by Rob Rogers
This was a crock, he thought to himself. He shouldn’t be going up alone. There should be snipers set up outside of the building, and there should be a trained negotiator on hand. But there wasn’t and he’d have to hope for the best.
The carpeted steps smelled of mildew and cat piss. He could hear Ducett screaming from two stories down. No wonder the building had evacuated so easily.
There were two officers stationed outside Ducett’s door. They looked tired and nervous, and glanced at each other gratefully when Lorca appeared. He introduced himself, then motioned for them to stand back.
* * * * *
Cain was considering slitting Mr. Marcus’s throat with his mother’s steak knife when he heard the cop walk up close to the door.
“Stand back!” Cain shouted even before the man had a chance to pull his hand back to knock.
Cain had long ago flipped off or broken every light in the apartment, but his hearing was incredibly acute. He could hear his mother’s heartbeat, hear the ticking of Mr. Marcus’s watch, hear the pigeons cooing to each other on the rooftop three stories above. He could hear the uniformed cops outside the door and could tell that they were uniformed by the way their heavy belts rasped as they moved. He could tell that the new man was wearing different clothes, different shoes. He was breathing hard from the walk up the stairs.
“I’m just here to talk,” the man said. “My name’s Salazar.”
What, he didn’t even rate a nice, soft-spoken black cop, ready to talk about how he understood what it’s like to grow up in the ghetto? Cain spat on his mother’s weathered avocado throw rug. “No use talking,” he said. “I’m going to do what I’m going to do and no talking is going to change that.” He licked his lips. “You should have sent old Bilbray up here. I could have put a bullet in his brain pan and done us all a favor.”
The man outside the door whispered, “Huh,” softly to himself, the sound coming across like he was biting back a chuckle.
“What, you don’t like Bilbray, either?”
Mr. Marcus started crying again, but even above that rasping noise, Cain could hear the cop—Salazar—jump just a little in surprise. Cain wondered if even the other two cops had heard Salazar’s little amused sound. He pressed the muzzle of his gun into Mr. Marcus’s ear, driving it in so that the sight dug into the skin. He could smell the blood. “Now I told you to stop blubbering and be a man, Mr. Marcus,” he whispered. “You’re embarrassing me now.” He wasn’t really sure what to do about Mr. Marcus. He wasn’t such a bad guy, really.
“Cain,” the cop said outside, “We’ve got two snipers with night vision scopes aimed at you right now. We’re only keeping you alive to be neighborly.”
“You’re lying,” Cain said. There were no snipers. He could feel that there were no snipers.
Salazar sighed. He muttered something that sounded like, “a one-day seminar.” And then, without warning, he kicked the apartment door open.
Cain was almost startled enough to jerk his finger on the trigger and splatter Mr. Marcus’s brains all over his mother’s living room couch. But instead, he pulled back his arm to cover himself. For some reason, he didn’t want this cop to see the red fur, the elongated features, the teeth, the wings, the tail that he’d felt but been afraid to examine more closely. He made a sound like a hiss, then pulled the gun back and stuck it into his own mouth.
And then Salazar was standing over him, a pockmarked Hispanic man with thinning hair and a slight paunch, his gun pointed at Cain’s forehead.
Despite the guns, despite the electric tension, what struck Cain first and hardest was the fact that the man didn’t seem surprised to find himself in the room with the devil. Quietly, almost timidly, Cain cut his eyes downward to look at his own arm. It was dark, nearly hairless, normal. He breathed a choked sigh of relief into the barrel of the gun. Whatever had been affecting him was over. Had he really changed? He shook his head a little, shaking it off. The muzzle of his 9 mm tasted like pennies in his mouth. It didn’t matter. Whatever it was—metamorphosis, hallucination, or bad trip—it was time to end things. He knew that. It was comical, really, that he was preparing to blow out his own brains and the cop still stood there pointing that gun at him.
Beside them, one of the two uniformed police officers was also pointing his gun at Cain, while the other was untying Cain’s mother and Mr. Marcus.
Cain wanted to swear at the cops, but knew it would come out ridiculous with the gun in his mouth.
The gun still clenched in his right hand, Salazar wiped sweat off his forehead with his left. “I’ve heard about you, Ducett,” he said. “And about the CEs.” He shrugged. “If you do it, there’s not going to be anyone who cares. Not your friends.” He nodded his head at the apartment door, where Cain’s mother was being led into the hallway, quietly avoiding looking back at him. “Not her. Not after what you did today. Certainly not me. Oh, I’ll have to do some more paperwork, but it will be time well spent. A public service.”
Cain narrowed his eyes at the man. What the hell kind of negotiator had they sent him?
“No,” Salazar continued, “you should definitely do it. There’s only one person in the world who would care in the least if you pulled that trigger, and that’s the one you’re holding a gun on right now.” He wiped at his forehead again. “Damn, it’s hot in here,” he said. “I think that there’s a tiny part of you that wants to live, Ducett. Maybe there’s even a tiny, microscopic part of you that deserves to live. But you’re the only one who cares about it. So go right ahead.”
* * * * *
Lorca’s arm was getting tired. He’d been talking to the boy for nearly twenty minutes now, and that was a long time to hold up a gun. He had a feeling that the instructor for his one-day course would be somewhat displeased with him for encouraging the kid to kill himself. But Ducett hadn’t done it yet. He’d narrowed his eyes, given Lorca murderous looks, closed his own eyes for a few seconds at a time as if summoning something up, but he hadn’t pulled the trigger.
Finally, the boy pulled the muzzle out. Lorca started to draw back, wondering if he was going to turn the gun and shoot, but instead the gun stayed resting against Ducett’s chin. The boy licked his lips and swallowed, then said, “If I put this gun down, will you please shut the hell up for a few minutes?”
It was a start.
The eccentric businessman known only as the Robber Baron is coming to the aid of the Juvenile Detention Center Fund. The Robber Baron said that he was moved by an article that appeared in this paper about the plight of teenagers convicted of criminal offenses who often have been detained long distances away from their families. “Family is a vital support system for youngsters in trouble,” the Baron said at a press conference stating his intentions. “If these misguided youths must be incarcerated, it should be close to home so that they aren’t denied the help of mother and father, sister, brother, aunt, uncle and cousin.”
The Robber Baron has established a grant that matches every dollar, up to $1 million, donated to the fund. This is expected to accelerate the facility’s opening date . . .
— Excerpted from “Robber Baron matches donations to juvenile detention center fund,” by Paulette Ragle, Devil’s Cape Daily Courier
Chapter Nine
Devil’s Cape, Louisiana
Early March, twenty-one years ago
When it opened, St. Tammany Parish Juvenile Detention Center had a planned capacity of fifty juveniles, but the needs of the city, and especially the rise in drug crimes and gang violence, ensured that the medium-security facility usually held close to twice that number. Now, less than three years after the first teenagers were moved in, it had already developed a tarnished reputation as a place where antisocial kids convicted of petty crimes went to learn how to become real criminals.
The walls of Cain Ducett’s room—they didn’t call it a cell, although the only way to unlock the door was from the outside—were painted white and baby blue, broken by a narrow window of rein
forced glass that let the sunlight in and gave him a view of the parking lot. There was a slab with a plastic-covered mattress pad for him to sleep on, and a white cylinder that served as a stool. The room was two paces long and one pace wide and smelled of antiseptic so strong it sometimes gave him headaches.
Breakfast that morning had been some pasty scrambled eggs, toast, and a plastic cup of orange juice. Some of the other juvies were “studying” in the facility’s small library or doing laps outside, but today the guards had let him stay in his room. It was safer there.
He’d been doing push-ups. He seemed to be able to do them now almost endlessly without tiring. Sometimes he’d break them up by pushing off from the ground and clapping between repetitions, or doing them one-handed or on his fingertips. But mostly he just did straight push-ups, sometimes a couple hundred at a time. He was doing them fast that morning, burning off the weight in his belly from the breakfast, trying to make his arms strain, staring straight forward, his face only a few inches from a baby-blue wall. He was sweating a little. It trickled around his eyes and he could smell the salt in it, as well as the pasty odor of the deodorant they gave him.
“Ducett?” Marsh, one of the guards, knocked lightly on his door.
Cain sprang up to his bare feet, stepped backward so that Marsh could see him clearly through the narrow window in the heavy metal door. “Yeah?” he said. It wasn’t time for a bathroom break yet. Not time for lunch.
Marsh tilted his head, looking at him, the fluorescent lights of the hallway making his bald head shine. “You all right?” he asked. He kept his voice loud, to be heard through the door.
“Yeah,” Cain said, his voice loud, too. It echoed in the small room. “Yes, sir.” The guards, even the gentler ones like Marsh, expected to be called “sir.” He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his arm. His arm was sweaty, too, so it didn’t make much of a difference. “What is it?”
Marsh slipped a key into the lock of Cain’s door and opened it. He dropped his voice lower. “Man here to see you,” he said. He opened the door and stepped backward, keeping himself out of Cain’s reach. He stowed the keys away. “SDPD,” he said. “Detective Second Grade Salazar Lorca.”
“The fuck does he want?” Cain said. It slipped out that way. Not angry. Just surprised.
Marsh’s hand slipped down to the nightstick he wore on his belt, but his eyes were soft. “He can come up here,” he said. “Or meet you in the basketball court.” He shrugged. “Up to you, he said.”
Cain looked around his room. He could stretch his arms out and touch the walls on either side with his fingertips. The stench of his sweat smelled stronger. He picked up the thin navy blanket they gave him for his bed and wiped away the worst of it. He felt nervous and didn’t know why. “Lot of people at the court,” he said.
Marsh shook his head. “Just you and him,” he said, “if you want to go there. He arranged it.”
Cain looked out the window at the parking lot, spotting the unmarked car right away. Flat gray, no detailing.
“Don’t have all day, Ducett,” Marsh said. But his voice was soft, unperturbed.
Cain nodded. He tossed the blanket onto the mattress in a heap and bent down to put on his socks and shoes.
* * * * *
It was hot, the kind of day where thin gray and white clouds diffused the light across the sky, so no matter where you looked, you found yourself squinting. They’d cleared the others off the basketball court, and when Cain came out of the building, Marsh behind him, he saw Salazar Lorca standing in the middle of the asphalt, a button-down shirt unbuttoned halfway to his chest over a graying undershirt, the cuffs of his khaki pants covering just the tops of his black cop shoes. He bounced a basketball down on the pavement, caught it, and then repeated the action. Each thump of the ball hitting the court echoed like a gunshot.
Marsh stopped near the gate while Cain walked onto the court. Lorca nodded at him. He’d grown a moustache since Cain had seen him last. It drooped around the corners of his mouth.
“Yo,” Cain said.
Lorca bounced the ball again and caught it. “Yo,” he said. He held up the ball. “You play?”
Cain patted down his shirt, which was bunched up from the push-ups. It bothered him that he looked messy and it bothered him that that bothered him. “Better than you,” he said, forcing himself to meet Lorca’s eyes.
Lorca smiled. One of his teeth was chipped. He bounced the ball toward Cain. “I don’t doubt it,” he said.
Cain caught the ball, holding it with his fingertips. “You come here just to get schooled in basketball?” he said.
Lorca shuffled his feet, squinting at a pelican that flew overhead. “Maybe a game of horse,” he said. “You know horse?”
Cain wiped at his forehead. He dribbled the ball once then threw it at the hoop from midcourt in an easy arc. He had turned to watch Lorca again before the ball even reached the basket, but it swished through the net softly, no rim, then thudded to the ground and rolled off with Lorca chasing it. “When you miss,” Cain said, “that’ll be H.”
Lorca chuckled. He walked to the midcourt point, beside Cain, and threw the ball. It hit the rim and bounced out.
Cain trotted forward and grabbed it. “H,” he said.
Lorca nodded. “So do you get the next shot or do I?”
Cain shrugged. “You picked the game, Mr. Police Officer,” he said. “You make the rules.” He passed the ball to Lorca. He could hear shouting from inside the center. A game, maybe, or a fight. Probably didn’t amount to much.
Hearing the noise, too, Lorca eyed the detention center, but when Marsh made no move to go inside to investigate, he shrugged and stepped just in back of the basketball goal. As he moved, Cain could see that he was wearing a gun in a shoulder holster under the button-down shirt. He remembered having that gun trained on him, the steadiness in the detective’s eyes as he held it. “This is tricky,” Lorca said. He threw the ball upward in a tall, narrow arc. It went over the backboard, then down through the hoop. It bounced once, then Lorca stepped forward nimbly and caught it. He passed it to Cain. “When you miss,” he said, “that will be H for you.”
Cain walked behind the goal, measuring his shot. Devil’s Cape was so damn hot. Barely into March, not even lunchtime, and he was already wishing he could take another shower. “I won’t miss,” he said. He pulled his arms back to make the shot, then lowered the ball. “You going to tell me why you’re here, Mr. Police Officer?” he asked.
Lorca clucked his tongue. He looked up into the clouds as if he were looking for an answer to Cain’s question. “That ‘Mr. Police Officer’ stuff is going to get old,” he said. “You can call me Salazar.”
Cain lowered the ball some more and just looked at the detective.
Lorca shrugged. “I’ve been to your apartment,” he said. “I almost shot you once. I almost saw you shoot yourself. Hell, we’re practically family.”
Cain realized his mouth was open. He shut it, forced the expression out of his face. He threw the ball and listened to it swish through the hoop. Salazar caught it before it landed. “You want me to snitch for you,” Cain said, “you’ll be disappointed. I got nothing. I been here like nine months. That’s about half of forever. Anything I knew is old now.”
Salazar tossed the ball up in the air, caught it, and then tossed it to Cain. “I’m not looking for you to snitch,” he said. “I know you wouldn’t.”
Cain dribbled the ball over to the free-throw line. “I’ll make an easy one for you,” he said. He sank the shot, hopped forward, snatched up the ball, and handed it to Salazar. He realized how close he was to Salazar’s gun, but blinked the thought away. The shouting inside the detention center seemed to have died down.
Salazar spun the ball in his hands as he walked to the free-throw line. He didn’t line up for the shot. Instead, he looked at Cain. There were dark circles under his eyes. “Word is someone tried to shank you yesterday afternoon,” he said.
&
nbsp; Cain smiled at him. “No big deal,” he said. He remembered the shiv coming up at his throat. It was shiny and green, the handle of a toothbrush that had been meticulously sharpened down to a point as thin and sharp as a needle.
“Jimmy Smith’s brother Tyrell,” Salazar said. He threw the basketball. It hit the backboard, then bounced over the hoop and down to the ground. “We’re at H-O, I guess,” he said. He trotted forward to get the ball. “Jimmy ran the Concrete Executioners before you,” he said. “You think Tyrell resents you?”
As Tyrell had passed him in the hallway, Cain had heard a sudden breath from him as Tyrell was getting ready to strike. He turned just in time to see that green shiv arcing up, Tyrell’s big muscles corded. By all rights, Tyrell should have punched a hole in Cain’s throat with the thing. But Cain had heard it coming, had gotten his hand up in time to catch Tyrell’s wrist. The shiv was maybe six inches away from Cain’s throat when he grabbed Tyrell and it didn’t move a single inch closer. Tyrell moaned with the sudden pain and fell to his knees. He dropped the shiv and Cain stood staring at it for a few seconds. It glistened there on the pale gray floor of the hallway.
“The guards weren’t close by when it happened,” Salazar said. “They said you had plenty of time to take Tyrell out with his own shiv and you didn’t do it.” He stood near the basket, threw the ball up and through, an easy shot.
He handed Cain the ball. An anemic breeze passed through the courtyard. Cain smelled car exhaust. He moved to where Salazar had thrown the ball. “Why would I want that much trouble?” he asked. He lined himself up and missed the net entirely.
