Scorch City

by Toby Ball

  “Are all these people going to leave?” Carla asked Eunice as they stood outside Eunice’s shack drinking her thick coffee.

  Betty Askins, who had been assembling the children and adults in need of medicine or vaccines in the Square, arrived, looking stricken.

  “The kids, they’re in the Square?” Carla asked.

  Betty nodded. Eunice ducked into her shack to get Betty a cup of coffee.

  Betty whispered so that Eunice could not hear her. “I can’t believe that people are abandoning the Community because of a dream; a superstition.” Betty was trembling with frustration.

  Carla nodded, having no words.

  Eunice returned with the coffee, and the three women drank in silence amid the chaos around them. Finally Eunice said, “Betty, are you coming to the Square? It may be the last time.”

  Betty looked at her.

  “Come to the Square, dear,” Eunice said. “You’ll see why you’re not really one of us.”

  * * *

  Frings arrived. Carla watched him approach, the sweat darkening his jacket, running down his face; the exhaustion in his pouchy eyes. Something else, too—a grimness to him.

  Frings greeted Betty and Eunice with tight nods, met Carla’s eyes. Carla said, “Excuse us for a minute. Dr. Berdych should be getting to the Square soon. I’ll meet you there.”

  Frings escorted Carla gently by the forearm down the alley. She let herself be guided, concerned by what she sensed in Frings. They found a gap between two shanties and slipped in. It was tight and the sun reflecting off the tin walls made it almost unbearably hot.

  “What is it, Frank?”

  Frings put his hands on her shoulders and told her.

  100.

  Winston stayed on the shaded side of the street as he made his way to the shanties. He’d spent the night with a waitress from the Palace in her one-room apartment above a liquor store, and had not slept. Her place had been bare, mattress on the floor and all that, but it had smelled nice and so had she. All night.

  He pushed a shopping cart he’d boosted from a bum sleeping one off down an alley, leaving the cat’s stuff in a neat pile. Now it was loaded with his guitar and amp. His other possessions—such as they were—were back in the shanties at Billy Lambert’s. He was getting the hell out of the City tonight. All those women, some with boyfriends, husbands, and even worse, mad-as-shit brothers. Then there were the troubles in the shanties—the attacks by the white folk and everyone getting ready to leave. And something else, something that might not catch up to him, but who knew?

  He planned to stick around for the Square before he left. He dug the Square. When Eunice Prendergrast learned he was a musician, she got him a drum and told him to flow along with the rest of them. It had been good; really good. Almost like those times onstage when it really came together, but in a different way. Better. Hard to explain. Hard to even dredge up the feeling when it wasn’t actually happening. He was looking forward to one last time. Maybe smoke some mesca with Billy, get in the mood.

  He came to the field that led to the shanties. The cart rattled as he steered off the cement sidewalk and onto the jumble of broken asphalt, dirt from God knew where, and weeds that passed for a field around here. The Samedi cats were out, rolling oil drums and lugging scrap wood to dump in them. A couple of them were painting that weird skull and top hat on the barrels. Watching all this, in a chair against the shanties’ edge, was Senah Glélé, wearing a black bowler and smoking a cigar, his eyes hidden by dark glasses.

  Winston found a guy he kind of knew named Étienne. “What’s going on?”

  Étienne was pouring sweat. His eyes were yellowed and rimmed red. “Getting ready, boss. Getting ready.”

  “For what?”

  “Things happening today, boy. Getting ready.”

  Winston chewed on his lip, not sure he was willing to put much stock into Father Womé’s prophecies. These Samedi guys certainly did, though, and they knew Womé better than he did.

  Étienne said, “Heard you’re checking out.”

  “That’s right.”

  More of the guys had stopped now, using Winston as an excuse to take a break.

  “Where you headed?”

  Winston shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  “Don’t put down roots, right? Just ease along.”

  There was a lot of head nodding and people slapping him on the back, shaking his hand.

  “You sticking around for the Square at least?” Étienne asked.

  “Yeah. I’m sticking around for that and then making my way.”

  Inside the shanties, Winston weaved his cart through the confusion of people. He found Billy Lambert’s shack and pushed the cart through the door. Billy was sitting in the corner on a seat he’d made from a stack of newspapers. Daylight leaked in through some narrow slits that Billy had cut through his tin wall. From the smell, Winston knew that Billy’d already started with the mesca.

  101.

  Westermann didn’t expect the move on Dr. Berdych to be complicated. A plainclothes guy, a Negro, was hanging around the shanties, and another was a block down where he could relay hand signals from the first. When the signal was given, the prowl cars would move in from a couple of blocks away. No problems.

  Westermann sat in a prowl car with Souza, doors open, and listened to the police radio as Grip reported back on Maddox’s arrest. Grip and Morphy would deposit Maddox at Headquarters, where the Chief would keep Truffant at bay, for a few hours, at least.

  The waiting was eating at Westermann. “You a religious guy, Lou?”

  Souza laughed. “The old lady drags me to church every Sunday, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Yeah, but do you go just because your wife drags you? What are you, Catholic? Are you a believer?”

  Souza made a face. “Jeez, Lieut, I don’t know. I guess I never thought about it that way. It’s just something I do.”

  Westermann let it go. He had other things on his mind.

  Maddox.

  Vesterhue.

  Morphy.

  It concerned him that Grip and Morphy hadn’t turned up Koss, or for that matter, Symmes. He didn’t like the idea of Koss finding out that Maddox was in custody again, or that they’d arrested Berdych. They needed to find Koss quickly. APB, maybe. Approach with caution. Or he could put Grip and Morphy on it. That had the added attraction of keeping Morphy the hell away from him. Then again, he couldn’t duck Morphy forever.

  “Hey, Lieut, I hear the heat’s supposed to break tomorrow,” Souza said, blowing smoke out of the side of his mouth.

  “That right?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  Westermann climbed out of the car and walked down the block. He was worried that they still hadn’t figured everything out, how it all fit together; yet they were still moving forward with arrests. His head swam from fatigue, his chest tightened.

  He would have to face Morphy.

  Souza’s call—his voice echoing in the empty street—came as a relief. Westermann jogged back to the patrol cars. He slid into the shotgun seat and Souza leaned on the horn, signaling the cars to move out.

  Four prowl cars moved in, sirens off. The panel truck wasn’t running. Two clean-cut guys in collared shirts were talking to a round Negro woman wearing a bright orange scarf wrapped around her hair. Behind them, in the distance, young Negro men were rolling oil drums, carrying wood planks.

  Westermann, glad to be doing something, took the lead. Souza and the uniforms trailed, hands on their holstered guns.

  Westermann approached the clean-cut men. “Dr. Berdych?”

  The one on the right, short blond hair and a mustache hiding a harelip, said, “No. The doctor’s in the truck,” nodding toward the back of the panel truck where stairs led to an open door.

  The uniforms took charge of the two men. Souza followed Westermann to the truck.

  Westermann put a foot on the bottom step. “Dr. Berdych?”

  He waited, heard
nothing. He walked to the top of the steps and leaned through the door. “Dr. Berd—” Westermann felt a pinch in his arm, a flood of warmth, and he pulled away, falling backward off the truck, grabbing at the syringe that was stuck through his jacket and into his arm. The needle broke in his arm as he hit the ground hard. Berdych stepped into the doorway, tall and stooped, his eyes wide. Westermann heard three pops in succession and watched as Berdych took two bullets to the chest and one above the eye, falling back into the truck.

  Westermann lay on his back, looking up at the panel truck, thinking, This is balled up.

  Things happened fast, kids from the shanties watching from the perimeter. Crime-scene cops showed up, took photos, samples, and, finally, Berdych’s corpse, zipped up in a body bag. Internal Affairs cops in expensive suits separated the uniforms and questioned them individually about what they’d seen.

  Westermann sat in the shade, sweat pouring off him, something from that syringe in his body. A crime scene guy had bagged up the syringe barrel and rushed it to Pulyatkin to compare what was left with Lenore’s disease. Westermann felt empty, not just because of his fear about the substance in the needle, but because without Berdych, how could they connect Maddox with the dead girls?

  Grip and Morphy arrived, standing in the street before Westermann.

  Grip said, “Souza really kill that doctor?”

  Westermann nodded. “He had to. No choice, but it’s not easy. He’s spooked.”

  The three of them took in Souza sitting on the bumper of a prowl car, Plouffe talking to him with a hand on his shoulder. Two uniforms, older guys that Souza must have known, stood with him, too. Souza’s tie was undone. He was waiting to sign something for IA, then Plouffe would drive him home.

  Grip said, “And Berdych got you with a needle?”

  Westermann nodded. Morphy gazed into the distance, mind elsewhere.

  “You know what was in it?”

  “No. Too many bottles in the truck. Pulyatkin’s looking at it.”

  “Jesus.” Grip changed the subject. “Lieut, you know what’s going on with those oil drums?”

  “One of the uniforms checked it out. Sounds like they think there’s going to be trouble.”

  “Yeah, but I mean that thing they painted on each of them. The skull. It was painted on my door and scratched into Ed Wayne’s badge. What the hell is it?”

  Westermann shrugged. “I don’t know. You’ve been in the shanties. They’ve got all kinds of paintings like that. Symbols.”

  Grip nodded; thinking. “You know, about the trouble they’re worried about?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They might be right.”

  Crows perched on the roof of the panel truck shrieked at the uniforms. Bigger birds, vultures, circled over the field between the shanties and the warehouses downriver.

  Westermann saw someone new on the scene, skinny guy with his fedora pulled low, walking around the taped-off panel truck. Grip turned to where Westermann was looking.

  “Damn it.”

  Art Deyna.

  102.

  Frings and Carla stood with Eunice in the shade of a tin shack on the edge of the Square. They ate fried plantains a friend of Eunice’s had prepared. Only the clothes had arrived for distribution. Nothing else had made it.

  The Community seemed to be leaking away before their eyes. The commotion was still intense, the shanty alleys still crowded, but not as crowded.

  The square was clear, except for a half dozen men setting up stools next to brightly decorated drums of various heights and shapes. Another man, lean and tall, wearing a white suit and white, flat-brimmed hat, paced around the drummers, keeping up a conversation. Occasionally one of the men would idly slap his drum three or four times, making a hollow sound.

  People peered through the thresholds where shanty alleys emptied onto the Square, some stepping in to watch for a moment or two; most disappeared back into the warren.

  People walked past them talking in their Caribbean patois, Frings struggling to pick out a piece here and there with little success. He felt somehow rooted to this spot, transfixed by the preparations for the ceremony.

  Two strikingly beautiful young women arrived, wearing long, colorful dresses that wrapped tightly down the women’s slender bodies. Their hair was wrapped as well, coning back.

  “Those are the priest’s assistants,” Eunice said. The women were talking to the man in white, while a couple of drummers played a beat and others chatted. The man in white walked to the center of the Square with a piece of chalk and carefully drew an X in the dirt.

  Frings looked to Eunice.

  “The crossroads. Where the spirit world meets our world. That man is the assistant priest. He’s making preparations for the ceremony.”

  The man continued to draw, now tracing a circle with the center of the X as its midpoint.

  “Who’s the priest?” Frings asked.

  Eunice looked at him in surprise. “Well, Father Womé, of course.”

  103.

  The IA cops were gone, along with the crime-scene cops, the panel truck, and a disconsolate Souza. A dozen uniforms hung around outside the shanties, watching the Community men light fires in the oil drums, black smoke rising in thick plumes.

  Grip said, “They have those things in this heat?”

  Morphy chuckled and two uniforms they were chatting with smiled. There was a lull, the lieut in the shade with a doctor, getting the broken syringe removed and his arm bandaged. Grip, Morphy, and the other cops waited, eyeing the white men gathering in the field, knowing there would be more work to do.

  Something in the distance, across the field toward the ware houses, caught Grip’s eye and he excused himself. Drums—sporadic, not coordinated—came from the shanties as he crossed the field. The only other sounds were the crows, the light crush of his feet in the weeds and gravel, the distant flow of the river. The ground seemed to radiate heat, and the sun on Grip’s neck had sweat pouring off him. Ahead, the two girls, dressed in canary-yellow dresses, stood several feet from their cow, which lay on its side, strangely deflated.

  He heard the sound of the flies. The girls didn’t come to meet him, but watched. They weren’t twins, but roughly the same ages with their hair in neat braids. They were calm. Grip wondered how long they’d been there.

  The cow, he saw, seemed to have burst open, blood pooled under its body and in it, viscera. The side up seemed untouched.

  Grip approached the girls, kneeling to be at their eye level. “What happened?”

  One of the girls said, “He popped.” The other nodded earnestly.

  “Popped?”

  The girl who had spoken nodded. The other said, “He was the Mack Doll.”

  Grip looked to the shantytown, its form distorted by the waves of heat rising from the field. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve.

  “Where are your mothers?”

  One of the girls nodded toward the shanties.

  “Maybe you ought to go find them.”

  The girls nodded and, without so much as glancing back at the dead cow, walked toward the shanties. Grip watched them for a couple of minutes, knowing that as soon as he left, the crows would converge.

  Westermann gathered his men—Grip, Morphy, and Dzeko—in the shade of a factory building that had caved in on itself, the crumbled brick walls on top looking vaguely like a castle’s crenellations. They heard rats scuttling in the ruins, smelled something decaying. Westermann laid down their only priority: Find Ole Koss. Things were falling apart around Koss and his reaction was unpredictable and likely dangerous. Grip and Morphy headed to Crippen’s to shake the tree, see what fell out.

  Morphy surprised Grip by taking the wheel, and Grip decided not to say anything about it. Morphy gave it the full siren-and-lights treatment, trusting that other cars would get the hell out of the way.

  “Jesus, Morph. Let’s get there in one piece.”

  Morphy looked sideways at Grip and shook his head. Grip hoped no o
ne gave Morphy shit at Crippen’s.

  A block away, they could see the crowd at Crippen’s spilling out onto the sidewalk.

  “The fuck is that?” Grip said.

  “It ever get like this?”

  “Never. Not close.”

  Morphy killed the sound and lights and pulled the prowl car to the curb down the block. Grip led Morphy into the crowd—all men—nodding to guys he recognized, several cops among them. People were drunk, their body language belligerent.

  Grip pushed his way inside, knocking a guy’s arm out of the way, spilling beer on the guy’s shirt. The guy started to make a move at Grip—not a small guy, either—but Morphy got ahold of his shirt and got in the guy’s mug and he backed down fast. Morphy grabbed a glass off a table and threw the beer in the guy’s face; the guy looked unsure; the man who’d just lost his glass got a good look at Morphy and decided to get another beer from the bar.

  Grip grabbed Morphy by the arm and pulled him hard. “Come on. We’ve got business.”

  Ed Wayne was at his usual table. Grip nodded for Wayne to get up. Wayne stared at him, glassy-eyed. Morphy shoved by a couple younger guys and picked up Wayne by the back of his shirt. The crowd checked out the commotion.

  Grip got in Wayne’s face. “You know where Ole Koss is, Ed?”

  Wayne drew back, as if the question surprised him. “How the hell would I know that?”

  Grip bit his lip in frustration. “The fuck is going on here?”

  “Free liquor. No one’s supposed to know, but Gerald told me Truffant’s footing the bill.”

  “Why?”

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Wayne sneered.

  Grip caught the subtle movement of Morphy’s arm as he gave Wayne a shot to the kidney, Wayne wincing and his eyes rolling drunkenly. “All right. Jesus. There’s a group—these guys, others—going to take apart the Uhuru Community to night. To night. Burn it to the ground.”