Desperate Souls

by Gregory Lamberson

  Dios mio!

  She felt Victor clinging to her nightgown, the poor boy. Raising the bat, she said, “Louis, you get out of here, boy. I don’t care if you are blood—you set one foot in this apartment, and I will do you some serious harm.”

  Louis kept looking at her with unblinking eyes, which zeroed in on Victor. A terrible moment passed, and then he stepped back from the door.

  Carmen took a deep breath and exhaled. Louis wasn’t the first boy who had tried to menace her only to back down. Just the first dead one. Why had he come home? Perhaps it had been a mistake for her to hire that private investigator. She hurried to the door, intending to close it again and throw the locks, but as her fleshy fingers closed around the knob, a long blade seemed to materialize out of nowhere, shearing the chain on the door in a shower of sparks.

  “Grandma!”

  Carmen heard the terror in Victor’s voice. As she moved away, the door flew open and crashed into the far wall, and Louis stepped inside holding a deadly looking machete. She raised the bat again, and he mimicked her movement with the machete.

  The last thing she heard as the long blade whistled down toward her eyes was Victor screaming.

  NINE

  Gary Brown and Frank Beck sat in the front seat of their unmarked car, observing the Shaft bar across 116th Street. The bar had closed at 4:00 a.m., and the Narcotics detectives arrived an hour later. Now streaks of pink outlined the buildings on either side of the street as the sun poised to emerge from the darkness. A homeless man dug through the contents of an orange metal trash can, and a pimp waited for his top girl to return from a “date,” location unknown. The short Guatemalan wore a leather vest over his muscular torso and a beaded choker around his neck.

  “Looks like someone’s impatient for his breakfast money,” Frank said as he pulled a plastic bag filled with white powder out of his jacket pocket. He sprinkled cocaine on the passenger-side dashboard.

  “Haven’t you had enough?” Gary said. Working the night shift, they both did their share of blow, but he liked to come down as the sun came up. Frank, on the other hand, never knew when to quit. Gary had calmed a panicked Frank’s wired nerves more times than he cared to count, and on more than one occasion, he had called a doctor who catered to the fringe elements of society to treat his partner’s overdoses in secret.

  “Nah,” Frank said, snorting two lines off the vinyl. “I’m just getting started.”

  I bet you are, Gary thought.

  He held out the half straw. “You want?”

  “No, thanks. I want to be straight for this.”

  Frank inhaled the coke deeper into his septum. “Suit yourself. It always gives me an edge on the opposition.”

  “You don’t need an edge. You need to be cool.”

  Frank massaged the coke particles into his gums. “Whatever.”

  Gary’s pulse quickened as he eyed the coke remaining on the dash. Ah, what the hell. “Give me that straw.”

  With a crooked grin, Gary did just that.

  They got out of the car a few minutes later, and Gary inhaled the fresh morning air. Blue seeped into the sky, and behind them two garbage men emptied rubbish into their truck. The pimp had disappeared, fading in the light, but the homeless man lingered at the corner. As Frank joined him, Gary’s eyes settled on a woman heading their way. Her fashionable clothes appeared as disheveled as her hair.

  “Morning,” Gary said with a knowing smile to the woman as her eyes met his.

  Red faced, she turned her gaze toward the sidewalk and passed them without answering.

  “I love when they have that morning after look,” Gary said, and Frank chuckled. They watched the woman reach the corner, ignore the homeless man, and disappear from view.

  The homeless man looked up, no doubt alerted by the aroma of her perfume.

  Gary and Loraine had been divorced for almost two years. She had moved out to the island with their three kids, and he kept a place in Chelsea. He loved his kids and made sure Loraine had everything she needed to take care of them, which meant he had to be more resourceful in how he earned extra cash.

  Fortunately, Frank had proven himself game for any scheme Gary thought up. They were partners on and off the clock and had each other’s back. That didn’t mean he considered Frank infallible. On the contrary, his partner’s impulsive behavior made him a severe liability. Gary knew he had to keep a careful watch on the man’s erratic behavior.

  “Come on,” Gary said.

  They circled the corner bar to its side door, which Gary rapped on. The sun peered over the rooftops, casting light on the green leaves of the trees growing from the sidewalk.

  The face of a dark-skinned teenage boy appeared in the door’s window. He looked about fifteen to Gary and wore the dirty white uniform of a cleaner. He wasn’t old enough to be working at a bar, let alone the night shift. The boy waved one hand sideways across his throat, indicating the bar had closed.

  Gary rapped on the door again and shook his head.

  Looking over his shoulder at some unseen person, the boy unlocked the door. “We’re closed.”

  “Tell Papa Joe that he has company.”

  “Ain’t no one here with that name.”

  “Tell him.”

  The boy held Gary’s gaze, then closed the door and retreated from view.

  A moment later, a tall man with a shaved head and a trimmed beard answered the door. He looked the detectives up and down.

  “Don’t make me take out my shield,” Gary said. “I want to see Papa Joe. He’ll want to see me, too. We need to discuss certain baked goods.”

  Shaved Head’s eyes shifted from Gary to Frank, who said, “Now, eight ball.”

  Ah, shit, Gary thought. Too much blow always made Frank talk tough. He never knew how ridiculous he looked, all five feet of him.

  The sentry closed the door and slipped into the shadows.

  “Will you watch it with that shit?” Gary said.

  “What? He was dicking us around, and now we’re getting somewhere. Bite my head off—why don’t you? That mope’s just hired muscle.”

  “You think he doesn’t have Joe’s ear? You think they aren’t gonna talk about the cops who were pricks? In case you haven’t noticed, this city’s running out of high-level dealers for us to freelance for.”

  In addition to the Machete Massacres, a number of drug lords had been assassinated or had simply disappeared during the last several months. At least three men Gary and Frank had done work for had ceased to exist. That made Papa Joe an extremely important man to them. But these hits did not point to a power grab; the drug lords’ operations were not taken over by an outside force. Rather, the operations were being cut off at the knees. Cocaine, crack, heroin, and ecstasy had become increasingly rare—and therefore prohibitively expensive—commodities on the streets of Manhattan and its suburbs. And the distribution of Black Magic had reached epidemic proportions. All fingers pointed to the source of this new narcotic as the mastermind behind the shift of power.

  A third man opened the door. Gary recognized him as Chess, Papa Joe’s right-hand man.

  Now we’re getting somewhere. Maybe Frank had taken the proper approach after all.

  “In,” Chess said, nodding into the dark interior and stepping back.

  Gary and Frank entered the bar.

  Chess closed the door behind them and twisted the locks. The tall, muscular man faced them. “You come when Joe calls you. He didn’t call.”

  Holding up his right hand as a cautionary sign, Gary said, “We were at the bakery earlier and picked up a loaf of bread for him.” He opened his jacket, revealing a wrapped brick of cocaine. “I don’t feel like keeping it at my place until Joe decides he wants a report.”

  Chess’s eyes registered the key of coke, then looked past the detectives. “Put it behind the bar.”

  Gary glanced behind him at the bar, where the boy who had first answered the door mopped the floor. “Do I look like an errand boy? I’m
putting this in Joe’s hands and nowhere else.”

  Anger flared in Chess’s eyes but not in his voice. “Joe’s hands don’t touch product. Ever.”

  Gary saw this was going nowhere. He took out the brick. “Then you take it and put it wherever you like. Just take us to Joe, so we can get out of here. It’s been a long night.”

  Chess fixed him with a stare, then took the key and disappeared down a flight of stairs.

  “Real diplomatic,” Frank said with a bemused grin.

  “I get tough when I have to. You get tough when you want to. There’s a difference.”

  Chess returned a minute later. “This way.”

  They followed him downstairs past restrooms and a kitchen to the manager’s office. Inside the spacious room, the second man who had answered the door stood in the corner. Bodyguard. A slim black woman in an elegant dress sat at a desk, running bills through a cash-counting machine. Chess sat on a leather sofa beside a heavyset man in his midforties with his hands folded over his wide belly.

  “Have a seat, gentlemen,” Papa Joe said.

  As Gary and Frank sat in plush chairs facing the sofa, the bodyguard closed and locked the door behind them.

  “You ever hear of calling ahead to make an appointment?” Papa Joe Morton had come of age as a teenager during the rise of crack cocaine in the 1980s. He had done a single stint in juvie for possession of narcotics with intent to sell, then had never been arrested again. He had worked his way up through the ranks of lower management, eventually taking the top spot with a series of canny business moves in the wake of 9/11 when law enforcement agencies concentrated their resources and efforts on counterterrorism.

  He had weathered gang wars and internal strife, ruling his territory with an even hand. If anything, he had proven himself a soothing influence in a volatile business. He had no ambitions of moving in on other dealers’ territories but tolerated no moves on his own. He owned Manhattan, plain and simple. Until now.

  “Can’t make a call like that when you change your number every day,” Gary said.

  “The price of doing business. How’d you know where to find me?”

  “We make it our business to know where you are,” Gary said.

  “That makes you an asset. It also makes you dangerous.”

  Gary nodded at Chess. “Today it makes us valuable.”

  Chess grunted. “Looking at the two of you right now, you probably saved another key for yourself.”

  Gary spread his hands in a gesture of futility. “I guess you’ll never know. Nevertheless, we shaved your losses tonight.”

  “True that. But it was still a bad night. We lost product, we lost people, and we lost a location.”

  Gary knew that despite his dislike for violence, Joe had already ordered the death of the bakery owner. Killing citizens who could put him in prison was necessary.

  “Tell me about the crime scene,” Joe said.

  “Messy.”

  “Machetes?”

  Gary nodded. “No weapons were left behind, but your people were dismembered.”

  “Kenny was a good man,” Chess said. “We never had to worry about counts or product when he was on duty.”

  “This is a war,” Joe said. “Good soldiers fall during wartime.”

  “This war’s killing more than soldiers,” Frank said. “It’s killing business. For everyone.”

  “This Black Magic is bad news,” Joe said in an agreeable tone. “Once a customer tries it, they don’t want to touch the product I carry. When this is all over, we’re going to have to build our operation up from the ground floor again.”

  “Or take over the Black Magic business,” Frank said.

  Gary’s stomach tightened. He didn’t like the idea of Frank suggesting business moves to Joe. It put him in a precarious position.

  “No,” Joe said.

  Gary thought he had seen Chess nodding in response to Frank’s comment. Better keep my eye on these two, he thought.

  “I won’t touch the Magic. It’s worse than crack or angel dust or any other drug out there. I provide contraband to a steady customer base. They know what they’re getting, and they know what they’re getting themselves into. It’s almost like a contract. I don’t pretend that I’m doing God’s work. I know what I am, and I can live with that. But Black Magic is worse than illegal; it’s worse than immoral. It’s an evil, soul-sucking product. I want it gone from my city. Hell, I want it gone from my country.”

  “I didn’t know you were such a patriot,” Gary said.

  “You think drug dealers can’t be patriots? Shit, I say the Pledge of Allegiance when I take my boys to see the Yankees. You don’t know anything about me. You just think you do. But I know a lot about you. I make that part of my business. For instance, you two police got your hands in a lot of fires. Leastways you did when those other fires were still burning.”

  Joe’s revelation neither surprised nor alarmed Gary. “A man’s got to make a living. Frank and I have never been exclusive agents.”

  “I’d call that a conflict of interest,” Chess said, an edge creeping into his voice.

  “This can be a complicated business,” Gary said. “Nothing Frank and I have done has ever posed a threat to your operation.”

  “I know that,” Joe said. “That’s why you’re both still alive. We know about every unauthorized bust and raid, every stickup you’ve made and every handout you’ve taken. Nothing goes on in this business— in this city—that I don’t know about. Too bad for you that so many players have been taken down or out and I’m the only fire left in town. I think y’all are more exclusive than you realize.”

  He knows he’s got us, Gary thought.

  “Unless we make bank with this Black Magic outfit,” Frank said.

  Joe burst into laughter. “You’re welcome to try; you’re welcome to try. But there’s a big difference between playing with fire and showering in gasoline.”

  “We’re not looking to cut a deal with anyone outside the normal circle,” Gary said. “We want these people put away.”

  “Putting away a drug dealer doesn’t do any good. Powerful men continue to conduct business whether they’re on the inside or the outside. You got to put these players down. Then we can all start making money again.”

  “It’s not that easy. We don’t even know who these players are.”

  “Shit, is that all that’s stopping you? All you had to do is ask. I know who’s running that outfit. It’s my nephew, Prince Malachai. My sister’s boy.”

  Gary’s mind tracked Malachai’s rap sheet. He’d been busted for slinging a number of times and had been a suspect in one homicide. “I thought Malachai worked for you.”

  “He did. But the boy was too ambitious, so I had to cut him loose. He took his crew with him. They laid low, working small time out of Brooklyn until a year ago. Then out of nowhere they started dealing Black Magic there and in Queens, and now they’re moving into Manhattan. Wiser heads wanted me to take him out right away”—he glanced at Chess—“but I had a soft spot in my heart for the boy, what with him being family and all.”

  “Why don’t you take him out now?” Frank said.

  “It’s too late for that. He knows me; he knows Chess. Knows our whole operation, which is why he’s been so successful at breaking us down. He knows who and what to look out for. Why you think I’m living in the shadows? But he doesn’t know you, and you say you got resources. A couple of crooked cops could get the job done.”

  “Where is he?”

  Joe shrugged. “That’s the one thing I don’t know. We snatched one of his dealers off the street and tortured his ass for three days.

  Motherfucker never said a word, never screamed, never even made a sound. He looked as dead when we grabbed him as he did when we dumped him.” He smiled. “Well, almost as dead.”

  “Grab another one,” Frank said.

  “We’ve grabbed four of them. Same story. You ever seen these ‘soldiers’? Malachai’s messing with f
orces he shouldn’t be.”

  Frank’s voice assumed a mocking quality. “What are you saying?”

  “They don’t call it Black Magic for nothing.”

  TEN

  Jake slept for two hours. His dreams never became intense enough to awaken him, but when he opened his eyes and took in his surroundings, the vague images of swampland, creepers, and snakes lingered in his mind like fading ghosts. He thought he remembered swallowing a mouthful of dirt, and he craved a cigarette for the first time in eleven months.

  They’ll be back, he thought, picturing his zombie assassins. Whatever they were, more will come.

  He rose from his bed, and pain seized his lower spine and rocketed up his back. He unleashed an agonized scream and dropped to all fours, only to have the impact send another wave of pain ripping through his body.

  Oh, Jesus Christ!

  He had not experienced such intense physical distress since Cain had tortured him in an abandoned factory in Queens. But that had been in his mind, a form of mental torture that had only seemed real. The excruciating pain he experienced now was all too existent. He tried to stand but screamed again and pitched face forward to the floor with tears in his eyes.

  Ah, God… God, make it stop …

  Jake allowed his breathing to normalize, then worked his way up onto his hands and knees again. He found it impossible to move without triggering the pain and surprised himself by whimpering like a wounded dog. In those moments, he knew that if for some reason he had to live with this pain forever, he would kill himself—even if it meant being subjected to Cain’s vengeful torture for eternity.

  He steeled his mind and crawled to the bathroom. Using the sink for leverage, he pulled himself into a standing position and pissed in the toilet. Wincing, he imagined his body as two cones, one perched upside down on top of the other, with their touching points representing his lower back. If either cone moved even a centimeter off point, pain racked his physical being.