Black Collar Empire

by A. N. Latro

  What does she know? What is she getting herself into? The receipt is written for Trent Carraba, an alias Caleb had developed in his early teens during their boyhood games, a name he always thought sounded cool. He notices a passport is next in the stack. He snatches it up quickly, knocking the clock radio askew, which sends the condoms into the floor. He stomach threatens to return his dinner as he forces his attention away from the flashing gold packaging.

  He flips open the passport, is accosted by Caleb's grim visage beside that name: Carraba, Trent Gabriel. It has several stamps, London, Tokyo, Bangkok, and a false living address in New York.

  “Fuck,” he spits, flinging it at the floor.

  He presses his fingers against his eyelids as if it will stop the flood of confused betrayal. He thinks of Caleb's assets, his portion of company shares that still sit in limbo on Seth's insistence. He has been inexplicably resistant to the pressure from all angles to come to an agreement to split those shares among several key family members. They have been coaxing gently, trying so hard not to seem like they're worried about what he might do with them, because it is ultimately his decision. The unified kingdom he has envisioned is quickly losing its luster. He feels like both Robin Hood and King Richard, returned to his home to find the interim king has made extensive measures against him.

  He lifts his head as if it carries the weight of all the buildings of Manhattan that are under his control. His heavy eyes roam the nightstand, noticing a brown-skinned, black-haired beauty staring seductively at him from the cover of yet another issue of Maxim. The words on the cover are a mix of English and the same language from the brochure, Thai, he realizes now. Bamboo. He had mentioned it himself, to Emma. The place had been hip and new when he left town. Caleb had loved it then. Seth had been less than pleased to hear, when he returned, that it was still open. It is a syndicate hot spot, a tangled mess of drugs and, yes, the skin trade.

  He stands swiftly, clearing the top of the nightstand with one well-placed swipe of his arm. The ashtray launches into the wall and shatters, exploding into a cloud of ash, spent cigarette butts, and shards of glass. Papers scatter across abandoned clothing and thread-bare carpet. The numbers on the clock go black as the chord jerks from wall socket, and the plastic casing slams against the floor and comes apart. His brother's words continue to break him. You don't understand, Seth. You never did.

  He takes hold of the stand with both hands. Tears make a play to rise as he flings it down the length of the room. The drawer falls out en route, scattering more knives, condoms, and bits of paper in a fluttering trail to where the stand crashes into the wall beside the door. The wood splinters, and it punctures holes in the paper-thin construction. Sheet rock dust bursts forth to join the cloud of distress.

  I am more like our family than you could ever hope to be.

  He bites back the tears. He's so tired of crying, weary of this anguish. Instead he takes an armful of the stylish, rich-textured clothes hanging in the closet, and rips them free. Several of the wooden hangers snap and bend, the pieces of which go flying in all directions. Fabric tears and buttons whiz by his head. The remains float to the floor around him.

  Because you are weak.

  “Because you were weak!” he screams, grabbing a built-in drawer by its handle and sending it sailing into the wall above the bed with one fluid movement. Again, plaster cracks and crumbles, and the drawer falls apart. Designer boxers and socks rain onto black sheets. Seth watches another gun ricochet into the silky heap, a black .357. It lands beside three photos that must have been in the drawer as well.

  “But you were right,” he says softly as he retrieves the pictures. The first is a genuinely smiling Caleb, laughing, Seth can tell from the way his eyes are crinkled at the corners. His dark blue shirt is mostly unbuttoned, toned chest bared proudly, and he holds a bottle of what looks like sake. “I'm not like them.”

  The next is Caleb, sleeves rolled up past his elbows bent in a left-handed arm wrestling match with a brown-skinned, bare-armed figure, whose his head is leaned forward and whose face is obscured by long, black hair. Caleb's eyes are locked on the mysterious face, and they are both covered in a sheen of sweat.

  The third is a snapshot of Caleb with his arm around Emma. His wide smile shines brilliantly next to the reserved, sweet curve of her lips. He wears a black vest over a white tux shirt, and her hair is significantly shorter. They are holding champagne and exemplifying luxurious beauty. They look so much alike, it hurts.

  Their father believed that family was the most important force in the universe. Gabriel believed in it so fully that he spent some of his last breaths putting his voice to the philosophy in order to instill its value within his heir. Seth took it to heart, but three years later he finds himself doubting the principle upon which he has based his actions, his whole life. Would Caleb really have pulled the trigger? And was he really so wrong when he said the family was dead? Most importantly, what if Seth had stayed? What if he had been here for his brother, instead of completely cut off from him? He had believed in the idea of gaining such a powerful ally by himself; he had believed it so wholeheartedly because he was naïve and selfish. He had believed that Mikie's support came from grounded and seasoned experience, but hindsight tells him that his uncle should have known better, which means he most likely did.

  Seth flips back to the second picture, eying the lithe, muscled foreigner stretched across the table like a delicate and deadly cat. Caleb's expression is fierce, his eyes alight with iced-blue amusement, the right corner of his lips hooked in the smallest smirk. Seth notices a tattoo on the inner side of Caleb's forearm, something he has never seen. The sight of it creates the same sensation as when Caleb kicked him in the ribs. It is a single flower, broad-leafed and accented in deep, golden yellow with a little green stamen in the center. It glows against his tanned skin, claims the focus of all the drama within the picture, but only once it's noticed. It could have been just a new tat, but something in his gut says differently, something that developed when he was scarred with a searing piece of metal by his own business affiliate. He silently berates himself. He should have known what would happen when he finally found the answers he sought. They can only ever lead to more questions.

  Time to call the first witness, he thinks, slipping his Blackberry from his pocket and dialing Vera. “Meet me,” he says when she answers.

  There is a long pause on the other end of the line. He can hear voices and activity around her. Most likely she is in the news room. “I'm extremely busy,” she says finally, tentatively.

  “I don't need much time. I'll come to you,” he answers, body settling back into calm control as his eyes sweep the destruction he has made. The tears have relented, sunk back into the cold depths of the pit where he cages his emotions. His anger cools as he speaks, dropping from violent rage to a steady heat that feeds him countless questions that beg for his attention.

  He hears her sigh, knows she wants to deny him. But he does not make effort to see just anybody.

  “Ok, I can give you ten minutes.”

  Hudson River, New York City. June 16th.

  Seth leans his arms against the metal railing and listens to the Hudson lapping against its shore below. Even this quiet setting makes him think of his brother and the fabricated details of his death. It had been so easy to make it seem like a tragic accident. He hadn’t even argued—Mikie set it up while he was still reeling with grief.

  Most people would be afraid to linger here after dark, but he doesn’t care about muggers and bums. He has killed royalty, watched kings fall. What does he have to fear from his own streets? He sniffs, burying his face in the lapels of his long, spring coat, which are popped arrogantly, and he lets his brown fedora hide his eyes. He can hear footsteps approaching, heels. She steps up beside him, not quite touching, but so close. She nudges him with her elbow. He looks up, feeling suddenly drained from his fit earlier. He realizes she is offering him a Styrofoam coffee cup, steam wafting up from
the little hole in the lid. She isn't looking at him, as if she is trying to fight off the power he has over her. “Thanks,” he says, his voice dancing into the chilly night.

  “The clock's ticking, Morgan. I have a lot of work to do,” she says. Her tone is cold. Maybe she can sense his tension. Maybe she can feel his hard-ball attitude from the few words they've shared. He takes a deep breath.

  “What do you know about my brother?” he deadpans, staring at her until she has to accept and return his attention. Her face drains of color, and her eyes drip with an emotion that makes him feel sick again—fear. He looks away, to the river, and says, “I should have known you, should have fucking known that you wouldn't offer any details I didn't specifically ask for, but you know more than the nothing that you mentioned. Don't you?”

  She bristles, sips her coffee. “He came to me, to find information for him,” she admits.

  Seth sucks in a sharp breath, can't help it. He turns his head away to shield the pain with the brim of his hat. Caleb had taken the same damn steps Seth is walking. If only the footsteps he keeps finding weren't so much bigger than his own, he could take this in easy stride. “What information?” Seth growls as aftershocks of his violence rock him. He resists the urge the fling the hot coffee against the sidewalk.

  “He had me research a group called Ratchaphure,” she says, taking comfort in the warmth of the cup against her fingers.

  Seth feels as if a hole has formed in the bottom of his stomach. He fights back a groan. “He had you digging around in a whorehouse, and you didn't report on it?”

  She doesn't move, only stares at him. How can she defend her actions? She says, “He also supplied me with dirt on other groups within the city.”

  He thinks of the newspapers, her stories. It was brilliance, really, to court the enemy until you have sufficiently diminished the threat. More than anything, he thinks of the date on the first story, months before he left town. “He bribed you.”

  “He kept the news off of your family. We conducted your type of business,” she answers, haughtily turning up her nose.

  “Did you fuck him, too?” he asks, voice cutting across the dirty serenity of the water. He almost doesn't recognize the sound of himself. The irrationality and intrusiveness of the question suddenly escape him. She gasps. He winces.

  “No!” she says bitingly, and then softer, “Caleb always seemed . . . detached. And he only had eyes for those dark-headed beauties. Like it's really any of your business.”

  “The whores,” Seth says bitterly.

  “Yeah, maybe,” she scoffs. “And their young frontman.”

  He sees the heated photograph in his mind's eye, the two young men engaged in such a show of competition. So Caleb had sought the attention of some other younger brother, some different kind of dark eyes. Seth's skin chills. “What else do you know?” he asks.

  “I think I know he didn't die in this river,” she answers, turning to pin him with a brazen look. “And I know that the men of your family love trouble just as much as they love to pretend to hate it.”

  His cheeks are hot. His coat is stifling suddenly. She speaks from experience with which he cannot argue, and it makes his blood boil.

  “Do you really think you know?” he snaps. He has no mercy tonight, no tenderness or reservation. He takes the blow of her scathing stare, accepts the full weight of her frustration. He says, “Caleb died with a bullet between his eyes.”

  Vera's mouth opens, but no sound results, so Seth fills the gap. “And my father, he died with a bunch of holes in his lungs. Is that what you want to know? Is that what you've always sought? Because that's what happens to people in my world, a world of which you have so deliberately made yourself a part. Whatever you think you know doesn't mean shit. I'm the only one who will ever hold the trigger for you.”

  She presses her lips together as tears well in her eyes. “I think Caleb was seduced,” she whispers, looking away finally.

  Seth's anger dissipates, melts into the grief in her gaze. He can't understand why he suddenly wants to take her in his arms, why he feels like the worst kind of villain. “What do you mean?” he asks, voice lodging painfully against his guilt. He takes the only solace he can, and his fingers ball into fists.

  “By the Ratchaphure.” She sighs. “I might be out of line, but he was very wary of them at first.”

  “At first,” he repeats. “So you saw Caleb often?”

  Another pause makes his breath hitch, then she says, “No.”

  Again he thinks of the newspaper articles that Caleb kept, and how the publication dates were spread apart. Not often at all. She says, “But the last time I saw him, it had nothing to do with his Thai friends—and by then they were friends.” She takes a long sip, seems reluctant.

  “What then?” He almost doesn't want to know.

  “He wanted me to find you.”

  The natural cycle of breathing is getting harder for him by the minute. He battles the panic that flashes through his limbs, along with the growing assurance within him that the something wrong that he had sensed during that last real meeting with his brother still racks his intuition, though his brother is several months dead.

  Vera says, “It was over a year ago.”

  He straightens, pushes away from the railing, shaking his head as if it will make everything fall into place. As if it will make it all hurt less. He sighs; asks, “What happened?”

  “I couldn't do it,” she answers, tone like a defeated shrug. “It was like you dropped off the planet.” The moment stretches painfully. I did, he silently screams, for too long, because she adds, “Your time's up, Seth.” And walks away.

  Bamboo, New York City. June 16th.

  She is aware of the eyes on her as she steps out of her sleek black car. The car is a statement, as much as the sheer, white dress she wears. She eyes the crowd waiting and walks to the imposing bouncer standing by the thin velvet rope. He flashes a short smile, and she slips past him into the pulsing interior.

  Emma knows she should have called Seth after her conversation with Bethania the night before. Her driver took her to his building, and she had been on the verge of going to his loft before she decided against it. Instead, she had gone back to her apartment, called Mikie in the morning and made a request. He had agreed, and within a few hours, the storage unit had been emptied and two low-ranking guns were moving everything into her apartment. She wanted to go out—had been left with a burning urge to dance, to see Rama. The desire pushed her from the waiting phone to Bamboo.

  She stays on the first floor, watching from the bar. Working girls move through the expensive suits, flirting, exotic and sensual. One catches her eye, a playful smile. The open honesty in the girl's eyes disturbs her, and she turns back to the bar and her scotch. A hand snakes around her waist, and she tenses for a moment before she tilts her head back, and his lips find hers.

  “What are you drinking?” he asks.

  “Scotch.” His drink. The dead are with her tonight, and she is courting the ghost of her cousin, drinking his favorite liquor. She swallows the last of it, intensely aware of his sudden tension. She twists in his arms, smiling at him. “Dance with me.”

  Emma all but drags him to the dance floor, already lost to the beat. He dances with her, but his mind is on another Morgan, one who tasted like scotch and ash. Her hands are in his hair, forcing his eyes back to her, and she smiles, slow, sultry, a smile that teases memories and makes him close his eyes, letting his head fall back as they dance.

  Emma dances until the ghosts of her brother and cousin fade, dances until her mother’s eyes and words are drowned out by pulsing music and lights. Rama moves with her, and guilt fills her for a moment as she realizes he is neglecting his work. She is as well.

  “Thirsty?” he murmurs against her ear as the music lulls. She nods, and he claims her hand as they leave the floor. She is amused by the way the crowd parts, whores drawing aside their rich clients, making way for their king. She sees the g
azes, the working girls who stare after him hungrily, the predatory stares from the dancing young women.

  In the dim lights, with his pale khakis hanging low on his waist and his jade button down a brilliant splash of color, she has to appreciate their good taste. He glances over his shoulder at her, his gaze hot, and she shivers, eliciting a knowing smile from him.

  * * *

  Seth knows his defiance isn't quite finished with him as he slams his car door and barks the address for Bamboo at the driver. It's really stupid to take a car into that neighborhood, sure to draw too much attention, but his anger has driven him past the point of caring what anyone thinks about his actions. It's foolish, he knows, and so he blatantly ignores the look of worn uncertainty on his driver's face.

  He flings the fedora across the seat into the opposite window. It lands upside down on some real estate estimates and a copy of the Times. He sheds the overcoat just as quickly, depositing it carelessly in the floor of the car. He sits on the edge of the seat for a long time, concentrating on commanding his calm as the car eases forward to begin its across-town crawl. The disruption Seth is getting ready to create will call for the utmost finesse. His fingers run absently over the strap of his double holster, pausing to think of his father when he brushes the bullet scar on his left shoulder. His only protection rests heavy against his lower back, two black steel reminders that Morgans live and die by the gun. The gun, he thinks, and the love of their people. And people do love him.

  He runs a hand over his hair, which is getting a bit too long, so that it falls into his eyes and brushes his ears. He hasn't shaved in two days. He hasn't slept much either. He also hasn't done blow or acknowledged his denial, and his emotions have come to claim him full force. They are like a drug in themselves, all mixing and twisting his insides so that all he can feel is hell-bent determination to follow the clues until he collapses or dies.