This was one of those pieces when we didn’t talk much. He meditated like a Hindu priest, sweating bullets the entire time. He vibrated like a tuning fork. He gave off visions. I saw him when he was a kid, just a baby, doing cartwheels in the yard for the affection of his mother. Learning about the struggles of being black at his Uncle Mino’s knee. Picking up on the idea that it’s better to fight for rights than against them.
He didn’t seem to notice.
Deuce let Othello Dufour take a good lead on us, and then he tailed him.
“We manage to stick with him,” Deuce said, “and I pop him when he stops.”
“Right on,” I countered.
“No speeches. No bullshit. Just a quick clip dropped in him, and then we vanish. End of story. Off to the netherrealm for the both of us.”
“You sure it’ll end after that?”
“At least get the volume turned down on the hurt piling up inside me.”
“And the dreams?”
“You baiting me, Rol?”
Deuce dropped in behind a white Mustang two cars behind Othello’s showy ride.
We tailed them until Deuce felt like he had a handle on the situation. Then he circled the block. On the final turn, he gunned the engine.
“Hold on,” he said.
I buckled my seatbelt and waited for impact.
Deuce mumbled something that approached language, and then the other car was upon us. It enlarged to a purple blur before the world turned sideways on us.
Everything after that happened in a blur.
One of his homeboys was ejected through the windshield. What remained of his head was sprayed across the pavement.
He wouldn’t be a problem.
The passenger side door opened.
One hand appeared, dropping toward the pavement and grasping for something, anything, to help the injured motorist out of the clusterfuck that used to be that car.
He was holding a gun, but he didn’t look to be much in the shape for using it. Still, he clutched it, maybe thinking there’d be some cause for him to defend his boss. I aimed and fired. Othello Dufour’s homeboy collapsed in a jumble of limbs beside the Caddy.
Radiator fluid leaked across the pavement. Blood leaked across the pavement. One of the bodies was a human smear spread across the sidewalk like toast.
Othello was alive and crawling. Maybe he thought he’d be able to evade us somehow.
When we caught up to him, he turned and smiled through bloody teeth. “The brother-man, man,” Othello said. “You think you got me fucked. I let you get me here, and you ain’t half the man your little bro was.”
Deuce hit him with the ass end of the pistol. Deuce broke his teeth. Deuce made his bloody smile a black maw.
He took out a picture and shoved the entrails-flecked item in his mouth. Dufour spat it out, just as Deuce said, “This is just a taste of things to come.”
“Fuck you and your three-fingered friend there,” he said, spitting red droplets in all directions. “I hope you both die burning, you fucks.”
“On second thought,” Deuce said, “maybe we can use him.”
I shrugged. “Up to you.”
We tossed him in the backseat of our car and drove away, leaving the scene of the accident far, far behind.
“The fuck you taking me?”
“The woodshed,” Deuce said, glancing in the rear-view.
“The woodshed?”
“Where all your dirty business gets taken care of,” I said. “You’ll get an up-close look.”
I waggled my broken and busted hand in front of him. “You think this is shitty,” I said. “Just wait until the saw blade touches that paw of yours.”
“I didn’t kill your little brother, man,” he said. “I didn’t kill him. Didn’t have him killed.”
“Some people around Jacksonville have put your name in their mouths,” I said.
He said. “You were a cop. You know motive, right? You know when a man is being wronged simply for his…for his reputation.”
“Your reputation is a bloated corpse,” Deuce said.
“Listen,” he said. “I got like thirty bitches waiting to be shipped off. I was on my way there. All they need is me signing off, and then they’re gone. They get dropped through the Southeast. I’m like the Johnny Appleseed of bitches, man.”
“Tell us more.”
“Your brother died a bitch’s death.”
Deuce bent Othello’s nose sideways, and O spat blood at us.
I wiped a nasty smudge from just under my left eye.
“Hope y’all get AIDS.”
“The human trade. How about it?”
“People go in. They get ground up. They come out pieces of meat. That’s the long and the short of it.”
“We might be able to leave you be if you help us. Show us you do got a heart.”
I saw the twinkle in his eyes, but he refrained from commenting in a way that might jeopardize his well-being. “I might know something,” he mumbled.
“So,” Deuce said, half question, half statement. He sighed.
“Won’t bring your brother back. I’ve got what I’ve got, and I can give you redemption.”
“Redemption? You think I want redemption?” Deuce asked.
The sound of ever-approaching sirens, a leitmotif in our lives.
“You want to be a shining knight,” he replied, spitting blood and something darker onto the pavement, trying to find a way to sit up.
Othello valued above all things his life and his ego, so he was quick to lead us into the depths of Florida to spring some women.
He smiled like he was getting one over on us, like we didn’t see it ourselves, but we let him lead us, because this was a net gain for us. He thought, perhaps, he was just cutting loose a wellspring of temporary income.
It was a flophouse with a half-working air conditioner that circulated dusty air in the living room, suffusing the home with the smell of dirty sex. Cigarette smoke thick as stale beer, not to mention the food going over on the plates in the kitchen.
The girls were underfoot. Single story house. Ranch as long as it was hideous couldn’t be holding these girls. They’d be jumping out the windows, kicking their feet bloody just to break free. I tested it out with a single stomp, and Othello Dufour’s bloodied, tattered face broke into a grimace.
“This place ain’t permanent,” he said, and I pressed the muzzle of my .45 into the base of his back.
“Oh yeah?”
“Fuck you, man,” he responded, and stretched one shoulder, which gave a voluminous crack.
Dude from his entourage showed moment later, and though his eyes looked stricken, he didn’t immediately jump to action. He was wearing sunglasses.
“O, you all right?” he asked, hand wavering above the hip holster. Earpiece over the ear.
“Give them what they want,” he said.
“But O—”
“Do it,” he said. “I am not playing with you, nigga. Do what these muh’fuckas say, or else I’ll do it myself and then come after you. I’m telling you: let the bitches go.”
Even with a personal threat of violence, he did nothing.
I tightened my hand on the grip of my piece. The sweat was beginning to get to me. Soaked through my shirt and slid in beads down my armpits.
Deuce had a weapon but had not raised it. Instead, he took a step forward. The bodyguard stepped back, hand grasping for his pistol.
“Whoa whoa whoa,” Deuce said. “Not a problem here. Not a problem. We’re going to be a whole lot of Miles Davis up in here, and what was he?”
“Who?”
“Miles Davis. Bitches Brew. Heroin. All that. You know what I mean?”
“Jesus Christ,” O said. I ground the barrel into the softest point in his back, and he winced.
Deuce glanced between us and back to the gun-wielding lobotomy patient.
He looked from Deuce to me to the boss, and when he received a nod from Othello, he nodded.
&
nbsp; “You know what the bossman told you? He told you to cut the chain on the girls you got stashed up in here. Whatever reasons you’ve got them here under, I’ve got no say-so in that, but I will say I’m going to politely ask that you turn them over to us.”
“Just do what the fuck they say,” O said. “I’m the guy makes the rules around here, and I’m telling you to give them what they want. Trust me: they’ll have their judgment. It just won’t be today.”
The dude backed away, feeble step after feeble step, hand never leaving the butt of his pistol. But eventually, he did what the big man asked.
“Don’t know what this is going to prove,” he said, and for a moment I didn’t either, but then I saw the faces of those women.
They wouldn’t bring Taj back, and they wouldn’t solve the crime which ended his life, but this was bigger than that.
“You think this’ll put me out of business?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Deuce said.
But it did. And it would.
“This ain’t shit, and you ain’t shit, and if you don’t get your asses out of my town, you’ll be dead by sundown.”
“You call the cops, and these bitches are out of the country by daybreak. You think you’re helping them, but girls like them don’t make it outside of the business.”
We were led to a door in the kitchen, latched over several times in the most obvious way. The bodyguard led the way, me and O bringing up the rear, the pistol separating the two of us.
The sound of it all. The shink-shink-shink of metal being pulled away. The sound of dirty, defeated feat clomping helplessly on the stairs. The hollow-eyed girls who appeared in the doorway, several years too young to be equipped to deal with this kind of detainment. They were seventeen, eighteen at the outer edge.
“Who is the pick-up man?” Deuce asked.
“Go fuck yourself.”
Deuce bloodied O’s shirt with a bit of the pimp’s blood, the henchman looking on as his boss was knocked uneven. I held his attention with my pistol. He moved even a little bit, I smiled and glanced at the gun barrel. That closed up shop on his attempts at heroism.
“You let me know when you’re ready to tell me who the pick-up man is.”
“So long as you tell me when you’re ready to suck my dick.”
Deuce got up, towered over him. Popped his knuckles.
It took a while, but eventually he warmed to the idea of talking selling out his middle man. As he started in on his story, I came to figure it out before he said it.
“It’s the man people are calling my brother, isn’t it?” I asked.
Othello shot a finger gun in my direction. “Now you got it, homes.”
It wasn’t even that I really cared. I just…didn’t think my life would go in such a crazy direction.
“Well,” Deuce said eventually. “You go on and you make that call. Tell him the drop-off is happening just like normal and that you’ll meet him…where?”
“Where I usually meet him,” O said.
“Which is?”
“That nigga doesn’t know this place exists.”
“Call him.”
“Shee-it.”
“Call him and tell him it’s going down with these girls the way it always does, and then tell us where you plan on making it happen.”
He thought long and hard, the barrel of the gun never really far from him. O looked tired, and he wasn’t thinking right. He was slow, sluggish, off his game, and in serious danger of making a mistake that might get him killed.
“There’s a place in the swamp,” O said.
“The cabin with the sawblades.”
“Man, I’m not lying when I say I don’t know what you mean. Even if you think it’s a pile, man, I’m telling you. I’m giving you the truth to the best of my ability. Just the way I know how to tell it.”
“Then tell it.”
“We have to switch our rendezvous occasionally. They go on a cycle. Sometimes it’s private, sometimes more public. This time it’s supposed to be real, real private. There’s some Chinese girls, some Asians, in the mix. Trying to please their men all day long, be it pimp or John or police officer. Real high price on that Moo Goo Gai Pan, I tell you.”
“Then tell Edrick that.”
“He’ll know. He’ll know, and then he’ll come and set this place on fire. No deal.”
I thwacked him one good time across the back of the head. Any place that could be swollen was, and everywhere else was turning purple.
“We got some women need a cover story until they can get out of this godforsaken place,” Deuce said.
“You can play detective all you want, but the truth is that your brother wasn’t just a victim. He was a player. He wanted that money. He wanted that reputation. He wanted to be on a big stage, just like his older brother. He wanted some notoriety, and he was beginning to get it. It don’t make me a monster that I gave the little nigga some work, does it?”
Deuce cracked him across the jaw, and Othello screamed. He came back smiling.
“Edrick is the man you want, and he’s long gone by now. He’s got business beyond business in people, and he’s always one step ahead of the people trying to track him down.”
“Where might he go?” Deuce asked.
Othello shrugged. “He specializes in disappearing. Been doing it since he was a little boy.”
He looked at me. “But then again, you know about that, don’t you?”
“I don’t know a goddamned thing.”
He smiled. “Might be why you won’t be able to find him. Nah, he’s gone as shit, and he’s the one I figured held down your brother and had him bled out before they sawed him into little pieces.”
He gulped blood to keep it from pouring out the corners of his mouth. He said, “Now, you can keep on feeding me my teeth, but that won’t do you any good in the long run.”
He sighed, ran one hand through his fro, before getting the pick out and depositing it, after a few strokes on his hair, back into his head. He was thinking.
“Man, all right,” he said. “I don’t know if y’all have killed any people, but I’ve heard enough crazy shit that I believe every single word of it. Y’all two ain’t devil worshippers, are you?”
He smiled, content with the knowledge that he was fucking with us.
“Here’s a phone,” I said. When he barely touched it and placed the phone on the kitchen table with noticeable anxiety, I said, “Don’t worry. It’s a store-bought cell. Good for things like this.”
Tentatively, he reached over and picked it up. Glancing from me to the phone, me to the phone, me to the phone, he opened it up and dialed a number. I saw him getting into character as it went down.
Once the phone call had been placed, we had no need for either one of them.
Seemed like Deuce heard my thoughts. He shucked his piece and pressed the barrel into Othello Dufour’s cheek.
Next moment, I had mine pointed between his homeboy’s eyes.
“Move,” I said.
O was on the floor, gibbering about how he’d helped us. Shit like that. As if we owed him any semblance of loyalty.
Deuce cocked the hammer. Deuce leaned close. Deuce pressed indentation into the slimy motherfucker’s face.
“Tell me why I don’t dispose of you right the fuck right now,” he said.
Whispering, sort of. Intensely and emphatically whispering, but whispering nonetheless.
It didn’t sound like Deuce.
It sounded like the force within Deuce, like something otherworldly come to nest in my closest friend. I couldn’t get that growl out of my head.
But I didn’t stop him, either. I kept waiting for Othello Dufour’s brains to go spraying all over Hell and creation.
When that didn’t happen, I started paying attention to Deuce. Actually paying attention to him. I didn’t like what I saw.
It wasn’t Deuce. It was his live-in tormentor, making hay of this volatile situation. But Deuce was fighting it. He was grit
ting his teeth against a certain kind of eventuality.
I yearned to tell him not to do it, but part of me wanted to see the world burn.
The bodyguard lunged forward. He gave me reason enough to shoot him, so I put one in his kneecap. He dropped, screaming his lungs bloody.
This guy would not be a problem.
Deuce, though, concerned me. He’d sweated through his clothes and was making this low grunting sound in the back of his throat. The buzzing of a guitar amp going bad.
“Deuce, he didn’t kill your brother, man. He’s a patsy.”
“He killed Reg. He killed Javvy. He put me in this place.”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re getting at, man,” O said, hands shaking uncontrollably.
Deuce pistol-whipped him. Deuce cracked his jaw. Deuce kicked him until he lay in a heap on the ground. O couldn’t do much but spit blood and teeth and cry over how we’d fucked him up for no reason.
“Did you kill my little brother? Did you kill Taj?”
The dude rolled around in his own blood, bemoaned his jaw, his fucking jaw. Othello Dufour had a rap sheet like Santa’s List, but he could be broken. Deuce proved that.
In between his cries for leniency, he tried to build a narrative.
“Edrick greased the wheels for Hector Dominguez. He made sure people got where they was supposed to go. He kept bitches in line. Kept the drug mules and the border wolves on lockdown, too. When he found out somebody was starting an uprising, he clamped down. Started cutting women in half. The trail led back to your brother. So…”
“And where are they now?”
“Edrick’s in the wind. He won’t come up for air until you’re not expecting it. Hector’s got layers and layers of protection around him. You’ll need an arsenal and a hell of a lot more than a redneck friend to get to him.”
“We bumped elbows with him at the party.”
“I’m sure he had some knowledge of that, but — oh, Christ.”
He raised a limp paw to rub a sore spot. He wasn’t getting too many more words out before he was done. His buddy had turned in for the night. Passed out. Blood loss, maybe. Shock. Something like that.
Dirt Merchant Page 47
