I feel there is something amiss when Count’s men let me enter without difficulty or hostility—the closest thing to hospitality for them. I smile, but no one smiles back. Count’s henchmen, Claudel and Otis, have taken a defensive stance. Count, seated at one of his tables, simply leans back in his chair. Then I see Lester. He acknowledges me with a nod and then turns back to the task that I have interrupted.
“Like I was sayin’,” Lester says to Count, “you need to leave Candy alone. She’s mine now.”
“Listen to this shit.” Count looks at me and laughs. “She ain’t yours. The reason you have her is because we let you borrow her, motherfucker.” Count winks at me. “Ain’t that right, little man?”
I’m scared—no, embarrassed—for Lester. He has no influence outside of the ring. Count may have inferred that we are on the same team, but he’s the master of a sport in which he’s the only player.
“Me and him don’t like you comin’ in here all ungrateful and whatnot. Especially when your big dumb ass is only alive ’cause I allow it.”
“She’s with me now ’cause she wants to be mine. But she’s afraid you’ll stand in her way. She wants to open up her heart to me, but she’s sacred of what you’d do to her.”
“Goddamn, this dumb bastard is a riot. Did you practice this shit? Did you stare at your stupid face in the mirror, cryin’ and snivelin’, ‘She want to be with me but she scared.’” Count laughs, then moves his hand from under the table, revealing a pistol that’s been aimed at Lester this whole time. “You damn right she’s scared. But she ain’t scared of what I’m gonna do—she scared of what she gonna do without me. How she gonna take care of herself? You? A washed-up boxer? I feed her. I clothe her. I take care of her like she’s my child. You just babysitting, nigger.”
Lester takes a moment to weigh the logic of what Count has said.
Claudel and Otis seem as if they are ready to make a move, but Lester gives them a brief look that promises a lifetime of pain. Lester tries the same look on Count, but he does not seem intimidated. More like hungry and aroused.
“You and me already been through somethin’ like this before,” Count says. “It didn’t work with Etta and it ain’t gonna work now. You know how this ends, Lester—with a win for me and you kissin’ the canvas.”
“You just stay away from Candy. Just let her be.” Lester turns suddenly to me. He startles me, and I step back, putting too much weight on my bad leg. I almost fall, but he grabs my collar—for menace or support, I cannot tell.
“Mr. Estem. Keep him away from her. I know you care for her, even though she don’t want you like she want me. There’s still a place in her heart for you.” He grabs my shoulders, straightening me up. “I really am sorry ’bout all this,” he whispers. He gives Count one more threatening look and walks out.
Claudel and Otis relax their shoulders in relief.
Count places his pistol on the table and stares at me.
I lean against the bar, still littered with beer bottles, shot glasses, and dirty ashtrays. “Well,” I say smiling, “at least Lester didn’t take a dive . . . not exactly. I tried to talk some sense into the man before he threw away his life by crossing you, but he’s hard to get through to, as you can see. I thought you should hear it from me before you heard it somewhere else.”
Count sits quietly with his index fingers and thumbs forming a triangle. His men look at each other and smile.
“Just thought you should know,” I say again.
“You thought I should know?”
For some reason, I nod a little too eagerly.
“There isn’t a thought in that peanut head of yours that I don’t allow to be there.”
“Tell ’em, Count!” shouts Claudel or Otis, I can’t tell which.
Count stands up and begins to unbutton his shirt. “When I give you a list of chores, you’d better check ’em off like a good little boy.”
Again from the goons, “Yeah, like a good little boy.”
“Look at my back.” He removes his shirt and shows me a patchwork of scars across his shoulder blades. “A white man did this to me when I was a boy. Caught me tryin’ to steal chickens to feed my family. I still thank him for it, though. Changed my life. ’Cause that’s when I learned to stop tryin’ to make it in his world—I learned I have to make my own. You are in my world now. I’m a hunter, and boy, you are scarin’ the game away. You know what that means? You takin’ food out of my mouth! You causin’ me to starve. And starvin’ . . . that’s a slow death. Is that what you want? You want me to die a slow death?” He folds his shirt neatly on the table. He then grabs his pistol and cocks it at my temple. “Is that what you want? For me to die slow? ’Cause I don’t wish that on you. I want you to die quick as hell.”
“Count, I apologize. I apologize.” He takes the gun away from my temple and pushes me with his free hand. Hard. My back hits the floor.
“Who do you think you’re talkin’ to?”
He answers his own question with a kick to my ribs.
“If you did somethin’, you damn sure did it for yourself.”
A heel in my abdomen.
“I take you in, try to show you the ropes. I lent you my girl and she comes back loaned out to somebody else!”
I roll over. The contents of my breast pocket put pressure on my chest. I remember what I’ve brought for him in case something like this might happen. I turn over, yielding something that should quell all this violence.
“I still have your money,” I groan, holding up the swollen envelope the agents had given me.
Count slaps the envelope out of my hand. Bills scatter everywhere like falling leaves. “It’s all my money,” he says as he steps on the hand that had held the envelope.
I receive a stomp to my braced leg. It’s not from Count, which I would have accepted, but from one of his minions, which I cannot accept.
“Get up,” Count tells me.
I think about that night in the alley while I struggle to my feet. I made a promise to myself after that first encounter: given the opportunity, I will hit back—and hit harder.
“Are you Otis?” I ask the one who kicked me.
“Nah, I’m Claudel, faggot.”
I grab a beer bottle off the bar and I swing it across Claudel’s head. That first swing causes a dull thud like a slab of meat hitting a butcher’s block. Claudel is dazed and stumbles back. The second swing causes the bottle to crack. He falls to his knees. The bottle breaks in half on the third swing, forming sharp, jagged edges. I continue to swing. Swings four through ten slice his face; lacerations drool blood.
Otis points his pistol at me, but Count fires a warning shot with his own gun.
“Let it be, Otis,” says Count.
My foe lies defeated. I stop when the blood comes. Claudel writhes on the floor and holds out a pleading hand, while the other tries to stop his face from bleeding. I’m in a mind-numbing haze of exhilaration. Never have I felt this. An overwhelming feeling of contentment brings me to tears.
Count comes to me, embraces me, and kisses me on my forehead.
“Welcome home, little brother. Welcome home.”
I sit at the bar with Count and sip whiskey to stiffen my leg and loosen the knots kicked into my stomach.
The rag Claudel holds to his face is already soaked with blood.
“That ain’t right,” Otis whispers to Count, “sittin’ there havin’ drinks with the man after what he just did to Claudel.”
“I don’t need you to tell me what’s right, Otis. Now go take Claudel to have his faced looked at.”
“Come on, Claudel.” Otis guides him out by the arm. Claudel mumbles something to me, but it sounds wet and muffled through his rag.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t kill her,” Count says to me.
I think for a moment, placing myself in Count’s shoes. It’s hard to come up with a defense of her life, let alone Lester’s. Even though she owes me nothing, part of me wants to see her pay. Still, there�
�s another part that wants to save her.
“That’s not the way, Count. That’s not the way to teach her a lesson. Let her live. She’ll see that life is not much without you. Lester’s ruined his boxing career. No fighting for him—watch him suffer. It won’t be long until she comes to her senses. She’ll think of the world you created for her and she’ll feel like a fool for leaving it. Let her live, and she’ll come back to you.”
Count tosses back his bourbon so fast and easy that I don’t even see him swallow. He slams down the glass and covers it with his palm. He looks at me—into me, past my eyes, and directly at the part of me that, until now, I was convinced remained hidden. “Remind me,” he says, “to never get on your bad side.”
It felt good to send Claudel to the hospital, and I slept well last night. But it’s morning, and the thrill has already gone. I’ve often wished for the courage to stand up to my tormentors and respond with the same level of violence that they use to threaten me. But what have I really done to rid my life of monsters? Mathis and Count have asked me to do terrible things, and I’ve offered little protest. They know I will comply. Their trust is the biggest indictment of my character.
I head to the office and learn the news. Last night, I cut a man’s face open and Martin has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. But Martin’s executive staff doesn’t seem as jubilant as one might expect. In fact, they don’t seem jubilant at all; they look frantic, distant, and downright scared.
Gant walks by without acknowledging me. His eyes are large and troubled, as if he’s escaping some unseen atrocity.
I look back at the secretaries up front. They all seem to be fine, getting an early start on the day’s gossip. As I head to my office, Abernathy and Young exit the conference room with the same look of fear expressed by Gant.
The door to Gant’s office is open. I look in. He stands behind his desk rubbing his temples and brow with one hand.
“Mr. Gant, is there something wrong?” I ask.
He stops the rubbing and looks at me. “No, Estem. Everything’s fine. Close the door, please.”
“Sure thing.”
“Wait a second. . . . Estem, come in here and have a seat.”
I do as instructed, closing the door behind me.
“The only reason I’m telling you this,” he says, “is that I don’t want to be alone in my horror.”
Immediately, I feel uncomfortable, but I nod, urging him to continue.
“Martin received a letter this morning. The letter was sent anonymously but it spoke in detail of his personal life—transgressions in his personal life.” He looks pained. He sighs and sits in his chair. “The letter said all these details about his personal life will be made public if he doesn’t kill himself within thirty days.”
He looks at me to share in his distress, but all I can manage is an expression of even-keeled solemnity. That letter may have been sent anonymously, but one monster can identify the work of another.
A grave mood dominates the office for the rest of the day. My knowledge of the tape, and now the letter, makes the hours pass in a torturously slow manner. My coworkers don’t know how close they are to the author of that letter, just one degree of separation. There was a time when such an act of dissemblance would have been satisfying, but now I feel guilty. Maybe there is still hope for me.
I need a cigarette. I don’t want to smoke with the rest of the staff and listen to them talk about Martin, so I step out back behind the building.
I pull out a menthol, but I smell smoke before I’ve even struck a match.
“Don’t look so down, John,” Martin says, exhaling smoke and tapping off ash. He has managed to stay positive, even if it is for our benefit and not his own. “You look as if you’ve just left my funeral. It’s not just me,” he says smiling. “All of us are in danger.”
I stare at him blankly.
“They think we all look alike, brother, so we’re all in trouble.”
We both laugh.
“You’re especially in trouble, since we’re the same height. They might confuse us. But don’t worry, John. When your end comes, I’ll be sure to preach at your funeral.”
The thought of that fills me with both honor and fear. He seems so comfortable talking about death. I don’t have that kind of courage. I wouldn’t know how that feels. “Thank you,” I say, managing to smile.
“Would you care to hear a preview?”
“Of course.”
He takes a wide stance, adds a solemn weight to his eyes, and lifts his head slightly as if regarding an imaginary congregation. “John Estem was a fine young man,” he says in that exaggerated preacher’s drawl, “but he thought that all the women in the city should like him. He had to be sharp every hour of the day. He bought sharp suits and wore them as pajamas, just in case he met a fine woman in his dreams.”
Again, we both laugh. Maybe he laughs a bit harder than I do this time. It has been a while since our conversation that night. He must have felt that he shared too much, because he has been especially indifferent toward me since then. I’m probably partly to blame. I do have an intensity that can be off-putting. He probably sees how I look at him with the strained objectivity of a psychoanalyst: the look of someone who knows too much about you—much more than you’d like—but doesn’t want it to show.
“Congrats on the Nobel,” I say, trying to make sure my thoughts maintain a positive tone. “Is pride a sin in this instance?”
“Thank you, but please note that I haven’t won anything yet.”
“But still, just the idea of being nominated . . .”
“Man gives awards, John. God gives rewards. The eyes of the world were on us before, but from now on they will be wearing their spectacles.” He pauses as if taking a moment to contemplate what he has said.
Even while trying to give him the deference he deserves, I can’t keep from thinking of that tape and how we are so much alike. We are reckless in similar ways, and we are both headed for a dangerous end.
“How is that lady friend of yours?” he asks. “What was her name?”
He’s been thinking of her.
“Candice. She’s fine.”
“How serious are the two of you? Are there any plans?”
I consider lying to him, but I don’t see the point and I don’t have the desire.
“We’re not serious at all. We’re just old friends.”
“I see.” He must sense something from me that troubles him, because he quickly becomes somber. “You have a nice evening, John,” he says without a smile.
“You do the same, Martin.”
He stamps out his cigarette and heads back into the office.
I’m not ready to go inside, so I light up again.
It’s night, and my routine is broken. Until sunrise, it’s just my robe and whiskey. Normally, I would be at Count’s, admiring Candice or spending money on her stand-ins, but Lester has her locked away, and the agents have me paranoid that I may be performing in front of an unwanted audience.
It’s as if I’d heard myself on that tape. Like Martin, I foolishly believed that my shameful indulgences were out of reach, unseen, that their lifespan was extremely short, that they died in the shadows almost as soon as I had given them life. But these agents have the power of resurrection and omniscience. They are moving closer and closer to becoming deities. Martin is a man of God, but he is just a man.
As I take a sip of my drink, I hear a car horn outside. I tighten the belt of my robe and peer out of the window. It’s Lester, standing in front of a shiny yellow taxicab.
I open the door. “What is it, Lester? Please don’t tell me you’ve taken a cab here and don’t have the money to pay him.”
“No, Mr. Estem. Not at all. This here is my cab. Got me a job driving it. Sorry to pop up on you like this. Candy told me where you live.”
I let out a sigh that smells of scotch.
“I just want to tell you in person that I’mma pay you back every penny. That’s w
hy I got this here job. Also, I want to apologize, man to man, for what happened with Candy and all. Me and her is real close. She tells me everything, and she told me how love-struck you was for her. I know how it is to love a woman who don’t love you back. She told me how you don’t have any friends and how few people got respect for you. But I’m here to tell you that you got me as a friend now. And I respect you. Anything you need, you just holler. Me and you is friends now. Okay?”
I don’t believe him. This is a man who laid many traps in the ring, tricking his opponents with false intentions. Maybe I’m being overly suspicious, but not without reason. I’ve seen this look and heard these words before. The smile and false declarations of friendship: I know what lies behind them. It’s strange, but I sense intimidation behind his kindness.
I look at his small driver’s cap with a head like granite underneath. Muscles bulging through his shirt, he has the shoulders of a statue. The sight of this man saddens me: a physical specimen gone to waste. An athlete with promise, but through the bad luck of unfortunate associations, his potential has been squandered. I force a smile when I think of his earnest effort to take care of Candy. Maybe this is the kind of man she needs—someone who would sacrifice and embarrass himself for her. He is not an aggressive negotiator. He does not threaten you with violence, but he wins you over with his honest simplicity. Is this what being a muscle-bound child brings you? I should want him out of the picture, but his guilt about stealing Candy is endearing . . . although I must admit I feel compelled to use him to my advantage.
It has been a few days since I’ve seen the agents and they played their tape of Martin. I have not contacted them. When my phone rings, I don’t even answer it.
I haven’t been to Count’s either. Just work and dry nights. I don’t want to see Claudel’s scarred face. Part of me is ashamed of my savage actions; the other is afraid I might gloat.
There’s a knock at my door. My heartbeat surges. I have changed for the worst. Curiosity doesn’t enter my mind, because I already know it’s the promise of danger that has come calling. Without hesitation, I go to receive it.
Our Man in the Dark Page 13