Ugly As Sin (21 page)

“I’m ready to quit playing games whenever you are!” Nick roared.

Tears filled the dealer’s eyes. “I’ll talk! Just don’t hit me again! Goddamn. I think you broke my wrist...”

Nick shrugged.

“I’ll tell you whatever you wanna know. I’ll tell you every-fuckin’-thing.” Shabazz held his injured arm as he glared at Nick and swore through clenched teeth, “But when all this is over, you better watch yo’ back. Believe
that
. I’ma feed pieces of you to my girl outside. You won’t be nothin’ but dogshit on the muhfuckin’ ground by the time I’m done with
you
.”

“Okay,” said Nick.

“Just tell me what you want and get the fuck outta my house...”

“Last March,” said Nick, “Eddie was arrested. He owed you some money after that.”

“Eighty large. He had his bitch to thank. She never woulda lost her kid, if her dumb ass didn’t do what she did in the first place.”

Nick’s heart sank. Shabazz was taunting him—he had to know that Melissa was his daughter. But he let it go for now. The dealer had all but confirmed a theory that had been worming its way through Nick’s brain the last few days. He didn’t want to hear anymore about it from this waste of oxygen. He would ask Melissa for the details, face to face, when he was finished here.

With his good hand Shabazz picked up a piece of candy from the mess beside his chair. His movements were very slow; he was obviously in pain. He read whatever was printed on the little pink heart before slipping it into his mouth. He let out a little moan as he sucked on it, as if the candy helped ease his suffering.

“I gave Eddie one month to get me my dead presidents. After that, Coko Puff had to get nasty. Business is business. Told him I was gonna call up this AIDS-infested nigga I know from the ATL. That mofo, he’ll do anything for a rock. I said, ‘He’ll wait for yo’ bitch to come home from work one night, and when he’s done with her she won’t be good for nothin’. But that ain’t all.’ I said, ‘This nigga, he like a jackrabbit. He don’t ever get tired of fuckin’. And he don’t care who it is, long as he got a hole to stick his dick in.’ I told Eddie, ‘Once he’s finished with yo’ bitch, he’s gonna do the same to
you
. Believe
that
.’ ”

“You piece of filth,” said Nick. “I oughta crack open your skull right now.”

Shabazz scratched at the cluster of moles on his cheek, winced again as he stared down at his shattered arm. The candy clicked against his teeth.

“So...he paid you back.” Nick urged him to continue.

“Coko Puff even made a little profit. For my trouble.”

“Where did Eddie get the money?”

“Coko Puff didn’t have nothin’ to do with that deal, you understand? It was strictly between Eddie and his...benefactor. Once the deal was sealed, though, I guess Eddie started feelin’ guilty about the whole thing. Took a likin’ to the kid, decided he wanted to play house with her and her momma. He wasn’t gonna give her up.”

“He died protecting Sophie, didn’t he?”

“Looks that way. That dumb mofo even took out an insurance policy on hisself, so they’d be okay after he was gone. I guess he saw the writing on the wall. A few weeks before it all went down, he drove the kid out to the Snake River Woods, spent a whole day teaching her how to shoot.”

“How do you know about all of that?” asked Nick.

“Eddie was my friend, yo. We go way back. He confided in me.”

“He was lucky to have you.” Nick’s grip tightened on the tire iron as he loomed over Shabazz. “These people who loaned him the money to pay you back, tell me why they wanted Sophie.”

“Not ‘people.’ One dude. He has his representatives, but it’s just one freaky-deak behind it all, from what I heard.”

Daddy
, Nick knew without asking.

“As for why he wanted her?” said Shabazz. “I hear this cracker got weird...tastes.”

Nick’s guts roiled as if his insides had been scooped out and replaced with a teeming mass of maggots. “Children. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“I heard he likes ‘em young, yeah. But that ain’t the only reason he chose this particular kid.”

Nick started pacing back and forth from one side of the room to the other, like an agitated panther, as he listened.

“He collects things,” said Shabazz.

“What...things?” asked Nick.

“He’s into, like, celebrity shit.”

“Movie props? Autographs? What are you talking about?”

“Nah. This ain’t the kinda stuff you be findin’ on eBay. I don’t even know, dawg. Coko Puff just tellin’ you what I heard through the muhfuckin’ grapevine.”

Nick felt closer than ever to understanding everything. “Tell me where I can find him. This...collector.”

Shabazz pinched another piece of candy from the end-table. He glanced down at the message on it, but then switched it out for another piece. The saccharine slogan on this one satisfied him, for whatever reason. He popped it in his mouth, sucked on it loudly.

“Now
that
, you gonna have to ask the middle man.”

“The middle man?”

“He set it all up. Brokered the deal. Got a finder’s fee and everything damn thing, is what I heard.”

“Who was that?” asked Nick.

Shabazz bit down on the candy.

“I only met him once. He works at a titty bar not far from here. Dude by the name of Russo.”

†

Nick pounded on his daughter’s door. “Melissa! Melissa, are you in there?”

A blue-haired old woman in a flowery bathrobe stuck her head out of an apartment down the hall, gave him a pursed-lips expression of distaste.

“Something I can do for you?” he barked at the old bag.

She blanched, shrank back inside.

“Melissa, open up!” He pounded on the door some more.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!”

The sound of a chain sliding back, a deadbolt being unlocked.

She opened the door. She wore a rumpled Waffle House uniform. Her hair was wet as if she had just stepped out of the shower. She was smoking a cigarette.

“What’s up, Dad? Is everything al—”

He shoved past her, into her apartment. “Going somewhere?”

“It was supposed to be my night off, but one of the other girls got sick. I offered to cover her shift. Why? What’s going on?”

“We need to talk,” he said.

She closed the door.

“Any reason you haven’t been returning my calls? I keep getting your voicemail.”

“I dropped my stupid phone in the toilet.” She rolled her eyes. “I was gonna come see you in the morning. Dad...what’s wrong?”

“Call me Nick.”

“Umm...okay. I thought we were over that. I don’t understand, have I done somethi—”

“Leon’s dead.”

“Oh, my God. What happened?”

“I’ll tell you all about it.
After
you tell me what happened last March.”

She looked confused. And more than a little afraid of him.

He said, “March thirtieth, I believe it was. The last time Eddie got himself arrested. You know what I’m talking about. The police searched your house, but it was clean as a whistle. They charged Eddie with misdemeanor possession, when he could have been facing felony intent to distribute.”

“Oh.” She stared down at the glowing orange tip of her cigarette.

He waited.

Finally, she collapsed onto the sofa. A tear trickled down her cheek. “He had two strikes against him already. One more, and they were gonna lock him up for good.”

“What did you do, Melissa?”

She took a long drag, blew the smoke out slowly. “I passed the traffic stop on my way home from work. I saw him sitting there on the curb, in handcuffs. He didn’t see me. I had my windows down as I drove by. I heard Sheriff Mackey tell his deputies to get to our house right away.”

“You panicked,” said Nick. “You hurried home and flushed everything you could find.”

“Once they came knocking with their warrant, they were too late by
seconds
.” She didn’t say it as if she were boasting. She merely stated a fact.

“Jesus Christ, Melissa.”

She sniffled, wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her Waffle House uniform. “This is all my fault, isn’t it?”

Nick gritted his teeth, stared up at the ceiling. Technically, she was right. This all began when she inadvertently caused a drug dealer to lose a lot of money. Never a smart move. But her complicity could not kill Nick’s instinct for compassion.

“Come here,” he said.

She stood, crossed the room and fell into his arms. “Was it the person Eddie worked for?” she sobbed. “Is that who took my baby? ’Cause I flushed his drugs?”

“No,” said Nick. “He got his money. Eddie paid him back with interest before Sophie ever came to live with you.”

“Then why—”

“It’s complicated.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“I had a little talk with Eddie’s boss, earlier tonight. Lovely fellow, calls himself Coko Puff.”

“So what happens now?”

“Now I have to go.”

“Where?”

He pried her arms from around his midsection. “To get Sophie.”

†

It was still early, not quite fully dark on a Sunday evening. No more than seven or eight vehicles occupied the club’s parking lot.

Perfect
. Nick assumed most of the Skin Den’s regulars were still in church.

He parked in the front. Left his tire iron in the car this time.

The night was quiet, save for the sounds of traffic on the nearby interstate and the bassline of some hard rock song thumping inside the club. As he stomped across the cracked pavement to the Skin Den’s main entrance, the big man was gripped by a surreal sensation that wasn’t quite déjà vu. It was something akin to the feeling amputees experience after losing a limb—the “phantom itch” syndrome. He imagined he heard Leon’s footsteps behind him, could almost smell a hint of body odor and the smoke from his late sidekick’s cigarette on the night’s cool breeze.

He swallowed a lump in his throat.

“As God is my witness, I’ll make sure you didn’t die for nothing,” he promised his friend. “I owe you that much.”

He didn’t realize he had said it out loud until a well-dressed man unlocking his Prius a few feet away turned and asked, “Beg your pardon?”

Nick shot him a look that made all the color drain from the guy’s face. He shrank back against his ride.

Nick stood outside the club for a few seconds. Cracked his knuckles. On the door, a sign warned NO CONCEALED WEAPONS ALLOWED ON PREMISES.

He flung open the door and stepped into the Skin Den.

†

Two minutes later, he had Russo the bartender’s bald head in his hands, and he was slamming it down on the bar again and again and again.

It felt good. He put everything he had into it, as if there might be some sort of prize at the end.

The dancers screamed. The men in the crowd shouted “what the fuck?” and “think we should do something, Glenn?” But Nick barely heard any of it. A furious buzzing filled his ears, like a swarm of angry hornets, as he bounced Russo’s head off the bar. His assault soon fell into sync with the beat of the dubstep tune on the club’s P.A. system:
whomp-THUD, whomp-whomp-THUD...

Finally, someone had the good sense to kill the music.

The bartender called Nick a motherfucker as his head came up again. That’s what it sounded like, anyway. He might have asked the big man to name his favorite action flicks. His lips were busted open like smashed grapes, two of his front teeth lay next to his empty tips jar, and his voice was all but unintelligible.

“You and me, we need to talk,” said Nick. “You’re gonna tell me where I can find Sophie.”

“I don’t have to tell you a goddamn th—” Russo started to say, but then Nick jerked him over the bar as if he weighed no more than a jug of that watered-down horse-piss he served his customers night after night.

“Better yet, you’re gonna take me to her. Let’s go for a ride, asshole.”

As Nick headed for the exit, he saw the curly-haired bouncer running toward them.

He glared at the guy. Slowly shook his head, like a stern parent warning a child not to act up in public.

The bouncer changed his mind, melted back into his dark corner.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” a voice screeched in Nick’s ear. “You can’t come in here throwing your weight around like that!”

Nick turned to see one of the orange-skinned, fake-tittied strippers from the night before. The one who had accused him of being gay because he didn’t want a dry-hump.

“You’re just a big, ugly bully,” she said. “That’s all you are!”

“Maybe.”

“You look like my cousin’s retarded stepson.”

“That hurts,” said Nick. It didn’t.

“I’m calling the cops.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and do that, honey? Tell them your buddy here was involved in the abduction of Sophie Lynn Suttles. Tell them he’s seen the error of his ways, and he’s gone to get her back.”

“Don’t,” the bartender said. “Leave it, Sheila. Don’t call the cops. It’s gonna be okay.”

The expression on the stripper’s face was that of someone who is unsure if she has chosen the right path in life. She backed away from Nick. Another young woman sobbed at the rear of the crowd.

“You’re making a big mistake,” the bartender told Nick. He wore a piece of tape on his nose from their last altercation, but it had come loose. It dangled from his cheek like a flap of dead skin. A bright red bib of blood stained his once-white TAPOUT T-shirt.

Someone else rushed at Nick then.

This time she wore a thin white blouse unbuttoned to her belly and a checkered “schoolgirl” miniskirt. Her blond hair was tied back in a ponytail.

“Claudette.”

“I wanted to tell you...he hasn’t laid a hand on me. Hasn’t spoken to me at all, after what you said to him. It’s like he’s scared of me.”

“That’s good to hear,” said Nick.

“I thought you should know. I’m fine.” She touched Nick’s arm. “Are you...gonna hurt him?”

“Probably,” said Nick. “He’s done some bad things. You’ll hear about them soon.”

Claudette looked at the bartender. He hung his head.

Nick gave a barely perceptible nod to the young lady, before shoving Russo toward the exit.