by Ron Fisher
“Stay down,” I yelled, hoping she could hear me over the gunfire. Mackenzie’s bedroom was in the back, so she should be avoiding all of this.
As suddenly as it started, the gunfire stopped, and someone revved a car engine. I goose-stepped over to the window, ignoring the glass shards on the floor, in time to see a dark-colored SUV turn the bend in the driveway and roar away. I couldn’t see who or how many were in it and didn’t catch the license plate number. I had a good guess who it was—I’d been watching an SUV just like it chasing Alvin and me through the streets of Clemson.
My shoes were on the floor by the bedside. I picked my way over to them, avoiding some of the broken glass but not all of it. I slipped my shoes on and went out into the hall where I ran into Mackenzie, making her way to Eloise’s room, scared out of her wits and tearful.
“Mom?” she called, anxiously looking over my shoulder as I opened Eloise’s door.
Eloise was kneeling on the floor behind her bed, staring at me with her face crumpled in bewilderment and panic.
“What’s happening, John David?” she said.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, she said, nodding rapidly, and standing up. “Well, I’m not fine, but I’m not hurt.” She looked past me at Mackenzie in the hall. “Are both of you okay?”
“Yes,” I said, stopping Mackenzie from running past me into her mother’s room. “Get your shoes on first. There’s broken glass everywhere.”
“Why is somebody trying to kill us?” Eloise asked.
“I don’t think they meant to kill us. Just scare us.”
“Scare us? What for?”
“To get me to stop doing what I’m doing. Same as Kelly. Plus a little payback, I guess. Alvin and me messed up one of their guys. They weren’t too happy about that.”
Eloise stared at me, a hundred questions roiling behind her wrinkled brow, but she didn’t ask them. Mackenzie went flying past me and embraced her mother, tears rolling down both their cheeks.
This was my fault, I thought. I got dressed and went outside. The open lawn of the front yard cleared the way to the star-sprinkled, nighttime sky, the air cooler in the wee hours. It was a serene experience had it not been for the fog and stench of gunpowder that lay atop the smell of fresh-mowed lawn and sweet gardenias.
Back inside, we sat in the den on the sofa, my feet in Eloise's lap. She was working on the glass cuts on the soles, a half-dozen or so, all minor abrasions, but that didn’t mean they didn’t hurt or need treating. She was smearing on an antibiotic ointment and placing Band-Aids on the more substantial cuts.
Mackenzie sat by watching and wincing every time I winced.
I tried to dissuade their fears as best I could, and convince them that it was just a warning like I said, and not meant to kill us. The most I could tell them was that I thought the shooters were the same thugs who assaulted Kelly and had shot up our house for the same reason—to get me to stop sticking my nose into their drug business. I had ideas on who they were, but not enough evidence yet to prove it. I got Eloise to agree not to discuss any of that with the authorities until I had one more day to check something out. She reluctantly agreed. I wondered if I deserved the trust she placed in me.
She called Bagwell and reported the shooting. At least by calling him, I thought, we’d have a better chance of getting the insurance to pay for the damage, my practical and financial side showing a seldom-seen face. I didn’t know if home insurance covered drug dealer drive-bys.
Bagwell came out, and Eloise and I told him our respective stories of what happened, bullet by bullet, and our inability to identify who did it.
He had me follow him outside to view the damage to the front of the house. Several of his deputies were already out there with floodlights, taking pictures of the bullet holes and broken windows.
Once outside, he turned to me. “Okay, who did this?”
“I’m serious, I don’t know. I couldn’t see them. The car windows were tinted too dark.”
He gave me a look that clearly said I was full of shit.
“Okay, I see that you don’t want to tell me what you’ve gotten yourself into, but whatever it is, you’ve involved your sister and niece, and placed them in danger. I’m not going to let you do that.”
“Look, Sheriff. Right now, all I’ve got are guesses. Theories. But until I can put some merit to them, I can’t see any good coming from talking about them. There isn’t one factual thing I can give you. I could be way out in left field with my thinking. When I know something, you’ll know something.”
He’d stood glowering at me, contemplating what I’d said, and obviously not liking it. He took a step toward me, placed the tip of a forefinger in the middle of my chest and said, “I’ll give you twenty-four hours to tell me what the dickens is going on here, or I’m putting out an APB on you and hauling you in. I’m serious here, J.D.. You can’t go putting Eloise and Mackenzie in the middle of whatever is going on here. Y’all are lucky none of you got hit.”
He was back to calling me J.D. again. But he was right. My actions had brought danger right to my sister and niece’s front door, and it was the last thing I wanted to do. I had to find a way to put an end to all this, and quickly.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “You’ve got my word.”
He looked at me a moment longer, then turned and walked to his car, stopping only to say something to one of his deputies. Then he got in his cruiser and drove away.
The deputy he spoke to came over. “When we finish up here, we’re going to leave an officer parked at the end of the drive, sir. He’ll be there for the rest of the night, and someone will be there tomorrow, too. So, you and your family can go back to bed and get some sleep. Don’t worry about these people coming back.”
We followed the deputy’s advice. After we swept up the broken glass from the bedroom floors and draped sheets over the broken windows, we went back to bed. But, as to the sleep part, I don’t think any of us got much of that.
At least I didn’t.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
With about two hours of sleep, I left Eloise and Mackenzie in their beds, Eloise having decided that Mackenzie could stay home from school, and since the day after Wednesday’s publishing day at the Clarion was always slow, Eloise decided to sleep in herself.
I’d promised Bagwell I’d meet him in the afternoon and explain what was going on. For that to happen, I had a lot to do.
I looked up the number of Jim Brandt, a Greenville City Police Detective I knew. I wanted to ask him where I could find Eddie Smoke. Eddie was a Greenville thug, pimp, and drug dealer I’d once met working on another story. Brandt and I met on that same story, and if anyone could tell me anything about Eddie Smoke, it would be him. He’d been trying to arrest Smoke for something for a long time, but Smoke was too slippery and covered his tracks well.
Maybe he’d nabbed Smoke by now, I thought, and he was sitting in a jail cell somewhere. But I guessed that he was likely still doing business as usual. Either way, I wanted to talk to him. Eddie Smoke was the only high-level drug dealer I knew. My idea to see him was based on something Vickie found in her opioid research. That two different drug rings were operating in the Upstate, one in Pickens and Oconee Counties, and the other to the east in Greenville County. Anything going on in Greenville, Eddie Smoke would be a part of it to some degree or another, and if so he might view the Pickens-Oconee operation as competition and be willing to talk about them—if he thought it might help him. Or he might not talk to me at all and have one of his goons re-arrange my nose. But I had to try.
I dialed Detective Brandt’s number expecting to get a voice mail. The detective answered on the second ring. After swapping “how ya’ doins,” I asked him about Eddie Smoke. Unfortunately, Smoke was still in the free world, too cagey to ever give them enough to bring him down.
“He’ll fuck up eventually,” Brandt said. “And we’ll get him. But we still can’t get anything prosecutable on him. Any witness to a
nything seems to have a way of changing their story or disappearing before they ever get to court.”
“So, if a guy wanted to get in touch with him, how can he be found?’
“Would that guy be you?”
“Yeah. It’s related to a story I’m working on.”
“What makes you think he’ll talk to you?”
“I’m working on a hunch that he will.”
“And it’s something you won’t tell me about.”
“Probably not. But if Smoke were to implicate himself somehow, I’d think about it.”
“All you media types are all assholes,” he said, but chuckled. “Maybe he’ll shoot you, and I can nail him for that.”
“So, you gonna’ tell me how to find him?”
I heard him sigh. “It’s no secret that Smoke runs a cab company in West Greenville. Jiffy Cab. That’s his legit business, and we know he runs his other business out of there too. We just can’t prove it.”
“Thanks, Detective, good to talk to you again.”
“Hey Bragg? You wouldn’t want to plant a wire in there for me, would you?”
It was my turn to chuckle. “You are trying to get me shot, aren’t you?”
“Can’t blame a guy for trying,” he said and hung up.
#
I found the number for Smoke’s cab company and called it.
“Jiffy Cab,” a woman’s voice answered.
“I need to speak to Eddie,” I said.
“Hold,” she said and transferred me.
“What can I do for you?” a man with a raspy voice said. It wasn’t Eddie Smoke’s voice. I wondered if it was the guy I’d hit in the throat a year earlier when Alvin and I had our first run-in with Eddie Smoke’s thugs.
“Is Eddie around?”
“Who’s asking?” he said.
“J.D. Bragg.”
It was a moment before he responded. “What the fuck do you want?”
Now I was sure it was the guy I’d punched in the neck. I’d aimed for his jaw and missed, hitting him in the larynx. He’d gone down making a sound like he had a chicken bone stuck in his craw. It was the one time Alvin accused someone else of being too violent. He said I could have killed the guy, when all we needed to do was discourage them enough to make our getaway. When it came to violence, Alvin had his professional standards. To Alvin, what I did was overkill. He still ragged me about it.
“You got some balls calling here. You and me got some unfinished business, mother-fucker.”
“Am I the reason you sound like Marlon Brando in the Godfather? If so, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you in the throat. My aim was off. But look on the bright side. I’ve helped facilitate your bad-guy mobster image. Now, are you going to let me speak to Smoke or not?”
He muttered something under his breath, then spoke to someone else, obviously Eddie Smoke. “Got somebody here wants to talk to you,” I heard him say, followed by something indecipherable, muffled as if he’d placed his hand over the receiver.
A moment later, Eddie Smoke came on the line.
“I never thought I’d hear from you again,” he said.
“I need to talk to you about something.”
“What could you and me possibly have to talk about, Bragg?”
“Not over the phone. We need to meet.”
“And why would I do that?”
“I think that the subject might be interesting to you. It’s about your competition.”
“You want to talk to me about Uber?” he said, deadpan.
“Another competitor. I can be there in a couple of hours.”
I didn’t say I wanted to pick Alvin up first. I didn’t think Smoke would allow the thug I hit in the neck to seek revenge, but with these guys, you never knew. I might need backup.
“Okay, I’ll see you. But Bragg? We parted on peaceful terms. That could easily change.”
“That’s the last thing in the world I’d want,” I said.
“Then come on. I’ll be here all afternoon,” Smoke said and hung up.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I called Alvin and found him still in Taylor Johnsons’ room at the medical facility in Greenville.
“We were just talking about your sorry ass,” he said.
In the background, I heard a voice scold him. It sounded like Millie Johnson, his aunt and Taylor’s mother.
“Sorry, Aunt Millie,” I heard Alvin say. “I didn’t mean to say ass.”
I heard her scold him again, and Alvin chuckle.
“Tell Mrs. Johnson I said hello,” I said.
He did, and I heard her say something in the background.
“She said to tell you she brought you something.”
“I hope it’s some of her peanut butter cookies.” Mille Johnson made her living as a wealthy family’s cook, and she was a good one.
Alvin told her I’d guessed it, and I heard her laugh. She’d sent them to Taylor back in college before he got hurt, and he would always give some of them to me.
She’s fussing at me for trying to eat em’ all up,” Alvin said. “I’m sposed’ to be savin’ some for you. But don’t count on it.”
“How’s Taylor?”
“He about the same. You know how he is. He’s doing more listening than talking. But he couldn’t get a word in even if he tried. Aunt Millie and me been running our tongues nonstop since I got here this morning.”
After Taylor’s spinal cord was injured, his phrenic nerve stopped stimulating his diaphragm, and it quit functioning. He needed round-the-clock assistance with his breathing and a breathing pacemaker surgically implanted. Otherwise, he couldn’t breathe at all. It gave his speech a start-stop effect with sudden short gasps of breath. It was heartbreaking to listen to him try to speak. He knew it, so he didn’t talk any more than he had to.
“Say hey to him for me too,” I said. “Tell him I’m sorry I’m not there with you.”
“He said you came to see him a couple of weeks ago. I told them about Kelly, and he said you’re probably doing more than your share of visiting hospitals, and to go find the a-hole who did it to her and don’t worry about visiting him.”
“How much longer are you going to stay?” I asked.
“Taylor’s getting tired and needs to rest, and Millie’s got to get home. I’m ready to leave anytime. What’s up?”
“You remember me saying last night I had this crazy idea?”
“Yeah?” Alvin said, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it.
“How about Eddie Smoke from last year in Greenville County? Remember him?”
“Greenville’s number one thug, pimp, and drug dealer. What about him?”
“I had a girl at work do some research on opioids, and she turned up something interesting. The opioids sold on the streets in Greenville County are different from the opioids sold over here in Pickens County. That suggests two different suppliers. If anybody knows anything about that, it would be Eddie Smoke.”
“He’s probably the Greenville supplier himself,” Alvin said.
“I think that’s a good bet, but probably not both.”
“That would make the one in Pickens County his competition. So, Smoke might be willing to tell us all kinds of shit, if he thought it would benefit him.”
“Great minds think alike,” I said.
“But why would he talk to us in the first place? We roughed up a couple of his guys. There’s got to be some bad blood over that. You hit one of them in the throat and could have killed him.”
“But it didn’t kill him. I was talking to him a little earlier. Besides, I didn’t mean to hit him there. I was aiming for his chin and missed.”
“What you were aiming for probably don’t mean a whole lot to him. He might still pop a cap in you.”
“You’re coming along to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“I see,” Alvin said. “Okay, I didn’t come down here to sit on my ass in the middle of a cow pasture, waiting for something to happen by itself. I’m
in.”
“You think you can find your way to the corner of Easley Bridge Road and South Washington?”
“Sure. That’s why God made GPS.”
“There’s a Clock Drive-In restaurant in the southwest corner. Meet me in the parking lot in about forty minutes. I’ve made us an appointment to see Smoke.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I spotted Alvin’s airport rental the second I pulled into the Clock parking lot. There weren’t many bright yellow Mustang convertibles parked there. Alvin was sitting in it and waiting for me.
“So, the Smoke-man knows we coming,” Alvin said, when he got into my Jeep.
“He knows I’m coming. We’ll let you be a surprise.”
“I love surprise parties,” Alvin said.
“I didn’t want to tell you this over the phone with Mrs. Johnson listening, but about three o'clock this morning we had a drive-by shooting at Still Hollow.”
That got all of Alvin’s attention, and he looked at me in disbelief.
“Nobody got hurt,” I said. “Other than me getting a few shards of glass in my feet. I think they were just trying to scare, not kill. They raked the second-floor windows, and aimed high enough for all the shots to go into the ceiling. They had to know that.”
Alvin’s face filled with fury. “The black SUV?”
I nodded. “But I still couldn’t see who was in the car, or get the tag number.”
“How are Eloise and Mackenzie handling it?”
“Shook up, but okay. Bagwell came out. All I could tell him was that the windows were tinted and I couldn’t see who it was. We don’t really have anything; all we’ve got are guesses. We can’t even prove that it was the Dollar brothers chasing us. I’m not going back to the cops until we’ve got something concrete. That’s why I’m hoping Eddie Smoke can confirm that the Dollar brothers are behind the opioid business in Pickens County. If he can, then we might be able to sic the sheriff on them. He’s got the law and the legal system behind him, and we don’t. It might be the only way to get justice for Kelly.”
