Charm City

by Mason Dixon

  “Damn. My college coaches would have loved you. During practice, they made me keep going until I puked or passed out.”

  Bigfoot ran the towel under his armpits, pressed it to his nose, then draped it over his shoulder. Bathsheba was a bit grossed out by the display, but chose to take his comfort in her presence as a positive sign. Once she earned his trust, she could start taking advantage of it.

  “Do you miss your days on the playing field?” she asked. She thought she’d heard a hint of nostalgia in his voice when he talked about the past.

  “When I fucked up my knee, my homies were acting all sad because I wouldn’t be coming into pro money and they’d be missing out on a free ride, but I was happy it happened, you know what I’m saying?”

  “Why?”

  “I was tired of getting yelled at all the time and being told what to do. Tearing my ACL was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  Bathsheba waited in vain for him to realize the irony of what he had just said. How was bending to Ice’s will any different from doing his coaches’ bidding? And why did he find one more palatable than the other?

  Her heart ached at the thought of his wasted potential. Not just his. So many people in Ice’s orbit could have made something of themselves if Ice hadn’t insinuated himself into their lives. Raq and Bigfoot had athletic ability. Dez had an affinity for numbers. All could have had successful careers in a legitimate field, yet they had chosen to embark on paths that would most likely end with them dead or in jail. All because Ice Taylor had convinced them to sacrifice their dreams for his vision. His considerable charm was even deadlier than the product he sold.

  “Keep pedaling. I’ll be back after I rustle up some grub,” Bigfoot said.

  He hitched up his pants again and lumbered out of the room, limping slightly on his damaged left knee. He had lasted a lot longer on the exercise bike than Bathsheba thought he would, but his surprising stamina had cost her valuable time. Time she could have put to much better use.

  She cocked her head to see if Ice and Dez were engaged in meaningful conversation she needed to track. She heard the sounds of digitally rendered warfare and testosterone-fueled competition, but nothing about business. Ice and Dez were acting like a couple of buddies sharing a few laughs, not the leaders of a vast criminal organization. She wondered if they were putting on an act for her benefit or if they conducted business meetings somewhere other than here. Someplace like Miss Marie’s.

  Bathsheba needed to explore the restaurant’s offices and back rooms. If the money for the payouts was housed there, perhaps other, more incriminating evidence resided there as well. Namely the location of the building Ice used to store his drugs and the names and contact numbers of his suppliers. If she could, she wanted to put them out of business as well. Though it wouldn’t completely eradicate the drug problem, it would go a long way toward stamping it out.

  She and Raq would be at Miss Marie’s this weekend, looking to get paid for their respective fights on Friday night. Bathsheba didn’t expect to earn much, but any intel she uncovered while she was onsite might prove invaluable. She checked her watch again, even though she knew only a few minutes had passed since the last time she’d performed the same action.

  “Where are you, Raq?” she said under her breath.

  In a way, she should have been glad Raq was MIA. She could perform a still limited but marginally more thorough reconnaissance of Ice’s apartment with one less person around to keep tabs on her, but she was too distracted to take advantage of the opportunity she’d been afforded.

  She was loathe to admit it, but she needed Raq more than she had ever needed anyone in her life.

  She had managed to find her way inside Ice’s crew, but her connection to the members of Ice’s inner circle was tenuous at best. She needed Raq to get her closer. Raq getting hauled off to jail or taken out by someone working for a rival dealer were complications she couldn’t afford. Raq was integral to the successful completion of her assignment. Bathsheba couldn’t achieve one without the help of the other. At the moment, though, she was more concerned about Raq than the case.

  She closed her eyes and tried to visualize each room in Ice’s apartment so she could force her mind to focus on what was important. Ice was her target. Raq was nothing more than the means to an end. Except she was starting to feel like something more.

  As she moved from the exercise bike to the weight bench, Bathsheba reflected on the kiss she had impulsively instigated the day before. The kiss had been meant to pique Raq’s interest. In the process, it had sparked her own.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she was in a relationship that had lasted longer than a few months. Ever since she had graduated from the police academy, she had kept to herself except for a handful of one-night stands and brief flings that ended almost before they began.

  Women were attracted by her uniform, but the danger inherent to her profession drove them away. She couldn’t blame them for leaving. And as much as she might have wanted some of them to stay, she couldn’t ask someone to risk her heart on her knowing she might not make it home after the end of her shift.

  She and Raq were on opposite sides of the law, but they had one thing in common. As today proved, there was no guarantee Raq would make it home safely at the end of the night either. Had she, like Bathsheba, made a decision to keep love at bay or was she willing to open herself up in ways Bathsheba wasn’t? The answer, Bathsheba knew, could affect not only the outcome of the case, but the direction of her life as well. She didn’t know how to feel about either prospect. And she didn’t know how she was supposed to feel about Raq.

  Raq was rough around the edges, but tender at the center. She was like a decadent dessert: bad for you in so many ways, but oh-so-sweet on your tongue. Bathsheba was drawn to her. Attracted to her. Two things she hadn’t expected to happen. Not this soon.

  She had been told to expect to grow close to the people she was pretending to befriend. Most undercover officers did at some point. Some even started families with people they became acquainted with while they were living under assumed identities. But she hadn’t expected it to feel like this. She hadn’t expected it to feel so real.

  “It’s all an act,” she reminded herself as she hoisted a metal bar containing fifty pounds of weight on each end.

  But spending time with Raq felt like anything but an act. Certainly, their first encounter at Pop’s Gym had felt artificial. So had the beginning of their date at Club Peaches. But once they’d starting sharing each other’s stories, the dynamic had changed. Bathsheba hadn’t felt like a police officer working a potential informant. She had felt like a woman being treated to a night out by someone who wanted to take the time to get to know her better instead of rushing into something fleeting. The feeling was intoxicating, but Bathsheba needed to keep her head on straight to keep it from getting chopped off.

  “Stick to the script,” she said under her breath. “Stick to the script.”

  A burst of raucous laughter from the living room made her assume the video game had reached or was nearing its conclusion.

  “Time to look busy.”

  She lowered the weight to her chest and exhaled forcefully as she extended her arms until her elbows locked. Then she repeated the process once, twice, three times. The weight grew heavier and her arms more rubbery with each repetition.

  “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to do bench presses without a spotter?”

  Bathsheba was so surprised to hear Raq’s voice—to see her standing safe and sound in the open doorway—she nearly dropped the hundred pounds of weight in her hands.

  “Whoa. Take it easy. I got you.” Raq dropped her duffel bag on the floor and ran across the room. “There we go,” she said as she helped Bathsheba lower the bar onto the metal catchers on each side of the weight bench. “How long have you been at it?”

  “Long enough.” Bathsheba sat up and reached for the water bottle she had stowed under the bench. “Where
have you been?” she asked after she took a long swallow.

  Raq backed up a step as if she had been caught off guard. “I had something I needed to take care of.”

  “Something like what?”

  No longer giving ground, Raq dug in her heels and looked at her hard. “What’s with the third degree?”

  “I was worried about you,” Bathsheba almost said, but she sensed that wasn’t the right way to play the game. “My first fight is coming up in a few days. That might not mean much to you since you’ve been through this more times than I have, but I don’t want to fuck things up my first time out. If you don’t want to take this seriously, that’s fine. I can ask someone else to help me.”

  “Who, Bigfoot?” Raq snorted laughter. “You put such a whipping on his ass today, he’s in the kitchen passed out in a plate of smoked turkey necks. If you want a real workout partner, I’m your girl.”

  “Then act like it.”

  Bathsheba tried to walk away, but Raq grabbed her arm before she could get too far.

  “Hold on.”

  “Don’t,” Bathsheba said, pulling free.

  “Come on. Don’t be like that.” Raq’s tone was wheedling, but Bathsheba turned her back on her to show she wasn’t swayed by the attempt to beg her forgiveness. “What do you want me to do, huh?” Raq asked with an exasperated sigh. “What do I have to say to make things right between us?”

  Bathsheba turned to face her. “You can start by telling me why you’re almost two hours late for our appointment. And don’t try to give me some bullshit excuse like you overslept because that isn’t going to cut it.”

  Raq stood firm again. “Do you really want to know where I was?” she asked defiantly.

  “If I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t have asked you, would I?”

  “Fine. I’ll tell you.”

  Raq leaned toward her like a drill instructor trying to intimidate a new recruit. Bathsheba could understand why most of Raq’s opponents seemed beaten even before the bell rang to start the fight.

  “A john wasn’t satisfied with the service he received from one of the girls and he demanded a refund. He laid into her when she wouldn’t give him his money back. I had to tune him up to reinforce the fact that all sales are final. The way Honey looked after he was finished with her, he’s lucky I didn’t do more than give him a busted nose and two black eyes. While you were here riding tricycles and lifting weights, I was out in the streets putting in real work. That’s where I was. Are you happy now?”

  Raq’s anger was mixed with a healthy dose of desperation Bathsheba found all too familiar. Though she empathized with Raq’s distress, she couldn’t let it distract her from trying to gather information. “What about last night’s shooting? Were you involved? Did you see it?”

  “No, I wasn’t involved. And, yeah, I saw it.” Backing off, Raq rubbed a hand across the back of her neck as if to ease growing tension. “Watching someone’s brains get splattered on the sidewalk isn’t the kind of thing you forget easily. That’s why I don’t carry a piece, man. It’s too easy to do something you can’t take back. You can apologize for busting someone’s nose, but there’s nothing you can say to make up for taking someone’s life. Once you pull the trigger, that’s it.”

  “Did you know the man who was killed?” Bathsheba asked gently. “Was he one of ours?”

  Raq shook her head forlornly. “He wasn’t a dealer. He was a customer. Or pretending to be.”

  That got Bathsheba’s attention. Was someone from the vice squad trying to horn in on her investigation, or were the dealers in the Middle East so paranoid they saw danger in every unfamiliar face? She wanted to solicit Carswell’s opinion on the matter, but she wasn’t scheduled to speak with him for several more days. Until then, she would have to follow her own instincts. Her gut told her to press the issue rather than let it drop. “What do you mean pretending?”

  “I didn’t know the guy. He was new to the corner, but Double D—the dealer he was trying to cop from—must have thought he was five-oh or something because he gave him two to the head without even thinking twice.”

  Double D. Bathsheba recognized it as the street name belonging to Dwayne Davidson, a member of King’s crew. If he was slinging in the Middle East, he was outside King’s territory. Bathsheba wondered if a turf war was in the offing. If so, she was positioned to get caught right in the middle of it.

  “Everyone scattered after Double D started letting off shots,” Raq continued. “I made sure my boys were okay, then I went home and tried to wash what I’d seen off me. I scrubbed until my skin felt raw, but I still don’t feel clean.” She ran her hands over her arms as if reliving the attempted baptism.

  “Raq, I’m—”

  Bathsheba reached for her, but Raq pulled away.

  “I don’t want you to see that side of my life,” Raq said, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “I’m trying to protect you from the ugliness that’s out there in the world. Why won’t you let me?”

  “Because I want to see you. All of you.” Bathsheba took Raq’s hands in hers and gently rubbed her bruised knuckles. She sought to comfort as well as interrogate. “How can I see you when you keep trying to hide part of yourself from me?”

  Raq looked at her wordlessly for a moment, either sizing her up or trying to figure her out. If Bathsheba didn’t convince Raq she was on the up-and-up, hers might be the next body found abandoned in an alley.

  “I’ve never met anybody like you,” Raq said at length. “What’s your game?”

  “I’m not trying to play games. I’m being straight up with you, Raq, and I hope you can be the same with me, all right?” Raq took her time before she finally nodded her assent. Bathsheba gave her hands a gentle squeeze and let them go. “Cool. Now let’s get down to business. I’ve got a fight to win.”

  Chapter Ten

  Raq didn’t get nervous before her own fights, but she was petrified now. Bathsheba was scheduled to enter the ring in a few minutes, and Ice hadn’t made it easy for her. Instead of matching her up against a pushover to build her confidence and guarantee an easy victory in her first fight, he and the other promoter had put her in with Sabrina Guthrie, one of the dirtiest fighters in the game. Sabrina didn’t care about what she had to do to win a fight as long as the referee raised her arm after the decision was announced.

  “When the referee tells you to protect yourself at all times, it ain’t no joke,” Raq said as Bathsheba jumped rope to work up a sweat. “Sabrina will do whatever it takes to win. Remember that movie where Clint Eastwood trains Hilary Swank to be a boxer? Sabrina puts the bitch who broke Hilary’s neck to shame. We fight bare-knuckled because it ups the risk and brings in more bets. Even though it’s technically against the rules, Sabrina used to wear padded MMA-style gloves in the ring. Ice and the rest of the promoters let her keep them because they were her trademark. The fighters were cool with it, too. Until she got caught loading up her gloves with ball bearings. She turned one girl’s face into mush once by doing that. The officials are supposed to check for shit like that before each bout, but some of them are so shady they’ll let anything slip by for a fee. If Sabrina comes to the ring with her hands wrapped, don’t let her get them anywhere near your eyes because she’s probably soaked the bandages in liniment so she can blur your vision long enough to knock you out.”

  “If she’s so bad, why is she allowed in the ring?” Bathsheba said between puffs of air as she continued to skip rope.

  “Because she puts butts in the seats. Crowds love having someone to root against, and she makes it easy for them to find someone to hate. They turn out just to see what she’ll do next.”

  Bathsheba laughed as she twirled the rope one last time. “I feel like a gladiator about to enter the arena.”

  “They don’t call boxing a blood sport for nothing.”

  JoJo, the other female member of Ice’s stable on the card tonight, tossed her street clothes in her locker and slammed the dented metal door. “You’re
full of advice now, but you didn’t have shit to say when I was new to the game. What’s the matter? I didn’t shake my ass right or something?”

  Raq felt her temper flare. She hated when people tried to rewrite history to make themselves look good instead of telling it how it really was. “I tried to tell you things, but you didn’t want to listen. You thought you knew everything.”

  A smirk slowly crept across JoJo’s face. “You think you know it all, don’t you? If you think I don’t know some things you don’t, you’d better think again. Or, better yet, why don’t you ask him?”

  JoJo jerked her chin toward the door, where Ice’s distinctive profile was displayed on the pebbled glass. Before Raq could ask JoJo what she was trying to say, Ice tapped on the door and came inside without waiting for a response. Dez followed him in while their bodyguards stood outside the door.

  “How are you lovely ladies doing this fine evening?” After Raq, Bathsheba, and JoJo murmured variations of the same positive response, Ice spread his arms and said, “I don’t mean to interrupt your preparations, but we need to take care of something before you get down to business.”

  He nodded at Dez, who stepped forward with a plastic grocery bag in his hands. When he reached into the bag, Raq hoped he’d come out with something good. Instead, he pulled out three home pregnancy tests and started handing them out.

  “What’s this?” Raq asked, turning the box over in her hands.

  “New rule,” Ice said. “No female can go into the ring unless she passes one of these tests first. One of King’s girls didn’t let on she was in the family way until she ended up in the hospital after her last fight. I don’t want to have history repeat itself. But that isn’t something I need to worry about because I know none of my girls would keep something like that from me, would they?”

  Raq and Bathsheba assured him he had nothing to worry about, but JoJo was strangely quiet.

  “You got something you want to tell me, JoJo?” Ice asked.