by S. A. Cosby
He was about to go back in the gas station and get another cup of coffee when he saw a white dually truck pull up to the gate at Randolph Lawn Maintenance. The truck stopped, and Ike hopped out to open the gate. He rolled the chain-link gate out of the way and pulled into the parking lot. Buddy Lee watched him get out of the truck again and enter the building.
As he climbed out of his own ramshackle truck, he started coughing. He knew it was going to be bad. His esophagus felt like it was being pulled like saltwater taffy. His lungs strained to force oxygen into his bloodstream. Buddy Lee gripped the steering wheel so tight his knuckles went white. After sixty agonizing seconds the cough subsided. He spit a wad of phlegm on the ground and jogged across the two-lane highway that bisected the town.
The inside of the warehouse was as sparse as a military barracks. A worn coffee table sat to the right of the entrance buffeted on one side by a metal folding chair and a threadbare leather love seat on the other. An old-fashioned glass-faced drink machine sat against the left wall. Most of the slots in the machine were empty. The three that weren’t had a plain blue can that said COLA on the front. On both walls there were numerous posters advertising a wide variety of lawn and garden products. All the posters either promised to kill your grass or make your grass grow. A few suggested they would execute insects with extreme prejudice. The back wall of the lobby had a security window in the center with a door on the left. Ike was standing near the security window. A big key ring dangled from one finger.
“Hey, Ike,” Buddy Lee said. Ike put the key ring back in his pocket.
“Hey. Buddy Lee, right?” Ike asked. Buddy Lee nodded his head.
“Hey, you got a minute? I’d like to talk to you about something,” he said.
“Yeah, I got a few. Can’t talk long, though. I gotta get my guys out on the road,” Ike said. He pulled the keys out again and opened the Masonite door. Buddy Lee followed him through the door to back of the warehouse. Pallets of fertilizer, granular herbicide, and pesticides were staged in lines that stretched ten deep all the way back to a wide roll-up door. Long sections of metal lawn edging were stacked against the back wall on the right side of the roll-up door. A small metal desk with a laptop and a Rolodex was positioned directly behind the security window. Behind the desk was a cubicle. Ike entered the cubicle and sat behind another metal desk. Buddy Lee sat in a weathered wooden chair positioned in front of the desk. The desk was as spartan as the lobby. It had a laptop, a pen holder, an in-box and an out-box, and nothing else. A short two-drawer filing cabinet sat next to his office chair.
“You ever thought of getting one of those, um, I don’t know what you call it, but it’s a bunch of metal balls hitting each other. Looks like a magic trick.”
“No,” Ike said. Buddy Lee stroked the scruff on his chin. The smell of sweat and cheap whiskey hung around him like a cloud.
“It’s two months today,” he said. Ike crossed his arms across his massive chest.
“Yeah, I know.”
“How ya been? Since the funeral and all?” Buddy Lee asked.
Ike shrugged. “I don’t know. Doing alright I guess.”
“You heard anything from the cops?”
“They called me once. Ain’t heard nothing since.”
“Yeah, they called me once, too. Didn’t seem like they had much in the way of leads,” Buddy Lee said.
“I guess they working on it,” Ike said. Buddy Lee ran his hands over his jeans.
“I’ve become a homebody in my old age. I go to work, then I go back to my trailer. In between I kill a few cold ones. That’s about it. If I can help it, I don’t have nothing to do with the cops. But this morning I got up at six and drove up to Richmond. I went by the police station and I asked for the detectives on the Derek Jenkins–Isiah Randolph murder case. Do you know what they told me?” Buddy Lee said. A quiver ran through his voice.
“No, I don’t.”
“Detective LaPlata said the case is currently inactive. No one knows anything, and if they do, they ain’t talking,” Buddy Lee said. He swallowed hard. “I don’t know about you, but that don’t sit right with me.” Ike didn’t respond. Buddy Lee rested his chin on his fist.
“I see him in my dreams. Derek. The back of his head is busted open. His brain is beating like a heart. There’s blood running down his face.”
“Stop.”
Buddy Lee blinked his eyes. “Sorry. It’s just I keep thinking about what the cop said. That their friends won’t talk to them. I can’t say I blame them. I think we both know it can be dangerous to talk to Johnny Law,” Buddy Lee said.
“I ain’t shocked it went inactive. They ain’t making a priority out of two … out of two men like Isiah and Derek,” Ike said. Buddy Lee nodded.
“Yeah. I wasn’t never a fan of that gay shit, but I loved my boy. I didn’t show it all the time, and I was gone a lot, but I swear I loved him with everything in me. I think you felt the same way about your boy. That’s why I wanted to talk to you,” Buddy Lee said.
“What did you want to talk about?” Ike asked. Buddy Lee took a deep breath. He’d been working on his pitch for a week, but now that he was about to say it out loud, he realized how crazy it was.
“Like I said, I don’t blame people for not talking to the cops. But what if they didn’t have to talk to the cops? What if they talked to us? Folks are liable to tell a couple of grieving fathers shit they wouldn’t tell the police,” Buddy Lee said. The words spilled out in one long continuous sentence. Ike cocked his head to the side.
“What, you want us to play some private-eye shit?” Ike said.
“There’s a motherfucker walking around right now. He getting up in the morning and he eating him a big breakfast. Then he goes and does whatever the fuck he does during the day. Then he probably gets him a piece of ass at the end of the night. This motherfucker killed our children. He popped them full of holes like a piece of chicken wire. Then he stood over them and blew their fucking brains out. Now, I don’t know about you, but I can’t live with myself while that son of a bitch is on this side of the dirt,” Buddy Lee said. His eyes were bugging from their sockets.
“Are you saying what I think you saying?” Ike asked. Buddy Lee licked his lips.
“You didn’t get that BG tattoo by being a wannabe. That’s shot-caller ink. And you don’t get to be a shot caller unless you done put in some work. A lot of work by the looks of it. Now, I won’t no shot caller but I’ve done my share of work, too,” Buddy Lee said. Ike let out a chuckle.
“What’s so funny?” Buddy Lee said.
“You should hear yourself. You sound like some cracker in an old hillbilly crime movie. Like you should be an extra in Gator. Look around here. I’ve got fourteen people that work for me, not including my receptionist, who’s late again. I’ve got fifteen property-management contracts. I have a little girl in my house that I’ve gotta help raise because your son and my son made my wife her legal guardian. I’ve got responsibilities. I got people depending on me so they can put food on their tables. And you want me to what? Play some Rolling Thunder or John Wick shit with you? You’re drunk, but I can’t believe you’re that drunk,” Ike said. Buddy Lee rubbed his forefinger against his thumb. Ike could hear the calluses rasp as they slid against each other.
“So, you scared to get your hands dirty? Or you don’t care that the man who killed our sons is walking around free?” Ike’s face settled into a rigid mask. Under his desk his hands curled into fists.
“You think I don’t care? I had to bury my only child in a closed casket service because the mortician couldn’t put his face back together. My wife wakes up crying in the middle of the night screaming Isiah’s name. I look at his daughter and realize she won’t remember what his voice sounded like. I wake up every morning and I go to bed every night praying he didn’t go from this world hating me. You see some tattoos and all the sudden you an expert on who the fuck I am? You don’t know nothing about me, man. What, you thought you’d walk in he
re and get the big, scary-ass Black nigga to go kill some people for you?”
Buddy Lee could see the muscles in Ike’s neck standing out in sharp relief like a 3D map. His pupils had narrowed to pinpricks. Buddy Lee leaned forward.
“Not some people. The bastards that killed Derek and Isiah. And I wasn’t asking you to do it for me. We can get more than one gun,” Buddy Lee said.
“Get the fuck out my office,” Ike said. The words came out slow and brutal, like cinder blocks being dragged over asphalt. Buddy Lee didn’t move. He and Ike locked eyes, and Buddy Lee felt the air between them change. It was charged like a thunderstorm was on the horizon. Buddy Lee dug around in his pocket until he found an old receipt. He grabbed one of Ike’s pens. He scrawled his cell phone number on the back of the receipt. He folded it once before laying it on Ike’s desk. He stood and walked to the door of the cubicle. He stopped and looked back at Ike.
“When you go to bed tonight and you’re praying your boy didn’t hate you, listen real close. You’ll hear him asking why you didn’t do something to make it right. When you ready to answer him, you give me a call. If you don’t, then I guess you should cover that lion up with a big fat pussy,” Buddy Lee said. He stomped out of the cubicle.
* * *
Ike heard the door chime go off as Buddy Lee left the building.
He brought his fists from under the desk. His breath was coming in short shallow bursts. Ike raised his arms and slammed his fists down on the desk. The pen holder jumped and skidded off the desk. Ike slammed his fists into the desk again and this time the laptop did a little jig.
That white boy had the nerve to sit there and tell him he didn’t care about Isiah. He should have fed him his fucking teeth. Ike got up and walked out of the cubicle. He stood in the middle of the warehouse flexing his fingers, trying to work the stinging sensation out of his hands.
Did Buddy Lee really think he was the only one who was hurting? He didn’t have a monopoly on grief. There wasn’t a moment that went by he didn’t think about Isiah. Every day it got a little bit harder and a little bit easier. Whenever the pain ebbed slightly he felt guilty. Like he was disrespecting Isiah’s memory if he didn’t feel an agonizing ache in his chest every single second. The days it got harder he sat in the shed and drank until he could hardly stand.
He should have jumped across his desk and snatched Buddy Lee’s skinny ass up out of his chair. Pushed him up against the wall of his office and pressed his forearm across his throat. Ike could have told him how in his dreams he found the people who had blown off Isiah’s face. He could have told Buddy Lee about how in those dreams he took those people some place nice and quiet. A place stocked with pliers and hammers and a blowtorch. Ike could have told him how in his dreams he introduced them to Riot Randolph. The OG with nine bodies on him, not including the one that had gotten him a manslaughter charge.
Ike massaged his temples. He hadn’t been that man in a long time. Not since June 23, 2004. That was the day he’d left Coldwater State Penitentiary. Ike had walked through those gates and found strangers waiting for him. A wife that had taken company with other men. A son, more man than boy, who wouldn’t look him in the eye. Strangers he loved who flinched at his touch.
He’d made up his mind the first night he was home. He was done. He was getting out of the life. As far as he was concerned, Riot had died in prison. Ike sacrificed him for his family. Just like Abraham had attempted to do to his namesake. At first no one in town wanted to believe it. The first couple of months he was home, crackheads would still sidle up to him asking if he was holding. For years the Red Hill Sheriff’s Department made pulling him over and searching his car their favorite hobby. People in the grocery store alternately gave him a wide berth and the side-eye. He ignored them all. He kept his head down and his eyes on the prize. He started a lawn-care service with a rickety riding mower and a rusty sling blade. He didn’t just work hard, he worked harder than anyone in five counties. By the time Isiah had graduated from college he’d paid off the house and the warehouse.
He learned how to control his temper. There was no such thing as nonviolent conflict resolution in the joint. You hit first, and you hit hard. If you didn’t, you would find yourself washing another motherfucker’s boxers. The first time he got cut off in traffic after being released had been tough. It had taken everything in him not to chase the guy down, drag him out his car, and curb-stomp him.
Buddy Lee had it all wrong. Ike wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. He wasn’t afraid to spill blood. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to stop.
SIX
Grayson raised his garage door. The heat was a living thing that reached out and touched him with a suffocating caress. An oily haze gave the neighborhood a sepia tone, like he was trapped in an old photograph. The afternoon sun cut through the exhaust from the diesel repair shop to the east and the smoke and steam from the sheet-metal plant to the west. Grayson threw one heavy leg over his bike. He slipped his helmet over his broad head. Long blond hair trailed from under the helmet and down his back. He was just about to fire up the Harley when Sara opened the door and hollered at him.
“Your cell phone is ringing. You know, the one in the nightstand you forbid me from touching,” she crowed. Grayson pulled off his helmet.
“Bring it here.”
“Oh, I can touch it now?”
“Bitch, bring me the goddamn phone,” Grayson said. Sara opened her mouth, changed her mind, and disappeared into the house. When she returned she had Jericho on her hip and the phone in her free hand.
“Tell her she better not kiss you because she’ll be eating my pussy,” Sara said when she handed him the phone.
“Jesus, watch your fucking mouth in front of him,” Grayson said.
“Like you don’t say worse,” Sara said.
“Go in the fucking house.”
“Sure, keep treating me like crap. Maybe one day you’ll come home and I’ll be gone.”
“You promise?” Grayson said. Sara flicked him off before going back in the house. Grayson grunted out a brief chuckle. They’d be hate-fucking later tonight. They played the same song and dance for the last five years. Neither one of them was going anywhere. And they both knew it.
Grayson opened the burner. He read the number and shook his shaggy head before answering it.
“Hello?”
“Hello. I suppose you know why I’m calling.”
“I got a guess.” The person on the other end of the line paused for a full minute.
“So, you haven’t found her.”
“It’s been two months. I had guys looking for her all over the place. Even put some feelers out with some of the homeboys that buy hardware from us. That bitch is in the wind. After what happened to that reporter, she ain’t saying boo to a cat. You got nothing to worry about,” Grayson said. The person on the other end was quiet for nearly a minute this time. When they spoke again they articulated each word with a bestial intensity.
“I would like to ensure that she keeps her mouth shut. We’re too close to let some whore ruin our plans.”
“You really gonna go through with that shit, huh?” Grayson asked.
“It’s time for a change. Our people are ready. We don’t need her interfering with that. That’s why I need you to find her. And greenlight her.”
“Hey, she ain’t at that address you gave us. She ain’t been to work since the reporter got popped. She’s a ghost, man. You’re good.”
“Do you know how I’ve gotten to where I am? I’ll give you a hint. It isn’t because I don’t pay attention to details. You and your club have been compensated to perform a task. That task isn’t completed until the girl is taken care of as well. Do we really need to go down that road where I threaten you and your associates? Because I’d rather not do that. We’ve had a mutually beneficial relationship for many years. No need to put that in jeopardy. But I need that girl. Before the twenty-fourth.”
Grayson clenched his jaw. He held the
phone away from his face for a few moments. Two deep breaths later and he felt he was able to speak.
“I hear what you are saying. But we’ve known each other a long time. So you know I don’t do threats. Let’s get that straight. We’ll keep looking for the girl because that’s what we said we would do. But that relationship you was talking about? That goes both ways, motherfucker. Remember that,” Grayson said.
“Duly noted. We can discuss the terms of that relationship at another time. Right now, I need you to take care of that slut.”
“Uh-huh. And where do you suggest we look for her?”
The voice on the other end of the line was quiet for another full minute.
“That reporter. He should have some kind of notes about her. He was going to write a story about her and how she is connected to my aspirations, correct? There might be a clue to her whereabouts in his notes. Go to his house and look around.”
Grayson laughed. It was a wet throaty sound that echoed through the garage.
“You really think he left some map on his computer that says ‘Look here for a party slut?’ Come on, man.”
“Since you asked me for suggestions on how to find her, I’m going to assume you don’t have any better ideas. And no, I’m not asking you to be cartographers. I’m asking you to be what we both know you are. Killers. I’ll text you his address.”
The line went dead. Grayson closed the phone and put it in his pocket.
“Fucking prick,” he murmured before firing up his bike.
SEVEN
Ike took a bite of his pancakes, then sipped his coffee. Mya sat across the kitchen table with a Newport dangling from her lip as she read the paper. The smoke floated around her head like a gray halo.
“What you and Arianna gonna do today?” Ike asked. Mya didn’t look at him.