Cracker Bling

by Stephen Solomita

  ‘Wait here until I check the side rooms,’ he tells Hootie. ‘And don’t give me a hard time.’

  But Hootie’s seeing exactly what Chigorin’s seeing and the last thing he wants is to be the first one to walk the length of that corridor. ‘Yeah, go ahead. You’re the one with the gun.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Chigorin begins with a simple choice. Fifteen feet away, a pair of doors lead into a pair of rooms, one to the Russian’s left and one to his right. He can’t search either room without exposing his back to someone lurking in the other. This is not the way cops do it, except when an emergency situation, like a clear blood trail, demands immediate action. So Chigorin takes a step, then another, eyes flicking from left to right as he tries to make up his mind. Door number one or door number two? Make a mistake and Sherman Cole or his partner takes your head off. Make a mistake and your daughter gets to attend your funeral.

  But Chigorin does make a mistake, two in fact. Although he guesses correctly, choosing the door to his right, his mind is divided, his attention more on his uncovered back than the task at hand. As a result, he comes too far into the room and is taken by surprise. His second mistake is immediately apparent. The individual standing to the right of the door, the individual who jams the barrel of an automatic into his ribs, is not a man, or even a woman. She’s a girl, at least in appearance, and while not technically a ‘good guy’, certainly a victim. Her left eye is black and rapidly swelling. A makeshift bandage, blood-soaked, encases her left hand. Her blouse is plastered to her back, so tight the lacerations beneath are plainly visible.

  ‘You wanna live?’ Amelia asks.

  ‘Hey, I’m a cop. I’m not here to hurt you.’ Chigorin’s voice is soothing, or as soothing as he can make it with his heart pounding away hard enough to crack his ribs.

  Amelia’s weapon doesn’t move, as the tension in her voice doesn’t diminish. ‘I asked you if you want to live.’

  ‘Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do.’

  ‘Then be a good boy.’

  Amelia’s bandaged left hand grasps Chigorin’s right hand, the one holding his Glock. Slowly and very deliberately, her fingers slide up to grip the barrel, leaving a blood trail behind. Then Chigorin’s weapon is in her hand and she’s prodding him back into the hallway.

  ‘Where’s Bubba?’ she asks.

  Hootie’s standing there, holding on to the .38, which he drew at the sound of Amelia’s voice. Try as he might, he can’t wrap his mind around her appearance. His eyes jump from the black eye to the bloody hand to the wounds on her back, never stopping long enough to absorb the facts. Not that he’s especially afraid – if there’s any threat, it’s to the cop, who’s staring at the .38 as though Hootie conjured it out of thin air.

  ‘Hootie, you breathing or what? Where’s Bubba?’

  ‘Busted.’

  ‘On what charge?’

  ‘Parole violation, but they’re lookin’ at him for a murder.’

  ‘Is this guy really a cop?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Chigorin picks that moment to try again. He doesn’t care for the gun in his ribs, but as it doesn’t waver and Amelia’s blue eyes betray more than a measure of madness, he doesn’t try to move it away.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, his tone eminently reasonable, ‘I’m the good guy. I’m here to help you. At considerable risk to myself, lemme add.’

  Amelia ignores his plea. ‘We’re gonna walk into the room in front of you, the room with the light. There are two men in there, one alive and one dead. I want you to go sit by the live one. You do anything else, anything at all, without doubt I’m gonna shoot you.’

  ‘Amelia, he’s right,’ Hootie says. ‘It’s all over.’

  But Amelia doesn’t as much as glance in Hootie’s direction. She steps back, leveling the gun on Chigorin’s spine. ‘I don’t like cops, so don’t give me an excuse,’ she announces. ‘Get moving.’

  As he watches Amelia and Chigorin disappear into the room, Hootie remembers the first time he walked into a Rikers Island housing area. Christ, but he’d been scared. Talk about suck-it-up time. Show fear and you’d be wearing lipstick by morning. He touches the .38’s cylinder to his temple as he follows Amelia, telling himself to stay cool, stay cool, stay cool.

  Hootie stops in the doorway, despite the effort to steel himself. There’s a body to his left, the body of the man who passed himself off as Sherman Cole. His eye has been pierced with a narrow shard of wood torn from the frame of a closet door. Hootie estimates the shard to be eight inches long, though he can’t be sure how much of it is buried inside the man’s brain.

  The real Sherman Cole is sitting on the floor at the far end of the room, his hands cuffed to a pipe behind his back. His mouth has been duct-taped, the tape passing several times around his head. Yet he appears, with his veiled eyes and shovel chin, somehow at ease.

  Chigorin’s sitting beside Cole, as ordered. His legs are stretched out before him, most likely because of his ankle. But it’s now impossible for him to move fast, no matter what the provocation. And Amelia hasn’t lowered the barrel of the Glock. She’s fifteen feet away, perched on the edge of a queen-sized bed, staring at Cole and Chigorin. Above her, a bank of lights hanging from a metal frame complements a trio of video cameras lined up against the wall behind the dead man. There are mic stands and microphones as well, and an array of children’s clothing on a metal rack. In the corner, to Hootie’s left, a cast-iron safe rises to a height of four feet. The safe is old and dirty, the dial pocked with rust.

  ‘Rip the tape off his mouth,’ Amelia tells Chigorin. ‘Let’s see what Shermie has to say.’

  Chigorin takes his time, removing the tape slowly and gently. A small act of defiance? Hootie’s not sure. He’s positioned himself to Amelia’s left behind the bed.

  ‘Is that how you hurt your hand?’ Chigorin nods toward the body. ‘Ripping that wood off the closet?’

  Amelia doesn’t reply. Her eyes are fixed on Sherman Cole. And he’s staring back at her through the slits between his eyelids. His tongue criss-crosses his lips, back and forth, until he finally spits out a bit of duct tape.

  ‘You shouldn’t have returned,’ he complains to Chigorin. ‘You’ve only made the bargaining process more complicated.’

  ‘Bargaining? For what?’ Chigorin asks.

  ‘My miserable life, of course.’

  ‘Your life? I can’t even count the crimes you’ve committed, or the years you can expect to spend in prison. Your life is over, you freak.’

  ‘Enough,’ Amelia says. She produces a handcuff key and tosses it to Chigorin. ‘Uncuff him.’

  But the Russian hasn’t had enough, and Hootie suddenly realizes that Chigorin is also bargaining for his life. That’s because he knows that Amelia can’t murder Sherman Cole and leave a cop around to tell the tale. No, that wouldn’t do at all. Hootie watches Chigorin remove Cole’s handcuffs, all the while thinking, And what about Hootie Two-Bears Hootier?

  Cole rubs at the red streaks encircling his wrists. ‘Thank you, Veronica. Now, where were we?’

  ‘You were offering me a bribe.’

  ‘A bribe? No, that’s too harsh, my dear. I believe I was attempting to make a down payment on my life. What would it take to convince you to forget, if not forgive?’

  ‘You hear that, Hootie?’ Amelia asks without turning around.

  ‘Yeah, I hear it.’

  ‘So whatta ya think? How high’s the moon?’

  Hootie steps backward and to his right. He’s now standing directly behind Amelia on the far side of the bed. ‘I think you need to end this. Nobody’s gonna blame you for what happened to …’

  ‘To Brian Moore? That’s his real name. And, oh, thank you.’

  ‘For what?’

  Amelia responds without turning away from Chigorin and Cole. ‘For showing up before. You created a distraction and they left me alone for a few minutes. Big mistake, Hootie. Big fuckin’ mistake. Only you shouldn’t have come back.’ She p
auses long enough to draw a breath, then gestures to Cole. ‘Open the safe.’

  ‘Yes, of course. But you do understand, what’s in this safe is merely cash on hand. There’s a good deal more to be had. Consider this home, for instance, paid for long ago. Even now, in a depressed market, it’s worth upwards of two million dollars.’

  ‘Unlock the safe, pull the door open and back away. If your hand goes inside, I promise you, Shermie, it’ll never come out.’

  Hootie watches Cole traverse the room on his hands and knees. As far as he can tell, the man appears unafraid. Cole’s playing the only card in his deck and he’s prepared to accept the consequences. The same cannot be said of Chigorin. The cop’s eyes dart around the room until they finally settle on Hootie’s. Is there a plea in that look? Or a set of instructions? Chigorin’s eyes move away before Hootie can decide.

  ‘Now, I must warn you, Veronica. You may be shocked by what’s in the safe. I mean besides the money. Please don’t do anything rash.’

  Cole twirls the dial, left, then right, then left again. He yanks the handle down and pulls the door open before settling back on his heels. ‘The money’s in the box.’

  In fact, a gray metal box, perhaps eight inches deep and ten inches high, rests on the topmost shelf. But that’s not what catches Hootie’s eye. Besides the box, the entire safe is filled with DVDs. Hootie doesn’t have to ask what’s on those DVDs. Nobody locks Gone with the Wind in a safe. Still, Chigorin poses a question.

  ‘What’s that,’ the cop asks, ‘your sales catalog?’

  ‘We never forced anyone to do anything.’ Cole sniffs defiantly. ‘We recruited the willing and we paid them well.’

  Chigorin glances at Amelia, then says, ‘Willing? Gimme a break. Ya know, short-eyes don’t do well in prison. They tend to be victimized by the other inmates, so they naturally ask for protective custody, which is nothing more than solitary confinement. What that means, Sherman, is that you’re gonna spend twenty-three hours a day in a six-by-ten-foot cell for the rest of your life.’

  Another plea, but Amelia’s not listening. ‘How much?’ she asks Cole.

  ‘A bit more than thirty thousand dollars.’

  Amelia laughs. ‘You remember what Bubba said, Hootie?’

  ‘Give me three thousand and I’ll turn it into thirty thousand. Give me thirty, I’ll turn it into three hundred. Yeah, I remember.’

  Amelia lays the Glock on the bed and picks up Chigorin’s nine millimeter, also a Glock. ‘How bad is it?’ she asks. ‘For Bubba?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer.’

  ‘You snitch him out?’

  ‘Yeah. I told them he killed the rat in the subway. But they don’t have the gun and I’m the only witness.’

  ‘And this cop here, he’s the one who collared Bubba?’

  ‘He was just doing his job, Amelia. And Bubba, he slipped the keys to the apartment into my pocket. He wanted me to talk.’

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘So I could ride to your fucking rescue.’

  Amelia hesitates for a fraction of a second, then addresses Cole. ‘Tell me about the movies.’

  ‘Certainly, but first let me say that what’s happened to you isn’t typical. When Brian discovered that you were recording his … his visit? Well, I’m afraid Brian wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the box. He overreacted and brought you here, much to my dismay. If he’d left, then and there, we wouldn’t be in this mess.’

  Amelia shakes her head. ‘Tell me about the movies,’ she repeats. ‘Where did you get your little actresses? Or were there little actors, too?’

  ‘Really, Veronica, there’s a police officer present. I don’t …’ Cole freezes when Amelia draws the Glock’s hammer back. His eyes jam shut and he raises his shoulders defensively. Still, he manages to speak.

  ‘We recruit girls online, as we might eventually have recruited you, and also through a … a network of friends. As I said, there’s no force involved. The girls are paid and paid well. If you were to watch any of the videos, you’d see that right away. The girls are eager, they’re smiling.’

  Amelia’s left eye is now swollen shut, her depth perception severely impaired. But the loss of binocular vision doesn’t affect her aim when she pulls the trigger. The bullet strikes Cole in the center of his face, passing through his brain in an almost straight line before tearing out the back of his head.

  The roar of the gun in the windowless room is loud enough to obliterate thought and the only moving thing, for a long moment, is Sherman Cole’s body folding gently on itself before toppling to the side. Amelia stares at Cole as though expecting him to rise. When he remains motionless, despite the blood pooling around his face, her eyes turn to Chigorin. The Glock’s muzzle begins to follow an instant later, but Hootie’s prepared this time. He cocks the .38 to draw her attention.

  ‘No way,’ he says. ‘Put the gun down.’

  Amelia’s arm stops, but she holds on to the weapon. ‘Anybody else know you’re here?’ she asks.

  ‘Uh-uh.’

  ‘Then why not? Ya know we’re gonna need money to find a lawyer for Bubba. Otherwise, he’ll get a Legal Aid jerk with two hundred clients.’

  ‘That’s Bubba’s problem. He knew what he was doing.’

  ‘Easy for you to say.’

  ‘Easy because it’s the truth. Bubba was my partner. I’m sorry for what happened to him, but it was mostly his own fault and I’m not gonna kill a cop to protect him.’

  ‘Good thinking, but it doesn’t work that way for me. That’s because the story I told you before left something out. Bubba’s not my partner, he’s my stepbrother. Now, I don’t wanna bore you with the sad details of my early years, but by the time our mother died, when I was eight, both our fathers were long gone. Bubba, he was just startin’ out at St. Johns, playin’ ball and tryin’ to keep his grades up. Nobody would’ve blamed him if he cut me loose, but he didn’t. He busted his ass all day and came home at night to make sure I had clean clothes and something to eat. And he kept on doin’ it until the day he was sentenced. That’s gotta be worth more than a kiss-off. More than, “It’s mostly his own fault.”’

  Hootie wills himself to remain alert. Amelia’s voice is softening and she’s becoming somehow younger, while he seems to be going in the opposite direction, adding years. He tells himself not to pity her, to forget the eye and the wounds on her back, forget her whole life. He’s no more to blame for Amelia’s suffering than for Bubba killing the rat. What’s happening here is about survival and he has a right to survive.

  ‘Mother dead,’ Amelia continued. ‘Father missing. No relatives. Hootie, believe me when I tell ya that foster care is a real crapshoot. There are good foster homes out there. I know from talkin’ to other foster kids. But there are bad ones out there, too, and I landed in every one of ’em. Funny thing, though, when Bubba made parole and we got back together, he never cut me any slack on account of what happened to me. Not for the Kallmann syndrome, either. He told me about a fighter named Joe Frazier who once beat Muhammad Ali. Frazier had a motto: “Whenever you get knocked down, in or out of the ring, stand up and fire back.”’

  Amelia’s voice finally trails off and her chin falls slightly. For a moment Hootie thinks she’s going to put the gun down. But when she snaps back to attention, he’s the first to speak.

  ‘You murder a cop,’ he tells her, ‘they never stop lookin’ for you. And when they find you, if they don’t kill you on the spot, they put you away forever. I’m nineteen, Amelia. I don’t wanna die in a cell. Keep in mind, your DNA’s all over the house.’

  Amelia lets her hand fall into her lap, though her forefinger continues to rest on the Glock’s trigger. ‘You know what we were up to, the point of the exercise?’ she asks Chigorin. ‘Did Hootie shoot off his mouth about that, too?’

  The question stirs Chigorin. He’s sitting with his back against the wall ten feet away, completely helpless. ‘Nobody’s gonna hold you accountable for what happened her
e,’ he tells her. ‘Cops hate pedophiles, especially cops who have daughters, like me.’

  ‘And what about the extortion? You gonna forget about that, too? And what about pretending to be twelve when I’m really nineteen? What happens after my computer’s examined and they find all those emails? And what happens when the reporters dig into the story? And what about the money? ’Cause I’m tellin’ ya, after everything that’s happened, I feel I’m entitled to compensation. Otherwise, it was all for nothin’.’

  Chigorin responds without hesitation, the stakes obvious to him and everyone else in the room. ‘Hootie was right, Amelia. Your DNA’s gonna be found in this house. There’s no cleaning up.’

  ‘So what? My DNA’s not on file anywhere. And recovering my DNA only means that I was present at some unknown point. It doesn’t mean I pulled the trigger.’ This time, when Chigorin begins to speak, she cuts him off.

  ‘Bubba thought a lot of you, Hootie,’ she declares. ‘He said you had undeveloped talent. Seriously, man. He said your only problem was that you were still looking for yourself. I didn’t argue with him because there was no point. When Bubba makes up his mind, he’s got a head like a rock. But I always wondered, Hootie, which way you’d go if you were squeezed.’

  Amelia jerks her chin in Chigorin’s direction. ‘Cops are paid to lie. They lie all the time. That’s why Bubba went to jail. They told him it looked like a clear case of self-defense and they only wanted to hear his side of the story. Then they charged him with murder. You understand what I’m sayin’, right? We let this cop walk away, we’re both goin’ to prison.’

  When Hootie finally admits the obvious – he’s going to have to kill Amelia to stop her – something inside him slips away. A barrier of sorts. His past, his heritage, has finally become irrelevant. There’s only now. There’s only what he does or doesn’t do right this minute. And he can’t wait for Amelia to make the first move and hope he reacts fast enough. No, the worst outcome he can imagine is being in this room with four bodies and no witnesses. He might as well put the .38 to his head and make it five.