Southern Heat

by David Burnsworth

  I said, “Mind if we get java? I’ll even buy you a cup.”

  “A man after my own heart.”

  “We all have our moments,” I said.

  She stopped at a local donut shop and I paid for two large coffees and a mixed half-dozen.

  When she saw the box she said, “You plan on eating all those yourself?”

  I took a bite out of one with chocolate icing and rainbow sprinkles and offered her the box. “Where we headed?”

  She chose a French cruller and pulled out of the parking lot.

  “I put the word out I’d pay for information.”

  “You think someone’s gonna tell you they murdered my uncle?”

  She blew by all the churchgoing cars on the road. “No, but they might know who did. They also know I reward any good leads.”

  We merged onto the Mark Clark Expressway and headed toward the airport, her foot hard on the gas.

  A half hour later, we pulled into the parking lot of a strip mall in a part of North Charleston I’d never seen before. This section specialized in pawn shops, used car lots, and cheap motels giving deep discounts to senior citizens. A black Chrysler loomed in a handicap spot in a lot across the street.

  I took the forty-five and chambered a round. “Wheel it around to the back.”

  Darcy stared at me but didn’t argue. We parked next to a dumpster behind a vacant store.

  “Calm down and tell me what’s going on,” she said.

  “Galston’s morons are in the black car across the street. It’s time they stopped following me around.” I got out and ran.

  Darcy yelled behind me. “Brack!”

  At the end of the building, I stopped and peered around the corner. All clear. The front of the strip mall lay a hundred feet ahead. I made it in seconds and peered again. The 300 was still there.

  Jacked up on sugar, caffeine, and adrenaline, I ran across the street and ducked behind a parked car, peering one more time. Nothing moved.

  I sprang to my feet, covered the distance to the driver’s door, yanked it open, grabbed the driver, and stuck the forty-five in his face. The old man I held stared bug-eyed at me. He wasn’t Shorty or his buddy. His hat fell off. Before I could say anything, something crashed into the side of my face and knocked me into the open door. I looked up in time to see a handbag in midair on its way to strike again.

  “Leave my husband alone!” An old lady with blue hair and a bluer dress blocked me in and tagged me one more time. She yelled, “Help!” and raised the bag for another shot.

  I darted past her and across the street.

  Darcy had moved the Infiniti to the front lot to watch the show and was eating another donut when I ran up. I was surprised she didn’t applaud my performance.

  “There’s only a few left, Soldier,” she said. “You want the Boston or the Bavarian Cream?”

  The 300 screeched out of the parking lot, mooning me with its Ohio license plate.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Darcy’s paid-for information was to come in the form of a young Chinese prostitute who sold her wares in an underground massage parlor.

  Darcy put on a brown wig.

  I said, “You work here too?”

  “Very funny. No, I don’t work here. But if they find out I’m a reporter, I’m dead. And so are you.”

  “Why are they even letting you in?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  I grabbed her arm, probably a little harder than I intended. “I want to know what I’m walking into.”

  She shook me off. “Fine. They’re running a blackmail operation on certain customers. I’ve been helping them identify targets.”

  “No kidding?”

  “No kidding.” She opened the door and stood.

  I did the same. “How’d you get hooked up with that?”

  “A lead. The people running the parlor found me sneaking around and I had to do some fast talking. Now I’m what you might call their ‘consultant.’ ”

  She walked and I followed.

  “What do you get for it?”

  “From them? Nothing. They figure I’m running my own scam, which I guess I am. I’ve got full access behind the scenes. And some cheating husbands get what’s coming to them.”

  I said, “I know a guy who might not agree with your revenge theory.”

  She didn’t reply.

  We walked to the backside of the rundown strip mall and Darcy rapped on an unmarked door. An Asian girl opened it. Not much more than sixteen, she wore not much more than a teddy. Black silk hair fell over her shoulders. Her eyes bounced from Darcy to me and back to Darcy.

  Darcy flashed several hundred-dollar bills.

  The girl turned her head and said something in Chinese.

  An older Asian woman came forward. The Madame, if I had to guess. Deep lines made an evil frown. “Who this? You bring me someone to take care of?”

  Before I could answer, Darcy said, “Maybe, but not now. Remember our arrangement?”

  The Madame waved us inside and barked an order to the girl, whose short teddy rode up as she closed the door. I forced my attention to Darcy in time to see her hand the Madame five fanned-out hundreds.

  The woman took the money, pointed at the girl in the teddy, and said to Darcy, “You follow Crystal.” To me, she said, “Let me know if you see something you like.”

  I gave her a grin.

  Crystal led us through a steel door into another room. Dim lighting made the room and furniture appear maroon. A few men were being entertained by girls in what must have been the reception area, an interesting place to spend a Sunday morning. A red banner hung above the bar with gold letters spelling out The Red Curtain. The fifty bucks in my wallet probably wouldn’t have been enough to get me this far.

  We went through the lounge to a closed door in the back. Crystal knocked. A twenty-year-old Asian kid wearing sun-glasses, a thick silver chain around his neck, and spiked hair opened it. A cigarette hung from his lower lip. Crystal said something to him. The kid pulled the cigarette out, yawned, and opened the door wide enough to let us in. His shoulder holster held a nine millimeter. Faint lighting gave everything a black-and-white feel. Five kids a lot like the one who answered the door sat at a table staring at me and Darcy. They all had cigarettes hanging out of their mouths, shoulder holsters, and heaters. Half-full forty-ounce bottles, dice, and a pile of cash lay splayed across the table. Behind them was a door. The volume of smoke in the room would have taken all night to produce, which is probably how long they had been playing their game.

  The kid in front of us pointed to another door. “Suzy in there.” He gripped the butt of his gun, still in the holster. “No funny business or you die.”

  I nodded, thinking one grenade could take care of the security detail in this place, and followed Darcy through the door. It closed behind us.

  A small Asian girl, a child, really, sat on a massage table smoking a man’s pipe. The smell that nearly overcame me was sweet and pungent. Definitely not tobacco. The skin around her right eye was black and purple and did not mask the vacant stare she had. I pulled out a stogie and lit up to counteract what I knew from too many hot spots in Afghanistan as opium. Darcy handed the girl a folded bill, probably another hundred. The girl took the money and put it in the pocket of tight red shorts, which, together with a yellow shirt, made her look like pedophile bait.

  Darcy said, “Tell us about the man who hurt you.”

  “He come in last week Saturday night. Say he want a rubdown.” She took a hit of her pipe.

  “Go on,” Darcy said.

  On the exhale, she said, “He want full service.”

  I said, “Meaning?”

  “E-v-er-y-ting.” She drew out the word, breaking up the syllables and adding a few extras.

  Darcy nodded.

  “He say he want a young girl. Fresh, he say.” Her shoulders shook when she said it, like she had a chill.

  Darcy said, “And you were . . . with him?”
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  Suzy moved her head from side to side like a metronome. “I didn’t want to. He look scary.”

  I said, “What was scary about him?”

  “Eyes,” Suzy hissed. “The way he look at me. Eyes tell me go with him or else. So I go.”

  Darcy asked, “What happened next?”

  Suzy blinked. “He hold gun to my head. Tell me take his clothes off. He hold my hair and shove my head down. All the time, he keep gun in my face.” She took another hit of her pipe. “He pull me up and whisper in my ear. He whisper he just kill a man. I so scared. Then he throw me on the table. He say he like gook girl after he kill. He say I no gook girl but I do.”

  I watched her smoke her pipe. She inhaled deeply and shut her eyes before exhaling. When she opened them again, her irises had transformed into impenetrable black orbs.

  “He hurt me bad,” she said. “I can’t work all week. It hurts when I work.”

  “There’s a bunch of guys out there with guns,” I said. “How come they didn’t stop it?”

  “I not here. I work in village. He pay a lot of money,” she said. “Nobody care what happens when door is closed.”

  The kid with the cigarette that pointed us into the room had said “no funny business or you die.” Maybe five hundred wasn’t enough for full service and roughing up the talent.

  Darcy said, “What village? On Harmon Street?”

  The girl nodded.

  I said, “You mean the owners of this place operate more than this?”

  Darcy said, “A lot more.”

  Outside, in the palmetto heat, Darcy and I got in her Infiniti convertible. I had a hard time focusing. It could have been the secondhand opium in the air. The more the girl reloaded and smoked her pipe, the more she’d talked. She was sixteen. Her mother had been a prostitute in China and her father a customer . . . some tourist. He was long gone. To pay for a heroin habit, her mother sold her into the life and later died from an overdose.

  Then she told us how the man who’d killed last Saturday night hurt her. How he tied her and forced himself on her, over and over. By the time she reached this part of her tale, she was so high she giggled.

  As we drove to Folly Beach, I said, “I breathed my opium quota for the week.”

  Darcy said, “We need to come back and show Suzy photographs. See if she can I.D. the guy.”

  “You must have one serious expense account. It will probably cost you another five bills to go back inside and another C-note to get anything else from that girl. I say we report the whole bunch to I.C.E.”

  I.C.E., pronounced ice, was the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

  Darcy took a breath. “Look, you’re right, okay? The truth is I’ve been investigating the place since I found out about it two months ago. I know most of the players in Charleston. As soon as I have the rest, I’m going to expose the whole operation.”

  “Did you get a look at what was printed on the banner above the bar?”

  Darcy nodded.

  “I guess the Chinese found another commodity to import.”

  In Afghanistan, I’d been known for handling problems a lot hairier than six Chinese kids with pistols. And when I finished, there were no more problems.

  Darcy dropped me at the Folly Beach rental and I played with my dog on the beach and gathered my thoughts. War hardened me. I’d seen innocent women and children blown to bits. Men in my unit, barely out of high school, gutted from land mines. Medevac helicopters full of wounded on their way to the hospital shot down out of the air. What bothered me about the massage parlor? I’d seen it all before, just not in my own backyard.

  After a late lunch, I went on a little field trip. The cops hadn’t found Reggie’s Cadillac. With nothing else to do at the moment, I cruised through the parking garage closest to the alley where Uncle Reggie was shot. My hunch was the car had not disappeared like the cops would have me believe. I idled up the levels of the garage in second gear with the windows open, partly to listen to the rumble of the engine, and partly to get a good view of the cars. On the last level before the roof, I spotted Uncle Reggie’s bomb and parked. At least it sat in the shade.

  My uncle rarely put the top up on his clapped-out Eldorado convertible. The factory brown paint was faded where it wasn’t rusty, and the leather seats were torn. The carpeting couldn’t be seen through the mound of junk on the floor. The surfboard Reggie always carried with him still stuck out of the backseat.

  I sat in the driver’s side and opened the glove box. It contained the registration, a bottle of aspirin, and surf wax. The door pocket treasures included a dead flashlight, a wrench, and cassettes. Bob Dylan and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Uncle Reggie stopped keeping up with trends around the time this Cadillac was built so I was surprised he made the switch from eight-tracks.

  I rummaged through the stuff on the floor, scaring several crickets, but found nothing interesting. My uncle kept the Caddy’s keys in the ashtray, and they were there when I opened it. With the newfound keys, the trunk lid popped open and another pile emerged. Before long, Playboys, a bowling ball, and wet gear made a pile of sorts behind the car in the middle of the drive lane. When the trunk was empty, I pulled the spare tire cover off, leaving nothing unchecked.

  After I put the stuff back in the trunk, neater than I’d found it, I sat in the driver’s seat. The sun visor fell down and something dropped into my lap. Another key. The ring had a plastic tab that read “U-Store It” and included a website.

  “It couldn’t be that easy,” I said aloud.

  I phoned Detective Wilson and told him where I was. He said he and his partner would meet me within the hour but didn’t sound too happy. While I waited for them, I lit a Cuban cigar.

  My phone belted out Ozzy Osborne’s Ai Ai Ai from “Crazy Train.” I’d assigned that ringtone to a particular number.

  I said, “Hello, Patricia.”

  “I had lunch with Muffie today,” she said.

  “Yeah? How’d it go?”

  “I think you’ll find the police have become more receptive to the investigation.”

  I blew out a cloud of smoke. “Great. Instead of disinterested detectives, I get to work with uncooperative ones.”

  “It’s a start. Anyway, I made an appointment for us to meet someone tomorrow. You can thank me later. Be at my office in the morning and wear something nice.”

  “You never told my uncle what to wear.”

  “You’re still salvageable. Not as set in your ways.”

  Detectives Rogers and Wilson arrived forty minutes after my call. Rogers pulled the cruiser into an open parking spot and they joined me behind the Cadillac.

  Wilson said, “I suppose you already went through the car.”

  I sat on the trunk and puffed on my Cuban cigar. “What would give you that idea?”

  “We have to tow it to the station,” Rogers said. “It won’t look good if your prints are all over it.”

  “He was my uncle. I’ve driven this car and ridden in it many times. You will find my prints all over it.” I threw him the keys.

  The detectives declined my offer of cigars.

  Wilson snapped on gloves. “Did anything look out of place?”

  “Not to me,” I said. “I think he parked it here sometime Saturday evening. I doubt if anyone’s messed with it since.”

  Rogers said, “You find the parking ticket?”

  “How much more work do I have to do for you guys? Can’t you flash your badge or something to get it out?”

  Wilson said, “It will tell us the time he parked here. Might not be much, but you never know where something like that could lead. If nothing else, it could tie up a loose end.”

  Rogers put on a pair of gloves as he walked to the front of the Caddy. The look on my face must have told him I hadn’t thought to check under the hood. He gave me a sneer and popped it open. I had to exercise a lot of self-control to keep from running to join him. Instead, I went to my car and took out the Maglite bat
on. To show I wasn’t a complete jerk, I handed Rogers the light. He turned it on and scanned the entire engine compartment. Aside from years of oil-soaked dirt and duct tape, the five-hundred-cubic-inch V-8 and accessories were more or less as they were when they left the GM plant in 1976.

  “By the way,” Wilson said. “Thanks for getting us reinstated on the case. We were looking for more work.”

  “Finish what you start.”

  Rogers slammed the hood shut. “Yeah, right.” He poked me in the chest with the flashlight. “You and the woman that runs the paper got us in a lot of trouble.”

  I grabbed the light out of his hand but stopped myself from beating him senseless with it.

  Rogers put his hands in his pockets. “I’m betting it was her idea. Guess you’re not wearing the pants here, are you, Pelton?”

  “Sounds like you’re a man of experience, detective.” I walked to my car, passing Detective Wilson. It almost looked like he was grinning.

  I left the detectives and rolled across the new Cooper River Bridge into Mount Pleasant. Directory Assistance had given me the number for U-Store It and I’d called and gotten an address. The kid in the office could have been a poster boy for the “Wanted” flyers at the post office. He must have had a hundred piercings in his face. Tattoos colored his exposed biceps and his shaved head reflected the overhead lighting. Doc Martin boots were laced up his shins, Nazi SS style. Overall, a good candidate for a meth lab bust. I wanted to tell him the skinhead thing was a bad idea twenty-five years ago and hadn’t improved much since. Instead, I tried to explain my intention.

  The kid said, “You’re not Reggie Sails?”

  “He’s my uncle,” I said. The green paneling in the office dated to the time I’d been born, and the linoleum flooring was worn through in places.

  “Sorry, our policy states only the renter can have access.”

  I showed him the papers Chauncey had given me. Interpreting the legalese would have been a long shot on someone with half a brain. With this kid, I’d be more realistic asking for Moses to come and part the harbor. I tried anyway. “He died and left me his estate.”