City of Heretics

by Heath Lowrance

  Crowe ignored him, spoke only enough to give him directions off Danny Thomas and back into Jimmy the Hink’s neighborhood. The driver looked at him in the rear-view, wondering what a middle-aged white guy wanted around these parts, but he didn’t ask, just said again, “I don’t even know anymore.”

  About a block from the Hink’s place, Crowe spotted them—three young black guys, huddled at a corner in front of an abandoned house. They were under the yellow acid glare of a streetlight. It was cold but they wore only hoodies with the hoods up to protect themselves from the wind.

  He told the driver to stop, then snapped a fifty dollar bill at him. “Drive around for five minutes, then come back to this spot,” he said. “There’ll be another one of these for you.”

  The driver took the bill, said, “It’s your funeral, I reckon,” and then took off before Crowe even had the door closed behind him.

  The three youngsters noticed him getting out of the cab, but didn’t respond. They only watched from within the shadows of their hoods. He walked over to them.

  When he was only a few feet away, one of them said in a quiet, deadpan voice, “You want somethin’?”

  Crowe stopped, close enough to reach out and touch his chest if he wanted to. “What you got?” he said.

  They eyed him up and down, checking out the suit and tie, and the one doing the talking pushed his hoodie back and cocked his head. He was a good-looking kid with a strong jaw and eyes that glittered in the pale streetlight. He had about two inches on Crowe.

  He said, “You a little over-dressed for the occasion, old man. Maybe you lookin’ for a dinner party, huh?”

  “I found what I’m looking for.”

  “You lookin’ for trouble, then. Blow, old man.”

  Crowe said, “You’re in the wrong neighborhood, kid. What you wanna do is find someplace else.”

  They all smiled at that one. They always did. Crowe didn’t know why he even bothered with it anyway. He watched as all three of them switched to swagger-mode, bumping against each other and laughing and imitating his bravado.

  The talker took a step closer, leaving himself open to show his sheer confidence, and said, “I like your suit, old man, so I’m gonna give you one chance to walk the fuck away, or—“

  Crowe hit him with a right in his kidney and before he could fall he head-butted him in the nose. The kid lurched backward, stiff-legged, his eyes dazed. The other two took almost three seconds to process before they moved.

  The sap was in Crowe’s left hand. As soon as the closest one was within distance, he snapped it backhanded at his face, like swinging a tennis racket. It cracked against his jaw and Crowe could see a couple of teeth surf out on a narrow wave of blood before the kid fell to the sidewalk.

  The third one was expending a lot of energy with words—motherfucker, I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you, that kind of thing. Crowe let him get close enough to take a wild swing that he sidestepped, and then Crowe was behind him, bashing the sap down on the back of his head, right at the base of the spine, the magic spot.

  He went down without another sound.

  Crowe stood over them for a moment, getting his breath back. It had been a few years and it took a little more out of him than he would’ve guessed.

  The first kid, the one who’d done the talking, was still conscious. He curled up on the sidewalk, groaning. Blood streamed from his nose, but he was clutching his torso. A rabbit punch to the kidney. There aren’t too many things much more painful than that.

  Crowe was still getting his breath, trying to push down the adrenalin rush. Fifteen years ago—hell, even seven years—all of this would’ve been a walk in the park, but he wasn’t a kid anymore, not like these guys. And maybe prison had made me a little soft after all.

  Before the kid could pull himself together too much, Crowe got down on his haunches next to him and said, “What’s your name, kid?”

  Between clenched teeth, he said, “Mother… motherfucker…”

  Crowe slapped him hard across the bridge of his broken nose and to his credit he didn’t scream. Crowe said again, “What’s your name?”

  “Garay…” he said. “Garay. Ah, you motherfucker…”

  “Listen, Garay,” Crowe said, like a benevolent dad. “If I see you around here again, I won’t have a sap with me. I’ll have a knife. And I’ll gut you like a fucking pig. You understand?”

  He didn’t answer, so Crowe hit him again. This time, the grunt of pain was louder, and he said, “Yeah, fuck, yeah, I get it… Jesus fuck, man…”

  “Good boy,” Crowe said, and stood up.

  The cab was just pulling around the corner. It stopped at the spot where Crowe got out and waited. He walked over and climbed in.

  “That was no five minutes,” Crowe said.

  The driver was looking at the three guys sprawled out on the corner. He didn’t look at Crowe or say anything. Crowe handed him another bill, which he took and shoved in his pocket.

  “Take me to the Cuba Libre. You know where that is?”

  He nodded, and off they went.

  The Libre was a nightclub just off Sam Cooper, glittering in the gray-black evening with pink and green neon, smack in the center of a small industrial area. The front was done up in a sort of Miami-deco style, with a rounded archway leading in and a curvy overhang with lights that were in constant motion. It was cheerful and decadent and made you want to have a tall, exotic drink.

  The cab driver let him off, took a twenty dollar bill, and drove away. Ice had begun to fall again, and the wind swept bitter across the nearly empty parking lot, so cold it made his gums ache.

  Back in the day, there was always a doorman at the entrance, but not now. He went in through the heavy leather-padded door and paused just inside for a moment to shake off the chill.

  It was pretty much just as he remembered it. There were pictures of palm trees and famous Cuban guerillas. A short hall opened up into the club, a large, high-ceilinged place with more neon in funny shapes, dim track lighting in more pink and green and the occasional ocean blue. The Libre usually didn’t get going full swing until after midnight, but he could smell the lingering richness of cigar smoke, marijuana, and earthy perfumes from the New Year’s celebrations the night before.

  To the left, wrought iron tables and chairs and a multi-colored dance floor and a stage for the rare live act that would show up. To the right, the long oak bar, lined with soft green plastic to rest your elbows on.

  He remembered nights when the Libre was so jammed with sweating, drunk, desperate people that you could barely move three inches, but at the moment it was all but dead. A couple of businessmen-types, in good suits with ties loosened, sat at the far end of the bar, heads together in some sort of half-sloshed negotiations. At a table near the quiet dance floor, a young hipster couple slouched, each nursing lime green drinks in tall glasses.

  A full-throated female voice said, “Well, fuck me seven ways to Sunday!” and Crowe saw Faith behind the bar, gripping a bar rag in one hand and grinning at hi with her fine white teeth. “If it ain’t goddamn Crowe, as I live and breathe.”

  She’d had a full-on Afro last time he’d seen her, big and well-coiffed, but now her hair was cut tight to the scalp and it made her look sort of like an action figure. She wore a tank top, revealing lithely-muscled light chocolate arms and a decent amount of cleavage.

  He smiled and said, “Faith. Happy New Year.”

  “Happy New Year, the man says! Motherfucker, I haven’t seen you in, what, five years? And now you just stroll in here like nothing and say ‘Happy New Year’. Goddamn Crowe!”

  It had been over seven years since he’d seen her, but he didn’t bother with a correction. She came around the bar, snapping her bar rag in the air, and barreled toward him as if she was going to pop him one. She threw her arms around his shoulders and hugged him with fierce strength. She was taller than he remembered, the top of her head at eye level, and she smelled sort of intoxicating, like peppermint and
rum. Up close he could see the dark cradles under her eyes, and the first traces of broken capillaries along the bridge of her nose.

  She’d always been a drinker, Faith.

  They’d gotten the attention of the two businessmen-types. They looked up from their important deal-making and stared for a moment, but very quickly their gazes drifted to Faith’s ass, and then back to their own concerns.

  She held him out at arm’s length, looked him up and down. “Jesus, boy, you done got skinny! Where the hell have you been?”

  He shrugged. “Traveling the world. This and that. You know.’

  “Traveling the world, right. And all your travels led you right back to where you started, huh?”

  He said, “What makes you think this is where I started?”

  That Faith didn’t know he’d been in prison told him a great deal. Chester had never mentioned it? Or Vitower, or anybody? So much for the irreplaceable hard-ass Crowe. She went back behind the bar, saying, “Well, if this don’t call for a drink, I don’t know what the hell does. Have one on me.”

  The three beers he’d had earlier were just about all the booze he needed for one day, but he pulled up a stool and said, “Thanks. Make it a—“

  “Wait,” she said, “Vodka gimlet, right?”

  One of the businessmen tapped his glass on the bar, and Faith slid over to refill it with scotch— always the up-and-coming young executive’s brand of poison. Smiling, she made her way back over to Crowe.

  She said, “You in town permanent?”

  He shook his head, and she nodded hers, and then the other businessman needed attention.

  Crowe sat and nursed his drink.

  This place, the Libre, was where he had his first introduction to the Old Man and his people. The Old Man didn’t own the joint, but he carried on a great deal of private business here—Sunday nights always found him in one of the Libre’s backrooms, going over weekly receipts or setting up new deals or plotting out how to screw with people in the coming week. It was also the place where Chester and Crowe hung around when they weren’t busy with other work. Home away from home.

  And Marco Vitower bought the place about a year ago. He wasn’t the sort to go changing things that didn’t need to be changed, and what better way to cement the permanency of the Libre than to own it?

  It was a Sunday night, which meant that, New Year’s Day or not, Vitower would be here. Unless he wasn’t.

  A burst of customers showed up over the next few minutes and the next time Crowe turned around to look, the place had filled up, keeping Faith busy. When she finally made her way back over, Crowe said, “You still see Chester and the old crew around?”

  “All the time,” she said. “Chester usually swings by two, three nights a week. He’ll probably swagger in here in pretty soon. I take it you didn’t keep in contact with any of them after you left?”

  “No, we kinda lost touch.”

  She mixed a Cosmo for a woman a couple stools down and said, “I asked about you a couple times after you left, but pretty much just got the cold shoulder. No one wanted to talk about it. It was like they were pissed at you or something.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe they were. But maybe if I smile and apologize real sweetly they’ll forgive me.”

  She laughed. “Oh, I just gotta see that. Crowe says he’s sorry. That’s a riot.”

  The P.A. system crackled energetically and then a staggeringly loud bass drum started throbbing like a thermonuclear pulse. The dance floor was mobbed almost instantly, and like clockwork, as soon as the music kicked in around the bass line everybody was moving, the lights were flaring and pulsing, the floors were shaking.

  Before prison, loud noise and mobs of people didn’t bother him much; things were different now. He’d spent too long in relative silence, had grown comfortable there. The sudden assault of noise sent his nerves crawling and his head pounding almost immediately.

  That’s when Chester decided to spring on him. There was a hand on his shoulder, and Crowe spun around on his stool, his fingers automatically going to grab the hand and break it off the arm it belonged to. “Whoa, whoa!” Chester said, barely audible above the techno music. “Easy, man, it’s just me!”

  It took a lot of effort to rein it in, but Crowe managed to relax. From the corner of his eye he saw Faith take note of his reaction, a brief flicker of uneasiness stiffening her body. But then he smiled and said, “Hello, Chester. Maybe you can tell me. What exactly was it we enjoyed about this place?”

  Chester nodded, said, “Yeah, right. I’m kinda surprised to see you here, Crowe.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “What?”

  Crowe raised his voice a notch or two. “You’re not surprised!”

  “Right,” Chester said, smiling and nodding. “Hey, come on with me. Vitower’s in back, he’ll be happy to see you.”

  Crowe took a last sip of his drink and left it half-finished on the bar and stood up. They started to walk away when Faith called, “Hey, Crowe!”

  He stopped, and she said, “How you getting home tonight?”

  “A taxi, most likely.”

  “No,” she said. “I’ll take you home.”

  “Thanks, but you don’t have to do that. It’s kind of a hike.”

  She grinned. “Not your home, dumb-ass. My home. I’m off at one tonight.”

  He shrugged and nodded, and he and Chester threaded their way through the crowds to the backroom where Marco Vitower waited for them.

  He knew that Marco Vitower was running the show these days. That sort of info gets around, even in prison. He was surprised, though, when he first heard it. The Old Man was pretty firmly in charge when Crowe got sent up. When he died—congestive heart failure and who knew the old bastard even had a heart?—Crowe had assumed, as much as he’d even thought about it, that one of his closer advisors would take over.

  But Vitower? Well, that had been a whallop, especially considering that he was—according to Crowe’s sources—still enraged over the murder of his wife.

  Marco Vitower, like a lot of the guys, had started strictly small-time. Everyone knew his legend. He was one of the first black guys to make a real mark, back in the days before the operations were almost entirely black, and lily-whites like Crowe and Chester Paine became the exceptions. Hired muscle before his eighteenth birthday, then bookmaking, and finally getting into the Old Man’s good graces by killing a district attorney’s assistant that had been snooping around. Whacked him, as they say in the gangster movies, gratis.

  In those last days before Crowe’s extended leave of absence, Vitower was pretty highly-placed, that was true. And by that time a good ninety percent of the Old Man’s people were black—nobody could say he wasn’t an equal opportunity sort of guy. But the top men, the men running the show, were white, still carrying on that questionable tradition of making wads of cash off the labors of black men.

  But now Vitower was in charge. And one of the first things he had done was order a hit on Crowe, in prison. And Chester had helped him.

  “Chester tells me you weren’t interested in coming back into the fold,” Vitower said. “Tell me that’s not true.”

  “Back into the fold? What are you running these days, Marco, a church?”

  He laughed good-naturedly. “Sure, why not? A church. And the city is our flock, right? I mean, I could think of worse analogies.”

  “Yeah, so could I.”

  “So, what’s the story? Not interested in salvation?”

  Crowe already grown tired of the church analogy, but Vitower probably could have kept it going all night.

  He looked dramatically different from the last time Crowe had seen him. Seven years ago, he was a thug—a tattooed, gold-chain-adorned gangsta-type with personal gym muscles, the type you see all the time on MTV. But even then, you could tell, the guy was just way too smart to go around looking like that. He was smarter than any of the gang, really. All that posturing and street-slang never seemed genuine.
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br />   He seemed to realize it now. The muscles and tattoos were hidden under the sleeves of a pretty tasteful pearl gray suit that he wore very well. His hair was cropped close to his head, and his strong jaw was clean-shaven. He looked respectable and trustworthy, and had that aura of casual authority that most leader-types have learned to cultivate from various books and seminars. The guy was a good ten years Crowe’s junior, but he perched on the edge of his desk like a benevolent old master. His fingers, decorated with rings that glittered with gold and diamonds, drummed against his thigh.

  Chester had slouched on a leather sofa across the room, smoking one of his smelly French cigarettes and watching with casual interest. There were two other men in the room, black guys who looked like proto-Vitowers, wearing good suits but without the panache of their boss. One of them stood by the door, the other hovered near Vitower’s left elbow.

  Crowe was placed in the seat of honor, a comfy high-backed suede chair right in front of the desk, with a pretty good view of the room. Vitower was saying, “I was a little offended, if you want to know the truth, Crowe. I mean, I sent Chester out to see you, as an emissary, really, and you just toss him out? Bad form.”

  “I was tired, what can I tell you? Chester picked a bad time.”

  Chester smirked, shook his head, and smoked his cigarette.

  Vitower said, “I suppose I can understand that. Speaking frankly, you stopping by tonight sort of… lessens my annoyance.”

  “I thought it over, Marco. I figure I owe you that much.”

  It was a clean, spacious office, not the sort you’d expect to see in the back of a nightclub and nothing like the makeshift space the Old Man had utilized. A picturesque seascape in pleasing blues and greens occupied the wall behind Vitower’s enormous oak desk. The carpet was a plush wine-red. An impressive bookcase filled almost one whole wall on the right, and the unread volumes that lined it were nice editions of various classics. A well-stocked wet bar sat next to the bookshelf. It looked more used than its neighbor.