Red Stripes (5 page)

“You think I’m unlike the Rude Bwoys you killed in Jamdown?”

“They were punks,” I said. “We’ll find out if you’re any different in a minute or two.”

He took no offense. In fact he laughed. “I like you, Babylon.”

“Won’t stop me killing you.”

“Or me from killing you,” he said.

“Let’s do it then.”

I
t was apparent soon enough why John Crow came after me and it had little to do with any monetary loss he’d suffered from losing his hostages.

He was a man who had to show his strength and ferocity in order that he held those under him in control. His lighter skin marked him out as a
white nyega
—his words not mine—and he’d possibly suffered some of the inherent racism found in the Rastafarian movement on his rise to the top. His nickname, an expression of hatred, confirmed that point. Possibly he felt that he had to lead by example, and in doing so he had to be more brutal than men who were happy chopping off the fingers of rich white kids. He had to show he wasn’t a man to be crossed, not if he intended holding on to the respect he’d earned.

But as potentially dangerous as he was, he also proved honorable in a way many other criminals weren’t.

He told his baldy friend to stand by and do nothing but watch. He said that if I beat him in fair combat then our beef was done with. Or at least that’s what I translated from the patois that flew between them.

The baldy wasn’t happy, but fuck him. He was about as trustworthy as Hector Wallace, who I’d pinned to a door frame with a machete weeks earlier. He looked as if he wouldn’t be content until the same had happened to me, and given the opportunity he’d try to stick me with a blade the second my back was turned. To show him the folly of such an idea, I pulled out my SIG from my waistband and laid it on an upturned oil drum across the room from him. He noted the gun, but he also seemed more concerned with the long finger that John Crow wagged at him. Earlier I’d heard him use the term
Obeah
. It was something that I knew translated as a curse—the magic kind—and it seemed he believed his own boast that John Crow was some kind of wizard or voodoo man.

He stood down, slouching against the wall nearest the door we’d come in. He folded his lean arms across his chest, and I could see them twitching as if they longed to wield a machete instead of lying idle.

John Crow came forward, pulling off his shirt.

He was tall and slim, but his frame was built from tight bands of lean muscle. On his chest were three livid scars. It looked as if the talons of some large bird had clawed him. They’d healed, but the scar tissue was red against his mocha skin. From the angle of the cuts, they could have been self-inflicted: perhaps they had something to do with his Obeah beliefs, or with his nickname, or even some kind of atonement punishment, but I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t ask. John Crow shook out his shoulders.

I didn’t bother with any fancy stuff, no loosening up exercises. But I did pull off my shirt.

John Crow checked out my tattoo.

“Exactly as described to me,” he said.

“Your man down in Jamaica must have an eidetic memory.”

John Crow frowned.

“See, he only briefly illuminated me with his flashlight, and even then he was already beginning to run away.”

“The man who described your tattoo to me didn’t run away,” John Crow said.

I didn’t think so. But now Crow had confirmed a suspicion I’d had since earlier. I shelved the thought for later. First I’d a task to complete, and if I lived through it, then it would be time to end things fully.

The abandoned building was little more than an open space with four walls and a flat roof, and bare linoleum on the ground. At one end a false wall had formed a small office space and adjoining bathroom, but the wall had been torn down at one time. The office furniture had been stolen, as had the john. A small porcelain sink hung at an angle, but the copper piping and taps had been stripped from it for their scrap value. The windows had been boarded over, but there was enough light streaming through cracked skylights to fight by.

I walked to the center of the room, and John Crow also came forward. I kept my back toward where I’d left my gun.

Crow rocked from side to side, loosening the muscles at his hips.

I stood, nonchalant.

“Ready?”

I nodded and settled my weight on my back foot.

Crow began a dance to a rhythm inside his head.

There’s a form of dance popular in Brazil called
capoeira
. To an uneducated eye its execution looks similar to the moves employed by hip-hop break-dancers, very athletic and acrobatic. But as was the case with many folk dances, it disguised a deadly purpose behind the more flamboyant flourishes and somersaults. Back in the bad old days, capoeira was a way for African slaves to continue practicing their martial arts right under the noses of their overseers, and many an unwary whip-wielding slave master had discovered the true meaning of the dance at their peril.

Crow moved constantly, his feet changing position in a triangular pattern as he performed the
ginga
, a ploy to deceive a combatant while he set up his next moves.

I waited.

Crow tested my defenses with a front push kick.

I merely adjusted my stance, swaying away from his uncommitted attack.

Crow smiled.

His follow-up was delivered with more intent.

He bent from his ginga, placed his right hand on the ground and pivoted on it, his back heel coming around scythe-like at my head.

I bobbed beneath his attack and his leg sailed over me. But his first kick was a feint, and he pivoted again, and the same leg swung at a lower arc, coming for my ducked head.

I’d a few unarmed combat tricks up my own sleeve. I didn’t try to leap back to avoid the kick. I stepped in and rammed the tip of my left elbow into the meat of his thigh, aiming for a cluster of nerve endings.

Crow grunted at the pain flaring through him. But he was as tough as his toned body suggested. He went onto both palms, doing a handstand, and both his heels jabbed at my face in quick succession. I had to disengage to save myself the crushing blows. Crow came back to his feet, grinning, segueing back to the ginga seamlessly despite the agony in his right leg.

Capoeiristas
aren’t known for their skill with their hands. Generally, men practiced the style with their wrists bound, hence the proliferation of kicks and somersaults while supported on the palms, but it appeared that John Crow had added to his repertoire. He swept in with another front kick, but immediately followed it with a left jab and right cross taken from western boxing. His left missed but the right sent sparks through my skull as it connected with my forehead. If he’d struck a little lower I’d have been in a worse situation. As it was, my mind went black for a split second, but I counterpunched by instinct and my knuckles drove into his sternum.

Crow fell back, but the move was contrived. His rear leg absorbed the drop, bending at the knee and supporting him like a dwarf flamingo as his opposite foot shot out and got me good in the nuts. Gagging on the nausea that spilled into my guts, I took two hurried steps back, and lucky that I did. Crow placed both palms on the ground and did some sort of move akin to a gymnast on a pommel horse. His foot swept around and aimed to hook my ankle. I hopped ungainly over the top of it and staggered away, even as Crow sprung forward, stood on his hands and cartwheeled both heels at my skull. I felt the wind displacement of the first kick. Then his second heel thudded painfully into my left shoulder, and my arm went numb.

It was pointless wasting any breath on a curse. I moved laterally. Crow came after me, a literal whirling dervish. His baldy pal egged him on, chanting in rhythm to the
ginga
, aiding the Albino Vulture’s dance.

Okay, I told myself. Time to show them I didn’t have two left feet either.

I took a half step forward, immediately switched stance and shot out a kick at Crow’s forward leg. He took the bait, drawing his leg away and turning into a back kick. But that’s what I expected. I half stepped again, and shot the same foot in for a jab at his previously injured thigh. Crow caught the move by instinct and began to twist aside, to protect both his leg and to set up his next attack, but my two half steps added up to me closing the distance without his knowledge. I was now within the arc of his kicks and his arms were out of range to either block or counterpunch. I struck two fast blows, the first to his left kidney, the next to the back of his skull. His spongy dreadlocks absorbed some of the punch to his head, but not all. He staggered, and spittle sprayed the air as he shouted in pain. I fisted my left hand in his mane of hair, whipping his head around and into the knee I powered into his face.

Crow spat out blood.

He was one tough bastard.

He went to his hands, his heels windmilling toward my face.

All well and good but for the fact that I’d retained a hold on his dreadlocks.

I yanked his hair, pulled him bodily off his palms and spun him onto his back on the floor. Immediately I dropped a knee into his gut, pinning him down, while I rammed my fist into his face. I felt his left cheekbone compress under the onslaught. His jade-green eyes dimmed. I pounded him once more, this time aiming to crush his nose, and succeeded. He wasn’t such a handsome boy now. But neither was he finished. He spun on his shoulders, his knees coming up to butt me away. But he was in my fighting zone now and no way was I going to let him find his own range again. I went with his spin, kept my hand in his hair and knee in place and hooked my spare elbow around one questing hand that went after my eyes. Rolling back I caught him in an armlock that hyper-extended his elbow to the breaking point. I gave it that extra ounce of pressure and heard the tendons popping. Neither did I release his hair. His status symbol now became his undoing, as my hold on the dreadlocks meant he couldn’t find room to move his head and adjust any of the space between us to alleviate the agony on his elbow joint.

I yanked down on his captured hand.

His elbow broke.

Let him try any of those fancy handstands now.

He let out a howl and I kicked him away from me.

He came to his knees, bent away from me as he painfully lifted his snapped arm to his chest. He was vulnerable and I wasn’t about to waste the moment. I shuffled after him on my backside and drove the toe of my right boot deep between his legs, giving him a taste of his own medicine. Crow collapsed onto his belly, his frame contracting around the agony in his balls.

Crow’s shout of agony was echoed by one equally as full of fury as his was of pain. I came to my feet, but still at a crouch, my hand feeding into my boot.

Baldy was probably thinking he was doing the right thing for his boss, even though he’d been given implicit orders to the contrary. He came running at me, and from down the side of his jeans he pulled a concealed knife that had gone unnoticed before. It had a short handle but a long blade, and was almost a mini-machete in design. He came at a lope, the knife going up and over his shoulder. He cursed me in patois, his words lost on me.

I came to my full height, which was still a few inches below his six feet plus, but on this occasion my slighter stature was to my benefit. It meant my left arm easily got beneath his descending elbow and held off the downward swing of his knife. At the same time I plunged in and out with the push dagger in my right hand. Unlike a machete, my dagger was designed for such a task, and I found stabbing the baldy an easier task than I had when killing Hector Wallace. The diamond-shaped blade dipped in and out of his guts, and then, as he began to slump in agony, I gave it a new home in the side of his neck.

The baldy fell to the floor, and blood squirted feebly across the stained linoleum as his heart fluttered and stilled.

When I looked for John Crow, he was sitting on his ass, knees drawn up, cradling his busted elbow.

“You killed him,” he said, eyeing his friend with little emotion.

“Do I still have to kill you?” I walked over to where my SIG waited. Picking it up, I held it loosely at my side.

John Crow shook his head slowly. “You beat me fair and square. I’m a man of my word.”

“Then I reiterate my earlier offer. Go back to Miami and forget about me. Forget about kidnap for ransom. Do that and this ends here between us.”

He was Nyabinghi. In his belief system “Respect” held sway.

He nodded once.

I
spoke with Kate, the mother of Stephan Pilarcik, on my cell phone while enjoying a cup of Jolie’s freshly brewed coffee, and she confirmed my suspicions about who had set John Crow on my trail.

Having established the facts, I switched the direction of our conversation and asked after the welfare of her son.

“He’s doing well now. His father arranged for a top specialist to do the surgery, and his hand is on the mend. I dread to think what would have been the outcome if you hadn’t intervened on our behalf, Joe.”

“How’s Wendy doing?”

“She’s a good girl.”

If Wendy hadn’t been alongside him, I doubted that Stephan would have survived his ordeal. On the face of it she was indeed a good girl, and very brave with it. From previous conversations with Wendy I was certain that she wouldn’t talk about what had occurred down in Jamaica. Unlike Stephan Pilarcik, she didn’t have anyone at home to worry about her when she’d gone missing. That was if you discounted her uncle Chuck. I’d always wondered—when the Pilarciks had received warnings not to involve the police—how a two-bit private eye the likes of Charles White had gotten involved in mediating the ransom.

John Crow told me the man who’d described my tattoo had not run away. Well, actually he had.

Charles White had taken the five hundred grand he was supposed to hand over for the safe return of Stephan and his niece, and had pulled in me and the guys on the safe bet that he could gain the best of both worlds by the safe return of the kids. Bastard had gambled with their lives, all of our lives, and if everything had played out the way he’d planned, either John Crow or I would have been dead and that would have been the end of the trail back to him. Kate Pilarcik had just confirmed it to me: Charles had gone to her and her husband claiming to have received a telephone call from a gang holding both their kids. He’d claimed he had experience in dealing as a mediator in similar instances when he’d been with the FBI, and that they should follow instructions to the letter if they ever hoped to get Stephan and Wendy home alive. The son of a bitch had even been the one to report that the kidnappers were demanding further money after the initial ransom demand was paid—even though he had already kept the half million dollars to himself. Bastard was greedy as well as a conniving piece of crap, and probably hoped to screw the Pilarciks for even more loot. When they’d claimed they couldn’t get their hands on any more cash it was likely then he’d hatched the plot to get the kids out, probably through a show of faith so he could lean on them for extras later. That or he knew that, having fed the intel about the kids’ location to the kidnappers, it was only a matter of time until they figured they’d been played by his “get rich” scheme and would come looking for him.