by Matt Rass
Ray’s Cadillac ambled from the old, pothole covered highway onto the gravel rutted road and into the park. “This place used to be a great place to live,” Ray said. “Now look. You can see it’s clear-cut right behind the tree line.” He pointed at a different spot. “There used to be a dump down that way and we’d have big blazing fires and drink beer and watch the bears pickin’ through the trash.”
When they approached Sam’s trailer, Ray could see the front window curtain pull back almost imperceptibly at the middle—just enough for someone to look out after the sound of his car. When the car stopped, the curtain fell back in disappointment, as if whomever was there was expecting someone else.
Ray told DC to stay in the car, and he walked across the spotted brown grass littered with cigarette butts, then up the corrugated iron stairs to rap on the trailer’s door. Toys were scattered around the small yard. A child’s swing set was lying on its side and rusted through.
Ray scanned the single and double-wide trailers and spotted a number of curious gawkers peeking out through their windows. Even though each trailer was a near copy of the ones beside and across, save for color, Ray was sure the curiosity was not out of boredom, but from people’s need to judge. The Cadillac would have disappointed them. People nowadays only found comfort when they knew someone else was doing worse than them.
Ray rapped on the trailer’s door. A teenage girl answered. She can’t be more than fourteen, Ray thought. Tall, young, and pretty. Her T-shirt read: Blow Shit Up.
“Yeah?” she asked.
“Is your mother here?” Ray replied.
“No. What do you want?”
“I’m Ray Price.”
She put her head down and sighed. “Did you find Sam?”
“Not yet.”
The kid was shy. She looked as if she was going to collapse and Ray moved to catch her, but she flinched at his hands. “Where is he?” she demanded.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you going to find him?”
“I’m going to try.”
“You’re still a cop though, right?”
“Yes. Well, not right now. I mean, I’m doing this alone at the moment.” Ray was surprised how nervous he sounded. “Has the sheriff’s department told you anything?” he asked.
“We filed a missing person’s report, but I know they’re not searching.”
A small boy’s voice squeaked from around the corner inside the trailer. “Is it the mailman?”
“No,” the teenager shouted. “Go back to your game.”
The boy appeared behind the girl, the top of his cornrow head reaching her waist, and she put a protective arm in front of him. “He’s waiting for something from eBay,” she explained to Ray.
“Your name is Emma, right? What’s the little man’s name?”
“His name is Shane.”
“Cool name.” Ray saw Shane was wearing a Detroit Lions T-shirt. “You a Lions man?”
The boy stared at Ray blankly and didn’t answer. The kids looked like their mother, but both of them obviously had different fathers; Emma was light-skinned whereas Shane had definite African American color and features. The boy could be Sam’s, Ray thought, but the girl was too old to be. She’d be around the same age as when he left town last, fifteen years ago.
“Listen, my mom isn’t here and I don’t know when she’s coming back home,” Emma said. “So maybe you should—”
Just then a taxi crunched along the gravel road. Ray watched as Emma’s lips trembled and her eyes filled with anger. She sprung from the doorway and disappeared inside the trailer.
Ray turned to see who was riding in the back of the taxi. Mandy. His former high school sweetheart.
Ray walked down the steps and put up a finger, indicating to DC to sit tight. Mandy remained seated in the taxi appearing to search through her purse. Ray could tell she was either drunk or on drugs. Her head bopped and rolled. Her lost eyes were smeared with running mascara, and her skin looked like melted marshmallow, pasty white and drooping. Ray opened the door for her, but she barely managed to extricate herself from the cab’s backseat. She wore a Tupac T-shirt and only had one big breast—the other obviously lost to cancer—and it swung like a wrecking ball as she twisted in her seat. “Ray, Ray, Ray,” she said. “Whaddaya say?”
Ray held out his hand and she turned in her seat, revealing one of her labia had squeezed out the crotch of her jean shorts. “C’mon Mandy, lemme help you out,” he said. She was much bigger than Ray remembered her. Fuller. Mom-sized. The gap between her two front teeth made the words whistle out her mouth as she said, “I can’t believe it’s really you. What are you doing here?”
Ray walked her up the rest of the drive. She was drunk and stoned on meth, talking in an annoying sing-song voice. The cabbie honked his horn and Mandy barely took notice of the shrill burst.
“Did you pay the driver?” Ray asked.
“No, I was going to go inside to umm…” She was searching for a story, but Ray interjected.
“Lemme take care of it.” He guided her to sit on the steps then turned back and went to the driver’s side. He peered down into the cab and saw the meter stopped at $16.80. He peeled a twenty from his roll and held it out for the driver.
The man looked relieved. “Thanks, mister.”
But Ray didn’t hand the money over. He reached into his back pocket for his notepad and found a blank page, ripped it out, and gave it to the driver. “Write down the address where you picked her up.”
“Excuse me?”
“You want to get paid for this fare, you write down the pickup address.”
The cabbie looked through his windshield at Mandy as if he needed her permission.
“I ain’t her old man,” Ray explained. “I’m a cop.”
“Yes, sure,” the cabbie said. He then looked at the address on his tablet and scribbled it on the paper. “Here you go.”
Ray reached in and turned the tablet’s screen so he could read that the address matched the one on the paper. It did, and he pocketed the paper.
“You ever pick her up or been to that address before?” he asked.
“No,” the cabbie replied. “I’m new.”
“OK,” Ray said and released the twenty. “Keep the change.”
As the taxi drove away, Ray turned to Mandy, who was sitting on the steps, trying unsuccessfully to light a cigarette.
“Is this Sam’s address in town?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“A girlfriend of his?”
She laughed. “Like that ain’t the funniest shit I’ve heard.”
“It’s still early,” Ray said.
Mandy looked coldly at Ray. “I heard you got married.”
“Now I’m getting divorced.”
“You didn’t invite us.”
“It was in Hawaii, just her family. I didn’t want to burden anyone. It was expensive.”
“And you never cared much for your family, have you, Ray?”
“What do you think happened to Sam?”
“I don’t know nothing.”
“Was he in trouble with anyone?”
“The fuck should I know? You know Sam, or no, maybe you don’t, seeing as you haven’t seen him in fifteen years.”
“Emma says you reported him missing.”
“He was s’pose to come here but he never showed. He’s never not showed up without calling first. And he never goes a day without a text or answering his phone.” She saddened. “Even if there was something wrong, he would at least answer Em.”
“He ever have a beef with anyone?”
“A beef? It’s Sam, he’s harmless. But what do I know about his life, anymore? We’re way the hell out here.”
“You ever been to his loft in town?”
“Loft?” Mandy laughed. “He stays with a friend, lives out his grandma’s house.”
“You think maybe he went into hiding?”
“Everyone hiding from something, aren’
t they?”
“What’s your problem, Mandy?”
“You don’t see I only got but one tittie? You don’t wanna ask me what happened to the other one?”
“I’m sorry. What happened to your other tittie?”
“It got cut off by a chainsaw, smartass. What do you think happened to it?! I got cancer, you fucking asshole.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t keep in touch, Mandy. After I was discharged I didn’t want to come back here and pretend everything was okay. With me.”
“Well, everything was not okay with the rest of us, Ray. Look at me. I’m fat. I’m ugly. I ain’t got no car, no money, no way outta here. I had dreams, too, ya know. But then I got pregnant in high school. You aren’t the only one who wanted outta this town.”
She began to sob and Ray sat beside her. He put his arm around her shoulder. “Well, I’m here now, trying to help.”
Mandy dropped her half-smoked cigarette and stepped on it. “Why are you even here anyway? It can’t be just ’cos Sam is up and gone. You haven’t given a shit about him or me since forever.”
Ray ignored the question. “Sam ever come here to just hide out?”
“No. He actually comes out here to try and be normal. Whatever the hell normal is nowadays.”
“He ever talk about leaving before? Like getting out of town?”
“Where would he go?”
“I don’t know. Florida?”
“He ain’t no Jew, Ray. The fuck’s he gonna go to Florida for?”
“I’m just saying maybe he talked about going to the beach somewhere. Miami? Jamaica? Mexico?”
“He doesn’t even have a passport.”
“That you know of.”
“What’s that s’pose to mean? That I know of?”
“Just that some people like to keep secrets.”
“What’s he need secrets for?”
“Some people have secrets for the sake of having secrets is all.”
“Pssh. He never kept secrets from me. Matter of fact, I used to be the only one he told his secrets to.”
“See? The man had secrets.”
“He always tried to do good by me, I know that now. I miss him, Ray. I just want him to come back home.”
“Is the boy, Shane, his?”
She pulled away. “What? Why you ask me some stupid shit like that for?”
“I just wanna know if he has something else worth coming home to.”
“You bastard… How dare you? Like I’m not worth coming home to? The fuck you ever do to deserve judging me? Matter of fact, I haven’t even thought of you since high school. ‘Worth coming home to?’ You aren’t worth coming home to. Why the fuck are you even here?”
“You asked me to.”
“I asked you to? Pssh, that would be the day.”
“On Facebook. I got a private group message from you.”
“Well, it wasn’t from me.”
“Well, who else would send it?”
Ray turned to the sound of someone behind him. No one was there, but Ray could feel a presence hiding just beyond the darkened screen door of the trailer.
“Listen, Ray,” Mandy said, loud enough so the neighbors could hear. “You haven’t been in our lives for fifteen years, and all of sudden you think we need you? Newsflash, pal: no one needs you… Bringin’ a ho up to my house.”
DC yelled out the Caddy window. “You betta not be talkin’ ’bout me, bitch.”
“You know I am, bitch. So you betta shut yo mouth!”
Ray stood up from the steps. “Does Sam have access to your Facebook?”
“You think he would message you if he did? To come find him? Get off it, Ray. Do me a favor and don’t come back here again. You hear me?”
“I hear ya.”
Ray returned to his car under a heavy blanket of guilt while Mandy pounded up the steps into her trailer.
“That bitch is crazy,” DC said as Ray sat down behind the wheel.
“That’s not even half of it,” he replied.
“You got history with her?”
“Too much. We were set to get married in high school, then I went and believed some rumors about her that turned out not to be true. But instead of apologizing, I ran away and joined the Army.”
“She only got one breast ’cos of cancer?”
Ray nodded and put the key in the ignition, but didn’t start the car. “I think maybe I should drive you to the Greyhound station now…”
“Whattabout helping you find your brother?”
Ray unfolded the address the cabbie had given him. It meant nothing to him. “I think I’m just gonna let the local cops deal with it.”
“Deal with what? Don’t you wanna find out what happened?”
“Of course I do, but what am I gonna do the local guys can’t?”
“How ’bout give a shit?” DC turned in her seat to face him. “You heard what that dude in the loft said about Sam—and he’s ’spose to be your friend? You think they give a shit about any one of us? Look around, we all alone out here and there ain’t no one to watch out for us but us. And if you don’t search under every goddamn rock in this town and the one right next to it, and the one next to it, then you may as well crawl under one yourself and give up livin’ ’cos if there is shit in this world worth fighting for, then nigga, this is it. Right here. Right now.”
Ray turned to see Emma run along the side of the trailer then dash toward the side of his car. She knelt at his open window, her little hands holding the frame. She handed him a twenty-dollar bill.
Ray flinched. “I don’t need any money, sweety.”
“Sam gave this to me the last time I saw him,” Emma said. “There’s a man’s name and phone number on it.” Ray read the name and number. “I was like saving it to give it back to him in case he needed it or something. But maybe this person knows where he is?”
Ray’s heart almost broke in his chest at her helplessness. A child stuck playing a man’s game. “Did you call this number?”
She looked guilty. But this wasn’t an interrogation.
“Did anyone answer?” Ray asked.
“When I asked for my dad, the person made me nervous…” She began to tear. Her mouth twitched uncontrollably. “He told me never to call again.”
“It’s okay, baby. I know this name and I’ll make sure I talk to him, personally.”
“I hope I didn’t get Sam in trouble by calling.”
“Don’t worry,” Ray said, pointing an accusatory finger at the name on the twenty dollar bill, “this dude is gonna regret talkin’ to you that way.”
The poor thing began to cry. Ray was getting his back up with all these tears. Some motherfucker was gonna hafta pay for making all these women cry. He could almost feel his blood run hot. He needed to start breaking some real shit if he was gonna put a stop to it.
“Please find my daddy,” Emma pleaded.
“You got it. I’ll make sure we find him if it’s the last thing I do.” He pulled a couple of twenties from his fold and handed it to her. “Get some McDonald’s for you and your brother, or something.”
She thanked him. Rubbed her eyes dry and sobered. Her mother shouted out to her from behind the screen door. “I’ve got to go,” she said.
“Wait,” he said. “You have a phone on you?” She nodded. “Let me give you my number in case anything comes up.”
“Sure,” she said.
Ray took a bent business card from his wallet and handed it to her. “It’s got my cell number on it. You can reach me anytime.”
“Emma,” her mother called again.
“Thanks,” Emma said and pushed the twenties into her front pocket. She then ran back to the trailer.
“She’s such a beautiful girl,” DC said. “I wish I had her color.”
Ray looked at the name on the crumpled twenty.
“Fucking Alex Silver,” he said.
TONY, MIKE & ANDRE
Andre exited his Monte Carlo, walked across the parking lot
of the Welcome Tavern, and into the bar through the side entrance.
Tony and Mike Silver were seated at one of the tables, drinking coffee.
“Check this out,” Mike said, waving Andre over. “My dad’s got a video of the cop.”
“What cop?” he asked.
“The Detroit one.”
Andre looked over Mike and Tony’s shoulders and watched the video on Tony’s cellphone of Ray going face first into Angelique’s backside.
“I thought brotha’s weren’t into that kinda shit?” Mike said.
“Booty? Shee-it, you’d have to buy me a submarine to dive down like that. Y’all didn’t call me down here to watch this, did ya?”
“Club burned down last night,” Mike said.
Andre put up his hands. “I didn’t do it.”
“No, no,” Tony said. “It was an accident. Kitchen fire. The bitch in the video got burned up.”
Andre put his hand over his mouth. “She alive?”
“Nah, she’s bacon.”
“Man, you ain’t got no heart.”
“So, we’re gonna hafta speed things up as far as our plans go.”
“Which plans?”
Tony turned to his son. “Mike?”
“Yeah sure, Pops.” Mike towered over Andre and said, “Empty out your pockets. I need to search you.”
“Search me? The hell for?”
“The FBI’s in town and everyone’s nervous about what they’re doin’ here.”
“The FBI? And you wanna pat me down after you show me that video?”
“Just show him what’s in your fucking pockets,” Tony said.
Mike patted Andre down and examined his keys, phone, and wad of cash. “I don’t see anything,” he said to his father.
“What happened to your girl—DC, isn’t it?—last night?” Tony asked.
“I dunno,” Andre said. “Whaddaya mean?”
“I saw her at the club last night with the cop.”
“This cop? In the video? The hell she doin’ with him?”
“That’s what I’m asking you. The cop’s Sam’s brother.”
“Sam? The skinny nigga out the club?”
“Why are you playing so fucking dumb? Everything I say, you repeat, like you don’t know what the fuck I’m talkin’ about. Yes, goddamnit, this cop—from Detroit—in this fucking video. He’s lookin’ for his brother, Sam, and your whore is helping him. She come home last night? Did you get the cell phone from her?”
