Bait: A Novel (4 page)

TWO DAYS AGO.

F
elix Fenton’s candy nose burned so bad he thought he might yell. Every vein in his right nostril was aflame. Nasal drip was like acid. The coke he’d bought was of the harshest variety and his sinuses were paying for it. What the hell was it cut with? Salt? Carpet deodorizer? If Felix’s sense of smell wasn’t so wrecked already he might have sniffed a clue. Blow was always cut with something worthless, that much was true. You couldn’t avoid it these days. Pollutants bought from dollar stores caused purity to plummet everywhere. Felix preferred something like powdered baby laxative in his order when he was getting shortchanged. A few extra visits to the crapper he could deal with. This shit, though, jammed up his nose, was all kinds of wrong. Forty bucks well misspent, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Don’t you dare blow your nose,
he thought.
Don’t waste a goddamn milligram now. The pain will pass. Wait it out.

His eyes watered before glazing. There it was—the kick, the payoff that he worried might not come. Felix shuddered, teeth grinding, gums flexing, tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth.

“Fuck yeah.”

He rubbed his nose, trying to derail the unreachable itch forming halfway to the back of his throat. The kick was surprisingly decent, but not nearly enough. Felix had to have another. The stairwell of his run-down apartment building was not the wisest spot to indulge. Even so, he crammed himself into a dusty corner, unable to wait another minute. Coke was the appetizer, the link in the chain that connected him to his true anchor, something to tie him over until he got settled in his apartment where he could cook.

“Double down,” he muttered and pulled a tiny vial from his jacket pocket.

He tapped another bump into the concave of his long pinky fingernail and pressed it to his nostril. With a piggish snort he vacuumed it into his head. There was pain again, though not as severe as before. The kick was less too, but piggybacked the previous one nicely. It gave Felix’s exhausted legs the energy to bound two steps at a time up the three flights to his floor.

At his landing he considered a third bump. These weren’t proper rails he was snorting, mere sprinklings at best. He looked at the vial again, half full with cheap cocaine, and swallowed the bitter chemical that leaked into his throat from his sinuses. The coke called his name again and again. Felix’s better half, now shrunk to less than an eighth, chastised him for listening.

You can’t wait thirty seconds until you’re in the privacy of your own damn home? What the fuck’s wrong with you, nigga? Get a grip.

Felix ran that squeaky angel off his shoulder nine times out of ten these days, but he let it cruise this time. Privacy was something he was becoming less mindful of and might pay the price for if he didn’t take care. Cops were always looking for an easy bust and Felix, black and male and addicted, was enough of a target already. The vial found its way back inside his pocket.

“. . . I’ll keep you updated, sir.”

An unknown voice up ahead. Felix rounded the corner into his hallway and stopped. Six doors down, shuffling away from his apartment door, was a mystery man. White and suspicious, that was all Felix took into account. He was slipping something into his back pocket as he tried to leave the scene. Felix had no doubt the guy had just been fucking with his front door.

“Hey!”

Felix quickened his step as he approached. The man looked over his shoulder and their eyes met. Felix tried on his mad dog glare, the one he used around the neighborhood regularly to warn others to give him a wide berth. It didn’t create an ounce of concern in the man’s reciprocating gaze. Felix got within three feet of him and reached out to grab a shoulder.

“Hey, what the fuck do you think—”

Felix had been a boxer at one point in his life, back when it had been important for a sample cup of his piss to come up clean. He saw the right hook coming, despite the uncanny speed of the delivery. Felix weaved, feeling knuckles graze his neck. He countered with a poorly timed uppercut that connected with the man’s sternum instead of his chin. The man grunted, but was otherwise unfazed. Felix tried for a headlock.

“Asshole, you just signed your own—”

In a flash the tables were turned. Arms got inside Felix’s guard, wrists slipped past his face, easily outmaneuvering his attempt to defend. Before he knew it Felix found himself in a clinch and at the man’s mercy.

Death warrant.

He’d underestimated his opponent, a critical mistake. One sentence filled the ticker tape of his thoughts, still transmitting as the first instance of pain came.

This is how it ends.

The man’s forearms crushed Felix’s head like a vise, compressing his cheekbones, squashing his ears to his head, burning them with friction as he tried to pull free. When the knee came up, Felix wasn’t ready. It was like something he’d seen in an underground Muay Thai fight once. The man’s knee bore into his gut with such upward force that Felix felt his heels lift off the ground. Seconds later another knee planted in the same spot and the vise grip released. Felix dropped like a puppet with strings slashed, the wind knocked out of him. His breath would not return.

Dude is pro,
Felix thought.
That wasn’t luck.

On his knees and doubled over, forehead a foot from the floorboards, Felix knew the misjudgment would cost him. His lungs demanded oxygen, though intake was impossible. He anticipated only two or three seconds before a heel or fist came down on the back of his head, or, worse, a bullet. He could visualize the police report:
murdered execution style
. Felix braced for the sound of a hammer being cocked. Instead he heard a low Texas drawl, the smile behind it as unmistakable as the pained breath in it.

“It’s your lucky day, boy. Any other and I’d have finished you for that.”

A vicious kick to the ribs flipped Felix on his back. Breathless, he lay there, staring at the discolored, waterdamaged stucco of the ceiling, waiting for hands to rifle his pockets and make off with his wallet and contraband. The robbery never came. His attacker was already on his way out, boots clomping back the way Felix had come. One last remark came from down the hall.

“You best count your blessings while you can, man.”

Felix dared not move, wheezing, coaxing his lungs to expand enough for a full breath. With strength returning he propped himself against the wall in a sitting position and fought the urge to vomit. He took a tiny baggie out of the inside pocket of his jacket and carefully checked it over, making sure it wasn’t damaged in the fight. This was his other purchase, his one true master: that which had made a modern-day slave out of him. The fine white powder inside didn’t look much different from what was in the vial, but the two were incomparable to Felix. The heroin held his eyes and gnawed at his brain stem. He thought of freshly fallen snow, a delightful worm wiggling through white drifts. His voice was pained, wispy, when he finally spoke to the empty hallway.

“Hell, you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

NOW.

“W
ho knew hell could look so beautiful?” Felix said, eyes skating over the turquoise water, fingers finding their way inside his open shirt to caress the two-day-old bruise on his stomach that was camouflaged from the others by his dark skin.

“We’re in hell?” Kenny asked.

“Got a feeling we will be soon enough.”

“Fuck, I’m already there,” Ginger grumbled and nodded toward Nash. “Who put this clown in charge?”

Nash ignored her. Someone had to handle the situation and none of them seemed willing to step up to the plate. He paced back and forth, arms crossed, voice authoritative.

“Okay,” Nash began. “First of all, does anyone remember how they got here?”

They all shook their heads except Ginger. She stood motionless, face pinched, bitterly pissed at him for taking the helm.

“Okay, does anyone know where the hell we
are
?”

Shrugs and silence. After some consideration Felix spoke.

“I’m guessing somewhere in the Florida Keys?”

Nash rolled his eyes. That was a no-brainer. Judging by their surroundings there was little doubt they could be anywhere else.

“No shit, Sherlock. I was hoping for something a little more specific.”

Felix flipped him the bird. “Fine, we’re on a deserted island in the Florida Keys.”

“What do we all have in common?” Nash asked.

Kenny gave a shaky laugh. “Shit, we all got fucking roofied, man.”

“Is it safe to assume we’re all from Miami?”

Everyone nodded.

“What parts?”

Hesitation from the others as Nash looked from person to person, hoping they might say something first. Lips were sealed, none of them willing. Nash gave in and took a deep breath to get the ball rolling.

“Opa-locka, north near the I-95. I’m in a Wash Box.”

They all knew it, the code name for those on the level. There were plenty of bad places to hole up in Miami, but the Washington Blocks ranked with the worst. They didn’t just scrape the bottom of the barrel; they punched a hole through it to an even shadier depth. There was a delay before the rest of them volunteered any information.

“I’m in Overtown,” Kenny said eventually. “Wrong side of the tracks, I guess you could say.”

“Coconut Grove,” said Ginger. “The bad corner.”

Nash snickered. “Jeez, which one?”

“The worst one.”

“And you?” Nash asked, turning to Felix.

“Liberty City, Seventy-ninth Street, y’all can guess which intersection.”

“The one you don’t hang out on after sunset?”

“The very same.”

Nash turned to Maria. “What about you?”

All eyes were on the woman who spoke little. She wanted no part of the conversation, trying to appear disinterested in them and the talk they were having. Her eyes betrayed her, though, silently informing the others that she was afraid to answer. They stared her down until she capitulated.

“I . . . move around.”

“Maria of no fixed address, eh?” Felix said. “Don’t sweat it, honey. I’ve been there too, more than once.”

The demographic they shared was clear. Every one of them dangled from the bottom rung of Miami’s social ladder, living in the worst neighborhoods with the poorest folk. More destitute urban locations of Western civilization on the East Coast would be hard to find.

“What else we got in common?” Ginger asked.

“I dunno,” Kenny said. “It ain’t age, sex, or race. I mean, we got man, woman, black, white, young, old—”

Kenny cut himself off and cast a nervous glance at Felix, who sneered before holding up a fist and extending a middle finger at the boy.

“Who the fuck you calling old?”

Nash didn’t miss a beat. “Oh, come on. You get a senior’s discount with all that gray hair, dude?”

“Premature . . . it comes with the territory.”

Nash raised an eyebrow. “And what territory is that?”

Felix didn’t reply. Nash looked the man over, then the others, then himself, looking for similarities, wondering what else they shared. He scratched at his sweaty throat, tiny sickly spiders crawling under his skin that needed to be squashed.

“Have any of us ever seen each other before today?”

“Nope,” Ginger said, cocking her head as she looked at Nash. “But you’re starting to seem a little familiar. What do you do?”

“A bit of this, a bit of that.”

“Yeah, don’t we all. C’mon, what’s your thing?”

“I’m a musician.”

“Wait?” Ginger peered at him. “Are you in a band or something?”

“Yeah, mostly play guitar in this outfit called Fuel Injector.”

It took a moment before Ginger’s eyebrows rose. Then she jabbed a finger at him, a snide bark of laughter punctuating each stab in the air.

“You’re in
Fuel Injector
? You play at the Barracuda Room sometimes, right? That band that’s always advertising ladies free ’cause you can’t get any chicks to show up to your gigs?”

“Bitch, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Ginger smirked. She knew exactly what she was talking about.

“I knew I’d seen your washed-up ass on a poster or something somewhere. Man, you look worse than your lame-ass photo.”

Nash shrugged off her comment. “Okay, there’s something we have in common. We’ve both been to the Barracuda Room. Felix? You ever been to that joint? It’s in Coconut Grove.”

“Nah, I stay out of C.G. Made some enemies there a couple years back.”

“Kenny? How about you?”

“Nope. Never.”

Nash turned to Maria, but she only shook her head and averted her eyes.

Ginger snapped her fingers. “Speaking of enemies, do you guys have any?”

“No one I’d call an enemy per se,” Nash said. “There’s a seriously pissed-off bass player I shit-canned from the band a few months ago, but that’s about it.”

Kenny sighed. “My parents hate my guts. Can’t think of anyone else who has a problem with me. What about you, Ginger?”

“I run out on a lot of joints without paying my tab,” she replied. “Which makes me public enemy number one with local bartenders and waitresses.”

Ginger scratched her elbow and for the first time Nash saw, really saw, the track marks on the insides of her forearms, scabby ones dotted with the fresh, their numbers alarming. He looked closer at everyone, discovering similar scarring. The harrowed looks on their faces, the bags under their eyes, the feverish, incessant scratching. All were signs. Nash paused before asking his next question, the precursor of silence making it pop from his lips when he finally spoke.

“You’re all junkies, aren’t you?”

The question caught Felix, Maria, and Kenny off guard, but not Ginger. She’d already pieced it together. She looked him straight in the eye and an understanding passed between them, two diseased peas sharing a putrid pod.

“Not as dumb as you look,” she said.

Uncomfortable silence from the rest, telling Nash everything he needed to know. He scratched another burgeoning itch on his neck to show that he too was a member of their exclusive club. They began to peer at one another for the telltale signs of a bad heroin habit. Only Kenny had less overt signifiers of drug abuse, but he was the youngest. Ginger’s fingers crept over the veins in her arms, touching the remnants of every puncture that pockmarked her skin.

“Smack made me its bitch years ago.”

The others nodded in perfect unison: addict marionettes strung together. Nash leaned over and inspected Ginger’s arms as close as he dared. She allowed him, but only so she could return the favor. It was close, but Nash’s looked a mite worse.

“Made all of us its bitch,” said Nash. “That’s what it does best.”

Everyone avoided eye contact, trying to hide their scars and scabs, fiddling with their clothes and hair, pretending to be suddenly interested in their surroundings. The tension in the air implied that no one wanted to continue the conversation. Kenny was the only exception. He raised a hand and waved it until everyone was looking at him.

“So . . . uh, what kind of price do you guys get for your shit?”