by B. L. Morgan
Candi grinned at Johnny and wiggled her breasts at him.
"Fucking great," Johnny said and looked away exasperated.
"You don't have to say nothing to me," Candi told Johnny. "I'll do things to you, you can't even imagine, and you don't even have to say nothing."
Even if Candi was a hermaphrodite, with the build she had, having muscles on top of muscles, I bet she could do some crazy sexual tricks.
"We are going to need some privacy," I told Candi. "What we need to ask you about is a little bit sensitive."
Candi smiled at the both of us. "All the people here are my friends," she said. "You can speak about anything you want to here. I've got nothing to hide."
"All right," Johnny said. "I'll come right out with it. We need to find out who the new main supplier is in this area. We know you sell and we know that a smart woman like you wouldn't deal with anyone but the main man."
Candi looked at me, "Did he just give me a compliment?" She asked.
"I believe he did," I answered.
"There is hope for him," Candi said.
"Maybe a little," I answered.
Candi batted her eyes at us and gave a small sad smile. "But," she said. "I can't tell you who the new main man in town is. He treats me and my other friends too good to let you mess with him. Besides, you don't want to know who this guy is. He'd fuck you up without even thinking twice about it."
"You say he treats you and your friends good?" I asked Candi. "Is one of your friends Robert Perry?"
I saw by her face expression that she knew Perry. It looked like she knew him real well. I dove straight on in.
"Robert Perry is dead," I told Candi. "We know that his death was ordered by the big supplier in this area. He was carved up like it was some kind of ritual killing. So, if you think you can trust this guy, you better think again. You could be next for any reason or maybe for no reason at all."
Candi's eyes teared up and she looked at Barbara whose eyes were also tearing up. She burst our crying and buried her head on Barbara's shoulder.
It was a strangely touching sightseeing this big muscle bound hermaphrodite crying on the shoulder of this huge red haired 'Baby Huey' of a woman. Candi tried to speak and couldn't through her sobs.
Barbara patted her on the back of the head, "Take your time darlin," she told her. Then to us she said, "We all liked Robert but Candi and Robert were really special friends. If you know what I mean."
After a few minutes Candi was able to pull herself together. She asked me, "Tell me how it happened."
Well, I wasn't about to tell Candi that I'd went down to Atlanta to kill Perry myself. I said, "I had a business deal I was going to do with Robert in Atlanta. I talked to him and he said he was nervous about the new man in East St. Louis. I was supposed to meet him in his hotel room to finish our business. That's where I found him. Who killed him was obvious."
Candi dried her eyes on the back of her hand and smeared her mascara down her face. The black streaks emphasized her grief.
"I knew something was going to happen like that," Candi said. "The man calls himself Cyphre. Who he really is, we don't know. But he showed up about a month ago. Told us he'd make it worth our trouble if we sold for him and didn't buy from nobody else. I've made real good money too, but Robert had to go his own way. He wanted to be mister big dealer man. I guess Cyphre found out."
"Where can we find Cyphre?" I asked Candi. "There is something else that he has to answer for besides Robert Perry."
She sniffed back her tears. "Cyphre is the spookiest motherfucker I've ever seen in my life," Candi said, "You really don't want to go find this guy."
Then Candi told us where she had been told that Cyphre lived. When I heard where it was, I knew I didn't want to go there. But I knew I would.
CHAPTER 49
BELOW THE STREETS
One of the ways to enter where this guy who calls himself Cyphre was staying was through doors in basements. This surprised me. Evidently there was an entire neighborhood that was below the streets of downtown East St. Louis.
The gist of what I got from Candi Divine, and it was backed up by Johnny, was that early in the 20th century the downtown area was flooding over and over again. Either all the businesses had to move to higher ground, which would have put them out of business, or the ground that the businesses were on had to be raised.
The city chose to raise the ground. So downtown East St. Louis was raised one level, roughly twenty feet. Below the streets of downtown East St. Louis were streets of closed down store fronts, turn of the century streetlights and other things that had been left down there when the people left.
Johnny told us that he'd went down there a couple times when he was a kid. One of his friends lived in an apartment building with a basement. They found a door in the basement that was nailed shut. Being young boys, they just had to pry it open. They went into the hidden city down there and went exploring. Their first trip was uneventful but their second visit was not.
Johnny and his friend came upon a campfire with five men hunched around it. They sneaked up to the fire to see what the five were doing. When they saw, both boys couldn't stop themselves from screaming.
The five men were roasting a human body.
The five who were around the fire chased Johnny and his friend back up to the basement. They didn't follow them as soon as they crossed the door to the upper world.
Johnny never went into the underground downtown again. He never wanted to. He had forgotten the place had even existed, until now.
I had never even heard of the underground downtown until now.
That's where we were going.
* * *
There was a basement below Johnny's bar. He only used the basement for storing things like old kegs and stuff like that. Johnny didn't go down there too much. Maybe that was because there was also a door in the east wall of the basement.
The door had been nailed shut since before Johnny had bought the bar. He saw no reason to pull the nails and open that door. He knew what was behind that door. He didn't want to open it.
When Johnny was driving through the snow back to his bar he said to me, "So the guy you were hired to kill was Candi's lover."
"That's the way it looks," I answered.
"And you'd have killed him too," Johnny said a little testy.
"That's what I was hired to do," I told him.
"You're an asshole," Johnny said with a finality that was hard to argue with.
"I do what I'm hired to do," I told Johnny. "If it makes any difference, I was hired because Perry blackmailed someone into committing suicide."
"It doesn't make much difference," Johnny said. "No one's totally innocent."
"Yeah," I said.
"You might think about changing your profession," Johnny said.
"I'll take that under consideration," I told Johnny, even though I knew I wouldn't.
* * *
We stepped out of the car at Johnny's and into the blowing snow. Neither one of us was really dressed for this weather and we didn't have the time to go looking for the right clothes. The cold weather was already starting to wear on the two of us. Johnny was moving slower and I noticed that he stumbled over the curb stepping up to the sidewalk.
I was definitely feeling the effects of the cold too. My face felt like it was stinging and my feet were ice cold and getting colder every second. While walking into Johnny's I wondered to myself, just how long I could last out in this weather.
I thought about Julia and Felicia and I knew I would withstand the ice and cold that was eating into me as long as I had to. As long as there was a breath left in my body, I was going to use it to try and make sure Julia and Felicia were safe.
The realization of what Julia and Felicia meant to me hit me like bricks dropped out of the sky.
For Christ's sake, I thought, I had never even had my hand in Julia's pants and here I was professing that I would die for this woman and her daughter. I was shaking my
head side to side in disbelief at my own screwed up brain when we walked through the doors to Johnny's place and stepped inside.
Johnny saw me shaking my head and looked at me kind of strange. "What the fuck's wrong with you," he said. "You look like you got the mange."
"You wouldn't understand," I told Johnny.
"You're right about that," Johnny said. "All you white guys are fucking insane."
And you are right about that, I thought.
As soon as we walked into his bar Johnny shouted, "Jeanette!"
There was no answer.
Johnny shouted her name again. When there was no reply he looked at me with an expression on his face that had the ghost of unspoken fear on it.
At a trot, Johnny went to the back of the bar. I heard him climb up the stairs.
I walked to where the chessboard was still set up on the table where we'd been playing earlier in the day. In the middle of the chessboard a sheet of paper was laying.
The sheet of paper was a note to me.
It read.
Mr. Dark
I do so enjoy playing with you.
Now I have two more toys
to play with.
You are invited to the party, Mr. Dark.
You, and your friend.
Don't be late.
At midnight I break my toys.
Come to me Mr. Dark.
Stop me, if you can.
The note was unsigned. Just like the one in Atlanta. I had no doubt they were both written by the same person.
I heard Johnny moving from room to room upstairs, shouting Jeanette's name. She would have had to be stone cold deaf not to have heard his shouts from downstairs, so there was no way in hell she was here.
Johnny came stomping down the stairs and ran over to where I was standing. Breathlessly he said, "Jeanette is gone."
I handed Johnny the note. "What do you make of this?" I asked him.
He read the note and then looked at me, "It doesn't sound like he's got Jeanette. He doesn't mention her at all."
"No, he doesn't," I agreed.
"Then where's Jeanette?" Johnny said. "This ain't the kind of weather you just go and take a stroll in."
"I don't know where she went," I told Johnny. "But I do know I do need to go and find Julia and Felicia. You can go and find Jeanette if you want to."
Johnny laughed at that, "What would I do, walk down the streets yelling Jeanette's name. Jeanette's been taking care of herself since before we both were born. I doubt if Jeanette needs my help now."
"You looked kind of worried when you came back down those stairs," I told Johnny.
"Yeah, well I just have to remember," Johnny said. "That Jeanette ain't no ordinary woman. She can take care of herself better than either one of us can."
CHAPTER 50
INTO THE DARK
Johnny got two big chrome flashlights from a shelf under the bar. He threw one of them to me. He went back under there and came out with a box of shotgun shells.
He filled up his pockets with the shells. Seeing him do that reminded me that I only had my five shot Thirty-Eight in my holster with no extra bullets at all.
"You got any Thirty-Eight shells back there?" I asked Johnny.
"Does this look like a firearm supply store?" Johnny asked. "I don't have every kind of ammunition made."
"Figured you might," I told Johnny.
He pulled out a small handgun from a drawer beside and below the cash register and tossed it to me.
The gun was a chrome plated Forty-Five. It looked a lot like the one that I'd bought in Atlanta, and then tossed away. The only thing different about this gun from the one I'd bought in Atlanta was that it was covered in a thick dust that came off in my hands when I caught it.
"Check and make sure it's loaded," Johnny said.
I popped the clip out of the pistol and saw that it was loaded. I turned the clip upside down and saw some rust fall out of it to the floor.
"Do you ever clean this thing?" I asked Johnny. "Hell, this thing might blow up in my hand if I try to fire it."
"Leave it here then," Johnny said. "If you run out of bullets you can always shake your dick at them. That should scare the hell out of them."
I slid the pistol into my belt.
We went down the stairs and into the basement. Johnny pulled a chain in the middle of the ceiling and a bare light bulb came on.
The basement was cluttered with all kinds of boxes, equipment, bar fixtures, and furniture. Everything had a coating of dust on it.
I slapped the back of a chair and dust flew up into the air. "Your maid’s getting lazy," I told Johnny.
"Yeah," Johnny said. "I need to fire her. She don't cook none too good neither."
He went toward a wall and had to slide some bar stools and chairs out of the way. There was an old beat up coke machine against the wall.
The door was behind the machine. Johnny put his shoulder to the machine. I put my shoulder to the machine. We shoved it to the side easily.
The door that we now looked at was covered with dusty cobwebs. There were nails driven through the door into the walls around it.
A pry-bar was laying across one of the chairs we moved to get to the coke machine. Johnny went and got that and started pulling the nails out of the door with the claw end. After Johnny pulled about half the nails out, he handed the bar to me and I pulled out the rest.
Johnny tried to open the door and it wouldn't budge. He kicked the door and I kicked the door and the door still wouldn't move.
The door swung in toward us, so it was going to be hard to get any leverage on it. I went around the edges of the door with the pry-bar. Then I grasped the door knob and braced my foot on the wall to the side of the door. Johnny grabbed me by the shoulders and together we hauled backwards with all our strength.
The rusty hinges screamed in protest. The door moved toward us about a half inch and stopped dead. We hauled and pulled with everything we had. Then I had a brilliant idea.
I turned the knob.
The door came loose and we were flung backward and went flying over some of the bar chairs and landed in a pile on the cement floor.
When we got to our feet and looked into the doorway what we saw was pitch blackness before us. We saw the stairs recede away into the blackness. It was totally dark. Not even a glimmer of light shown.
I looked at Johnny and he looked at me.
Johnny said, "Are you sure you want to go down there?"
"I'm sure I don't want to," I told him.
Then we grabbed our flashlights and without another word we headed down the stairs.
The blackness was so complete that we had to shine our flashlights on the stairs below us just to see where we were stepping. Neither of us spoke as we went down the stairs until Johnny whispered, "Damn, I hate this fuckin shit."
"Don't tell me you‘re afraid of the dark," I whispered back to him.
"No, I'm not afraid of the dark," Johnny said. "I'm scared of the shit that can jump out of it and grab my ass."
Our voices seemed to be eaten up by the blackness around us, almost as if it were a living thing hungry to devour anything entering its domain, even the echo of our voices.
"I know what you mean," I told Johnny as I came off the last stair and stood on flat level concrete. "When I get the hell out of here, I'm probably going to use a night light for a long time."
All around us was the unrelenting blackness. Not a spark or a flicker of a light was anywhere to be seen. It was cold down here too. A musty breeze blew past us and up the stairs. The air around us smelled like stale dirt. The thought came to me that this place smelled like a crypt.
"For anybody to want to live down here," Johnny said. "He must be a fuckin vampire or something. This ain't exactly the kind of place you take your girlfriend to, to impress her."
"You got that right," I said back. "If this guy is just a vampire, hell, I'll be really relieved. I'm figurin he's a lot worse than that."
&
nbsp; "Which way do you figure we should go now?" I asked Johnny.
"Well, Candi said that she heard that Cyphre was doing something to the old Rialto Hotel. I think that used to be on Main Street. Assuming that they renamed the streets above the same as the ones below. That would put Main Street one block to the north running east and west."
We shinned our flashlights around and what we saw was eerie and weird. This had once had been the main part of East St. Louis. Storefronts were here. The paint on the signs were still readable. The store windows were boarded up and the doors were nailed shut.
There were lamp posts on the corners. Trash was strewn about even on these streets. I guess some people hauled their trash down here rather than pay to take it to the dump. There were even a couple broken down things that once might have been old fruit carts.
In this darkness there was the complete setup for a thriving downtown area. It was only missing a couple things; the people and the sky.
CHAPTER 51
SHAPES
"I don't remember it being this dark when I came down here when I was a kid," Johnny whispered to me.
The thick atmosphere of the dusty darkness made us unconsciously want to whisper and be quiet. You got the feeling that you were walking through a giant's bedroom in the night. You sure as hell didn't want to wake that giant up either. The giant from Jack In The Beanstalk could smell the blood of an Englishman. Well, neither one of us was English, but I sure didn't want to run up on anything unexpectedly in the dark that wanted my blood.
We walked out into the center of the street and started north. We were shining our lights on the pavement in front of us to see where we were going so we wouldn't fall into a hole. There were quite a few large holes in the street. The holes were probably caused by the repeated flooding in the past century after these streets were abandoned.
We walked north on the street and didn't talk very much. Both of us were trying to listen for the sound of anyone in front of us.
