by M. P. Wright
“Go away . . . before I call the police.”
Then once she’d recognised who I was, she flung her arms in the air. “Oh it’s you . . . Locked out, are we? Do you know what bloody time of night it is?”
She tapped at her skinny old wrist to a watch that wasn’t there, then slung the curtain back at the glass, leaving me to stand like a fool on my own doorstep. I leant against the front door and waited while the minutes passed until I heard her lift the latch on the door; I stood away from the entrance and waited to face her displeasure at me for getting her up at such an ungodly hour. As soon as the door was unlocked, she started on me.
“Eleven o’ bleedin’ clock it is . . . What d’you think you’re playing at getting an old woman out of her bed at this time of night? You ought to be ashamed of yourself, do you hear, ashamed!”
She stood to one side to let me in and I sheepishly walked through into the hallway as she slammed the front door behind me. I turned to face her, about to apologise, but was stopped in my tracks as she continued to berate me.
“I could smell the ale coming off you no sooner than I’d opened that door. Just out the bloody clink and straight down the pub. What would your mother think, police knocking bloody doors off their hinges in the early hours, half the street gawping at you as you were marched out into a Black Maria in handcuffs; no job that I know of, too; odd men calling at all times of the day and night. You need to take a bloody good look at yourself, young fellow, get your act together. Just look at the state of you. It’s freezing out there, you’ve no coat on your back, man. I’d have thought where you came from you’d feel the cold!”
At less than five feet tall, she stood scarily glaring up at me in her worn cord slippers and duck-egg-blue dressing gown, her silver locks dragged back and covered in a green hairnet. I was in no fit state to argue with her. She studied me as I stood in front of her like a scolded child before speaking again.
“Well there’s no point in going on about it, I suppose. Make sure it doesn’t happen again, do you hear me?”
Despite her vicious tongue, there was something about the look in her eyes that told me she wasn’t all bad. I remained silent, with my head down and took her reprimand on the chin, then began to make my way upstairs to my room.
“Mr Ellington?”
I turned and stared down to where she was standing at the foot of the stairs looking back up at me. The tone of her voice had softened.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Mr Ellington?”
“Nuttin’ that a good night’s sleep can’t cure . . . Thanks fo’ asking, and fo’ letting me back in, Mrs Pearce. Good night.”
“Goodnight, Mr Ellington, sleep well.”
I watched as she returned to her flat and quietly shut the door behind her. I continued to climb the stairs back to my own room, thinking that I may have just made myself a new friend.
*
“JT . . . JT!”
It was Vic’s voice bellowing out my name and his desperate, heavy-handed pounding on my door which woke me with a start from a sound sleep that, for the first time in many months, had not been plagued with nightmares or visited by the restless, tormented spirits of either my wife or daughter. I reached for my watch and saw that it was just after seven thirty.
I got up, grabbed my dressing gown off of the floor and made my way down the hall with each of my footsteps appearing to be syncopated with the frantic thuds from my cousin’s fists on the door. When I opened up, Vic reached out to me and took a hold of both my shoulders firmly. He stared blankly at me, his eyes red, tears streaming down his face, his body shaking with anger. Mrs Pearce stood a few paces behind him on the landing, a look of concern and confusion on her face.
“What the hell’s going on, Vic?”
My cousin drew me towards him, cradling his huge, muscular arms around my back so that our chests touched and I could feel his heart beating against my skin. He forced my face deep into his neck and put his mouth close to my ear, his breath laboured. When he finally spoke I had already anticipated the pain of his words as he whispered them to me.
“Carnell’s dead, JT . . . He’s dead, some bastard’s gone and cut him up from behind.”
I felt my cousin’s grip on me loosen as he slowly started to slump to the floor. I held on to each side of the door frame as his powerful bulk dropped, his hands desperately clawing at my body as he fell. Now hunched at my ankles, I watched powerlessly as he wept uncontrollably at my feet.
*
Vic and I sat at the kitchen table. Neither of us had spoken since I’d helped him to his feet and brought him inside. I heard the tap, tap, tap of Mrs Pearce’s shoes on the floorboards in the hall as she made her way down to us holding two delicate china cups filled with tea.
“Here now, drink this: best thing for shock is tea.”
She placed the cups in front of us and I thanked her. Vic maintained his hard stare, and I got up and walked my elderly neighbour back down the hall to see her out.
“If I can do anything for the pair of you, you just let me know.”
She smiled at me and patted the side of my arm before leaving.
When I returned to my cousin, he had got out of his seat and was standing resting his arms over the sink, running the cold-water tap. The empty teacup was sitting upside down on the draining board.
“You know I could never stand to drink tea.”
I walked back into my bedroom and brought back what was left of one of the bottles of rum that Vic had given me. I unscrewed the cap and handed it over to him.
“Here, git a drop of this down you.”
Vic took the bottle from me, lifted it to his lips and gulped backed the remainder of the contents in four solid gulps. He walked back over to me and dropped the empty bottle on the kitchen table before telling me what had happened to Carnell.
“Police knocked on Loretta’s gate door at around four this morning and told her that he was dead. Just like that. Some old guy had found him laying face down in the gutter on Dean Street. Some son of a bitch drove a blade so far into his back that it came t’ru the front of his guts.
“The police recognised it was Carnell: shit, everybody knew Carnell. They took the pastor from the City Road Baptist church with them when they broke the news to Loretta. Her neighbour Carmen heard her screaming; she saw the panda car parked outside her house and went straight round to see what all the commotion was about. It was Carmen who came running round to my place to let me know what had happened. I went straight over to see Loretta: she was a mess, wailing and screeching out Carnell’s name, pulling out her hair in great big clumps. There was no way any of us could console her. In the end, the police called for a doctor to come out and sedate her. That’s when I left. I don’t understand it, JT. Why, why’d somebody do that to Carnell? That dummy, he’d never hurt a fly.”
I watched has Vic’s shoulders slumped and he began to weep again.
I knew that Carnell was dead because of me. He cheerfully walked out of the Star and Garter wearing my coat and in a cruel twist of fate was killed in my place. It seemed Papa Anansi had taken me seriously after all; he’d waited in the shadows and fog to snuff out my life, armed with the large, cold steel machete that he was notorious for using. He was going to make sure that what I knew about him and his involvement with Terrence Blanchard, the murders of two people and Stella Hopkins’s disappearance was going to be information that I’d take to my grave. In his eagerness to get rid of me, he’d silently crept out the darkness and brutally extinguished a life that he believed to be mine.
Papa could not have known he’d slain the wrong man. He had struck in the most cowardly way, from behind, and had left Carnell, his head most likely still covered by the hood of the duffle coat, to bleed to death in the street. He’d walked away thinking I was dead, and in the next few hours I would make sure his arrogant false sense of certainty would be his final downfall.
Carnell’s murder hit Vic hard. Since we were young kids I’d never
seen him this hurt. We’d been through a lot together, and in all those years of hardship we’d stayed loyal, stuck up for each other when things got tough and never kept a secret from each other. I wasn’t prepared to jeopardise that strong bond. I needed to tell him how I had again unknowingly played a part in the death not only of an innocent but also of somebody whom we both loved dearly.
Although he had been living in Britain at the time both Ellie and Melia had been murdered, I knew that Vic had mourned their loss greatly. He had once told me that I was blessed and that I possessed what he had always wanted: a beautiful wife and a daughter that doted upon me. I sat back at the kitchen table and called over to him to come and join me. He drifted over and dropped into the chair opposite, wiping away the tears and the snot that ran from his nose with his sleeve. He looked up at me and saw the tortured anguish in my eyes, then, surprisingly took my hand in his and spoke quietly to me.
“What d’you need to tell me, Joseph?”
I told him the events of last night: what had happened at the Speed Bird club and the futile threats I’d made to Papa Anansi, and my meeting with Carnell at the Star and Garter and the wonderful news that he’d shared with me. Then I told him as he’d left I’d offered him my old coat, which he’d taken and which I believed had ultimately led to Carnell’s murder. I recounted my terrible story like a sinning man in the confessional. I watched as Vic kicked his chair back from under him, grabbed the empty rum bottle from the table and flung it at my kitchen wall, sending pieces of broken glass across the kitchen.
“That muthafucka Papa . . . I’m gonna waste that nigger’s worthless ass!”
He paced the short, cramped length of the galley, crunching broken glass under his feet as he spat out threats and obscenities at the world. I stayed in my seat, knowing better than to get in my volatile cousin’s face when he was raging. He came to a sudden halt in front of the kitchen cupboards and began to kick at the panels furiously, and continued putting the boot into them until he’d busted one off of its hinges and knocked an eight-inch hole in the other. Finally he calmed a little and rested his forehead on the kitchen door before speaking.
“All this bullshit is because o’ you, man. Carnell should never have been involved in any of this, you know that! You nearly four thousand miles from home and still got it in your head that you can push people about like you still got heat. Well, you ain’t no cop no more, JT. You caused a shit storm back home on Bim, then come running from the last jive-assed bastard you pissed off and you still tinking you can be the only honest marshal in town. Damn fool, same old Ellington, same as you were when we was yout’s, thinking you can fight the good fight, sticking your finger in the bad guy’s eye then wondering why you leave a trail o’ blood and misery in ya damn wake. Well, I’ll tell you straight: I’m gonna finish this, you gonna see some blood run when I git a hold of that pox-faced Jamaican ponce. You should o’ let me take him out at the neck after we found that pervert Mayfield carved up and he tried to put the frighteners on you by sending you his damn ears in a box!”
I’d heard just about enough of his ranting and got to my feet, my temper about to boil over.
“Damn you, Vic, tell me what good would it have done if you had wasted Papa?”
“Carnell would still be alive if I’d have put a bullet t’ru Anansi’s ear. You know that one less wufless shitbag on the street and it would o’ sent a message to the prick you trying to lean on to find that damn mute woman. Damn you, fo’ all you know she could o’ been dead fo’ weeks an’ be dug down deep in some field!”
“She’s not dead!” I snapped back at my relation.
We started to square up to each other like prizefighters about to knock gloves.
“If she’s dead then why is everybody who had any contact with Stella Hopkins lying behind sheets up at the morgue? Clarence Mayfield, Jocelyn Charles, Virginia Landry all dead cos they knew someting they shouldn’t have. When I first started poking about all I got was the runaround. I took a beating from a dirty cop, then got lifted on suspicion of murder when I was getting too close to the trute. Somebody out there doesn’t want Hopkins found, dead or alive! I don’t know yet what it is that’s so special about a girl who Earl Linney claims is nuttin’ more than a simpleton, but I’m sure as hell gonna find out.”
“Linney . . . that Jamaican fucker that don’t fly straight and you know it. He’s had you dangling off a short lead from day one. How’d you know he ain’t killed her?”
“You got it wrong, Vic . . . Ask yourself this: what would be the point of Linney employing an ex-copper to look fo’ a missing woman if he’d already had a hand in her disappearance? Why would he set himself up to take a fall? It don’t make a damn bit o’ sense. Surely he ain’t that stupid?”
“How the hell do I know, JT? Stupid or not, I told you befo’ everyting that comes outta that cat’s mout’ is a pack o’ lies. He’s been playing you since he first offered you a wad o’ cash to find that damn retard.”
“Look, Linney ain’t the source of all this mayhem, I know it. Papa’s just a foot soldier, a gofer doing the dirty work fo’ a man who thinks he can play with people’s lives. He’s a little fish in a big sea. It’s the shark I need to go after.”
Vic pushed his face into mine.
“I don’t give two shits ’bout no shark . . . I want that murdering nigger Papa’s head on a pike. He’s mine, you hear me?”
“And you can have him, but please, Vic, don’t blow this fo’ me, not now. I know I’m close; I just need a little more time to solve this and work out what the hell is going on.”
Vic stared back at me for what seemed like forever.
Slowly he began to calm and sat back down on his chair, put his head in his hands, then frantically started rubbing at his scalp in frustration, then all of a sudden froze, his fingers still hooked into his hair. When he spoke to me, his head was still pointing down at the floor.
“OK, Mr Detective, when you was tearing Hurps’ a new ass’ole back at the Speed Bird and he thought you were gonna rob his cash register, what was it you told me he shouted at you?”
“That I didn’t know whose money I was gonna be messing with. Why?”
Vic looked up at me.
“By ‘messin’ with’, who’d you think he was talking ’bout?”
“Well . . . Papa, I suppose.”
Vic laughed to himself, shaking his head to and fro.
“Papa’s got his dirty hands in lots o’ people’s bidness: not in the Speed Bird, though. Hurps don’t like people knowing, but he’s got himself a silent partner in that underground shithole of his, he always has had.”
“Yeah . . . Who’s that?”
“Cut Man Perry.”
Vic got up without saying another word; he grabbed his coat from where he had hung it on the edge of the kitchen door, then turned to me as he was putting it on and nodded toward the hallway as an indication that we needed to haul our butts. Confused, I was about to ask him what the hell was going on when he barked out at me impatiently.
“C’mon, drive me round to Cut Man’s place. I got someting you need to take a look at.”
36
Cut Man Perry didn’t believe in opening up for business until after midday. The slothful proprietor of the only gymnasium in St Pauls was renowned for his love of two things: sleep and food. How he’d become rich remained a mystery to many, as he rarely rose from his pit before eleven and had never appeared to work a full day in his life. But behind this façade his business ventures were both varied and almost always illegal in one way or another. Those who knew the stinky fat man well enough never tried to contact him until after he had eaten his lunch or attempted to do business with him thinking they would get the best end of a deal.
Cut Man was astute in all things fiscal, a miser who was rumoured to keep his ever-increasing amounts of capital in various dubious businesses, which he may or may not have owned. He refused to trust a bank and loved the thrill of being able to barter for what
he wanted. He would have happily been at home doing business in a Moroccan souk or in any of the hundreds of money-lending houses across the globe. Never shy at courting friendships with those who wielded power or influence, Cut Man trod a fine line that sat somewhat uncomfortably between gregarious entrepreneur and just plain shifty.
I parked the Cortina in a side street across the road from Cut Man’s gym. Vic was on a mission: he slammed the door behind him, ran over the road, unlocked the gym’s door and was impatiently waiting for me by the time I’d caught up with him. He walked in and flicked a switch on the wall; a series of unshaded hundred-watt bulbs sprung to life and brightly lit up the stairwell in front of us. I watched my cousin sprint up the flight of stairs, taking the steps two at a time to the top of the hallway.
“C’mon, fool . . . We ain’t got all day.”
I hesitated, then followed his lead. We passed the office that he was supposedly “renting out” from the fat man and made our way down the corridor to Cut Man’s workplace. Vic reached Perry’s door but put his back against the wall and with one swift, violent kick smashed it open. He looked at me and winked.
“What was I supposed to do? I ain’t got no key fo’ this rat’ole.”
Vic strode across the room in the dark to Cut Man’s desk, leant across it and turned on a small lamp with a flexible stand. He picked it up, then set it on the edge of the table and directed the strong beam of the spotlight onto the far wall, where the gym owner’s collection of fight posters and memorabilia was pinned up. Vic walked over to the floodlit wall and jabbed his finger at a large black and white photograph that was partially hidden between a cut-out newspaper picture of Sonny Liston and a local Masonic Lodge dinner-dance invite.