The car slid sideways, but I managed to keep it between the ditches. When it came to rest, the damned thing blocked the whole road.
I was out, snubnose in hand, moving before the other car had fully stopped.
I fired twice. I knocked out both front tires. I waited until the car slid into a nearby pine tree and then dragged the driver out by his collar.
He resisted. He got the butt of the pistol between the eyes. After that, he complied.
The dude in the passenger seat, leaped out of the car, reaching for a piece in his shoulder holster, but a single shot directly above his head stopped him cold.
“I’ll kill one of you and paralyze the other,” I said. “Make another move and see which is which. Toss your weapon.”
The passenger hesitated but threw his glock on my side of the car. I picked it up and put it in the waistband of my jeans. I popped the driver one more time to make sure he was good and pliable.
“Tell me what I need to know.”
The passenger stared at me. The driver just bled.
“Why the fuck are you following me?”
“Man, I don’t—”
I aimed a bit closer to the passenger this time. He got the message.
“Victor, man. Fucking shit. Are you crazy?”
“What does Victor want with me?”
The driver spat blood and bile on the ground between his legs. I let him go, and he rolled around on the ground. He was hurt. He would be no problem.
“Come around to this side. Get on your knees next to your boy here.”
He did just that.
“Tell me what Victor wants,” I said.
“He’s paranoid. Thinks maybe you’re a hired gun. Thinks you want on his turf. There’s a lot of people eyeing the club. The girls, sometimes they do fuck movies on the side. He doesn’t want all his good girls to go and give head on camera. Says it’ll ruin his brand.”
“Do you think I’m a hitman? Do you think I’m interested in fuck movies?”
He didn’t seem to know how to respond. I raised the pistol, pressed it against his temple.
“What do you think now?” I asked.
“I don’t think nothing. I think Victor’s barking up the wrong fucking tree.”
“Good boy,” I said. I released the hammer on my piece, sat down in the grass. I pulled my flask and swigged on it. “You go and tell your boss—”
I stopped. Deliberated on it.
“What, man? I’ll tell him,” said the passenger side guy. His buddy was emptying his breakfast into a nearby patch of grass.
“Never mind. Stay away from Victor. I’m going to tell him everything myself. You understand?”
He nodded.
“I mean, I don’t want you going to the club. I don’t want you telling him anything. I don’t want you calling him on the fucking phone. Does that make sense?”
He nodded again, wiped sweat from his brow. Looked like he was soaking through his clothes.
“I see you anywhere else, I’m going to kill you. I’ve got a lot of shit to figure out, and the last thing I need is for somebody to tailgate me in the middle of town. Makes me anxious. You hear me?”
He seemed pretty clear on the subject.
“Tell your buddy once he’s got himself back under control.”
I finished off my flask and tossed it through the driver’s side window of my car. I got up, dusted myself off.
“Give me your phones,” I said. “I don’t want no ambush.”
They did as they were told. I tossed those into the car, too.
The passenger regarded their sedan. Steam rose in a slow arc out over the hood, disappearing into the air several feet above it. He said, “How are we going to get back to town?”
I smiled. “Couple of fellas in suits? You should have no problems hitching a ride.”
3
I contacted the strip club owner. He wouldn’t take my calls at first, but I was persistent. Well, you could say that. I walked in, shouldered through the VIP curtain, and pistol-whipped every half-wit bodyguard in my way. The patrons of this particular titty bar didn’t hear a thing. The music drowned out the cracking noses and bizarrely high-pitched screams, so they were none the wiser.
One dude actually did pull a gun, and I sent as many teeth down his throat as time would allow. He ended up spitting shards of white onto the pants leg of a colleague as I waited for back-up to arrive.
I stacked five, six guys on the floor in the hallway, ignoring the half-juiced cokeheads in the dressing room. They continued their sniffing and nose-pinching, looking at me with frightened eyes. They were dressed in stage attire, all straps and elaborate underwear.
“The fuck’re you?” one of them asked.
“An acquaintance of your boss, I guess,” I said, stepping over a semi-conscious dude.
After I proved myself, I was greeted not with attempted violence but reverence. The remaining bodyguards stepped aside, giving me a shitty look but leaving me alone. I expected them to snatch me up and tear me apart, like a four horse execution. Good to the word of their boss, they kept it civil and allowed me to enter the dark lair at the end of the hallway.
Victor, just as last time, was seated behind a desk bathed in shadow.
“Doesn’t it get lonely back here?”
“I have an entire audience out there, waiting on me, if I want the attention. All I have to do is step into the club, and I am blessed to have a building full of friends.”
“Doesn’t seem like the attention excites you.”
“Provide people a service, and you’ll end up drawing the most dogged supporters,” he said, smiling.
When I didn’t respond, he said, “Didn’t figure you’d want to speak with me after — you know.”
“Guess I figured live and let live,” I responded, “and I’ll let you live if you give me the information I want.”
He leaned back in his seat, bemused. He plucked a long, thin cigarillo from a silverish case and lit it, blowing smoke at me.
He pointed the cigarillo-sporting hand in my direction. “Ham-handed segue or not, I think I’ll talk with you, Rolson McKane,” he said.
“I don’t think you have a choice,” I said. “All of your men are lying bloody in the hallway.”
“Touché,” he said. “That’ll be quite an expensive outcome for this little…meeting.”
“I’ll deduct it from the trap you sent me into,” I responded.
He nodded, exhaled. “I don’t suppose you’ll believe it was a coincidence.”
“I don’t, but I’ll let bygones be bygones.”
“And how would you trust me this time?”
“Because if I can’t, I’m going to come back and put two in your skull.”
He broke up, laughing, sending smoke in all directions. “I guess that will have to do, so long as you think empty threats of violence will get you what you want.”
“Oh—”
“They’re not empty, yes, I know,” he said. Voice as soft as a velvet pillow. He got up, walked around the desk, ran one finger along my shoulders. “You’re going to come back and put a real hurting on me if I steer you back into violence.”
“It fucked my friend up,” I said. “He didn’t need that kind of head trauma, after what he’s been through.”
The dude stopped, smiled. Mocking face. “Oh, how hilarious is that? A guy in search of vengeance finds out that he’s not cut out for killing. Ooh, yeah. Ooh, that’s rich.”
“He came close to killing a woman.”
“A low-rent drug dealer,” Victor replied. “A woman who killed people. Basically children.”
“Is she involved, or did we handle some of your business for you?”
That brought out a smile. “I don’t play chess, but I do like a good pawn.”
I reached across the table, grabbed a bottle of scotch, and drank directly from it. “I’ve got nothing but time left to burn.”
“And murder is time spent well?”
&nb
sp; “Investigating a kid’s murder is, yeah.”
“He wasn’t some cartoon-watching, action figure know-nothing. He was—”
“I know. He was dealing dirt.”
“That’s not what I mean. He had his whole family tripped up on the drugs, but he was starting to slip headlong into something a little more…heavy.”
“So, what. He was into murder, too? That it?”
Victor shook his head.
“So, what, then? What was he into?”
“You think I’m going to hand over this information for free?”
“You need me crack you across the teeth?”
“Guess not. I can, however, bring the big boys back in here, now that they’re expecting you.”
“I got a round for each of them,” I said.
“Stop playing macho,” he replied. “It doesn’t suit you. No threats of violence. None of that. You don’t do this because you enjoy it. Inside, you’re a little bit of a Boy Scout. Something tells me you wouldn’t—”
I yanked my piece and shattered all the bottles on the table. The room exploded in a spray of liquor. Smelled like a fire ready to burn. My hand opened in a right stinging series of cuts, but I was in, now, so I’d have no time to check the damage until later.
I leaped the table and toppled over on top of Victor. He had snatched a shard of glass and was able to swipe me across the face before I could knock it free.
I pressed the barrel deep into his throat. Released my left hand’s grip.
“Look at this hand,” I said, displaying my missing fingers. “I’ve been through absolute hell to get to this moment, and I’ll go wherever it leads me next, including through your whole crew.”
“I…can’t breathe,” he said.
I heard footsteps. Men burst into the room. I raised my pistol. “First I shoot you, then I shoot him,” I said.
Another step closer from a bald black guy. I cocked the hammer. Aimed directly for his knob of a head.
“Don’t fuck with me,” I said. “Don’t you know: I’m the Butcher of Savannah. They got my face all over the TV. I’m a walking corpse, so I’ve got nothing but a body count to live for.”
He smiled. He steepled his fingers together. He rested his face in his hands.
“Leave,” Victor said. “Get out of here.”
“You sure, Vic?” This was the biggest and dumbest-sounding of them.
“Leave,” he said, and the men slowly backed out, leaving just to the two of us.
“Go on,” I said. “Give me the scoop on Taj’s killers. No games. No chess. Just whatever’s crawling around in that fucked up mass you call a brain.”
“I done told you,” he said.
I fired a round into the wall. Screams throughout the building. Music cutting out. People fleeing for their lives.
“They’re dirt merchants, man,” he said. “They do the dirt. Whatever it is, they do it. Drugs. Guns. People. They even handing off videos of little kids.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“It’s fucked up, for real,” he responded. “They don’t give two runny shits about it. If it gets them in the black, they do it. Sell their grandmothers. Videotape their girlfriends making bukkakke tapes. There’s a whole underground network of this shit. Like World Star Hip-Hop, but the worst depths of human depravity.”
“And Taj was involved?”
“You let me up, I’ll tell you everything.”
I released the hammer. “You sure?”
“Every fucking thing,” he responded.
I decided to let it go. I shrugged. Got up.
“Christ,” Victor said, rubbing his throat. “Most people don’t know how to touch me. Think I’m some kind of freak. You just fucking leaped right over that table. You don’t feel conflicted?”
I shrugged. “I do. I was raised not to treat…well, shit.”
“You were going to say women, weren’t you?”
I nodded.
“You got a lot to learn, country boy,” Victor said, swiping a thick clump of scotch-soaked hair aside before picking the chair up off the floor.
I didn’t sit down, but I did take off my T-shirt — I had a white undershirt — and daub at the glass wound on my head, which throbbed and pulsed like I was bleeding out.
“You’ve got something like six minutes,” he said, “before things get real awkward for you.”
“Cops?”
“You fired off a weapon,” he said, not quite smiling. “Strip club run by a transgender businessperson. You don’t think they’ll be all over my shit over that one?”
“What’re you going to tell them?” I asked.
He eyed the piece dangling from my bloodied hand, said, “A lunatic stalker trying to harass one of my girls. Came in here, pointing guns, and just accidentally fired off a round. Boys roughed him up, sent him on his way.”
“This a real person?”
“A few crazies like to follow the girls to their cars after shifts. No big deal. Cops down here are on the take, you get the right ones. Let’s hope that happens tonight. So let me give you the info and get you on your way, hoping you never fucking make it back this way again.”
“Let’s hope,” I said. “Your liquor cabinet can’t take much more.”
That provoked braying laughter from Victor.
“I need names,” I said. “I need addresses. And I need guns. Put me into contact.”
“I think your friend Reg would be the person to speak with, on that front,” he said darkly.
I had more questions, but the sound of sirens was too close. “I’ll be back,” I said.
“I’m going up front,” Victor replied. “You go out the side door, out into the back parking lot. The cops won’t be there. Go. Go now.”
“Oh, and Rolson?”
“Yeah.”
“Next time, my boys will shoot on sight. Stay good and far away from me.”
I didn’t take Victor’s suggestion to go fuck myself lightly, but I also didn’t think it’d be a good idea to go knocking at his coconut tree anytime soon.
I went on an afternoon sojourn and ended up belly up at a local tavern.
Halfway through my fourth beer, the bartender placed a shot of whiskey in front of me.
“I didn’t order this,” I said.
He pointed over my shoulder.
It was Taj’s old girlfriend, perched up in a bar booth like a bird in a too-cramped cage. She was beautiful but carried an air that she might step out of reach of the truth when it suited her.
She dragged tentatively on the cigarette. I peeled one from her pack and lit up, blowing smoke over our heads.
I relayed my run-in with Victor.
“Victor’s a sad queen with a taste for vengeance,” she replied. “He’s strung out on one of his dancers, and he can’t get it through his head that his bitch is in love with what Victor gives her. Namely, a stage and a cage.”
“Sounds like a vendetta.”
“That club is not just a place for tits, ass, and overpriced drinks. You get one of his coked-out girls to talk, they’ll tell you what’s really going on.”
“Why don’t you save me the trouble?”
“The stage is the stage, but behind the scenes, he’s running those girls for what’s between their legs.”
“It’s not that uncommon.”
“But consider it. You’re looking for human trafficking, and here we are, talking about a strip club where girls are being bought and sold.”
“You have any proof?”
“It’s common knowledge to anyone calls the 904 home.”
“Is it widespread?”
“Meaning—”
“Meaning, is it happening all over, or should I take this as the lead in Taj’s death?”
“You can make of it what you want, but that’s the path of the river down to the delta.”
“You want to find them,” she said, “find the people they passed around like party favors. It’s then you’ll be able to uncover the truth
.”
“Forgive me if this is off-color,” I said, “But were you ever in the life?”
She smiled sardonically. “You know how to charm a girl?”
“Goes along with the territory, I suppose,” I said.
She retrieved Marlboro Lights from a purse pouch and sat them on the table, stacking a small pink lighter atop the pack. Then, returning to me, she said, “Everybody’s ashamed of something. Even you, I bet.”
“You bet. I’ve got skeletons of skeletons always clattering around in my head. If only I could find a way to silence them, I might end up forgetting they’re in there.”
“Ain’t that the truth?”
“If Taj was as underhanded as they say, it’s obvious he was dealing in people. If you have any knowledge, now would be the time to come out with it. You might end up helping some people.”
“You think you going to free a buncha hoes solving Taj’s murder?”
“Wouldn’t hurt,” I said.
“Them girls are so brainwashed, you’d be lucky to get them to spit on you. Way things work in that life is, they don’t get out. They want it, but they’re too afraid.”
“How did you get out?”
“Who said I was in?”
With a flick of the wrist, she dislodged a smoke from the box. Brought it to her lips. Put flame to it. She held her thumb over the button, watching the flame flicker before letting it die.
She said, “It doesn’t happen like you’d think. I didn’t fall into it. I wasn’t a runaway, dropout, none of that shit. I was on the honor roll most semesters, got accepted to a four year school right down the road. Older man caught me out one night, bought me some drinks, doted on me, some shit happened.”
“Sounds accurate.”
“You get much prostitution in Podunk, GA?”
“I don’t mean to offend,” I said. “I just thought to say it’s consistent with what I’ve experienced. It’s not something you should be ashamed of.”
“Anyway, I fell in love with this fifty-year-old man, and he put me on the street. Wasn’t like boom-pow, there you go. He eased me into it. Bought me things. Told me how beautiful I was. Then it was like, I owed him something, and he came to me and said, ‘I know a way you can pay me back.’”
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