by Carey Lewis
“He dumped me,” she said.
“You mind if we ask why?”
“No,” she said.
They waited for her to go on. She just wanted them to leave, the hangover starting to pound in her head. She called to the other room, asked her mom to put coffee on.
“Why’d you break up?” Ray asked.
“He wanted to do ass stuff.”
She saw they weren’t expecting such a blunt response.
“Irreconcilable differences? That what they call it?” Kenzie asked.
“You not feeling well?” the good looking one asked.
“Friends took me out last night. I didn’t get your name.”
“Jamal.”
“Seriously?”
He nodded. Probably heard something about his name a thousand times. She said “that’s unfortunate.”
“When did you guys break up?”
“Not long enough ago for me to be over it yet.”
“You don’t seem that torn up, hearing he died.”
“There’s a threshold for this? On a scale of one to I don’t give a fuck where am I supposed to be? He wanted to do ass stuff, broke up with me for it. Excuse me if I don’t have a little resentment.”
“We found this,” Jamal pulled out the bracelet, showed it to her. “Yours?”
She tried to hide her shock. She was sure she got everything that belonged to her out of the basement.
“You read the inscription?” she asked.
“I did. Both of them. Clash song.”
“His favorite band. Called me Janie Jones for a pet name. It was cute, I gave him one too. You probably found it, says he’s in love with rock’n roll whoa.”
“So how come you don’t have yours?”
“He broke up with me, I threw it at him.”
“We understand he was in a gang,” Ray said, “go by the Outcasts. You know anything about that?”
“About him being in a gang? His stupid friends got together, smoked pot and talked tough if you want to call that a gang.”
“Any other people he had a problem with? Someone looking to do him harm?”
Kenzie started to cry. She didn’t mean to, it just started coming out. She shook her head.
Her mother came in with the coffee. A perfect break for Jamal and Ray to leave. They went to the door, told her they were sorry for her loss, but then the good looking one, Jamal, turned back to her mom.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t ask if you had any guns in the house.”
“Guns? No, who has guns in their house?” her mom said. Then Jamal looked at Kenzie.
“You didn’t ask how he died.”
It took her off guard. She was trying to feel her way through the situation, not give anything away. As long as no one knew she was there, Lex wouldn’t come after her. She thought she did a good job.
“I didn’t want to know.”
They walked down the driveway to the Crown Vic, Ray in the drivers seat. “Thought she was lying until she broke down like that. Little girl trying to pretend she’s tough. I don’t know why they wear all that makeup, trying to look like death. You see her face? Even a raccoon would tell her she’s overdoing it, smeared all over her face like that,” Ray said.
“She got drunk last night, probably smeared it all over her pillow when she came home. You could smell it on her still.”
“So now we go see Lex, Mr. Primary?” Ray teased him.
“Yeah,” and Jamal stared at the house as the car backed out of the driveway, saw the girl in the window with the raccoon eyes watch them drive off.
It turned out Lex wasn’t home but his dad was. Drunk. Greeted them with an automatic rifle and a bottle of spiced rum. Came out of the house as soon as Ray put the Crown Vic in park, walked out in a stained white tank top and cigarette hanging from his lips.
“Expecting someone?” Ray asked.
“It’s the person I don’t expect, you understand? That’s the one I want to see.”
Jamal waited for Ray to come around the car then followed him up the dirt pathway to the house. Ray said, “who’s the person you don’t expect you want to see?”
He took a swig from the bottle, looking them over head to toe. Looked at Jamal, “you serve?”
“Sorry?”
“No huh. You’d a done good. Good build to you, look the type.”
“Mr. Henderson, we’re wondering if we could ask you a few questions,” Ray said.
“You ain’t the ones from last time come around here.”
Jamal looked at him, saw he had some teeth missing near the back. The teeth he had were stained, some almost all the way black. The white mustache was colored from nicotine near the ends.
“No, Mr. Henderson, this is our first time here. I’m Ray and—”
“The ones come last time, they just come in, no regard or nothing. Just come in start taking my shit like it ain’t even mine.”
“I’m sorry, who we talking about?” Jamal asked, taking a step toward the man with the gun. He slightly raised it, not enough to be threatening, but enough to get their attention. Jamal never saw a look so menacing in a man’s eye before.
“Son, you’re going to want to fight the momentum of your movement.”
It stopped Jamal dead in his tracks.
“Best you tell me why you’re here.”
“You got a son? Alex? Goes by Lex?”
“Y’all here for Lex?”
The cops nodded.
“Shit, I thought you were here about the wife. Call me Hank,” and he gestured to Jamal and Ray to sit on the car seats, the bench type, that were on his front lawn. “What’s the fucker done now?”
Jamal and Ray didn’t want to sit on a car seat from the eighties on a man’s front lawn looking at his dilapidated house. But the guy had a gun, so they sat. It was wet.
“Last time, they come in just take the shit like it ain’t mine,” Hank said, sitting on a recliner in front of them. “Wife standing there in the doorway with her arms crossed, this cunt look on her face. I says ‘Dot, what the fuck you doing, that shit’s mine.’ She says ‘oh, is it?’ They say they’re cops, nothing I can do but feel that cunt look burning on me.”
“We’re actually here to talk about Lex—”
“That’s not enough for her. Never was. She comes back again after that, this time with just one guy, the one she’s fucking. I get to thinking about last time, I think I don’t remember seeing no badge or nothing. I wake up on my couch and there’s this guy in my kitchen drinking my booze, says he’s back for more. Dot’s in there, the bedroom?” Hank pointed behind him to a boarded up window. “She’s in there, she’s taking shit she knows don’t belong to her. I says again, I says ‘Dot, what the fuck you doing, you know that shit ain’t yours.’ She tells me to eat a dick, then the guy? He comes over, punches me in the face. I served you son of a bitch, you don’t hit me in my home, so I get up and I kick this fucker in the balls. Boom, his ass drops. You know what he says to me? He says he’s going to call the cops on me for it.”
“Hank—”
“So I go in the bedroom, I push Dot away, I figure that’s okay, she wanted to leave, my house now. She starts screaming saying I broke her arm. I’m saying fuck you, I go into my closet I grab my thirty-eight, I tell them get the fuck out my house. That’s when she comes out sees the guy she’s fucking all hunched over, asks me what happened. I told her I broke his fucking dick what you think happened? She picks him up, takes him out of the house. Guy’s still got my booze but I figure it’s a good price to pay get them out, you know? You know what she says to me she’s leaving? She says ‘he’ll still fuck better than you.’ That Dot, the fucking balls on her. It’s why I love her.”
“So you have guns in your house?”
“Goddamn right I do. She knows that too, when she decides to come back,” Hank took a big swig of his rum, his rifle sitting across his lap. “Want a pull?” he offered to Jamal, “Captain Jerry, the good shit.”
“Not n
ow,” Jamal said, and then Hank took another swig from the bottle.
“Do you know where your son is? Lex?” Ray asked.
“Shit, I know where he is much as I know where the sun is. It’s up there somewhere.” Hank then stuck up his middle finger to someone over their shoulder. Jamal and Ray looked behind them to see a man shaking his head, walking to the car in his driveway.
“That fucker over there. Tells me tell my son turn his music down. I say you tell him and go get Lex. Then he asks Lex, like a prick, asks him turn the music down. Says some people have jobs got to wake up in the morning. Lex tells him go fuck himself, slams the door in his face. Maybe the guy’s wife wasn’t so ugly, he’d get his own damn kid, see what it’s like.”
“The thirty-eight you have? Still in your house?” Jamal asked. He was starting to squirm with his pants becoming wet from the seat.
“What else am I going to greet Dot with when she come back?”
“I’d recommend you not doing that,” Ray said. “You mind if we come in, have a look around?”
Hank looked at him, ice coming out of his eyes. “You not been listening? Ain’t no one coming in my house again.”
“Hank,” Jamal said, “you uttered a threat to officers about using the thirty-eight on your wife. We have every right to place you under arrest and seize the weapon.”
It made Hank laugh, “you have every right to try,” he said, patting the rifle on his lap.
Driving back in the Crown Vic, Ray said to Jamal, “think we got our front runner. You’re not doing bad, you know? We all thought you’d be falling over yourself with it.”
“Makes me glad I’m not married,” Jamal pressed the button on the radio, watching the electric numbers flip and land on a station. Jamal pressed it again and again until it landed on something he liked.
“Never took you for a Stylistics fan,” Ray said.
“You ever hear this one before, the DJ, Asteria Nyx? Plays this shit all the time. Not just the popular stuff but the deep tracks no one’s heard of.”
“Shit man, she looks half as good as she sounds, I’d leave my wife for her.”
They drove in silence for awhile, Jamal looking at the city as they drove through it.
“It’s the way you came in,” Ray finally said. “Didn’t put in the time, you know? I mean, you were a goddamned parole officer and come right into detective? And how old are you, forties? Fifties?”
Jamal looked over at him, not saying anything. Ray was right, he did go straight to detective from parole officer and it was the result of a tip from The Boss.
“I got lucky.”
“Lucky is getting a blow job from your wife on your birthday. You got some juice behind you and there’s resentment for it. Lucy especially. She thinks you’re taking a job away from someone that can actually do the job.”
Jamal went back to looking out the window, everything flashing by.
“You called a press conference, right? Who does that? Call a press conference then hand a crime lord over to the mayor and commissioner. It’s balls man.”
“I’m supposed to go back to being a PO? Just say the job’s too much for me and step down, work my way back up? My age?”
“I’m just telling you what word around the campfire is.”
“You think I don’t know that already?”
“Be a shitty detective if you didn’t,” Ray smiled.
“I’m not crooked. If that’s what people are thinking.”
“How much you want to bet ballistics comes back saying the holes in Zax come from a thirty-eight?”
“If it’s not, that thirty-eight’s going to be found in Dot.”
“You ever hear the story about the snake and the crab?”
“No.”
“Reading all this shit to my daughter now, she’s at that age,” Ray said. “This snake and crab are living together. The crab don’t trust the snake because he’s all crooked. He’s always telling the snake to be straight but the snake can’t help it, it’s the way he is. One day, the crab has enough, he gets the snake in his claw and starts choking him. The snake is about to die, his whole body straightens out, straight as an arrow. Crab says to him ‘you would’ve been this straight to begin with we wouldn’t be having this problem now.’”
“Why you telling me this story?”
“You said crooked. It came to mind.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“So, everyone’s going right? That’s what the radio said. And it’s because of you right?”
Cyrus smiled, let the question hang in the air, shuffled the cue cards in his hand. He had no intention of using them, just always found being prepared to be best.
“Some speech going on, oh shit. My boy’s moving on up,” Lex said, drinking back another Dos Equis, no later than early afternoon. “What you got planned Cy?”
This time Cyrus looked at him, smiled. He was nervous and anxious. He couldn’t wait to get the night over with, see what came of it. He said, “it’s big,” wishing he could take back the words.
This got Lex banging his fist on his knee over and over saying, “I knew it.” Then he took out another beer, popped the cap on the bottle, handed it to Cyrus, “Knew I hitched my wagon to the right star.”
Cyrus didn’t understand what Lex said, but he got the point. He took the beer, thinking it might do something to calm his nerves. They clinked the bottles together and he took a sip.
“So it’s everyone right? Everyone under the Black Knights?”
Cyrus nodded.
“This is going to be huge. What you got planned?”
“It’ll effect everyone if it goes right.”
The smile on Lex’s face grew even bigger. Cyrus knew he was being prodded for answers, but it was too late now.
“You’re bringing the kids right? You know one of them took a pipe to one of my boys? Right upside the head, gave him a concussion.”
“He likes to do that.”
“It was Rex, the muscular one. Thought it might be Max, the fat one, when I heard. But he’d still be falling if it was him. Told him to go on Atkins or something to get it under control.”
“Your guy cool?”
“Yeah, he’s cool. It’s just growing pains, you know? Two families coming together. I got respect for that kid though, taking out my biggest soldier.”
“Despite that, you think they should go.”
“Truthfully, I’m on the fence. I know they’re your boys and all, but you’re moving up to the big time, in what I’m guessing is a big way. They going to be there, representing you. You think it’s best you get in front of these hard as nails motherfuckers one of them come bopping up big hair bouncing around trying to give you a puppy? But they’re still your boys.”
“What’s your game plan here, Lex?”
He laughed. “I told you, I’m just riding your coattails.”
“That’s it huh?”
“Honestly Cyrus?” putting on a big show, like he was being forced to say it.
Cyrus nodded.
“I’m not going to lie. I wanted to run the Outcasts. Have my own gang. Zax getting got like that, I’m not thinking about it no more. But now I start thinking of it again, I figure we stay under you, I learn how it’s done, running a successful outfit. Time comes, you let me branch off, have my own outfit, but under your banner.”
“A subsidiary?”
“If that’s what they call that kind of shit. That way, I get my gang but me and you ain’t in no war neither. We working together.”
“So you’re looking for a unified front?”
Lex nodded. Cyrus thought he was full of shit.
“You come tonight, with me,” Cyrus said. He couldn’t wait to see the look on Lex’s face when he proposed all the gangs band together. It would reveal if he was telling the truth or lying to take what Cyrus had.
Cyrus guessed he was lying.
Cleon was lost. A man without a home. He joked and laughed and tried to hit on the girls in the park last
night, but he just didn’t seem himself. He wasn’t even concerned about getting the plaid shirt back from the girl. Told her to keep it, had no use for it. Cochise was worried.
Even now, seeing the guy he got Ajax to knock out, Cleon should’ve been gloating instead of sulking like he was. Ajax went up to the guy, Rex, asked if he was okay.
“Lost my equilibrium,” Rex said. Ajax asked what kind of watch that was, then told him he’d help look for it.
It was something Cochise never thought about before - life outside the Boppers. Now that he was reflecting, he wasn’t sure he got much out of being in a gang. He got to hang out with some cool people, made some new friends, Cleon and Ajax. The new one, Snow, he didn’t say much. Wouldn’t even know he was around most of the time. Maybe he needed a new name, make him talk more then. Or give him the name of Mouth, make it ironic.
He was sure that seeing Ajax befriending Rex wasn’t doing Cleon any good. Then there was his brother, Dax, in the gang that seemed to be taking over. He felt Cleon’s pain, having nowhere to go.
He barely looked up when Lex came out of Cyrus’s place, introduced himself to all of them. They’d started talking about the Summit before Lex came out, the original Boppers figuring they were too young and low ladder to be invited.
It was only after Lex told them they were invited, that he wanted them to go, that Cleon seemed to perk up. Like a kid at Christmas, his old personality came back. And his gift was an invitation to the Summit - a seat at the big boys table.
Lex said, “it’s very important you guys go. Make sure you’re there.”
“He tells me a story about this snake. Crab kills him, making his body go straight. Some moral in there I think he was trying to tell me,” Jamal said.
“A crab and a snake?” The Boss asked.
“Some children’s story that’s supposed to be a profound reflection of life.”
“Like the one with the scorpion and the turtle?”
Jamal shook his head, not knowing that story.
