The Devil Came Calling (Rolson McKane Mystery Book 2)

by T. Braddy

  “Makes a whole lot of sense.”

  “He lived on his own at ten, was gutting skeevy johns and crooked poker players by thirteen. Got enamored with body parts and started a collection. Must have heard about cultures where, you know, where they cut off people’s hands for theft?”

  “I’m aware.”

  “Well, for some reason, that tickled his fancy. Took to it like riding a bike. Soon enough, he had a reputation for being as mean as he was unkillable. He destroyed a whole lot of lives, even before he got propositioned to take up collecting money for half-assed mobsters. Refugees with some scratch and a vendetta to match. As he rose in the ranks, he got rich, but shit, he didn’t care about that. Money just fueled his passion, and his passion was dead bodies. You don’t want to hear about the depth of that man’s depravity.”

  “I think I do, though,” I said. “I think I need to know.”

  “It ain’t– man, it’s not something grown men get into, conversationally. You’ll think it’s kid stuff. Santa Claus. Fairies. The Boogeyman. Shit like that.”

  “You’d be surprised,” I said.

  Richie wasn’t a sheepish sort of guy, so it was kind of astounding to see him fumble for the right words. Eventually, he seemed to land on them, because his eyes widened.

  “You know how I said his folks were from Haiti?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, and so people down there – a lot of them – believe in some kind of voodoo, yeah?”

  “I’m not up on my Haitian history, but yes, I believe that’s correct.”

  “Doesn’t seem right, because his progenitors, they went the way of Dillinger pretty early in little Bellerose’s life, but he still got enough to get along.”

  “Got enough of what?”

  “Voodoo, man.”

  “Huh.”

  “Dude thinks he can talk with spirits, can have them do things he wants them to do.”

  I stared at him, but he mistook my incredulity for a lack of belief. In actuality, it was my overwhelming belief which caused me to be speechless. Richie didn’t know that, and it would be impossible to let him in on my little secret now, so I kept it to myself.

  “I told you that shit was crazy,” he said.

  “South is filled with ghosts, spirits, and haints,” I said. “No surprise there.”

  “Rumor is, he’s got this one room, keeps it handy just for torturing fools. That’s where the real rhapsodically supernatural shit goes down. Real repugnant, that one is.”

  “And you decided to accept money from him.”

  “I was in a bad spot.”

  “But you’re not now.”

  “No, I’m not now. But the trouble with money is hanging onto it. You start giving it away, and every last dime seems to slip from your fingers.”

  “But the settlement from your work injury.”

  “The settlement is mine. I took that loan from Bellerose before I had two nickels to scrape together. Dude added his own percentage fee on top, not because he needs the money, but because he wanted to see me squirm.”

  “So pay the man. You enjoy your life. Give him what he wants.”

  “I will, I will,” he said. “I just got to find the right time.”

  “When your nutsack is touching the sawblade,” I said.

  “Keeps the blood pumping,” he replied.

  * * *

  He parked near a sand dune and turned the car off. “Get out and stretch. You look like a balled-up fist. I’m going to make contact with Bellerose’s people. You might want to see if you can get in touch with any of your folks, tell them to turtle down for the next few days, just in case.”

  “You sure you want to do this, Richie? You seemed to have a pretty good set-up out on the island.”

  “Smoke and mirrors, McKane. That shit was all smoke and mirrors. None of it has made me happy in a long goddamned time. I feel, I don’t know, listless. Like a boat left floating in the harbor. Now, at least, I’ve got a way to help somebody, even if that somebody is a no-good alcoholic like you.”

  I laughed. “Even the Pope drinks wine.”

  He got out and wandered over the hill, thumbing through what I assumed to be the contacts in his phone. One last look over his shoulder, a thumb’s up gesture, and he disappeared.

  I basked in the sun’s waning majesty for a while, watching the sky transform into a beautiful pink-and-orange smear. When I felt the transcendence pass, I topped the hill myself and headed in the opposite direction.

  Two missed calls from Deuce.

  And one voicemail.

  “Huh,” I said aloud before I could catch myself. The breeze coming off the ocean caught the word and dragged it away.

  I slid open my phone and listened.

  “Rol, my man. It’s been a long time. Hope your journey of personal enlightenment has taken you far. At least as far as Savannah, because that’s where I am, and that’s where I heard you are. I see you’re in a big old shitty situation, and I’m here to help. Might need your assistance in a personal matter of my own when it’s all said and done.”

  He took a deep breath. I missed my oldest and best friend.

  “You can’t do this on your own. Last time you got tangled up, it nearly killed you. Took my ass coming in at the last minute to save you. I can’t do that, if you don’t call me back. I’ll be waiting but not at some hotel. I’m going to rip Savannah apart until I find you, okay? Believe that. Be safe, Rol, and be in touch.”

  Deuce? In Savannah? I hadn’t seen him since shortly after Vanessa’s funeral, when he and I went out for a beer that turned into ten or twelve. A few days later, he ended up chasing a bail jumper through the swamps of southern Georgia, and I made my decision to skip town.

  But he hadn’t given up on me.

  I hit the “call back” button on my voicemail screen and let it ring twice before hanging up. My entire body was cold with anxiety. I didn’t quite know how to handle that conversation, and even though he called me right back, it was impossible for me to answer.

  I needed to handle this, to do my best to get out of it, before I dragged Deuce into it. I couldn’t handle him catching a bullet for me, like everyone else had.

  Still, his words lingered with me, and I imagined they’d be in my head for the rest of this debacle, for however long it lasted.

  A voice pierced the breeze sweeping across the dune. It was Richie’s. “Things are in the works,” he said. “Now we hide out.”

  * * *

  I dressed in one of Richie’s tattered ironic t-shirts, some sunglasses, a big-brimmed Braves cap, and I snuck into the hospital where Jess had been working off her near-overdose.

  No cop, no handcuffs. Maybe they weren’t pressing charges for the drugs.

  She was sleeping, an innocent-looking slumber. The purplish bruise underneath her eye had begun to fade, but she looked pale and thin, even for her. Her skin had an unhealthy iridescence about it, sparkling and shiny but not quite human. Her mouth had twisted into a grotesque frown, the result of pain or bad dreams.

  “Hey, Rolson,” she said, barely opening her mouth.

  I looked up to see her eyes slightly open. The center of her brow became an assemblage of lines as she affected a bewildered expression.

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “I got eyes still,” she said weakly. “Drug overdose ain’t going to to blind me. Plus, you’re the only person’s come to see me since I got dragged to this hellhole.”

  “Must be torture, being forced to get better.”

  “They won’t even let me smoke in here. What kind of prison is this?”

  I smiled. “How’re you holding up?”

  “I feel like shit. Haven’t felt this bad since I tried to kick the last time. Like the goddamn flu, but multiplied by a billion.”

  “And your stomach.”

  “Pumped and sore. Say it’ll be a while before I feel normal again. I wonder what the hell normal’s supposed to feel like. It’s been so long since I
was anything approaching normal.”

  “Depends on the person, I figure, but if I had to guess, I’d say you’re not supposed to feel like Sisyphus’s rock just rolled over you.”

  “Ha! Actually, I have no clue what in the hell that means.”

  “You’ve let your daily burden run you over.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” she said. “You here to scream at me?”

  “I wouldn’t do anything of the sort. Some questions, maybe, but I’ll try to keep my voice down.”

  “I just guessed, after, you know...”

  She pointed at the black eye, which had, like her other eye, begun to well up with tears.

  “Richie didn’t do this,” she said.

  “I kinda figured that out. Richie’s not such a bad guy. I wonder why you’d sic me on him.”

  “You were new. Easy. Didn’t know how you’d react. Too sensibly, if I had to guess.”

  “No such thing as ‘too sensible.’”

  “For an addict, there is. Richie has – had – a good connection. Figured I could work the system, get him to fund my relapse. It’s not like he doesn’t have the money.”

  “I don’t know if that’s true,” I said. “He owes money to–”

  “To Bellerose, yeah. He’s always walked a mighty fine line with that man.”

  “Something tells me this time is different.”

  She said, “He’s used up all his fuck-ups.”

  I sat down in the chair and put my feet up. “Tell me about the man who attacked you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “That tells me way more than you think it does, Jess.”

  She blinked once. A nurse wandered in, changed the pillows around, gave her some form of medication, and then departed without a word.

  I said, “You ready to tell me?”

  “He’s dangerous.”

  “Which is why you’ve got to tell me who he is.”

  “He’ll kill me.”

  “Not if I stop him.”

  “He’ll kill you, too.”

  “I’m not scared of him.”

  “You should be. He’s a monster in human form. Get Richie to tell you about him.”

  “Richie doesn’t know him.”

  She sat up suddenly. “Yes, he does, the lying twit. Get him to tell you about Limba Fitz.”

  I mentally unwrapped the diaphanous coating on the name, tried to plumb the depths of my subconscious for any trace of knowledge about it. I came up with nothing. However, the name itself was imbued with a kind of inherent evil. Sounded like a Bond Villain, or some character out of one of Richie’s video games.

  “Interesting name.”

  “He’s an interesting guy. Kills people for fun.”

  “And for profit, if I had to guess.”

  She sighed. The air came out in a dry, ragged squeak.“He’s the guy who visited me. Force-fed me the pills. He said he wanted to send a message.”

  “To whom?”

  “To you, I guess. He knows we had sex. Says he watched us through the window before he sent in his buddy to kill you.”

  I tried to hide the not inconsiderable disgust I felt at the thought of that monster seeing me in flagrante delicto.

  “Wonder why he didn’t go in himself, make sure he did the job.”

  She shrugged. “Guy goes in. Guy ends up dead. Maybe he meant for you to kill that guy. Now the cops are all over you. Which reminds me–”

  I peered over my shoulder at the window. No cops yet.

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll get out of here soon enough. How do you know him?”

  “I don’t.” She paused. “Vanessa did.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Right before she left – with some of Bellerose’s money, I might add – she started talking to these dudes from Atlanta. People who work with Limba. People who work for this big-time drug dealer importer guy in Buckhead. That’s how she got enamored with the idea of taking off. Nothing much left to do in Savannah. She’d seen the beach, done the drugs. She needed a new challenge.”

  “And hooking up with this Fitz guy is her ticket to Atlanta.”

  “Funny you should say it like that,” she said.

  I experienced a fleeting spike in anger at her implication, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to ask her about it. I was on a singular mission, and Vanessa’s transgressions no longer held sway over it. An empty feeling, because everything had to do with Vanessa, and I knew that.

  I looked from Jess’s hands, punctured by tubes of various sorts, to her eyes, which barely remained open. She forced a nod. Whatever she had taken was beginning to get its hooks in her. Her eyes fluttered. “Yeah, she...She. Thought it was a way out.”

  “Does he have any weakness? Anything you could tell me to try on him?”

  A shake of the head. “He’s a mythical beast...Invincible...like...Super...”

  Her eyes fluttered again, and she slipped under the surface of consciousness. I took her hand and leaned down and kissed it. “Sleep tight,” I said.

  In that state, she wasn’t a drug addict, wasn’t a lost person in search of something. Just a sleeping body, regenerating her mental faculties and imagination for her next bout of consciousness. We’re all lost, and we’re all looking for something. Some of us are just more successful at finding it. I needed to find a killer named Limba Fitz, and I was going to rip Savannah apart, if need be.

  * * *

  Richie had information he had neglected to divulge. If Jess wasn’t too strung out, and if she knew what she was talking about, then Richie was acquainted with Limba Fitz.

  What was I walking into?

  Back in Lumber Junction, I had trapped myself in the web of a man who didn’t even try that hard to keep his villainy a secret. “Hey, let’s go hang out at an abandoned building,” he’d more or less said. “Also, I’ve got a gun. Wink, wink.”

  If Richie had a previous tie to Fitz that I was unaware of, then I was walking into my own personal Hamburger Hill. This could be a ploy to get me in the right position – over a barrel – to be reamed into infinity by the monster who had already taken so much from me.

  But Richie was my only confidant in Savannah. He was the man who had chauffeured me around town, had risked being an accomplice to a bogus murder charge in order to keep me on the lam. If he wanted me trapped, he could have done so already. For a few nights now, I had lain awake in a bed at his place, listening to the cacophony of the bullet hell that Richie’s semi-permanent lodgers released upon the household. I was an immobile target, easy pickings for someone who seemingly plucked my identity out of thin air. Limba Fitz was the devil’s conductor, and he was playing one hell of a concierto right now.

  If he knew nothing, he knew nothing. No harm, no foul. Jess was a liar, in that case, and Richie proved to be a somewhat selfless individual in this repulsive, mediocre world. A believer in the green light, and an optimistic spirit in the soulless cesspool we call reality.

  If he were lying, if he knew Fitz, then perhaps it was I who was the grotesque one. Maybe I was too plainly naive to be able to exist. Shame on me.

  Still, he knew something. Had to. He ran with Bellerose, at least enough to amass a healthy debt to the man, and somehow he was still alive, so he had some skin in the game.

  But that was about to change. I texted him and told him to meet me back at his house.

  He didn’t respond, but I suspected he’d be there when I arrived.

  “I don’t know Fitz,” he said, as soon as I walked in the door. Some teenagers were playing Halo multiplayer in the main living room. Of all the things I had learned since coming to Savannah, the words Halo, Call of Duty, multiplayer, and deathmatch were probably the most surprising. The speakers were blaring science fiction sound effects, so I invited Richie out on the porch to discuss it.

  We had to shoo away some kids doing bumps off a CD case on the upstairs patio, but they went away tamely enough, considering what they were inge
sting.

  “I don’t know him,” Richie repeated. “Jess texted me, warned me to tell you everything I know about Limba Fitz, but I’ve got to tell you: I don’t know much.”

  I leaned against the railing, stared out over the descending sun, spackling the backdrop of the sky with a myriad of colors ranging in hue and brightness. I absently wondered how many more of these I would be blessed with seeing.

  “Tell me what you do know.”

  “He’s crazy as fuck. Gets off on hurting people.”

  “Sounds a lot like Bellerose.”

  He sucked his teeth. “Except way worse. Bellerose is a maniac, but he has an ethos, at least. This Fitz guy is a walking flood warning. He is a sick motherfucker, and the people he works for just let him off the leash sometimes.”

  “What’s his damage?”

  “He’s a living, breathing murder machine. Nobody knows where he came from, and nobody has cared to ask him. He drinks virgin blood and sacrifices newborn babies. He’s the Alpha and Omega of assholes, and he will not let you live through this.”

  “That’s not putting a lot of confidence in me, Richie.”

  “You’re a good dude. You’ve got a heart buried somewhere beneath all the bullshit. But this guy, no way. Monstrous doesn’t even begin to describe him. I heard he killed his family with a chainsaw. Loving, suburban family. Picturesque life. He just couldn’t stand to be in the presence of happiness.”

  “How much of this is apocryphal?”

  “Who knows? Man lives long enough, every story is a legend. Just like you, man.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Yeah, you, man. Some people say you torched a building full of bodies and got away with it because your father is the town sheriff. Any truth to that?”

  “No,” I said hesitantly.

  “See? That’s how it happens.”

  “I’m no killer, but if this guy is as bad as you say he is, I might have to become one.”

  Richie ran his fingers around his mouth, as though stroking an invisible goatee.

  “At first, I didn’t want to believe that was the guy after you, but after the thing at the AA meeting–”

  “The shooting, Richie. It was a shooting. People died.”