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City of Heretics
By Heath Lowrance
City of Heretics by Heath Lowrance
Published by Snubnose Press at Amazon
The copyright belongs to the authors unless otherwise noted. 2012. All rights reserved.
Amazon Edition
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locations is entirely coincidental.
First Amazon Original Edition, 2012
Cover Design: Eric Beetner
Amazon Edition, License Notes
All rights reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author
He saw the Ghost Cat twice. The first time: a cold and icy morning in the middle of nowhere, and him sprawled out on a desolate two-lane road, blood freezing to his face, spent cartridges scattered. January Third. From the corner of his eye he saw it moving amongst the dead, searching...
He remembered thinking death. The Ghost Cat means death.
Some weeks later, he would see it again for the second and last time, and again it would follow at the heels of violence, rubbing against its ankles and purring. If he’d had any doubts then about what it meant, those doubts were laid to rest.
That long and brutal January, all sorts of things were laid to rest.
The room was dark when Crowe came in. He stopped in the doorway, key in hand, and tensed up. He’d turned on the floor lamp before he left, he was certain, but now the light was off and the room was pitch-black.
Pitch-black, which meant that the curtains had been drawn as well. And he knew he’d left them open.
So he stood there in the doorway, silhouetted against the dim light from the landing and making a wonderful target for whoever was in the room. He waited for a long minute, expecting any second to see a tire iron swoop out of the darkness or feel a bullet plow into his guts. But then a familiar voice said from the darkness, “Well? You gonna stand there all day or you gonna come in?”
Crowe said, “Turn on the light.”
“What, you afraid of the dark?”
“Turn on the goddamn light.”
A hoarse chuckle, a creak of imitation leather, and the light snapped on.
The little room, illuminated by the weak yellow light, looked only slightly less seedy than it did during the day. Small kitchenette in one corner, rumpled bed in the other, and between them a small sitting area, just a love seat and a cushioned chair with a scarred coffee table between them.
Chester Paine sat in the chair by the window, a nasty grin spread out across his long face. After seven years, he looked exactly the same—slick black hair, a pencil-thin mustache under a thin nose, small, expressive eyes gleaming blue in the pale light. He was about Crowe’s age, late ‘40’s, but there wasn’t a single new line on his face or gray hair on his head. The only thing new was the suit; it was well-pressed and expensive. A sharp Burberry overcoat was draped over his knees.
Buds were in his ears, attached to an MP3 player he held in his hand. He plucked the buds out and Crowe could vaguely hear the strains of a Tom Waits song—“Misery is the River of the World”—before he shut it off.
He spoke in his raw Mississippi drawl, “Howdy, Crowe. Happy New Year.”
Crowe shut the door behind him. While Chester smiled, he strolled over to the small stove in the corner and put some water on for coffee.
Chester said, “No beer in the fridge. And no bottles in the cabinet. You on the wagon or something?”
“What’s with turning out the light, Chester? Seems a little dramatic, unless you were thinking of plugging me or something.”
“I wouldn’t shoot you in cold blood,” he said. “I reckon I just like having the element of surprise.”
He’d just pulled out a pack of cigarettes, so Crowe grabbed the little tin ashtray out of the cupboard and took the two steps that brought him back into the sitting area. He eased onto the battered love seat across from Chester. “Hope you don’t mind if I light up, Crowe,” Chester said. “You want one?”
“No thanks.”
“I’m on these French smokes now, American cigs don’t have any taste anymore.”
He lit one of his French cigarettes and a plume of gray-black smoke wafted away from his head. It smelled awful.
Outside, the wind howled against the single window and ice rattled the panes.
Memphis, New Year’s Eve, near midnight, the wind sweeping across the waves of the Mississippi River and pasting the streets with clinging wet ice. The ice wouldn’t stick, and tomorrow the only signs of it might be a felled power line or two, but the cold was vicious.
It was a long goddamn walk from the bar on Madison to this hovel, a rented third floor room near Front Street in an old converted cotton warehouse. There were a few of them downtown, harkening back to the Gilded Age when cotton was Christ. Most of them were pretty pricy. Crowe’s wasn’t.
And now here was old Chester. From far away, bells tolled, goodbye, goodbye to the old and welcome the new, a year of promise and goodness and hope. Crowe heard people cheering somewhere far away, and fireworks. He said, “Well. Whatever’s on your agenda, it’s gotta be pretty goddamn important. Hell of a night for a social call.”
Chester nodded. “How’s things, Crowe?”
“Passing fair. You?”
“Same shit, different day. You know how it is.”
“Yeah. What brings you around here?”
“Well,” Chester said. “I was in the neighborhood. And seeing as how you haven’t bothered to come around since you got out of stir, I thought I’d check in with you.”
“That’s mighty neighborly of you, Chester.”
“I’m a neighborly sort of fella, you know that.”
They let that one hang out there for a long minute. Chester puffed on his cigarette, stinking the place up good and proper. Crowe heard the water start to boil and got up to make the coffee. He brought Chester a cup. Chester sipped it, made a face, set it on the coffee table between them. “Instant coffee,” he said. “Things are never that bad, are they?”
Crowe sat down again and cupped his between his hands. He didn’t look at Chester.
Finally Chester said, “Got some work for you.”
Crowe shook his head. “No. Thanks anyway.”
“Oh, I see,” Chester said. “You’re gonna take one of those other hundred jobs people are trying to throw at you, right?”
“Chester—“
“I hear that bank manager job pays real well. And the executive president gig has a real good benefits package. Which one you thinking of taking on?”
“I’m weighing options presently.”
“Yeah, sure. But in the meantime you need money. Even a dump like this costs something. And the economy being what it is and all, I’ve managed to get a good thing lined up for you. I put in a good word for you, and—“
“No.”
Chester scowled, took a last drag on his smelly cigarette and crushed it out in the tin ashtray. “Lemme guess,” he said. “Going straight, right? Giving up the old life. Prison changed you, you’ve paid your debt to society and turned over a new leaf. Realized the error of your ways. Yeah?”
Crowe didn’t answer him.
Chester shook his head. “Well now, th
at’s pretty noble, I gotta say. Too bad it’s a load of shit, though. Right?”
Again, he didn’t require a response. Chester never did, really.
“A load of shit, Crowe. Going straight ain’t in you. You can pretend all you want. And just because you ain’t got no booze in the place, that don’t convince me. You think not taking a drink is gonna make you a better person?”
Crowe said, “You want to hang around and talk about old times, fine. But I’m not interested in what you’re bringing me.”
Chester nodded, something like disgust twisting his narrow face. “Old times. Yeah. Let’s talk about old times. I don’t know, maybe you have changed. There is something different about you, I gotta admit. You got that hang-dog expression, the kind you see on the faces of losers. Seven years in stir, hey, it can break a man, sure. But I reckoned you for tougher than that.”
“Did you?”
Chester stood up, looked down at Crowe. His impeccable coat fell to the floor, but if he noticed, he pretended not to. “So what happened, exactly? What happened to old Crowe? The biggest bastard I ever knew. The cat who’d knock a man’s teeth down his throat for smiling at him wrong. The cat who’d break someone’s arm ‘cuz he didn’t like his choice of whiskey. What happened to old Crowe?”
“What makes you think something happened to him?”
“Because the old Crowe wouldn’t even bother saying that. The old Crowe would just sock me one, right on the jaw.”
“Is that what you want me to do?”
He chuckled. “No, not really. I’ve seen what happens when you sock someone. They don’t usually get up on their own.”
“You’re just gonna have to get used to it. Find some other thug to hang around with. There’s plenty of them out there, you know.”
Chester eyed him warily, taking inventory. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, Crowe. But the facts still remain. You need work, and I have work for you. You remember Vitower? Marco Vitower?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s running the show now, since the Old Man died, about two years ago.”
“Not interested.”
“Oh, for fuck sake, at least hear me out! It’s about Murke. Peter Murke, you know? That fucking psycho. You heard about him while you were in the joint, yeah?”
Crowe stood up, picked Chester’s coat up off the floor, and with his other hand grabbed Chester by the collar of his expensive suit and hefted him around the love seat. “Hey!” Chester said. “Listen to me, man! Vitower wants to take Murke out!” Crowe opened the door and shoved him out onto the landing. He bounced against the far wall, looking too stunned to be angry. He’d dropped his MP3 player. Crowe stooped to pick it up and flung it at him. Chester fumbled but managed to catch it.
“I don’t give a damn about what Marco Vitower wants,” Crowe said. “Happy Fucking New Year.” He slammed the door before Chester could say anything.
Crowe waited for a minute at the door, listening. He heard Chester mumble under his breath, straighten out his clothes, and then his footsteps walking away, tapping down the wooden steps. Crowe had expected a this ain’t over or a you just wait, I’ll be back, but he’d apparently decided to bide his time.
Crowe went to the window and opened the curtains. Ice gathered at the corners of the glass. Just over the rooftops to the west, he could see the slow muddy waters of the Mississippi roiling and tumbling under the Bluff, and the lights of a moored barge near the marshy Arkansas bank. There was no moon and no stars, and the barge lights looked like glittering lost planets, reflecting dimly against the rushing universe of the river.
Crowe gazed past his own reflection and thought his thoughts.
Mid-morning, the first day of the New Year, Crowe forced himself out of bed, stumbled into the bathroom, and took a long shower. He didn’t get out until the hot water crapped out on him.
He was less than three days away from seeing the Ghost Cat for the first time.
He shaved carefully, straightened his tie, and took a cold, hard look at himself in the mirror.
He saw a man with a 50th birthday coming up in a couple of weeks, but with a slightly somber look that made him seem much, much older.
Crow’s feet had formed around his eyes and mouth during his years away from the world, and more than a sprinkling of gray had somehow appeared at his temples when he wasn’t paying attention. His face looked long and lean and hungry. They’d given him back his old suit when he got out—and admittedly it was a fine suit—but it hung on him now as loose as an elephant skin. He looked seedy and run-down. He looked like a criminal. It was a little hard on him. He’d always been a bit vain about his appearance.
Almost 50 years old. Fuck. Didn’t I just turn forty?
He had a suit and a few bucks and an apology that they couldn’t line up any work for him presently because of the shit economy, but at least he didn’t have to endure parole, and so the world was his oyster.
“Happy New Year, Crowe,” the landlord said when he passed his door. He leaned against his doorjamb, smoking a cigarette. His wife hated tobacco smoke in their apartment. He was a stringy, bony man in his mid-fifties who always smelled like a dusty book. The oversized, threadbare sweater he wore made him look even flimsier.
“Morning, Harriston.”
“Say, you ain’t goin’ out like that, are you?” He waved his cigarette at Crowe’s jacket. Crowe nodded, and Harriston said, “Damn, it’s colder’n a witch’s titty out there. Ain’t you got a winter coat?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Gonna catch yourself the pneumonia is what you’re gonna do.”
“Take care, Harriston.”
Crowe started down the stairs and Harriston said, “Oh, say, I almost forgot, hold up a minute there, Crowe.”
He took a last long drag of his cigarette, holding up his other hand in a ‘wait-a-minute’ gesture, stubbed the butt out in the standing ashtray by his door, and scurried off inside his apartment. Crowe heard him calling, “Hey, Luella, where the hell’s that envelope?” A mumbled response from a deeper room. “What do you mean, what envelope? The goddamn envelope for Mr. Crowe, woman! Can’t you get off that goddamn computer for two goddamn minutes?”
He came back out carrying the envelope in thin, nicotine-stained fingers. “This was in the vestibule door this morning.” He handed it to over. It was addressed in a fine, feminine scrawl.
Crowe shoved it in his pants pocket without opening it. He knew who it was from. “Thanks. And tell the missus I said Happy New Year.”
“Will do,” he said. “And if you come back here hacking and coughing with the pneumonia don’t come crying to me about it.”
In the vestibule downstairs Crowe pulled the envelope out of his pocket and crumpled it up. He tossed it in the trash can by the door.
Outside the building, the wind snapped down out of a slate sky, so bitter it stung his freshly-shaven cheeks. Traffic was light on the street and even the pedestrians had apparently taken a powder. He had a brief moment of disorientation, wondering where the hell all the people went, before he remembered it was a holiday. New Year’s Day. And ungodly weather to boot.
He had some eggs and bacon and a bowl of fresh fruit for breakfast at a diner just off Front. The local news was on the little flat screen television over the counter and the stiffly-smiling blonde broadcaster was talking about Peter Murke. Murke had been all over the news since Crowe had gotten back. He had a hearing coming up tomorrow to determine if he was of fit mind to stand trial for murder, and after the hearing he’d spend the night in a holding cell at Memphis P.D. before being shipped off to Jackson for evaluation.
Crowe watched with interest, thinking about what Paine had said the night before. Vitower wanted to hit Murke. No surprise, considering what had happened to Vitower’s wife. He’d need to find out more about Murke.
After breakfast, he hailed a taxi and started to look for Robert Radnovian.
The last couple days, Crowe had been digging around for him, checking
some old haunts, looking for a possible lead on a safe place he could talk to him. In a pinch, he could’ve just called Radnovian’s office at the Sheriff’s Department, but that would’ve meant embarrassing questions. Not that Crowe was concerned about his comfort—but if Radnovian was squeezed, he wouldn’t be any good to Crowe.
Radnovian was a bad guy’s wet dream. He was a cop, very well-connected, who’d worked his way up from Vice to Internal Affairs over the course of twelve years, so he knew scores of people and had dirt on just about every single one of them. He was also that rarest of things—a functional heroin addict.
His addiction to smack made him very easy to work with.
Crowe had his old home address, and the address of a girl he saw on and off, depending on how available the drugs were. He also had the latest address for Jimmy the Hink’s place, where Rad spent a lot of time. It was sort of a private club for lowlifes and hopheads. That was where Crowe finally found him.
The house was on the north side, in the shadow of the freeway that wrapped itself around Memphis like a boa constrictor. A shabby place, even by that neighborhood’s questionable standards. Ice clung to the dead remnants of lawn, nudged around broken glass and rusty auto parts. Crowe told the driver to wait, gave him a twenty to hold his nerves at bay, and trotted up the rickety front porch.
The front door was wide open, letting in the cold. Crowe walked in.
Three men and two women lounged around the front room. One of the women had nodded off with a needle stuck in her arm, the back of her head slumped against a threadbare sofa. The others were in various states of oblivion, working with the tiny dose of heroin on the table in front of them. Also on the table were a couple of syringes, a spoon with a burnt-out middle, and two or three back issues of People magazine.
One of the men had a lighter and another spoon, doing it the old school way, and the others watched him, rapt. None of them paid any attention to Crowe.
When he was halfway into the room, one of the guys finally looked up and said, “Oh. Hey, brother. Can you close that door? It’s fuckin’ freezing, man.”
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