Tear It Down

by Nick Petrie

  “Since the thirties.” Wanda clutched her car keys in her fist. “Guess they figure a plush prison is better than living free and watching for shotguns.” She glared at Peter, swaying slightly. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”

  She was right, of course. Peter was definitely hoping she’d be so comfortable she’d just crash in her room. One less person for him to worry about. The bellman waited by the desk to escort Wanda to her suite.

  “You go ahead,” said Peter. “I really do have to make a phone call.”

  Wanda leaned close. The smell of alcohol came off her like a wave. “Let me guess, you don’t have any cash, either. So I have to tip this nice man, too?” She shook her head. “You are one lousy damn date.”

  She took the bellman’s arm, leaning on him as they walked toward the elevator.

  It was a relief to step outside into the heat and call Lewis.

  * * *

  • • •

  The phone rang on the other end, but nobody picked up. Peter left a message. “I’m on a borrowed phone. Call me back.”

  Wanda’s phone rang again thirty seconds later.

  Before Peter could say anything, Lewis said, “Did you lose another goddamned phone?”

  “I loaned it to someone,” Peter said. “I’ll get it back soon enough.”

  “Uh-huh. Is this June’s friend’s place all over the news again? Some kind of major automatic weapon? Military grade?”

  “I might be a little outgunned here,” Peter admitted.

  “No shit, Jarhead.” Peter could hear that tilted smile. “But I’ll hook you up. See you tomorrow, early.”

  Peter was slightly scared to think what artillery Lewis might show up with. When they’d first met, he’d favored a sawed-off 10-gauge shotgun, which would put a serious hole in a person.

  “Listen, Lewis.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry about this.”

  Lewis gave his low, rumbling chuckle. “No, you’re not. You’re just trying to pretend you ain’t having fun. ’Sides, things are a little boring around here anyway.”

  “What about Dinah and the boys?”

  Peter heard the smile again. “You got a shrink, right? For your post-traumatic shit? Well, Dinah says running with you is my therapy.”

  “Lord help us all.”

  Lewis’s chuckle deepened. “I’ll be in touch.” The phone went silent.

  A moment later, the screen lit up with a text. BTW, June saw the shooting online, can’t reach you, called me twice already. Don’t be that asshole.

  Now Peter was getting relationship advice from a career criminal.

  On the other hand, Lewis and Dinah seemed to be doing pretty well.

  Peter called June.

  * * *

  • • •

  You sonofabitch, what the fucking fuck is going on?”

  One of the things Peter loved about June was that she swore like the carpenters he’d grown up working with. Not quite like a Marine drill instructor, but that was the pinnacle of the art, a high bar for a civilian.

  “June, I’m sorry. I misplaced my phone and haven’t had time to call. Things are a little busy here.”

  “I saw the footage of Wanda’s house after that thing with the machine gun.” He heard her breathing hard on the other end of the line. “Tell me you’re wearing that vest I bought you.”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “It’s a great fit, super comfortable. Safe as houses.”

  Although maybe that last expression wasn’t the best choice given the circumstances.

  “Don’t fucking lie to me.” Her voice broke a little. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “It’s definitely gotten interesting,” he said. Understatement of the year. “Lewis will be here in the morning.”

  “I can’t believe I asked you to go.”

  “Actually, I think you told me to go,” he said. “Because I was driving you nuts.”

  “Completely nuts,” she said. “You were like a crackhead hamster running a squeaky wheel, all day every day.”

  “But now you miss me. Can’t live without me.” He smiled. “Mission accomplished.”

  “Don’t push it, Marine, I’m still pissed,” she said. “Have you figured out why someone is trying to kill Wanda?”

  “I’m not convinced that’s what they’re trying to do. If they are, there are certainly easier ways to go about it. Whoever they are, they mostly seem to want to beat the shit out of her house. I’ve got her checked into a nice hotel, trying to keep her out of sight for a while. But I don’t think she’s going to stay in her room.”

  June laughed. “No, I’d guess not. How’s she holding up?”

  “Not so well,” Peter said. “She seems wound pretty tight. Was she always like this?”

  “Wanda’s a handful. She sleeps with her camera under her pillow and her finger on the shutter. Is it worse than that?”

  “Seems like it. Vodka for breakfast, all kinds of pills.”

  “Shit,” June said. “She’s been shooting war zones and refugee camps for the last fifteen years. Her last assignment was four weeks in fucking Syria. She won’t talk about any of it, at least not with me. Maybe she’ll talk with you?”

  “I’ll try. Thing is, she’s got this gallery show scheduled in New York. She hasn’t really said anything, but it seems like kind of a big deal. The gallery owner, Garry somebody, he keeps calling. She still hasn’t made her selections for the show, and I guess she’s running out of time to get the big prints made. Her house is a wreck, she’s kind of a mess emotionally, I just don’t want her to ruin her professional life, too.”

  “So maybe you need a hand wrangling Wanda?”

  “Jesus, do I ever.” Peter had no idea how to cope with Wanda’s intensity.

  “This isn’t going to be like last time, is it?”

  The last time, June had gotten locked in the trunk of a car. Neither of them had been happy about it.

  “The last time, I asked you not to come, remember?” The phone gave back an icy silence. “But this time I’m asking. You can stay at The Peabody with Wanda. You’ll be in stealth mode. I got her a suite, it’s pretty plush. Please, will you come help?”

  “Well,” she said. “I guess. But only because I already bought my fucking ticket.”

  22

  It was after four. Peter was ready to go upstairs, hoping Wanda had fallen asleep and left the car keys somewhere he could find them, when she bounced through the double doors. She had a wide smile on her face. “Okay, homeboy. Let’s roll!”

  She’d showered and changed into what Peter assumed were her working clothes: dark-blue ripstop pants that would hide all manner of dirt, a plaid short-sleeved button-down shirt made of some sweat-wicking miracle fabric, and running shoes. She carried her Nikon with a fat lens in a padded open tote bag.

  Wanda seemed to have only two speeds, wired to the gills and off like a light. Now she walked toward Peter with a swagger he hadn’t seen since Camp Pendleton.

  Her pupils were enormous.

  She’d obviously taken something uplifting from her vast collection of pills.

  Peter walked around and opened the passenger door for her, but she jumped into the driver’s seat and fired up the engine.

  He said, “Maybe I should drive.”

  “I know this town a lot better than you do. Plus my reflexes are like lightning.” She threw the car into gear. “You coming or not?”

  Peter had to hop in while she was already moving. She made a hole in the one-way traffic and cranked the Toyota through the turn. “Your truck’s already long gone,” she said. “You know that, right?”

  “I have to look.” He shrugged. “I put a lot of hours into restoring that rig. Plus it’s got all my tools in the cargo box, everything I need to fix up your house.”<
br />
  Not to mention the armored vest June had bought him.

  For his own personal safety, he wanted to be wearing it when June showed up in town.

  Wanda pulled around the block to B.B. King Boulevard, a one-way street headed north, and Peter got a chance to take a closer look at downtown Memphis. For every two restaurants or shops, he saw a vacant storefront that looked like it had been empty for a long time.

  It was hot and humid, and Peter’s clothes were sticking to his skin, but Wanda drove with all the windows down, pointing out the highlights of the municipal center.

  “The streetcar runs down Main two blocks over, but they’re renovating, so for now it’s just fancy buses. Court Square is a block that way.” Peter looked left and saw shade trees and a fountain, on the right a gorgeous stone church.

  “County courthouse here, county jail up to the right.” Big buildings designed to be impressive and intimidating, demonstrating the power of the government. Another beautiful church, this time in red brick, then parking lots mostly empty, then yet another church.

  “Yeah, we do a lot of church in Memphis,” Wanda said. “I’m a sinner because, you know, I dig chicks, so I’m not much for church myself.” She pointed right. “That’s the Lauderdale Courts, used to be apartments, now a hotel. Elvis lived there for a while.” She frowned. “We do a lot of Elvis, too.”

  Then under the freeway and into Uptown, where things changed. Wanda zigged and zagged, taking Peter on a tour of wide vacant lots and shuttered businesses, two blocks of newer multistory apartments or condos across from two churches and a park, then a store selling African crafts across from a small barbershop. An auto-repair shop and junkyard surrounded by a sheet-metal fence. A print shop, boarded-up apartment buildings, vacant lots neatly mowed. Battered old houses and small businesses surrounded by tall, ancient trees providing shade. A few blocks of small, newer homes, clearly some kind of modest development.

  “Where’d you get jacked?”

  “Up Watkins past the freeway,” said Peter. “At a Texaco station.”

  “In Frayser?” She turned right on Chelsea. “Good thing I’m here, ’cause you clearly don’t have the sense God gave a goose. You’re lucky you walked away at all.”

  The thick heat was a tangible thing, even with the breeze through the open windows. Peter felt like he was swimming through invisible mud.

  They passed a newer four-story apartment building across from more overgrown vacant lots, then a little convenience store with security grates across the windows and doors, then a big painted-brick former church that looked abandoned for decades. It was surrounded by a high chain-link fence.

  “What happened to Memphis?” Peter asked.

  “White flight, forty and fifty years ago, same as a lot of other places. Now most of the money’s in the suburbs. Uptown, where we are, was starting to pick up speed until the crash hit in ’08, when everything stalled.” She shrugged. “Downtown has a little arts district, the Orpheum Theatre, the National Civil Rights Museum. Beale Street, Graceland, the Stax Museum, and Sun Studio bring in the music pilgrims. There are a few other pockets of recovery in the city, but big chunks of Memphis proper haven’t even come back from the seventies.”

  She turned left onto Watkins, the route Peter had taken earlier in the day. On the long bridge, she pointed out the window at the brown water below. “The Wolf River,” she said. “Flows to the Big Muddy. This whole area, along with the freeway, is what segregates Frayser from the rest of the city.”

  She drove past the Texaco without slowing. The kid’s red car was still parked down the street.

  “Where are we going?” Peter asked.

  “Around.” She turned into a residential area. “Keep your eyes open for your truck. If you’re lucky, your new friend just drove it to his mom’s house. Or we might find it wrapped around a tree.”

  Inside Frayser, the street grid devolved into loops and alleys and dead ends, contained by the contours of the land. Enormous oaks and chestnuts gave steady shade. The low frame houses were small, but the front porches were wide and deep. The lots were big, too, with plenty of space between the buildings.

  Wanda made her way through section after section, slowly but methodically, working her way out from the Texaco. Frayser varied widely from block to block, from house to house. Some homes were neat and clean. Others were sturdy but needed paint and basic repairs. Still others looked like they were being eaten alive by the landscape growing wild around them. Board-ups were frequent, and on many streets remnant foundations of demolished homes lay cracked and bare amid high grass, cooking in the hot sun. Some vacant lots had been untended for so long, they’d turned into quarter-acre wilderness, trees towering over dense tangled scrub and weeds gone to seed.

  Wanda drove with her left arm hanging out the window while she palmed the wheel with her right. She seemed calmer on the move, or maybe whatever combination of pills she’d taken at the hotel had kicked in and created some kind of equilibrium.

  She seemed to know almost everyone in the neighborhood. She called out to the older men and women on their porches and the young mothers with strollers, and waved to the boys on the corners, who waved back. She raised a low-key hand to the young men collected in the yards of certain vacant houses, who gave her slow nods of recognition.

  Peter looked at the vehicles parked on the asphalt verge, up the long gravel driveways, and in front yards, looking for the familiar silhouette of his 1968 Chevy. There was a pattern to Wanda’s driving, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was.

  He thought of the cereal bowl full of pill bottles and the vodka on the coffee table.

  “I’m guessing you saw some serious shit in Iraq.”

  “Sure,” she said, voice flat, face blank. “Who didn’t?”

  Peter thought about his own veterans’ group. How talking helped. “You want to tell me about it?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t.”

  “Might help.”

  She stared furiously out the windshield, a vein throbbing in her temple. “What makes you think I need your fucking help?”

  “No reason.” He kept his voice calm. “Except for the vodka for breakfast and pills for lunch. Listen, war can really mess with you. I, ah . . .”

  He’d gotten more practice talking about it, but it still made him uncomfortable. Acknowledging that weakness. But maybe this was another way he could help Wanda. He cleared his throat.

  “I was eight years a Recon Marine,” he said. “An elite unit, even for Recon. Command told us we had indispensable skills. I stopped counting my deployments. I was fine in the fight, all eight years. But I got off the plane for the last time, three days from mustering out, and suddenly I had this insane claustrophobia. I could barely go inside, even for a few minutes. The shrinks told me it was post-traumatic stress. I get these panic attacks. Sometimes I can hardly breathe.”

  “You went into my house.” Her dreadlocks quivered with her intensity. “I saw you go into that crawl space.”

  “I’ve been working at it. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it gets better. Facing it helps. Talking about it helps.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t know what I’ve been through.”

  “I would if you told me. You told anyone?”

  For a long minute, she didn’t answer. “No,” she finally said. “Not really.”

  23

  After an hour’s driving with no sign of Peter’s truck, Wanda came to a corner where a boy, maybe ten years old, stood surveying the streets in cheap sunglasses, a baggy white T-shirt, sagging jeans, and disintegrating sneakers. She slowed and waved, and the boy’s cultivated cool fell away when he recognized the blue Land Cruiser.

  “Miss Wanda! Miss Wanda!”

  She pulled over, and the boy ran up to her window. He was thin as a reed, maybe malnourished, his hair shaggy, his skin a dusty brown.
/>   “Are you taking pictures? Will you take mine?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “What’s your name?”

  “Stevie.” He made a face. “They call me Stinky, but I don’t like it.”

  “I like Stevie better, too,” she said. “I’ll make you a deal. Tell me where the trap house is and I’ll take your picture.”

  The boy glanced past her at Peter, just for a moment. “Who’s Casper?”

  “He’s with me,” Wanda said. “A friend. His name’s Peter.”

  Peter raised a hand. “Hi, Stevie.”

  The boy ignored him. “I gotta get permission.” His tone was matter of fact. “Boss’ll beat my ass if I don’t.”

  “I hear you,” said Wanda. “Who’s the boss there?”

  “Chester.” Stevie looked a little nervous.

  “Mad Chester? With the lightning bolt tattoos?”

  “Yeah, but, uh, you know he don’t like to be called Mad Chester, right?”

  “I know. Tell him Wanda says hi. We’ll wait right here.”

  Stevie stepped into the shade of a huge chestnut tree, half-hidden by the untrimmed low-hanging branches. He pulled a cheap walkie-talkie from his back pocket and brought it to his mouth.

  Wanda turned to Peter. “Chester’s a local power, on his way up,” she said quietly. “If he likes you, he could put the word out about your truck. He’s got a temper, but he’s vain as hell. He’ll want his picture taken.”

  “What’s the trap house?”

  “A place to score and a place to use,” said Wanda. “Usually crack, meth, or heroin, sometimes all three. Lately there’s a whole lot of heroin. We’ve passed a few already, the boarded-up places with the kids standing in the yard.”

  “I noticed those. Why is it called a trap house?”

  “There’s one way in and one way out, like a trap. Heavy security inside the house, with the guys in the yard to weed out the crazies and keep things moving along. Stevie’s just a lookout, watching for police or cars loaded up with a rival clique. They’ll have young boys like him posted two or three blocks out, all the way around, somewhere between six to ten kids at a time, depending on the streets. Usually four shifts, six hours each.”