Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time (35 page)

Vic pushed his face into mine.

“I don’t give two shits ’bout no shark . . . I want that murdering nigger Papa’s head on a pike. He’s mine, you hear me?”

“And you can have him, but please, Vic, don’t blow this fo’ me, not now. I know I’m close; I just need a little more time to solve this and work out what the hell is going on.”

Vic stared back at me for what seemed like forever.

Slowly he began to calm and sat back down on his chair, put his head in his hands, then frantically started rubbing at his scalp in frustration, then all of a sudden froze, his fingers still hooked into his hair. When he spoke to me, his head was still pointing down at the floor.

“OK, Mr Detective, when you was tearing Hurps’ a new ass’ole back at the Speed Bird and he thought you were gonna rob his cash register, what was it you told me he shouted at you?”

“That I didn’t know whose money I was gonna be messing with. Why?”

Vic looked up at me.

“By ‘messin’ with’, who’d you think he was talking ’bout?”

“Well . . . Papa, I suppose.”

Vic laughed to himself, shaking his head to and fro.

“Papa’s got his dirty hands in lots o’ people’s bidness: not in the Speed Bird, though. Hurps don’t like people knowing, but he’s got himself a silent partner in that underground shithole of his, he always has had.”

“Yeah . . . Who’s that?”

“Cut Man Perry.”

Vic got up without saying another word; he grabbed his coat from where he had hung it on the edge of the kitchen door, then turned to me as he was putting it on and nodded toward the hallway as an indication that we needed to haul our butts. Confused, I was about to ask him what the hell was going on when he barked out at me impatiently.

“C’mon, drive me round to Cut Man’s place. I got someting you need to take a look at.”

Cut Man Perry didn’t believe in opening up for business until after midday. The slothful proprietor of the only gymnasium in St Pauls was renowned for his love of two things: sleep and food. How he’d become rich remained a mystery to many, as he rarely rose from his pit before eleven and had never appeared to work a full day in his life. But behind this façade his business ventures were both varied and almost always illegal in one way or another. Those who knew the stinky fat man well enough never tried to contact him until after he had eaten his lunch or attempted to do business with him thinking they would get the best end of a deal.

Cut Man was astute in all things fiscal, a miser who was rumoured to keep his ever-increasing amounts of capital in various dubious businesses, which he may or may not have owned. He refused to trust a bank and loved the thrill of being able to barter for what he wanted. He would have happily been at home doing business in a Moroccan souk or in any of the hundreds of money-lending houses across the globe. Never shy at courting friendships with those who wielded power or influence, Cut Man trod a fine line that sat somewhat uncomfortably between gregarious entrepreneur and just plain shifty.

I parked the Cortina in a side street across the road from Cut Man’s gym. Vic was on a mission: he slammed the door behind him, ran over the road, unlocked the gym’s door and was impatiently waiting for me by the time I’d caught up with him. He walked in and flicked a switch on the wall; a series of unshaded hundred-watt bulbs sprung to life and brightly lit up the stairwell in front of us. I watched my cousin sprint up the flight of stairs, taking the steps two at a time to the top of the hallway.

“C’mon, fool . . . We ain’t got all day.”

I hesitated, then followed his lead. We passed the office that he was supposedly “renting out” from the fat man and made our way down the corridor to Cut Man’s workplace. Vic reached Perry’s door but put his back against the wall and with one swift, violent kick smashed it open. He looked at me and winked.

“What was I supposed to do? I ain’t got no key fo’ this rat’ole.”

Vic strode across the room in the dark to Cut Man’s desk, leant across it and turned on a small lamp with a flexible stand. He picked it up, then set it on the edge of the table and directed the strong beam of the spotlight onto the far wall, where the gym owner’s collection of fight posters and memorabilia was pinned up. Vic walked over to the floodlit wall and jabbed his finger at a large black and white photograph that was partially hidden between a cut-out newspaper picture of Sonny Liston and a local Masonic Lodge dinner-dance invite.

“Here . . . You come take a look at this.”

I joined Vic as he pulled the photograph off the wall and held it closer to the strong shaft of light.

It was a recently taken photograph of Cut Man standing with both Elrod Haddon and the white cop Mickey Warren, as well as a group of men and a woman I didn’t recognise. Cut Man, Haddon and Warren were standing either side of a white guy who was probably in his fifties and a well-dressed black woman. Vic stuck his big finger on the face of Mickey Warren and tapped at it repeatedly as he asked me a question.

“Tell me who you think that ugly-looking honky is with the crew-cut trim job?”

I looked back at him and smiled.

“That’s the dirty cop that tried to put my ass out to grass with a slapjack.”

Vic pushed the photograph hard into my chest and let it go. It stuck to my raincoat for a moment before it started to fall to the floor. I caught it as floated to my feet and looked again at the faces in the picture. Vic picked up the phone on Cut Man’s desk and began to dial a number.

“I think we need to have a serious word with the fat man,” he said, the bloodlust in his voice barely hidden. “Hey, Cut Man . . . How you doin’, brother, it’s Vic.” I could hear the oily businessman complaining from across the room.

He was banging on ’bout how pissed he was at being woken at such a ridiculous time of the day. My cousin interrupted his whining on the other end of the line by giving him a tall tale that he knew would silence the flabby old goat.

“Man . . . Will you shut yo’ big, saggy-assed mout’ fo’ one goddamn minute. I just got to the gym to pick up a couple o’ boxes of hooch. Ting is, when I gets here I finds the back door ’as been jemmied open and all my Mount Gay rum has took a walk. The ting is, from where I’m speaking to you now and from the size o’ the hole in your office wall, so has your damn safe too!”

Vic pulled the receiver away from his ear just in time as Cut Man bawled a series of crude expletives at him. The line went dead and we sat and waited in the semi-darkness of his stinky office for him to arrive.

The sound of a breathless Cut Man running up the stairs announced in no uncertain terms that he had arrived. He marched down the hallway towards us, continuing to swear and curse in between bouts of hacking and wheezing.

“What muthafucka tinks he can come in my place and steal from me!”

He stormed into his office and came to a grinding halt, looking straight ahead at his back wall expecting to see his precious safe gone only to find it untouched and Vic sitting at in his best leather recliner with his feet resting up on his desk. I stood out of sight behind the opened door, my back against the wall, and waited.

“Hey, Cut Man, it’s good a you to show up so promptly, brother.”

Vic smiled at him for a moment before his face became blank and stern.

“What the fuck you playing at, dragging me outta my bed fo’ some damn stupid prank, how the hell you git in my office?”

Cut Man gingerly walked towards Vic, angry but not stupid enough to challenge him outright.

“One o’ the rats that you shack up here with let us in.”

I closed the creaking door behind him as he moved forward, and a surprised Cut Man turned indignantly to face me. Livid, he snapped at me like a chained-up bulldog.

“What the . . . ? Not you too. What is this, some kinda Ellington family git-together?” He pointed at Vic. “Next ting you’ll be telling me you got that miserable ole bastard of a daddy and uncle o’ yours in my shitter back there!” He crudely stubbed his thick thumb over his shoulder towards the WC to make his point.

Vic bolted out of his seat, flew round the desk towards Cut Man and stood right up close in his face.

“Now you mind your big mout’ what you saying ’bout my daddy . . . You hear me?”

Cut Man backed away from Vic and found himself caught between the two of us. The original whiff of unpleasant body odour that had originally hit me when Cut Man first walked in had now erupted into the pungent stench of nervous sweat. At first the perspiration that was running down his forehead, nose and cheeks had been caused by the excursion he had made to get to his beloved coffer, which he thought had been fleeced; now it drained out of him from pure fear.

“What the hell are you two pair o’ bastards playing at?”

I leant over Cut Man’s shoulder and hung the photograph of him and Hurps Haddon with the bent copper in front of his clammy face.

“Tell me ’bout the people standing with you in that photograph, Cut Man.”

“What’d you wanna know that shit fo’, JT?”

“Cos I’m t’rowing a party . . . Who are they?”

“They ain’t nobody, just some moneyed-up honkies and an ole nigger bitch I met at the Masonic hall last year . . . What the fuck is it you on with? You bustin’ into my place, asking me questions ’bout tings that are none o’ your goddamn bidness!”

Cut Man fell silent. He’d been directing his anger at me and he’d briefly forgotten Vic standing behind him . . . It was a big mistake. Vic swung him round by his lapels, then hammered two swift direct blows to his gut. Cut Man doubled over and threw up over his carpet as Vic pulled him over to his desk, pinned his head to the green baize ink-blotting pad with one hand, then pulled his right arm out straight, turned it so his palm faced upwards and angled the foul-smelling fat man’s elbow on the edge of the table. Vic held Cut Man’s wrist tightly and applied pressure, bending his arm towards the floor, making him cry out in pain.

“Now you listen to me, you stinky fat bastard. You better start answering my boy’s questions with a little bit more accuracy and good manners, cause if you don’t then I’m gonna pop your elbow outta its socket like a fuckin’ chicken wing. You hear me?”

Vic applied more pressure to Cut Man’s arm, making him squeal out like a pig.

“Yeah . . . yeah, I hear you.”

Vic loosened off the pressure, but only a little. I bent down so that Cut Man could see my face, then held up the photograph in front of him again.

“Now . . . I’m gonna point at every one o’ these people in this picture that I’m interested in an’ I want a name fo’ them. You under understand me?”

I watched as Vic pushed Cut Man’s arm towards the floor a little, making him wince.

“OK, OK, I . . . I understand.”

I pointed at the first face.

Cut Man snapped at me. “Oh fo’ Christ’s sakes, you know who that—”

Vic leant down on Perry’s arm again.

“It’s Hurps . . . Elrod, Elrod Haddon.”

Sweat continued to fall from Cut Man’s face onto the desk.

“Like I said . . . every face I point to gets a name.” I directed my finger to another face, this time to one whose name I already knew.

“That’s Mickey Warren, he’s a fight fan.”

I looked up at Vic and nodded to him to do his thing. I heard the rim of the desk creak as Vic bent Cut Man’s arm hard down towards the ground.

“It’s Warren . . . Mickey Warren, he’s a vice copper, works outta Bridewell station, we drink together sometimes.”

“Is that so . . . is that so? You doin’ good, Cut Man. Keep this shit up, we going be out your hair in no time.” Vic grinned down at the squirming lowlife, then turned and cruelly winked at me.

“That’s just nice, ain’t it, Vic? What you doin’ drinking with vice cops, Cut Man? You started adding police officers to your wide circle o’ friends now?”

“In my game I have to drink with everybody . . . I’m a bidness man; you know that, JT, I mix with all kinds o’ folks.”

I nodded, then pointed back at the print to a silver-haired white man dressed in a dinner jacket and bow tie.

“Who’s this serious-looking dude?”

“That’s . . . Terrence Blanchard.”

“How’d you know Blanchard?”

“Warren introduced me to him a while back at a prissy knees-up at the Masonic hall on Park Street . . .”

Vic interrupted. “You a Mason, Cut Man?”

“Hell no . . . ! Those bastards won’t let no black man be a Freemason, you know that.”

“So how’d you git to be at a Mason’s Lodge fo’ some good-time knees-up then?”

“I gits invited all over; Mason’s Lodge ain’t no different to the Speed Bird, if you got money to spend and a little juice!”

“You do any bidness with this Blanchard fella?”

“No . . . never.”

Vic could smell Cut Man’s lies like he could smell the stink of his sweat. Out of nowhere my cousin forced himself down onto Cut Man’s arm; I heard an almighty crack as the portly gym owner screamed out in agony and fell off the desk and began to roll around in his own puke, cradling his broken limb in his crook of his other elbow.

Vic dragged everything that was on the desk and threw it across the office in a single stroke of his massive hand, then grabbed Cut Man and hauled him off the floor. Slamming his back onto the desk, Vic delivered a vicious series of blows to his stomach, chest and face before grabbing the wrist of his other arm to repeat the process.

“OK, you lying, miserable prick. You gonna be having to pay somebody to git yo’ next handjob, cos I’m going break this other fuckin’ arm off if you don’t start being straight with us!”

Vic pressed down on the other outstretched arm.

“Stop . . . stop! What you want from me . . . what you want?” Cut Man shouted out. He began to bawl, panic set in his eyes like he was a rabbit trapped in front of the beam of a motor car headlights, his legs began lashing out all over the place. Vic applied more pressure, and as he did Cut Man’s bladder gave out and a stream of yellow piss fell down from between his legs and flowed along the inside of his trousers, spilled out onto the carpet and began to mix in with the puke.

“Blanchard . . . Tell me everyting that you know about him and his connection to Mickey Warren and the whoremonger Papa Anansi.”