by Nick Petrie
She was who she was, nothing less, nothing more. She’d turned her negatives into a positive, did her job without complaint. She wasn’t particularly ambitious, and her personal life never interfered with her work. Not often, anyway.
King took another hit from that little silver spoon. “Either of you ever hear anything like that big gun? Damn, where do you think I could find one of those?”
King Robbie didn’t carry anymore, at least not day-to-day. Brody and Charlene did most of the heavy work, although King still had an active interest. When King was making his big move after Isaac Bell got sent up, he’d kept an Uzi or an AK close to hose down a rival crew or house or car, and he still let loose once in a while. Held out a hand for Brody’s gun just for the pleasure of doing the deed himself.
Even when the guy getting put down was making them money. Had overstepped, sure, deserved a beating, maybe a fine. Some reminder of the rules he’d broken.
Not every problem, in Brody’s opinion, had to be solved with a bullet.
But King was as wild as he’d ever been, and more than a little crazy. Brody thought hard about doing business, running people, making money, keeping order. He could see all the ways King’s reckless behavior had cost them.
Being King’s muscle was a job. It paid well, and Brody was good at it. Not like he had many choices, growing up where he did. But it gave him no pleasure to hurt somebody, not like King. No, what Brody liked was seeing how the pieces came together, watching it grow.
He’d been the muscle for six years.
Now he was starting to think about what else he might be.
Reckless or not, King was still the boss. Brody kept his opinions to himself. But he didn’t like how King was getting more and more unpredictable. He wasn’t making good decisions. It was bad for business.
A big machine gun? Man, that’d only make things worse.
* * *
• • •
King’s phone rang. Besides Brody and Charlene, the only other person with the number was Chris, working the scanner back at the storefront.
They all cycled through cheap work phones every week, to keep their business private. Brody also had a loaded new cell he kept for personal use. Pictures, social media, his mom. He kept it on airplane mode when he was working.
King answered on speaker. It wasn’t how Brody would have done it, but as always, he kept his mouth shut. “Anything?”
“Not from the scanner,” said Chris. “But one of our friends in blue called, says there were four of them wearing some kind of white coveralls. Two dead at the mall, one shot and gone missing, one just plain gone. Young niggas, not grown men.”
“Young don’t mean shit, you know that,” King said. “Just means they ain’t had much practice yet.”
Brody had watched King Robbie beat a grown man to death on his fourteenth birthday. Almost like a present to himself. Seeing it had made Brody sick to his stomach. He’d thought about it for months, trying to put it out of his head. All these years later, it wasn’t the worst thing he’d seen—or done himself—but it still came back sometimes, if he wasn’t paying attention. It took him years to learn to shut down enough to do the job he was paid for.
King bragged about that killing to this day.
He was just plain Robbie Kingston back then, and the killing let him take ownership of a corner. It was the first of many moves like it. A corner, then a house, then a captain’s position. The captain had misjudged Robbie, as they all did, despite everything Robbie had already shown himself to be.
At the time, in awe of King’s ability to take what he wanted, and to talk his way out of the problems he caused himself with the bosses, Brody had thought King was some kind of genius. Even when King had schemed to bring down Isaac Bell and take the whole town for his territory, Brody had gone along and got Charlene to come with him.
Not like there was much choice. Brody had learned that, too. Sometimes standing still wasn’t an option. Sometimes you had to move up or get cut down.
When Bell’s operation fell, it was a free-for-all, but King, Brody, and Charlene moved fast to consolidate. In less than a month, King and Charlene took out any serious contenders while Brody hand-picked the new house captains and reached out to the suppliers.
Eventually, though, Brody realized that King wasn’t a genius. He’d kept jumping up the food chain because he didn’t know how to run what he’d already taken. That’s why he started shoving that shit up his nose, faster and faster. Which didn’t help anything.
Now King said, “Get any names?”
“No official ID yet, but our friend in blue says he knows the two got dropped. Skinny B and Anthony Wilkinson.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.” King’s voice turned threatening. “Tell me you asked around.”
Chris didn’t let it ruffle him, kept his voice nice and even.
“’Course I did, boss. Skinny B used to work outside one of your houses. He wanted to move inside, but the house captain told me the boy wasn’t ready, probably never would be. Kid didn’t like hearing it. He up and quit about three months ago.”
“Maybe trying to go on his own?” asked King. “Serves him right. Police saved me a bullet. I keep telling you, Chris, you gotta stay on these young niggas all the damn time.”
Even on a fresh phone, King wasn’t talking about the real reason he was pissed. The jewelry store was a money laundry, a good one, turning drug cash into legitimate profits. So those were King Robbie’s goods that got stolen, and King Robbie’s single best laundry wrecked in the process.
“I know, boss, I know,” Chris said, his voice tinny over the cheap phone. “But you can’t kill everybody, right?”
“What about this Anthony Wilkinson?”
“Part-timer, lived with his mama. Smart kid, ran a lookout crew at that same house, still going to school. You and I talked about him a while ago, how maybe we should take him off the street, send him to U-Memphis. Get him working the clean side.”
Brody thought about the description that workingman Peter had given King about the guy who’d jacked his truck. It didn’t fit with these young men, unless someone older was running them as a crew without getting King’s okay. That would turn into serious trouble.
King was obviously thinking the same thing. “Somebody forgot who runs this damn town. Maybe they didn’t believe the price they’d pay. We’re gonna make it clear, set a damn example. Write it out in blood.”
King didn’t want his people to get any big ideas. Least of all Chris, Charlene, or Brody. Maybe that was why he put the phone on speaker, thought Brody, so he could deliver the message to everybody at once. King was half-crazy, but he wasn’t stupid.
To Chris, King said, “Tell me you know who these niggas run with.”
“No crew to speak of. Anthony Wilkinson was doing the work, but he didn’t hang around. He wasn’t all in, you know? Skinny B was on the outside. But the house captain talked with some of the lookouts who saw them with Isaac Bell’s youngest boy. The guitar player. Shows up at the Lucky every once in a while.”
“Yeah, I remember. Goes by Eli, right?”
At the time, King hadn’t considered nine-year-old Eli worth killing. He hadn’t wanted to draw the heat. But Brody had made a point to keep track of young Eli as he grew. With Isaac Bell for his father and Win Bell for his brother, you never knew who that boy might turn into. Could decide to put down that guitar and pick up a gun. Brody knew the boy paid his piece to King’s man like everyone else. It wasn’t much, the kid was scraping bottom, but it was a positive sign that the boy knew how things stood.
“That’s him,” said Chris. “But he’s got this homeboy from way back. Put out the word a few years ago, Eli Bell gets left alone on the street. He’s protected.”
King was getting impatient. “Homeboy got a name?”
“You know him. Name’s Coyo.”
* * *
• • •
Brody took the next turn faster than he’d planned, the heavy Mercedes dipping on its springs. Charlene put out an automatic hand to steady herself, but kept on staring out the windshield, thinking whatever she was thinking inside that head of hers.
King was trying to keep himself calm, but Brody could hear the effort. “You think Coyo could have put this thing together?”
“Coyo’s got talent, we both know that. Cooler than ice cream when things get hot. But he’s not the kind to plan things out. More like he makes it up as he goes, just shows up and gets it done.”
Brody thought about Isaac Bell, the organization he’d made before he got sent up. Isaac had been a planner. He’d built something so tight nobody could touch him, especially not the police. King himself had only managed to bring the man down by turning snitch, throwing anonymous tips to the feds. Nobody else knew but Brody.
No, King’s heavy street rep was built entirely on what he’d done before, and his ruthless cleanup afterward. There were more than a few young guns who’d made King work for it. Young Baldwin Bell was the strongest contender. Almost made it, too.
Eli had that same strong blood running through him. And he was tight with Coyo?
But neither boy linked up with that workingman Peter’s description of the carjacker.
It was a puzzle.
Brody liked puzzles.
“One last thing,” said Chris. “I’ll tell you right now, you’re not gonna like it.”
King’s voice turned threatening again. “You know I don’t like bad news, Chris.”
“Yeah, but sometimes you got to hear it. Right before our friend in blue called, before I made my own calls, Eli Bell walked in here looking for you. Said he had a message from some stranger in a red car who told Eli to come tell you he knew he owed you for something this morning.”
King gave a half-strangled scream and kicked at the back of the seat with his pointed boots. Brody heard the thick leather tear. “Tell me you got him stashed away someplace.”
Chris coughed nervously. “Wish I could, boss, but it didn’t come together until after he walked away. I sent him out with a phone and twenty bucks, told him to watch for that same green pickup truck. Now I got people out looking for him.”
“Hey, Chris.” Charlene spoke without looking back at King. “You hear anything about that big shooting in North Memphis today?”
“Charlene, there’s only two things on the news today, and that shooting is the other one. It’s the same house somebody drove a dump truck into yesterday.” He paused. “You know whose place that is, right?”
“No, who?”
“Wanda Wyatt,” Chris said. “That’s Wanda’s new place.”
Charlene whipped her head around to glare at King.
Brody made a point to be quiet, think before he spoke, and be careful what he said. Charlene, on the other hand, usually said what was on her mind.
“Wanda’s.” Her voice was a flat crack, like a gunshot on the river. “That’s how I’ll find him.”
Brody watched King in the rearview, staring hard at Charlene. Reminding her who was in charge.
“Once we find those young niggas and what they took,” King finally said, “you’re free for a few days. Do what you need to do.”
21
Downtown Memphis made Peter nervous.
It was an old city, but once he got past the highway the streets weren’t particularly narrow. Wanda’s Land Cruiser was in good shape, and traffic wasn’t bad at all. Still, it was a dense urban area, and Peter’s sight lines were clogged up with parked cars and tall buildings. Every alley, intersection, and red light was a possible ambush. His head was on a swivel and the white static was sparking up high.
He told himself he wouldn’t feel this way if he hadn’t taken a pistol from a gangster’s gunny just that morning. Right before he’d taken a run at a lunatic with an armored station wagon and a machine gun intent on blowing the shit out of Wanda’s house.
Maybe he was telling the truth.
What really made him uncomfortable was the fact that he didn’t truly mind the white static. The blast of adrenaline, the hyper-awareness.
In fact, he liked it.
June knew it, too. The year before, when they’d only known each other a few days, she’d told him to come back when he’d gotten it out of his system. He wondered now if he ever would. If he even wanted to.
Wanda looked at him from the passenger seat. She sat in a boneless slump, her eyes at half-mast. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, Chuck Taylors propped on the dusty dashboard, the accordion folder with her photo proofs clutched in both hands.
“You never told me what happened to your truck.”
Peter turned left into the driveway of The Peabody hotel, an ornate thirteen-story building in the heart of downtown, and pulled under the covered entrance area. “Long story,” he said. “I’ll tell you later.”
A uniformed bellman opened Peter’s door. “Welcome to The Peabody, sir. Do you have any luggage?”
“We do,” said Peter. “We had some problems at the house, so we’re not very stylish, I’m afraid.”
“Not a problem, sir.” The gray-haired bellman had an easy smile under a crisply tailored mustache. “We all have days like that once in a while.”
The Peabody was a Memphis monument to old white money. Built in 1925, everyone from U.S. presidents to Elvis Presley had stayed there. Aside from the fact that the online photos were gorgeous, Peter had picked The Peabody because he knew, with its high-end clientele, the hotel would have a lot of practice taking care of difficult guests.
Wanda wasn’t going to be easy.
The bellman brought over a cart and began to load the black, professional go-bags that Peter had found stashed in Wanda’s bathtub, the big kitchen drawer full of office gear, and the pair of white trash bags full of dirty laundry. His face betrayed no evidence that their baggage was in any way unusual. Wanda watched anxiously, the accordion folder in a two-fisted death grip, her purse slung across her chest.
Peter figured she was ready to crash. He kept the Land Cruiser running. He still had her phone.
He touched her shoulder. “So, this is a little awkward,” he said. “I misplaced my wallet. I had to put the hotel reservation on your credit card. It’s a nice room, and it’s not cheap, but don’t worry about the money. I’ll transfer everything to a new card tomorrow.”
She looked at him plaintively. “You’re not coming in?”
“I need to get my truck back.”
She blinked at him. “Where exactly is your truck?”
“Somebody took it this morning,” he said. “While I was getting gas.”
“Wait.” A sleepy smile blossomed across her face. “You got jacked?”
Peter didn’t want to explain it, how he’d felt sorry for the kid. How desperate the kid had seemed, but also how profoundly capable and dangerous. How Peter might have stopped him from taking the truck, but didn’t.
He just nodded. “Yes.”
“I should go with you.” She screwed her knuckles into her eyes, trying to wake up. “I know most of these bangers. I’ve been taking their pictures for years. Tell me about the guy who jacked you.”
There was no way Peter was going to allow her to come along.
“Sure,” he said. “But let’s check you in and get your stuff up to the room first. You go ahead, I’m going to make a quick call.” He still had Wanda’s phone.
Faster than he thought she could move in her impaired condition, Wanda reached past him into the Land Cruiser and took the keys from the ignition.
“You’re not fooling me one bit,” she said. “I’ve learned my lesson. I’ve been screwed out of too many stories.”
“What about choosing the prints for your show?”
“I’ll do that later,” she said. “I’d rather go shoot gangsters any day.”
Again, it took Peter a moment to realize she was talking about shooting pictures.
The bellman closed the Toyota’s rear hatch and pointed his cart toward the hotel entrance. “You’re welcome to leave your vehicle there for a few minutes, sir. If you like, I can get started on your check-in. What’s the name on the reservation?”
Peter sighed. “Wanda Wyatt.”
* * *
• • •
The hotel lobby was vast, with a high, elegant ceiling coffered in dark wood. The open second floor hallway wrapped around the lobby in a balcony halfway up. On the main floor, a bar stood at one end, a grand player piano at the other, and a wide fountain occupied the middle, along with couches and chairs and table seating.
The static sparked higher up Peter’s brainstem. Maybe it was the dim, cavernous space. Maybe it was the piano’s version of “Hound Dog,” which sounded like it was recorded by a hyperactive middle-school kid from Nebraska. Maybe it was the aggressive air-conditioning, or all the Elvis memorabilia.
But Peter knew deep down that the static was rising because his truck was gone, maybe for good. That truck was the closest thing to a home he’d had since moving out of his parents’ house at eighteen. Even more than June’s valley compound, which he liked, and with all the repairs he’d done, he felt some sense of ownership there. But it was still June’s place, not his.
Wanda signed at the check-in desk, then handed Peter her spare key card. She waved a tired hand at the fountain. “See the famous Peabody ducks?”
Peter watched the birds paddling serenely in the water. “I read about this on the hotel website. They live in a little palace on the roof and take the elevator down for a swim every day, right? With a red carpet and an escort?”