City of Heretics

by Heath Lowrance

  Crowe went back and closed the door and the guy said, “Cool, thanks, brother. You up?”

  He indicated the heroin the other guy was cooking up, and Crowe shook his head. He passed through the room.

  There was a filthy kitchen beyond that, stinking of the rank garbage overflowing from a little trash can, and two men who clearly weren’t junkies were lounging, one at the table and the other against the cabinets.

  They both came to attention when Crowe strolled in. They were dressed in classic street thug attire—wife-beater tees, baggy pants with the boxers showing over the top, ball caps and gold chains and all that. They had training weight muscles and tattoos. No marks for originality.

  The one who’d been leaning against the counter took a step toward Crowe, saying, “You lost, old man?”

  “I’m looking for someone.”

  “Yeah?” he said. He looked as if he expected his day to get really interesting, out of nowhere. “Who you looking for?”

  “A guy named Radnovian.”

  The other one didn’t get up from his chair. He said, “We don’t do names here. What’s your boy look like?”

  Crowe said, “He looks a little like you. Except better dressed, and not so fucking ugly. You seen him?”

  Both of them went all wide-eyed, and the one sitting down shot up and into Crowe’s face. He said, “I know you didn’t just say that. Tell me you didn’t just say what I thought you said.”

  The other one pulled a gun out of the back of his waistband but kept it low, just so Crowe could see it.

  The one in his face said again, “I know you didn’t say that.”

  Crowe was long past the stage in his life where these sort of kids amused him. He said, “Where’s Jimmy the Hink?”

  The one with the gun said, “You a pig?”

  Crowe shook his head.

  “What you want with the Hink?”

  Crowe grinned at him. “Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you make me tell you?”

  The gun-boy scowled, but the other one was starting to look a little uncertain. He said, “You got some guts, old man. Maybe we should see what they look like all over the fucking floor.”

  Crowe had already decided on the fastest way to drop the two jokers—a fist in the throat would take down the closest one, and a heel just below the kneecap would cripple the other, followed up with a fist directly behind his left ear. Piece of cake.

  But he didn’t have to do a thing. From the other side of the kitchen, a familiar voice said, “You ass-wipes better back off. Dat Crowe you fucking wit’.”

  Jimmy the Hink filled up the doorway pretty thoroughly. He was a fat ugly man in an ugly orange blazer, his pale head patchy with psoriasis. He sucked on a peppermint. Crowe could smell it from across the room, even over the stink of the garbage.

  “Heya, Crowe,” he said.

  “Heya, Jimmy.”

  The two thugs backed off. The one with the gun looked unsatisfied.

  “I take it you here to see ole’ Rad.” He still spoke in that weird, pseudo-Cajun cadence of his, although as far as Crowe knew he’d never been anywhere near Louisiana.

  Crowe nodded. Jimmy brushed dandruff off his shoulder, said, “C’mon, I take you up dere.”

  The thug with the gun was standing in the way. Crowe looked at him, and, without breaking eye contact, the thug stepped back. Crowe walked by him.

  He followed the Hink down a short hall to a staircase in back. They passed a couple of rooms with an assortment of junkie-types lounging around; old and young hippies, street bums, prostitutes, pretty much the whole catalogue. You had to sort of give it to the junkies, Crowe thought—these were people who’d given up on ambition. And who could blame them? Ambition is a bitch. It makes people do horrible things. People without ambition are the happiest people on earth.

  The Hink spoke to him over his shoulder as he waddled up the steps. “You been gone a long time, ole’ Crowe. They got you all locked up in da big house, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah. That change a man. I been dere too, you know.”

  The Hink had been the Old Man’s operator for as long as Crowe could remember, and now he was working for Vitower, doing the same job—selling heroin, operating little fly-by-night ‘safe houses’ for addicts to crash in, as long as they had the cash. Not that he ever had the pleasure of meeting his employers face-to-face. The Old Man would never have allowed himself to be seen with someone as crass as the Hink, and Crowe could only imagine Vitower felt the same way.

  At the first door at the top of the stairs, the Hink stopped. He jerked his head at the door, and dead skin sloughed off and floated away. “In dere,” he said. And then, “Listen. After you bidness done, come down and talk wif me? I gotta thing, could use you.”

  “Some trouble?”

  He frowned. “Some trouble, yeah.”

  He trudged off, back down the stairs.

  Crowe watched him go, thinking about how quickly old patterns re-emerge in this life. Back in the day, he used to do odd, unpleasant jobs for the Hink, out of nothing but pure altruism—and, of course, the fact that he always enjoyed a good bit of ugliness. He opened the door without knocking and went in.

  Rad was sprawled out lazily on an overstuffed sofa in the middle of a nearly bare room. There was a widescreen TV in front of him showing cartoons, and between that and the sofa a long, low coffee table. All his gear was spread out there. A candle was burning and the room smelled like synthetic apple pie.

  He looked up at blandly. Crowe hardly recognized him.

  He’d lost a good thirty pounds, and his off-the-rack suit hung on him comically. He’d lost a lot of hair, too. What was left clung haphazardly just above his ears and at the moment was ridiculously unkempt.

  He was well-shaven, though. He always carried a portable electric razor with him, and used it four or five times a day.

  He said, “Is that… is that Crowe?”

  Crowe nodded, and Rad said, “No shit. Well I’ll be damned. Crowe is back.” And then, “That can’t be good.”

  He didn’t stand up. From the way his gear was spread out, Crowe could tell he’d only just that moment shot up and was waiting for the bliss. Seeing Crowe walk in probably wasn’t what he had in mind.

  He’d been on the Old Man’s hook back in the day, had managed to secure a steady line of smack in exchange for… well, whatever the Old Man needed. He’d picked up the habit back in the late ‘90’s, when he was still with Vice, working undercover. Posing as a heroin addict.

  Eventually, we become what we pretend to be in this world.

  There were a few officers with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department who suspected the truth about Radnovian, but the fact that he was with Internal Affairs now and could destroy them completely with one phone call kept them quiet.

  Crowe said, “Catch you at a bad time, Rad?”

  “Naw, man, not at all. Why don’t you, like, siddown or something, though. It hurts my neck to look up at you.”

  Crowe sat down next to him. Rad looked at him with hooded eyes, and Crowe could see the drug starting to take effect. His facial muscles were slack and he sort of smiled weakly. “I heard you were out,” he said. “Good for you. Fresh start. Debt to society paid, and like that.”

  “I’m a reformed man.”

  Rad laughed, not so stoned that he would believe something like that. “I take it you’re here for something shapasic. Shpacific, I mean. Shit.” He shook his head sharply. “Specific. You’re here for something specific.”

  “I need to know about Peter Murke.”

  His mouth opened and closed a couple of times. He said, “Peter… Peter Murke. Ah, no, man. No, no, no, no, no.”

  “Last I heard, he was about to face a competency hearing.”

  “No, man, come on. Christ.”

  “Rad,” Crowe said. “For the last few days, I haven’t done much. But as of today, I’m a very busy man. Stop wasting my time.”

  Rad
grumbled and slouched lower on the sofa. “Vitower sent you, right? Whassa crazy bastard gonna do?”

  “I haven’t seen or talked to Vitower since I’ve been back.”

  “No, man. No way.”

  Crowe hit him in the teeth. Rad grunted once, clutching his mouth, said, “Shit! Ah, fuck, man!”

  “Things are a little different this season, Rad. We ain’t buddies, you and me. And I’m not asking you to talk to me. You understand?”

  Rad looked at him resentfully. Crowe gave him a minute to gather himself. Finally, he pulled his electric razor out of his coat pocket, flipped it on, and ran it over his face. It seemed to relax him. He said, “Yeah, okay. I reckon things are different, huh? Not that I ever thought we were buddies.”

  “You’re trying my patience, Rad.”

  “Okay, okay.” He seemed entirely straight now; the fist in his face had sort of dispelled the heroin rush a bit. He flipped off the razor and put it away. “Fine. You wanna know about Murke, fine. He got some good slimy attorneys, tryin’ to pass him off as crazy, sayin’ he’s not responsible for what he did. They’re trying to get an appeal on his conviction.”

  Murke had been apprehended about two years before and charged with the murder of a thirteen-year-old girl named Patricia Welling. But he was the prime suspect in many more murders, possibly as many as sixteen in all. Every last victim a woman, but that was all they had in common. The D.A. went over every scrap of evidence they had, but, despite that they knew Murke was their man, they had nothing solid, nothing that would stick. Nothing except for Patricia Welling. There they had him with strong DNA evidence and a witness who’d seen him with the victim.

  He’d been convicted on a single charge of first degree murder, given a hefty life sentence without parole.

  That much, everybody knew. It had been all over the papers, had even scored national headlines for a couple of months. But like any ugly media story, there was much more to Murke’s saga than that.

  Crowe said, “An insanity plea? That hasn’t worked in the state of Tennessee in, what? Decades.”

  “Whatever, that’s what they’re gonna try. They’re gonna transport him to the psychiatric hospital in Jackson. He’s gonna undergo a complete psych eval. It’s not gonna do them any good. Any shrink they can get to say Murke is too crazy to be convicted, the prosecution’ll come up with three more to say he’s sane as rain. But they’re going through with it anyway.”

  “When are they transporting him?”

  Rad sighed. “Jesus, Crowe.”

  “When, Rad?”

  “The third. Tuesday. Tuesday morning. What the hell are you gonna do about it? Ambush the goddamn transport van?”

  Crowe smiled. “Not a bad idea.”

  Rad shook his head. “You’re goddamn nuts. Maybe they should take you there. Honestly, man, don’t even tell me what you have in mind, I don’t wanna know.”

  “Did you think I was gonna share with you, Rad?”

  Crowe found it all very interesting. Interesting, because one of Murke’s victims—his last, in fact—was Jezzie Vitower. Wife of Marco Vitower.

  Opportunity wasn’t just knocking on the door. It was walking right in, flopping down on the sofa, and opening a beer.

  He stood up. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Rad frowned and pulled out his razor again. “Well, you know, that’s something to look forward to, I reckon.”

  “Dese boys,” the Hink said. “They been in the neighborhood, see. They been around, and they got no bidness here.”

  “Outsiders?”

  “Yeah. Dis new gang popped up in the last few years, while you was away. Bad Luck, Inc, dey called. Dese fellas wit’ dem.”

  The Hink’s office was in the far back of the house, down a long crumbling hallway hidden by a ratty curtain. It was barely big enough for his desk and two wooden chairs, and there were no windows. He had a poster hanging on the wood-paneled wall of a Hispanic girl holding her large breasts up, as if waiting for an inspection. Several large stacks of money were on the desk; must’ve been close to fifty grand just sitting there.

  “Lotsa new faces dese days, you know,” he said, and Crowe nodded. It had been happening since long before he got sent up, the slow infiltration of major gangs into Memphis from Chicago and L.A. The scenery was changing all the time. “But so far,” the Hink said, “we been okay. We do what we do, and they do what they do. Respectin’ borders, right?”

  “But now they’re getting bolder.”

  The Hink nodded. “Since Vitower been runnin’ the show, things got a little more stable. The new gangs listened to him, respected him, cuz he black, not like the Old Man. Dey made deals, shook hands. But dese new boys, Bad Luck, dey don’t care ‘bout none a’ dat. Dey come in, dey do what dey want. Down the South side, dey already runnin’ everything, and now dey movin’ north and east and you can’t hardly scratch your balls wid-out hittin’ one wid your elbow.”

  “I’ll do what I can. But I don’t know what good you think it’ll do. It’s not like running them out of the neighborhood is gonna do much for you, long term.”

  He shook his head, and a little flurry of dandruff floated to the desk top. He brushed it away from the stacks of bills. “I don’t care ‘bout no long term. I’ll be outta this block in another three weeks or so anyway, it’ll be time to move somewhere’s else. But for now, I need dem outta my hair.”

  “You clear this with Vitower?”

  “I don’t need to clear nuthin’ wit Vitower,” he said, frowning.

  Crowe leaned back in the rickety wooden chair, mulled it over for a second. The Hink drummed his thick fingers on the desk.

  “Okay,” Crowe said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The Hink grinned, an expression that looked painful for him. One big hand grabbed a stack of bills and handed them across the desk.

  “Dat’s two grand dere, for your trouble,” he said. “Get yo-self a coat, why don’t you? You too old to be runnin’ around wid-out a coat.”

  Crowe took it, slid it in the inside pocket of his jacket.

  From half a block away, Crowe could see her in front of the building. Even from the distance, he knew it was her. She wore a long gray wool coat with a white fur collar. Probably fake fur, but who could tell? Her hair was the color of oxblood, wavy but not quite curly, long and flickering in the wind like the flame of a huge candle. He paid the cabbie off half a block away and walked the rest. She saw him coming but only stood there, hands thrust into her pockets, shivering.

  Closer, and they made eye contact. He went over in his mind if he should just walk right past her or actually stop. Her pale cheeks were flushed with cold. Her nose, slightly too long, burned pink and her green-gray eyes, which he’d always thought were too big, were cradled by thick black eyeliner. She looked like a gothic raccoon.

  Without really making the decision to, he stopped in front of her.

  She said, very softly, “Welcome home.” Her voice was just like he remembered, just like he’d remembered all those black, black nights in prison. Deep and dark, with that soft lazy accent that absolutely refused to commit to a vowel. Like many in Memphis, she was really more of a North Mississippi girl.

  He nodded. “Well, you know, it’s good to be back.”

  She nodded back at him. And they didn’t say anything for a long moment.

  Then, “You wanna invite me in?”

  He shrugged and opened the door for her. She went in, past him, and he smelled her smell. That smell did something to him. He had a lot of memories tied up with it.

  She paused in the vestibule and he didn’t look at her. He went up the stairs slowly and she followed.

  Inside, she took off her coat, looked around for a coat rack, and finding none, tossed it on the loveseat. She wore a simple green tee-shirt, tight around the breasts, short enough to show just a peak of her midriff. Hip-hugger jeans. She was in her mid-‘30’s, had put on a few pounds since he’d seen her last, but the extra weight looked good on
her. She’d always been too skinny.

  She put her fists on her hips and looked at him.

  The old thing came back, horribly. Take her. Throw her on the floor and take her. He’d thought about it often enough in prison. Pretty much every lonely fantasy he’d had involved her.

  He said, “Okay. You want coffee?”

  “I hate coffee.”

  “I don’t have anything else.”

  “Tea, maybe?”

  “I don’t have anything else, Dallas.”

  She walked past him, gazing around the room. Her eyes flicked over the narrow little bed and the beat up loveseat and the scarred coffee table. She sat in the easy chair by the window, just like her husband had the night before, and crossed her legs like she owned the goddamn place and said, “My letter. Did you get it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well?”

  “I didn’t read it.”

  “What?”

  “I threw it away,” he said. “You shouldn’t be here, Dallas.”

  She said, “If you’d read the letter, you’d know that this is exactly where I should be.”

  “Well, I didn’t read it. I think you should go.”

  He couldn’t read her face. But he never could. He remembered looking down at her, he remembered her body under his, and blue light coming from somewhere, her gazing up at him with those green-gray eyes half-closed and mouth part-open, sharp little teeth clenched, sweet breath against his cheek. And the smell of her. A flower, after the rain. Even then, he couldn’t read her.

  They’d been sleeping together for almost two years before Crowe went to prison. They never talked about her leaving Chester or anything like that. They weren’t children, with stupid and unrealistic ideas about each other. What they had was nothing.

  She sat there in his easy chair with her oxblood hair all crazy and wind-blown. Most women probably would have been touching it, trying to fix it up, but not Dallas. She didn’t care. She knew it looked good that way.

  She said, “They released you on Christmas Eve, gave you a bus ticket back to Memphis and a hearty slap on the back. You stayed at a motel on Union your first night. And then you paid the first and last month’s rent on this place the next day. Are you out of money yet?”