Noble Warrior

by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

  That’s why it worked so beautifully. McCutcheon never saw it coming.

  He played me, M.D. thought.

  Demon saw rage starting to burn in his son’s heart, the toxic kind that gnawed at a person’s soul, and he wanted to help. He wasn’t mad at his boy. Wasn’t upset with him at all. Though he still didn’t know why or how McCutcheon arrived in the D.T., Demon knew in his heart that the reason must have stemmed from a miscarriage of justice. His boy never shoplifted, never bullied other kids, always did his homework, and constantly said please and thank you his entire life. Getting locked up in a hellhole like the Jentles? There had to be a story behind it, one that he wanted to hear. Maybe a little friendly conversation, he figured, something light and easy, would open things up between him and his son.

  “You mentioned your girl,” Demon said. “You two still a thing?”

  McCutcheon almost attacked his father right on the spot, but he refrained. For the first time in M.D.’s life, his dad had not done anything. The question he’d posed was entirely innocent.

  M.D., however, didn’t answer. Instead he rolled over in his bunk and took an inadvertent whiff of his flat, smelly pillow.

  If I thought I had problems before, I’m super fucked now.

  Demon, however, wasn’t ready to give up that easily.

  “Hey, son. You remember when I told ya relationships’ll just fuck a fighter up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was wrong,” Demon said. “That was an addict talkin’. Lockup is a crazy place. Like this shit is the worst nightmare a man could ever go through, and yet being here and seeing you, well...it’s like the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Prison cleaned me up. Got me sober. I ain’t used in four months and I’m thinkin’ clear for the first time in more than fifteen years.”

  “Real happy for ya, dad.”

  Demon could feel the sarcasm dripping from M.D.’s comment, but he didn’t let it affect the words he wanted to say. Some addicts never get a second chance to clear the air with their kids. If this was Demon’s, he planned on taking it.

  “Relationships, doesn’t matter who you are, M.D.” Demon put his hand on McCutcheon’s shoulder. “Relationships are everything in this world.”

  “Sounds like you found God in here.”

  “Don’t know about no God, but what I did find is peace.” Demon jumped up onto M.D.’s bunk so he could look his boy in the eye. M.D. realized that one side-kick to the chest would send his old many flying.

  “So, tell me, you still with that girl?”

  McCutcheon rolled back over and saw a shine in his father’s eye, a light he’d never before seen. It was warm, caring, and human. Instead of kicking his dad and sending him flying across the cell, M.D. sat up.

  “Naw, we’re done. Totally and completely done.”

  It was true, too. McCutcheon knew that in order to move forward with his life—to save his life—he would have to give up all his fantasies and delusions. Starting with the ones he held about Kaitlyn.

  “Too bad,” Demon said, patting M.D.’s leg. “I know you cared for her.”

  McCutcheon felt like snapping at his father. Felt like reminding his dad of the time he’d done all he could to get Kaitlyn to break up with M.D. because he felt she was bad news for him, bad news for his future, and would fuck up McCutcheon’s cage-fighting career, a career that represented Demon’s only source of income. Pimping out his kid to pay for drugs, hookers, and steak dinners wasn’t going to count in the father-of-the-year vote tallies.

  But McCutcheon held his tongue. He knew dwelling on the past would do nothing to help either of them at this point.

  “So you gonna tell me how you got in here?” Demon asked.

  “You first,” M.D. replied.

  Demon smiled and reclined against the wall. “Okay, sure.”

  “You read the papers?”

  “Do they even make newspapers anymore?” M.D. asked.

  “It’s an expression. It means, do ya follow the news?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Remember that crazy big drug bust in D-town about eight months ago? Four tons of powder and fourteen mil in cash. Hear about it?”

  McCutcheon shook his head. “No.”

  “Well, you got smartness, do the math,” Demon said. “A pound of coke costs about seven thousand dollars. That’s fourteen million dollars a ton, wholesale. Multiplication that times four tons, and you talking about fifty-six million dollars.”

  M.D. reached his arms over his head and rotated his neck around in a full circle. At some point soon he’d need to spend some time putting his body in motion. Moving some energy, working some muscles, raising his heartbeat—he needed to stay sharp.

  “Is there a point to this?” McCutcheon asked.

  “O’ course there’s a point,” Demon said. “Five-O bust up a drug deal, get four tons of powder, but only about fourteen mil in cheese at the drug buy? Where’s the rest of the cheddar?”

  “You mean, where’s the rest of the...” M.D. took a second to figure it out. “Forty something million dollars?”

  “Forty-two million, three hundred eighty-seven thousand, six hundred fifty-two dollars and no cents.”

  “You know the exact figure?”

  “Of course I do. It’s mine, ain’t it?”

  M.D. paused. Then he let loose with a big laugh.

  “Man, I’ve heard some bullshit out of you before but this has got to be the biggest bullshit yet.”

  “Fine, fuck you then. Don’t believe me,” Demon huffed. “And you’re welcome for saving your ass, too.”

  “I never needed your help.”

  “Not what it looked like to me.”

  The two stopped talking and Demon, frustrated, tried to peek his head down the hall to see if he could spy any other inmates. Though he couldn’t, he knew the pedophiles were out there.

  “Can’t believe they got me in here with the Cho Mo’s,” he screamed out. “YOU SICK FUCKS! Better hope I don’t get a chance to get these hands on you!”

  Demon’s words echoed down the hall, but none of the prisoners replied. They’d heard these sorts of threats a thousand times before and most were used to living with a perpetual target on their back. No one felt sorry for them. No one would help them if attacked. Most people in prison, as well as in society, would be happy to see them dead.

  First beaten, wounded, and severely abused, then dead.

  Time in lockup passes more slowly than it does on the outside. Each tick of a clock’s second hand feels heavier, more methodical, more plodding and pronounced. After ninety minutes with nothing to do and his curiosity piqued, M.D. reignited the conversation.

  “G’head, finish your story.”

  “My story?” Demon asked.

  “Well, what would you call it?”

  “Factualness.”

  “Whatever,” M.D. replied. “I’m listening.”

  Demon stood up and began acting out his tale as if he were doing a performance of Penitentiary Theater.

  “So I go to the feds, ya see, to turn in the High Priest and make a deal, ’cause the Priests was all up into my ass since you lost that fight against Seizure.”

  “I didn’t lose,” M.D. replied.

  “Oh yeah,” Demon asked. “What happened?”

  “I threw the fight.”

  Demon shook his head. “Pretty fucking lame. There’s other ways to conversate with your old man, ya know. Ways to clear the air without trying to get me murdered and shit.” Demon couldn’t help but laugh. “Man, we got us some family dysfunction, don’t we?”

  M.D. gazed at the iron bars surrounding them.

  “Ya think?”

  Demon smiled. Prison humor always made for dark and funny jokes.

  “Yessir, the moment you lost I was under water for like two hundred g’s,” Demon continued. “I mean, shee-it...I was done! Priests always pay but they get paid, too. Those fellas don’t mess around.”

  “So you snitched?”
>
  “I survived. Ain’t the same thing.”

  It’s a matter of perspective, M.D. thought, but he didn’t see the point in arguing about it.

  “Keep going,” M.D. said.

  “Turns out the High Priest ain’t what the lawmen really wanted. I’m like, ‘How da fuck you not want the biggest boss in the city?’ But they were like, naw...we need a sexy bust. Something to feed the media.”

  “The media?”

  “They needed some front page action cause of all the bad press they been taking since the city of Detroit declared bankruptcy,” Demon explained. “Cops ain’t even bothering to stop average robbers anymore, and with all the budget cuts and eliminated services and shit well, every day TV news just be eating their ass. Especially near where we rest, by Zone Seventy-five, near Fenkell.”

  “So they wanted some propaganda?” This part of Demon’s story made sense to McCutcheon. Detroit’s crime, corruption, and general despondency seemed like the lead story on local news every night. A story about the cops winning the war on drugs certainly couldn’t hurt anything.

  “So I told ’em about this drug buy that was coming up,” Demon said. “I knew about this monthly flip when I was in all good with the Priests during your fightin’ days. Figured I’d tip the coppers off to throw them a bone and be on my way to go figure some new shit out for myself. Didn’t know it was gonna be that big of a drug buy, though. I mean, this shit turned out to be international.”

  Demon crossed the cell to take a leak in the toilet. “Just a shame how a person has to use the can in lock-up. I still ain’t comfortable taking a dump in front of another man. Treat us all like a bunch of fucking animals, they do.”

  When he finished whizzing, Demon turned back around.

  “You gonna wash your hands?” M.D. asked.

  Demon adjusted his nuts. “I can’t seem to find the moist towelettes.”

  M.D. shook his head. His father was never much for hygiene in the first place. “G’head, finish,” M.D. said.

  “You don’t believe none of this, do ya?”

  “I can’t think of any reason in the world why I’d ever doubt you, Dad.” M.D. had been lied to so many times before by his father that he knew that only a fool would consider this made-up fantasy real. Yet he had to admit, he was interested to hear what kind of crazy final explanation his father would cook up to tie this whole cock-and-bull story together. Demon was one of those bullshitters in life who had a gift for making a person want to hear the rest of his nonsense, even though they knew it was all pure make-believe. He owned a gift for it, like the kind of guy who could sell mud in a rain forest, and even his own son surrendered to his enchanted ways.

  “So what happens was,” Demon continued, “the cops show up, but they ain’t got enough men, and a crazy-ass gun battle breaks out. These South American motherfuckers got Uzis and shit. Dealers gets shot, buyers get shot, a few officers get blasted. Looked to me like that shit was cop on cop, too. All hell broke loose.”

  “Wait a minute—you were there?”

  “Yep.”

  “Because the cops brought you?”

  “Hell, no. They didn’t know I’d be lurking,” Demon answered. “I showed up ’cause sometimes a mouse can find a bit of cheese after busts like this. You know, dudes throw bags into the bushes and shit, when they are running and tryin’ to get away. I was hoping to catch me maybe a quarter ounce of powder or something, just to feed my own habit.”

  “Like a scavenger?”

  “Yo, watch your tongue,” Demon said. “I’m not so sure I like your attitude and all, and considering you’re gonna be my beneficiary.”

  “Your beneficiary?” M.D. laughed. “So like you got an estate planner now? Dad, this is so good.”

  “No, I didn’t buy any real estate,” Demon said, scrunching up his face. “But I might.”

  “With the forty million dollars you have, right?”

  “Forty-two million, three hundred eighty-seven thousand, six hundred fifty-two dollars and no cents.”

  McCutcheon shook his head. This was classic Demon Daniels. Tell a lie and then stick to the story so sincerely that no one could ever refuse to believe you.

  “You are one in a million.”

  “Don’t I know it.” Demon grinned proudly. “Okay, so like at the end, people scatter in all directions, but the cops win, and get a nice couple of photographs with four tons of powder and a hunk of cash laid out on a brown picnic table for all the D-town media to drool over.”

  “And you had a front row seat to all this?”

  “Ain’t that something? During the chaos—and I mean this shit was like Iraq—I grabbed two huge duffel bags and hauled ass outta there. I know some dirty cops gotta be looking for their money, too. They probably think one of the gangstaz done took it. Want payback, too. But what they don’t know is, it was me.”

  Demon laid back, stretched out comfortably and folded his hand behind his head.

  “Now that shit’s my buried treasure.”

  McCutcheon stared at his father reclining on the prison bed as if it were a lounge chair by a tropical beach.

  “You are a lying motherfucker.”

  “It’s true,” Demon said. “How you think I got my juice in here? I done laid low for like two months, then went back to the Priests after shit settled down and gave ’em double what I owed them. Told ’em I won big playing the ponies in Atlantic City.”

  “And they believed you?”

  “Those motherfuckers don’t care. A bitch walks in with four hundred grand in cash and says here ya go, clear my name, they take that shit and say, ‘Thank you very much, would you like one of our hoochies to lick your Popsicle?’”

  “And they had no idea it was their drug money you were giving back to them?”

  “That’s the sweet part; it wasn’t their drug money,” Demon said. “The Priests were just brokering a deal for some rednecks out of Canada. People think Canada is all polite and clean and shit, but they got some big powder-lovin’ fools up across the border. It wasn’t Priest money I took. It was Canadian cash.”

  “You stole Canadian dollars?”

  “Is you stupid?” Demon asked. “Of course not. Who buys cocaine with funny looking Canada money? These real American greenbacks, I got. Green as they come. For once in my life, I was in the right place at the right time.”

  McCutcheon looked down the hall and wondered when food might be coming. Like every other prisoner he hated the S.O.S., but hunger was hunger. No signs of a meal delivery, though.

  “So how’d you end up in here?” McCutcheon asked.

  “Jaywalking.”

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me. Jaywalking.”

  “This story just gets better and better.”

  “What happened was I got drunk in Vegas and decided to cross from Caesar’s Palace to the Paris Hotel right in the middle of Las Vegas Boulevard with two hotties, one white, one Puerto Rican, on each arm. Oh, you shoulda seen them titties,” Demon bragged. “But some junior Nazi policeman busted me and found out I had a warrant for my arrest, ’cause I’d done violated my parole by not checking in with my P.O. for a few months back in D-town. Got cuffed on the spot, extradited back to Michigan, and the bitch-ass judge gave me nine months to teach me a lesson. Been here for five, only four more left to go.”

  “And then you’re gonna take your buried treasure and go to, let me guess, the Cayman Islands?”

  M.D. always knew it was his father’s dream to one day retire a wealthy man in the Cayman Islands.

  “Indeed,” Demon answered. “Or at least I was till you showed up.”

  The cell got quiet, the fun and lightheartedness of Demon’s story giving way to the cold reality of their current circumstances. Demon, reflective, crossed to the front bars of the cage and picked at the chipped white paint. Four months left on a bid was practically nothing to a con. An easy stretch. On the other hand surviving four months in the D.T. after double-crossing the Priests was a
n eternity. It’s one thing not to have gone through with the hit against his own kid; it was quite another to put a knife in the neck of the main head shotcaller. Demon knew that being quarantined with the Cho Mo’s might offer him some protection, but M.D.’s father was also a realist, and he knew chances were high that he was already a dead man.

  At any moment, a hit could come.

  M.D. started inspecting the cell and studying the environment. He’d been well-trained in the art of urban warfare and had been taught that if a way existed in, a way always existed out. “This prison’s too old not to have weaknesses,” McCutcheon said, surveying the domain. “You been here for months. What have you heard?”

  “There’s only two ways out of the D.T.,” Demon said. “Parole or the morgue truck. Everyone knows that.”

  McCutcheon used his finger to peel away some of the aged concrete in the back corner of the cell and started ruminating over the how the plumbing lines ran vertically down the southern wall and then under the floor. The water supply had to flow in from somewhere, which meant that where there were pipes there was crawl space.

  “There’s gotta be a way,” M.D. said. “There’s always a way.”

  He tested the strength of the toilet to see if he could pull it off the wall. It gave a bit, but M.D. didn’t want to yank it with full strength until he formulated a plan. Just ripping a shitter off its anchors would get him nowhere. Brains before brawn. Always.

  Demon studied McCutcheon as McCutcheon studied the cell and couldn’t help but admire his son’s optimism and grit. In the cage, his son always had more heart than any fighter Demon had ever seen. M.D. never gave up, never surrendered, and never believed he was ever out of a fight as long as there was still time left on the clock to battle. In so many ways, McCutcheon demonstrated perseverance, honor, brains, bravery, and goodness. In so many ways, McCutcheon demonstrated all the qualities that Demon himself did not.

  “I done made a lot of mistakes, M.D.,” Demon said to his son. “Lord knows I was a terrible dad. But you’ve always been my boy, and you gotta know one thing.”