A Twisted Ladder

by Rhodi Hawk

  “You’re married to this little nigger whore?”

  Rémi pulled back his fist and drove it into the man’s jowls. The brute staggered backward, head pitched, but he recovered and hardened his gaze on Rémi. Growling, he bent his head and rushed Rémi like a bull, shoulder to Rémi’s diaphragm, knocking him to the cobblestones.

  He heard Chloe gasp, and marveled at the way it sounded very far away, like a puff of wind that stirs an oak tree on a distant hill.

  The alley turned black.

  CHLOE WATCHED AS THE brute straddled her husband, beating him bloody.

  “You will not strike another blow!”

  He stopped short, gaping at her. His eyes registered surprise at her audacity, and yet his jaw turned slack and his tongue protruded as he accepted the command.

  Rémi was out cold. The brute seemed to take sudden notice of this, and chuckled. He reached down and slapped Rémi’s face, but Rémi’s head only wagged dully with the impact.

  Chloe gritted her teeth. “Get away from him!”

  The man picked himself up and turned back to Chloe. He reached for her in the darkness, his breath husky and sour with alcohol.

  But she had already unsheathed the knife she kept in her garter belt, the knife she carried in a city she did not trust, and on a plantation where danger comes as frequently as the phases of the moon. And when the oaf put his greedy hands on her, she plunged the blade into his chest.

  He gaped, his eyes wild and glinting in the darkness.

  He sank to his knees, still grasping her arms. She wrenched the knife free from his chest. He moaned and collapsed to the ground, his head landing next to the soiled white evening bag in the gutter.

  He rolled over and crawled a few paces, then slumped prostrate on the cobblestones.

  “I’m dying,” he whispered, spittle dropping to the filthy stones. He lifted his head and called out louder: “I’m dying!”

  Chloe wiped the bloody knife on what was left of her white suit jacket and then lifted her hem, thumbed the band of her garter belt, and resheathed the blade.

  “Help! Help me!” The brute put his hand to the wound and grimaced at the black blood. “She’s killed me!”

  She folded her arms and looked toward the crowd at the end of the alley, and could not tell whether they were brawling or celebrating. Worse than any Mardi Gras, this eve of Prohibition. She’d never seen such collective wildness.

  “Nobody hear you.” She crouched next to the fallen man. “Cry louder.”

  He looked up at her with hazy eyes.

  She shoved him hard, causing him to roll. “Cry louder!”

  “Help me!” His voice was high and shrill. “Help me! She’s killed me! Help!”

  He bawled and shuddered, and she could see he was growing weaker.

  Chloe shook her head. “They do not hear you.”

  “I’m dying,” he sobbed. “You’ve killed me.”

  She stood and regarded him. “You are not dead yet. You not dead until I say you are dead.”

  She stepped over his body and walked to where Rémi still lay unconscious, and nudged him with her foot. The man quieted for a moment. She felt his eyes on her in the shadows.

  “Who are you?” he whispered, and in his voice she heard deference and a hint of awe.

  When she did not answer, he said, “Help me. Lady, please help me.”

  She folded her arms and looked back over her shoulder at him, then down at Rémi again. Two useless men in the gutter. The marriage, at least, was legally sound. Should anything happen to Rémi, she and her children would have a home.

  She considered this monstrosity of a man who’d felt her blade, and wondered whether she might put him into service.

  She said to him, “No, I think I let you die here. You be dead by morning. You rot in the stinking gutter where you belong.”

  “No! Help me dear lady, please help me.”

  He wept, repeating the words. She grew nauseated with his puling. Finally she turned back to him, leaning over his trembling shape, speaking to him in a whisper.

  “Better for you to die. If I help you, you belong to me. You do what I say. Better for you to die, for sure.”

  He whimpered, his voice high and thin. “No. I don’t want to die. Help me. I’ll do whatever you say.”

  “What you have to live for? Stealing money for liquor and molesting women? Be a man, once in your life. Die tonight.”

  “No! Please help me. I’ll do whatever you say.”

  She stared at him. “What is your name?”

  “Bruce.” The word was a puff of air as he stifled a sob. “Bruce Dempsey.”

  She leaned over, hands on her knees. “Bruce. You stinking drunk. You will not even remember me tomorrow, if I let you live.”

  “No ma’am,” he pleaded. “I’ll remember. I promise. I . . . I belong to you.”

  She narrowed her eyes. He had spoken the right words. Perhaps he was not so dumb.

  “Hmph. We will see.”

  She moved her hand under her skirt and once more removed her knife from its sheath. She crouched down next to Bruce and folded the blade into his hands.

  Nearby, Rémi groaned and shifted, but did not rouse.

  “Bruce Dempsey. Cut off your ear and give it to me.”

  His jaw dropped, and the cold air around him filled with his vinegary breath. “Mother of God. What sort of black magic is this?”

  Chloe rose to her feet.

  “Devil’s whore! I should rip your throat out!” He lurched and slashed at her with the knife.

  Chloe took a single step backward and watched him struggle. Dempsey swayed to a sitting position, and then ran out of fury. His hand went to the wound, which now coursed afresh with blood.

  “Mother of God.” He slumped backward and lolled flat on his back again. The knife clanked against the cobblestones as he released it.

  “Dear lady. Please, have mercy on me.”

  She gathered her purse and its spilled contents, then turned and walked away.

  “Have mercy,” he cried after her. “Mercy! Mercy! I’m begging you! Oh my God!”

  She left him there; left him to die and left her sot of a husband in the alley with him.

  “You monster!” Dempsey screeched.

  She joined the crowd in the street, a hand over her belly, letting herself fall in step with the flow. Another child would be coming, their fourth, though she hadn’t told Rémi. A good thing to have these children. She could school them in her ways, groom them for a new era, and create new leaders. Four children were a good start, but Chloe knew she should bear more. The more children there were, the stronger the line. She looked back over her shoulder toward the dark alley. She should retrieve Rémi, then, lest he die of exposure during the night.

  Chloe turned and pressed back toward the maw of the alleyway. It occurred to her that she knew at least one person in New Orleans. Jacob Chapman had attended the wedding, and would remain in town for a week. She detested the man, a lazy playboy, but could call on him for assistance. She paused outside the alley and looked around for street children. She could pay one of them to send word to Jacob Chapman.

  From the alley came Bruce Dempsey’s shrill voice: “Take it then! Take my ear!”

  Chloe paused. Dempsey fell silent, and she listened for any sound from him. She waited.

  Then suddenly, shrieking. The alley coursed with the sound. She knew that he had done her bidding. The crowd streamed around her. Dempsey’s screams hovered just above the volume of the horde, but no one took notice. Chloe watched the throng of people as they ambled by, too absorbed with the ecstasy of the moment to notice the shrieks of a dying man. She stepped into the alley.

  A couple, arm in arm, stumbled in behind her. The man’s bolo was untied, and the woman was giggling from under her cloche hat. They staggered, arms wrapped around each other. Bruce Dempsey let out a piteous wail. The couple stopped short and peered into the blank darkness, then spotted Chloe in her blood-smeared c
oat. They turned and stumbled back into the street.

  Dempsey lapsed into sobs behind her. She turned and walked back to where he lay bleeding. He writhed and wept, his hands over his face, and she watched him for a time.

  She folded her arms against the cold. “Bruce Dempsey.”

  He removed his hands from his face and looked up at her in wonder. “God in heaven. She’s come back. I thought you’d left me here to die.”

  “Give it to me,” she commanded.

  Dempsey’s face contorted. “It’s here.”

  He shuddered, and his hand grasped a mottled piece of flesh and cartilage that lay next to him on the stones. He lifted it with a trembling hand.

  Chloe wrapped the ear in her handkerchief and slipped it inside her purse. “You belong to me now.”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  thirty-nine

  BATON ROUGE, 2009

  ANITA LET THE TOP down on the Mustang, and Julie hopped into the passenger seat without opening the door. They were both dressed to kill, Anita’s ruffled sleeves fluttering like angel wings in the sudden rush of air as she careened out of the driveway.

  She drank in the warm, sumptuous Gulf South wind. Next to her, Julie’s arms were stretched up into the air, fingers spread. The Mustang sped toward the freeway and away from Baton Rouge’s city center.

  “Hey, take it easy,” Julie protested, cupping her hands over her golden hair, which was now slapping at her lipstick. “Maybe we should put the top up.”

  “Too late,” Anita shouted over the wind with a smile. “We’re halfway there.”

  Julie pouted as exit signs whizzed by. “I don’t see why we have to go way out to the boondocks for this!”

  Anita laughed but continued on, sunglasses shading the bright afternoon sun. She knew why. Same reason she’d taken the self-defense class, and the handgun training. She zoomed the Mustang right up to the front door of the gun shop.

  “Hey, is this a real parking place?” Julie asked, but Anita was already entering the shop.

  Julie followed a minute later, and made straight for a mirror hanging on a wall near the register. Anita lingered back by the crossbows.

  From beyond, she heard someone drone through a crackling radio in a language she couldn’t identify. Wasn’t Spanish or anything normal like that. Large black rifles hung on the walls behind the counter, and handguns lay in neat rows in display cases. Anita’s nose twitched at the odor of stale cigarette smoke. She pressed her finger to the pointed tip of an arrow on display. It looked like a miniature spacecraft, black with shiny steel blades. ASSASSIN, the display read.

  Julie was making noises of disgust, and she took out a comb and hacked at her hair. “We are definitely putting the top up on the way back! Looks like I stuck my finger in a plug outlet.”

  “May I help you?”

  Anita jumped at the sound of Zenon’s voice. Julie looked startled when she recognized him, then her eyes narrowed. Anita trained her focus on the display case, pretending to be absorbed, though she continued to watch in her peripheral vision.

  He was stepping out from the back room and wiping his hands with a rag. A dark blotch sagged under his left eye. He wore a simple gray t-shirt tucked into his jeans. It made him look tough.

  “Why hello there,” Julie said in her silkiest bedroom voice. “No, honey, I don’t need any help.”

  In a mechanical motion, Julie pivoted on her foot to look at Anita, and Anita focused intently on the crossbows, heat burning her cheeks. Julie pivoted back again to face Zenon.

  “It’s my friend over there who needs help.”

  Anita turned around and lifted her brows as if she were just now noticing Zenon’s presence.

  “Well hello again!” She dazzled him with her brightest smile.

  Zenon nodded back with a blank expression.

  “What happened to your eye?”

  He didn’t answer; only stared at her until she dropped her gaze.

  “Well,” Anita said. “Uh, I came here because I wanna buy a gun, instead of having to use a loaner at the shooting range.”

  Zenon folded his arms over his chest. “You’ll have to complete your training before you can get a handgun permit. The state also requires a 100 processing fee.”

  “Do I really gotta do all that? I’m going on a road trip next week. Gonna stay with Julie’s family in Houston, then I’ll head out to see my aunt in Florida. I’ll be driving down all alone.”

  “You can’t cross state lines with a handgun anyway,” Zenon said, gesturing to a display rack. “Try a stun gun, or pepper spray.”

  Anita regarded the blister packs. Some looked like pens or flashlights.

  “I heard pepper spray doesn’t work on people who are on drugs.”

  “Products that use CN gas are not as effective on violent attackers under the influence of narcotics or alcohol. These here are pepper spray. They use a substance extracted from chili peppers. When sprayed directly into the eyes, it’ll subdue an attacker for up to forty-five minutes.”

  “Well!” Julie turned to Anita. “I now understand your sudden fascination with self-defense. You have found the absolute living authority on the subject!”

  Anita ignored Julie’s comment and leaned over the glass where the stun guns lay.

  She tapped her fingernail on the glass. “What’s this one?”

  “That’s a Taser,” Zenon replied, unlocking the cabinet. He placed it on the counter.

  “Is that like a stun gun?”

  “They’re similar. A stun gun shoots out pure electricity, but you have to be in direct bodily contact with the assailant. When you shoot a Taser, you can be up to fifteen feet away. These hooks clamp into the assailant’s skin, and the wires pulse electricity. The pulses interfere with communication between the brain and the muscular system, causing the assailant to lose control.”

  Anita pondered her slow progress at the shooting range. “What if I shoot and miss?”

  “As a back-up, the unit will also work at close range, just like a stun gun.”

  “I’ll take it!”

  Julie chimed in, “Hey, maybe I could try it out at the university bookstore. See who tries to cut in front of me in line. Zzzzzzt!”

  Anita and Zenon stared at her.

  “That was a joke,” Julie said.

  Zenon closed the case and disappeared into the stockroom.

  Julie whispered, “Now I get why we had to sail out to the far reaches of Baton Rouge to go to this particular gun shop.”

  Anita grinned. “Isn’t he cute?”

  “Well, yeah, but don’t you think he’s a little . . . I don’t know,” she waved her hand. “He’s a little stern. Not exactly a comedian.”

  “I know. But it kind of turns me on.”

  Julie shook her head. “Anita, honey, look at you. You’ve got every jock, nerd, and scholar we know wanting to ask you out, and you get all moon-eyed over Bubba in there. I just don’t get it.”

  Anita pinched her.

  “It stinks like old cigarettes in here,” Julie said. “I’m gonna wait out in the car. And I’m putting the top up.”

  Anita watched her go. She fidgeted, waiting for Zenon. The radio was still buzzing in that foreign language, and it didn’t look like any radio she’d ever seen before. Zenon reappeared from the stock room.

  “What’s that language they’re speaking on that radio?” Anita asked.

  “Hungarian.”

  “Oh my God! You’re Hungarian?”

  “No.”

  “You speak Hungarian?”

  “No.” He switched off the radio.

  She cleared her throat to hide her nerves. She’d intended to ask him out but he was so brusque.

  Instead: “You and Madeleine seemed awfully friendly the other night.”

  He said nothing.

  “Are you dating?”

  “No.”

  “Good, because . . .”

  He said, “That’ll be 169.95.”

  She du
g in her purse. “I’ll put it on my Visa.” She handed it to him.

  As Zenon ran the card, Anita leaned over the counter and stuck her pinky into the crevice under the cash register.

  “Who’s the angel?” she asked, pulling the necklace out and dangling it on her little finger. The afternoon sun glinted on the gold handwritten name. She cocked her head, realizing the chain was a name necklace, and her heart sank.

  “Is it your girlfriend?”

  Zenon took the necklace from her and tossed it into a drawer without a word. The credit card machine churned out the sales slip.

  “Guess it just ain’t my business,” she mumbled, and signed the receipt.

  “WHAT THE HELL WERE you thinking?” Josh said. “You kept the necklace? The fucking necklace?”

  “I thought you knew!” Zenon replied. “I’ve kept it right there the whole time.” He turned and muttered, “Thought you knew everything.”

  “Jesus Christ almighty. It’s got her name right on it! I’m serious, man, what were you thinking?”

  “How the hell I know that was her name? I thought it meant angel as in angels and devils. Shit.”

  “What are you, stupid? You want to get caught?”

  Zenon reddened. “Get caught? You said there was no way I would get caught. You said you’d take care of everything.”

  “Yeah, if you stick to the goddamn rules!” Josh pressed his fist to his forehead. “I mean it man, you better cut this shit out, right here and now. Don’t be keeping no more goddamn souvenirs.”

  Zenon breathed out through his teeth and leaned on the display case. “All right. Didn’t think it would hurt nothin. I’ll get rid of the damn necklace.” He jammed out a cigarette, and didn’t mention the other memento he’d kept.

  “Damn right you’ll get rid of it. And now you’re gonna have to get rid of her, too.” Josh flung his arm at the door where Anita had left moments ago. “What a goddamn mess.”

  Zenon stared at him. “That girl has no way of knowing who that necklace belonged to.”