by Anton Marks
Finally Bagga John, Father Fowl, Diamond Ruff and even Anthony Gee would be able to regain their positions that had been taken from them by his secret treasure trove in the basement.
This would all be over soon, once he got the key to Carlos’ office - the only entrance into the Crypt through the walls. He could work without disturbance getting in and out with the treasure and nobody would be the wiser.
Make no mistake, this was a courtesy extended to Carlos because with or without his authority or help he would be demolishing his wall to get into the catacombs.
The phone slammed down on its cradle and Spokes looked up from his thoughts.
Velors had finished his conversation finally and was grinning in his direction.
“Señor Spokes, apologies for the interruptions. Where were we?”
“Someting to do with why the figure we agreed on keeps going up,” Spokes said sarcastically.
“Ah yes. I‘m happy with what we‘ve finally agreed on. Your proposal is a good one don‘t worry.”
“Mi looked worried to you, rudy?”
“You do actually. What can I do to relieve some of that stress?”
“Feh starters you can reconsider changing our sixty-forty deal to fifty-fifty. Then while you’re at it give me access keys and magnetic cards to all the rooms so on the night I can give deh council surveyors access to every nook and cranny.”
“Sure. I‘ll have them ready for you,” he said. “And let me sleep on the profit split. Nothing should come between us and the healthy profits we’re making, right?”
His face lit up with the wattage of his greed at the thought of the profits to come.
The phone rang.
Spokes kissed his teeth.
But Velors flashed his veneered gnashers, his jaw angled to profile his good side. His eyes twinkled artificially, savoring the sense of importance it made him feel, he paused before answering.
“Have a drink, relax,” he pointed to the drinks cabinet, “I’ve been expecting this call,” he said. “Two minutes, tops.”
Spokes stood up and unruffled his linen suit. He made his way out of the office where his protective angels would be waiting for him. The door sucked shut behind him and the only thought that made him feel good was him being out of the picture and a crazed Velors, having spent thousands on a party standing in the middle of the venue thinking he had the Midas touch and realizing that he was alone and useless. All the greedy, gravoliscious, vindictive, tight-fisted son-of-a-bitch deserved.
He smiled fleetingly and played the mind movie in his head again.
His smile broadened.
Westfield Shopping Centre, Shepherds Bush
Tuesday 23rd July
12.51
Shaft inhaled the aroma of his cappuccino as it wafted up from his cup and continued to massage Y’s feet under the table with his free hand. A grin, surgically attached to his face by a skilled Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, stood triumphant for all to see as he contemplated how great life was, amidst the Tuesday scrum of intelligent shoppers.
They were sitting in one of these conveyors belt type restaurants with staff who by rights should be mucky while preparing the food but pranced about in immaculately white smocks and with eager grins only he could appreciate in his present good mood.
And this good mood was fuelled by the adolescent exhilaration of being around not just one but three painfully sexy women, who made him feel like some Hip Hop mogul on a video shoot. A sigh of contentment came from his lips like an inadvertent belch.
Why women thought men were a Rubik cube-type puzzles to be solved with nagging and tears was a mystery he couldn’t understand. Men were simple creatures. Feed them, stroke their egos - and anywhere else that needed attention - and you would have a friend for however long it took him to get bored.
Strangely enough though, he never did feel out of place around them. And the subject of boredom was as alien to these three as work to a benefit cheat. Bad II the Bone’s exploits were nudging precariously close to the excitement levels of the Flying Squad in his opinion. One or two gun battles over a few months and they would nearly be there.
Y looked over her magazine with a little smile on her face after reading her horoscope. She caught Shaft either reading the front page of the Pride or looking at her through the magazine. Her eyes didn’t linger with his for too long but that did not stop her from trying to figure out from his expression of total cool and his delightful thumb movements over her feet what was going on in that handsome head of his.
Carefully, she closed the magazine and placed it on the table. It was time to give up the struggle, having skimmed a sentence four times and still not understood a word she had read.
“Let’s go and rejoin the girls at Prada,” Y said suddenly.
“Not when I’m getting into the swing of tings,” Shaft’s voice had taken on the chocolaty undertones of Barry White, “I can still feel areas of tension, here, here and here.” He pointed.
Y shivered deliciously as he trailed his finger up her calf.
And if you continue doing that I will not be held responsible for my actions, Y thought. Then she swung her legs out from under the table and picked up the bunch of designer named shopping bags beside her chair.
“What is it about men and shopping that gets them all jittery and frightened?”
Shaft slurped the remainder of his coffee as he stood up and glared at her, a smile not too far from his lips.
“I resent that generalization,” he said with his corny voice of authority. “But I can briefly say by way of explanation, that a man’s aversion to shopping is a primal response that is triggered when the male of the species back in the day saw the imminent collapse of his tribe through his mate’s carelessness. Translated into layman’s terms shopping equates to possible bankruptcy, collapse of a man’s tribe. You see?”
“Do you know, you are a chauvinist dawg?”
Shaft howled and grinned broadly.
“I prefer to see myself as a wolf, baby. A chauvinist wolf.”
Shaft and Y walked down the busy shopping mall arm in arm. She was chatting away about how predictable most men were while the detective was occupied with a strand of information left over from the discussion they had the last time they met.
He wished he didn’t have to bring it up now but he felt it important enough to run the risk of placing a damper on the fantastic time he was having. And for a detective there was nothing worse than having unresolved questions lurking around in your head.
Y preferred the direct approach anyway, so he laid it on the line. He stopped, squeezing her hand gently and pulled her in to face him.
“Remember I said I’d look into the client you’re working for, some background stuff that could prove to be useful? Well I found something peculiar.”
Y maintained her smile but her body betrayed her deep seated worry by the tautness exhibited in her neck and shoulders. Shaft pulled her in closer.
“You okay?”
“I’m good, let’s talk here.” They shuffled over to a length of balcony and made it their own; the exquisite perfume of savory crepe teased them from the restaurant across the way. Shaft leaned on the cool brushed aluminum tubes and looked down at the milling shoppers below. Y leaned her backside on it with folded arms, ready to hear what he had to say.
“Your man Spokes has no criminal record but had a minor traffic violation seven years ago. He was driving a car that the motor patrol bobby thought had been stolen but turned out to have been loaned to him by a friend, Jimmy Éclair. They were buddies back in the Caribbean.”
“I know this is going somewhere right?” Y asked feigning impatience.
“There’s more,” Shaft continued. “At the time Jimmy Éclair was working with a self professed Obeah man from Jamaica called Enoch Lacombe who was running a gambling den with a few close acolytes around him as he begged, stealed and murdered for certain types of antiquities. Years later Éclair disappeared and his murder, along wi
th three other people working with this psycho, was pinned on him. Spokes has never showed up on our radar since. Until now.”
Y stroked his arm.
“You’re beginning to worry me. You don’t walk around with these facts bouncing around in your head as a matter of course, do you?”
Shaft laughed then got serious staring intensely into Y’s eyes, his voice lowered.
“Normally I’d say no but on my desk right now is a set of murders linked with this sadist Enoch Lacombe. In the last four weeks eleven people have been slaughtered. Some of these victims deserve everything they got but there are other casualties who have been caught up in a struggle I can’t explain. These are decent people torn from their families. That’s when the facts aren’t just mere facts but people’s lives. And it sticks with me, everywhere I go. The thing is this killer has been in prison for the past four years of a thirty year stretch. He is physically incapable of committing these crimes but they are happening. Then there is this niggling feeling I’ve got, that’s prompting me to ask you if any of this is related to your client.”
“So why haven’t you asked this Enoch Lacombe guy to give you his take on the situation?”
“Funny you should ask that because I’ve been trying to book an appointment with him in Wormwood Scrubs for five weeks and as far as I can figure out it’s been denied from the top. First my Governor wouldn’t have it and when I tried to sidestep him the Prison Governor literally laughed me off the phone. It‘s pissing me right off but until I can find out who is copycatting his methods, I‘m guessing.”
“So you presuming it’s copycatting.”
“What else could it be?”
Y shrugged.
“Is there anything you want to tell me?” Shaft asked.
“I have a question, first,” Y said.
“Fire away.”
“Do you believe in Obeah, magic and things that go bump in the night?”
“Ah, the supernatural,” he grinned. “What a question, to ask me on a first date. Luckily for you my incomplete anthropology doctorate was on African Urban Mythology. And yes some people think so. But the theories tend to attribute those kinds of belief systems to our need to believe in something greater than ourselves. God, witchcraft, magical powers and that kind of thing are archetypes that have followed us into the twenty-first century from when we huddled around camp fires, telling horror stories. From my experience of tracking these urban myths in Southern Africa, I’ve been unable to categorically prove the existence of anything overtly supernatural but I did generate a shit load of unanswered questions.
“And your mind is made up?”
“I’m a detective and a scientist. I’m open to the possibilities.”
Y pursed her lips in contemplation at his answer.
“Who is Darkman?” She asked bluntly.
Shaft looked at her. He spoke slow and deliberately.
“Where did you hear that name?”
Shaft’s Adam’s apple rose up to under his chin and stayed there.
The words fell out of his mouth with more haste than he could conceal.
“Hey, if you don’t want to talk about this, I understand babe but …”
Her eyes flashed trepidation and fear. An almost imperceptible change in Y’s stance said she had just physically reinforced herself for a conflict that only existed in her head. She held onto his upper arm, her grip tight and stared into his eyes.
“I think your man Darkman is trying to kill our client.”
Completely out of context he kissed her on the lips and held her close.
There was no resistance.
He would figure out why he did it, later.
“Yow, yow, Y! Cut that shit out, man!” Patra shouted out to them with her solid cheeks glowing. “You got your grubby hands all over a nigga, damn. Crushing up his shirt and putting lipstick, all which ways over his shit.”
“Yeah, just cool, nuh.” Suzy added, promptly making parting movements with her arms like some overzealous Catholic nun chaperoning her girls at a mixed ed. dance. “Wi like him jus’ as he is. All neat and smooth.”
Shaft unclenched and looked at the two women approaching sheepishly. Y had left his embrace and joined her sisters over the short distance.
Patra pulled up beside him and placed the bags at her heels.
Suzy looked appraisingly at Shaft and locked her arms in his, speaking over her shoulder to Y.
“Yuh told him, nuh true?”
“He is as good a detective as we thought,” Y said, sounding apologetic. “But all the juicy bits I’ve left for you two to fill him in with.”
“Only fair,” Patra quipped and she took up her position on Shaft’s free arm.
Y called after them.
“I don‘t think he believes me, so you may have more luck convincing him than I did.”
Shaft felt that familiar school boy flush when he was around them returning, he wondered how long he had to know them to be completely comfortable.
“You’re gonna dig this,” Patra said to Shaft excitedly, dragging him into a bistro and directing him to a table. Spokes sat loosely in a wicker chair, his fingers fondling the black trilby on his knee and an empty plate in front of him.
“Detective McFarlane, Spokes.” Patra introduced them then without further fanfare began her story with Suzy filling in the gaps. Shaft still could not bring himself to believe what he was hearing.
They had been talking to Shaft for the last twenty minutes and the warmth of Shaft’s kiss still lingered on her lips. Her heart felt languid and a spark of fuzzy heat exploded in her stomach as she savored the strong chemistry between them. But soon her mind was on other things and Y began hoping Shaft would be an ally in this craziness.
It felt like Patra and Suzy had accepted this situation more easily than she had and after Sunday night’s clash with the undead, sleep was at a premium for her and nightmares showed no sign of abating either.
They had killed that night.
Even if the assailants had been drugged and bound by some spell, bent on taking their lives but having to kill did not rest well with any of them.
Maybe the reason why she was so keen to see Shaft believing in what they were going through was the importance of a shared experience from the perspective of someone with no vested interest in this weirdness.
A skeptic.
Spokes was paying them well but it had become much more than that now. Y craved for a point of view outside of their trinity something or someone that could keep her balanced. Because the more situations they were exposed to in this brave new world the more the boundaries between the normal and incredible would wear thin.
And how much more of her beliefs about the world could she see shattered? Maybe she would finally give in to the raging battle inside and fully accept it as part and parcel of her world.
Maybe.
It was these thoughts that occupied Y’s mind as she intercepted the girls, Spokes and Shaft as they left the bistro.
“We taking him home,” Suzy announced and Spokes accepted the verdict with a nod of his head.
“His head is all fucked up with the truth, our kind of truth.”
“I’ll walk you to the car.” Shaft had his hands on Y‘s shoulders and mirrored her uncertain steps playfully.
“Had enough from the tales of the Twilight Zone?” Y asked as they walked through the sliding doors to the car park.
“If I didn’t know you better I wouldn’t be wasting my time listening to this but...” he corrected himself. “You ladies are the most level headed people I know. Making head nor tail of this is difficult.”
They walked out onto level three and headed to section AF to where the limousine Spokes had hired was parked in the distance. Spokes, Y and Patra were just ahead as Suzy fell back beside Shaft.
“If I was yuh, I guess I wouldn’t believe it either but lucky for me I have my sisters. If dem convinced of anything then I’m a believer.”
“That can be dan
gerous, don’t you think, relying on a second party’s opinion and not the facts as you see it.”
“Normally I’d agree with yuh.” Suzy shrugged. “But I have an advantage. Anyway if you’ve seen some of dis evil with your own eyes, fought it with your hands and when you have a second to confirm it was real, yuh know yuh not going crazy.”
He nodded.
“Me an deh girls have dis connection ting. Hard to explain but when we decide to use it we can feel deh truth in most situations.”
“Why am I not surprised, by that?”
“There is hope for you yet, then Mas Winston,” Suzy said.
John-John the chauffeur jerked up from his newspaper as he saw the group approaching through his rear view mirror. Folding it self-consciously he neatly squeezed it into the glove compartment and jumped out of the luxury car, using the keys to close it remotely.
He was a very courteous lad, who took the responsibility of giving his passengers the best customer experience he was capable of. As he straightened his ill fitting jacket around his thin frame, he walked briskly up to meet his passengers some way from the limo with extended hands to greet them all and relieve them of some of the baggage.
“Ladies, Sir.” He took as much as he could carry and without looking around, pointed to the Cadillac and pressed the door release.
There was the characteristic bleep sound and the car shuddered violently as if a massive force was struggling to get out from under the hood. Everyone stopped and stared as a roar erupted from the interior. The big car bucked and twisted, the undercarriage screeching with the strain. There was an almighty boom and the car lifted from the ground engulfed in hungry red flames and bellowing black smoke. Another nerve shredding screech like a pterodactyl from prehistory and the nebulous smoke and flame formed the outlines of a hideous giant bird of prey. It emerged from the limousine like it was disgorging from a metallic egg, head first then wings. The dark phoenix screeched, and a geyser of car parts and concrete rose up with it, forming its body while its massive flapping wings were all flame and smoke.