Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time (12 page)

“OK, enough of this fuckin’ around. You wanna hiss through your teeth like some old bitch on the hump, that’s fine, brother. But you gonna have to do it with that thick throat o’ yours cut wide open, you hearing me?”

“What the fuck you want with me?” The goliath had finally got the message that Vic meant business.

I bent down in the wet ice so that I could make myself understood more easily. He was going have a hard time hearing what I had to say with Vic’s sole across one ear and the other pinned down into the wet ground.

“Few weeks ago, a white dude, could’ve been a cop, walked through that door above us. Then a short while later he walks out again with a lady on his arm. Now I know that upstairs ain’t the kind place that honky coppers frequent without a good reason. They either come fo’ cash or a piece of ass. That’s right, ain’t it, Clarence?”

Vic pushed down hard again onto the decked man’s thick skull, prompting Clarence to speak.

“Yeah, that’s right . . . They coming fo’ both, most times.”

“So how often do they come and where they taking those girls who walk out with ’em?”

I stayed calm, keeping my questioning relaxed. Vic was doing all the hard work, and he looked like he was enjoying himself.

“I don’t know where they take ’em. Papa got a couple o’ pigs in his pocket. He keeps ’em sweet with a little cream off o’ the top and a choice of some cunny, that’s all I know.”

Before I got chance to press him a little harder, Vic took his foot off of Clarence’s face and quickly knelt down next to the big man, his knife in hand, its pointed tip placed firmly inside Clarence’s ear.

“Let me tell you what I know ’bout you, dirty bullaman.” Vic spat out his forthcoming threat with real menace. “I know you like pushing that nasty cock o’ yours in places it don’t belong and that you like to be around schoolboys in your spare time.” Vic gave Clarence the chance for a moment’s reflection. “Now I know that’s someting you don’t want getting round, cos it’s gonna fuck up your reputation as a stand-up kinda brother. You getting me, you ass’ole? Now unless you start giving my man here some answers to the questions he’s asking, you gonna find yourself walking round this neighbourhood with everybody knowing you is a one-eared, kiddie-fuckin’ nigger.”

The beaten colossus didn’t need further persuasion to continue to spill his guts.

“There’s two of ’em, both on the take outta Bridewell police station. They come any time they wanting some action fo’ themselves. But only one of ’em comes every other Saturday night to collect a special piece o’ ass that Papa brings fo’ him. The pig’s an action-man-lookin’ type o’ dude, with a crew cut. I don’t know names or where that honky takes the bitches, and I don’t care, I swear, man.”

“When you expecting him to pick up his next girl?”

“Keep him talking while he’s still scared,” I thought to myself.

“He should be over tomorrow night, after eleven.”

Vic kept the pointed end of his blade firmly in Clarence’s ear. He looked over at me to make sure I’d got all I needed out of the fearful child molester. I nodded that I had, then Vic got to his feet, took a screwed-up piece of paper out of his back trouser pocket and flung it onto the downed man’s head. It bounced off onto the wet asphalt in front of him before Vic gave him a series of simple instructions.

“There’s t’ree numbers on that paper in front o’ you. Somebody who’s gonna answer any one o’ those numbers can git a message to me within five minutes o’ you calling. When that honky cop turns up tomorrow night, you git yo’ ass to a phone and you make that call to me, brother. Cos if you don’t, an’ I have to come looking fo’ your ass again with this cutlass, I promise you I’m gonna off cut that scabby prick o’ yours and feed it to my dog.”

Vic gave Clarence a hard, swift kick in his back before then jabbing his thumb in the air towards the direction of the steps, informing me our time was up and telling me to exit back up the steps and onto the pavement.

We left Clarence Maynard laying in the basement doorway, wet, scared and cold. After what Vic had said about his wicked predilection for young boys I would not have given a damn if the demons of a hell-fired underworld had risen up from out of the frozen earth in front of me to grab his worthless soul and drag him to the torture of eternal torment that he rightly deserved.

Snow was now falling out of the night sky in larger flakes, covering the road with a fresh layer of the godawful white stuff that I was quickly growing to despise. I looked at Vic as we walked back to the car and laughed as he was opening the driver’s side door of the Cortina.

“What?” he said, irritated by my unexpected laughter. I watched him about to get into the car; a single snowflake fell onto his face, catching his eyelash, which he quickly wiped away with his hand before turning back to me. “You got someting to ask me, man?”

“Yeah . . . You ain’t got no dog, Vic.”

“I know that, fool, but next door sure as hell have, and that poor ting, it always looks damn hungry to me.”

And at that moment I had absolutely no doubt in my mind of my cousin’s cruel ability to make good on the threat he’d just made to the petrified doorman.

The sound of snowballs being repeatedly pelted at my bedroom window finally woke me from a deep, dreamless sleep on Saturday morning. I pulled the blankets across my naked shoulders and walked over to the single-paned window, which was patterned top to bottom with a spider’s-web effect of frozen ice. Taking the cold brass loops in both hands, I drew the up the sash frame, poked my head out into the cold air and peered sleepily into the street, which was coated in a deep covering of freshly fallen snow. Looking up at me, framed in all the blinding whiteness around him, stood Carnell Harris. He was dressed in a pair of brown carpenter’s overalls and a black donkey jacket buttoned up to his collar with a thick blue and red scarf around his neck. Hiding the top of his bald, shiny head was a dark-green woollen bobble hat, which initially made me think that I was staring down at an oversized black dwarf who belonged next to Santa in a fancy department-store grotto at Christmas.

“What the hell time is it, Carnell?”

An unpleasantly chilly wind blew through my blankets, making my skin rise up in large goose bumps and setting my teeth on edge.

“Marnin’, JT, it’s just after eight o’clock. Vic asked me to come round to yours early. We picked up some furniture fo’ your digs a couple o’ days ago.” Carnell pointed to the back doors of his rusted-up old Bedford van, which he had pulled up onto the pavement directly underneath me. “He told me he didn’t want any of that shit I got in the back o’ there cluttering his lock-up fo’ more than a day or so and that I was to git it loaded up and to help you shift it.”

“Are you kidding me? At eight o’clock in the fuckin’ morning, on a day like today? Are you plain shit stupid, Carnell?”

The big lummox just stood there and took my thoughtless insult on the chin. I regretted almost immediately my ungrateful rebuke to my friend and I shot a half-cocked smile down to him by way of apology for my short-tempered remark and he returned it with a goofy grin that made me question what the hell Loretta ever saw in her witless, lethargic, but good-natured spouse.

“Just gimme a minute . . . OK?” I drowsily called down to him.

“You take your time, JT. I like the snow.”

It was a witless remark like that made me realise it was gonna be one of those kinda days. I wondered for a moment if I could just leave the dense bastard out in the street while I made myself a hot cup of coffee, but I thought the better of such a cruel idea and reluctantly made my way outta my digs and down the stairs to the front door to let the brains o’ Barbados in.

Carnell entered into the hallway with all the grace of a bull elephant that had accidently caught its nuts on a wire fence. His big feet dragged in half a streetful of snow onto the floor. He stopped and stood in the doorway for a second, taking a moment to undo his coat before stamping the rest of the wet crap that had accumulated on his hefty size nines onto the hessian mat. As I waited for him to haul himself a little further into the hallway, another gust of cold air howled around my bare feet and legs, the icy draught blowing up inside the blankets I’d covered my nude body in, sending a chill up my ass that increased my temper tenfold.

“Fo’ Christ’s sakes, Carnell, why don’t I just stand here with this damn gate door open fo’ the rest of the day? Maybe if you hang round long enough, some more of that white shit out on the sidewalk can blow in here and you can make yourself a goddamn snowman.”

By the time I’d finally got him inside and closed the door, my frozen heels had stuck to the tatty linoleum flooring and I couldn’t feel my toes any more. Not only was my patience wearing thin but so was the skin on the soles of my feet.

“Go on up, man.” I impatiently put my hand out in front of me as a polite gesture that my my sloth-like buddy should go on ahead of me and that I would follow him. Every step on the cold lino felt like I was walking across a frozen glacier and my efforts to get quickly back upstairs and return to the now-dying warmth of my bed were hindered by the weighty trudging of Carnell’s fat ass in front of me.

“Carnell, you ain’t climbing the north face o’ the fuckin’ Eiger, man. Git a goddamn move on befo’ I freeze to death out here on the landing.”

“Sorry, JT, I ain’t as fit as I used to be. Loretta says I need to git myself a set o’ weights and a skipping rope to knock some of these pounds off o’ me.”

He undid his coat as we finally reached my room. His chubby hands held a length of his fat stomach, which he wobbled up and down in his thick fingers to emphasise his obvious weight problem. I looked at him playing with his fatty flesh and at first didn’t know quite what to say to him, but not for long.

“Carnell, man, if you use a skipping rope to jump around with a big-assed gut like you got going on there, you gonna do yourself and anybody stand’ within twelve feet of you some serious fuckin’ injury, you know that, don’t you?”

I couldn’t help but see the funny side of my large friend trying to skip and burst out laughing, while Carnell just looked on at me in bewilderment.

After I’d dressed, the two of us made our way back downstairs and out into the street. Carnell opened up the double rear doors of the Bedford and inside was a large ruby-red-coloured settee and four wooden kitchen chairs. Balanced on top of the sofa were a small oak writing desk and a cardboard box that contained cooking utensils pans and a set of six drinking glasses, which Carnell cheerfully informed me Loretta had sent “special” for me.

It took us around half an hour to lug the heavy couch and the rest of my newly acquired furnishings up the stairs and into the various rooms. When we’d finished, I filled the kettle at the kitchen sink, lit the gas hob and sat opposite Carnell at the table on one of the dining chairs he had carried up.

“Carnell, where the hell did Vic git all that stuff we just dragged in?”

As soon as I’d asked the question, I wished I hadn’t.

“You remember old girl Walker, JT: that sweet lady who lived opposite Loretta and me in one of those run-down tenements?”

“No. Should I?”

I didn’t like where any of this was going.

“Well, she passed on t’ree weeks back. See Vic and me, we did the house clearance as a favour fo’ her sister on account the deceased was a good friend o’ your aunt Pearl’s.”

“So all this shit we just dragged through the snow and up them stairs used to belong to an old dead woman? Tell me she didn’t croak it on that lounger that’s sitting in my front room.”

“Hell, no, JT. She died in bed. Now, I asked Vic if we should bring that along, and the mattress fo’ you too. But he didn’t think that you’d want it. Said it was shagged out and he knew you got tings sorted in the eiderdown department.”

The well-meaning oaf nodded his woolly-hat-covered dense head in the general direction of my bedroom and grinned at me again.

“Well, thanks, Carnell. I’ll rest easier knowing I got friends who know me well enough to realise that I ain’t too keen on sleeping on some poor old stiff’s night-time chaise longue. That’s sweet, man, real sweet.”

“Oh, you’re welcome, JT. Any time, man.”

I made coffee for the two of us and we chatted for a while ’bout anything and nothing, and the latest news of the cricket back home, both subjects Carnell specialised in. As he prattled on about everything under the sun, my thoughts became lost again in the mystery that was Stella Hopkins’ disappearance and how I needed to speak again to Earl Linney at some point before the end of the day. I watched as Carnell drained the last dregs of coffee from his mug and then raised his bulk up from off of the chair before sticking his hand in his donkey-jacket pocket, pulling out a set of keys and throwing them across the table to me, then buttoning up his coat as he spoke.

“They’re fo’ the Cortina you and Vic were sitting in last night. He said you may need a set o’ wheels fo’ a while, and befo’ you say anyting, it’s only gonna sit outside my place rusting up just like my damn van does. You’ll be doing me a favour taking it off my hands fo’ a while. You’ll find it still parked up outside o’ Gabe’s. I’ll be seeing you around, JT.”

He gave me a final gormless smile as I sat and watched him aimlessly wander out of my kitchen. I heard him fumble with the catch on the front door as he was leaving, finally closing it behind him with a loud, ham-fisted slam. I was speechless and humbled by my lumbering friend’s act of generosity and kindness.

A cloak of shame dropped over me for the unkind comments that I had made to him earlier. The cruel ignominy I had meted out to Carnell was not deserved, and I felt a lesser man for it.

It was after midday by the time I had had a shave and cleaned myself up. The bruises on my body had started to lose their aggressively dark hue and were not as painful as they had been. I dressed for the bitterly cold weather outside, putting on a pair of jeans, a powder-blue herringbone shirt and then a thick crew neck Arran jumper before slipping on my shoes and double-knotting the laces. I took my hat and coat from off of the hanger in the hall and picked up my wallet and the car keys, which were sitting on top of the writing desk that had been placed against the back wall of my bedroom. As I was about to walk out, I turned and stared back at the dusty piece of antique furniture that old Mrs Walker had unknowingly bequeathed to me. It suited the room, and for the first time my inhospitable abode started to feel, just a little bit, like a possible home.