could barely appreciate the amazing falsetto of a light-skinned black man who was standing center stage, surrounded by the kick-ass house band, crooning an impeccable version of the R&B classic. Irony, indeed. But imagination was one thing and my gut instincts were another. I knew I’d put myself in danger.

  As I walked toward the far end of the bar, another biker slipped away from a table on the main floor and began to follow me. I had to do something fast. I spotted a friendly face at the far end of the bar. It was a pleasant-looking man in his fifties named Vincent who always sat alone near the service area nursing a Diet Coke and bourbon. He was wearing his signature windbreaker jacket and a Durham Bulls baseball hat. Choice of drinks aside, I’d talked to Vincent on a few occasions and knew him to be, at the very least, someone who was not a killer. Whether he’d understand what I was about to do was another matter, but I couldn’t afford to be much pickier than that.

  “Vincent,” I cried in a burst of what I hoped was drunken exuberance as I came up behind him and draped my body over his shoulders, making sure my boobs were parked firmly by his face. He froze, unable to believe his good fortune.

  “Listen,” I whispered furiously into his ear, “I don’t have much time here. There’s a bunch of bikers after me and I need to get out of here. Can you help me out?”

  He looked up at me startled, his eyes reflecting both confusion and a reluctance to take his mind off my breasts. Two bikers moved closer to us. “I haven’t seen you in ages,” I cried out loudly before leaning in closer to his ear. “Did you understand what I said?” I asked in a low voice. “Just nod your head and smile.”

  Vincent pasted a smile on his face and gave me a slow, cartoon nod. “I have no effing idea what’s going on,” he said through a grin so desperate it made him look like the Joker on Quaaludes.

  “Me, either. But I’m not kidding. Act like you’re happy to see me.”

  No one could ever call Vincent a slow learner. He stood up, threw his arms in the air dramatically, then grabbed me and pulled me to him. He put his right paw right on my ass and I had no choice but to let him. “What’s your name again?” he asked quietly through clenched teeth.

  “Casey.”

  “Casey!” he cried out so loudly that most of the bar crowd could hear him above the pounding beat. They turned to watch us carefully and I could practically hear them thinking, Leave it to the white people to ruin a good song.

  “I haven’t seen you in ages!” Vincent added. He started to put his other hand on my ass as well, but I kneed him ever-so-slightly in the groin and he released me and stepped back, mumbling “What next?” in my ear.

  “I have no idea,” I admitted. My smile was starting to hurt my face. I laughed uproariously, as if he had said something clever.

  “Okay, now you’re scaring me,” Vincent admitted.

  “You are so funny,” I cried, playfully pushing him away. Behind him, I saw the behemoth biker in the black leather vest enter the music hall. He was heading straight for where we were standing.

  I admit it. I panicked. I grabbed Vincent by the hand and shouted, “Come on worm, let’s wiggle!” as I dragged him toward the crowded dance floor.

  But this time, Vincent balked. “I can’t dance,” he protested. “I don’t like to dance. I’m sorry. I can’t help you out.”

  “Dance,” I ordered him like I was waving a pistol and about to take potshots at his boots and accuse him of being a tenderfoot. “There’s safety in numbers and I need to buy some time to think.”

  The big biker had stopped uncertainly at the edge of the dance floor, glancing around him at all the witnesses he’d have to wade through in order to get to us. There’d be a flat-out war if he tried to grab me in this crowd.

  People were starting to stare at us and I figured they had sensed something was wrong,. But it turned out that Vincent had been right: he really couldn’t dance. Not at all. While a sea of black people bobbed around us, Vincent stood whimpering in the center of the dance floor, a terrified look on his face, lamely bouncing up and down on his knees like the worn-out springs of a cheap mattress. He tried snapping his fingers to the music but that only made it painfully obvious the man had absolutely no sense of rhythm. If the goal had been to be inconspicuous, I was failing miserably. A couple patrons at one of the long communal tables that edged the dance floor were actually standing up to get a better look at Vincent’s attempts to dance.

  I needed a Plan B. Fast.

  “You see those bikers?” I asked a group of men who were sitting inches from the dance floor with a tower of empty shot glasses stacked in front of them. “They’re out on the patio hassling a bunch of coeds from Central. I’m serious. It’s starting to get ugly out there.”

  Central was North Carolina Central University, a historically black college where young ladies of color trained to become lawyers, doctors, and teachers. Being hassled by a bunch of white bikers was not part of the curriculum—and this crowd was not going to stand for such disrespect of their sisters. The words were barely out of my mouth before the table of men raced toward the patio. Predictably, most of the men at the other tables followed suit, stampeding after them, ready for a fight and not stopping to find out what they were fighting about. Pandemonium erupted. Most of the noncombatants hopped up on their chairs to get a better look at the action, an ill-advised strategy given the size of most of them. They teetered and swayed like Confederate statues being toppled by an angry mob and I began to wonder uneasily just how large the Blue Note’s liability insurance policy was.

  Unsure what to do, the house band segued into the next song in the their set, Jungle Boogie. Now, this was a tune that had never been the most evolved of songs, even forty years ago, and it now had the capacity to pitch the white progressives of Durham into the deepest of moral quandaries. Do you dance to it and look i
nsensitive or do you take the opportunity to sit at your table looking disapproving while trying to hide your glass of expensive white wine? Usually, the Wednesday night crowd, being black, had no such compunctions. They were too busy having fun. But this time, as a small, well-built black man hopped on the stage and took the microphone for his turn to sing, “Jungle boogie, get it on,” people began to melt away from the dance floor, pushing toward the patio doors to see what the commotion outside was about. It wasn’t everyday you saw the entire local chapter of the NAACP take on a bunch of white bikers too stupid to know when they were outmanned.

  By now, Vincent was absolutely terrified. “I can’t dance to this song,” he shouted above the music. “This is Durham. Someone’s going to take my picture and call me a racist on Twitter.”

  “At least you’ll still be alive,” I yelled back.

  My Plan B worked. Unable to stand by and let Cody Sherrill face an angry mob alone, the bikers hovering around the dance floor finally took off toward the patio, leaving us an escape route out the front.

  “Come on,” I shouted, grabbing Vincent by the hand. “Let’s go.” I had to take him with me. I could not be responsible for what might happen to him if I left him behind. Once the melee erupting outside subsided, I knew the bikers would likely take their frustration at finding me gone out on him.

  “Where are we going?” Vincent asked as I dragged him off the dance floor and headed for the front entrance. We almost got bowled over by the Blue Note’s owner, Bill, when he flung open the kitchen doors and began racing toward the patio, bar towel slung over his shoulder and a baseball bat in hand.