by John Hart
“I don’t want you to start! That’s the point! I don’t want you near me or this prison, not near the Pagans, either, and definitely not the Angels.”
“If they convict you, they’ll execute you.”
“Yeah, well. Prosecutors.”
I leaned away, cold on the inside. “What kind of fatalistic, inmate bullshit is that?”
“Go home, kid. Go to school. Kiss the girl.”
“I won’t give up only to watch you die.”
“That sounds like something Robert would say.”
“Sara’s gone.” It was my last bullet, so I fired it point-blank. “Burklow thinks she was abducted, possibly by the same person who killed Tyra. That means it’s not just about you anymore.”
“Listen to me, kid. You’re out of your depth. You don’t understand what’s happening here.”
“Explain it to me.”
“If I did, you wouldn’t believe me; and if you believed me, you wouldn’t accept it. What I will tell you is this.” His restraints clattered as he leaned closer. “You watch your back out there. I mean it. Walking. Driving. Be aware of the people around you, of everyone around you. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t open the door to strangers. Stay inside. Stay with friends. If you find yourself outside and alone, be especially careful of middle-aged men who look older than they should, doubly so if they’re small and narrow, and not at all dangerous-looking. You see someone like that, you run, and I mean for your life.”
“Why run? What man?”
“Let’s just say that a prison like this does not forget, and there are people who want to control me, bad people who will hurt you to do it.”
“People on the inside or the outside?”
Jason smiled, then, but with little warmth. “I understand you, little brother. I truly do. You want to help because we’re family, and it feels like a noble cause. But we’ve not been family for a long time. You don’t owe me a thing.”
“I don’t see it like that.”
“The brother you remember is gone, kid, killed as dead by Vietnam as Robert ever was.” Jason stood, his eyes a wasteland. “The sooner you accept that fact, the better off you’ll be.”
* * *
The guard who returned Jason to his cell was not on X’s detail, so Jason had to wait, and it wasn’t easy. He paced the cell; pounded on the door. “I want to talk to X! Now! I want to see him now!”
Gibby wouldn’t back down.
That was the problem.
“Guard! Guard, goddamn it!”
When Jason finally made it to the subbasement, he found X with a paintbrush in one hand. “What kind of deranged game are you playing this time?”
“Game?” X didn’t turn.
“The girl. The missing girl.”
X dabbed a bit of paint onto the canvas. “I’d like your opinion on this painting.”
“Answer the question.”
“The painting first.”
Driving down the impatience, Jason looked at the painting. It was only a start, but the gist of it was clear: one fighter down, the second standing above him. “That’s you on the floor.”
“Unconscious on the floor.” X dabbed more paint. “The first time it’s happened since I was a student.”
He made the word sound casual, but there was nothing casual about X as a student of the martial arts. As a boy in Switzerland, he’d mastered Wing Chun and hapkido before getting away with the murder of his family, inheriting his parents’ fortune, and devoting himself entirely to the study of Shotokan Karate-Do. He’d spent a small fortune to train with an Okinawan master named Gichin Funakoshi, who’d first brought the discipline from China to Japan in 1922. X had described the training, once, as something akin to divine suffering. At the moment, Jason didn’t care. “Are you targeting my brother or not?”
The paintbrush stopped an inch off the canvas.
“He’s a tough kid, but just a kid. He won’t survive inside this place, so if that’s the endgame—”
“There is no endgame with regard to your brother.” X turned, at last. “My concern is with you, alone. I’ve made that very plain.”
“Then why take the roommate?”
“Roommate?”
“Tyra’s roommate has been abducted. With me here, the cops will look at my brother. He knew the girls. He knew both of them.”
X put down the brush. “This roommate? She is blond?”
“You know her?”
“I know only of her.”
“It’s Reece, then.”
“Or not Reece at all.”
But that was bullshit, and Jason knew it. “My brother is out there right now looking for the roommate. What will Reece do if he finds her?”
“Reece would not hurt your brother without my permission.”
“I need more than that. Blow the whistle. Call off your dog.”
“I will handle Reece.”
“How?” Jason demanded.
“Like the dog that he is.” X allowed his lips to twist. “Shotokan may be a Japanese discipline, but it began in China.”
“What does that mean?”
X gestured, and two guards took Jason by the arms.
“Wait, X…” Jason fought to stay in the cell, but they dragged him out. “I don’t understand what that means!”
X watched him struggle, and left the rest of his thought unspoken.
That the Chinese have never been afraid to eat their dogs …
* * *
After the prison, I said little to my friends until we were halfway back to the city. It was a tense ride with a lot of unanswered questions. Finally, I said, “He doesn’t want me involved. He won’t help me.”
“Did you tell him about the Carriage Room?” Chance leaned forward, every bit as angry. “That you are involved?”
“I told him.”
“And he still wouldn’t help? Unbelievable.”
“What next?” Becky asked.
“I don’t know what else to do. Jason won’t talk to me, and I know almost nothing about Tyra, not her friends or where she worked. I don’t even know where she’s from. Normally, I’d ask Sara…”
The words trailed off because that sentence spoke for itself. Chance leaned forward, his sunburned arms folded on the back of the seat. “Sara’s gone, man, and that sucks. I don’t even know her, and it sucks. But maybe the cops will see things differently now. Time, you know. Perspective. Two victims, like Burklow said, a different dynamic. Maybe if your father pushes…”
I watched him in the mirror, and then glanced at Becky. This part was going to hurt. “I think Jason knows who killed Tyra.”
It was as if I’d said something perverse. Chance’s face went slack. Becky’s lips parted enough to form a perfect, silent O. But how much of my brother could I share? I’d seen his bleakness and resolve, what, at the very end, had seemed like the blackest kind of despair.
The brother you remember is gone, kid, killed as dead by Vietnam as Robert ever was …
That part was private.
The rest of it, though …
I gave it to them word for word: the warning, the risk, everything Jason had told me. Afterward, Chance parroted my words, seemingly in shock. “There are people who want to control me, bad people who will hurt you to do it.”
“He’s trying to scare me off,” I said.
“Or protect you,” Becky replied. “Though, I guess that’s the same thing.”
“Let’s assume it’s all true,” Chance said. “We have to assume that, right? And if it is true, who was he talking about? What dangerous people?”
“All I know is what I told you.”
“It’s not much, man.”
“Becky?”
She took her time, more thoughtful than Chance. “What does he mean by middle-aged men who look older than they should? That’s oddly specific and nonspecific.”
I answered with care because this part would sting, too. “I’m pretty sure I saw him.” Chance’s mouth opened—he
looked horrified—and even Becky paled. “Twice,” I continued. “Once, the day we were in court, and then again right after Tyra … you know.”
“Right after she was hacked into a million pieces.” Chance almost came over the seat. “Is that what you mean? Right after Tyra was killed, and right before Sara was abducted.”
“Settle down, Chance.”
“You settle down! Jesus!” He slammed a palm on the seat top, then dropped back into a cross-armed, clench-jawed silence.
“Are you sure it was him?” Becky asked it softly, as if to make the point that she and Chance were very different people.
“He matched the description, like he was forty but looked sixty. Small and narrow. Not particularly dangerous-looking. Just like Jason said.”
“Where else did you see him?”
“On Tyra’s street, parked in a car…”
“Oh, that’s perfect,” Chance said. “On her street.”
“It might not have been him.”
“But you believe it was?” Becky asked.
“It would be one hell of a coincidence, a man like that parked on her street so soon after Tyra’s death. And it is an oddly particular description. Specific. Nonspecific. Like you said. And he’s easy to miss, too; he just kind of fades. Had I not seen him in court, I wouldn’t have noticed him the second time.”
“But you did see him in court.” Chance interrupted. “You did notice him the second time.”
“He was watching me, too. Maybe thirty seconds as I walked to my car.”
Becky was the first to see the bigger picture. “If Jason knows who killed Tyra, why won’t he tell the police?”
This part bothered me, too. “Maybe he doesn’t really know. Maybe he has no proof.”
“No, I think he’s definitely protecting you.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“Because it’s what you would do.” Becky leaned close, like it was the two of us, alone in the world. “Think about it. He won’t answer your questions or let you near the investigation. He’s warned you about this horrible man. He all but begged you to stop asking questions. If he knows who killed Tyra, he would want to tell the police—any innocent man would—unless there’s some powerful reason not to.”
“He said we’re barely family.”
“Do you really think he believes that?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Aren’t you, though?”
I drove the car in silence.
I had no kind of answer.
* * *
It took twenty minutes more before the tall buildings of downtown Charlotte rose in the distance. At a stoplight outside the city line, Chance said, “Turn here, man. Take me home.” He seemed frustrated and troubled, and at his house, oddly embarrassed. “I’d go with you if I could—wherever you’re going. It’s my mom, is all. She only has two hours between jobs. I told her I’d come home for lunch.”
I said, “Hey, brother. All good.” But I knew him well enough to understand his thoughts. Things were getting real …
“What will you do next?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe you should do nothing at all. How about that for a change? Go to class. Graduate.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Chance looked at his house, still struggling. “That man you saw on Tyra’s street … How close were you?”
“Ten feet, I guess.”
“Just sitting in his car?”
“Watching the condo, I think.”
Chance studied my face as if some kind of answer might be written there. “Call me later?”
“Sure. Course.”
“All right, then. Bye, Becky.”
We watched him into the house. “What now?” Becky asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe you’re looking at this wrong. The whole thing.”
“How so?”
“So far, it’s been about Tyra. That’s been your focus. Who did she make angry? What did she do that got her killed?”
“Yeah, because she is, in fact, the one who got killed.”
“How well do you know your brother?” Becky asked.
“I don’t understand.”
She took my hand, and shrugged sadly. “Maybe Tyra’s murder is not about Tyra at all.”
* * *
Becky’s insight was blindingly bright, and simple enough to open the door to an entirely new line of thought. From the beginning, I’d considered little but Tyra’s life and choices. It’s why I’d gone to the Carriage Room and to Sara’s condo. Becky’s modest question turned all that on its head. I truly did not know Jason at all; he’d told me as much. Even so, I’d assumed that the distance between us was born of mere circumstance, of war and distance and time apart. On that first day at the quarry, he’d said a brother should know his brother. But what effort had he made? We’d spent one day out, one day with the girls.
I am not a good person …
He’d said that, too.
“Where are we going?” Becky spoke for the first time since I’d pulled into heavy traffic. Before that, she’d been patient, and I’d used the time to turn Jason like a plate: brother, soldier, convict. Beyond the memories of our shared childhood, I knew only that he could be cold, violent, and dismissive.
Swim away, little fish …
“There’s a restaurant,” I said. “Soul food and Korean.”
* * *
The restaurant smelled exactly as I remembered: tobacco smoke and collards, the faint, familiar odor of barbecued beef and fermented vegetables. We took stools at the counter, and an old black man called out from the grill.
“Charlene! Customers!”
A round-faced, wide-hipped woman pushed through a swinging door, a smile on her mouth as she ambled along behind the counter. “Well, now, aren’t you the cutest little white people?” Cracks appeared in the purplish lipstick, and a pen materialized from behind her ear. “What can I get you on this fine day?”
“Coffees,” I said. “And a word with Mr. Washington.”
I nodded toward the old man, and her smile faded, sudden suspicion in her eyes. “You know my Nathaniel?”
“We kind of met last week. I’m Jason French’s brother.”
“Oh, Lord, that one. I should have seen it, just from looking at you.” The suspicion drained away. The smile returned.
“So you know him?” I asked.
“The good and the bad, though with him, the bad was not so bad, and the good was awfully good. Nathaniel!” She barked the cook’s name, her eyes all over my face. “Come see what the cat dragged in.” The old man mumbled something about burning the mush, and Charlene sighed in false exasperation. “That man…” She poured two coffees, and put the pot back on the burner. “You know, I don’t believe what they say about your brother. Newspapers. Television.” She made a sour face.
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, now, don’t misunderstand. I don’t know your brother enough to say I know him. He did have a prison spell, and did get into the drugs. But killing that girl?” She shook her head. “He sat at that counter too often, had dinner in my home a dozen times. Then there’s what he did for my boy.”
“Darzell,” I said.
“Ah, you’ve heard of my Darzell.” Her eyes lit up. “You want cream with that, sugar?” She pointed at Becky’s mug, then slid along a tin creamer without waiting for an answer. “You know, your brother saved his life.” I put down the coffee, and she said, “Mmm-hmm. They met on the bus to Parris Island, and were thick as thieves right off the bat. Same hometown, same streak of wild and ready. Parris Island is twelve weeks of hell, but they bunked together, trained together…”
“And he saved Darzell’s life?”
“Fourth day of boot camp.” Charlene cocked a round hip, and spread plump fingers on the counter. “They were three miles out on a six-mile run, twenty or thirty boys in full gear, half of ’em puking up their breakfast. Darzell and Jason were out fr
ont when it happened, but they were always out front. Competitive, you understand…” Her gaze got a little smoky, remembering something only she could see. “With all those boots pounding sand, I guess no one heard the snake rattle. And a canebrake will disappear into pine needles and sand; you can trust me on that. It could have been your brother who got bit—side by side like they were—but it was Darzell who stepped on the canebrake, and your brother who carried him back to base, three miles at a dead run.” She smiled again, and it was like sunshine. “You’ve not met my Darzell, but he’s six-two, two-twenty, and so hard you can’t kill him with a tire iron. Not like this little one…”
She hooked a thumb at her husband, but I saw the love in her eyes.
“You kids like soul food? Jason loves it like Sunday morning.”
“Actually, Mrs. Washington…” I met Becky’s eyes, and she nodded. “What I’d really like to do is talk to your son.”
* * *
Darzell’s address was not far away, but we were nervous about going there. When Becky spoke, I heard it in her voice. “About what the old man said…”
I was driving in four-lane traffic, but risked a glance at her face. Not nervous, I decided.
Wary.
That was the right word, the right emotion. During our conversation with his pleasant, round-faced wife, Nathaniel Washington had barely looked our way. He’d tended the mush and the ribs; smoked a cigarette or two. But when Charlene told us where to find her son, he’d spun so quickly from the grill that dark grease flicked from the end of his spatula. You’re sending these white kids into Earle Village? Are you trying to get them killed? Or is there some kind of foolish in you I’ve not discovered in forty-two years of marriage? He’d tried to talk us out of going, but I’d explained my reasons, and he’d listened with care, nodding several times. Afterward, he’d kissed his wife and picked up his keys. I’d best trail along, then, see people stay on the right side of things …
Charlotte wasn’t Baltimore or Detroit or any of the other cities that burned after James Earl Ray gunned down Dr. King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, but riots on the coast had sparked bloodshed across the state, and tensions were still high. Desegregation and forced busing. Black Panthers and the KKK. It wasn’t all about race, either. People were angry about Vietnam and inflation, communism and Watergate, crooked leaders and the price of gas. Resentment, though, burned hottest where people were poorest, and that was Earle Village. Good people, my father often said. But so damn angry.
