Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time

by M. P. Wright

  Errol ‘Sure Ting’ Toleman was the kind of man who my mama would say “needed a good leaving alone”. He was a weasel-featured Barbadian who stank of bad luck and was as stupid as he was greedy. He made a cut out of anyone who favoured frittering away their money on the horses, dogs and anything else you cared to bet on. You could find him skittering in and out of anywhere that housed a card game and he parasitically attached himself like a leech to those poor creatures intent on losing either all the money they had in their hip pockets or the shirt off of their backs. On a Friday, if you had just received a wage packet and you liked to gamble, Sure Ting would be hanging over your shoulder like a vulture ready to tear the flesh off a rotting carcass. He was far from your nine-to-five kinda guy.

  “Now ole Sure Ting, he thought he got a better hand o’ poker at the table than Carnell, tinks he’s got him on the ropes. Fair hand, the man’s got. There’s two hundred notes on the table and Sure Ting offers up his motor, cos he shit outta cash and those cards he’s holding, well he knows they’re a sure ting, or he tinks they are. You know what I mean? Carnell, well he takes the bet offa the man. Only Sure Ting forgot one real important ting.”

  “Yeah, what he forget?”

  Vic had me hooked. He stared over at me with a knowing twinkle in his eye.

  “Carnell cheats like a real muthafucka!”

  Vic shrugged his heavyset shoulders and began to chuckle to himself as he returned to watching the door of the shebeen.

  We sat and I continued to listen to Vic laughing to himself as he relived the tale he’d just told me in his head. On the radio, Ken Dodd began to sing “Happiness” and Vic hurriedly snapped the wireless off, scratching the back of his head furiously with his fingers, the white-hot-tipped joint hanging from the corner of his mouth, a tiny trail of smoke rising up and gently bouncing off of the inside of the roof and soaking its pungent scent into the back seat and passenger shelf of the car. He looked over at me, his face full of bemusement at the music he’d just turned off.

  “There ain’t no way I’m listening to that ugly-assed, buck-toothed honky Scouser. Not now, not ever.”

  He shook his head in disgust, then returned to watching out for his chance to move.

  Earlier in the evening, Vic had gone into minute detail as to what was going to go down later that night when we were face to face with the hulking doorman. My cousin had left me in no doubt of the kind of damage and pain that Clarence could inflict if he was of a mind to. I was trusting Vic to keep the giant’s mind on other things.

  “OK, JT, now you clear on what we gotta do, brother?

  I nodded sharply, as Vic continued to go over his plan of action again.

  “Let me do the talking, it’ll be cool, man. We git the information you want real quick and we git outta there an’ drinking my rum back at your digs in twenty minutes instead o’ sitting in here like a couple o’ cold stiff dicks waiting to git laid.” Vic swung open the passenger door, readying himself to leave. “Now c’mon, let’s git this shit over and done with.” He nudged me in the ribs with his elbow and I yelped in pain. “Sorry, man, I forgot ’bout your tenderness down there.” He laughed at me as we got out of the car.

  Some light flakes of snow had begun to fall as we walked over to the shebeen. We climbed the large granite steps and Vic gave a hefty knock at the dark wood-panelled front door as I stood by his side. Behind us, the only light was the orange glare of the street lamps. Clarence opened the door, with a slight look of surprise on his face when he saw the two of us standing in front of him.

  “Hey, Vic. What you doin’ here, man? The pumped-up doorman frowned at us. “I don’t normally see your mean ass outside o’ here.”

  Clarence spoke with all the grace of a man who had a house brick tied to the end of his tongue. He came out onto the step, closing the door behind him.

  The man’s huge bulk was now blocking our further advancement towards the entrance of the shebeen, but we had no interest in going inside.

  “You sure right ’bout that, Clarence. I don’t normally find myself needing to buy pussy or cheap rum from one o’ Otis’s joints. But my man here is looking to find himself a special kind o’ lady an’ I thought you might just be the fella able to help him out.”

  Vic was keeping his patter nice and light, but underneath the froth he was ready for Clarence to turn on the pair of us. He started to push the doorman’s patience a little further.

  “Only you see JT here, well, he’s kinda reserved, shy even, and he was hoping to git himself an introduction of a more personal nature. He’s looking fo’ someting with a little more class than him ending up knocking his ting up one o’ Otis’s cock-rats in those nasty back rooms you got going on there.” Vic pointed over the bouncer’s large shoulder towards the shebeen’s closed door. “You know what I mean, brother?”

  Clarence, clearly irritated by our presence and Vic’s banter, moved towards us and we took a step back down the icy steps.

  “Hey, Vic, Papa wouldn’t want you using his other name like you keep doing.”

  Vic’s plan was starting to successfully unfurl, and with the cunning of a black widow spider had begun to draw the big fellow towards his web, readying himself to strike.

  Clarence looked directly at me, sizing me up before speaking again.

  “If the brother here wants to meet a special kinda lady then he either needs to step inside o’ here with a full wallet or git himself to church and find himself a wholesome piece o’ tail there.”

  Another step backwards, closer to the pavement and Vic’s web.

  “Well, like I said, Clarence, JT’s kind o’ unsure if he wants to be wiping his ting on one o’ Otis’s skanky bed sheets with the sort o’ bitch that’s gonna leave more than a lastin’ impression on his cock in a week’s time. You can see my point, brother?”

  “Look, I ain’t got time fo’ any more stupid questions ’bout finding your boy there a clean whore. If he wants some o’ what we got, he pays the lady and he gets a piece o’ ass. If not, take a hike.”

  “Hey, we don’t wanna spoil your night, Clarence, my man here’s willing to make it worth your while.”

  Vic held up two fingers and his thumb and rubbed them together hypnotically. Clarence wasn’t the kind of guy to be hypnotised, but, if we were lucky, he could still be bitten by my cousin’s careful scheming.

  “I ain’t interested in that nigger’s money, now git the fuck off my steps.”

  Clarence outstretched the palms of his large hands in front of him and, still without touching either of us, used them to back us down the remainder of his precious steps away from the entrance – just as Vic had told me he would. He’d bait him one more time to get Clarence where he wanted him.

  “Hey now, there ain’t no need fo’ you to be blowing no blood vessels. You need all the red stuff you got to keep it rushing to that big ole head o’ yours an’ stop you falling on that fat ass that’s hanging out the back o’ those baggy trousers you wearing, Clarence.”

  That did it. The big man flipped.

  “Git your muthafuckin’ asses off o’ my gate door, who you think you’re talking to?”

  Vic had pushed all of Clarence Maynard’s buttons and it had nearly paid off for us.

  We retreated backwards one more time, and I caught Vic darting his eyes quickly from left to right to check that the street was clear of passers-by or punters. When our feet hit the pavement, I moved quickly to my left as Vic came in close towards Clarence’s body and shot his knee hard into his balls, immediately making the big man double over in pain and grasp with both hands at his testicles. Vic then tore down with his fist across the incapacitated bouncer’s nose, blood spraying onto the path in front of our feet. He quickly forced his left hand under Clarence’s thick neck, pinching at his throat with his thumb and forefinger and gripping tightly at his windpipe, crushing his ability to breathe. I took hold of the doorman’s enormous left arm at the wrist and bent it around fiercely behind his back, pushing him for
ward, as Vic quickly led the incapacitated Clarence by the throat down the next set of steps into the basement area, pushing him violently against the wall and slamming his fist into his nose again.

  I then heard the mechanical sound of a blade disengaging from its metal and bone handle and in a split second Vic’s flick knife was held firmly against Clarence’s jugular, the razor-sharp edge drawing blood as it sliced a thin cut into the bouncer’s skin.

  “Let’s be cool now, real cool.” Vic pushed the blade a little harder into Clarence’s neck before he spoke again. “Now I know I got your attention, brother? You just smile back at me, no need to try and nod that hunk-o’-lead head of yours. I don’t wanna have to slice it off with my pen knife – you git me?”

  Clarence stared at Vic, eyes watering, his anger abated by the razor-sharp cutting edge at his craw. He pulled more of a grimace than a smile as he obeyed my hot-tempered cousin’s request, showing the whites of his gritted teeth, which were stained with his own blood. Vic calmly continued with his instructions to the big man.

  “Now, my man here has a couple o’ questions fo’ you, an I don’t wanna be holding this chopper at you ugly-assed head fo’ too long, cos your breath’s starting to fuck up my sense o’ smell. We on the same wavelength here, Clarence?” Vic twisted the knife into the big man’s neck to make his point. “You need to be smiling, brother.”

  The doorman smiled again, the severity of his predicament now fully realised. I moved in closer towards the bloodied doorman, who stared back at me like a roped-down bull desperate to break free of its secured bonds.

  When I began to speak, Clarence immediately started to suck air in between his crimson-tinted teeth as a precursor to our conversation, which simply stated in street parlance that he had nothing to say to me. Vic thought differently on the matter, and like a cobra striking at a mongoose’s unprotected hind he struck out at the giant’s shin with the toe of his shoe, dropping the huge man to the floor, then pushed down hard with the flat of his foot onto the hulk’s face, pressing his cheek and jaw into the slushy concrete. Now Vic was pissed off.

  “OK, enough of this fuckin’ around. You wanna hiss through your teeth like some old bitch on the hump, that’s fine, brother. But you gonna have to do it with that thick throat o’ yours cut wide open, you hearing me?”

  “What the fuck you want with me?” The goliath had finally got the message that Vic meant business.

  I bent down in the wet ice so that I could make myself understood more easily. He was going have a hard time hearing what I had to say with Vic’s sole across one ear and the other pinned down into the wet ground.

  “Few weeks ago, a white dude, could’ve been a cop, walked through that door above us. Then a short while later he walks out again with a lady on his arm. Now I know that upstairs ain’t the kind place that honky coppers frequent without a good reason. They either come fo’ cash or a piece of ass. That’s right, ain’t it, Clarence?”

  Vic pushed down hard again onto the decked man’s thick skull, prompting Clarence to speak.

  “Yeah, that’s right . . . They coming fo’ both, most times.”

  “So how often do they come and where they taking those girls who walk out with ’em?”

  I stayed calm, keeping my questioning relaxed. Vic was doing all the hard work, and he looked like he was enjoying himself.

  “I don’t know where they take ’em. Papa got a couple o’ pigs in his pocket. He keeps ’em sweet with a little cream off o’ the top and a choice of some cunny, that’s all I know.”

  Before I got chance to press him a little harder, Vic took his foot off of Clarence’s face and quickly knelt down next to the big man, his knife in hand, its pointed tip placed firmly inside Clarence’s ear.

  “Let me tell you what I know ’bout you, dirty bullaman.” Vic spat out his forthcoming threat with real menace. “I know you like pushing that nasty cock o’ yours in places it don’t belong and that you like to be around schoolboys in your spare time.” Vic gave Clarence the chance for a moment’s reflection. “Now I know that’s someting you don’t want getting round, cos it’s gonna fuck up your reputation as a stand-up kinda brother. You getting me, you ass’ole? Now unless you start giving my man here some answers to the questions he’s asking, you gonna find yourself walking round this neighbourhood with everybody knowing you is a one-eared, kiddie-fuckin’ nigger.”

  The beaten colossus didn’t need further persuasion to continue to spill his guts.

  “There’s two of ’em, both on the take outta Bridewell police station. They come any time they wanting some action fo’ themselves. But only one of ’em comes every other Saturday night to collect a special piece o’ ass that Papa brings fo’ him. The pig’s an action-man-lookin’ type o’ dude, with a crew cut. I don’t know names or where that honky takes the bitches, and I don’t care, I swear, man.”

  “When you expecting him to pick up his next girl?”

  “Keep him talking while he’s still scared,” I thought to myself.

  “He should be over tomorrow night, after eleven.”

  Vic kept the pointed end of his blade firmly in Clarence’s ear. He looked over at me to make sure I’d got all I needed out of the fearful child molester. I nodded that I had, then Vic got to his feet, took a screwed-up piece of paper out of his back trouser pocket and flung it onto the downed man’s head. It bounced off onto the wet asphalt in front of him before Vic gave him a series of simple instructions.

  “There’s t’ree numbers on that paper in front o’ you. Somebody who’s gonna answer any one o’ those numbers can git a message to me within five minutes o’ you calling. When that honky cop turns up tomorrow night, you git yo’ ass to a phone and you make that call to me, brother. Cos if you don’t, an’ I have to come looking fo’ your ass again with this cutlass, I promise you I’m gonna off cut that scabby prick o’ yours and feed it to my dog.”

  Vic gave Clarence a hard, swift kick in his back before then jabbing his thumb in the air towards the direction of the steps, informing me our time was up and telling me to exit back up the steps and onto the pavement.

  We left Clarence Maynard laying in the basement doorway, wet, scared and cold. After what Vic had said about his wicked predilection for young boys I would not have given a damn if the demons of a hell-fired underworld had risen up from out of the frozen earth in front of me to grab his worthless soul and drag him to the torture of eternal torment that he rightly deserved.

  Snow was now falling out of the night sky in larger flakes, covering the road with a fresh layer of the godawful white stuff that I was quickly growing to despise. I looked at Vic as we walked back to the car and laughed as he was opening the driver’s side door of the Cortina.

  “What?” he said, irritated by my unexpected laughter. I watched him about to get into the car; a single snowflake fell onto his face, catching his eyelash, which he quickly wiped away with his hand before turning back to me. “You got someting to ask me, man?”

  “Yeah . . . You ain’t got no dog, Vic.”

  “I know that, fool, but next door sure as hell have, and that poor ting, it always looks damn hungry to me.”

  And at that moment I had absolutely no doubt in my mind of my cousin’s cruel ability to make good on the threat he’d just made to the petrified doorman.

  14

  The sound of snowballs being repeatedly pelted at my bedroom window finally woke me from a deep, dreamless sleep on Saturday morning. I pulled the blankets across my naked shoulders and walked over to the single-paned window, which was patterned top to bottom with a spider’s-web effect of frozen ice. Taking the cold brass loops in both hands, I drew the up the sash frame, poked my head out into the cold air and peered sleepily into the street, which was coated in a deep covering of freshly fallen snow. Looking up at me, framed in all the blinding whiteness around him, stood Carnell Harris. He was dressed in a pair of brown carpenter’s overalls and a black donkey jacket buttoned up to his collar with a thick
blue and red scarf around his neck. Hiding the top of his bald, shiny head was a dark-green woollen bobble hat, which initially made me think that I was staring down at an oversized black dwarf who belonged next to Santa in a fancy department-store grotto at Christmas.

  “What the hell time is it, Carnell?”

  An unpleasantly chilly wind blew through my blankets, making my skin rise up in large goose bumps and setting my teeth on edge.

  “Marnin’, JT, it’s just after eight o’clock. Vic asked me to come round to yours early. We picked up some furniture fo’ your digs a couple o’ days ago.” Carnell pointed to the back doors of his rusted-up old Bedford van, which he had pulled up onto the pavement directly underneath me. “He told me he didn’t want any of that shit I got in the back o’ there cluttering his lock-up fo’ more than a day or so and that I was to git it loaded up and to help you shift it.”

  “Are you kidding me? At eight o’clock in the fuckin’ morning, on a day like today? Are you plain shit stupid, Carnell?”

  The big lummox just stood there and took my thoughtless insult on the chin. I regretted almost immediately my ungrateful rebuke to my friend and I shot a half-cocked smile down to him by way of apology for my short-tempered remark and he returned it with a goofy grin that made me question what the hell Loretta ever saw in her witless, lethargic, but good-natured spouse.

  “Just gimme a minute . . . OK?” I drowsily called down to him.

  “You take your time, JT. I like the snow.”

  It was a witless remark like that made me realise it was gonna be one of those kinda days. I wondered for a moment if I could just leave the dense bastard out in the street while I made myself a hot cup of coffee, but I thought the better of such a cruel idea and reluctantly made my way outta my digs and down the stairs to the front door to let the brains o’ Barbados in.

  Carnell entered into the hallway with all the grace of a bull elephant that had accidently caught its nuts on a wire fence. His big feet dragged in half a streetful of snow onto the floor. He stopped and stood in the doorway for a second, taking a moment to undo his coat before stamping the rest of the wet crap that had accumulated on his hefty size nines onto the hessian mat. As I waited for him to haul himself a little further into the hallway, another gust of cold air howled around my bare feet and legs, the icy draught blowing up inside the blankets I’d covered my nude body in, sending a chill up my ass that increased my temper tenfold.