South, America

by Rod Davis

  “That’s the fact, Jack. I shut him up. Right here, actually.” His soul-dead blue eyes shifted away toward a pile of 4x4 wooden staves for making custom shipping boxes. “I mean, he took a swing at me, what was I gonna do?”

  It was clear why she had stood her ground for this, letting him blather. She knew him. She knew he would eventually tell her what had happened. White line fever or not. She knew he would deliver unto her his confession. But she was going to make it into something else. She advanced on him and paused, a lioness waiting to spring.

  “Had to, you know? I mean, you know, it bothered me. Old friend and all that. And anyway, little T-boy, well, he sort of double double-crossed me, didn’t he? Didn’t bring the painting or the freakin’ birth certificate. Even bragged he was fucking with me the whole time.”

  She was an arm’s distance from him. Their eyes were locked together. “You never could get the best of him.”

  “Well, maybe this very last time I did.”

  “You just killed him is all,” Lenora called out, the drop cloth slipping off again.

  “Fuck you. Some hoodoo lady you turned out to be.”

  “Fuck you,” Elle said. “Why didn’t you just ask me about it, any of it? I would’ve told you. You didn’t need to do any of this.”

  He looked at her for a long time. “Bullshit.”

  “No bullshit, Trey. I never would have wanted anything to do with you, even for money.”

  He breathed out hard. Looked at her some more. “Well, too bad about that now,” he finally said. “But turns out your aunt wouldn’t tell me where the birth certificate is, either. So I said, what the hell, then I’d just have to whack Ellie. And here’s the really good part.”

  He went to one of the work benches. Ernie came up to keep Elle in check. Trey opened a drawer, pulled out a small metal case and from it a small plastic baggie. He poured out a line of coke on the top of the bench, bent down and snorted it.

  “Whee-yuh!” He put the stuff back in the drawer. “Whee-yuh doggies! You know? So anyway, when auntie here tells me where Rose was—that she’s alive—she actually said that she was telling me because I ought to know. Because—this is the part I especially like—I wouldn’t kill you. Since I wouldn’t kill the mother of my own daughter. Can you believe? For thirty million and change?”

  He twirled around, like a tango dancer, finishing with one arm in the air and the other across his chest. Held the pose.

  Then he took a deep breath, threw his hands open in a dismissive gesture. He looked at his prisoner hanging on the ropes.

  “But shit, Lenora, that just means now I probably have to take care of Rose, too.”

  Elle tried to get past Ernie, but he did a move I didn’t think he had and slipped around to seize her from behind, pinning her arms again.

  “I don’t even know who’s in there anymore,” Elle said, ignoring Ernie’s hold. “What happened to the boy I grew up with, the three of us playing together down in the Delta?”

  “He grew up. Like you said.”

  “Everyone grows up.”

  He looked at her, opened his mouth as though to speak.

  “Do it,” she said to me.

  Trey’s head turned in my direction, quizzical.

  Whatever he was about to say to her, he never got the chance.

  Whatever my intention—to somehow grab my Colt and shoot Reggie and Ernie without harming Elle and hope that would buy me a few seconds to deal with Trey—I never got that chance, either. Good thing.

  Trey’s cell phone rang at the same time that a loud banging, like a hammering with a big air jack, came from the door at the front of the gallery.

  I caught Elle’s eye. The message was still to fire at will. But I didn’t.

  Trey looked at his caller ID, glanced at his two pals, and at me. His smile had more teeth than it really needed as he spoke into the receiver.

  “Hello, Red.”

  28

  “Trey, you bastard. We’ve been out here knocking for five minutes. What the fuck?”

  The booming, pissed-off voice seemed to propel Ernie from the viewing gallery back into the storage room like a Cat 3 hurricane. Hard on his heels were my old pal, Big Red, and a wingman. The extra muscle was nearly as much a tank as Red, maybe a little thinner, easily over six feet. To Red’s Hawaiian shirt outfit, he wore tan slacks and a dark purple shirt, shiny black Italian loafers. His hair was slicked back to Red’s wild-in-the-city look, and with his mustache he looked vaguely like Magnum, P.I., New Jersey version.

  Trey walked up to Red with an outstretched hand. “Welcome to the Delta.”

  Ernie made immediately for the back of the room. Reggie lowered his weapon and took a step back, but stayed within muzzle-slap distance of me. And vice versa.

  Red and his backup ignored Trey, stopping in the middle of the room, pretty much as Elle and I had done, to take in the scene. As a frieze of modern life in the Big Easy, our little tableau had its place.

  “God almighty,” Red exhaled. The other guy shook his head, frowning.

  “This is where we prep the material,” Trey said, the hail-fellow-well-met arrogance in his voice hiding who knew what. “As you can see, we’ve been getting some new works delivered.”

  “The fuck is that?” Big Red snapped, staring at Lenora. “The fuck are you doing?”

  “By the way, what the fuck are you doing here?” Trey answered. It must have been the coke talking because it was an insane thing to say.

  Made even more obvious by the way Red glared at him.

  “For god’s sake cut that old lady down. Now. And put that piece away, Reggie. The fuck kind of cowboy are you?”

  Reggie immediately lost his interest in me and turned toward Ernie. “You heard the man. Let her down.”

  Ernie started to comply but stopped, looking to Trey for the final okay.

  “You got a problem with that?” Red snapped.

  “What the hell, she probably needs to sit for a spell,” Trey said, and nodded to Ernie, who had made the unforgivable error of mistaking exactly from whom he was supposed to take his orders.

  “So as I was saying, welcome to the Delta,” Trey continued. He walked forward and extended his hand to Big Red and friend. Neither responded. Trey shrugged.

  “My name’s Trey Barnett,” he said to the friend, again extending his hand, again declined. “And you would be?”

  “He would be Antonio. You can call him Tony the Barber. Most of his business acquaintances seem to favor that,” Red said.

  Tony the Barber nodded, a faint smile on his lips. He looked steadily at Trey, but I could see he was also aware of every move that Ernie and Reggie were making.

  Elle and I both looked at each other with something between relief and fatalism.

  Ernie pulled out a shiny lockback knife and cut the ropes that held up Lenora. Reggie went through the motions of helping her sit down to rest against the wall. When they were done, Elle covered her aunt once more with the drop cloth.

  Red came up to me. “You get yourself in some shit, don’t you, Shakespeare?”

  “It’s a gift.”

  He studied me, not in the manner of a rescuer. His voice sunk to a growl I had heard before. “So what the fuck is going on? You got something for me, bringing me all the way here?”

  My impression was that he was really talking to Trey, whose body posture had lost all its theatricality.

  “Like I said, this one over here called, said to come by here first.”

  “I know that already.”

  “He changed plans from the first meeting place. I tried to call you. A lot.”

  “Did you? I must of been busy.” Big Red took a step closer to Trey, eyeing him like a piece of day-old fish.

  “I left a message on your voicemail, too.”

  “Well, I’ll have
to check it sometime—hey, don’t bunch up over there,” he said to Reggie and Ernie, who had gathered in front of the work bench at the back of the room. They moved apart a few paces.

  “Don’t worry about the phone, though,” he said, talking to me but watching them. “Turns out Tony was out there by the lake, saw you drive by. Followed you back down here.”

  I looked at Elle. She kissed her aunt on the forehead and rose to her feet again.

  “Kind of a shitty thing to do, wouldn’t you say, rich boy?” Red said.

  I thought he was talking about Lenora. But he was more focused.

  “What, you’ve never changed a meet at the last minute?” For the first time there was anxiety in Trey’s voice, as though he were calculating that he hadn’t calculated everything.

  “So . . . the fucking painting?” Red, back to me.

  “We have it. We just didn’t bring it. You know.” I stared at Trey, who ignored me.

  “I definitely know,” Red said.

  Tony the Barber moved a little nearer to the back of the room, almost next to Ernie and Reggie.

  “It’s my painting. I was going to deliver it to you. It’s my right.”

  “You were already told I was getting it from this schmuck.” To me: “No offense. You got no business in this.” Back to Trey: “You should of known that.”

  “I know I need to make sure I get credit for getting it for you.”

  “You calling me something?”

  Trey shrugged. It was like he was trying to get control of the situation again. “I’m just saying that if I personally deliver it to my client, my client knows where it came from. It’s just standard business.” I still couldn’t tell if he had balls or was just high.

  Red looked at Lenora, at me, at Elle. “This is standard?”

  “They have my painting. The one her fucking brother stole to get this all screwed up in the first place. All I have to do is go pick it up. Then you can have it.”

  “This is crap.” It was Tony. First thing he’d said all night. His voice was low, smoky, like a DJ’s.

  “Yeah.” Big Red turned, went to the side of the room, looked at a watercolor propped on one of the shelves that wasn’t in the show. It was of a gator eating what looked like a Bible. “Interesting. Twisted, though. This your name in the corner?”

  “Take it. It’s a gift. ‘Red Gator Taking Sacrament.’”

  Red looked at Tony. A second later they both laughed. Then Red came back close to Trey. “So you have the million-dollar art, or what?”

  “I was about to get it when you dropped by.” Trey looked at me.

  “What I thought,” said Red. “I’m doing business with the wrong man.”

  “We only came for her,” I said, pointing to Lenora.

  Red looked at her again, sitting against the wall, then back to Trey. “About that. You want to tell me how you came to tie up and cut the fingers off an old black broad by way of getting me a painting you’re not even supposed to have?”

  “For all I knew, they’d be in Mexico and I’d still owe the Francosis a lot of money.”

  Red and Tony exchanged another look.

  “If you think I went too far, fine.” Trey grinned, tentatively. No one else joined him. “Whatever. It seemed the best way to get myself a little insurance.” His voice dropped an octave and he looked directly at Red. “You know, I just want out from under this with the family. I was taking care of it.”

  “I can see that shit.” Red looked at Tony again. “But back to the question. Where’s the friggin’ painting?”

  “I’ll show you,” I put in.

  “Fuck him,” said Trey. “He’s nothing.”

  “He’s the only one’s done what I asked him so far. Except for coming here instead of straight to me.” He shot me a hard look.

  “But seeing this”—he shifted his view toward Lenora and shook his head—“seeing this puts everything in a whole new light. I’m with Shakespeare on that. You’re a sick fuck, Barnett. Business? You think this is good for business? Now what you gonna do with all these people? Say, ‘see ya, have a nice day, sorry about the fingers?’”

  “It’s my mess. I can clean it up.”

  Elle, who had been taking it all in, walked up to Red. He stood a head taller but it didn’t bother her. “The thing is, that’s my aunt,” she said, her voice even and icy. “You know Trey already killed my brother. He wants to kill me, too. I’ll get your painting for you. He can kiss it and the inheritance goodbye.”

  Red to Tony again.

  “Inheritance?”

  “It’s nothing,” said Trey, stepping up as though he was going to push her away. “Something from my family. The painting’s where the money is.”

  “That’s a lie,” she said.

  “A big fat one,” I added.

  Trey took a step toward me but stopped.

  “Trey and I grew up together, is the thing,” Elle continued, only about an arm’s length from Red’s chest. “Want to hear?”

  “Make it fast.”

  “Turns out we grew up out of the same daddy. We all sort of just found out. Trey’s view is that with no siblings, or even half-siblings, there’s nothing to split up from the estate. You want to know what Aunt Lenora is doing over there? Not to get the painting here.” She shot Trey a hard, hard ray of hate. “To get me here. Deal with him however you want.” A pause. “Whatever you think is, you know, fair. In your world.”

  Red listened with a half-smile, looking across at Tony. Ernie and Reggie hadn’t moved the whole time, other than to shift feet and wonder what was going to go down.

  “She’s smart and good-looking,” Red said to me. “Hope it’s been worth it.”

  “She’s a great fuck, too,” Trey said, his face working itself into some kind of mask of sadism. “She forgot to tell you we were more than brother and sister. Hell, we’re mom and dad.” He let it hang there. “At least for the time being.”

  “Shut up,” she yelled, the first time she’d really done that.

  “So go get the painting for the man, wherever your fucking brother stowed it, and let them be on their way so we can go on with our party. And then maybe I can go visit our little daughter. You know, talk to her about our family.”

  Elle’s lips snarled back to show her teeth and gums. She looked wildly about, like she was trapped.

  And it happened.

  She rushed to Trey, lioness to her jackal nemesis at long last, so quickly it almost seemed everything else in time went into slow motion, slamming him toward the tables at the back of the room.

  Recoiling from the attack, he tripped over an electrical cord used for the track lighting, lost his balance and fell, hard, toppling a table as the back of his skull hit the concrete with a loud crack.

  For a millisecond, she stopped, as though some immense gears needed but one more click to engage.

  Then she leapt upon him, straddling his torso and pounding him with her fists. He covered his face, cursing her, blinking his eyes into focus from the force of his fall.

  Red and Tony let it happen.

  When I started to step in, Red put his arm in front of me and shook his head.

  No one really saw the move, but the next time Elle raised her arm to strike, she was clutching a long, plastic-handled screwdriver in her right hand. On the downswing, a dull sound of metal crunching through ribs filled the room. A splurt of bright red blood flew up.

  Trey convulsed, reached for the screwdriver, but couldn’t pull her hands away from it nor pull it out.

  She leaned forward and with all her body weight drove the chisel-nosed blade deeper into his body. The spurting stopped. Trey coughed, put his hands around the screwdriver handle, and then lay quietly, his shirt drenched in his own blood, his face gone pale and expressionless.

  I looked at Red as we both
made an instant evaluation of what had happened. On the floor next to Trey lay an overturned carpenter’s box, its contents spilled out: a hammer, measuring tape, some nails, carpet cutter, and several screwdrivers. Minus one.

  “Damn,” Red said.

  “You bitch!” That was Ernie, who made his last mistake of the evening, rushing forward, trying to pull a pistol from the pocket of his trousers. He almost got it out when the straight razor sliced his neck just above the Adam’s apple.

  He stopped, like he wasn’t quite sure why a spray of blood was splattering the back wall. Then he toppled forward, gurgling, eyes wide open, barely breaking his fall with his hands but hitting hard on his face, which thumped and then turned sideways, weirdly, because his head was only about two-thirds attached.

  Tony the Barber stood next to him, knees flexed, as if ready for anything else. Which wasn’t coming. Blood from Ernie’s wound spread out in a thick puddle. His eyes stared out across the floor, not like he was looking for anything, just open. Tony looked down, emotionless as the cutter in a poultry processing plant. When he was sure it was over, he bent down and wiped the blade on Ernie’s jeans.

  Reggie froze, staring at Red, his mouth slightly open, an occasional glance down at Ernie, and at his own blood-speckled clothes.

  I pushed aside Red’s arm to get to Elle, still straddling Trey’s body.

  I knelt beside her. Trey was breathing slightly. I could see a faint gurgling around the opening where the screwdriver had impaled him. Her hands still gripped the handle. His hands loosely encircled hers.

  I pulled at Trey’s fingers to get them away before the death grip locked them forever. Then I worked at her fingers. Those, I couldn’t loosen. She raised her head for the first time. Her eyes were wide, nostrils flared, jaw tight and pulsing, mouth twisted in a way I’d never seen, or ever wanted to.

  Then she stared back down at her half-brother. “How’s that feel?”

  He tried to say something but it was just a hoarse gurgle.

  “Let it go, Elle. Let it go.” I kept saying things like that, prying at her fingers, hoping to overcome the adrenaline strength.