“You haven’t said shit yet, Garay.”
The little guy craned his neck around to look at us and said, “The man’s right, Garay. You ain’t told him nothin’.”
“A’ight, a’ight,” Garay said. And then, “We want you to cap Vitower. We want you to put a bullet in his fuckin’ head.”
Crowe said, “What makes you think I’d do that?”
Garay rubbed his thumb and fingers together, the universal sign of cash. “Five large,” he said.
Crowe laughed out loud.
Garay scowled. “What the fuck’s so funny?”
“You expect me to kill Vitower for five thousand dollars? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“What, that ain’t enough? I know some brothers’ would do it for fuckin’ five hundred.”
“So why don’t you get them to do it, then, and stop wasting my time?”
They were coming up on Poplar. The big bastard took a right, cutting off traffic. A lady in a microbus honked her horn but he ignored her. It wasn’t quite five o’clock, but already the sky was going gray and the sun was nowhere in sight. The bandages on Crowe’s face itched like crazy.
Garay said, “Ain’t no one can get close enough, that’s why. Fuck, man, how much you wanna get paid?”
Crowe said, “Add another zero, maybe we can talk.”
“Fuckin’ fifty large? Jesus Christ, mother—“
“Look,” Crowe said. “If Bad Luck doesn’t have the capitol for something like a hit, who can hold it against them? They have a ways to go yet before they’re playing with the big boys, right?”
The big bastard rumbled, “I’m gonna stop this fuckin’ car and slit your throat.”
“Relax, Fats. I’m just saying, five grand is what I’d get paid just to hear you out. I’m doing you a favor just listening to you.”
The big guy calmed down, just a little, but he swerved into the left lane without signaling and touched the gas a little harder.
Garay seemed to be waiting for one of the others to say something, to make a decision, but no one jumped in. Finally, he sighed and said, “Tell you what, Crowe. I’ll talk to Falcon, see what’s what, and maybe we can—“
The little guy said, “Falcon ain’t gonna like it. Falcon ain’t gonna pay this cracker fuck no fifty large.”
“We’ll talk to him,” Garay said. “See what’s what, and then we’ll talk again. How’s that sound?”
“Sure,” Crowe said. “You know where to find me.” And then, because he couldn’t resist it, he said, “At your sister’s place, fucking her every chance I get.”
His face went dark with blood and he gritted his teeth. His fingers clenched the grip of his gun.
The two guys in front laughed, and the big bastard said, “You gotta give this old fucker credit. He got stones.”
“Let him off here,” Garay said. “Now.”
They were still on Poplar, a good four miles from where they’d picked him up. The big bastard pulled over into the parking lot of a strip mall, stopped the car with a jerk.
“We be talkin’ to you,” said Garay.
Crowe opened the door and started to step out of the car, glancing back just in time to see Garay pulling up his hoodie to put the gun in his waistband. He had a strange tattoo on his washboard stomach, black and red. It was a cross, topped by a blood-red heart.
He reached over and slammed the door shut, and they drove off.
He was getting his stuff together to leave that night when Faith finally came out of the bedroom and, without a word, put her arms around him and held on for a long minute. When she looked up, her eyes were clear for a change and she said, “I don’t want you to leave.”
“I probably should.”
She shook her head. “Stay. Please.”
So, against his better judgment, he stayed.
Later that night they were out of bed and Faith was stone sober for a change, and they were eating Chinese food in the living room and listening to a CD she had of Count Basie, some cool, loose-limbed thing from when he was on the Okeh label. Crowe was in his boxer briefs, she had pulled a tee-shirt on and was trying to feed him some beef lo Mein, when he said, “I ran into your brother today.”
She stopped with the chopsticks halfway to his face, and her eyes went weird. For a second, he thought she might try to gouge the chopsticks into his face. She said, “My… my brother? How do you know my brother?”
“Made his acquaintance a little while back. We’ve been staying in touch since then.”
She put the chopstick back in the carton and set the carton on the coffee table. “Are you fucking with me?” she said.
He shook his head. He hadn’t been sure what to expect, but the anger interested him. He said, “Did you know he was a gangbanger?”
She sneered. “Did I know? How could I not know? He always goes around flashing his stupid little gang signs, dressing like a thug. And he always has money, I don’t even want to think about where he gets it. If Mama had any idea…”
Her face was set hard, talking about him. She looked at Crowe again, her eyes burning. “How? How do you know him?”
“I told you.”
“What is he getting involved in now? Tell me, Crowe, or so help me—“
“I don’t know what he’s getting involved in. He’s with Bad Luck, that’s enough, don’t you think?”
She shook her head. “Bad Luck doesn’t have anything to do with your people. With Vitower’s crew. They… they’re small-time. I mean… they’re street-level. How, Crowe? How did you just happen to run across Garay?”
“Bad Luck’s trying to make a play for a bigger share of the city. Garay brought it to my attention.”
She stood up quickly, knocking the carton of lo Mein off the table. Noodles and vegetables spilled all over the floor. Cursing, she grabbed a napkin to pick it up, then threw the napkin on the table and stalked off into the kitchen. She came back with a dust pan and a wet towel and started pushing the mess into the pan.
Then she stopped, shoulders slumping, and looked at him. “You don’t wanna tell me the details, fine. You know what? I don’t even care, okay? I should be used to this shit by now. Every man in my life is on some stupid fucking crusade to prove what a bad-ass he is. My brother. You. Shit, even my pop was a crook. Great role-model for Garay he was. You know what happened to my pop? Did I ever tell you? He tried to rob some guy at gunpoint, and the guy pulled out a gun of his own and shot him. He shot him right in the fucking heart.”
“Faith, he—“
“What do you think that did to my Mama, Crowe? How do you think she feels even now? She and Garay live in a nice house, on a nice street in Germantown. Brinkley Drive. Respectable. And there’s Garay pulling up in his pimped-out Grand Prix, lookin’ like some kind of hood, making my Mama look like a fool in front of all the neighbors. And she doesn’t even know it!”
She threw the dust pan across the room. It shattered a small vase on the curio by the television. She didn’t even look at it. She said, “So you and my brother wanna be tough guys, knock yourselves out. Sooner or later, you’re gonna come across someone tougher than you.”
She stood up again, glared at him like there was something else she wanted to say. She turned around and marched off toward the bedroom.
In the doorway, she stopped and looked back at him. “You know what, Crowe? I changed my mind. I do want you to leave after all. Tomorrow morning.”
He nodded, and she slammed her bedroom door behind her.
The next morning, January 11, Crowe went to work. He’d already packed up his stuff, so he got up before Faith, left, and took a cab downtown. After that, he had eggs and ham and fresh fruit for breakfast at a diner off Union. He lingered over it.
Early afternoon, with the sun trying desperately to break out of the strangle hold winter had on it, he took a cab to the offices of the Memphis Clarion.
Lori Cole worked the crime beat for the paper, had since long before Crowe ever come to the Bluf
f City. Four times in the last fifteen years, the word Pulitzer had come up in the same sentence as her name, but so far they had only danced around each other and never consummated the relationship. Probably just as well. Lori hated her job, she hated her bosses, and she hated the people who read her paper. She responded to praise with a disdainful sneer. A Pulitzer would no doubt have sent her over the edge into a total psychotic breakdown.
She saw him coming before he was even halfway across the bustling, noisy newsroom, and something like irritable confusion showed on her face. By the time he made it to her desk, she’d put it together and said, “Almost didn’t recognize you, what with all those bandages on your mug. How is it that no one told me you were out of prison?”
“Your source at the joint must be losing his touch.”
She scowled. “I’ll have to see about that. You here to kill me or something?”
Crowe laughed. “No, Cole. Why would I do that?”
“Because I was the one covered your trial. And I told the truth about you.”
“That’s your job. Can’t fault a woman for doing her job.”
She flopped back in her rolling chair and rubbed long fingers across her face. “My job,” she said. “Oh, Christ Almighty. Fuck my job. I wish you would kill me.”
She was about forty years old, and you could see that, once upon a time, she was quite pretty. Her eyes were Alaskan Husky blue, and the lines on her face formed a perfect frowning mask, like the one you see in posters for drama clubs.
“Maybe someday,” he said. “But today, I need your help.”
She said, “You need my help, and yet you won’t do me a simple favor and put a bullet in my head? Come on, Crowe. It’s what you do, right? What do I have to do to piss you off enough to kill me?”
She was joking, but there was a very real despair under her words. Lori Cole didn’t really want him to kill her, but if he did, she wouldn’t have minded too much.
“I want some background on a murder victim from two years ago.”
She said, “Patricia Welling?”
“How did you know that?”
She said, “Peter Murke is sprung while in transit to Jackson. Marco Vitower hates Murke’s guts. You, who used to run in the same circles as Vitower, show up out of nowhere. The only victim Murke was charged with killing was Patricia Welling. It doesn’t take a genius.”
Around them, the newsroom whirled and shook. Anyplace else, his bandaged face would’ve drawn attention, but here no one seemed to be interested. They had their own, more pressing agendas.
It was a large office, almost the entire third floor of the building, but the crush of mad activity and the desks all lined up with only narrow gaps between them made it feel close and claustrophobic. At the desk closest to Cole’s, a hard-looking girl was screaming at someone on the phone. A few desks away, a younger reporter with thinning hair and eyes lined with shadows had a phone pressed against his ear, nodding and saying, “Right, right, right” over and over again while jotting notes. The fluorescent lights flickered irritably.
The whole place was a seething, insane cauldron of noise and activity, and Crowe was already feeling edgy. Noise. He really can’t stand it.
But he smiled at Cole and said, “You never lose those reporter’s instincts.”
“I reckon not,” she said. “Also, the fact that you look like Claude Rains in The Invisible Man.”
“If he was invisible, how do you know what he looked like?”
She decided, wisely, that the question wasn’t worth answering, and said, “So what happened on that day? You wanna give me the scoop on Murke’s escape? Whatever it was, it looks like you didn’t exactly come out of it unscathed.”
“What happened to me doesn’t have anything to do with Peter Murke.”
“Yeah, okay. That’s what I figured. You just wanna know about Patricia Welling because you’re a concerned citizen.”
“Snag any files you have on the girl, and I’ll feed you some info on Vitower.”
She sighed. “Ah, Crowe. Honestly, man, I just don’t give a shit about Vitower anymore. This city has gone completely to Hell, and good goddamn riddance. Besides, you don’t need any files. I’ve got it all right here.” She tapped her temple with a long forefinger. “I’m a walking encyclopedia of all the nastiest information this city can offer.”
“Hell of a burden.”
“Tell you what. Get me the hell out of this office, buy me a drink, and I’ll spill my guts.”
Beale Street was only a couple of blocks from the Clarion offices. Natives didn’t often hit Beale—it was really a tourist thing—but it was off-season, the weather was bitterly cold, and some of the bars and clubs had half-price drinks mid-day.
They sat by the window in a joint where the walls were covered with glossies of famous and semi-famous blues musicians and rockabilly cats. A genuine Wurlitzer jukebox, retro-fitted for compact discs, grinded out re-mastered blues classics. A beat-up Stratocaster hung precariously over their table.
Cole was already on her second whiskey and soda. She said, “I picked the wrong job. All those years ago, thinking I wanted to be a goddamn journalist. A goddamn crusading reporter. Jesus. If I could go back and talk to that little bitch I used to be, oh, the things I’d say…”
“Naïve youth,” Crowe said.
“Amen to that. Say, you don’t think I could maybe get a job doing what you do, do you? That sounds like just the ticket. A hired killer.”
He sipped his vodka gimlet without enthusiasm. It was a bit early in the day for him. “I’m not a hired killer, Lori.”
“Oh, right. You’re a handyman, aren’t you? Not a killer. A killer just kills, but a handyman, well… a handyman does what needs to be done. Still… set your own hours, no boss breathing down your neck all the time. Sounds ideal.”
“It takes years of training, and the certification’s a bitch.”
She laughed. “I always did like you, Crowe. You’re not very smart, but you’re clever enough to know that if you don’t talk much people will think you’re a genius.”
“Tell me about Patricia Welling.”
She let out a deep breath, glanced around the bar warily. She said, “Thirteen years old. Family has a home in Bartlett, but since Patricia was killed they spend most of their time away from it, out in some place they have on the other side of the state. The papers never mentioned this, but she wasn’t really the sweet little angel she seemed to be. Kind of a wild kid. At that tender age she was already into drugs—nothing major, weed, maybe a little pill-popping—and was in and out of trouble in school. She ran away, had been missing from home for almost a week before they found her body in a vacant lot in the Cooper-Young area.
“I was one of the first reporters on the scene, lucky bitch that I am. And let me tell you, I’ve seen some screwed-up shit in my life, but nothing really compared to the way that girl was butchered. Equal parts Black Dahlia Murderer and Jack the Ripper. It’s hard to explain, but my first impression when I saw the scene… my first thought was religious. That there was something religious about it.”
Crowe frowned, and she looked embarrassed. Gulping down her drink, she motioned to the bar girl for another, and without looking at him she said, “I mean, her organs. They weren’t, you know, where they were supposed to be, right? But the way they were laid out, all around her? It almost looked as if the killer had been sort of reverent about it, if you know what I mean.”
“No, Cole, I don’t.”
She scowled. “Oh, fuck you then.”
“Sounds like that old sensational journalist chromosome of yours.”
“I don’t have a journalist chromosome, sensational or otherwise. I’m just telling you the impression I got. And if nothing else, my impressions are always good.”
“Okay. So her body was found. How did they link Murke to it?”
“The usual stuff. Just like with Jezzie Vitower, someone saw him hanging around the area shortly before the body was discovered. Mo
stly, though, it was that new-fangled DNA evidence what you hear tell about.” She said that last bit with an exaggerated hick accent; the booze was going to her head a little. Like a lot of people, Cole couldn’t talk about ugly things without adopting a distantly humorous tone. If the crime had been much worse, she would’ve turned into a stand-up comedian. “Sweet little Patricia managed to claw him along his neck at some point, and they got some of him from under her fingernails. Perfect match. It’s just too bad, I reckon, they weren’t able to link him to any of the other victims.”
Crowe said, “It probably wouldn’t have made much difference.”
She shrugged. “Probably not. But maybe if Jezzie Vitower had some… I don’t know… personal justice? Maybe old Marco wouldn’t have such a mad-on and you wouldn’t be here talking to me right now.”
“Maybe.”
The bar girl brought her third drink. She looked at Crowe’s, still barely touched, and sashayed away back to the bar, where a line of young German tourists with rockabilly pompadours drank beer that must’ve tasted like watered-down piss to them.
Crowe said, “Was there anything at all that might have connected Murke to her? Or was it totally random?”
“Murke’s a serial killer, Crowe. By their very nature, they choose their victims for a reason. You know that, right? I mean, there’s often something the victims will have in common, like, I don’t know, blonde hair, or thin faces, or one leg shorter than the other, whatever. Like that. But not always. With Murke, none of his victims seemed to have anything at all in common. And they almost certainly weren’t affiliated with him at all.”
“Almost certainly?”
“I don’t like speaking in absolutes, sue me. Unofficially, the cops have lain something like sixteen murders at Murke’s doorstep, that’s including Jezzie Vitower. See, everyone knows he did them, and the thing is, the only thing the victims have in common is that they’re women.”
“Well, what about the families of the victims? Anything there?”
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