Superbia (Book One of the Superbia Series) (21 page)

“Yeah.”

Dez looked up and
down the street, checking for people.
 
He
handed Frank a balled up ski mask and told him to put it on when they went
inside.
 
“Under no circumstances are you
to use anyone’s name, agency, or other identifying information.
 
Do you understand?”

Frank looked down
at the mask and said, “Are you being serious right now, or is this some sort of
joke, because I’m seriously not in the mood.”

Dez leveled his
eyes at Frank and said, “Vic told me you were a
cop
.”

“I am a cop.
 
Things have just been a little weird lately,
that’s all.”
 
Frank went past the door
and pulled the mask over his face as Dez did the same.
 
The warehouse past the first door was lit by
a single floor lamp that was plugged into the wall near a folding chair.
 
A black man sat in the chair, hands cuffed
behind his back, wearing only his underwear.
 
Sweat dripped from his dark skin so profusely that a puddle was forming
under his seat on the concrete floor.
 
Frank adjusted his mask and the man turned to look at him with wide eyes
that showed white all the way around the irises.
 
Paris
Deimos,
Frank thought.
 

Men from Dez’s
team stood around Paris in a circle, all of them masked.

Dez walked in
front of Paris and leaned forward, putting his hands on his knees so that he
was looking directly in Paris’s face.
 
“So where were we?”

“We was at
fuck you
,
fuck
these other muh fukkin’ pigs,
fuck
yo mamas,
fuck
yo
grandmamas,
fuck
yo kids,
fuck
yo skank-ass, scandalous ass,
dick-sucking babymama, and
fuck whoever
the fuck
it is you think I kidnapped because I ain’t done shit.”

“Right,” Dez
said.
 
He stood up and sighed, “Well, we
tried everything else.
 
Now that we’re
all here, I guess we should just get down to it.”

“Yeah, right,”
Paris sneered.
 
“You bitches don’t scare
me.
 
I ain’t
never
scared, faggots.”

“Okay,” Dez
said.
 
He looked over at the closed door
of their meeting room.
 
“You ready in
there?”

Something pounded
on the door in response.
 
Hard.
 

Paris turned
toward the sound and laughed sharply, “What?
 
You think I never took a beating before?
 
I’ve been getting my ass kicked by the police my whole life.
 
This ain’t shit.
 
You hear me?
 
You ain’t shit in there, whoever the fuck you are.”

“I’d like to
welcome you to a very special club, Mr. Deimos,” Dez said.
 
“Since the seventies, police have relied on
one singular entity to gain information from subjects when all else
failed.
 
Not many people have ever seen
him, but those that do never forget it.
 
And I can assure you that neither will you.”

Paris had gone
silent and was now watching the door.
 

“Allow me to
introduce you to a friend of mine,” Dez said.
 
He turned toward the door as it slowly opened to reveal a six-foot man
in a dirty, blood-stained bunny costume.
 
He came out of the office carrying an orange nightstick, heading
directly for Paris.
 
“This is the Truth
Rabbit.”

***

Paris Deimos
slumped forward against his seat and spat blood between his knees.
 
He worked something inside his mouth with his
tongue and grunted, then spat a piece of broken tooth at the Truth Rabbit.
 
“I don’t know where they at!” he
screamed.
 
His eyes were swollen shut and
his black skin was covered in bloody welts flecked with pieces of orange paint.
 

The rabbit turned
toward Dez.
 
The Special Agent nodded and
pointed at two of the other men standing near Paris’s chair.
 
They grabbed the prisoner under the armpits
and threw him face first onto the floor.
 
His bare chest slapped against the concrete and he moaned and cursed at
them as they pinned him to the floor.
 

The Truth Rabbit
walked behind them and kicked Paris’s legs apart with his large fuzzy bunny
feet.
 
Two more men came forward and
grabbed Paris’s ankles, pulling his legs apart and holding them.
 

Dez walked around
to Paris’s face and bent down.
 
“What’s
the address of the house where you’re keeping them?”

“Fuck you!” Paris
shrieked.
 

Dez flicked his
head up at the Truth Rabbit and Paris started screaming as the furry bunny
fingers wrapped around the waistband of his underwear and pulled it off.
 
“You’re going to get a little practice for
the Joint, Mr. Deimos.”

Paris cried out
in terror as the bunny put the nightstick’s tip between his buttcheeks, sliding
it forward.
 
“All right!
 
All right!
 
Stop.
 
I’ll tell you.”

The Truth Rabbit
withdrew his stick, but held it at the ready.
 

“They at my baby
mama’s sister house in Camden, on Tartaros Street,” he whimpered.
 
“The little girl is with my baby mama an’
that junkie bitch wife of Billy’s is probably shooting up in the bathroom.”

“Where’s Billy?”

“Chained up to
the water heater in the basement.”
 

“How bad is he?”

Paris closed both
of his eyes and pressed his forehead against the floor.
 
“I cut off two of his fingers because he
wouldn’t tell me who took my shit.
 
He
kept saying some bullshit like the police took it but didn’t arrest him.”

“Anything else?”

“No,” Paris said
quickly.
 
“Not really.”

“Not really?”

“Nothing even as
bad as what y’all did to me today.
 
Except he’s gonna smell like piss when you go to get him, so take a
bucket of hot water with you.”

Dez chuckled
under his mask and said, “Why, pray tell, is he going to smell like piss?”

Paris looked up
at him and said, “Because…every morning I go down there and piss on him.”

***

Everyone else
left after two cops smuggled a blindfolded Paris outside and dumped him in the
trunk of a car.
 
Frank listened to him
pound against the inside of the trunk as they drove off, calling them all
bitches, swearing to take revenge.
 
The
sun was setting, casting the trash and bottles littering the street in a soft
orange hue.
 
A man walked up beside
him.
 
“How in the hell are you going to
arrest him now after all of that?” Frank said.
 

“We’re not,” Dez
said.
 
“Not yet anyway.
 
They’ll dump him a few blocks away from his
house after we pick up the Helens.
 
I’ve
got guys on their way over to Camden now acting on an ‘anonymous’
tip.
 
After that, Billy can give us Paris and we’ll get a warrant for his
arrest.
 
Pretty freaking cool, huh?”

“Right,” Frank mumbled.
 
“Pretty cool.”

Dez clapped him
on the shoulder, “You did your old man proud today.
 
Ask him what he ever did with the old
suit.
 
We’ve got kind of a pool going,
and I have twenty bucks that says it’s still in his basement.”
 
He waited for Frank to respond, but when he
didn’t, Dez smiled at him and headed toward the door.
 
“I know.
 
It takes a minute for it to all sink in.
 
Give me a call tomorrow or something.
 
You’re gonna fit in here real well, Frankie.”
 
  

The agent opened
the door and went inside as Frank stood there, watching the trash blow from the
street to the sidewalk, and up against the walls of the building.
 
The gates to the shipping docks were closed
and locked and the rest of the street was empty.
 
Frank walked back to his police car and sat
down with both hands on the wheel.
 
He
gripped the wheel as hard as he could but could not stop them from shaking.
 
  

14.
  
The station was dark by the time he
returned.
 
There was a vehicle in the parking
lot that made Frank’s eyebrows raise.
 
He’d never seen the Chief’s car there so late.
 
He backed into Unit 6’s assigned spot and got
out, limping across the lot.
 
He opened
the station door and turned on the hallways lights.
 
The Chief’s office door was open.
 

“Chief?” he
said.
 
He walked down the hall toward the
office and as he looked inside, he let out a burst of air like someone had
punched him in the gut.
 
There were spots
of discolored wallpaper where various framed pictures and certificates had hung
for years.
 
The desk had two pens and a
blank notepad sitting on top of it with a large imprint of where the Chief’s
desk calendar had been.
 
Even the damn horseshoe
was gone.
 

The station door creaked
opened, and Frank did not turn to see who it was, but the sound of labored
breathing made it unnecessary.
 
Staff
Sergeant Erinnyes came waddling down the hallway carrying a large cardboard box
of his belongings.
 
He frowned at Frank’s
proximity to the empty office and said, “Can I help you?”

“I take it I
missed something.”

Erinnyes smiled
thinly.
 
“Welcome to the brave new
world.
 
You’ll appreciate it once you get
used to it, Frank.”

Frank ignored him
and said, “I needed to tell the Chief something important about Vic.”

Erinnyes’s eyes
flashed and he said, “I am all ears.”

“He’s
missing.
 
I haven’t seen him since
yesterday and have been trying to reach him all day.
 
He’s not answering his phone and I think something’s
wrong.”

“Very funny,
Frank.
 
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need
to drop this off so I can go home.”

Erinnyes pushed
past Frank to go into the Chief’s office and Frank said, “I’m not kidding,
sir.
 
I’m really concerned.”

“Vic was sitting
in his office this afternoon when I left, Frank.
 
I was able to give him the good news in
person and deliver him a fresh new pack of traffic tickets.”
 
Erinnyes’s face lit up, “You should have seen
him.
 
I’ve been waiting to have that
conversation for over five years.”
 

“He was here?”
Frank said quickly.

“Still is, I
think.
 
His car is still parked in the
same spot.
 
Didn’t you see it when you
came in?”

Frank turned and
bolted down the hallway, ignoring the spike of pain in his leg.
 

“I told him to
get his uniforms ready, effective immediately,” Erinnyes called down the
hall.
 
“Make sure you do the same.
 
You’ll be doing high-intensity traffic
details first thing Monday morning!
 
From
now on, we will be focused on real police work!”
 

Frank grabbed the
handrails on the steps and swung down three steps at a time like a
gymnast.
 
He reached the landing below
and started hopping on one foot to make it the rest of the way.
 
“Vic!” he called out.
 
“You son of a bitch, you scared the shit out
of me.
 
Vic?”

The detective’s
office door was open and the light was on.
 
Something familiar stung his nose as he approached, like the burner on a
stove left on for too long.
 
Gunpowder.
 
There were a dozen
brand-new traffic tickets scattered on the floor in front of the door.
 
Frank called Vic’s name again as he stepped
over the tickets and came around the corner.
 

Detective Vic
Ajax was sitting upright at his desk.
 
His eyes were turned up to the ceiling in wide, unblinking
amazement.
 
His mouth was open.
 
Dried fluid had crusted under his nose and dripped
from his lower lip onto his shirt.
 

A dark, bloody bullet
hole ran through the center of his chest.
 

Blood was
spattered in a fanned web behind his chair.
 

Frank opened up
his mouth and covered it quickly, stifling a scream.
 
He limped forward and saw Vic’s gun on the
ground beneath his right hand where he’d dropped it.
 

Frank covered his
face and pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes, feeling the sting of
tears.
 
A million thoughts raced through
his mind like the sudden burst of static that drowned out his thoughts and left
him unable to do anything but stand there, covering his eyes so he could not
see the dead body sitting directly in front of him.