The Fight (A Ray Hammer Novel Book 4)

by Aaron Leyshon

  “Thing is,” said Carter, “we can’t seem to track him down.”

  “We hoped your clearance would help,” said Barrens, “but you found as little as we did.”

  “When’s the last time anyone heard from him?”

  “There was a report about a week ago at a rehab clinic; you know, mandatory reporting. Just the name, but we went down there and he’s vanished. Checked himself out last night apparently, kicked the asses of a couple of the guards by the sounds of things.”

  “You shouldn’t have taken me,” said Eliza. “I could have got this information a lot better from the inside.”

  “I’m still inside,” said Carter.

  “And besides,” said Jimmy, “Groening has to royally fuck this up. You said so yourself.”

  Eliza McNamara wrestled with herself. They’d kidnapped her. Taken her off the damn street. They’d kept her prisoner. Carter should be fired—at the very least. Barrens locked up. Hell, both of them should be in jail.

  On the other hand though, there was merit to what they were saying about Groening; he would screw things up and that would potentially lead to the necessary disruption of the police force. It was politics, plain and simple, and brutal. But more people would die. And McNamara didn’t know if she could live with that. There was no good option.

  “So, how the hell does this play then?” asked Eliza.

  Barrens started first. “You and I, we go check out what we can, see if we can find any other mention of this guy or any more carnage that he left in his wake. We do this outside the law. You disguise yourself and you don’t check in with anyone until we find our man.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then he runs the story about Groening’s fuckup, runs the story of our plight,” said Barrens, and Carter nodded.

  “I feed you info from the inside. Anything you need, you send it to me. I get you information back,” said Carter. “Here’s a burner and some walking-around money.” She handed McNamara a new phone and some cash.

  Eliza shook her head. “I don’t know if I can. People will—”

  “People will die either way,” Carter retorted, “This way they won’t continue to die after we’re through.”

  “I can come down hard on them, though. Stop this before it’s too late.”

  “Not hard enough. Not with Groening in charge. He’ll use this as an opportunity to spread his racist messages and his far-right antics, or he’ll be too drunk on the power to even notice,” said Carter. “That and it’s already too late.”

  “Are you in?” asked Barrens.

  Carter raised an eyebrow and Eliza shook her head, but the words that came out of her mouth were: “Yeah, I’m in.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Keith Groening was nine years old when he was nearly killed by a falling tree. That morning, the wind had rushed and tousled his hair, and brought water to his eyes. His hands were cold and clammy. Sweat dripped under his arms and his back was hunched forward; he couldn’t pedal any faster than he was, as he humped it around the bend with his Malvern Star and across a gritty dirt road intersection. He was late. The boys would already be down at the dam shooting bottles. His dad was passed out on the couch, already, his shirt stained with hooch and spilled chilli left over from last night.

  The tree came from out of left field. Swaying left and right on the tray-bed of a truck. It was stripped, without its leaves and branches and one of many loaded high on the logging truck. Keith noticed too late. Noticed the way the truck swerved into the potholes and lurched back out of them. The driver drove like his dad.

  And then the driver saw him. Their eyes met. The driver slammed the brakes on. Too late.

  The truck spun. The timber took to the air. Keith’s tree hit the road. Dug out a deep gash in the gravel and bounced up, its thick butt hung in the air, and little Keith ducked, throwing a hand up.

  It could have taken his head off.

  It didn’t.

  He didn’t keep the whole memory of it. Just the pain of over a ton of hardwood slamming into his nine-year-old body. His arm broke, but not his head. The Lord must have been watching over him.

  He came to in a ditch beside the track, his precious Malvern Star mangled. He remembered that clearly. The handlebars bent under the largest splinter he’d ever seen. Blood dribbled down his face and Keith scooped gritty red out of his eyes. It didn’t stop the flow.

  Then he blacked out.

  The next thing he remembered was the driver—how’d his father say it, “a nigger son-of-a-bitch,” —standing over him, lifting Keith’s eyelids.

  “You in there, kid?”

  Keith shrank back from him. He’d never seen this man before. And only seen blacks from a distance in the city, loitering, as his dad roared through town to pick up some more booze.

  “Y’know, I’m mighty sorry, kid.”

  Keith didn’t give a shit if he was sorry or otherwise. He wanted to tear this . . . this filthy, no-good nigger to pieces.

  But he was nine-years old.

  And bleeding. Almost to death.

  That was when he did the thing his father would never forgive: He let the nigger take him to the hospital.

  When Mr. Keith Groening Senior found out about that, he let go black and blue and beat the recovering Keith Junior back about six months in his recovery. “You let some nigger run you down and then you just sit there and take his charity? You’re no son o’ mine.”

  Young Keith remembered the papers reporting the fire at a Mr. John Jackson’s hut on the old dirt track just down from the mill. He recalled the satisfaction of the smile on his Daddy’s face. And he promised himself he’d never let a nigger hurt him ever again.

  Keith Junior clung to the smell of kerosene. And pictured himself rising with the flames over the tiny hut. He kept the match in a dented old cigarette case. Revenge smelled sweet.

  He’d just turned ten. And he made his daddy proud.

  Groening Senior died a year later, with sixteen 12-guage shots in his chest and a Grand Wizard outfit turning crimson and brown in the lee of an old lynching tree. They never found the killer. But Keith Groening Jr. knew well enough it was them niggers.

  Keith Junior swore he’d make ‘em pay the right way. So, he chose politics as his vehicle of destruction.

  It started in the school yard and was far from over yet. He pictured the oval office.

  A portrait of his dad hung up on the wall over the door, so Keith Junior would never forget the beating he received just after getting shot of the hospital. And he’d certainly never forget the flames of revenge.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I was hurtling down the Parkway when I realized I’d left $300 million on the scrap of paper with my few possessions front counter at Chatham County jail. I slowed a little, pulled on the handbrake, ripped the car around until it was facing the other way, avoiding two or three oncoming cars. Within minutes I skidded to a halt out front, checked the ammunition in the prison guard’s detective special, and stepped out into the parking lot.

  I trotted up the steps and into the front office. There was no one there. I rang a bell on the counter—and still no one came out. There were muffled voices, the sound of dogs barking, of prisoners rattling their cages inside, and yet no one was here at the front counter.

  I fired off two rounds into the old Yale lock on the door, keeping well clear of flying flack, and it burst open. I stepped inside, working my way hesitantly through the back office, weapon raised, my footsteps soft, careful, on the carpet. No one here. Maybe they sent all the ancillary staff home. Maybe it was safer that way, or maybe they were locked down in a bunker somewhere. I didn’t know, but I sure didn’t like the feeling or the eerie silence, the only sound, my breathing—soft, light, careful.

  And then, there was a flutter, just a slight movement of air, the crackle of a footfall and a slight change of smell in the room. I spun fast but it was too late. The barrel of a handgun was pointed at my head. I raised my hands slowly, let th
e revolver spin around on my finger and then drop to the carpet. It clunked against the ground.

  “Jesus, Jimmy, you scared me,” I said.

  It was years since I’d seen Jimmy Barrens. Back then, he hadn’t been anywhere near as famous, just a man with a guitar and a brother on death row. We’d talked for hours, discussed all the intricacies of the case. It became clear that his brother should not have been convicted, but the media were braying for his blood—or were until they read my article. And then the prosecutors called for a media blackout, but it was too late. The damage was done. Reasonable doubt was established, and Michael Barrens was acquitted.

  Jimmy held out a plastic bag with my belongings. “Thought you might come back for these,” he said. “Seems you’ve come into a bit of a windfall, Ray.”

  I nodded. “Nothing like what you’re making these days though, Jimmy . . . and besides, you know me, I only need a bit of it.”

  “Well, that might be, but we need a bit of you and your magic. How’s your editor going?”

  I considered this for a moment. I think of Ed like a pet rock. He’s my editor, but he’s pretty slow and thick and dense and heavy, and if I don’t feed him and water him with some articles every once in a while, he does just fine without me. He doesn’t seem to mind the relationship and neither do I. But then, his wife is quite fond of me, and I quite like the way she talks—dirty.

  “I’m retired,” I said.

  “You’re a ghost, Ray,” said a tall, strong African American woman, stepping around the corner.

  “It’s just the way I like it,” I replied.

  “Chief Eliza McNamara.” She held out a hand.

  I shook it. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  When Irving Mathers heard about the prison break, he didn’t take any notice. But, when a picture appeared onscreen of a familiar face with the name Ben Miles aka Ray Hammer scrolling under it, Mathers opened his mouth and stared as the sauce from his burger dripped down onto his white(ish) T-shirt. He was barely out of Savannah, sitting at a truck stop on the side of the interstate. Billowing plumes of smoke provided a bleak tableau through the Burger King window.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Irving to no one in particular, but a young girl in a Burger King outfit was brushing past his table at that point. She turned to him. “Sorry, sir?”

  “I said I’ll be damned; these prisoners escaping, this mess back in town,” he waved a hand towards the TV screen, which showed the fires burning, the police and protesters clashing, rocks being thrown, people being pushed to the ground, kicked, battered, tasered, skulls bashed in.

  “How do I get back on the interstate heading south?” asked Irving.

  The girl shrugged, shimmied away. “I don’t really know. I don’t drive.”

  “What?” said Irving, grabbing a napkin and wiping the sauce off his grimy shirt. “How do you get to work then, a place like this on the side of the highway?”

  “Friends, mostly,” she said, with the tone that indicated there weren’t really friends or that something bad had happened between them recently. She shrugged. “Or bus, I guess. Worst case, I walk.”

  “You live in Savannah?” asked Irving.

  “Yeah, on the outskirts,” said the girl.

  “And which way does the bus go when you take the bus? Or which way do your friends drive when you go with them?”

  “Eh? I can’t say. I never paid that much attention. Look, excuse me, I’ve got some work to do.”

  Irving nodded and let it go. He stepped outside and clambered up into the cab of his 18-wheeler. He finished his supersized Pepsi and waited in the carpark for the girl to come out. She didn’t hop into a car, just looked left and right and started walking along the main road towards the interstate. Irving started his engine and eased the semi along behind her, slowly. Eventually, he stopped just to the side, opened the door, leaned over.

  “You want a lift?”

  The girl shook her head and kept walking, head down, eyes averted. Irving moved the truck along again, slowly, keeping just to the side of the entrance ramp. He wound the window down and called out to her.

  “Come on, get on in. I’m heading back to Savannah myself. Hey, one of your friends, he wouldn’t happen to be a guy called Ben Miles, would he? Or Ray Hammer?”

  She shook her head, and looked up at him in the cab. She looked forward at the long road ahead and then back up at the cab.

  “I don’t bite,” he said, and scratched one of the tattoos on his arm.

  He extended his arm to her. She took it, and he lifted her up into the cab.

  When they pulled onto the interstate, Mathers locked the doors.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I’m sorry, Jimmy, but I don’t owe you shit. It’s been nice and all catching up,” I said, “but this is over.” I snatched my bag of belongings, a small plastic bag with very little in it (not counting the $300 million), and then stepped back out through the back offices.

  Jimmy and the woman named McNamara tailed me. “It’s not about me,” said Jimmy, as he bent down and picked up the detective special.

  “I’d put that damn gun away,” I said, and he obliged, sliding his own weapon into his waistband.

  They stuck to me like chewing gum on a sneaker as I moved out through the lobby, down the stairs and towards the warden’s car.

  “It’s about justice, Ray. I know you care about justice.”

  “Justice?” I echoed. “Do you know what I think about justice, Jimmy? Do you know what I think about justice, Chief?” I said, looking from one to the other.

  Jimmy shook his head.

  McNamara said, “I don’t know anything about you.” Which was fair enough.

  “I think justice is a rigged game,” I said. “There’s no such thing as justice. I don’t give a shit about it. The only thing I care about is people.”

  “This is about people,” said Jimmy, exasperation creeping into his tone. “Do you know how many African Americans have died in this country at the hands of people who are supposed to protect and serve? Do you know how many have died pointlessly, in so many horrendous ways, so others could benefit? Hell, the Land of the Free was built upon on their bones. The tree of democracy watered with their sweat.”

  “He’s right,” said McNamara. “This isn’t about justice . . . but it’s not only about people either. It’s about the future. It’s about this country being a place we can all live together.”

  She’d been so stoic and deadpan all along that her passion surprised me.

  “It’s not about making America great again,” she said. “It’s about making this place a great place to live for everyone, from now on. It’s about being patriotic and doing what needs to be done to make this nation what it ought to be.”

  We were halfway down the stairs and I turned and looked back up at her. “I served this country,” I said. “Do you know what they gave me? A fucked-up mind, and a pretty nasty drinking habit—and that’s it. That’s the only thing I ever received from the great US of A.”

  “You got a Congressional Medal, too,” said Chief McNamara.

  “Oh, you found my file,” I said dismissively, and continued towards the car.

  She indicated Jimmy. “He dug it up for me. You prevented a war. You saved thousands of American lives, countless soldiers.”

  This time, I glared at her when I turned. “That was purely selfish.” People had such stupid, naïve ideas about “heroes”, fueled by all that garbage Hollywood kept churning out. Most of the time, “heroes” were just trying to save their own asses. Saving others was incidental.

  I stepped into the car. I started the engine. Jimmy opened the rear door and McNamara jumped in, headfirst. Jimmy followed her into the back seat. I screeched out of the carpark and they kept going, pressuring me, pressing me. They wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t let up.

  “We need you to do this, to write an article about our relationship to race, the bigotry, the l
ynching, the modern-day equivalents. You need to do it for yourself, for the people.”

  They kept going, throwing out every argument they could think of, every turn of phrase, every little piece of rhetoric, and maybe it was their pestering or maybe it was the deep pit of hunger that welled in my stomach as I pressed down on the pedal for more gas, that made me soften and lose my focus.

  The warden’s Mustang leaped forward, a monster under the hood. It was a sweet ride indeed, with 300-plus horsepower, and the thing purred right into my oversteering as I wrenched the wheel too hard one way and then another to avoid a tree I was heading straight towards.

  The car bucked, rolled under me—under us—flipped, once, twice, three times. I slammed my head on something. My hand cracked on something else. Glass shattered. Screams echoed from the back seat. We rolled, crunching metal over metal to a final stop on a slope of grass—the smell of gasoline and burning rubber, the trickle of blood running down my cheek, and the two faces in the back a tableau of horror, pinned into their seats under pieces of folded steel.

  I checked their vitals and then waited for the ambulance to arrive. When I heard sirens, I moved into the trees, into the brush, and felt the scratching of leaves and branches as I crouched down, instinctively reverting to my basic training. Moving through the scrub and the high grass, staying low, staying quiet, I sucked breath in and held it.

  The paramedics did their job. They were smart, efficient, quick. Jimmy Barrens regained consciousness when they arrived, but the police chief—or should I say former chief—was out of it. The paramedics radioed to the police, and I moved farther off into the scrubby woods. A stick cracked under my foot and a voice called out, “Hey! Anyone there?” and I sprinted away from the scene, scrambled up the bank and onto the parkway for the fourth time.

  I checked my pocket for where I had placed the faded scrap of paper with the lottery numbers. My only worthwhile possession was still in the plastic bag with my other things, which was thankful because the smell of ozone became overpowering and tiny droplets of rain splashed on my face.