Hair of the Dog

by Gordon Carroll

  Mr. Diamond smiled. “After all this time?”

  “Ziggy says time don’t matter to debts or promises,” said Ziggy. “Those are forever things till they fulfilled or paid off.”

  “Forever things, yes, I suppose they are. Well… I certainly do owe you, so go ahead and ask what you want. You ask and I’ll play the part of old King Herod and give to you up to two thirds of my kingdom.” He held up his fat arms as if in surrender. “Ask. Whose head is it you want on a silver platter, old man?”

  Of course Ziggy didn’t want a head, just a name.

  Jerome had to be careful. Unlike Ziggy, he hadn’t been gone for thirty years and he had a big bounty on his head, dead or alive.

  Gil gave him a hundred dollars and Jerome’s first stop was to the local Walmart where he picked up jeans, a t-shirt and a neutral green hoodie as well as a red one, and some cheap sneakers. He wore the green hoodie until he got into Blood’s turf, then slipped the red one over it. Time was slipping away. It was already nine-thirty and he needed to make contact before the heavy hitters started coming out. Playing it safe, he stuck to the back alleys as much as possible and avoided the streets. Gil wouldn’t give him a gun, but he planned on taking care of that in short order. He saw two teens consummating a drug deal behind a 7-11 and eased his way to them just as they were finishing up. One of the boys wore a tilted cap and red pants hanging down to the tops of his thighs, while the other sported close-cropped black hair and a thin mustache. Jerome pegged the one in red for the dealer and focused his attention on him. The boy turned at the other boy’s startled look behind the dealer’s shoulder. It would have been comical if not for the everyday life and death struggle that plagued the inner streets of the city. Jerome thunked the dealer square on the top of his baseball cap before he could complete his turn and he crumpled in a loose heap to the dirty asphalt. Jerome grabbed the second boy by the throat before he could flee or scream.

  “Your money. All of it. Now.”

  The boy wasn’t about to argue with this walking mountain that had just crushed the dealer with one strike. He dug out his wallet and with shaking hands fumbled out the remaining few dollars.

  “You got a gun?” asked Jerome completely unafraid.

  “Gun? No… no… I swear…”

  “Get,” said Jerome. “And don’t look back.”

  The boy got and he didn’t look back. He didn’t want to see what might happen.

  Jerome searched the boy in red. He looked to be about sixteen. Jerome found a black BB gun in his front waistband and a piece of garbage pocket knife, along with a wad of bills that counted out to about three hundred bucks.

  Jerome walked away; once again on the hunt. He needed a gun. A real gun.

  It didn’t take long. Three blocks over, he ran into a banger, huffing from a silver can of spray paint behind a dumpster. Jerome put him down with a hard smack to the side of his neck. The skinny freak only had seven dollars on him, but he also had a gun. It was a nice .22 S&W revolver that the kid had to have stolen. One chamber was empty, but that left five bullets, and five bullets should be more than enough for what he had planned.

  Jerome hadn’t told Gil everything. He hadn’t told him that he recognized one of the Bloods that attacked him at the church where Gil had taken Clair from him. The Blood had been about seventeen when Jerome knew him, which would make him about nineteen or twenty now. He looked different, but not that different. Jerome recognized him clear and sure. And better, he knew where he would be.

  Like most street gangs, the Bloods didn’t have a central headquarters or meeting hall like your local chapter of Elks or Masons (they weren’t that kind of club). Instead they gathered at pool halls, or more often, at crack or meth houses, many of which were heavily fortified with lots of armed bangers acting as guards and reinforced doors that would take a battering ram to get through after running a gauntlet of bullets. The OGs were virtually untouchable, so long as they stayed inside. But the kid Jerome recognized, Baby Toker, wasn’t an OG. He was just a foot soldier and drug dealer who sometimes pimped a few girls for extra cash. The best part was that he was a mommy’s boy who lived with her and his little brother. And Jerome knew where they lived.

  Twenty minutes of navigating the dark corridors of innermost Chicago landed Jerome behind a row of track apartments that made war-torn Yemen look like the Hilton.

  Jerome walked up the stairs, bypassing little clots of teenage thugs smoking in the hallways. Graffiti covered literally everything. Most of the lights were broken, lending a dim, shadowy cast to the walls and ceilings and floors that stretched and receded with no consistency. The smell of stale beer and fresh urine competed for his attention. A couple of junkies pushed away from a stairwell wall when they saw him approach and started toward him until they made out his size. They passed without making eye contact and left him be. Lucky for them.

  Jerome couldn’t remember the exact apartment, but he managed to narrow it down to three. He knocked on the first and was rewarded with Baby Toker’s twelve-year-old little brother, James, answering the door with a six inch butcher knife.

  “Whach yo wan…”

  Jerome snatched the knife away and picked him up off the floor by his face with one hand. He flipped the boy’s thin body around in his arms and hugged him tight to his chest, his giant hand covering his mouth. Jerome kicked the door closed with a foot and walked the few short steps into the main room, past the closet-sized kitchen to the right. Baby Toker sat on a ratty couch in front of a seventy-inch, high-definition, surround-sound, TV that barely fit between the walls, playing a video game and puffing on a short joint. His grandmother sat next to him smoking a filtered cigarette, two inches of ash balanced amazingly at the end.

  Baby Toker squinted up at Jerome and jumped up, reaching into the front of his pants. Jerome dropped the butcher knife and slipped out the S&W revolver. He shot Baby Toker in the left knee while the banger was still trying for the gun in his pants. Jerome kept his brother in front of him as a shield just in case. Baby Toker shrieked, forgetting all about untangling his own gun from his underwear, and fell back onto the couch, rolling back and forth.

  Stepping forward, Jerome stuck the barrel of the revolver against Baby Toker’s forehead.

  “Stay still,” said Jerome. Baby Toker got still. Moaning quietly.

  Jerome set the twelve-year-old on the floor and told him to sit, which he promptly did, pure hatred beaming from his eyes. With his free hand, he removed the gun from Baby Toker’s waistband and stood up straight. G-Ma Toker never moved. She just stared up through her thick glasses and sucked on the filtered cigarette, a cloud of blue smoke obscuring her features.

  “Who you working for?” asked Jerome.

  “Fool, you know who I work for. I’m Pirue through and through.”

  “But who hired you to take my little girl?”

  “I ain’t telling you. You gonna kill me anyway. You got to ‘cause you know what’s coming down on you once the Blood know you in town.”

  “That’s true,” said Jerome. “But if you tell me, and so long as none of your folks here know who I am, I ain’t got to kill them.”

  The twelve-year-old stood up from the couch. “Don’t tell him nothin’, Bobby.”

  “You shut up, James. Shut up and sit back down.” He looked up at Jerome, sweat running down his face and liquid crimson pooling around his fingers clutched over the leg wound. “You give me your Blood word you won’t hurt them?” The pain was getting to him and he breathed in and out fast to try and keep it in check.

  Jerome looked at the old woman, still smoking as if the events transpiring in front of her meant absolutely nothing, then back at the boy. The boy was another matter. The boy was on the verge of attacking.

  “He’s gonna make a play for me,” said Jerome. “He’s gonna try and save you.”

  “No he’s not,” said Baby Toker. “He won’t.” A little spit and sweat flew as he said it. He thrust his bony chin toward the boy. “You don’
t do nothin’, boy. You hear me? This is grown men matters. You ain’t there yet. One day you will be, but today ain’t that day. You got me?”

  The boy looked at his brother, tears welling in his eyes and spilling down his cheeks. He looked back at Jerome.

  “You do it and I’ll kill you. You do it and I’ll tell them what you look like and what you said. They’ll know who you be and they’ll find you. They will.”

  Jerome pointed the gun at the boy’s forehead.

  “No!” screamed Baby Toker. He tried to get up off the couch, but his leg wouldn’t hold him. He fell to the floor.

  Jerome looked back at him and James charged, ducking under the gun and going for the butcher knife. The kid was brave, Jerome had to give him that. He swung down with the gun and smacked it against his skull. The kid went down and out.

  “Don’t, please don’t, please, man,” blubbered Baby Toker.

  “Because of you, I lost my little girl. So you tell me and I’ll let them live. You don’t and I kill him now.”

  “Ok, ok, ok. Don’t know the man’s name, but he was big, real big, bigger than you maybe. Bald like you, only he was dressed in a suit and tie and had one of them ear piece things like in the movies that secret agents use. I seen him talking to the OGs over on 13th street. Then a few days later, they give us the go ahead to head up to Colorado and do what we did. That’s all I know, Blood, I swear it is. I swear.”

  “Who were the OGs the big dude was talking too?”

  “Twelve Gauge and Mad Money Man,” said the boy, sweat pouring down his face and neck.

  “None of them is that high up to make a call like that,” said Jerome.

  “Nah, not them. Whoever he was talking at through that sleeve thing. I heard him call the dude PM.”

  Jerome had heard the acronym before, back before he’d gone rogue. PM for Psycho Murderer. No one seemed to know who he was, but every Blood knew of him.

  Jerome’s eyes swiveled over to the old woman. “You best look away.”

  She just blinked slowly and took another long draw on the cigarette, the ash still hanging there, defying gravity.

  Jerome shot Baby Toker through the forehead and either the blast wave or the old woman flinching at the sound finally made the ash fall to the floor. Jerome knew he should shoot James and the old woman. But he didn’t, he left instead. He didn’t know why he let them live, it was foolish and it would warn the Bloods to his presence, but Jerome did it anyway.

  33

  My eyes snapped open at the sound of the knock. Max stood silently by the door waiting for the chance to destroy. The sun was up and the heavy rush of traffic outside told me rush hour was still in effect.

  “Ziggy says it’s time to hear what we gots to say,” said Ziggy from outside my door.

  I threw back the covers and rubbed at my face.

  “Ok, Ziggy, ok, give me a few and I’ll come to your room.”

  “Ziggy says he’ll wait, he surely will.”

  I stood and padded my way into the bathroom, which was comprised of a rusty sink with heavy water stains around the drain and a shower with a drooping curtain. Before I shut the door, out of habit mostly, I said to Max, “Don’t kill anybody…” I thought about it for a second, remembering where I was, and then added, “Unless they need killing.”

  The water took about ten minutes to heat up, so while that was happening, I shaved in the sink and then did a quick wash and rinse before toweling off. The bullet wound to my chest was healing, the scar an angry reddish color, but already beginning to blend. I dressed and let Max out to take care of his business. No one came up to me to tell me about my civic responsibilities of cleaning up after my dog. But then again, maybe that was because of the bum taking a dump on the sidewalk on the corner in front of traffic, passersby, and the world in general without a hint of embarrassment.

  I shook my head and let Max back into the room before walking over to Ziggy’s a few doors down. Jerome sat at the desk, drinking coffee. He’d cleaned up and was wearing new clothes. The bruising and cuts were still there of course, but he looked way better. Less scary.

  Ziggy handed me a cup of black coffee. His eyes were dilated and his hands steady, which told me he must have scored already.

  “Any luck?” I asked.

  “Ziggy says he done got us a name,” said Ziggy.

  “A name?”

  “Lucinda Washington,” he said. “She be a ho works the corner of 17th street.”

  “A whore…a prostitute?” I asked.

  “Ziggy says she be a friend to the little girl’s mother, what big boy over here killed.”

  “You think she knows something?” I asked.

  “Ziggy says that he got word that she do.”

  “Okay,” I said. “That could be good. When will you make contact?”

  “Ziggy thinks later today. Ho’s don’t strut this early.”

  I looked at Jerome.

  “You?”

  “Your man Clyde ordered the hit on me and you.”

  That made sense. I didn’t know how or why, but it seemed to fit.

  “You sure?”

  “Big black man, big as me, bald, dressed like a fed, radio in his ear. It’s him.”

  “Okay, any idea why?”

  Jerome shook his head to the negative. “Orders from a Blood OG goes by PM… Psycho Murderer.”

  That made my eye brows go up. “Nice moniker. Who is he?”

  “Don’t know. Never saw him. Heard of him, back in the day. Mostly whispers. He was like a legend or a myth. No one I ever knowed ever saw him face to face. Just heard tell of him is all.”

  “And what was it you heard tell of him, exactly?”

  He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Don’t remember exactly. Mostly stuff like how he was taking over the Bloods. How he moved up fast and was making changes. How he took out a couple of the other OGs. Someone once told me how he burned one of the OGs alive. Don’t know if it’s true though.”

  “So why would he want Keisha?”

  “Clair. She’s my Clair.”

  Seeing the look in his eyes, I held up a hand.

  “Clair,” I said softly.

  “Don’t know, don’t care, so long as he dies.”

  “I get that,” I said. “But knowing why might help lead us to him.”

  “Still don’t know,” said Jerome. “But I remember he was supposed to be sort of uppity-uppity. Dressed fancy, stuff like that. Said to have liked the women.”

  I shook my head. Not a lot to go on.

  “So what’s next?” asked Jerome.

  “I go see Senator Marsh.”

  “Find out where Clair is,” said Jerome.

  I nodded. “I’ll make sure she’s safe, buy us some more time so we can get to whoever wants her dead. In the meantime, you stay put.” I looked over to Ziggy. “You see what you can get from the lady of the evening. Also, we need to find out who this aunt and uncle of Keisha’s are. See if you can sniff anything out on that.”

  “Something else,” said Jerome. “The Bloods know I’m in town.”

  That wasn’t good.

  “All the more reason for you to stay put and inside.”

  Jerome nodded, but something about the way his eyes shifted as he looked away made me wonder if he would follow my advice.

  I loaded Max up in the car and drove to Marsh’s office. It was a big, sprawling building that stood taller in the sky than anything Denver had to offer, so far at least. Once there, I left the car running with its climate control safety for Max, and went in the front doors where I was stopped at a metal detector and armed security.

  I showed them my PI badge, deciding to keep the Secret Service badge out of the picture for now. The guard looked at it with dead eyes and shook his head.

  “No guns,” he said. “If you’re carrying, I suggest you put it back in your car.”

  “I work for Senator Marsh,” I said as I pointed to the newspaper that sat on the counter beside his arm. “He hired
me to find the little girl you’re reading about there.”

  He glanced down at the headline, then back up at me.

  “That so?”

  “That it is,” I said, smiling.

  “Hold on.” He picked up the phone and turned away.

  “Holding,” I said, taking the opportunity to suck in all the incredible splendor of this massive structure.

  “Senator Marsh says he’ll see you,” said security. “Forty-second floor, elevator on the right.”

  In Denver, we don’t have hundred-plus-floor buildings, although there is talk. The view going up was quite spectacular. Lucky I don’t have a fear of heights.

  Marsh’s offices were about as splendid as I would expect for God. They took up the entire floor, roughly the length and width of your standard football field. The windows were like an open view to the state, looking over those below as if in judgement.

  His secretary, a nice woman about my age and dressed in a very businesslike black dress with matching high heels, ushered me into his personal office, smaller than the football field but bigger than say your average racquetball court. The entire space was decked out in rich woods, polished to a high shine. His desk was large and intricately carved and looked like it cost more than my mountain. It probably did.

  Senator Marsh didn’t get up when I entered. He sat behind that big desk, his hands in front of him, fingers steepled.

  “Thank you, Cindy,” he said to the secretary. “That will be all for now.”

  Cindy closed the door behind her.

  “Hello, Mr. Mason.” This time he sounded like God in Bruce Almighty again, only when he was fed up with Bruce and his disbelief; not in the mood to take any more guff. Like when God lost patience with Moses’ whining at the burning bush.

  I held up a friendly hand. “Hi, there.” It was a pretty weak Jim Carey, but a pet detective I am not.

  “What are you doing here?”

  That seemed a bit harsh.

  “Alrighty then. Let’s just get down to it. I want to see Keisha.”

  His head remained motionless while his eyes did a slow scan of the room. “She isn’t here.”