by Matt Rass
“Andre? He’ll whoop my ass for ditchin’ that junkie last night,” she said.
Ray tried to rub his headache out with the heel of his hands, but was failing. “Suit yourself. You know I’ll make sure you’re safe if you change your mind.”
“But I’m gonna need some more clothes. So maybe after you bring me shopping, you can drop me off at the bus station. I’m gonna go back to Atlanta where my people at.”
“How much a ticket cost to Atlanta?”
“It’s like a hundred and somethin’. But I’m broke.”
“Well how in the hell are you gonna pay for new clothes then?”
“I figured you owe me for takin’ me outta that room before I got my money.”
“Pssh. I don’t owe you shit. But if you stick with me for the rest of the day, I’ll bring you shopping, and buy your ticket, plus give you some gettin’-around money.”
“That’s cool. But what you need me for?”
“I need you to help me find out where these parties were held at.”
DC bit the inside of her cheek. “What parties?”
“Sam was settin’ girls up for these rich white people and there’s a chance he took off with their money.”
“The money for the girls?”
“Somethin’ like that.”
DC then ducked back into the bathroom to run the bath. She spoke over the sound of the running water. “Those two strippers say your brother was pimpin’ girls?”
“Yeah.”
“What do they think happened to him?”
“They say he took money wasn’t his and skipped town.”
DC poked her head out of the bathroom and said, “What?”
Ray repeated himself. “They say he took money that wasn’t his and got out of town.”
“And what do you think,” she asked.
“I think if he took the money he wouldn’t still be hangin’ around a joint like the Welcome on a Wednesday night.”
The coffeemaker hissed and she went back in, then hollered, “It only makes like two cups, you need both?”
“One’s fine,” Ray said.
“Cream and sugar?”
“I take it black, baby,” he said. “Just like my women.”
DC poked her head back out. “What?”
“Nevermind,” he said. “Lemme fix it, you get in your bath.”
Ray followed her back into the small bathroom where she removed her robe and pulled down her panties. Ray poured his coffee as DC stepped into the tub behind him, squatted in front of the bath’s nozzle, splashed water, and rubbed soap on her vagina.
Ray turned to watch her. “Aren’t you gonna let the tub fill up first?”
“I was just gonna wash my pussy,” she said.
“What’s wrong with your pussy?”
“There’s nothing wrong with my pussy, I just want to clean it is all.”
“Why don’t you take a long soak. Put some bubbles innit. I’m gonna take my coffee and make some calls, give you some peace.”
“You sure we have time?”
“Hell yeah. Sit back and relax, girl.”
“Okay,” she said and pulled the lever for the plug. She then tore open a bubble bath packet and squeezed it out like ketchup under the faucet.
Ray handed her a coffee cup. “Black,” he said.
“Just how I take my men,” she added.
Ray smiled but then frowned as she leaned back, allowing him to see the half-dozen cigarette burns that looked like bullet wounds in her chest, and the beginnings of a baby bump.
As he began to close the door, DC piped up. “Ray?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks,” she said.
“What for?”
“For last night, and the room and shit.”
“No problem, kid.” He reached to pull the door closed.
“Ray?” He stopped and put his head back in. “What did you want to be when you were my age?” DC asked.
“A jazz man.”
“What stopped you?”
“Afghanistan.”
DC gnawed on the inside of her cheek again and the first bit of modesty crept over her as she said, “Ray. Do you think I’ll be okay?”
“Sure, kid,” he said. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
He closed the door softly behind him and was pissed at the knot in his stomach. He hated having to lie to her. Because once she was on that bus back to Atlanta, there was no telling the amount of trouble she’d find herself in. The course he was on was one that went straight ahead, and already he felt as if he had taken a detour by getting involved with her. But this wasn’t his town any longer and he couldn’t think of anywhere to take her where she’d be safe. Plus he needed her help, didn’t he? She could still help him find out where his brother was. That, and Ray felt the brotherly instincts toward her that he’d missed growing up with Sam.
His phone rang. The chief again.
“You havin’ a good time in your Podunk town, Raymond?” he asked.
“How’s that, sir?”
“I’m just asking. Are you havin’ yourself a good ol’ time?”
“Did something happen?”
“You tell me. I’m gonna forward you a goddamn picture some fuckin’ asshole sent me last night, and you tell me what the fuck is goin’ on in that town of yours.”
Ray received the image as he sipped his coffee. It was a screenshot of an image and was small and grainy. He had to focus closely, but there was no doubt what it showed. It was Ray going down on Angel’s booty. He spit his coffee all over his phone.
“That the sound of you spittin’ out the taste from last night, I’m guessing?”
“Yes, sir,” Ray said.
“You wanna know who sent me that picture?” the chief asked.
“Who?”
“You did.”
Ray looked at his phone as if it had betrayed him.
“But since you look like you was too busy eatin’ asshole to have taken a goddamn selfie, I’m guessing someone is tryin’ to set you up to look stupid,” the chief continued. “So I suggest you find out who it is and you bury ’em before they bury you, ya understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But I don’t mean bury-bury, as in kill the sonuvabitch. I mean—dammit—just go find out who it is and kick his ass, will you? What if my wife saw this picture?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I’ll find out who sent it.”
“And Ray,” the chief’s voice mellowed. “How’s things with your wife?”
“We’re getting divorced.”
“Oh. Well, that makes things easier, I guess. Just do me a favor and don’t bring this small town mess back with you to Detroit.”
“I’ll settle it here, sir.”
“You better.”
Ray ended the call and opened up his messages. He opened his wife’s, and saw that she had been sent the full video. Or at least ten seconds of it. The hell were those two strippers thinking firing off vids like that to his boss and his wife? A prank? Or intimidations to get him off of his brother’s trail? Couldn’t be blackmail, they already sent the evidence to the people he cared about.
He called his wife, but after the third ring the line died. He tried again and this time his call went straight to voicemail.
“Jayneen,” he started, “I don’t know who sent you that video last night, but I want to explain. I was drugged. I don’t have any memory of what happened.” He hung up the phone. “Shit! Maybe I should’ve said it wasn’t me in the video,” he said to himself.
DC’s face was covered in suds when she heard Ray scream “FUCK!” followed by the sound of something smashing against the wall.
She quickly rinsed her face, pulled the plug, and stepped out of the bath. She wrapped herself in a towel, tucked it in between her breasts, and stepped tentatively out of the bathroom. She looked around the corner. Ray was picking up pieces of his broken coffee mug. He turned to her and said, “Get your shit together. We’re goi
ng out.”
MEET THE CONGRESSMAN
Congressman Frank Silver sat back in his half-court-sized home office and swiveled in his expensive cherry leather chair. He stared out the window into his adjacent garden where his nine and ten-year-old grandchildren frolicked with their grandmother, his wife Barbara.
His once brilliant blue eyes, now cold and grey, narrowed as he watched the eldest boy, Nathaniel, bend over to smell the flowers. He was so effeminate. Nicholas, the youngest, was a good boy—dumb, but jovial. But this Nathaniel… It turned the congressman’s stomach to watch the boy prance around like a fucking fairy.
The congressman had embarrassed himself this past summer trying to straighten out the kid’s wrist, scolding the parents in a room filled with gawking adults, for allowing the boy to continue to act like a goddamn faggot. “You gotta toughen him up or he’ll be wearing a dress by Christmas,” he had said. Frank’s son had swallowed the outburst like a guilty dog as the wife had scurried off in tears. The Silvers had yet to turn out a homosexual in a hundred generations, and the congressman was sure as shit not gonna let one come out on his watch.
He returned his chair to face the two men his own age, seated in front of his desk, Carl and Bradley. Bradley, with his fresh chemically peeled face, was the same man who stared at Ray at the Ramada Inn lounge. He was sixty-five years old and still very much in the closet even if everyone who knew him knew he was queer, including his boss, Frank Silver. Faggots in general didn’t bother the congressman, just don’t stick ’em in his family, he would say behind Brad’s back.
Bradley sat tall and poised despite his latest chemical peel appearing fresh and painful. The man seated beside him in a tan suit, his cowboy hat balancing on his knee, and spinning a gold and black Masonic ring on his pinky finger was Carl Barron. Carl looked as if he was a former, 1970’s NFL linebacker—he was solidly built and a hard-looking man two years Bradley’s junior. His face was bloated and severely pockmarked and looked as if it had been sculpted from concrete using a sledgehammer.
Bradley cleared his throat and said, “I’ve got some bad news, I’m afraid.” The congressman waited for it. “We haven’t found the kid that took off with the seventy-five—”
The congressman slammed his hand atop his executive desk and said, “Whose idea was it for this nigger to handle my money in the first place?”
The other two men looked at each other to see who would speak. Carl squirmed under the confines of his leather chair. Finally, Bradley said, “Your nephew Alex, sir.”
The congressman raised his thinning eyebrow in surprise. He looked at each man to see if they harbored any pride in telling him a Silver had messed up, but didn’t find it. The three men in the room had been friends since grade school and now that they were in the twilight of their lives; wealthy, full, and unburdened by duty, they spoke to each other as if to their own blood—they wouldn’t take pride in bad news. Besides, they all knew what it meant for Alex, the golden boy, to have dropped the ball: he couldn’t be trusted to make decisions on his own. That meant failure. And even though there weren’t too many Silvers out there winning awards—none in fact—this was a big setback. The kid needed to be spoken to, reminded of the stakes, and be entrusted to do a helluva lot better if he wanted to move up the political ladder. Alex was Frank’s only hope to carry the Silver name deep into American politics—and thank God Alex had taken his mother’s maiden name—the kid had all the makings to go national: good looks, established family, money. His only drawback was his unbridled brashness and a skidrow, junkie father.
The congressman and Bradley had become lawyers—Frank destined for politics because of his family and wealth, and Bradley to work for the Silver family business interests. They wore custom suits and had their hair cut once a week. When the congressman had developed tennis elbow and was unable to play the game for six months, Bradley stopped going to the private club out of respect for his best friend.
As for Carl Barron, his nickname was both his initials: CB, and short for “cinder block.” It reflected both his body type and his cold, gray personality. He had been the protector of the other two men since they were boys, but when the other two went off to college to become lawyers, Carl had joined the Marines. Since his childhood under an abusive father, he’d felt the need to protect things, beginning first with his mother followed by liberty, justice, and the American flag. He had also been under investigation for assault prior to his enlisting for a crime the congressman had actually committed against a prostitute. When Carl returned, no longer a protector but an aggressor, his friends encouraged him to enter the sheriff’s Department, and with the help of the congressman—and his dirty money—he had risen to become sheriff of the county.
Bradley continued, “That’s not all, Frank.”
“Go on,” the congressman said.
“The kid’s got a brother in town asking questions about what he was doing for us.”
“Carl can take care of it, why bother me?”
“The brother’s a Detroit cop.”
The congressman thought about it for a second. “Whaddaya say, CB? This cop gonna be trouble?”
“A pain in the ass, but not trouble,” Carl replied.
The congressman smiled. Good dog, he thought. Stay mad.
“Carl suggests we have the brother tailed so he can maybe lead us to the kid with the money,” Bradley said.
“Good idea. What’s the kid’s name?”
“Sam Beck,” Carl replied.
“And the brother?”
“Ray Price.”
“Isn’t that the cop on the news?” the congressman asked.
“The same,” Carl said.
“If he doesn’t know about the missing money, or what it was for, we could be sticking our necks out on this one,” Bradley said.
“I think you’re giving the guy too much credit,” Carl said. “He ain’t Sherlock Holmes.”
“And he’s black,” Bradley said.
“And he’s black.”
They all nodded their heads in agreement on that one.
“Now let’s talk about the blackmail situation,” the congressman said.
Bradley began by clearing his throat.
“Why do you keep coughing like that?” the congressman asked.
“I may be getting a cold,” Bradley explained.
“It’s summer for chrissakes.”
Bradley pulled a stack of pictures from his briefcase.
“Oh my God, I’m gonna have a heart attack,” the congressman said. “Why do you still have those? Burn them already.”
Bradley laid them out on the congressman’s desk. “These are new ones,” he said.
“What? Of the same girl?”
“Different one.”
The congressman took the photos from Bradley and looked hard at Carl. “I thought the idea behind these welfare kids is we wouldn’t have to worry about shit like this.”
“The kids aren’t behind this,” Carl said. “Someone else is.”
The congressman shook his head and looked at the photos of himself and a black teenager kissing in the back seat of a car. “Sonsabitches got me bent over a barrel here.”
“They want the monthly stipend increased to twenty-five thousand,” Bradley said.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. What do they expect me to do, rob a bank? If I use any more money from the campaign, I’m not gonna be able to pay it back in time for the audit. And with this stolen seventy-five—”
“As executor of the family holdings,” Bradley interrupted, “maybe you should look at divesting some of the Silver holdings? There’s a lot more than just seventy-five thousand dollars unaccounted for.”
“I thought we had a handle on those expenses.”
“We did, but we risk someone taking a closer look if we can’t account for the seventy-five. We have to sell and inject that money back into the campaign account where it belongs.”
“If I sell, what am I supposed to leave to my brother an
d sister?”
“Tony has used your businesses to make his own illicit money. It’s probably time for him to build his own roof, don’t you think? And your sister, excuse me for saying, hasn’t had a job in her life. You shouldn’t have to supplement her lifestyle in Florida.”
The congressman waved his hands in surrender. “You’re right, you’re right. They’re not gonna like it, but if it’s my ass blowing in the wind—”
“It’s the only way,” Bradley said.
CB sat idly and continued to spin the Masonic ring on his pinky finger, his ears on the two men and his eyes out the garden window where Barbara had reappeared with her two grandchildren in tow. She was old now. White as snow; elegant, soft. But still very regal. She wore her wealth on her person; on her fingers and wrists; her feet and her wardrobe. There had once been a time—so long ago—when she and Carl had been youthful, pink, and in love. Teenagers.
He smiled at her as the two boys rapped their fists against the glass to get their grandfather’s attention. Barbara looked at Carl, read his smile, and smiled back at him. The light she’d had in her and Carl’s youth was still very much in her eyes, but now only appeared when she directed them at the two boys at her side. Carl had observed her, otherwise, walking the mansion’s halls like a ghost. Never—like himself—one hundred percent present.
She knocked on the glass to aid the kids’ attempt at getting their grandfather’s attention, and Carl could see the shadow cast across her face when Frank turned in his chair and stared coldly at her. He knew the kind of look Frank was capable of. As if you were the dog responsible for the shit he’d just stepped in. Barbara shrunk from the window.
From his back pocket the congressman removed his wallet and took two twenty-dollar bills from its fold and waved them at the boys. “Come,” he barked.
The boys whooped, stamped their feet, and clapped their hands. Their grandmother shook her head and rolled her eyes in exasperation then followed after the scampering children as they disappeared from view.
The congressman turned back to face the two men. “You look at selling the businesses, Brad. And Carl, find out what that kid did with my 75K. This is turning into a goddamn nightmare.”
