"It's not enough." King raised his voice to cut through the burgeoning chaos. "I don't think we've made a bit of difference."
"What do you want us to do?" Wayne asked. "Keep in mind, I'm on full-time with Outreach Inc. now. They got me going into schools, building relationships with kids, trying to get them on the right track. Lott here just got promoted at FedEx. Finally getting a decent shift. And Lady G is earning her GED and preparing for college."
"I know. Damn it. It's just not enough."
"Come on, King." Lady G took his hand. With her touch, he began to calm down. "Let's take a walk."
Locked in dark thought, King believed dreams to be important. Merle more so. His dreams lingered with him, coming unbidden between moments. Snatches of images. Dragons took to the air against smoke-filled skies. Razed buildings. Cars on fire. Only the occasional person seen running. Like an owl on a field mouse, a dragon swooped down and gobbled them in a single swallow. Slick and coiled, serpents writhed, their bodies filling the streets, crushing everything in their path. Their sides bulged with digesting bodies. The grass slick with blood, men fought with futility, their hollowed faces tired of grieving. The dragons and serpents crowded the land and kept coming. Inexorable.
It was why King rarely slept and drove himself and those around him so hard. Each day brought a new task. A new crew to get information on. A new openair market to disturb with his presence. A new head to bust if things got out of hand. Lott especially warmed to the task, loving to fight. Given a just cause, he perfectly rationalized his violence.
Wayne, however, wanted no part of that; and the blind relish the two of them took to their operation, the more uncomfortable he became. They were an unchecked fire and inevitably, the wrong person would be caught up in it. King felt responsible, burdened, and now refused to hear advice. Not Wayne's. Not Merle's.
"King is kind of closed off." Wayne watched King and Lady G skulk off. "I've known him longer than anyone. The man is a living wall." They were on the verge of something, something potentially transformative. Wayne sensed it and wanted to be a part of it, but hated the hound-dog way King sometimes carried himself. There was a fine line between being real and being seen as weak. And this was an inauspicious start to whatever it was King had planned.
"Child of the morning, I have the same old wound," Merle said, "but I believe he is the right man."
"Something made him hard. He guards himself and won't let anyone in. I know that I'm his boy and all, just like I know King is ride or die," Wayne absently brushed dirt from the table, not wanting to meet anyone's eyes. "Not to go all female or anything, but I have no emotional sense that King even cares about us."
"It's not good for brothers to fight one another."
The moody silence allowed King a retreat to his grim thoughts as he locked himself away in darkness. He grew sickened by his own rage. The hallway led from what was once the church foyer to what was once the nursery. Charted memory verses littered the wall. A pictogram of a white Noah on a huge boat, animals popping out from all over, sailed merrily across a sea of blue. Forty days and forty nights, God sent the waters to flood the earth to cleanse it of all unrighteousness. That was probably the only time the land knew peace. The kids sang a story about Noah collecting animals two by two. All King pictured was all the dead bodies the storm left in its wake.
"What are you doing, King?" Lady G slipped her hand into his and rested her head on his shoulder.
"You know what I'm doing. I'm trying to make a difference."
"Right. All cause a raggedy homeless guy says you have a grand destiny. An important role to play."
"We all do."
"I know, baby. But…" Lady G took his delicate, knobbed hands and ran hers along them. "You all over the place. You run from this to that, no rhyme or reason, just always running. Just caught up in the idea of being important. You don't have a plan. You don't have an endgame. It's like as long as you keep moving, keep doing, that's enough for you. You don't see how lost you are."
King only half-listened to what she said. He took comfort more in the idea of her. The warmth of her hand. The realness of her proximity. King saw himself taking shape in her eyes. She made him braver, more sure. Everything simply made sense when she was around. The two understood each other if neither knew why. Years of solitude made them secretive, selfprotected, with that closeted fear that the more they revealed about themselves, the more folks won't like them. Years of pain and scars haunted them. Maybe they simply recognized the reflections of their own haunted expressions in each other's eyes. All he knew was that she held his demons at bay. She was the light to his dark. When he gazed into her eyes, he saw the faithful and honorable man he wished to be. They worked. But he couldn't escape the feeling that they weren't real.
"What do you suggest?" King asked.
"When was the last time you spoke to Pastor Winburn?"
The name caught him off guard. He couldn't even remember mentioning him to her. In a lot of ways, King was raised by Pastor Ecktor Winburn, the father he thought he wanted.
"I ain't spoke to him in a minute," King said in halting measures.
"Don't you think it's about time?"
"Do you?" King asked.
"I only want one thing."
"What's that?"
"For you to be true to yourself and come home safe."
"Go on off to school." King squeezed her hand.
"Bye, love." She raised their entwined hands and kissed them.
"Bye, baby."
CHAPTER TWO
Detective Lee McCarrell scanned the periphery of the scene, not listening to anyone in particular: the chatter, the radio squawks, the idling engines, the occasional horn or siren blare dissolved into a susurrus of a crime scene symphony. Though he hadn't had a drop all shift, his mean, green eyes appeared liquorheavy. His protruding jaw dominated his profile followed by his high forehead. His long, slack hair threatened to bloom into a full-blown mullet, a hairstyle choice which did not combine well with his thin mustache, which made him look like he stepped right off a porn set.
"You're up."
"I know." As much as his last partner, Octavia Burke, put him off, better her patient brand of ballbusting than the too-eager grind of his latest one. Of course, bumping Octavia up to captain left a "brother" slot available which they quickly filled with one Cantrell Williams. African-American. Average height. Shaved bald. Clean-cut. Cigarette smoker, Kools his brand of choice. Leather hat. Leather trenchcoat. Young, smart, and arrogant — worse, he was good enough natural police to back up his arrogance. He handled each case as if it might serve as an opportunity for a grade promotion. The only things he lacked were people skills and experience. His "aggressive assertiveness" — evaluation speak for pushy — earned him a rep as a glory hound, a rep he did little to dispel. He doubleparked in front of the playground at the Phoenix Apartments, his face caught in the slightly haloed gleam in the emergency lights.
"You ready to handle this on your own?" Lee turned off the ignition and let the engine cool for a minute.
"Am I ready to go solo after being under your capable tutelage for a few cases? Yeah, I think I got this."
"All you had to say was 'you're up'. Fuck me for caring."
Moldy brown leaves puddled along the base of the black chain-link fence which ringed the outer boundaries of the apartments. Weeds and broken glass choked a sea of cracked pavement. Empty bottles of Colt 45 littered the dilapidated equipment that passed for a playground. Rust held the monkey bars together. The swings had been thrown over the top of the metal frame of the set, out of reach of any would-be user. The yellow school bus jungle gym had been tagged. RIP Alaina. RIP Conant. Nobody wanted to be here — not the police, not the media, not the paramedic, not the tenants — all equally prisoners in a cycle of well-meaning benevolence.
"I take this seriously," Cantrell intoned a little too earnestly. Try as he did to keep an open mind about his partner, he recognized the half-a-cracker scent of
festering resentment. "We speak for the dead. That's the job."
"Screw this job. Screw the dead. Screw this neighborhood. You watch, no witnesses, nothing useful. We'll be lucky if we can even ID the vic. They don't care about these animals, even when they prey on them much less when they get killed."
"Animals?" Cantrell arched an eyebrow.
"You watch."
Before he got out of the car, Cantrell muttered a prayer for the victims, the survivors, and their families. And then his partner. Though it was half-full and lukewarm, he gripped a Starbucks cup, toting it with the consciousness of an affectation.
The city took on an entirely different pallor at night. Darkness had a way of enveloping any crime scene. No matter how many street lights, flashing lights of emergency services vehicles, the brightness of the moon, or lights from the surrounding buildings, shadows swam in deep pools around them. Where there was darkness, there was mystery. Lee studied the shadows, uncertain of the trick of the ambulance's lights on his eyes. Pairs of red dots glimmered at him. A half-dozen sets at least. Hate-tinged flecks glaring at him. He blinked. The dark remained a smooth velvet sea of ebony.
Like red boxes in white trim, every bit like bricks in the wall of the Phoenix Apartments, three ambulances remained in front, without sound, with only their lights' intermittent flash acknowledging their presence. Police tape had been strung from tree to fence. Lee only grew irritated by the welling quiet he knew would soon settle on the gathering looky-loos. Full of sideways glances and growing stillness, as if a cloud of innocence descended on them with a spiritual anointing of silence.
"I see angels. Snow angels." A homeless guy, in a tinfoil cap no less, waved his arms flapping in the snow only seen in his head.
"I bet you do," a uniformed cop said as Lee and Cantrell approached the scene. "That kind of crazy had to be steeped in whiskey."
The uniformed officer had that young cop look about him: thin, but muscular; dark sunglasses, and eager, with an arrogant bossiness to his manner. The rookie raised the tape to let them through. Cantrell ducked under. Shards of glass vials crunched underfoot. He paused to survey the remaining landscape.
"I ain't ruining my new shoes stepping in that shit," Cantrell said.
"You worried about this? Some of the shit you'll be walking through, you'll be begging for a scene this clean," Lee said.
"We got a live one here," the uniformed officer said.
"There was a survivor? He conscious?"
"Uh, no. I meant it was a lively scene."
"Look here, rook…" Lee rolled his eyes, the preamble tell to an apoplectic fit Cantrell usually found entertaining if not useful.
"Why don't you stick to telling us what we got?" Cantrell cut him off and slipped on a pair of latex gloves. The red light bounced from their faces. The first body slumped against a wall. At first glance, he looked like a panhandler waiting for change. But his clothes were too new, clean-cut, fresh look. High forehead, eyes sunken in regret, thick-faced, heavy lips. Blood flared against his yellow vest.
"Looks like multiple shooters. Don't know if these guys even got off a shot," Lee said.
"Where are their guns?"
"Exactly."
"So, no guns recovered," Cantrell said.
"Not even theirs?" Lee asked.
"Someone needed souvenirs."
"I doubt memories of spring break is what they have in mind." Annoyed by Cantrell's tight-assed fastidiousness, Lee strolled around the scene.
The second body leaned out of the car, his blood mixed with a puddle that drained into the sewer. Thin, bright-eyed, the red lights caught in them making him appear possessed. His white teeth spread in a harlequin sneer across his face.
Lee leaned over the body. At first he thought the dead boy was Juneteenth Walker, would-be assailant of Green, the former muscle for the Night organization. He had the same semi-scowl, the same years of hurt worn into his skin, worn like an ill-fitting jacket off the rack from Good Will. The images hit him all at once. The blood. The bodies. The death. Lee pictured Green lumbering toward him, holding a severed head in his hand. Bullets flying. His thigh ached, his body remembering its violation. Noting the boy's ashy knuckles and a short bus necklace, he was certain of only one thing: this mutt didn't deserve a cop standing over him.
"What's his name?" Lee asked.
"Don't know," the uniformed officer said.
"Dob?"
"Don't know."
"So he's not going to be missed by anyone." Lee wanted to roll the body, but knew the coroner would jump his shit for weeks if he touched a body before he got there. "What else do we know?"
"We know he was a part of a drug crew. Used to work for a dealer named Night," Cantrell said.
"But you know they were strapped?" the uniformed officer asked.
"Holy Virgin Mary's rotten pissflaps," Lee said. "Yeah, they were strapped. These fools can't floss without pulling out their nines like they were tugging on their junk."
The last body had been worked over pretty good. An inelegant beating, his face punched in, jaw broken. Bruising around his chest from a close wound: execution-style, but there was no stippling. The way his body sprawled along the sidewalk, it was as if he were snuggling into a bed of concrete with the tarp serving as his only blanket.
Cantrell hitched his pants up slightly and tucked his tie into his shirt. He imagined photos of the boys pinned by magnets on their mothers' refrigerators or framed on what passed for mantles or end tables. He humanized them to see them in schoolboy pictures full of hope and promise.
"If I had to guess, this here was one of Night's stash houses, and from the look of things there was a firefight. Near as I can figure, an enforcer," Lee pointed to body number three then to number two, "and wheel man making a delivery or a pickup. Street soldier over there," Lee gestured to the first body. "Ambushed."
"Tire treads?" Cantrell asked.
"Nothing," the uniformed officer said.
"Assailants on foot?"
"Maybe." Lee's stomach churned — a queasy sensation that for some reason had him rubbing along his scar. To the casual observer, it appeared like he rubbed the sweat of his palms along his pants.
"How they going to sneak up on an armed crew on high alert, take them all out, and disappear? That's why you detectives and I'm a lowly uniform. Earn them big bucks," the uniformed officer said.
"Fuck you and your big bucks."
Lee kicked at the tire leaning against the side of the building. "Stash's still here."
"Cash still on the bodies." Cantrell flipped a pants pocket inside out to withdraw a roll of bills.
"Rules out a robbery."
"Rook, come over here."
"What's up?" The uniformed officer saw the wad of bills. And that Cantrell saw that he saw.
"You first on scene?" Cantrell asked.
"Yeah."
"See anything?"
"What do you mean?"
"No one messing with the bodies?"
"Not a soul on the scene." The uniform officer shifted nervously, afraid he'd missed something. Cantrell put a reassuring hand on his shoulder by way of dismissing him.
"Bodies weren't picked clean," Lee said with mild surprise.
"Hard to believe they were part of the same crew."
"There was more than Night and Green holding that crew together. But you take them out…"
"… and there's a mad scramble to…"
"… hold the center." Caught up in the easy rhythm of Cantrell, a glimmer of hope once again flickered in Lee that he might actually be cut out to work with a partner.
"I was going to say 'keep their shit together,' but OK." Cantrell grinned. No slack given. "How'd you know?"
"These mooks make numbers three, four, and five to get popped."
"Five?"
"They caught a couple on night shift."
"Shit," Cantrell said.
"So let's take stock again." Lee tamped out a Marlboro and offered it to Cantrell, who wave
d him off as he took out a pack of Kools. "A mid-level dealer. An enforcer. A street dealer."
"Someone sending a message."
"New player in town. Or players. No one's safe."
"Shit," Cantrell said. "So someone's cleaning house preparing to move in."
"Yeah."
"How are we doing with witnesses?"
"Why don't you canvass the Greek Chorus over there?" Lee asked.
Hard faces glared from the fence. Lee returned their beady stares. Half-assed thugs probably with more questions than answers. A panoply of mean-mugging, concern, fear, and curiosity. In other words, the neighborhood in a snapshot. Lee decided to let Cantrell do the canvass. He'd probably have better luck with that brother-brother shit they do. And besides, Lee wasn't in the mood to bust any heads. The joy wasn't there tonight. All he could think about was the huge waste of it all. All the boys without fathers. He thought of his own father.
Lee's old man didn't take any crap. He grew up dining on his father's stories, chewing them up and swallowing them until they became a part of him. Stories were like that. His father often wove the hard-luck tapestry of standing as his own man though he never stood a chance. His every career opportunity blocked at every conceivable turn. Better accounts handed to someone less deserving. Skipped over for promotions. Pay frozen or benefits cut back at the worst time. So much pain, bad luck, and anger could only be tempered by getting his load on in a bar. One night, the alcohol haze left him confused and he made a delivery to the wrong address, a neighborhood much like this. Robbed and beaten, his dad lost an eye. He was still a man though and made the most of his life. No excuses. In fact, soon as he got back on his feet, he went back to that neighborhood with a pipe and a few of his boys and showed them what for.
On quiet nights, along with his thoughts, especially as he sifted through bullshit for a living, Lee was used to how people spun their particular angle on things and had learned to parse stories accordingly. Everyone was the hero in their own stories. Even his father. Lee imagined him begging for his wallet. On his knees pleading to not be hurt. For them to stop. He never lost that flicker of fear and doubt, that anxiousness when one of them neared. His father had been so larger than life, especially to Lee; to see him reduced to a helpless pile of bandages incapable of even wiping himself after soiling his bed sheets, the incident left an indelible mark of humiliation on him.
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