by T. Braddy
“Right, right. I know, man. I’m just– this is a lot to deal with. But anyway. After that, I figured it was Fitz. Guy is impossible to stop. He’s like a Terminator, and not the Arnold one. The other one, the one that’s made out of liquid and shit.”
“I see.”
“I mean, you don’t want to see that shit firsthand. He, well, he kills people and then just disappears. Like, he leaves this goddamned swath of destruction and human misery in his wake, and then the police have to pick up the pieces. He doesn’t leave much to pick up. Mostly body parts.”
“Richie.”
“I’m serious. I tried to stay away from the guy when he was around.”
“What was his business down here?”
“Bellerose. They’re all connected in some fucked up way. Drug deals. Human trafficking. Some of it involves gun running. They’re all bad dudes, man, but Fitz is the worst.”
He, too, leaned against the railing. I didn’t know what he was watching, but I paid particular attention to the water. It was lush and beautiful and still at this time of day, and the slight breeze caused miniature ripples, but otherwise it was placid.
“Jess told you about him and Vanessa.”
“Yeah.”
“Details?”
“Don’t need them.”
And I didn’t. What space in my hard drive hadn’t been taken up with trying to figure out a way to kill Fitz had been commandeered with images of my ex-wife fucking that lunatic.
I said, “I put myself in this position.”
“How so?”
“I could have left well enough alone, could have given up my new path in life. I was this close to making it through to some kind of peace, but then–”
I clapped my hands together.
“You had no choice, man. Fitz was already on you. All the other stuff...well, that was just unfortunate. You stumbled into a situation where you didn’t know you’d learn what you ended up learning. Make sense?”
I nodded.
“And you got more than you bargained for. Opened Dora’s box.”
“Pan.”
“What?”
“Pan. Pandora’s box.”
“What?”
“Nevermind.”
“Rol– Rolson.”
“Yessir.”
“You’ve got that money, right? That’s what’s in that suitcase?”
I flinched. He didn’t hear it, or maybe he did, but a slight change had undertaken his voice. He probably thought it was subtle, but to my ears it was as acrid as ammonia to unsuspecting nostrils. He was prying, badgering. This was where he wasn’t a good kid. This was the part of him which had always snatched him off the true and righteous path.
“Richie, don’t get any ideas. That’s my ticket to freedom.”
“I know. Shit.”
“You start thinking about it, and it’ll eat you. Just leave it be. Keep your head up and your eyes forward. It’ll get you farther than fucking with whatever’s in that briefcase.”
“Aw, come on. You know there’s money in there. You never opened it?”
“Never opened it.”
“Bullshit.”
I shrugged.
“You never spent a penny of it?”
“Couldn’t tell you the currency that’s in it. Or that’s not in it. Might be empty, for all I know.”
“You’re crazy, man.”
“I’ve just got a reputation.”
He sighed, took a step back and retrieved a joint from his pocket. He sparked it and toked.
“You want to get blazed?”
Shook my head no. He said, “Don’t make a difference if you’re sober or not, if you’re going to be dead in a couple days, am I right?”
It was tempting. I’d never been much of a pot smoker, but the idea of getting blazed and forgetting about the sword hanging above my head for a little while sure was tempting.
“I think I’ll just be clear-eyed until the end,” I said. “Hell, I’ve gone six months. What’s a few more days?”
“I just figured it would be a ‘last meal’ sort of thing.”
He puffed-puffed, then exhaled a long, wide cloud of smoke.
The question remained if Richie would be my Judas.
“What’s the word with Bellerose?”
“None, so far. I called and spoke with one of his bodyguard assholes, and they said they’d try to make it happen. You know, you’re lucky I got purchase with those guys, man. It’s real hard to get in front of Bellerose without losing a limb of some kind.”
I clenched and unclenched my fists, felt the particular tightness of burgeoning arthritis in them. At this point in my life, I couldn’t be bothered with losing one of my arms. I needed both of them, for now.
“Any timeframe for when we might be able to speak with him?”
“They’re closed up tighter than a duck’s asshole.”
I nodded. “Keep me up to date on him. That’s my other ticket out of this mess, so don’t go and screw the pooch on it, you hear me?”
He smiled. “What? You think I made it into this house by being stupid?”
“No, you made it into this house by being clumsy and letting somebody drop a stack of pallets on you.”
“Only honest job I worked, and I got smacked down by a miracle from God. Gave me a little bit of a limp, but otherwise I feel like I’m all right. Brain’s a little fucked up, but whose ain’t?”
“You’re lucky to have your health.”
“Gave me the ability to help all these kids with my – what did you call it?”
“Redneck noblesse oblige.”
“That’s it. Jesus Christ, man. That’s why I think you can lick that fucking Limba Fitz asshole.”
“Why’s that?”
“He’s smart. But you’re smart, too, man. Real smart. And dark. There’s a dark side to you I bet people haven’t seen yet.”
* * *
Yaelis wasn’t returning my calls. I left her simple, straightforward voicemails, but those went unchecked, I imagined. I drove by her house, but there was no car and no lights, so I figured her for gone. It was just my hope she’d holed up somewhere safe, even as my thoughts – in his voice – had a taunting response.
There is nowhere safe, McKane. I’m going to track you in your fucking nightmares if I have to. Everyone you know will be dead, and then you yourself will die.
It was a powerful motivator to see myself through this thing. For the first time in months, I had something to pursue, other than sobriety.
The only solace I drew from Yaelis’s radio silence was the feeling that the spinning circle was complete. I didn’t return Deuce’s calls, and Yaelis didn’t return mine. Except she had a reason, a good one, and I didn’t. But still, we celebrate small victories wherever they occur.
Down at the crime scene, a young pastor at the Mount Pisgah Baptist Church had taken to holding a twenty-four hour round-the-clock vigil for those lost in the attack, thinking the violence, in his own personal way, to be an act defying the church and Christianity, rather than a single, violent act perpetrated against the people there. He fasted as he comforted the families and friends of the victims, reaching out to his flock to bring food and drinks for anyone who attended.
I watched coverage of the vigil, hoping to get a bead on Yaelis, but the faces of lost and suffering people were all that I saw.
It wasn’t long before my imagination wandered. I thought maybe she had hopped a plane to some exotic country she had incessantly discussed visiting. Maybe she had finally taken the trip to South America to see her family. It was that thought, of her sunning in some faraway land, that gave me a sense of solace, but ultimately it didn’t seem realistic.
You forgot the other maybe. Maybe she’s dead. Maybe she got captured and put to the saw.
Time passed in slow motion, but eventually the time came. Richie banged open the back door and yelled: “Time to go! He said he’d see us tonight.”
eighteenth chapter
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nbsp; We made pretty good time in Richie’s Charger. We parked around the side of Bellerose’s compound and met an intimidating giant of a man around back and were led through an elaborate backyard, complete with a heated pool full of beautiful women sipping champagne. They didn’t seem particularly happy – in fact, they appeared to be dazed and lacking any basic semblance of joy – but they were plenty drunk. Piles of bottles lay on the patio surrounding them, and they drank like people working up the courage to do something bold.
None of them looked in our direction. It was as though we were ghosts.
Through a set of ornate double doors and down a few dark hallways, an immutable gloom began to descend over me. I wanted to cry out, wanted to tell Richie that we weren’t leaving the gangster’s compound, but the heaviness of my realization pressed against my vocal cords. Even being an inveterate optimist didn’t soften the truth of my situation: I was going to die down here.
I thought of Richie’s conviction that a torture dungeon existed deep in the bowels of Bellerose’s house. The light above us grew increasingly dim as we made our way further into the depths of this gigantic estate, and I couldn’t help but feel my fate was ineluctable, a train on a track destined for this station for quite some time.
We finally appeared before Bellerose, who sat at a desk on a riser that made it seem more like a judge’s bench than a place where business might be conducted. Of course, this meeting was not about business. It was about bloodletting.
“Welcome to my inner lair,” he said, smiling that ever-present, patronizing smile of his. The math on that man didn’t quite work out. He was two-thirds of a Michael Clarke Duncan, but twice as dangerous-looking. And he was ugly, pockmarked as he was scarred, and that was saying something. He was festooned with all sorts of jewelry, from elaborate gold necklaces to diamond rings and watches. Even the hat he kept on the desk before him was covered in bright, glittery stones.
He leaned back in the chair and steepled his fingers together. “What will be my business with the two of you,” he said. Not a question, because he didn’t need to ask questions for things he already knew the answers to. This was all a game, and not a particularly fun one, either.
“We need protection,” I said.
The chair squeaked under Bellerose’s slight movement. “You the one caused that big kerfuffle up at the church? All them drunks dead because of you?”
I nodded once. It was the truth.
“You don’t have anything to say for yourself?”
“My presence in Savannah is what caused them to die. Nothing more.”
“You didn’t do anything to stop it.”
“I didn’t know it was happening.”
“Me, I’d have tracked down that sumbitch and put a clip into his skull. That’s just me. What about you, Donnell?”
Donnell raised his eyebrows, as if he’d been asked what kind of gravy he’d like with his pork chops and biscuits. “Hell, I’d get some pipe-carrying motherfuckers to yank him outta hiding, and we’d go to work on him for a while before we ever got to thinking about guns and shit.”
Bellerose nodded. “He got a point there, don’t he, McKane? You can’t get your hands on this guy, this murderous little prick?”
“That’s why we’re standing here.”
Bellerose got up, and if the man was intimidating sitting down, he was practically terrifying standing. Six-point-five, at least. Bigger than Deuce, he was, and this guy was capable of violence Deuce himself couldn’t dream up.
“I owe you anything, McKane?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Did we enter into some kind of, well, not legal agreement, but an agreement, nonetheless?”
“Nope.”
Richie was standing beside me this whole time, but he’d remained noticeably silent. He was staring at Bellerose like a dog that’s just realized it shouldn’t have pissed the carpet. He decided, at this point, to speak up. “Mr. Bellerose, man, we– it’s not that we’re here begging for something. Man. It’s just, that dude–”
A quick flash of the eyes in Richie’s direction was all it took. One of the behemoths in Bellerose’s employ snacthed his pistol from the holster and smacked Richie across the back of the head. Richie, whose constitution was not that strong to begin with, fell bonelessly to the ground.
“Nobody asked you a goddamn thing,” Bellerose said.
Richie could only manage a sheep’s bleat in reply. The back of his scalp was covered in red, and he pawed at the ground as if looking for some pair of hard-to-find spectacles.
“Not much in this world clears the mind like a good, swift crack to the skull,” Bellerose said.
I stepped away from the men keeping an eye on me and knelt to help Richie to his feet. One of the men took an advancing step toward me, but I glanced at Bellerose, who waved the man off.
Richie’s face was now decorated with small rimples from pressing his cheek against the floor. He staggered to his feet and pressed a blanched white hand to the wound. Blood poured in rivulets between his fingers.
“He didn’t mean any disrespect,” I said.
“Men often don’t,” he said. “This ain’t about respect or disrespect.”
“That’s what it seems like. Talking out of turn like that.”
Bellerose dismissed my accusation with an insouciant flick of the hand. When he moved, the alloyed metal of his chains clacked together in a dissonant little song. Wind chimes of the damned. His eyes, hidden behind a pair of designer sunglasses, made an appearance for the first time. Eyes brown as tree bark peered at the both of us, me with my defiant glare and Richie with his timorous, watchful stare.
He placed the glasses on the table in front of him, leaning forward on knuckles like craggy outcroppings. He cleared his throat, reached for a small glass of thick, black liquid in front of him. Stuff looked like Jagermeister left out to congeal.
He drank down the brew in a single, mighty gulp and replaced the glass in its former spot. I could have sworn I saw his eyes flash blue.
“Where is the suitcase?”
I flinched. “The what?”
The look of ever-present sanguine self-confidence returned, as if he suddenly realized we were playing his game. He said, “Oh, you don’t think I’d have let you have an audience with me again without some kind of chip to place on the table, now did you?”
I said, “Actually, yeah, I kind of did.”
He smiled and looked at Donnell, one of the underlings whose name I had learned, somehow. “This motherfucker thinks I do pro bono work on the side. Maybe I go and give crackheads a cancellation on their debt to me. ‘Here you go. Don’t worry about paying me back. This one’s on the house.’”
“I don’t think that. This man, Limba Fitz – he’s making your business go bad. Cops everywhere, shaking down your runners, your mules and dealers. Am I right?”
“Things have been somewhat slow the last few days, sure. That’ll go away.”
“Unless I don’t go away. If Fitz doesn’t catch me – I stay hidden, let’s say – then he continues to tear apart the city, and then your business gets impacted. I’m a former cop. Maybe I can put an earwig in somebody’s ear, tell the cops it’s all because of you. You think they’d let your empire stand for very much longer?”
He stared at me.
“No, they wouldn’t,” I said. “They’d come down on you like two tons of pure Hell.”
From his pants pocket, he retrieved a small container and opened it. Out of it he took a single, giant pill – easily the biggest I had ever seen – and slipped it into his mouth. He went back over to his desk and downed the capsule with a slug of Johnny Walker Blue Label. Two empty glasses on his desk. The nearby bottle of Blue Label, however, was not.
He took his time turning back to us. He was not a man in a rush. Didn’t need to be, I guess. He said, “You say that like you’re going to walk out of here tonight.”
My blood became oatmeal in my veins.
Richie step
ped forward. “But, Mr. Bellerose–”
“Right, right,” replied Bellerose. “I remember, young Mr. Richie. McKane, I believe there is another bargaining chip, one that provides us both with the necessary means for a win-win outcome here. Don’t you?”
“The suitcase.”
His face brightened. “The previously mentioned case full of money. Whether it is in a briefcase or suitcase, doesn’t matter to me one whit. What’s in it does.”
It was like walking into a swamp. Moving forward was about to get impossible, but I forced my rubbery legs to put me in a clearer line of sight with this man.
“I thought you didn’t care about the money Vanessa owed me. Last time, you let me walk right out of here.”
He smiled. “That was before I came to grasp onto some information about your financial situation. Since new information has come to light, man, I’ve got to say I’m a whole lot more interested in what you have to say about a certain little briefcase full of cash.”
“Well, then,” I said, “Take it. I don’t fucking need it.”
“Oh, I will. But you don’t understand, Rolson McKane. You done stepped in a big, prickly-ass bramble bush, and the money won’t just get you out of it.”
“You and I don’t have any beef, so why would you go and torture me for bringing you the money?”
“Because I’m bored as shit. That’s what happens, man. I get so bored with people begging for their lives and their dope and all that nonsense. They think I ain’t heard it before. They think I’m just some dipshit drug dealer.”
“I don’t think that.”
“I also got to keep myself busy until the guy who wants a chat with you shows up. He’s got a bounty on your head, and I’m gonna get a cut, which means I get double money, because what he doesn’t know is that he doesn’t need to know I got your money. Or their money. What the fuck ever. Money. My money, now.”
I started to feel something going completely sideways on me. This was not how I’d planned it out. This was not my intention, and it certainly wasn’t how I’d imagined it.
Bellerose’s face became a grim anti-smile. “Thing is, McKane: I didn’t tell your boy Fitz I’d hand over a whole version of you. I been looking at them paws at the end of your arms, and I got to say: they look like they’d make a good pair to go on my trophy wall, down in the dungeon. Keyannan, what you think?”