by Matt Rass
“Is that a fact?” Ray asked sarcastically.
“So we trade information. I tell him if any Silver names come up on the board and he sends them on vacation, and in return, he tells me about certain deals going down around our lovely town.”
“Sounds like you’re on the payroll.”
“Quid pro quo, they call it. And I don’t take money, I take the collars. You and Bobby had to leave this town to find what it was youze were looking for, and did you find it? Bobby did. And I hear he’s doing fine in DC. But me? I knew what I wanted and it was right here. I plan on being behind a desk with a big ol’ sheriff’s star on my chest. And that, brother, ain’t gonna happen unless I keep close with Frank Silver.”
“It’s good that you’ve got goals, JT.”
“Ain’t it? But on this occasion, Bradley called and asked about any Kung-Fu niggas in town—on account of you bustin’ up all those white boys at Silver Motors. That’s when I told him about you.”
“And how did Alex’s name come up?”
“I said you were looking for your brother and you had some crazy idea that Sam was somehow connected to Alex Silver, the fuckin’ assistant city attorney…”
“And?” Ray said.
“To be honest, bro, I told him that for your own protection. I didn’t want you goin’ off half-cocked trying to fit Alex Silver into your lunatic conspiracy theory about what Sam was doing ’round here.”
“And what was Sam doing ’round here?”
“Selling dope, bro. I told you that.”
“You think that was a drug hit behind the motel? They buried him out there, man. That’s some white people shit!”
“These niggas are smart nowadays, bro. They see that shit on TV and they say, “hey, if it work for the Mob or the Mexican Mafias, it gonna work for us.” It’s not like when we was growin’ up. They ain’t gonna kill you in no drive-by, they gonna take you out to the edge of town, shoot you in the back of your head, and bury your ass behind an old, boarded-up motel!”
Ray took Sam’s iPhone out of his pocket and held it up to show it off. He noticed how John’s eyes lit up when he saw it.
“Whose phone is that?” John asked, coolly.
“Sam’s.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“The girl I was with at the loft, DC, she found it in a junkie’s room at the Welcome Hotel.”
“Homicide will prolly wanna take a look at that,” John said. “You can leave it with me.” He put out his hand, all nonchalantly-like.
“You know what’s on the phone?”
“Nope,” John said.
“A voicemail he recorded. Lemme play it for you.”
John sat up a little straighter behind the wheel. Ray unlocked the iPhone, went into Sam’s Voice Memo app, and pressed the Play button. The voice recording started: “Sammy, help! It’s DC, I’m with the senator…”
Ray pressed the Pause button. “She means Congressman,” Ray said. “And that’s the same DC I just told you about.” Ray pressed the Play button. DC continued on the recording: “He’s drunk and he’s going to kill me, I know it!” A distant voice could be heard yelling at the woman, “Open this door bitch, before I huff and I puff and I blow this house down.”
“Wait,” Ray said. “You’ll hear him much better in a second.”
The sound of the door being kicked open could be heard, and DC shrieked. “Come here, bitch!” he said.
“Oh, hello congressman Frank Silver, you sonuvabitch,” Ray said.
John chewed on his lip and Ray could almost hear the hamster working the wheel between his old buddy’s ears.
“You can’t say that’s him for certain,” John said.
“All work and no play make Frank a dull boy,” the congressman said on the recording.
Ray nodded his head and John looked straight ahead.
“No stop,” DC said. The sound of her clothes being ripped could be heard and her continued struggle telling him “No,” and to stop, before he finally says, “I’m gonna stick my white cock in your beautiful, black ass!”
“Turn if off,” John said.
DC screams further and the recording ends with the sound of DC crying and Frank Silver humping.
Ray pocketed the phone. “Take me to see the FBI,” he said, pointing Andre’s 9mm at John’s hip.
“Oh man,” John exhaled. “You in some deep shit now, boy. I am going to kick your black ass.”
“You couldn’t kick my ass when we was kids, and you ain’t gonna kick my ass today.”
“Thing you don’t know about me, Ray—’cos you don’t give enough of a shit to ask is—I’ve got seven black belts. That’s two more than you, muthafukka, and soon as I park this car, I’m gonna stuff that gun up your ass and pull the trigger with my boot.”
“That’s gonna be pretty hard to pull off with ten broken fingers,” Ray said.
EMMA RUNS AWAY
Emma slipped into the trailer and put her finger to her lips to shush her little brother. She tried tiptoeing to her bedroom but the puppy, Max, was nipping at her heels. She closed her door on him and collapsed onto her bed. She blindly reached into her backpack, extracted her wallet and pulled the money out of the sleeve. She threw the money into the air and let it rain down around her. She could hardly believe it. She flipped over and started collecting the bills together like a kid with her Halloween candy. She had never had so much money at once in her entire life. She counted it for the tenth time. Two hundred and fifty dollars. For a massage she hadn’t even given yet. Paid in advance! This shit was crazy.
“Where did you get that money?”
Emma jumped at the sound of her mother’s voice. She tried desperately to gather up the cash. “I uh, found it at…” Emma stammered. “I got a job.”
“Oh yeah? You got a job last night and were paid today?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“What kinda job gives a kid that much money?”
“What do you care? It’s my money and I earned it.”
“Who gave it to you?”
“None of your business.”
“Damn right it’s my business. No one gives a teenager that kinda money for nothing.”
“It wasn’t for nothing. God. You don’t give me any privacy. You’re always snooping through my things—”
“I’m trying to make sure you’re safe.”
“By checking my messages? My Instagram? You’re just jealous that I have a life and you don’t, mom.”
“You better be careful, Em. You’re starting to turn into a real bitch.”
“Well, it’s a good thing. I have you to look up to for that.”
“Oh, fuck you. I don’t even want to know how you got the money.”
“Then don’t ask.”
“Did you have sex with someone for that money?”
“Gawd. No! I’m not a prostitute.”
“I don’t like it. Jesus Christ. You know, you get harder and harder to live with every year.”
“Well, maybe I should move out, then.”
“And where are you gonna go?”
“I have friends.”
“Where did you get that money?”
“None of your business.”
“Ugh, I wish I could give you to your father.”
“Whatever. You don’t even know who my real father is.”
“Oh, I know who he is, he just doesn’t want anything to do with you.”
“Bullshit. He doesn’t want anything to do with you! I’ve heard you say it, like, a thousand times. You’re drunk every time, so you don’t even remember it the next day”—Emma started to cry—“It’s the fucking asshole from the sheriff’s department. I see him following me all the fucking time and I hate it!”
Mandy covered her mouth and slid down the door frame. She clenched her eyes and blubbered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”
Emma didn’t go to her on purpose. She watched her mother sob. She wanted her mom to suffer.
For all the times Emma had to endure hearing her drunkenly tell a friend—or near stranger—about how much better her life would be if she had never had kids. For all the times Emma had to cover her ears to the sounds of her mother having sex with some random black dude she never saw again. For all the times she had to take care of her brother because her mother was “sick” in bed. The words she wanted to spit at her mother in all those incidents, and this one: Bitch. Asshole. Drunk. Druggy. Liar. Shitty mom.
Emma swept up her money and cell phone and stepped over her mother. “I fucking hate you,” she said.
She went to her closet, took her clothes from inside, and stepped over her mother.
At the front door, she gripped her little brother by his shoulders and said, “When you’re older, you should run away, too.”
She was crying now as she took Carl’s business card out of her pocket, burst through the trailer door, and started running down the trailer park’s rutted road.
FIGHT!
The sheriff’s SUV pulled into the parking lot of an nondescript motel and John Thomas turned off the engine.
“Keep both hands on the wheel,” Ray said. “Which room is the FBI’s?”
“Two-eleven.”
“I wish it didn’t have to be like this,” Ray said.
“You ain’t gonna shoot me, Ray, I’m a cop.”
“I’ll shoot you. I won’t kill you, but I’ll shoot you.”
“I guess if you ain’t eatin’ assholes, that’s how you get off? Shootin’ unarmed people? Is that why you killed that little boy in Detroit?”
“Why you tryin’ to test me, JT?”
“If you wanna be tested, you can put that gun down and we can go toe-to-toe, UFC-style.” John slowly started removing his hands from the wheel.
“Okay, we can do that. But first, you put your hands back up on the wheel and tell me ’bout Sam. I know you recognized his phone when I showed it to you. Why is that?”
John squinted at Ray and sucked on his lip, thinking.
“You might as well lay it out for me,” Ray said. “‘Cos I don’t see you walkin’ away from this.”
“You sure you wanna be all-in on this, Ray? I mean, you haven’t been in the boy’s life all this time, and now that he’s dead you wanna make a stand? You used to say how you’d die for your brother, but the truth is, you never even wanted to live for him.”
“And I’m gonna take that regret to the grave with me,” Ray said. “Now, you can tell me everything you know, and I’ll go straight for the motherfucker who pulled the trigger, or I guarantee after I put this bullet in you, you’ll be wearing a colostomy bag for the rest of your miserable life. You ever know anyone wears a colostomy bag, JT? You wear the motherfucker on your chest, right here, and it stinks all the time. Piss, shit.”
John looked out the windshield beyond Ray. “There’s the FBI right now,” he said.
Ray glanced over his shoulder, and John grabbed at Ray’s gun with his mirror-hand and punched Ray in the throat. Ray croaked, but swept the gun down to his feet as John Thomas reached for it. Ray then grabbed JT by the wrists as his old buddy tried to punch him again. They wrestled in their seats, each man trying to get leverage on the other. With the computer and mount in their way, they smashed it with their elbows and banged into it with their knees trying to raise themselves out of their seats, cursing one another. Finally, they broke free from their grappling and traded wild, heavy punches, rocking the vehicle like a boat on water. Their fists moved lightning quick, as they took turns striking each other in the face. The fight was more exhausting because of its close-quarters and limited movement. Each man failing to grab onto the other’s wrists and stop the other from punching.
“You sonuvabitch,” Ray said after blocking and deflecting a flurry of John’s punches before releasing his own round of hands that were parried by JT.
The two men huffed and puffed and frothed at the mouth like rabid dogs. And then, in one fluid movement, Ray caught one of John’s wrists with his cross-side hand, then the other, and pulled him into a headbutt. John went limp and Ray delivered a pair of powerful hooks to John’s head, and then smashed his old buddy’s face into the steering wheel three times for good measure, sounding the horn each time.
“Motherfucker,” Ray said, and removed handcuffs from John’s belt and clasped him through his steering wheel. He snapped the rover wire to keep him from communicating with anyone from the sheriff’s office and picked up the 9mm from the floorboard before exiting the SUV.
The Special Agent was coming around the far corner of the motel, carrying a take-out coffee box and donuts.
“Agent Lance,” Ray said. “Can I talk to you?”
Lance looked at Ray and then glanced into the driver’s window of the sheriff’s SUV but the windows were sufficiently tinted that he couldn’t see inside.
Ray trotted across the parking lot to Lance’s side, and handed over the 9mm. “I’ve got some evidence that could prove what happened to Sam.”
The Special Agent stopped and shook his head. “Thanks for the gun, but I’m sorry Ray, there’s nothing I can do for you. Perhaps you should contact the sheriff?”
“They may be involved,” Ray said. “I have Frank Silver on tape raping the woman I brought to the hospital.”
“Okay,” Lance said. “That could change things… Let’s show my partner.”
Ray followed Lance to his motel room.
“Where’s the gun come from?”
“Pimp over in Benson Bridge,” Ray said.
“Is that how you managed to open up all your cuts again?”
“No,” Ray said. “That’s from something else.”
Lance glanced back at the sheriff’s SUV still sitting quietly in the parking lot. “I just hope he’s still breathing,” he said.
Ray shrugged and Lance knocked on the motel room door.
THE FBI MOTEL
In the motel room, a nervous Alex Silver jumped at the sound of a car horn outside followed quickly by two more honks. His eyes jumped to Christmas to see how he would act, but the agent was nonplussed.
“That sounds like a warning or something,” Alex said.
“The car horn? Prolly just an impatient girlfriend or kid in a car.”
Alex watched as FBI Special Agent Christmas opened his briefcase on the bed in his motel room and took out a listening device that looked like an ordinary USB flash drive.
“It’s voice-activated,” Christmas explained, “and will record and store all conversations after you flip over the cap. It works like any other thumb drive and has about two gigabytes of storage space to add pictures or files or whatever, so it passes as legit should anyone want to look at it. But it will record audio on a hidden, encrypted file.”
Alex was amazed. “I didn’t even think of that. When you said wired, I was thinking it was gonna be like a Scorsese movie, with the wire taped to my chest and the transmitter in my crotch.”
“Well, there’s no need to get nervous and try and flush it down the toilet. No one's gonna know it’s a listening device.”
“Okay.”
“Just remember to flip it over and keep it in your pocket, then forget about it.”
Three knocks followed on their door and Alex almost jumped out of his skin. “Jesus! This room is gonna give me a heart attack.”
The digital lock clicked and Christmas’s partner, Lance, entered with Ray in tow.
Alex braced himself against the wall. He knew who Ray was—had heard he was the one who had busted up the dealership, and seen his picture on TV—but apparently the big man didn’t recognize Alex. He seemed dazed. One of his eyes was swollen shut and he staggered into the room.
“Donuts?” Lance asked.
“What the hell is this?” Christmas said.
“I found him in the parking lot. Take a seat, Ray.”
Alex cringed as Ray wavered while sitting. The TV on the wall of the room was playing the Tigers game. Alex snuck between the wall and the bed and
sat down to watch it with one eye on Ray in the corner chair.
“Ray. Ray?” Lance said.
Ray looked up and wiped his good eye clean. He was losing consciousness.
“This is Alex Silver,” Lance continued.
Ray stood quickly as if responding to the fight bell, but he staggered back when the rush of blood filled his head. “What the hell?” he asked. “What’s going on here?”
“Take it easy.” Lance settled Ray back down in his chair. “Ray says he has some audio of Frank Silver he wants us to listen to,” Lance explained to Christmas. Then to Ray he said, “We know you think Alex may have been involved in Sam’s disappearance.”
“Damn right, I do,” Ray said. He then gave Alex such a hard look that Alex looked away. He’d never had to fear another man until now.
“I’m sorry,” Alex said. “I didn’t know anything like this would happen to Sam.”
Ray raised his balled-up fists and jumped up from his chair. The room didn’t seem large enough to contain him. But both Lance and Christmas moved cautiously to block him from going further.
Ray looked at the Federal Agents. “Tell me what he’s doin’ here.”
Both men gulped.
“He’s going to provide evidence that his uncle has been running a corrupt campaign…” Christmas replied.
“I’m not interested in politics,” Ray said. “I’m interested in who killed my brother.”
A roar came from the TV and the toilet flushed in the bathroom. Alex looked up as the Tigers pitcher slapped his glove and pumped his knee. Strike three. Game over.
“If I coulda kept playing ball,” Alex said, “my life woulda been a helluva lot different. I woulda gotten out of this town, away from my family. Just like you Ray. That’s all I ever wanted. A way out.”
The faucet in the bathroom shut off as Ray rubbed a trickle of blood from his nose. “I’m too busy bleeding to listen to any more of your story.”
“Easy Ray,” Lance said. “There’s a reason I brought you here.”
Just then, Joe the Junkie came out from the bathroom, “Don’t go in there for the next hour,” he said, unaware of the commotion on the other side of his door. His eye too, was black and completely swollen shut where Ray had bopped him.