Lou Mason Mystery 03-Cold Truth (19 page)

"It's the oldest story in the Bible, beginning with Jacob and Esau," Nix said.

"You forgot that Jacob framed Esau, though he didn't try to get away with murder. If you used the same kind of therapy with Emily Davenport, I'm not surprised she killed herself."

Nix loosened the knot on his chin strap and pulled his hat off, setting it on the table. "Actually, I do take responsibility for Emily's death, though it's stretching the facts to call it suicide. She was pregnant, like a lot of girls we see. She wanted an abortion. I talked her out of it."

"You've got the sixties, touchy-feely, left-wing schtick down pat, Terry. I didn't figure you as pro-life."

"It's not about politics for me. It's about the person. Some girls can handle an abortion. Some can't. I didn't think Emily could. I thought she'd be better off having the baby and giving it up."

"She killed herself rather than have the baby?"

Nix shook his head. "She was doing crack. I told her the baby would be born an addict. I don't know what she was thinking. I walked in on her and Jordan."

"Jordan says she tried to save her but you accused her of shoving Emily out the window."

"I know what I saw. Centurion and I talked it over. Under the circumstances, we decided to let it go because of Jordan's condition at the time."

"What was her condition?" Mason asked.

"Don't you talk to your clients, Lou? She was pregnant too. Telling the police that Jordan killed Emily wouldn't have helped anyone, especially Jordan's baby."

Mason's hand covering the ledger went slack as he absorbed what Nix had said. Children having babies was no longer news. Those babies growing up to be children having babies made for too circular a world. From Abby to Jordan to Jordan's baby, he thought, at last willing to acknowledge the possibility that Abby was both mother and grandmother. He didn't resist when Terry Nix picked up the ledger and walked away.

Mason sat for another moment after Nix left, ignoring the librarian's officious paper shuffling as she counted down the final minutes of the library's day. He wasn't surprised that Centurion sent Nix to retrieve the ledger, rather than put himself at risk. It didn't matter to Mason whether Nix recorded their meeting from the cover of his poncho since Mickey had been listening. Mason snapped the cell phone out of the cradle on his belt.

"Could you hear all that?" he asked.

"It was pin-drop quality," Mickey said. "Daphne had a tape recorder. I put the mike next to the phone. The recording has a hiss soundtrack, but it can probably be enhanced."

"Good job. Where's Jordan?"

"Upstairs. Daphne checks on her every fifteen minutes. She's driving Jordan crazy. You think Nix was bullshitting you about Emily and Jordan?" Mickey asked.

"Centurion, Nix, and Jordan tell pretty much the same story about Emily Davenport, except for the small detail about whether Emily jumped or Jordan pushed her. The part about Jordan having a baby should be easy enough to verify. On Monday, check the city's birth certificate records."

"Why not ask Jordan? Don't you think she'd remember?"

"I think she would have told me when I asked her about Emily, but she didn't. She's got a reason for not telling me, so I'd rather find out on my own until she's ready to talk about it. I'm beat. I'm going to get some dinner and go home. See you tomorrow."

The rain had stopped and the clouds had parted for the debut of a new moon when Mason walked out of the library, proving his aunt's adage that if you didn't like the weather in Kansas City, wait fifteen minutes and it would change. A warm breeze dried the air, carrying the smell of a barbecue joint a couple of blocks away that was renowned for its burnt ends, and answering Mason's question of what he would have for dinner.

Mason had parked his car on 12th Street in front of the library. He put the top down and circled back west to the barbecue restaurant on the corner of 13th and Grand, picked up an order of burnt ends, and headed south on Grand, already tasting the beer waiting in his refrigerator that would chase the barbecue. He popped a Coltrane CD into the player he'd had installed in the dash, letting the mellow sound take him home.

Traffic was light, in keeping with downtown's dead-on-Saturday-night reputation. Mason stopped for a red light at 17th Street, wishing he'd left the top up when a two-tone Chevy Caprice, one dent shy of the demolition derby hall of fame, stopped alongside him in the outside lane, bleeding bone-jarring rap from its open windows, overpowering Coltrane.

The driver looked to Mason to be no more than twenty, in spite of a patchy beard that failed to cover his patchy skin. His left arm hung over the open window, a tattoo of a snake wrapped around a naked woman writhing with the car's vibrations against his pale skin. The driver's passenger, a black man wearing a do-rag and a cold stare, drew hard on a joint, its sweet, pungent odor leaking out of the car. He burned the joint down to his knuckle and passed the butt to the driver.

The light changed, Mason popping the clutch, jumping out to put distance between him and the Caprice. The Caprice kept pace, escorting Mason to the next light at 18th Street, then roaring ahead, cutting in front of Mason just before they reached the intersection.

Mason slammed on his brakes, leaning on his horn, not stopping before the front bumper of the TR-6 kissed the rear of the Caprice. The passenger jumped out, sprinting to Mason's car. He leapt into the seat next to Mason, pointing a gun at Mason's belly.

It was a smoothly executed car-jacking, over in seconds and witnessed by no one. Mason was smart enough not to resist. "You want the car?" Mason asked, keeping his hands on the wheel. "You can have the car. Just leave me the burnt ends."

"Don't want this pussy piece of shit," the gunman said. "Want your sorry ass." He jabbed Mason in the ribs with the barrel of his gun. "Now shut the fuck up and follow my man."

The light turned green and the Caprice pulled away, its music suddenly muted, drawing no attention as they turned east on 18th. The gunman rode with his back against the passenger door, both hands gripping his pistol, staying out of Mason's reach. Mason doubted that he was the victim of a random street crime, certain now that Centurion Johnson had played him like a chump from the beginning.

Centurion had worked Mason with a velvet glove, stroking him and threatening him until Mason brought him the ledger, using Terry Nix as a cover. Mason imagined Centurion watching from a safe distance, laughing as Mason put his ragtop—and his guard—down. Mason would have to wait for a rematch with Centurion. In the meantime, he tried the gunman.

"You meet a lot of nice people in your line of work?" Mason asked.

The gunman motioned with his pistol to the road ahead, silently telling Mason to watch where he was going. Mason knew where they were going—into the East Side where Centurion and his Ebony and Ivory carjacking team would have the home-court advantage. Mason swerved to avoid a pothole that the Caprice rode over without fanfare. The gunman rolled with the car's pitch, casting an anxious look at the street, then pressing the barrel of his gun under Mason's armpit.

"Easy, slick," Mason said. "The car has a low ground clearance. I hit a pothole like that one and we'll have to tow the car out of it. I'm not going to turn stupid and give you an excuse to use that thing, so relax and tell me where we're meeting Centurion."

"I tole you before," the gunman said. "Shut the fuck up and drive. That's all you gotta do. You do that, and I won't shoot your ass."

The Caprice turned north a couple of miles east of downtown, following a maze of side streets and alleys until the only thing Mason was certain of was that he wasn't in Kansas anymore. The neighborhood had its own measure of darkness, devoid of streetlights and porch lights, illuminated only by passing headlights. The few houses Mason could make out had barred or boarded doors, overgrown yards, and no candles in the windows.

The Caprice pulled to a curb in the middle of a blacked-out street, Mason easing to a stop behind him, his passenger sitting up, tightening the grip on his gun. The driver of the Caprice walked toward Mason, a gun in one hand, his other hand behind his back, hiding something worse than the gun.

Mason tallied his odds. His passenger was too far away to jump without getting a bullet for his trouble. The driver was three steps away, close enough for a fatal shot. Mason squeezed the steering wheel, screaming inside at the futility of dying without trying, smelling his own sweat.

The passenger lunged at Mason as his partner reached the TR-6, jamming the barrel of his gun under Mason's chin. "Hold real still," he said, blowing dope breath in Mason's mouth. The driver stuck his gun in his belt, showing Mason the black bag he'd been hiding behind his back, shaking the bag open, pulling it over Mason's head, clotting his vision.

The bag reeked of a medicinal scent. Mason gasped and gagged, the rough fabric against his face. His sweat turned cold as a suffocating panic swept over him. He tore at the bag, trying to rip it from his face, the dark water taking him.

***

Consciousness came in painful pieces. Voices floated overhead, out of reach. Mason wanted to move, but couldn't, his head too heavy, his body too weak. Someone was playing a drum, he thought, until he recognized the internal percussion throbbing between his ears. Movement came to his arms and legs, whether by his own effort or others he couldn't tell, still struggling to open his eyes. Blinking at last in the dim light of a squalid room, knocked back by the stench of foul, dead air, he found the floor with his hands, then a wall behind him, then a hazy face in front of him.

"You not dead," the face said.

"Too early to tell," Mason said. "Where am I?"

The face came into focus. It belonged to a boy sitting cross-legged on the floor, his round black face faintly familiar. "My room," the boy said.

"Are you dead?" Mason asked.

"Not yet," the boy said.

"Then I guess I'm not dead yet either."

Mason looked around, getting his bearings. The room was small, barely big enough for the mattress on the floor, a dresser missing its top drawer in one corner, a pile of dirty clothes in another, a poster of Shaq and Kobe on one wall, crumbling Sheetrock and exposed wiring on another. Black plastic trash bags were tacked around a window, shutting out the light that crept around the edges, catching dust mites.

"You got a name?" Mason asked the boy.

"Donnell," the boy answered.

"You got a bathroom, Donnell?"

The boy smiled. "You're funny," he said, offering Mason his hand, helping Mason to his feet. "Come on."

The bathroom was in a hall outside Donnell's bedroom. There was a mirror above the sink with fluorescent lights on each side, the left side burnt out, the right side flickering like a gray candle. Donnell stood in the doorway, gazing up at Mason with unblinking eyes as if he'd made a grand discovery, finding a white man dead on the floor in his bedroom, miraculously resurrected.

"Give me a minute," Mason told the boy, closing the door. He wasn't surprised when the toilet didn't flush or when the water ran from the sink faucet with a rusty hue. It was enough to be alive, even if he didn't know why. It was enough to be in Donnell's house, even if he didn't know where it was. And it was oddly comforting that the boy was familiar to him, even if he couldn't place him. He opened the bathroom door, pleased that Donnell was waiting for him.

"Donnell, are there any other grown-ups here?" Donnell nodded. "Where are they?" Donnell pointed down the stairs at the end of the narrow hall. "How many?" Donnell shrugged. "You forget how to talk?" Donnell shook his head, giggling. The door to another bedroom opened and a stick-thin black woman called to the boy.

"Donnell, what you doin'? Get outta this hall!"

She grabbed the boy by the collar and dragged him back to his room, closing the door behind him. She leaned against the door, one hand on the knob, exhausted by the effort. A thin black dress, shapeless against her bony frame, hung on her like a sheet on a clothesline. Her eyes were dull, but Mason caught something in her look, the same familiarity he'd seen in the boy.

"Varonda? Is that you?" Mason asked.

"I didn't think you'd remember me," she said. "Be better if you forgot."

"It hasn't been that long," Mason said. "What, nine, ten months? You were charged with possession with the intent to sell. I got you into a diversion program. Donnell was in court with you. That's why I recognized him."

"He's a good boy, but he don't mind me like he should."

"It's hard for a kid to stay in a dark room. Why does he have to stay in there?"

"Only safe place in a crack house like this," she said, looking over Mason's shoulder.

Mason heard footsteps on the stairs as she spoke. He turned in time to see the passenger from the Caprice standing at the top of the stairs, his gun pointed at him again.

"Thought you was never wakin' up," the man said.

"Was I supposed to?" Mason asked.

"Don't matter to me," the man said. "Varonda, you know him?"

"He was my lawyer. Got me into that diversion program."

The man laughed. "You done got diverted all right, girl. Straight back to the fuckin' street sellin' your ass for a rock."

Mason remembered Varonda. She carried twenty more pounds and a glimmer of hope when he negotiated the diversion deal. She was on the edge then, having spent time on the street, but not too much time to get off. Since then, she'd gone back, hustling for crack, wasting her body until there was little left to hold or hustle.

"Fuck you, Tyrone," she said, joining Donnell in his room, shutting out the rest of the world as she slammed the door.

"So, Tyrone, what do you say you and me go out to the ballpark and catch the Royals," Mason said.