by Thomas Pluck
Questions clawed at the back of his brain. The answers gnawed at his stomach. If his folks were dead, or his memory had faded in the light of another child’s smile, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
He hit send.
The phone thought a moment before it rang. He stared at the blank ceiling, the tone rattling in his head. On the seventh ring, a woman’s voice answered.
“Post office, may I help you?”
“Ma’am? I hope you can. I’m trying to find my people. They lived down there before the storm.”
“Well, that’s no trouble dawlin’, ya not the first been looking.” Her voice was scratchy with nicotine, and had that New Orleans “Yat” accent which resembled the Bronx more than a Southern lilt. It brought a smile to Jay’s face. “What’s ya name, now?”
“My name’s Jay, ma’am. I’m looking for Angie Desmarteaux. She’d be about—”
“Hold on, I got someone at the counter.”
Her phone touched wood. Jay closed his eyes, listened to the muffled sounds on the other end. Felt the summer heat radiate through the receiver, smelled the thick air. It turned to ice as he saw tombstones bearing Angeline and Andre’s names in his mind. Bodies in floodwater, bellies bloated and white.
“Who were ya looking for now?”
“The Desmarteauxs, ma’am. Angeline and Andre. They’d be about sixty. Andre’s a woodworker, makes real fine furniture and the like. Angeline, she’s got blonde hair…” Jay spun his wheels, and realized he didn’t know what his Mama would do for work. She could cook, but most women in bayou country could. She could shoot the face off a playing card at twenty feet, and sometimes she bought and sold jewelry. Folks were always coming by for her opinion on this ring or that necklace, but she didn’t wear any herself, not until they moved north. Then she and Andre each wore a thin gold band. “She might be working at a jewelry store. Got a good eye for stones.”
“Hmm, don’t know dem,” she said. A fingernail tapped the handset. “I can ax at church. Lemme get an inkpen. Gimme a number to reach y’at.”
“I’d be real grateful, ma’am.”
He gave her his number. She told him her name was Cindy, and said he should call back next week. “We having a cochon du lait. Don’t ya worry now. I’ll find someone who knows.”
He thanked her and closed the phone.
He called Martins’ office next. A young woman answered and told him Martins was with a client. “Tell him it’s Desmarteaux.”
“Oh, wow. He’s been having us call all over the place looking for you.”
“Well you win the prize.”
He waited.
“Like crazy,” Martins said. “That’s how you’ve got us here. Where the hell are you?”
Jay liked Martins. He had a full beard and a bald patch on top, like someone had used his head for a pencil eraser. A good sense of humor and a jaw like a pit bull.
“I’m working at an auto shop in Belleville,” Jay said. “All good here.”
“You know what I mean. You weren’t supposed to cycle out until August.”
Jay told him what Billy had said about Leo Zelazko and Matty Strick gaming him out to avoid confrontation with the Bello family.
“Well, I don’t usually file complaints for my clients getting early release. Looks like we’re all done.”
“They’re threatening my boss,” Jay said. “Trying to get me fired. I want to file harassment charges.”
“And you’re in the right. They shouldn’t be doing that. A lawyer can take care of it, but it won’t be me.”
“Come on now, you got the big win of getting me free. Now you gonna let me swing? I know Ramona was paying for it.”
“Uh—”
“She told me,” Jay said. “No bad blood. You ain’t the first one who ever lied to me.”
“Jay, it’s not like that. Your case was important. We’ll be using it to help a lot of men like you, who did things as kids, and got put away for life.”
Wasn’t the first time he’d been used, either.
“Martins,” Jay said. “You won the war, but they’re gonna kill me here in the peace. A man’s got to work. Now, I ain’t got her money, but I can pay something.”
“No offense, Jay. Our hourly rate? Unless you’re fixing Ferraris…”
So that’s how it was. Jay thanked him and let him get back to work.
Chapter 13
Jay had met Cheetah on his first day in juvenile prison at Annandale farms. A little smart-assed four-eyes named Alfonse, who had earned his name for how fast he’d hotwired the cars his crew took for joyrides. The guards paid back his smart mouth by sticking him with a strapping, cold-eyed cellmate named Feature. Jay had the cell next door.
He hadn’t anticipated sleeping his first night through, but the nightmare music of Cheetah failing to fight off his cellmate’s advances made sure of it. Jay shouted for the guards until he was hoarse.
The next morning, Jay picked a fight with Feature on the basketball courts. Feature was a head taller and had an easy twenty pounds on him. The boys crowded around to watch the new kid get pounded and to shield the fight from the bored guards.
Jay couldn’t box yet, but he knew how to fight mean.
Feature had speed and reach, used both with cruel precision. Snapping quick knuckles to the ribs, the point of the nose.
He popped Jay’s head back. Jay let the tears run free. Lighter fuel to the flames smoldering in his opponent’s eyes.
Feature flashed a smile and threw hard. Jay lunged to take the punch on his hairline, like Papa Andre had taught him.
The crowd winced at the crack. Feature yelped and clutched his busted knuckles.
Jay leapt on him like a wolverine with a cattle prod up its ass. By the time the guards pulled him off, Feature had one eye puffed shut and a chunk bitten out of his chin.
Jay bared a bloody smile as the hacks dragged him away.
No one bothered him or Cheetah after that.
After they graduated to Rahway prison, they kept their friendship on the down-low. No one crossed the color line in the open. They communicated through a sister named Rene, little brother to one Verdad Hernandez—corona of the Latin Kings—who ruled from his roost in the SHU, the Secure Housing Unit. Jay fell in with an old outlaw named Okie Kincaid, and Cheetah found Mack, a Brick City construction foreman and sometimes fight promoter who ran the yard’s boxing ring, where Jay and Cheetah could talk freely as they sparred.
Jay knew Cheetah ran strip clubs for the Italians, and that meant selling women and drugs. He wanted to break clean, but the citizens didn’t want him. He needed papers to operate in their world, and Cheetah could get them. Maybe he knew a mechanic shop that would overlook Jay’s record.
And maybe he’d gotten over their last bout.
Cheetahs dangled like a lure between Newark’s train station and the Prudential Center, where the Devils hit the ice. The building was painted flat black with a stripe of purple neon ringed around the top like a hat band. A garish painting of a curvy woman in a leopard-spotted bikini leered from the wall.
Jay touched the brass door handle where the paint had been worn off. One summer day as kids, he and Tony rode their bikes to a go-go bar called The Red Shingle, a brick dump with windows painted over black. They scraped the paint with a penny and peered in at men slouched over beers while a skinny woman in a bikini danced a bored little jig, until a sallow bartender with crusty elbows came out whipping a dishrag. They ran, and Tony flipped the finger. The bartender gave chase.
Tony yelped when the bartender caught him and wrenched a handful of chub. Jay doubled back to find the man tripped to his knees and hawking up a lung cookie. “Little fuckers,” he panted, and wiped a brown rope of slime from his yellowed mustache. “Like them titties, don’t you?”
They mounted their bikes. The bartender slumped against the brick wall and lit a smoke. “Hey, fat boy.” He gestured with his cigarette. “Go into that drugstore. Five bucks, they’ll sell you an electr
ic pussy. That’s the only trim you’ll ever get.”
They left the man laughing and wheezing.
“Think they really sell one?” Tony asked on the ride home.
“Don’t reckon I want to find out.”
Jay felt the same worm twist in his gut that he’d felt that day. The only time he thought of sex without it turning sour was with Ramona.
He pulled the door handle.
It opened on a dark atrium, where a bald tree trunk in a sleeveless black shirt leaned on a metal stool, thumbs dancing on the screen of his phone. There was a sea urchin of black hair living on his chin, and his meaty forearms were graffitied with expensive Japanese ink. He looked at Jay like he was a freshly deposited turd.
“I’m here to see Cheetah,” Jay said.
“Come back later,” the bouncer said, and went back to his phone.
“I called,” Jay said. “He’ll want to see me.” He peered around the man’s juiced physique. An empty bar beckoned through an open curtain.
“Whoa, is there a fuckin’ problem?” The bouncer planted a palm on Jay’s chest.
It was no problem to snap the man’s thumb and knee him in the balls. Kick one of his skinny legs out from under him. Crash his head into the stool, bounce it off the floor a few times. Okie talked a lot about delayed gratification, Headshrinker Shit, he called it. How you had to picture the reward, to ease the waiting. He told some story about marshmallows. You could get one marshmallow now, but if you waited, you could get two marshmallows later.
“No problem,” Jay said, and cracked a smile. A man’s eyes felt kind of like marshmallows before they popped under your thumbnails.
The bouncer pushed him back a step. “Then come back later.”
“Tell Cheetah I’m waiting,” Jay said, on his way out.
“I’m not that moolie’s secretary,” the bouncer said, and went back to his phone.
Back outside, Jay rounded the corner to the parking lot. A silver Mercedes G55 and a coffee-colored Coupe DeVille land yacht hugged the wall. There was a newer model Cadillac sedan, the one with the monster V8, and that big SUV they made. Jay had only seen those in magazines. He ran a hand along the polished paint. The building was unpainted brick in the rear with a blackened exhaust fan and a Dumpster flanking an open kitchen door.
In the kitchen, a short Latino in a dingy apron unloaded a green rack of glasses from the dishwasher. He looked up as Jay approached.
“Donde esta Cheetah?” Jay said.
The man pointed through the kitchen.
“Gracias,” Jay said, and dodged men in aprons on his way into the club proper. Dim blue light from above froze the room with a dreamlike gloaming. Black walls and blue velvet curtains, with matching low-back chairs ringing stages skewered with chrome poles. The air vibrated with a dull bass thump from hidden speakers. A tickle caught in the back of Jay’s throat, the chemical buzz of air freshener and old perfume over spilled booze and human funk.
Curtains covered three doorways. The fourth was lit with restroom signs. In one corner of the ceiling, one-way glass allowed a view from above. The boss’s office. Where Cheetah ought to be.
Jay stepped through the curtains nearest to it and bumped face-first into a topless mahogany statue.
“Oh shit!” The dancer skipped back and folded her arms over her breasts. She was as tall as Jay in her stocking feet, with a glow to her rich brown skin.
“Sorry, ma’am,” Jay said, and tore his gaze away. Heat flushed his ears, and his boxers went snug.
“Ma’am? I look old or something?” she laughed. “You’re red as a beet.”
“Been away awhile,” Jay said, admiring her white thigh-high stockings and pale blue boy-shorts. “I’m looking for Cheetah’s office. My name’s Jay.” He’d seen her breasts. Only polite that he introduce himself.
“I’m Leticia,” She pointed over his shoulder. “The office stairs are on the other side.”
A thin Asian girl in a Betty Page wig appeared at Leticia’s shoulder. “Hey. Get the fuck out!”
Jay stepped back with a quick bow. “I was just on my way.”
A flare in Leticia’s eyes made Jay snap around.
The bouncer charged across the room like a tattooed bull. “You motherfucker!”
Jay juked left, skipped into boxing footwork. The bouncer kicked a chair into his legs and looped an overhand right to Jay’s ear that jumbled his vision.
The pain lit up Jay’s eyes, swept aside the down-low tingle from his first glimpse of real-live bare breasts in a quarter century, stoked a fire of indignation in his gut. His hands launched into a flurry of muscle memory. Two jabs to the bouncer’s throat and neck, a left hook to the ribs, and a chain of body blows as the big man covered up.
The bouncer roared and crushed Jay into a bear hug, plowing through the curtains. The dancers screamed as the men hit the floor, tangled like lovers in the sheets. Painted toenails scampered and pink heels kicked at their faces.
Jay pounded the bouncer’s nose back with his palm and kicked his way out from underneath him.
The Asian dancer clocked Jay across the head with her shoe. “Get him, Randal!”
Jay clinched, and Randal the bouncer heaved him onto the make-up counter. Lipsticks and bottles tinked on the floor as he pinned Jay to the mirror and threw wild hooks.
Jay gripped Randal’s bullet head and dug both thumbs into the folds of his eyes, knuckle deep. Two marshmallows about to pop.
Randal screamed and clutched his face.
The ragged shriek of the women halted Jay from scooping out a tablespoon of brains. Okie’s calming voice broke through the haze of fury. Face ain’t worth dying for. Or doing a stretch. A celly named Leif Dunham had fought MMA, before he’d cracked a skull in a street fight. They’d cross-trained. He scoured his memory for one of the moves, and scrambled around Randal’s shoulders and snaked a forearm under his chin.
The bouncer stumbled through the curtains with Jay on his back and tried to scrape him off on the door jamb. The Asian dancer followed, swinging her stiletto heel as they swayed across the main floor.
Two men exited the stairs, one thick, one thin. Cheetah, a lean chestnut middleweight in a summer suit. Mack ballooning a turquoise tracksuit with a matching golf cap. Cheetah tilted his head, regarding the tussle with cool eyes.
Jay sank the choke deep and smiled over Randal’s shoulder. He clamped down until the bouncer crumpled to his knees. Randal slumped with a gurgle.
Cheetah swept a hand over his shaved-smooth head. Sharp eyes took in a scene that should not be, and quickly made sense of it. “Welcome home, brother.”
Jay extracted his arm and took Cheetah’s hand, pulling him in for three hard slaps on the back.
The dancers piled through the curtains and stared at Randal’s wheezing bulk. “What the fuck,” the Asian dancer said.
“It’s all over, ladies,” Mack said, around a dead cigar.
Jay brushed his rumpled shirt. It had split between the shoulders.
“You all right?” Cheetah said.
“A few love taps,” Jay said, and nudged Randal with his shoe. “Who’s the jag-off?”
“He comes with the club,” Cheetah said.
Randal coughed and groaned. He put a hand to the ground.
“Hear that, big fella? The boss knows me.” Jay rubbed the back of his head. His palm came away red. He wiped it on his torn shirt.
“He ain’t the boss.” An old hawk-nosed bruiser with gray wings in his slicked-back hair held open the curtains for a hulking silhouette behind him.
Dante Mastino had hound-dog eyes, a forehead that recalled Easter Island moai, and hands fit for scooping gravel pits. His hand-tailored suit hung off him like cave bear pelts. He surveyed the wreckage.
“So you’re out,” Dante said. “The one-man walking shitstorm.”
Jay had met Dante when he did five for perjury. Did the man a favor that could never be repaid. One Dante had never expected to with Jay being a lifer. Gear
s turned behind Dante’s eyes.
“Your boy swung first,” Jay said. “He had it coming.”
Dante prodded Randal with a loafer. “This fuckin’ jooch. Get him up, Vito.”
The old hawk helped Randal to his knees.
“You interrupted a meeting. Cheetah and I,” Dante said, “we’re discussing the future. I’m guessing you didn’t stop by for a drink and some tits.”
“Could use help with some paperwork,” Jay said. “I’ll pay the same as anybody else.”
“Later,” Dante said, furrowing his brow. “We can take care of anything. You being out, this changes things. We could use someone like you right now.”
Jay knew what Dante wanted. With the life sentence, Jay had put his fists out for hire until Okie knocked sense into him.
Cheetah said, “Give him a second to breathe. How long you been out?”
Jay weighed his response to avoid offense. “Few days. Had to take care of citizen shit. I’m here to see old friends, maybe do a little business. Things ain’t like they were before. If they were, I wouldn’t be out. And I aim to keep them that way.”
“What, you don’t want to work for me?” Dante said. “You always thought you were too good for us.”
“I never said that,” Jay said. “But I don’t work for no whoremasters.”
“Whoa,” Cheetah said. “Cool down, everybody. We should celebrate. Come on, to the bar.”
Randal shook his head clear and blinked the wooziness out of his eyes. “Motherfucker.”
“Get him some water,” Dante said to Vito. “We’ll be at the bar.”
“How you doing, sweet cheeks?” Jay said to Randal. “You gotta learn not to mistake patience for weakness. An old friend of mine taught me that. Now I taught you. It’s a good lesson. Don’t take it the wrong way.”
Cheetah laughed and led Jay toward the bar. “No more of that. That boy is Frank Dellamorte’s nephew. That’s why we keep him on, even though he’s an asshole.”
Jay held a bar napkin to the spot where the dancer’s heel had gouged his scalp, to staunch the drip. “So, you miss me?”