Big City Heat

by David Burnsworth

  After a quiet ride back to Mutt’s house, she dropped him off and went to her day job. Brack needed to work out his anger. With no bikers to beat up, the only thing left was exercise. Shelby was excited to see him. Brack changed into a t-shirt, running shorts, and tennis shoes. He clipped a leash on Shelby and they went for a run.

  Returning forty-five minutes later, they found Mutt sitting in his Caddy convertible talking on his phone. He had on expensive-looking aviator shades and a plum silk shirt. Brack opened the passenger door and Shelby jumped into the seat and licked Mutt’s face.

  “Good Gawd!” he said, startled.

  “Easy, boy,” Brack said to his dog. “You don’t want to get Mutt excited.”

  Mutt quickly ended his call. “Very funny.”

  “Who was that?”

  “I think I got a lead,” he said, not exactly answering the question.

  “Great. Let me get water for Shelby and a quick shower and I’ll be ready to roll.”

  “Opie, I think this is somethin’ I need to check into myself.”

  Brack leaned down to meet him at eye level. “You don’t really expect me to accept that, do you?”

  Mutt looked away. “I don’t ’spect you to understand. It’s just somethin’ I gotta do.”

  “You’re right,” Brack said. “I don’t understand. In fact, I don’t want to understand. All I know is I’m going inside to take my shower. If you aren’t out here waiting on me when I get done, Vito and the bikers won’t be all you’ve got to worry about.” Brack walked into the house, Shelby at his heels.

  Eleven minutes later, Brack dressed in new duds and let Shelby out. To his surprise, the Cadillac remained parked in the same spot. And Mutt still sat in the driver’s seat. Shelby gave Mutt another quick lick, got out to water the bushes, and then went inside the house without any hassle. The dog was better than Brack deserved.

  After locking the door to Mutt’s house, Brack got in the passenger seat.

  “Opie, you ain’t never talked to me like that before.”

  “Yeah,” Brack said, “well, you’ve been talking crazy since I got here and frankly you deserve it.”

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” he said. “I’m my own man.”

  Brack looked at his friend. “We’re brothers. Nothing is going to change that. I want to help my brother any way I can. If that means I’ve got to be a jackass, then that’s what I’ll be.”

  “True that.” Mutt started the car.

  “Where we headed?”

  Mutt gave him a sideways look, put the car in drive, and pulled out.

  Fair enough, Brack thought. He hadn’t demanded to know where they were going, merely told Mutt he wasn’t going alone. Brack would have to live with whatever they were about to get into. So he pulled a fresh cigar from the pocket of his new khakis and lit up, ready for anything.

  Chapter Five

  Friday mid-morning

  “Anything” turned out to be anything but. They rode south. Not wanting to say another wrong thing, Brack kept silent, smoked his cigar, and took in the sights. Within a few miles, the populace went from melting pot to mostly minorities to all black. Like at Mutt’s bar, his was the only white face in a sea of ebony. And he got the stares one would expect. After all, Mutt’s ’76 Eldorado attracted attention by itself. Mutt kept it polished and shining, unlike Brack’s Uncle Reggie—its first owner, who never put the top up and carried his surfboards in the backseat. Getting the bodywork fixed took quite a large sum of money. Brack knew because when he inherited all of his uncle’s property following Reggie’s murder, he paid for it.

  They pulled into an alley, passed a row of plywood and sheet metal shelters, and parked by the loading dock of an abandoned building.

  Mutt looked at him. “You wanted to come. Here we is.”

  “What is this?”

  “You’ll see.” He got out of the car.

  Brack followed, checking to make sure his forty-five was still jammed down the back waistband of his new trousers. The building was in worse shape than the worst of Mutt’s bars, and that said something. Cracked brick, rusted steel, rotted wood. They climbed a set of crumbling steps and entered the building. Water pooled on the broken concrete surface of the emptiness inside, reflecting the rays of sun that forced their way through the holes in the roof. Brack raised his sunglasses to the top of his head. Their footsteps echoed.

  Mutt said, “Yo, Jacob. It’s Mutt.”

  They waited for a reply. Nothing.

  “Jacob!”

  Again, nothing.

  From the corner of his eye, Brack spotted movement. He touched Mutt on the shoulder with one hand while he reached for the forty-five with the other.

  Mutt said, “Jacob, that you?”

  A scrawny kid about twelve, tall and lanky, wearing a dirty Braves jersey, moved out from the shadows. “Mutt?”

  “It’s okay, Jacob. Just me and a friend.”

  Sensing the kid’s paranoia, Brack kept the forty-five, now in his hand, behind his back but ready to rock and roll with a bullet already chambered.

  “You bring me my baseball cards?”

  Mutt pulled a pack from his pocket and tossed them to the boy.

  Brack watched Jacob hold the pack up to the light and grin.

  “Jacob,” Mutt said, “you find out anything?”

  Still looking at the wrapped cards, he nodded, “Uh-huh.”

  “Like what?”

  “They come at night.”

  “Who come at night?”

  “Motorcycles. A lot of ‘em.”

  “Where do they go? Can you show us?”

  The boy took his eyes off the prize and focused on them. “I guess so. No one there now.” Jacob turned and walked back the way he came.

  They followed. Brack thumbed at the forty-five’s safety to make sure it was off.

  At the other end of the open room, the three exited the building. The contrast between the darkened interior and the sunlight was enough to make Brack immediately pull his sunglasses down to shield his eyes. The kid rushed ahead, a directness in his steps. They cut between two more run-down buildings to the back paved lot used for the loading docks. Unlike the weed-strewn asphalt surrounding the first few structures, this lot was clear and in good condition. No weeds grew through these few cracks, as if the paving got frequent use. The loading dock, its concrete solid and smooth, had a pair of roll-up doors as well as a side door. The doors appeared decrepit, but when Brack tried each one they held firm.

  Mutt said, “Jacob, you say the bikers come here?”

  The kid said, “Uh-huh. And trucks. Big ones. They turn on bright lights and make lots of noise. I can hear ’em from two blocks away. Then the trucks leave.”

  Brack slipped the pistol back into his waistband, pulled out his iPhone, and took a video clip of the surroundings, making sure to not get Mutt or Jacob in any shot.

  Mutt said, “You done real good, Jacob.” He reached into his pocket and produced a second pack of cards, which he tossed to the boy.

  Jacob caught the pack, grinned, and took off running, disappearing between two buildings.

  Brack and Mutt returned to the Caddy and drove away.

  After rolling down another street named Peachtree something-or-other, Brack said, “Darcy had a line on a warehouse by the airport. It had a little more security than the place Jacob showed us, but the same nighttime-only schedule. I’m thinking there’s a connection.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “How do you know Jacob?”

  “He come to the soup kitchen Cassie runs Saturday mornings. Always has on that baseball jersey. I got to talkin’ wit him about the game and he kinda open up to me. When he mention the motorcycles, I got curious.”

  “And you didn’t want me with you because I might’ve spooked the kid.”
r />   “Somethin’ like that.”

  Brack put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

  Mutt faced him. “Opie, I know you was only tryin’ to protect me. I appreciate it. Really, I do. But you gonna have to trust me a little on this one.”

  “Okay then, why haven’t you told Cassie about your bar?”

  “’Cause it’s mine.”

  “Don’t try that jive on me.”

  Mutt pulled to a stop. “What did you say?”

  Brack looked at him. “You’re not going to shuck me like you think you’re doing with Cassie who, by the way, already knows.”

  “Opie, I ain’t gonna take this from you.”

  “Sure you are, because deep down, you know I’m right. And if that isn’t good enough, then we can step out and settle this like men.”

  The two friends eyed each other for a moment, then Mutt looked away.

  “Get outta my car,” he said.

  Brack complied and stood on the sidewalk, cigar in hand. He watched Mutt drive away, thinking something was really wrong with this picture.

  Darcy picked him up an hour later after filming her news segment. Brack hadn’t been idle. He found a shaded spot beside one of the abandoned buildings and managed to answer a few emails from Paige, the manager of both of his bars in Charleston. Not once did he have to pull out his gun in self-defense while waiting in expensive clothes in a dangerous part of town.

  Darcy said, “You want to tell me why you’re here, of all places, alone and with no transportation?”

  “Not really.” Brack tried to decide if he was more upset with Mutt for ditching him or with himself for pushing him to it.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll assume it’s related to Cassie’s sister.”

  “There’s a building near here that from the outside looks abandoned like the rest of them. But when you get close, you see new locks and a shipping dock in very good condition.”

  “That’s interesting,” she said. “How is it related?”

  “It might not be. But there’s a homeless kid who says the place sees a lot of activity when the sun goes down.”

  “Like the one by the airport.”

  “Just like it. Except this one comes with the added detail of motorcycle riders. Lots of them.”

  After he showed her the building, they drove a mile down the road in silence.

  Brack asked, “So where to now?”

  Darcy said, “Let’s see if you can use those powerful skills of observation to pick out what’s wrong in what I’m about to show you.”

  Instead of replying, Brack reclined in his seat. Three years in Afghanistan had taught him that you couldn’t tell from first glance who you were fighting. It occurred to him that on certain streets of this city the situation would be the same. Profiling sometimes created more problems than it solved. Darcy had probably spent the last twelve months observing her new surroundings. She would be well versed in the treachery hiding on the fringes of the capital of the South.

  She turned down a side street, and Brack received a whole new perspective on gentrification. Whereas Charleston’s poor areas had mostly been relocated to North Charleston by practices involving money and taxes, here in Atlanta on street after street he saw people in various stages of decay and despair. And this on a weekday when most were at work.

  He said, “Vito caused all this?”

  “Not all, but he’s exploiting it.”

  “Cassie’s sister didn’t live here.”

  “True, but from what I could gather she went looking for trouble and ended up on Vito’s doorstep. She could be a used-up hooker by the time she’s twenty-six. If she lives that long.”

  Looking at the trash on the sidewalks, abandoned cars left on the streets, and clusters of unemployed men, he said, “Forget this. It’s almost three. Let’s get a sweet tea and figure out how we’re going to get her back.”

  “Are you really sure you want to go up against one of the most powerful men in the city’s underworld?”

  “I’m here to help Mutt get Cassie’s sister back. Then I’m heading home.”

  They rode in silence for five more minutes, the weathered Accord leapfrogging from stoplight to stoplight, until Darcy slowed, turned on her directional, and made a left.

  She pulled to a stop at the curb, pointed across the street, and said, “Look.”

  Three young women stood together on the trash-spotted sidewalk wearing various renditions of the same overly revealing attire, each of them selling her wares. None were past thirty, but all looked unkempt and run-down. The scene resembled the clearance rack for Goodwill.

  “The bottom of the barrel,” Brack said.

  “One step from it,” she said. “The bottom is where these ladies end up when they can no longer make any money.”

  “And death soon follows.” To focus on something else, Brack took out a cigar.

  Darcy said, “I’d rather you not smoke in here.”

  Her ride, her rules. He complied.

  They sat in her undercover mobile and observed a life neither of them really understood. Though his parents had been nowhere near as comfortable in wealth as Darcy’s, Brack never wanted for things. Luck, more than anything else, kept him from ending up in the gutter.

  For several minutes they remained parked, watching a steady stream of cars, not unlike the one they sat in, cruise the street. Some picked up and some dropped off one or another discount hooker.

  Darcy started the car and they moved on. When her phone rang she looked at the caller ID. “It’s Mutt.”

  “I’m not here,” Brack said.

  Using the car’s Bluetooth, she answered. “Hey, Mutt.”

  “How you doin’?”

  “You know me,” she said. “What’s up?”

  He cleared his throat. “Um, you ain’t happen to hear from Opie, has you?”

  “Why?”

  “I...um, can’t find him.”

  She glanced over at Brack. “What do you want me to tell him if I see him?”

  “It ain’t that,” he said. “I need to find him. He ain’t in a good place.”

  Brack spoke up then. “You mean like the old warehouse district?”

  “Opie? You there?”

  “No thanks to you.”

  “Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’ta left you there.”

  Brack didn’t reply.

  Darcy said, “You guys want me to stop and step out so you can kiss and make up?”

  At the same time, both men replied, “No.”

  “Good. I want you both to listen. You guys are the oldest fifth-graders I know.” She paused to spur the car around a smoking Chevy with big rims. “I suggest you spit, scratch your testicles, and shake hands. Maybe not in that order, but you get the picture.” She stopped for a light. “If Regan is who we need to be helping, then get over it and let’s go get her.”

  Brack knew she was right, as usual.

  Mutt said, “Yeah, besides, I got someone I think we need to talk to.”

  “All right,” Darcy said. “I’ve another story brewing and really need to get back to it. I’m dropping Boy Wonder off at your house, Mutt.”

  Chapter Six

  Friday, mid-afternoon

  Riding shotgun again in Mutt’s Caddy, top down, Brack lit the cigar Darcy wouldn’t let him smoke. Mutt took a hit of vapor and exhaled a cloud of mist. The day was Deep South hot, the sky a clear and cloudless blue. The sun wouldn’t set for another few hours.

  “So who’s this person we need to talk to?” Brack asked, avoiding the slight tension between them from their last encounter.

  “You’ll see.” At a stoplight, Mutt hung an arm out the car, tapping on the steel door to the beat of “Brick House” by the Commodores.

  Brack took in a mouthful of the Domin
ican’s finest and exhaled. He wanted to ask his friend more questions, but decided it would be better to let things play out.

  A black four-door Wrangler, also with the top down, stopped next to them, cutting through any remaining tension. The doors were off, the same way Brack liked to roll in his old Jeep. Three bikini-topped and short-shorted young women in it were giggling, apparently at a joke directed at him and Mutt.

  “How you ladies doing?” Brack asked.

  The driver, a twentyish blonde, turned to the two other twentyish blondes and giggled some more. Then she turned back to the two men.

  “What are you guys supposed to be?” she asked, her snotty attitude even more exposed than her body. “The pimp scene went out in the seventies.”

  “Why?” Brack said. “You girls looking for work?”

  Mutt had been in the middle of taking a drag of vapor and choked up.

  “Seriously?” she asked, still with attitude. “You guys look like you have to pay for it.”

  “And you three look like you’re selling it,” Brack said.

  The driver’s flame-red lips dropped open.

  The blonde in the passenger seat leaned forward. “Listen here, perv—”

  “Look,” Brack interrupted her. “We’ve had a really bad morning. How about we all head to the closest watering hole and I buy you gals a round of whatever you want? Show you we aren’t all that bad.”

  “Opie,” Mutt said, “we ain’t got time to be flirtin’ with no girls.”

  Brack turned to Mutt. “Coming from you, that’s real rich.” Back in Charleston, the man had been like a deer in rut.

  The light turned green and Mutt hit the gas, his face pinched together and jaw muscles bulging.

  Brack and Mutt sat at a bar across town from his own establishment where they were supposed to meet Mutt’s source who, according to Brack’s vintage Tag watch, was late. To not arouse suspicion or frighten whoever they were meeting, both men had left their guns in the car.