Caged Warrior (9781423186595)

by Sitomer, Alan Lawrence

  Snitches got stitches.

  A large, offensive lineman–sized black guy with a full beard and a gold hoop earring lined up his next shot at the pool table. He wore a blue Detroit Pistons basketball jersey underneath a black leather jacket, and I’d have laid two-to-one odds he was packin’.

  “Six ball, back pocket.”

  He tapped his pool cue on the table, and then he and the bartender made eye contact. No words were exchanged between them, because words weren’t necessary.

  Even if the bartender did know something, he wasn’t gonna say shit to me. The big guy in the Detroit basketball jersey was simply reminding the bartender of the code that existed. A code of silence that was rarely, if ever, broken.

  “You got any ID, kid?” the bartender asked me.

  “I said I’m his son.”

  He pointed at the door. “Get the fuck out.”

  I didn’t move and thought about what to do. Picking a bar fight when I wasn’t even sure if anyone knew anything seemed like a low-percentage play. The downside was high—I could catch a beat-down, maybe even a bullet—and at best I’d get a lead, which could prove to be total bullshit anyway. The more I thought about it, the more I realized my dad wouldn’t be fool enough to hide out at his favorite bar anyway. He was a scumbag, but he wasn’t an idiot.

  “Well, if you see him,” I said, getting ready to leave, “tell him I’m looking for him.”

  “Suck a nut, kid.”

  I left the Honey Pot and went to check the abandoned dry cleaners past Lumpkin where they run dice games and dogfights.

  Nothing.

  After that I scoped out the check-cashing joint by Mount Elliot, where people go to get fake ID’s and forge legal documents.

  Nothing.

  Then I hit up the Super Lottery Liquor Outlet near Shields Ave., Sammy’s Tire Shop close to Mound Road, and the burger and burrito stand close to Conant Street that also sold dime bags of weed with your french fries if you knew how to ask for ’em.

  I checked and checked and checked. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  Rain turned to sleet. Ice pellets stabbed me. The gusts blew at more than twenty-five miles an hour, and the darker it got outside, the harder the storm hit. Sidewalks soon turned to icy slicks.

  In some parts of Detroit, the city salts the streets so that cars can drive and pedestrians can walk. In other parts, they just let people slip and fall on their ass.

  It didn’t take Einstein to figure out which part of D-town I should still focus my search on.

  Screw it, I finally said to myself after walking through the back alley of a few side streets where trannies were known to perform oral sex for twenty-dollar bills. I crossed down Van Dyke.

  M.D., dude, you gotta go do it.

  I headed to the C-Star, the one place I’d hoped not to go.

  Club Stardust on Mitchell Street was a dark bar with a reputation for being a place where the worst of the worst went to drink, smoke, fight, and fuck. At the C-Star, the bar’s nickname, there was a garbage-filled alley in the back where customers who had beefs with one another were encouraged to go settle their differences as opposed to smashing up the inside of the “fine establishment.” I knew this because when I was twelve my father had staged a few fights for me in that alley.

  Fights I’d won, of course.

  But I also knew that above the C-Star, up a switchback flight of wooden steps, there was an empty storage room with an old blue mattress on the floor, a thin one with stains and little cushioning, designated as a place for customers to go do the nasty if they had a partner and got the urge.

  The reason I knew this is because on that mattress is where I’d lost my virginity. She’d been sixteen. Name was Chantelle. Said she wanted to be my first because she liked the way I threw roundhouse kicks to people’s heads.

  A guy never forgets his first. Me, I kinda wish I could. There was no specialness. No emotion. No real human connection or feeling, and after we’d finished, a part of me wondered if I’d even been Chantelle’s first lay of the day, because she seemed so experienced in taking off and putting on her panties.

  I was just meat to her. My whole life, I’ve just been a piece of meat. Except to Gem. She was my only real relationship.

  The thought of Gem reminded me why I’d come to this hellhole in the first place. I opened the door of the C-Star and walked in, chest up, ready to find what I needed.

  And if I had to hurt someone to get the information I was looking for I would. Enough was enough.

  Suddenly, a shottie was pointed at my head.

  “Don’t move, motherfucker!”

  “Hands up!”

  My eyes scanned the scene, and I saw three more handguns locked in on me. Cops were everywhere.

  “This the guy?” a voice called out. “This Ghost Jones?”

  A scared looking black lady, thin, about thirty years old, shaking with fear, shook her head side-to-side.

  “Naw. Ain’t him.”

  A thick-necked cop spun me around and muscled me up against the wall. “What the fuck you doin’ here? Get your hands up.”

  After patting me down and finding no weapons I was hustled out the back door and out into the alley where all the fights usually took place. Obviously, I’d just wandered into some sort of sting operation filled with trigger-happy police officers.

  “Now, get lost and keep your mouth shut,” a short, wiry cop warned me. “Shouldn’t a kid like you be in school anyway?”

  For a second I thought about telling this police officer my story, telling them about my kidnapped sister and my piece-of-shit father and how there was a crime that needed immediate investigating.

  But I pretty much knew they wouldn’t have done jack other than have me waste a few hours down at a station house filling out a bunch of stupid forms. Man, I really do wish the police would function like they’re supposed to and take back this city, but I also know wishes are for little kids. Adults go out and handle their own business.

  I threw my hood over my head, ignored the cop’s question, and walked off. Being that they had other things going on, the police didn’t hassle me further.

  I continued on without learning who the cops were seeking to ambush or why. I’d never heard of Ghost Jones. Wasn’t curious about him either. Had my own situation to deal with.

  The hours dragged on. I hunted for my father. I hunted for Willie the Weasel. I hunted for any member of the Priests who might possibly know something, anything, but nobody talked and barely anyone acknowledged me. My search kept turning up nothing. And the more I walked, the more I searched, the longer I looked and came up empty, the more my mind raced in terrifying directions.

  What if Gemma was being raped?

  What if she was being beaten and punched?

  What if Gem had been handed over to a sadistic fiend who took joy in carving the lips off of her…?

  Stop! McCutcheon, you gotta stop!

  I knew I was only making things worse by imagining all kinds of horrible things happening to my sister, but my fears had taken on a life of their own. The longer I wandered and looked for and scrambled to come up with some sort of something without being able to discover even a single clue, the more ragged, desperate, and fearful I became.

  I began to bargain with God. Please, take me!

  No answer.

  I imagined bargaining with my father. I promise, I’ll fight in the cage for a thousand years.

  But I couldn’t find him. Maybe the reason he’d kept Gemma around for all these years was because he knew that she could always be his ace in the hole in case things ever became sketchy between me and him.

  Wow, the son of a bitch had played me like an Xbox. I swore to myself if I ever saw him again, I’d tear his throat out.

  I began to bargain with the devil. I swear, you can have my soul.
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br />   There was no price I wasn’t willing to pay, but still, I got no response.

  I wandered aimlessly for two days around the ugliest parts of an ugly city, all of my prayers going entirely unanswered.

  “Yo, my man, whatchu want?”

  A street hustler with gold teeth, a fur collar on his bulky jacket, and a thick gold chain with a diamond-studded Ferrari charm dangling from his neck waved me over.

  “What you selling?” I asked, my brain frazzled and fried.

  “You got money?”

  “I have money.”

  “Then I can get whatever da fuck you need. You want white to snort, green to smoke, smack to shoot, Ferrari Frank can scratch your every itch.”

  “I’m looking for a young kid.”

  “Aw, you one of them, huh? Boy or girl?”

  “Girl. She’s a…”

  “Gimme a sec,” he said, and before I could finish my thought Ferrari Frank slipped inside a burned-out building that didn’t even have a front door.

  How stupid is this, I thought while waiting for him to return. The chances of finding a random hustler who might know where I could locate my sister were less than those of winning a three-hundred-million-dollar lottery. Yet I had to try something. I’d been walking for so long with no food, no sleep, no leads, no clues. And I was desperate. Besides, sometimes street players know things about things that can help lead to other things.

  Or so I hoped.

  A rat scurried across the entrance and nibbled at the carcass of a dead cat. This part of Detroit was a war zone, for people and animals alike. Outside of sting operations, police never showed up until after the shootings stopped, ambulances didn’t arrive until after bodies were cold, and firefighters didn’t jump into their trucks until after all the flames had died down and turned whatever had been burning into smoldering ashes. Try to be a superhero and help someone in this part of town, and a person could end up in the morgue.

  ’Round here, people kept to themselves. But a cat named Ferrari Frank, a guy who wore a gold chain with a diamond-studded Ferrari charm dangling on the outside of his winter coat, was gonna help me? What the hell was I thinking? I decided to return to prowling the icy streets.

  “This whatchu lookin’ for?”

  I turned around and saw that Ferrari Frank had emerged from the building with a girl. She couldn’t have been more than eleven.

  “Forty bucks, you can fuck her any way you like.”

  He parted her hair and pulled it to two sides making it look like pigtails.

  “Young, dat’s what you want, right?”

  “I’m not…uh…the girl I’m looking for is five,” I said.

  “Aw, you a freak like dat?” He smiled approvingly, rubbed his chin and thought for a minute. “For that, I’ll be needin’ like four hours.”

  “But you can get girls that young?” I asked.

  “Boys, girls, you name it. This here D-town, mothafucker, and our menu is thick as a phone book.”

  He grinned, proud of his city’s extensive offerings, and I unloaded on him with a right to the jaw and then a left to the kidney. After staggering him, I grabbed him by the hood of his jacket and yanked his head down into a rising knee smash that landed clean and smashed in his nasal cavity.

  Dude was out cold before he hit the ground. The young girl he’d brought with him from inside the building stared in amazement at the red blood, which began to spill out from his face into the fresh white snow.

  “Go home,” I said.

  She didn’t move. Instead she just stared, gazing at me with large, white, innocent eyes.

  “Go home,” I repeated.

  “Now why da fuck you do that?” she asked. “How’s I s’pposed to handle my business now, you motherfucker?”

  She swung at me with a wild right.

  “Stupid-ass bitch,” she yelled, trying to kick me in the shins.

  With my left hand I pushed her away. Once a pimp turns a girl out, their mind gets all twisted and they start believing that their captor is really their savior. I knew it didn’t matter what I said or did at that point; this girl was gone, too far gone to ever get back.

  As I walked away she punched me in the back.

  “Fucker!” she yelled.

  Again, my mind began to race. Would that be Gem one day?

  I needed to find her!!

  I started to run, hoping to halt the sinister voices that had once again begun to fill my head with horrible, horrific, dark, and sadistic ideas. Racing crazily along the slippery streets I headed for the only place, the last place, I could think to go.

  It was before dawn when I arrived, so I waited under the shelter of a small doorway. Shivering, soaking wet, I stamped my feet to stay warm. After the morning light broke through the evening sky and night became day, cars began to pull into the parking lot.

  His was the third vehicle to enter.

  “I need your help,” I said as soon as he opened the car door. Mr. Freedman raised his eyes, surprised to see me.

  I knew I looked deranged. I hadn’t slept, showered, eaten, or even sat down in almost seventy-two hours. Worst was the tears. They streamed down my face in uncontrollable waves, Niagara Falls.

  “I need,” I repeated, “your help.”

  A clap of thunder crashed in the sky. Mr. Freedman nodded.

  “Of course, son,” he said. “Of course, I’ll help.”

  TWENTY

  I took a seat in the tan folding chair Mr. Freedman kept by the side of his desk. In a simple, direct, all-business tone, he asked me for three things.

  “Number one,” he said. “Tell me everything.”

  I did. Held nothing back. I told him about Gemma. I told him about my father. I even told him everything I knew about the way the Priests operated their organization. I’d seen stuff over the years, stuff that no one in their right mind would ever dare talk about. But I was beyond caring. Let ’em shove a sawed-off shottie into my kidneys. Fuck ’em, I didn’t care. Everything I knew about the High Priest, the drug network, the prostitution and extortion ring, the people who’d been murdered, I spilled.

  “Number two,” Mr. Freedman continued once he’d heard the entire story. “I’ll need your trust.”

  I raised my eyes, a look of “no way” almost instinctively flashed across my face.

  “You’re gonna have to believe in me, son,” he said. “Believe in what I say and in what I ask you to do.”

  He pushed a small bag across his desk. I peeked inside. Breakfast. His cinnamon roll.

  Sugary junk food, I thought. Really?

  Mr. Freedman nodded, signaling me to eat. I must have looked more in need of some nourishment than a stray three-legged dog.

  I reached in the bag, picked off a chunk from the corner, trying to avoid the thick, white icing and plopped it in my mouth.

  “Okay,” I said chewing. “What else?”

  “Number three, I want you to fight on Saturday night.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “I want you to fight.”

  “The Brooklyn Beast? Tomorrow night?”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “I fear you’re gonna have to, son. It might be the only way we can smoke out all the players.”

  A fight tomorrow? I thought. Impossible. I was in absolutely no shape to pull it off, especially against a guy with a rep like this.

  I took a deep breath. But if that’s what needed to be done, I said to myself, then that’s what I would do.

  “All right,” I told him. “I’ll be there. You gonna come?”

  “I will,” he said. “As soon as I can get there. But let me ask you, do you have anyone you can get to be in your corner? You being alone for this doesn’t make me happy at all. ”

  “I do,” I said.

  “Good, then contac
t them. And after that, go home and try to get some rest.” He reached for his wallet. “And for God’s sake, get something to eat,” he added as he passed me a twenty. “You look ragged, son.”

  I didn’t take the cash. “I have money,” I said, rising from my chair. “But thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet, McCutcheon,” Mr. Freedman said as he reached for his cell phone. “I’m going to do my best, son. Gonna call some people I haven’t spoken to for quite some time, but don’t thank me yet.”

  I wish I could have walked out of his classroom with a bit more hope in my heart than what he’d just left me with that last statement. I mean, it really would have been nice to leave Fenkell feeling as if it was all gonna be good.

  But far from it was more likely. I left school with a rain cloud in my gut, but since I’d promised Mr. Freedman I’d put my faith in him and allow him to call the shots, I did what he’d said and scored myself a rotisserie chicken, an order of mixed vegetables, and a dry baked potato in order to try to give my body some much-needed fuel. After that, sleep.

  Closing my eyes felt impossible, yet I was so exhausted I could barely stand. Only one thing seemed like it might be able to help me at that moment, so I did it.

  I dropped to my knees and began to pray.

  Whether God would deliver Gemma safely back to me, whether God even existed or heard me, I didn’t know. But praying felt like I’d unloaded some kind of heavy burden from my heart. I prayed so hard I actually felt physically lighter. Even at ease.

  Not peaceful, of course, but calm enough to at least finally fall asleep.

  When I woke up it was Saturday, around noon. My first thought?

  Only a few more hours till the fight.

  I entered where I always did, through the broken back gates of the abandoned middle school on the west side of campus near the PE building, and scanned the arena.