City of Heretics (12 page)

All that stuff was long gone. Midtown was almost as bad as every place else in Memphis these days. A lot of the shops had closed up. For rent signs were everywhere. It was late afternoon, but there wasn’t much traffic on Madison and a cold wind skirted along in the wake of each passing car.

He stopped and huddled in the doorway of what used to be a head shop, marveling at the pain in his left shoulder and at his shoulder blades. He’d been stabbed once before, in the side. He was thirty-two when that happened, and he didn’t remember the pain of it lingering as long as these new wounds. The cold only made it worse, reaching deep down inside his muscles and clawing them.

He felt old. He felt like a stranger.

Eddie Wills was going to be trouble, that much was clear. More trouble than Vitower or Chester or anyone. It didn’t make Crowe’s life any sweeter, knowing that the cop would be dogging him. But he’d had cops giving him grief before; it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle. And no cop was going to stop him from doing what he had to do.

He was standing there in the cold thinking about Wills and thinking about how damn old he felt when the pimped-out silver Grand Prix pulled up to the curb in front of him. The power window on the passenger side came down, and a handsome black face with a bandage over the nose said, “Crowe. Get in.”

He showed Crowe his gun.

Garay got in the backseat with him, sure to keep his gun low. The two others occupied the front. The driver was a big, thick bastard whose hands made the steering wheel look like a toy. The guy in the passenger seat was smaller, with delicate, almost feminine features. Neither of them spoke.

“Found out your name,” Garay said. “Didn’t even have to ask my sissy.”

He seemed proud of that, so Crowe said, “Congratulations.”

The car smelled, not unpleasantly, of weed. The driver took a hard left, headed toward downtown. “Yo,” Garay said to him. “Go easy on my car, motherfucker.”

The smaller guy said, “Stop fuckin’ around, Garay. You gotta talk to the man, talk to the man.”

Garay looked ready to mouth off to the guy, but then thought better of it. Obviously, he was low man on the totem pole here but didn’t want to look too weak in front of Crowe. He leaned back in the seat, gun in his lap, eyed him, his face saying,
who’s the bad-ass now, huh
? 

  He nodded at the bandages on Crowe’s face, said, “What the fuck happened to you?”

Crowe didn’t answer him. Garay waited a beat, realized he wasn’t going to get an answer, decided to let it go. He said, “Well, whatever it was, I’m glad. Makes my little bandage look like nothin’, don’t it?”

Crowe let him enjoy that for a moment, and said, “You got a reason for plucking me off the street?”

The little guy in front said, “Maybe we gonna kill you. What you think about that?”

“I don’t like that plan.”

The two in front laughed, but Garay just looked at me warily.

The little guy said, “You don’t like that plan. Nice. Naw, we ain’t gonna kill you, not unless you get all crazy and shit. Garay, tell your man why we grabbed him.”

Crowe looked at Garay, waiting for an answer, and Garay said, “We got a proposition for you. We got a little business arrangement, see what you think about it.”

“Is this something just between the four of us?  Or are you guys running errands for someone else?”

The driver’s huge hands tightened on the steering wheel, and he glanced at Crowe sharply in the rear-view. “What?” he said, his voice rumbling in the confined space. “What, you think we just some motherfuckin’ errand boys?”

“I don’t know what you are, Fats. You tell me.”

Garay looked nervous. He fingered his gun, said, “Chill, bro. Let’s just chill, yeah?  This don’t have to get ugly, right?”

The driver relaxed, taking a deep, resigned breath. His fingers were still tight on the wheel, though. Crowe shrugged and said, “I’m listening.”

“You one of Vitower’s boys, ain’t you?” Garay said. When Crowe didn’t answer, he went on: “Marco Vitower, the big fucker. Thinks he’s the fuckin’ King of Memphis, yeah?”

“What about him?”

“He don’t know shit, that’s what about him. He don’t know, the game’s changin’ all around him and he’s frontin’, actin’ like it’s still the old days. But it ain’t the old days.”

The little guy said, “He thinks he’s the New Breed. That’s what makes me fuckin’ laugh. He thinks he’s the New Face of Crime in Memphis. But he’s DVD, knowmsayin?  He’s DVD and Bad Luck Incorporated’s fuckin’ Blu-Ray.”

The big bastard laughed, said, “Yeah, yeah!  Fuckin’ Blu-Ray, motherfucker!”

Garay laughed along with them, and said to me, “He’s still playin’ the game by the white man’s rules, right?  He don’t know.”

Crowe said, “So what does any of this have to do with me?”

Garay smiled slyly, nodding. “You been away for a while. Been in the joint. They be sayin’ you’re something like a free agent, got no loyalty to Vitower.”

Crowe frowned. “Who’s been saying that?”

“It don’t matter who’s been saying what. What matters is that you got no reason to be loyal to Vitower.”

“You’re suggesting I throw in with you boys.”

Again, they all laughed.

Garay said, “Fuck, man, what we gonna do with some old cracker?  No, what we got in mind is something more… free-lance, right?”

“You haven’t said shit yet, Garay.”

The little guy craned his neck around to look at us and said, “The man’s right, Garay. You ain’t told him nothin’.”

“A’ight, a’ight,” Garay said. And then, “We want you to cap Vitower. We want you to put a bullet in his fuckin’ head.”

Crowe said, “What makes you think I’d do that?”

Garay rubbed his thumb and fingers together, the universal sign of cash. “Five large,” he said.

Crowe laughed out loud.

Garay scowled. “What the fuck’s so funny?”

“You expect me to kill Vitower for five thousand dollars?  Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“What, that ain’t enough?  I know some brothers’ would do it for fuckin’ five hundred.”

“So why don’t you get them to do it, then, and stop wasting my time?”

They were coming up on Poplar. The big bastard took a right, cutting off traffic. A lady in a microbus honked her horn but he ignored her. It wasn’t quite five o’clock, but already the sky was going gray and the sun was nowhere in sight. The bandages on Crowe’s face itched like crazy.

Garay said, “Ain’t no one can get close enough, that’s why. Fuck, man, how much you wanna get paid?”

Crowe said, “Add another zero, maybe we can talk.”

“Fuckin’ fifty large?  Jesus Christ, mother—“

“Look,” Crowe said. “If Bad Luck doesn’t have the capitol for something like a hit, who can hold it against them?  They have a ways to go yet before they’re playing with the big boys, right?”

The big bastard rumbled, “I’m gonna stop this fuckin’ car and slit your throat.”

“Relax, Fats. I’m just saying, five grand is what I’d get paid just to hear you out. I’m doing you a favor just listening to you.”

The big guy calmed down, just a little, but he swerved into the left lane without signaling and touched the gas a little harder.

Garay seemed to be waiting for one of the others to say something, to make a decision, but no one jumped in. Finally, he sighed and said, “Tell you what, Crowe. I’ll talk to Falcon, see what’s what, and maybe we can—“

The little guy said, “Falcon ain’t gonna like it. Falcon ain’t gonna pay this cracker fuck no fifty large.”

“We’ll talk to him,” Garay said. “See what’s what, and then we’ll talk again. How’s that sound?”

“Sure,” Crowe said. “You know where to find me.”  And then, because he couldn’t resist it, he said, “At your sister’s place, fucking her every chance I get.”

His face went dark with blood and he gritted his teeth. His fingers clenched the grip of his gun.

The two guys in front laughed, and the big bastard said, “You gotta give this old fucker credit. He got stones.”

“Let him off here,” Garay said. “Now.”

They were still on Poplar, a good four miles from where they’d picked him up. The big bastard pulled over into the parking lot of a strip mall, stopped the car with a jerk.

“We be talkin’ to you,” said Garay.

Crowe opened the door and started to step out of the car, glancing back just in time to see Garay pulling up his hoodie to put the gun in his waistband. He had a strange tattoo on his washboard stomach, black and red. It was a cross, topped by a blood-red heart.

He reached over and slammed the door shut, and they drove off.

He was getting his stuff together to leave that night when Faith finally came out of the bedroom and, without a word, put her arms around him and held on for a long minute. When she looked up, her eyes were clear for a change and she said, “I don’t want you to leave.”

“I probably should.”

She shook her head. “Stay. Please.”

So, against his better judgment, he stayed.

Later that night they were out of bed and Faith was stone sober for a change, and they were eating Chinese food in the living room and listening to a CD she had of Count Basie, some cool, loose-limbed thing from when he was on the Okeh label. Crowe was in his boxer briefs, she had pulled a tee-shirt on and was trying to feed him some beef lo Mein, when he said, “I ran into your brother today.”

She stopped with the chopsticks halfway to his face, and her eyes went weird. For a second, he thought she might try to gouge the chopsticks into his face. She said, “My… my brother?  How do you know my brother?”

“Made his acquaintance a little while back. We’ve been staying in touch since then.”

She put the chopstick back in the carton and set the carton on the coffee table. “Are you fucking with me?” she said.

He shook his head. He hadn’t been sure what to expect, but the anger interested him. He said, “Did you know he was a gangbanger?”

She sneered. “Did I know?  How could I not know?  He always goes around flashing his stupid little gang signs, dressing like a thug. And he always has money, I don’t even want to think about where he gets it. If Mama had any idea…”

Her face was set hard, talking about him. She looked at Crowe again, her eyes burning. “How?  How do you know him?”

“I told you.”

“What is he getting involved in now?  Tell me, Crowe, or so help me—“

“I don’t know what he’s getting involved in. He’s with Bad Luck, that’s enough, don’t you think?”

She shook her head. “Bad Luck doesn’t have anything to do with your people. With Vitower’s crew. They… they’re small-time. I mean… they’re street-level. How, Crowe?  How did you just happen to run across Garay?”

“Bad Luck’s trying to make a play for a bigger share of the city. Garay brought it to my attention.”

She stood up quickly, knocking the carton of lo Mein off the table. Noodles and vegetables spilled all over the floor. Cursing, she grabbed a napkin to pick it up, then threw the napkin on the table and stalked off into the kitchen. She came back with a dust pan and a wet towel and started pushing the mess into the pan.

Then she stopped, shoulders slumping, and looked at him. “You don’t wanna tell me the details, fine. You know what?  I don’t even care, okay?  I should be used to this shit by now. Every man in my life is on some stupid fucking crusade to prove what a bad-ass he is. My brother. You. Shit, even my pop was a crook. Great role-model for Garay he was. You know what happened to my pop?  Did I ever tell you?  He tried to rob some guy at gunpoint, and the guy pulled out a gun of his own and shot him. He shot him right in the fucking heart.”

“Faith, he—“

“What do you think that did to my Mama, Crowe?  How do you think she feels even now?  She and Garay live in a nice house, on a nice street in Germantown. Brinkley Drive. Respectable. And there’s Garay pulling up in his pimped-out Grand Prix, lookin’ like some kind of hood, making my Mama look like a fool in front of all the neighbors. And she doesn’t even
know
it!”

She threw the dust pan across the room. It shattered a small vase on the curio by the television. She didn’t even look at it. She said, “So you and my brother wanna be tough guys, knock yourselves out. Sooner or later, you’re gonna come across someone tougher than you.”

She stood up again, glared at him like there was something else she wanted to say. She turned around and marched off toward the bedroom.

In the doorway, she stopped and looked back at him. “You know what, Crowe?  I changed my mind. I do want you to leave after all. Tomorrow morning.”

He nodded, and she slammed her bedroom door behind her.

The next morning, January 11
, Crowe went to work. He’d already packed up his stuff, so he got up before Faith, left, and took a cab downtown. After that, he had eggs and ham and fresh fruit for breakfast at a diner off Union. He lingered over it.

Early afternoon, with the sun trying desperately to break out of the strangle hold winter had on it, he took a cab to the offices of the
Memphis Clarion
.

Lori Cole worked the crime beat for the paper, had since long before Crowe ever come to the Bluff City. Four times in the last fifteen years, the word
Pulitzer
had come up in the same sentence as her name, but so far they had only danced around each other and never consummated the relationship. Probably just as well. Lori hated her job, she hated her bosses, and she hated the people who read her paper. She responded to praise with a disdainful sneer. A Pulitzer would no doubt have sent her over the edge into a total psychotic breakdown.

She saw him coming before he was even halfway across the bustling, noisy newsroom, and something like irritable confusion showed on her face. By the time he made it to her desk, she’d put it together and said, “Almost didn’t recognize you, what with all those bandages on your mug. How is it that no one told me you were out of prison?”

“Your source at the joint must be losing his touch.”

She scowled. “I’ll have to see about that. You here to kill me or something?”

Crowe laughed. “No, Cole. Why would I do that?”