"Your true work, mahn. Everybody knows. Come see about me."
"In a couple of hours," I told him, and hung up.
25
My true work. Wesley said it was a bull's-eye painted on my back. But he was gone, hunting the devil, not even leaving the cops a scrap of flesh to put under their microscopes. Wesley, the stalking sociopath. The perfect hunter-killer. We'd come up together, practiced the same religion when we were kids. But the ice-god had come into his soul until he wasn't human anymore.
In the dark part of the streets, people whispered he wasn't really dead.
The sun dropped behind me as I drove along Atlantic Avenue toward deeper pockets of darkness. Turned into a narrow driveway, flashed my high beams twice.
A barge-sized old Chrysler rolled slowly across my field of vision in the rearview mirror. It came to a stop, blocking my Plymouth from the street. I looked straight ahead, waiting. Heard the icy dry sound of a pistol being cocked.
"Come on out of your car, nice and slow. Leave the keys." West Indian voice, not Jacques's.
I did what the voice said. He was a slim young man, hair cropped close, prominent cheekbones dominating a pretty face, tiny, lobeless ears pinned flat to his skull, big eyes with a bluish cast in the night light, long lashes shadowing. Reddish highlights dominating mahogany skin. Wearing a dark green Ban-Lon long-sleeved shirt buttoned to the neck over dark slacks. Looked like the kind of kid the wolves would jump on as soon as he hit the prison yard. They wouldn't know what they were dealing with until the guards came. With the body bags.
He stepped to one side, the gun tracking me, waist high. I walked straight ahead. A door opened. I heard the Plymouth's engine kick over.
Down a flight of metal steps. Felt the young man behind me, heard the door close, bolts snap home.
Horseshoe-shaped table, the midpoint against the wall. Jacques in the center, an old woman on his left. One man sat on each wing. I stepped into the open space, waiting.
"So you came, my friend." A faint light glinted on Jacques's high cheekbones.
"Like you asked."
Another man stepped out of the shadows. Patted me down, neck to ankles. I stood still for it— every church has its own ceremonies.
The man stepped back. Returned with a straight-backed chair. I sat down.
"Anything you want, mahn? A drink, maybe? Some fine rum we have here."
"A cigarette?"
"You don't have any?"
"I came empty."
A smile bloomed on the Islander's noble face. I'd shown him respect by walking in with empty pockets. He knew what you could fit in a pack of cigarettes— he was in the business. Jacques nodded at one of the men on the table's wing. "Get my friend cigarettes."
The man got up, extended a pack to me.
Jacques's voice was soft. "Mahn, that is not what you do. My friend does not want your cigarettes, he wants his own."
"How I know what he smokes?" the man said sullenly.
Jacques's voice went chilly. "You ask him, mahn. Ask him nicely. Then you go out and you get what he wants. A fresh, new pack. Is that so hard, now?"
"What you smoke?" he asked me.
I told him. He walked away.
Jacques shrugged his shoulders. "Young boys, Burke. All hot blood. Better they learn from a gentle man like me, huh?"
"Yeah."
"This lady has a problem, my friend. I would like for her to tell you. All right?"
"Sure."
He turned to the old lady. "You tell the man now, missus."
"He look like the police to me," the woman said.
Jacques chuckled. "Don't let that ugly white face fool you, lady. This is a very bad man."
"He gonna help me?"
"We will see. First, you tell him what you tell me. Come on now.
The old lady gathered herself, her face turned toward me, her eyes somewhere else.
"I got a grandson. Derrick. My daughter's child. He almost four years old. My daughter on the Welfare, lives in that hotel out by the airport. Her man is a vicious beast. Beat her all the time, take her check. He beat my grandson too. For nothin'. Right in front of my eyes. I go to stop him once, an' he punch me right in my face. Broke this bone, right here." Touching her face, eyes focusing on me now.
"Monday my daughter calls me. Says her baby run away. I tell her, how could that be?— he too small to run away. She cryin' and all, says the police there. Ain't nobody seen her man. My Derrick is gone."
A tap on my shoulder. Jacques's man, handing me a pack of cigarettes. I slit the cellophane, took one out. The man handed me a paper packet of matches— I fired one up.
Jacques leaned forward. "We found the man, Burke. Talked to him. He say he knows nothing. Okay. We talk to the girl too. Same story. It is a story, mahn. Finally, she tells us the man took the baby out of there, said he's going to give the child to another woman of his."
I dragged deep on the smoke. Still waiting.
"What we need is a man to look, Burke. Look around."
"Why me?"
"It's what you do, mahn. Your work, like I said. People know, word on the street— Burke looks for runaways, yes?"
"The baby didn't run away."
"I know. This good lady here, she is one of us. Like a mother, always to help, that is the way she is. She wants her grandson back."
"Why don't you ask the man? Ask him again."
"He has vanished, mahn. We are looking for him, but…for now, until we find him…"
"It's a long shot."
"I know, mahn, but…"
"Obeah," the old woman said. Like it explained everything.
"Why do you say that, ma'am?" I asked her.
"That is what I heard, white man. You know them?"
"No."
"Her man, Emerson, that is his name. He is with those people. I think that is where he take my grandson. To be with them too."
"You take a look, mahn?" A soft undertone in Jacques's voice, the sun banked.
"A quick look," I warned him.
"Clarence will go with you," he said, nodding at the young man who met me in the parking lot. "In case there is a problem with any of our people, yes?"
"So long as he listens."
"Clarence, for this work, Burke is your boss, you understand? Like it was me talking. I told you about this guy. You listen, and you learn."
The slim young man nodded agreement.
"We have anything else to discuss?" he asked. Meaning: how much?
"We'll settle at the end," I told him. "No guarantees. Clarence has all the information?"
"I have it all." Clarence's voice, gentle and calm.
"Let's do it, then," I said.
26
"We'll take my ride," Clarence said, standing in the parking lot.
"I'm not hitting Queens in a posse car, son."
"Posse? No, mahn, we will go in my car. A true West Indian car. Wait here."
He pulled up in an immaculate Rover 2000 TC, British Racing Green. I climbed inside. The black leather smelled new, the walnut trim gleamed. Clean and spare, letting the craftsmanship show.
"Very fine," I congratulated him.
"This is my baby," he said, flashing a quick smile.
27
On the way over, I read through the contents of a thick manila envelope Clarence handed me. All the police reports, a complete package, even the SSC records. SSC, Special Services for Children, the agency that investigates child abuse. It used to be called BCW, Bureau of Child Welfare. Now they call it CWA, the Child Welfare Agency. That's a politician's idea of social change— change the names. You can tell when someone first got stuck in the net by the name they call it. Same way you can tell how long a man's been in jail by his prison number. I didn't ask where Jacques got the records.
We took Atlantic all the way through East New York, turned left on Pennsylvania to the Interborough, found the Grand Central. Clarence pointed the Rover's nose to La Guardia.
We exited at Ninety
-fourth Street, crossed over the highway. The hotel was a long, thin rectangle, the narrow piece fronting the service road to the highway. Clarence pulled in the back way. Plenty of parking.
"She's inside. Still lives here. You want to start with talking to her?"
They don't let you stay in those hotels once you lose your meal ticket— maybe the Sherlocks at SSC thought the baby really had run away on his own. "Let's wait a minute," I told him. "Get the smell."
He nodded agreement. I lit a cigarette— Clarence tensed, like something was going down. I pulled out the ashtray— it was a virgin. I rolled down the window, blew the smoke outside, felt him relax.
A corroding van sat diagonally across from us, grounded on four flat tires, an indistinct figure behind the wheel. An orange BMW approached. Stopped. Man on the passenger side stepped out, went over to the van. Money showed. A hand extended out of the van, a Ziploc bag held aloft. The streetlights caught the vials of crack inside, sparkling. Street diamonds.
"Rastas," Clarence said. Yeah. Ganja for fun, hard stuff for money.
A dog barked, close by.
A woman staggered out the side door, high-yellow complexion, wearing white shorts and white spike heels, her makeup as sloppy as the cheap wig sitting lopsided on her head. She stumbled, one hand against the wall to guide her.
"Crack whore." Clarence's flat, uninflected tour guide voice.
Four boys came out the same door, wearing black vinyl jackets draped to their knees. They swept the street with hard looks, challenging. The leader crossed over to us, the others flanking out behind. He stopped in the street, waiting. Clarence watched him the way a gorilla watches a jackal. I'm a vegetarian, you understand, but if you insist…
The leader veered to his right, moving off, shooting a last warning look. Clarence held the automatic calmly against his thigh, looking nowhere special.
28
The security guard at the door was a careful man, watchful that no visitor meant him harm. The tenants had to look out for themselves.
"Room 409," Clarence said, letting me lead the way. The same way you did in the jungle: point man on the alert, next man up with the heaviest firepower.
The stairs smelled of human waste. A large pile of it was on the second landing, wearing a blue-and-orange Mets baseball cap with matching jacket. He completed the ensemble with a regulation Louisville Slugger.
"What you want here, whitey?"
Clarence slid in next to me, pointed his 9mm automatic at the pile's face. "Business," he said, soft-voiced. "Maybe business with you. What you say, mahn?"
The bat clattered as it bounced on the concrete floor. The waste pile backed away, mumbling something.
Carpet runner on the corridor floor as thin as stockbroker's ethics. The walls were beige filth, the doors the color of starving roses. Numbers scrawled on their faces with black grease pencil. Murky light fell in spotty pools, most of the overhead fixtures wrecked— pre-mugging preparation.
We found the room near the end of the corridor. "When we get inside, follow my lead," I told Clarence, motioning him to one side in case they answered my knock cowboy-style. I put my back against the wall, reached over, and rapped lightly on the door.
Nothing.
I rapped again, hard. The door opened a crack.
"Who is it?" Woman's voice, phlegm-clogged.
Clarence answered her. "We come from your mother, Miz Barclay…she sent us. We have something for you.
"Emerson, he ain't here. I tole you."
Clarence pushed the door with his palm, gently. I followed him into the room. The woman walked ahead of us. Sat down on the bed. The room was long and narrow, dominated by a double bed. Bathroom door stood open to the right, Hollywood refrigerator against the other wall, two-burner hot plate on a shelf. A small color TV set sat on a black metal stand, complicated arrangement of antenna loops on top, looked like a model of the solar system. On the screen, cops wearing suits they would have had to explain to Internal Affairs were chasing drug dealers in their Ferrari.
"We need to ask you some questions, ma'am. This guy, he is from Jacques. Understand?"
"Yeah." She never took her eyes from the screen.
I walked over, turned it off. Anger flickered in her eyes— she wasn't drunk.
Clarence drifted over to where he could watch the door, hand in his pocket. The woman lit a cigarette, retreating into dullness.
"The night Derrick disappeared," I asked her, "tell me when you first noticed him missing."
"I dunno. Maybe nine o'clock, ten."
"What did you do?"
"We…I went lookin' for him. Asked everybody. You ask them, they'll tell you."
"And then…?"
"We couldn't find him. So I called the cops."
"What time was that?"
"I dunno…maybe midnight."
The 911 call had been logged at 3:28 a.m.
"Where was Emerson?"
"Emerson don't stay here, mistah."
"Where was Emerson that night?"
"He wasn't here. I tole the cops. He wasn't here."
She wasn't going to tell us anything. Years of dealing with Welfare and Child Protective Services had perfected the sullen-hostile-stupid routine. The cops had already threatened her with a murder rap if she was shielding Emerson. She didn't look afraid of anything society had to offer.
"You got a silencer for that pistol?" I asked Clarence.
"I got this, mahn," he ice-whispered, taking a straight razor from his pocket.
"That'll do. Start on her arms— it'll just look like more tracks when they find the body."
She was off the bed, opening her mouth to scream as Clarence slammed her back down, driving his shoulder into her chest, stuffing a handful of the ratty bedspread into her mouth. He pinned her flat with one knee. The razor gathered light as if it were a crystallized gem, waving hypnotically before her eyes. Snot bubbled in her nose as she fought for breath.
I leaned over her. "You want to tell us, now? Before we start cutting?"
Her head nodded hard enough to snap her neck. Clarence pulled the bedspread from her mouth, shifted his hand to the back of her head, pulling hard on the hair to expose her throat. The razor was ready.
"You scream, it's your last one," I said.
"Emerson took him— I didn't do nothin'."
"I know. Tell me what happened."
"Derrick was bad. Emerson and me was…in the bed. Derrick wouldn't be quiet, so Emerson picked him up to give him a slap. Derrick wet on Emerson and Emerson punched him in the chest. When we got done…in the bed, Derrick, he was still layin' there. We couldn't do nothin' with him. Emerson put him in one of the bags."
"What bags?"
"Over there," she said, gesturing with her eyes. In the corner, a box of green plastic Hefty bags.
"Then what?"
"Emerson, he went out."
"What did he say when he came back?" I asked her, guessing.
"He say, nobody ever find Derrick. It's okay."
"How long was he gone?"
"I dunno."
Her theme song— but I believed her this time.
"Why'd you call the cops?"
"SSC was comin' the next day. To check on the baby. They took him away before."
"And cut your check, right?"
"Yeah."
"Does Emerson have a car?"
"No, he ain't got no car. He had a car, but…"
"Never mind. He calls you, right?"
"I ain't got no phone here."
"There's pay phones downstairs."
"He don't never call me. Sometimes, he come by."
"On check day?"
"Yeah."
I signaled to Clarence. He stepped away from her, wrinkling his nose at the smell.
My eyes caught a color photograph on the dresser, propped up in a goldtone frame. I walked over to it. The woman, standing next to a tall, sheik-handsome man with a mustache, wearing a cream-colored suit, panama hat.
&nbs
p; I held it up. "This Emerson?"
She nodded.
I popped the picture out of the frame. "Fix it," I told Clarence. His razor sliced surgically, leaving me just the man's photo. I slipped it into my pocket.
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