Vengeance (19 page)

Chapter 22

It was early afternoon and D-Bag’s car was outside, but he wasn’t answering the door. At first I wondered if he was sleeping. Then I got worried something had happened. I was ready to let myself in the back door when I heard movement inside. When he still didn’t answer I pounded so hard the windows rattled.

D-Bag opened the door and scowled at me. His left cheek was swollen under his eye. The rest of him looked like something a hurricane dropped in its wake.

“Fuck you, man!” he said. “You fucking decked me!”

He gave ground as I pushed my way inside.

“You said you wanted cred. I had to make it look like you were in a fight.”

“You could have warned me.”

“You would have flinched,” I said.

He started to curse me again, but it fizzled out as he turned to sit. His stash was sitting open on the coffee table.

“Been tasting your own product?” I asked. I didn’t need confirmation.

“They rolled by here last night,” he said. He was trembling. I didn’t know if it was from the drugs or fear. “After you left. I opened the door for a customer and they fucking rolled by my fucking house!”

“Who?”

“The Brothers, man! They know! They know I talked to you.”

“They don’t know anything,” I said. The Brothers. That’s who was doing the dirty work. What a small world.

“They know! And they’re going to kill me.” He started crying as he eased onto the sofa. I’d never seen so many men cry in my life as the past few days. I remained standing.

“Are you sure it was them who drove by?”

“Yeah, I’m fucking sure! They drive that old black and white. And the doors have their kill count in red paint. Hard to miss.”

The Brothers drove a police car. If only I had known, I would have been calling them Jake and Elwood. They could have invested in a couple of cheap suits and some Ray-Bans to play up the routine. The time wasn’t right to muse on the irony, though.

“Look, D-Bag…”

“Don’t call me that. I never liked that name. I don’t want to be called that anymore. My name’s Brian.”

“Brian,” I said. “The Brothers are a couple of morons. I’ve always called them Larry and Moe. Like the Stooges.”

He blinked at me, cocked his head, blinked at me a few more times.

“Is that a joke?” he said. “They’ll fucking kill me!”

“Sorry. I was just trying to lighten the mood. You seem pretty shaken.”

He made two wide circles with his face and held his arms out toward me, palms up, as if to underscore how obvious my observation had been. “Of course I’m shaken! These guys are mean, man! They came back here that night, after they killed Flash. They put their feet up on the coffee table and helped themselves to my stash. Popped some pills, lit up. They were talking about what they’d done to Flash and laughing it up.”

“His dad said they beat him. Broke a lot of bones.”

“They didn’t beat him,” he corrected. Nervous laughter gushed out of him, but his face looked like someone was driving nails through his feet. “They made him jump from a bridge out in the country. They thought he’d crash through the ice and drown. But the fall broke his legs, not the ice. He was laying there screaming so they started shooting at the ice around him so it would break. When that didn’t work, one of them noticed a dump truck on the bank at the end of the bridge. It was full of broken up sidewalk chunks. So they hotwired the truck, parked it on the bridge, and tossed chunks down at Flash. They decided it was funnier to hit him instead of the ice around him.”

You’d think someone would drive by. But some of those roads didn’t see a handful of cars between midnight and dawn. I wondered how long Flash lay there, being pummeled by fifty pound wedges flung from the height of a building, their jagged edges mauling him. Hearing those sadists laugh above him. Hearing his own bones snap, his own wailing. Knowing no one would rescue him. Knowing those demons would be the last faces he would ever see.

“I don’t want to do this anymore. I planned on another year, maybe two. Enough to start a stereo shop. But this shit’s crazy. I liked Flash,” Brian said. He was rocking forward and back on the edge of the sofa, his hands clenched under his chin, elbows tucked to his ribs, practically shriveling into a fetal position. “Why did they have to kill him? Or why not just shoot him in the head, if that’s what they had to do? But they tortured him to death. And then they fucking laughed about it.”

There was nothing to say to that. I couldn’t convince him he shouldn’t be afraid. I had taken my share of knocks from those thugs when I was younger, but their violence had escalated.

“OK. Brian. You’re right. The Brothers are vicious, sick fucks. And Sterling never should have sent them after Flash or my brother. But I’m not going to get you tangled up in this. If you give me another name, I can get the information I need and nothing will come back to you.”

“I can’t. I want this shit to stop, but I can’t give up Sterling. Man, he’ll send those fuckers after me for sure!”

“I already know about Sterling,” I said. “But you’re the only one who said anything about the Brothers. I need someone they roughed up to tell me it was them. I need someone else to tell me Sterling sent the Brothers after them. If I get my information that way you had nothing to do with it, see?”

I was selling him the same runaround Casey had engaged me in. But I was willing to go through with the extra legwork to give us both peace of mind. I wasn’t looking to get anyone hurt. I sat next to him on the sofa, put my arm across his shoulders, and squeezed to reassure him. He stopped rocking and soon started breathing normally. I got us both a glass of water. We just sat there a few minutes, settling down.

“This is my aunt’s house,” he said. “I really am a fucking douche-bag. Selling drugs out of my aunt’s house.”

“She lives here with you?” I asked.

“Nah. She died a few years ago. My cousins and I came up with this idea. We split the profits. I stay here for free. They’re waiting for the property value to go up before they sell it. Win-win.”

That explained the décor and the contents of the front bedroom. Brian confirmed the uniform was his uncle’s. He had died a decade ago.

“I try to keep this place the way it was,” he said. He pointed to the long scratch on the coffee table. “But look at that fucking scratch. The Brothers. They break everything they touch. One of ‘em puts his boots up that night and there’s a piece of gravel stuck in the tread of the heel. He just stretches his legs and ruins the fucking antique table.”

He talked for a while about the car stereo shop he wanted to open. He had a name picked out and had sketched some logos for the sign. A few of his buddies were good at systems and they’d work for him. It sounded like a nice dream. Even with the sordid price tag that was attached. I could relate, I told him.

“They’re not really brothers,” he said, breaking a minute’s silence.

“The Brothers?” I asked.

“Larry and Moe. The Stooges. Curly, Moe, and Shemp were brothers. Larry wasn’t related.”

“Interesting,” I said. It wasn’t.

“But the Brothers aren’t brothers either. That’s why it’s funny,” he said. “They’re cousins.”

“They look like brothers,” I said, not sure why I was pursuing the topic.

“So people started calling them the Brothers. Probably some scared white guy who could only see two black guys who have a little resemblance. Or maybe it was a joke. Like a pun,” he said. “Because black people call each other brother.”

I tried to remember how often I had heard black people call each other brother. Maybe it was something we picked up from TV shows in the seventies.

“D-Bag. The Brothers. Weasel. It all comes down to what someone thinks of you,” he said.

His philosophical musings might have come from reflection, but he was strung out, running on empty. At the end of an all-nighter, some people get the giggles and some grow world weary. In our case, it was light out, but he may not have slept since the last time I’d seen him. Afternoon was slipping into evening. He needed to decide whether to sleep or head to work and I needed to connect Sterling to the Brothers.

“Brian, can I get that name from you?”

“Man…”

“I’ll keep you out of it. I swear.”

“Seriously, man,” he said. “We’re talking about my life.”

He looked at me with an expression like an ellipsis followed by a question mark, in italics. I nodded once, firmly, tight-lipped. He accepted my silent pledge and got up to retrieve the ledger, paging through it as he returned. I stood to meet him before we got caught up in more conversation I didn’t have time for.

“This guy,” he said. He tore the page from the book and handed it to me. “They roughed him up.”

I thanked him and we shared a handshake that grew into a brief hug and a pat on the back. As I left, I realized I had missed my flight. I dismissed that thought before it could frustrate or distract me. The past day’s developments had me so focused on finding proof of Aiden’s murder that I had neglected everything else. And now I had one more visit to make.

Chapter 23

The sun had just gone down when I left D-Bag’s. The guy he had pointed out was named Wade. His place was out in Marion, a kind of satellite city to Cedar Rapids. I took First Avenue all the way through town. It wasn’t even warm enough to cruise with the windows down, but the avenue was already rumbling with high school kids revving their engines to build suspense then tearing away as the lights burst green. Aiden had loved to cruise. He never had a car that anyone took seriously, but cruising was more about seeing and being seen. Anytime he was without a girlfriend, one weekend on the avenue scored him what he was looking for. Showing up solo was all the advertising it took.

Being little brother to someone as dashing as Aiden, and too young to drive on top of that, I thought of the avenue as little more than window shopping for luxuries I couldn’t afford. Still, I’d go out with him in the summer, when the street was crowded with hot rods, sedans, and anything with wheels. But only when I could ride shotgun. Being in the back seat was almost worse than walking the sidewalk or nursing a fountain drink in front of the Quick Trip. Well, unless you weren’t alone back there. Then you never wanted the ride to end.

Aiden didn’t need a restored muscle car or late model sports car to get a girl. He could pull up at a red light in his out-of-style cracked vinyl top Monte Carlo, smile at a couple of girls on the corner, and at least one of them would hurry over and give him her number before the light changed. And if they were flirting and the car behind him starting honking, he’d raise a one-finger salute high out his window, then take his time sweet-talking. Sometimes he’d have her hop in for a ride across the bridge and back. Or he might take a few more passes up and down the avenue, check if the girls were watching for him and staring at him as he passed, then finally swing back around and pick them up when he was satisfied. Girls didn’t play hard to get with Aiden. They knew a line was always forming and they wouldn’t risk giving up their place.

It was a few years ago that I sometimes thought I’d get my own car and try my luck on a Saturday night. But about when that would have happened, I was busy working to pay rent and eat and never thought about cruising. So there I was, a few years later, but far too late to join the mating ritual parade. Anyway, my Buick wasn’t going to turn any heads and I never had Aiden’s charm. Driving through the current of youthful lust and pageantry, I grinned with pure joy. I don’t know if it was from amusement and approval of those hopeful kids and their braggadocio, or maybe the notion that a memory so vivid and vital about Aiden could pierce through my grief. I might have been idealizing Aiden. But screw Hamlet. Let Aiden’s faults be interred with his bones, not his virtues. I had been on a mission for a brother who was dead, but for a moment – at least until I crossed Nineteenth Street and departed that hallowed stretch we called The Ave – I remembered who my brother was when he was alive.

*

Marion wasn’t hard to navigate, even though I had never learned the streets there. But when I got to Wade’s duplex, his side of the building was dark. No one answered the door. The curtains were open enough for me to see the place looked empty, but it was hard to be sure without light inside. His neighbor’s porch light was on, so I figured I’d try there. As I rounded the front of the car in the neighbor’s driveway, I heard the front door and was met at the corner of the garage by a man who wore a coat over pajama pants and untied sneakers.

“Wade moved,” he said, based on a safe assumption of why I was there.

“You know where?”

He had rendered moot all formalities. He didn’t seem particularly hostile, even with his arms folded across his chest. I got the impression he was being efficient. He wanted rid of me as soon as possible. I appreciated that about him.

“Moved in with his mother.”

“You know where she lives?” I asked.

“Nope. Somewhere on the northeast side. Not too far from here.” If he knew the address, I suspect he would have given it to me. He was looking out for his own interests. And getting me on my way was his immediate priority, if for no other reason than the thought of someone peering into the vacant unit next door this late at night was going to disturb him so he couldn’t enjoy watching TV.

“Probably find her in the phone book,” he offered. “Jenkins.”

It sounded like a common enough name, but knowing the address would be on the northeast side would narrow it down.

“Thanks,” I said, and started down the driveway.

“You’ll probably see his truck out front. Has his name on the doors,” he said, anticipating any trouble I might have and making sure I knew not to bother coming back for more information.

“Thanks, again,” I said. I was at my car and saw across the roof that he hadn’t budged. He was going to verify my departure before he returned inside. Sure enough, it wasn’t until I had turned around in the driveway and made it back to the stop sign that I checked my rearview mirror and saw him head in. You wouldn’t think crime was much of a problem right there, but there was nothing wrong with being vigilant.

The first payphone I stopped at didn’t have a phone book hanging in its empty plastic protector. I pulled in at a convenience store with two phones side by side on the outside wall. One had the book. There were four Jenkins on the northeast side. One had a man’s first name and the other three had initials. I didn’t have any paper or pen and I wasn’t too interested in copying down the addresses in the first place. Given the assault, kidnapping, breaking and entry, theft, extortion, and whatever other transgressions I had racked up in the past few days, I didn’t figure stealing a sheet from the White Pages was going to take my tally over the top.

“Hey!” a customer said as she saw me ripping out the page on her way back to her car.

“I’m gonna bring it back,” I said, deadpanning to her astonishment. We were in a decent neighborhood, after all. She probably lived nearby and wasn’t used to witnessing such flagrant crime. I guess the severity of the act depends on the context.

I was no more familiar with the far northeast side than I was with Marion, but I could tell from one of the addresses that it couldn’t be too far away because it was on a high numbered street. That was the perfect place to start.

Not even one radio song later, I was idling in a lazy street, reading Wade Jenkins’ last name on the door of his Chevy. If the convenience store witness had happened by she would have made a disapproving tsk-tsk sound, I’m sure. Such a waste of a page. I parked in front of his truck and knocked. The front light came on and I had to shield my eyes.

“What do you want?” a woman asked through a crack in the door. A security chain was preventing it from opening further.

“I’m looking for Wade Jenkins,” I said. I had practiced the next part in my mind, but didn’t realize how formal it sounded until I heard the words myself. “I was hoping he could tell me about some events I’m looking into.”

“You’re with the police?” she asked.

“No, ma’am. I’m not with the police.”

“We told the police everything weeks ago. We still haven’t heard anything back.”

“I understand,” I said. I wasn’t sure what I could say to get me past her password-based security. But it was clear she wasn’t a fan of the cops. “I’m not a police officer. I’m pursuing a private investigation.”

I understood the implications of my words, but I stopped short of calling myself a private investigator. I didn’t know if impersonating a dick was a crime, but I preferred not muddying the waters with too many lies. The door closed and I heard her muffled voice explaining who I was to someone. Then I heard the chain being slid out of its track and the door opened before me.

“I’m glad someone is looking into this!” she said, stepping back to let me in.

The front room was dimly lit and crowded with furniture, wall hangings, and knick knacks. Most of the light spilled in from the kitchen.

“You were out at my duplex?” a man sitting in an armchair said. The chair was nestled in a tight corner, and the end table at his side was actually partially in front of the chair. Between the chair and a sofa there was a lit floor lamp that added a few candles’ worth of light to the room. Wade’s face was in the umbra the lampshade cast.

“Yes,” I said. “Your neighbor called?”

“He’s my landlord. Let me out of my lease after it happened.”

That put the neighbor’s vigilance into context. He was protecting his own property and he might have thought there were still people looking for Wade. He didn’t want any of that business going down around his duplex.

“Shitty of him to tell me where to find you, don’t you think?”

I realized after I said it how threatening that might sound. But Wade didn’t flinch.

“Never said he was my friend. He figures I brought this on myself.”

“Can I get you something to drink?” Wade’s mother asked.

“Water,” I said, not feeling particularly thirsty. Her hovering was making me a little edgy and I wanted to be able to get a read on Wade.

As she went to the kitchen I noticed the end table near Wade was a match for one we had when I was little. It had a dark walnut-colored wood finish, and was shaped like a hexagonal column, with the top extending over the sides. Two of the six side panels were hinged and opened up for storage. My mom used to keep her magazines inside. But when it was empty, it was big enough for a toddler like myself to climb into, though a tight fit.

“Would you like a seat?” Wade’s mother said as she extended the glass to me.

I sat on the end of the sofa near Wade.

“So you’re investigating the attack?” he said. “Why? The police sure don’t seem interested.”

“Attacks,” I clarified. “Not just yours.”

It was hard to tell in the light, but I thought he nodded approval, as if I had passed a test.

“Someone’s got you looking into this?” he said. His tone didn’t seem as apprehensive as a moment ago. I think he was genuinely asking who would be interested in pursuing the investigation.

“Like I said, that’s private.”

His mother had sat on a chair opposite the other end of the sofa. She was out of my sight, over my right shoulder, turned as I was to face Wade. I saw his eyes dart in her direction, probably confirming whether he should proceed.

“So what did they do?” I asked.

“See these marks?” he said. He leaned forward enough to cast light on his extended forearms. Scabs covered gashes from the backs of his hands to his sleeves. “Barbed wire. They wrapped me up in rusty old barbed wire. Took me out to Jones Park in the middle of the night.”

“You should never have gotten in the car with those—!” his mother said.

He hurled a look as vehemently as reaching out and catching her jaw with his hand. She stopped talking but contorted her closed lips as if restraining a swarm of hornets in her mouth.

“I had to stand there and let them do it. I couldn’t run. They would’ve shot me in the leg to stop me and then done it anyway. I was shaking so hard the wire kept pricking me. And the one wrapping me up kept stabbing his fingers as he worked. Every time he did, he cussed and his partner laughed. Then the partner would come punch me in the gut or jaw or wherever and say that was for making his brother stick himself.”

“These are animals!” his mother said. “Sick! Who does these things? Violence, I can understand. You get into a fight. It happens. But they planned this.”

Wade waited to be sure she was done. Then waited another full beat before continuing.

“Took fucking forever. But they were having a good time. Kept laughing and making jokes. We were on top of the sledding hill. Wasn’t any snow. They wrapped that shit around me from my shoulders to my ankles and back again.”

I winced at what I guessed was about to come. His mother clenched her one hand tight within the other. Imagining her son lying there like that clearly unsettled her.

“Ma, you want to go wash the dishes, or something?” Wade said.

She left for the kitchen silently. Once he heard the clinking of dishes, Wade continued.

“When they were done, they lit up some cigarettes, gave me a puff and told me to relax. Relax! I knew what was coming! The one put the cigarette to my lips and let me take a drag. I smoked two cigarettes that way. Just shaking and trying to breathe. They were joking about whether I’d piss my pants. Laughing it up. And we were standing there so long I almost started to hope that was it. I mean, they had me scared enough to do anything. They could see I had received the message. They could have just let me go. And I started to think they might. Then one just kicked me without warning like he was smashing through a door. I hit the ground full force. The whole side of my body. It was like being stabbed twenty times all at once. I was still screaming from that when they kicked me down the hill.”

I had sledded that hill plenty of times as a kid. It was a good two hundred feet, maybe more. And steep enough for a thrilling ride. For a kid on a sled, that is.

“That wire almost made me spring up and bounce a little, but that meant I’d come down harder on the frozen ground. It was fast is all I can say. After standing there must’ve been twenty minutes while they wrapped me up, and another ten minutes after, at least the ride was over before I could really feel. It was this constant tearing so I couldn’t completely feel each stab because another one was always ripping into me. My mind couldn’t even process it. But I remember a couple. I mean, that wire got me everywhere. You know? Everywhere, man!”