Jury of Peers (16 page)

“You know we’re going to have to go in the old shelter if we’re gonna find the fucker,” Tonic said as they passed two dogs fighting over… something.

Finn nodded.  “I know it.  Let’s go past and see if it’s even still there.” 

They wheeled around, careful not to jump the curb and bust a tire.  Ray was sure that they’d be awfully quick to remind him of his intern status if something like that happened.  He could imagine them saying, “We just want to see if you can do it,” as he changed the spare.  It could be his epitaph.

“Where’s this shelter?” he asked as the two cops peered out either side of the car.

“Right around here somewhere,” Finn said.  He wiped fog off of his window.

“There,” Tonic said.  He slowed and pointed. 

It was a three story brick building just like most of the others, with two wide, church–like doors slightly ajar on the ground level.  There was no light inside, and nothing much to be revealed anyway as the windows were boarded up against the wind and cold. 

“
This
is the shelter?”

“The
old
shelter,” Tonic corrected.

“Okay, Ray,” Finn said as he drew out his pistol and checked the chamber.  "Seriously, if you don’t want to go in, it’s cool.”

Ray looked at Tonic who was, in turn, watching the front doors.  He tapped him on the shoulder.  "You going?”

“He'll get lost if I don’t.  You can hold the flashlight if you wanna come in since you’re wearing a vest.  They mostly shoot at flashlights.”

“Well I’m not staying here alone.  Fuck that.”

Tonic smiled, but it wasn’t his usual easy grin.  “I hear ya.  Don’t sweat it, I’m just givin’ you shit about the light n’all.  Just stay with us, and don’t call out if you get separated.  We’ll find you.”

“I won’t,” Ray said, though it wasn’t clear if he meant get separated or call out.  Probably both.  His natural tan was waning.

“Seriously, it’s all good.  We’ve done this before,” Tonic assured him.  Finn radioed in their location and they all bailed out of the car as one.  Finn led them to the trunk.  The wind was a breath stealer after the humid warmth of the car–the sleet stung, and as soon as the trunk was open, they all hunkered down behind it. 

There was a pile of gear, strewn about by a couple of hours of erratic driving.  Finn, too, donned a vest, working in and out of his coat like a runway model changing between sets.  “Christ,” he said as he tossed Ray the dreaded flashlight.  “Miami sounds good.”

“I didn’t think you guys were serious about the light,” Ray said weakly.

“We weren’t.  Give that to Spencer.  You take this.”  He handed him a helmet.  A no shit, going to war in Afghanistan helmet.  It was scuffed and well–worn, tan even.

“What the fuck is this?” Ray gasped.

“Relax, it’s mostly to keep shit from falling on your head man,” Tonic said.

“Mostly?”

“Yeah,” Finn said.  "But it works for other stuff too.”  He put one on as well, an old black one, and pulled the chin strap tight.

“What about you?” Ray asked Tonic, who in turn beat his chest with his fist. 

“I wear mine all the time.  Makes me feel tough,” he rummaged through the trunk as if it were a pile of laundry.  “Where’s my silly string?”

Ray’s heart was pounding, thrumming away in his ears like some enormous electrical transformer.  His armpits were slick with sweat… this was nuts.  He felt like he could sense everything around him, smell the spray paint on his vest, feel the hair bristling on his arms–he could
hear
each little pellet of ice as it glanced off of his face. 

             
“I’ve got it, dear,” Finn said, waving the can and then dropping it into his pocket.  He saw the look on Ray’s face and said, “We’re just going in and out.  We’ll find Andy, get his attention, then meet later.  Just stay close.  No big deal, alright?” he thumped Ray on the back of the vest.

             
“Easy peasy,” Tonic said and threw the trunk closed.  The wind hit them all in the face.  He locked the doors, something that struck Ray as entirely unnecessary, and then the trio started off toward the yawning double doors.  As they drew closer to the building, Ray could hear something scraping inside of the structure, slightly above them.  It reminded him of the tree that used to stand outside of his bedroom window; all night long it would creek and groan in the slightest of wind, scraping against his window like the claws of the beast.  His breath preceded him in tight little puffs.  The two cops didn’t have their guns drawn and seemed almost casual.  Were it not for the ridiculous mixture of street clothes and body armor, they might have been the survivors of an earthquake, emerging to view the destruction for the first time since the big one. 

             
“Watch your step,” Tonic pointed without looking.  A manhole was missing mid–street, and Ray gave it a wide berth, preferring not to peer into the abyss.  Life above ground was quite terrifying enough for him.  He noticed that Finn, too, chose not to sneak a peek. 

             
Tonic glanced back at the car, and then winked at Ray as they came to the front doors.  He flipped the flashlight on and examined the front latch, or at least where it might have once been.  A splintered hole remained, the kind that might have been induced by a shotgun.  He touched the door gingerly, gave it just a little wiggle, and then shown the light along the length, pausing at both top and bottom.

             
“Sometimes they’ll run a string to the door like in Scooby Doo.  Rattles a can or rings a bell, you know,” Tonic said.

             
“Or sometimes it runs to a trigger,” Finn jerked his head at the hole at about crotch level.  He rubbed his hands together, blew into them. 

             
“Goop!” Tonic said, holding out his hand like a surgeon.  Finn handed the can over.

             
Ray looked up and down the street.  It was hard to see for more than about a block, as the ice was giving way to something that resembled snow.  It slithered about their feet and skittered over the street like sand across a dune.  Some disappeared into the manhole. 

             
A sound like gushing shaving cream brought his attention back to the doors.  Tonic held the can of Silly String like a pistol, his flashlight balanced across his wrist pointing at the base of the door.  The web of neon orange foam gathered across the threshold.  He leaned farther inside, continuing to spray the floor in short, concentrated sweeps.

             
Finn’s chinstrap cut into his face, tight enough to make it slightly difficult to talk.  Or maybe it was the cold.  “If there’s a wire in there, a trip wire or a Scooby Doo, the string will hang on it, but not trigger it.  Easier to see and stay away from.”

             
“Won’t they just run out the back?” Ray asked.

             
“Could.”

             
“Shouldn’t somebody be back there then?”

             
“
This
isn’t creepy enough for you?” Finn worked his chin around under the strap.

             
Tonic leaned back out of the door, "All good.  Ready?”

             
“I guess,” Finn said.  He waved Tonic on, "You’re the expert.”

             
The flashlight led the way.  Tonic moved the door aside as quietly as possible.  It had been wrenched back and forth often enough that the hinges sagged, allowing it to drag along the pavement.  When it offered a gap of two feet, Tonic slipped inside.  Ray followed, and Finn brought up the rear. 

             
A dank stench, evidently immune to the freezing temperatures, settled unto Ray’s senses, suppressing them just as the snow outside had muffled the sounds of the street.  It was not the smell of rot as he’d expected, but rather a distantly troubling scent, one that had a flavor.  It felt as if it might attach itself to your nervous system and dismantle it bit by bit after each breath.  Mold, sewage. 

             
Tonic stepped toe first, pushing the ball of his foot into the ground with each step as if he were crushing out cigarette butts.  His stealth was wasted on Ray and Finn who simply stepped forward, the broken glass crackling under their feet.  Ray followed the beam of light as it swept along the floor, indicating the Silly String highway.  The entryway might have once been a foyer to a church sanctuary with room enough for a dozen or so people to mill about and hang their coats before a service.  A wide hallway led farther into the building, one wall slumped under the weight from above so that the ceiling was beginning to crack in some sort of urban plate tectonics. 

             
They stooped through the hall and emerged into a much larger room… where it was snowing.  Tonic swept beam around the pile of rubble that was the centerpiece of the space, but Ray’s attention was upward, four or five
stories
worth of upward, ending in a gaping hole that revealed the swiftly moving overcast above.  Gentle flakes had begun to settle atop the rubble, filtering down through what remained of the natural light like dust motes in the sun. 

             
“That’s new,” Tonic said.

             
If it had been a church, this would have been the sanctuary, but with a few stories of fallen rubble on the ground it was impossible to tell.  Still, with the soft guts of the building caved in, the spacious view to the heavens felt strangely peaceful.  The falling snow, the reprieve from the wind outside–it was still a sanctuary of sorts.

             
Finn was looking up as well, then down at the pile of timber, carpet, and rusted out, harvest gold appliances.  "Hmfph.”

             
Staccato footsteps.  Someone was trying to run through the loose glass and debris farther back inside the building.  They all stood still, men caught in the beam of alien light from above.  They rotated in place as the sound panned around to their left.  One, maybe two people were making their way along the outside wall of the building, scrambling, falling, a true mad dash.

             
Tonic reacted first, taking three full steps toward the front door before either Finn or Ray had moved.  "Out back!”  Ray’s adrenaline hit him with such force that he felt as if the ground had moved beneath him.  He followed the two cops, skidded around a corner on the cubed fragments of glass, and burst out of the now fully open front door into the wind.  Tonic was in the street about five strides behind a guy in a dirty brown dinner jacket.  Finn was not far behind.             

Ray stepped forward to the edge of the street, watching the chase in an adrenaline haze as the dinner jacket guy leaped for the open manhole, slid on the pavement, and then slithered face first into the darkness.  Tonic made a grab for him, but came away with only a shoe.  He lay there, peering into the pit with his light, breathing hard.
             

             
“Son of a
bitch,
” Tonic said as he stood and tossed the shoe down into the hole.  He looked up at NERD who had wandered a bit farther into the street.  “Isn’t that some shit?” Tonic was smiling.

             
His smile disappeared and he looked
behind
Ray.

             
Ravish Ramadeep had an odd thought as he turned to see whatever monster had materialized from behind him,
I just got a new desk. 
There
had
been a second runner.  Perhaps the guy had fallen in his hurry to negotiate the twisted timbers that lay along side the building, but this hadn’t kept him from adhering to his original flight plan.  He burst out from around the corner just as Ray turned, and the two collided at a combined closure rate of
full sprint
and
standing still.  Boom
.  Ray’s helmet leapt up off of his head as if he’d taken the full brunt of a linebacker’s wrath.  The two bodies were momentarily free of physical law, torsos twisting in the air with limbs akimbo.  And just as suddenly they were snatched up by gravity and yanked to the ground.  The runner hit first absorbing Ray’s weight with his ribs.  The helmet hit last with a hollow clunk and spun out into the street. 

             
Tonic lifted Ray clear of the tangle as Finn pounced.  The second, less fortunate runner, was slight, dirty from the top down, and wearing only a gritty old t–shirt.  His white ass gleamed against the dirty grey street.

             
“Hello Andy,” Finn said from astride the kid’s chest.

Chapter Twenty–Six

Incense

              “Turn here,” Jonquez said.  "Two blocks to the skinny alley, sorta off on this side,” he patted the headrest on the seat in front of him.  “We’ll take ya to ‘em.”

             
They pulled into the alley, and it was indeed narrow.  Or maybe the car was just too fucking big.  All Seth knew is that he’d have a bitch of a time even opening the door here.  He focused, and found that it wasn’t hard to think, to plan, to react just as long as you were willing to do anything that it took to get to your goal.  In fact, it made things almost easy. A long list of possibilities scrolled through his mind, but they sorted and organized themselves into neat little rows of data.  There was no panic, no hesitation.  He felt completely invincible, at ease with each decision.

             
The alley was merely a space between two dark brick apartment buildings.  Fifty feet in, it opened into a dank courtyard devoid of any life or light.  Heaps of garbage clung to the bases of the buildings, making them appear strangely organic, as if they had sprung from the concrete years ago like great, angular sequoias.  

             
“Here,” Jonquez said.

             
Seth stopped the car and said without turning, “Daisy, let me see your gun.”

             
Jonquez elbowed him and he took it out of his coat, a large framed, silver revolver of some sort.  It seemed much, much larger than the kid’s hand.

             
“Alright, let’s go.”

             
They all stepped out of the car, and Seth was instantly assaulted by the smell.  The air was stagnant despite hearing the wind howling above the roofline.  The rot that perpetuated itself, giving off heat to cause more decay–the rot that could not be frozen–lurked here in every dark basement hole, seething. 

             
“Daisy, you want to do business?” Seth asked as he came around the car buttoning his suit jacket.

             
“Yeah, man,” the kid said.  Even next to Seth he seemed slight.  Fully a foot shorter.  A hint of afro poked out from one side of his bulging stocking cap.  Maybe that gave him an extra couple of inches. 

             
“Jonquez and I will be back in about half an hour.  If I come back and my car is happy and intact, I’ll hand each of you a grand.  No questions.  If my car is sad, this will not bode well….are we understanding each other?”

             
“Yeah, I gotcha.”  He sat down between the wall and an overturned dumpster, revolver in hand.

             
“Lead on Jonquez,” Seth said.  He followed the kid along the wall where there was a pathway cut in the refuse, and up to a porch of sorts, the left side of which threatened to collapse from the weight of the garbage that had been unceremoniously dropped from above for years.  The doorway beneath was merely a shadow under a shadow, a recessed hall leading to what was once a bright red door.  The paint was warped and cracked like a desert floor, burned and sooty, only the knob seemed to be polished clean.

             
Seth was hard pressed to see in the gloom, but the kid seemed to know his way, and though this was little comfort, it was the path he’d chosen.  The door opened smoothly; there was no lock, no secret slat that furtively opened to reveal a pair of sweeping eyes.  Instead, they were met by a dim grey that illuminated the stairwell leading up.  It seemed almost dazzling after being in the alley.

             
They climbed, Seth’s finely polished shoes adhering to the narrow walkway that was not covered in paper, piss, or anything else that had been left behind.  At the top of the landing, Seth peered out over the street through a window long since broken.  The shards hung like stalactites in the sill.  Tiny beads of ice were borne along on the wind and just beginning to gather in swirls on the street.  He took a gulp of the relatively fresh air and followed the kid up the second landing, which benefited from the window’s light as well.

             
Here Jonquez knocked.  “Stand back down there,” he said, indicating anywhere away from him, and down the steps.  Seth obeyed.

             
The door opened and a voice interrogated the kid, “Waaas Quez?”  It was shrill, like wind in power lines, warbling and almost… cat–like. 

             
“Guy wants to see Suki,” Jonquez said, turning to indicate Seth.

             
The face appeared, hissed through missing teeth, and said, “Whooosew?”  The lid of one eye sagged over an eyeball that rolled about in the socket without any apparent guidance.  Or maybe it was seeing something that Seth wasn’t.

             
“I’m here to see Suki,” Seth said.  If he was going to live out his last fifteen minutes of life in an insane T.S. Elliot world, so be it.  He was waiting for her to whip out a doll and start stabbing its eyes with pins.

             
The door closed and Jonquez turned to him.  The kid seemed to want to say something as his eyes searched over Seth’s backlit form. 

The suit, the car, the dudes he ran down with his cold ride.  And white.  Quez knew that there were two different kinds of white.  There was dirty white, and clean white.  Dirties were hated by everyone.  They had given up their advantage, allowed themselves to be suckered out a life of dreams.  They were quitters.  Quez busted his ass everyday so that he could stay ahead of a bullet and make sure his family didn’t starve–to make sure that his momma didn’t have to answer the door at night, to make sure that she didn’t have to bang any fuckin’ guy who wanted to score.  Dirties gave up and lived out of a bottle or a pipe or just laid there when they could have spit in their hands, cleaned their white faces off and got a job.  He hated them all. 

              This dude in the suit was clean.  He stood straight up like he knew exactly what he was about, like nothing was out of his reach.  He stood like a fuckin’ king in the shit of his slaves.  He was beyond everything.  Even right here and now, just walkin’ up to Suki’s door like it was nothin’.  Nothin’ at all.  Quez had been here about a dozen times since Suki took SMG over for himself, and never once did he leave without being glad as fuck to get his ass outta there.  But this dude looked high.  Like guys on ice, tweaking on the way down, too wired to sleep.  Ready to take on anyone.  The difference was that a tweaker was up in everybody’s face, talkin’ shit or chewin’ their fingernails until they saw their bones poking out.  Hyper, crazy hyper.  This guy was no tweaker.  He was clean.  He acted like he belonged right in this moment.

             
“What?” Seth asked.

             
“Nothin’ man.”

             
The door opened again and a guy about twenty years old stepped out.  Dark jeans, Nike warm–up jacket, scuffed white sneakers.  Seth was about level with said sneakers.  It was a pretty good ploy, having anyone that wanted to come see you have to look up at your bruisers.  The guy was big anyway, but staring up from toe level made him into a giant.  He looked right through Jonquez who stood aside.  "Who are you?”

             
Seth had expected worse.  He shook his head, "Who are you?”

             
“I’m askin’ the fuckin’ questions.”

             
“Doesn’t seem so.”

             
The kid seemed confused, so Seth made it more difficult.  He turned to Jonquez.  "Why is it that when I ask for something simple I have to talk to talk to Old Grizabella and fucking Rum Tum Tugger here?”

             
“What the
fuck
?” the kid's white sneakers got nervous and he reached for his gun.

             
Jonquez backed into the wall.

             
“That would be unwise,” Seth said.  He looked straight up at the kid as he struggled to pull a pistol out of the warm–up. 

             
“I’ll cap your ass, motherfucker,” spit flew from his lips.

             
“Jonquez, explain it to him.”

             
Quez just shook his head.  His hands were up by his face, and it took a moment for Seth to realize that he was getting ready to plug his ears. 

             
“Mother
fucker
,” Rum Tum said.  “You got two fuckin’ seconds.”

             
“I thought you were going to shoot me.  Why the change of heart?”

             
The gun came out.

             
“I’m ‘bout done playin’.”

             
“By the way,” Seth said to Jonquez who was still huddled off to the side.  “The Rum Tum Tugger thing was actually kind of a compliment.  You’d be Skimbleshanks.  Which is also a good thing.”  Seth focused, pressing back the images of his family spellbound in the audience of CATS.  Jenny had memorized it all, it was her favorite, and it seemed almost obscene to mention it here… or maybe fitting.

             
There was a laugh from inside the door and everyone turned toward it, including Rum Tum.  Floorboards creaked as something heavy moved toward the door.  Lumbered.  The gun went away, and suddenly there were
two
kids up against the wall.  The laughing continued and a voice to match the thudding steps seemed to open the door of its own accord.  “Who’s that make me?”

             
Suki was an enormous black man.  Cut from the cloth of the Sumo, he lacked only the loincloth to step into the ring.  Stout trunks held up a body that otherwise might have teetered with every step, while a black t–shirt struggled to hold the remaining bulk in check.  The man’s face was broad and clean and might not have seemed as Asian as it did where it not for his name, and the ridiculous topknot haircut.

             
“That would make you Old Deuteronomy I think.”             

             
Suki waved him in with a swipe of his paw.

             
The room was well lit, but without any natural light.  The windows were filled with new bricks, neatly mortared into place, and track lighting lit each of the long walls with spots of soft, feathered light.  Tapestries hung around the room, absorbing any of the lingering death that might have slipped in from the door, and dispelling it in the warm glow of tightly woven red and yellow yarns.  Suki strode into his space with ease, trusting that Seth would follow.

             
There was a desk along the far wall, large enough for two Sukis to sit behind, and this was flanked by a pair of equally enormous ferns that reached toward the ceiling under bright floods.  Incense burned near a doorway leading farther back into the building, and the smoke seemed to Seth much like a third plant unfurling, making its way slowly upward and spreading out across the painted ceiling.  Seth let his fingers trail along one of the many red couches that leaned into the walls; empty, they reminded him of the sofa in his grandmother’s living room, the one that wasn’t used for sitting.  All they needed were plastic covers.

             
There were two other men in the room, as quiet and still as the tapestries.  They stood in the gaps between lights, watching.  Suki eased himself down behind his desk, and motioned for Seth to take a seat in a frail looking wicker chair. 

             
Seth looked back toward the door he’d entered.  It seemed distant, like the only fire exit in a museum… an origami museum.  It had been pulled closed, and there at the base of the doorframe was the woman who had given him the evil eye.  She lay curled, very much like a cat watching for any signs of the next mouse.  By contrast, Seth could see glimpses into the next room from where he took a seat.  Through a veil of unmoving beads, several pairs of long, smooth legs could be seen intertwined within a heap of pillows strewn along the floor.

             
Suki folded his hands, studied Seth for a moment, and then shook his head.  The slick topknot stayed exactly in place.  “You must be the Magical Mr. Mistoffelees.”

             
“You might be right.”

             
“You gonna conjure something for me?” Suki asked.  He leaned forward and let his big head rest in his palms.

             
“If I may?” Seth said, gesturing to his inside breast pocket.             

             
“By all means,” Suki said.  There wasn’t the slightest hesitation, he seemed very much the birthday boy watching a magician produce an endless stream of ribbons.

             
Seth reached into his pocket and produced a sketch of the graffiti that was forever burned into his mind.  The big man put his palm on the image and drug it over.  He lifted the sketch as if peering at a poker hand and then replaced it on the table.  His eyes fell on Seth.  Large dark eyes.  “Who are you?” Suki asked.

             
“My name’s Seth Meek,” he extended his hand, which disappeared into Suki’s for a moment and then slid free.

“I gotcha, alright. Yeah, fifteen minutes of fame and all that?”