by Rob Rogers
When he remembered it later, what would surprise him the most, wasn’t the abrupt violence of his reaction, but the complete apathy he felt while committing it. What he did to Jazz wasn’t out of anger. It was more of an automatic reaction, like reaching out his hands to catch a fall or slapping down a dog that was trying to bite him.
Cain placed his hands on her chest and shoved her as hard as he could. She flew backward, her legs rising into the air so that he saw one brown sandal and one bare foot, toenails glistening with pale pink polish. Her hair surrounded her face like a shroud as she fell, and then he heard a crack as her back hit the curb, followed by a hollow thump as her skull hit the asphalt of the road. By the time she landed, he was on top of her, one knee smashing into her gut, a switchblade at her throat. Behind him, 5-D was saying, “Oh, man,” over and over again.
Jazz didn’t move. A puddle of blood was growing beneath her head.
Another voice boomed off to one side. “Back away from her, Ducett!”
Cain turned to see a man about a quarter block down the street. Dustin Bilbray was a hulking cop with thinning brown hair combed over a ragged bald patch. He was nearly as overweight as 5-D and looked like a stuffed sausage in his police uniform.
“Paid you last week, Bilbray,” Cain said. “Don’t you try to squeeze me again.”
Bilbray wiped a sweaty face with one hand and let the other slip to the holster of his gun. “Ain’t gonna let you hurt a white girl, boy.”
Cain glanced contemptuously down at Jazz’s unmoving form, then pulled the switchblade up until the point was poking her cheekbone. He looked up at the police officer. “You know why I didn’t know you were coming down that street, Dusty?”
Bilbray’s hand slipped more firmly onto his gun. He flipped off the snap of the holster with his thumb. “Guess you were too busy to pay attention,” he said.
Cain shook his head slowly. “Nope,” he said. “My boys watch this street. Anyone comes up or down it, they let me know. Now why do you suppose they didn’t let me know about you?”
Bilbray smiled. “Maybe they aren’t as loyal as you think.”
Cain stared at him, no expression on his face. For a few seconds, the only indication that Cain was even breathing was that his nostrils fluttered in and out. Then he dug the switchblade into Jazz’s cheek. A drop of blood ran down her face like a tear. “They didn’t let me know because they know you don’t matter,” he said to Bilbray. “I own you.”
Dustin Bilbray’s hand clutched his gun again and his face grew pale, but he looked sick rather than angry. “Nobody’d ever—” he started, then stopped as he saw the frost of Cain’s eyes.
“I’ve got pictures, man,” Cain said. “Tapes, videos, iron-clad witnesses. I don’t even need to pay you anymore, except what I have to pay you is so little it ain’t worth mentioning.” He twisted the knife, making the tiny cut on Jazz’s face into a small, moon-shaped wound. “Now get,” he said.
The fat police officer stared at Cain, his eyes taking in Jazz’s still form and 5-D’s large one, snickering behind Cain’s shoulder. For a moment, Cain even thought the man would vomit. Then he turned without a word and walked away, his steps slow at first, but speeding with a frantic intensity until he was out of sight.
“I believe he soiled himself,” 5-D said. “You see that? His legs were pressed together like he was trying to hold it in.”
Cain grinned at him, then cut his eyes back to Jazz, not sure what to do with her. A thin line of blood trickled down her cheek, and as his eyes followed it down, he saw it joining the larger pool at the base of her head. Leaning down for a better look at the blood, he wondered if he’d killed her.
Then her eyes opened. They seemed to be filled with dark blood, like those of the blind ten-year-old in Cain’s building whose mother had shaken him for crying when he was just a baby, detaching his retinas and creating hemorrhages in his eyeballs. But unlike the kid, Jazz seemed to see just fine. She stared at Cain with hateful eyes and rose to a sitting position, her jaw tense, the bleeding on her face now looking like a single crimson teardrop. He’d later discount it, but at the time, Cain could have sworn he saw smoke rising from the corners of her eyes. “You’ll pay for that,” she said.
Any other time, cold, cool Cain Ducett would have had a hundred retorts or just gone for his knife or a gun. But instead, he stared at her, eyes wide. Behind him, he could hear 5-D whimpering, could hear the slow leak as 5-D’s bladder let go. But neither of them moved.
Jazz reached forward and took the newspaper back into her hands. She crumpled it, then bent and dipped it into her own blood, which was pooling in the street. The Devil Baby of Dubai was painted bright red with it. She spat on the paper, then wiped her bleeding face on it, smearing even more blood across her pale features. Then she threw the wad into Cain’s face.
Cain didn’t even think to block the paper, didn’t raise his arm, didn’t move out of the way. It hit him like a fist, harder than he’d ever been punched before, harder than his father had ever struck him as a child before Cain had broken the man’s kneecaps in his sleep, harder than the bullet that had once torn its way along Cain’s ribcage. He flew backward through the air, thinking of nothing except that he wished 5-D would stop his screaming—only to realize the screaming was coming from his own throat. He saw a flash of red for a second, and beyond it the Devil Baby of Dubai screaming back. And then he slipped into unconsciousness.
* * * * *
It was dark when he woke up, still lying in the street, his head cradled in 5-D’s lap, the fat boy’s tears dripping onto Cain’s forehead and the stench of his urine strong. Cain sat up, groaning with the pain of it, wiping dried blood and mucus from his face, peering around, staring blankly at 5-D.
They’d let him lie there for hours, no one coming to help him but 5-D, no one doing a thing except probably hoping he died.
“She gone,” 5-D said. “She just gone. Don’t hurt her none, Cain. I’m scared if you do.”
Cain shook his head, patting 5-D on the head like a dog. He didn’t know what to make of Jazz, wondered if her eyes were still filled with blood, wondered if his own were. He didn’t know what to make of her or what had happened to him. He was tired and empty, and for the first time in a long while, he could feel that emptiness inside him. He shook his head again. “I’m going home, 5-D,” he said.
But when the Argonauts, as these fifty brave adventurers were called, had prepared everything for the voyage, an unforeseen difficulty threatened to end it before it was begun.
— Excerpted from Tanglewood Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Chapter Seven
Devil’s Cape, Louisiana
Late August, twenty-two years ago
“You’ve got to help me, Jules.” Jason Kalodimos’s face glistened with sweat. His breath came in short gasps and his eyes darted from side to side, as though a monster were stalking him through the book stacks at the Devil’s Cape Public Library. A tall, thin man in an Air Supply T-shirt walked by, nearly brushing Jason, and Jason, all of five foot six, stared him down, saying, “Beat it.”
The man rushed off toward the periodicals.
“Don’t call me that,” Julian Kalodimos said, his voice an intense whisper. While Jason was dressed in a black T-shirt, torn jeans, and sneakers with no socks, Julian wore a white button-down shirt, khaki pants, and penny loafers. A maroon Members Only jacket was laid carefully on top of his backpack, and a copy of Lord of the Flies was propped open in front of him. “Whatever it is, it should keep.”
When Jason leaned in toward his brother, Julian smelled body odor and cigarette smoke. “It won’t keep,” Jason said, and spittle flew from his lip with the last word.
Julian shrugged. “I warned you,” he said quietly.
Jason spread his hands. “It’s not like I have a lot of choices here, Jules. Uncle Costas asks someone to do a favor, that someone had better do the favor, you know?”
Julian looked around to make sure that no one
else was near, then leaned in close enough to his brother to kiss him if he’d wanted to. “We have choices,” he said. “You know what we can do. No one can make us do anything we don’t want to.” He pressed a finger against Jason’s collarbone. “And don’t start in about Dad. You didn’t do this for him. You did it for you. You liked the money and the thrill, and you liked being near Uncle Costas and knowing something he doesn’t know.” Then his face whitened. He pulled back, a lock of black hair falling across his face. “Jesus, he doesn’t know, does he? You didn’t tell him?”
Jason shook his head slowly. His throat rose and fell for a moment with no sound coming, like there was a sparrow trapped in there, trying to push its way out. “No, he doesn’t know. But someone does. A cop named David Dees. I thought he was in Uncle Costas’s pocket, but it turns out he’s in Lorenzo Ferazzoli’s pocket, too.”
* * * * *
Detective Second Grade David Dees was in an alley near the wharves when they found him. He was smoking a Camel Light less out of addiction or habit and more to hold back the odors of salt, rotting fish, and diesel that filled the air. The ocean breezes didn’t seem to make their way into the alley where he sat hunched, waiting to meet with one of Ferazzoli’s boys, sweating in his seersucker suit.
First Jason crossed into him, moving faster than Dees could have believed, rushing into the alley and then slamming the detective hard against a brick wall tagged with graffiti. Then both brothers were there, not touching him again, but actually floating in the air, dodging and weaving around him, hovering first to one side of him and then the other.
“Jesus, you can fly, too?” Dees said. He caught an angry glance from the uptight brother in the red jacket to the wilder one in the jeans. “And two of you, too. I figured maybe it was both of you, but I wasn’t sure.” He grinned and stubbed his cigarette out on the asphalt. “A lot of people would pay a lot of money to learn about you boys.”
Still hovering, Jason leaped forward and punched him in the gut. Dees could take a hit, but this hurt like hell. He tasted bile in his throat and his stomach burned like he’d swallowed a handful of broken glass. “You’re not telling anyone,” the boy said.
Dees fought to keep from vomiting. He raised his head, though, looking from one brother to the other. “Yeah, sure. You make it worth my while and we can talk.” He straightened up. “Look, kid. It’s like this. You can give me the beating of my life. Fine. But we both know you’re not actually going to kill me. Your cousins, maybe, but not you. I’ve met your father, you know.” He raised his eyebrows. “Does he know, by the way?”
Julian had just started to shake his head “no,” when Jason held up a hand to stop him. Dees caught it, though. Dees caught a lot.
“Our father isn’t part of this discussion,” Jason said.
Dees wiped a hand against his mouth. “Whatever,” he said. “Point is, we all know you’re not going to kill me. So that leaves us with a quandary. I’m either going to get paid to tell someone this information, or you’re going to make it worth my while, you understand? Me, I’d rather have you both at my side, as it were.”
To Dees’s satisfaction, both boys looked pale and shaken. An artery pulsed in Julian’s neck. Jason tried to say something, but the words didn’t come, like he’d had the breath knocked out of him. Then he tried again: “Under your thumb, you mean,” he said. His head slumped in defeat.
Dees focused on Jason, a smile on his face. Jason, after all, was the formidable one. He knew the other kid would cave. And Jason had gone under more easily than he’d ever thought. “Whatever you want to call it,” he said. He smirked.
That smirk was still on his face when Julian Kalodimos hurled a loose brick at Dees’s chest at something over five hundred miles an hour. The blow knocked him back ten feet against a wall, and he looked around in startled confusion for just a moment, even opened his mouth as if to speak, before he crumpled to the ground, his heart crushed, two of his vertebrae lying on the ground at his feet.
Jason stared open-mouthed at his brother, feeling a wave of nausea go over him. He moved toward Dees.
“Don’t,” said Julian, his voice like a razor blade drawn across glass, drawing Jason up short. “No more contact. You don’t want his blood on you.” The color was coming back into his cheeks. His backpack filled with library books was slung over his shoulder. He looked like he’d just stopped by on the way to class. “He would have held that over us for the rest of our lives,” he said. “It would have only gotten worse.”
“But you—” Jason was having trouble getting air.
“I what? I’m the fragile one, the peaceful one, the one who stays home with Dad while you run errands for Uncle Costas and the other hoods?” Julian shrugged, his face expressionless. “Maybe I just see what has to be done,” he said. Abruptly, he stepped away from Jason, away from the wide-eyed corpse of David Dees. He headed out of the alleyway, toward the streets beyond. Without turning around, he said, “You coming?”
Devil’s Cape’s been accused, maybe with some justification, of having the most corrupt police force in America. Okay, fine. We’re giving Tijuana and Bangkok and Kampala a run for their money. But you’ve got to keep in mind that most of the men in blue are on the up and up, making the best of a bad situation and trying to keep you and me and my Aunt Harriet alive with a couple bucks left in our wallets.
— Excerpted from “Devil’s Cape blues,” by Ed Clugston, Devil’s Cape Daily Courier, editorial section
Chapter Eight
Devil’s Cape, Louisiana
Late August, twenty-two years ago
As he had for several nights now, Cain Ducett dreamed of blood and fire.
He pulled his bed sheets over himself, despite the heat of his room. He felt nauseated, his skin itched, and sweat soaked his pillowcase. It stank of fear.
He swore, throwing the sheets aside and sitting up. His body felt strangely light as he padded his way to the bathroom.
He turned on the light.
Cain was not given to fear. If anything, he displayed a complete lack of self-preservation when encountering danger.
But this was different.
The reflection he faced in the mirror was not his own. Or worse, there were elements of Cain Ducett in the image he confronted, but horribly, horribly different. His irises were blood red. His skin, even on his face, was covered with fine, short fur, a dusky scarlet. His ears and teeth were elongated and pointed, and two needle-sharp canines protruded from his lower jaw all the way past his top lip. Flaps of skin like bats’ wings stretched from his arms to his sides.
He screamed.
* * * * *
Detective Second Grade Salazar Lorca didn’t have much training in hostage negotiation. He’d attended a one-day seminar once in L.A. and had blown off the afternoon session after a rather successful negotiation of a different kind over lunch had netted him the attentions of an attractive waitress who said she had once guest-starred on The Fall Guy.
On this hot August night, he’d been about to come off a ten-hour shift in which he’d been searching fruitlessly for any leads in the Dees case. Lorca didn’t smoke, and the recent development of a minor ulcer was keeping him off coffee and colas. The only thing with caffeine he’d found that didn’t hurt his stomach was Mountain Dew, and he could barely stand the taste. When the call came in, he blinked, rubbed his eyes, looked at his watch, sighed, and downed a can of the stuff as quickly as he could, then cracked open another and hit the siren and the accelerator at the same time.
“What’s the word?” he asked the officer at the scene when he pulled up. They were in Crabb’s Lament, named after one of the ship captains murdered by St. Diable, the masked pirate who had founded Devil’s Cape. It was one of the roughest neighborhoods in the city. Drugs, gangs, lots of tension between the blacks and the Hispanics. There were about ten officers scattered around the block, and the building seemed to have been more or less evacuated already, people milling around and pointing and trying t
heir best to stay under the cops’ radar.
The patrolman nodded in acknowledgment, looking past Lorca to see where the detective’s partner was.
Lorca shrugged. “We were about to get off our shift. He left me to write up the fives, and then the call came in.” His face twitched. Why the hell was he explaining this to a patrolman? “What’s the word?” he asked again, this time slow and deliberate.
The patrolman shrugged back, taking his time with it. “Perp’s a juvenile black male, fifteen, runs with the CEs.” The CEs were the Concrete Executioners, a black gang suspected of running half the drugs in that ward. Two weeks before, the CEs had caught a nine-year-old Hispanic boy spray-painting—tagging—his name on a neighborhood McDonald’s. They’d broken both his arms and one leg and stuffed so many french fries in his mouth that he’d nearly suffocated. “Name’s Cain Ducett,” the officer continued. “Word is he might have taken over the CEs after we busted Jimmy Smith back in November.”
“And?”
“And he’s up in his mother’s crib, 304-C, waving around a 9 mm and God knows what else, has his mother and the next-door neighbor tied to the living room couch with an extension cord. Says he’s the devil and he wants to hear some jazz before he blows his own brains out. Or something like that.”
“Or something like that,” Lorca said dryly.
The officer stepped back from Lorca’s car, gesturing at the building. “It’s a hostage situation, so we called it in.” He rubbed his hands together in a “washing my hands of it” gesture and smiled smugly at Lorca.
There was another hostage situation across the city. Some superhuman who could move things around with just his brain. And half the force looking for clues about Dees. So Lorca and his one-day seminar were it. He drank the rest of his Mountain Dew, crushed the can in his fists, and handed it to the patrolman, who looked back at him with distaste. Lorca flashed him a grin. “Take care of that for me, will you?” he asked. He didn’t wait for an answer, but moved on into the building.
