Bait: A Novel (9 page)

“You want me to do you?” she said, biting her bottom lip dreamily.

Curtis raised an eyebrow. “Are you referring to the drugs or my dick?”

“Whatever you want, baby. I’m game for either.”

Another attempt to smile, followed by a shake of his head. Ginger raised both eyebrows in surprise. It wasn’t like Curtis to turn down a fuck from her. Not like him at all. She rode his lap and jiggled her rack to try to coax something more positive out of him. He patted her ass nonchalantly, showing his utter lack of interest.

“Not right now, babe, I wanna keep my head straight. I’ve still got some things to take care of tonight.”

Ginger was curious for the first time. “Who was that on the phone, anyway?”

“Just business.” Curtis shrugged and glanced at his watch. “Someone’s coming around later to pick something up.”

His irises gave up nothing more, and Ginger knew better than to ask him further about his affairs. With all the pies Curtis was plunging fingers into lately, the less Ginger knew the better. The topic of a certain little slut wasn’t off-limits, however.

“Rita’s not coming by, is she?”

Curtis shook his head vehemently. “No, don’t worry.”

“Good, I hate that skank.”

Curtis braced for some Rita bashing. Ginger let the topic slide, incapable of giving two shits about much. The heroin had her in far too pleasant a mood and there was plenty of time to hate on Rita later.

“Look, I’m sorry I got shitty with you,” Curtis said. “I didn’t mean to bring you down, especially during your high. Let me make it up to you.”

“Baby, this
dope already makes up for anything and everything. You’re off the hook for the foreseeable future.”

She grinned lazily, slinging rubbery arms around his neck. He put a firm hand under her ass and eased her off his lap so he could rise.

“Regardless, I’m gonna fix you a drink.”

Curtis returned to the kitchen and prepared something on the counter with his back to her. Ginger sprawled on the sofa and stared at the stucco ceiling, a grin stretched across her face, not a care in the world. She felt suspended above the cushions, as if her body had been hollowed out and filled with warm helium. To her the stucco looked like the soft, creamy tips of Cool Whip. She saw herself floating up off the couch to run her tongue over a ceiling of dessert, dip hands into its cool, buttery texture, write words with a finger in its white surface.

I could write my life story in that,
she thought.
I could . . .

And suddenly there it was, clear as day in the center of her head, a worm wriggling and writhing with both pleasure and pain. If she could reach inside her brain it would be cool and smooth to the touch, slithering around her finger, then arm, then body. Ginger danced with the worm.

I’ll wrap you around my brain stem and tie you in a knot so you can never leave.

She felt weight sink into the cushions beside her again. Curtis had come back, and he’d brought something with him.

“Here,” Curtis said, handing her a mug. “Drink this.”

“What is it?” she mumbled, returning to her senses.

“Something to help your high along, make it twice as good.”

Ginger took the mug and drank every last drop. It was syrupy sweet, but a bitter aftertaste drizzled on the back of her tongue.

“Tastes weird,” she said. “What liquor did you use . . . ?”

She felt time and space around her stretch, sights and sounds warping, her world collapsing into a bloated, lethargic state. Curtis was saying something, but his voice was a series of deep yawns, foreign and frightening. Ginger closed her eyes, waiting for her high to grow exponentially. Soon paradise was lost completely and darkness came.

o o o

An hour later, Felix Fenton was climbing the stairwell to his apartment off of Seventy-ninth Street. The ascent felt like a hike up a mountainside in cement shoes. His movements were sluggish, feet dragging, toes catching on the lip of every stair. Walking straight was proving a challenge. The wall and the banister bounced his staggering body between them. Drool leaked from the corner of his mouth. His breath stunk of booze, his head lost in the haze of a hit. There was a worm inside his brain, a wonderful wiggly worm that danced to the beat of his heart. A car stereo, boosted from an unlocked car in a quiet lot, swung by his side in a plastic shopping bag. Felix intended to fence it in the morning to fund his next grab.

An hour earlier Felix had needed his hit so bad he’d asked to shoot up in the apartment of Al Catraz mere seconds after buying. The drug dealer had reluctantly permitted him to cook a quick spoon in his kitchen, on condition that Felix make himself scarce as soon as he was fixed. Felix wanted to kick back, sink into an armchair, and enjoy his junk, but he knew better than to piss off a supplier. He took to the street after injection and headed home in a daze. Catraz wasn’t the closest drug dealer by a long shot, but the cat was rumored to be selling shit of such quality it was worth the long walk to his neighborhood. The rumors were true. The junk coursing through Felix’s veins was of a variety rarely seen, let alone sampled, in his neck of the woods.

Felix finally reached the third floor and lumbered down the hallway to his apartment door, where he stabbed his key repeatedly above the door handle, trying to penetrate the lock.

“Fucking fuck,” he mumbled. “Open, damn it.”

He leaned against the door, trying to focus. A half dozen more jabs and the key slipped in, disengaging the lock. Felix turned and pushed back the knob. The black beyond it surprised him, thick and foreign and cool. The worm in his head stopped wiggling for a moment.

“What the . . . ?”

Darkness filled every inch of the apartment. Felix didn’t know why. He was sure he’d left a light or two on. Leaving lights on was a bad habit he’d had since childhood. Lights on had kept the boogeyman in his closet away, the monster under the bed away, and sometimes the drunken fists of his stepfather away. Felix couldn’t remember the last time he’d returned to a blacked-out crib. He remained standing in the hallway, unsure of whether to enter, wishing he could gather his wits about him. The heroin and whiskey created a solid buffer.

“Damn junk,” he grumbled. “Damned
junkie.
”

For a moment he despised the narcotic within him, wishing he could fight it off the way he’d fought off so many opponents in the ring as a young man, wishing it had a physical form so he could plant a digger in the gut and bring it to its knees. The bookies had always given him a one-in-four chance of winning. As a kid, he had the same likelihood of catching a beating from his mother’s poor taste in men. Felix never liked those odds. He’d done his damnedest to be king underdog. If smack was a heavyweight contender Felix would have it tangled in the ropes and hammered into submission.

“Jesus, what did you expect, Felix? You beat him to a bloody pulp.”

Felix remembered the angry, ashamed words spewing from Sheldon Monet’s mouth. They were almost two decades old now, but his former manager’s words rang as clear as they had in the locker room after Felix’s fateful bout in the ring.

“You couldn’t exercise a little restraint out there? Fuck, what did I expect? That’s how you were trained. Like a goddamn pit bull.”

That night Felix had sat on a bench and said nothing, knowing he was finished. Sheldon wasn’t close to being finished, however. Spittle flew off his lips as he continued to berate him. Felix took the verbal beating in silence while his trainer toweled off the sweat from his body and cut his wraps.

“You can’t be controlled. You’re a loose cannon, ticking time bomb, and rabid animal all rolled into one. And you wanna know something else, you fucking caveman? I can’t defend your ignorant ass anymore. I’m gonna have a hard enough time defending myself from—”

As soon as the wraps fell, Felix decked his manager with bare knuckles and watched Sheldon’s front teeth sail through the air, lit by fluorescent light, and clatter off an old locker. Sheldon staggered into a corner, hands over his mouth, blood seeping through fingers. He tried to find purchase on the brick wall before collapsing in a heap. Felix was heading for the door before his manager even hit the floor.

“I’m done,” Felix had said, picking up his gym bag. “For good.”

His trainer, severed wraps in hand, begged him to reconsider, but Felix never boxed another day in his life.

“Wasn’t my fault,” Felix mumbled.

He’d said it then, and he was saying it again now. For close to twenty years he’d repeated this mantra that did him no good. He’d walked away from a fucked-up fight and into a personal hell, out of the frying pan and into the fire. Hell, for all its fiery depictions, was more likely to be found on the earth’s crust rather than below it. Now, as he stood in front of his apartment, he couldn’t help but feel the doorway before him was the entrance to some other hell. It was ridiculous, of course, being as high and drunk as he was, but he couldn’t shake the vibe. To prove the feeling wrong, Felix strode defiantly into the dark.

Five feet inside the doorway he stopped. There was a shuffling sound at his back, rubber soles beginning to move across the floorboards. He felt a presence emerge from behind the door a second before it snaked an arm around his neck and put him in a choke hold. A jacketed bicep and forearm flexed against Felix’s throat, the power of the squeeze almost superhuman. He thought his neck would break, but only his lungs were denied air. Felix recognized the Texas drawl the second the voice spoke in his ear.

“Now today . . . today just
ain’t
your lucky day.”

The elbow inclined, lifting Felix’s chin. The pierce of a needle, something Felix knew well, immediately stung the flesh of his exposed neck. The bagged car stereo dropped to the ground with a clunk. Felix struggled, but his assailant maintained the strong hold easily. His body began to go limp as his vision blurred. The silhouettes of the furniture in the apartment swayed and swirled before his eyes. Felix was out before he hit the floor.

o o o

Miles away in Overtown, two men were loading Kenny Colbert’s unconscious body into a gray windowless GMC van parked in the alley behind Matty and Merle’s place. Merle was in the alley too, arguing with the men who had come to collect. They didn’t answer many of his questions or respond to any of his demands. Merle didn’t like the way things were being handled. He didn’t think things were fair. He wanted to alter the deal.

One of the men, after hearing Merle out, made a call on his cell phone. The voice on the other end first listened, and then gave instructions. When the call was complete the man conferred quietly with the other. It had been decided that M&M had exhausted their usefulness. Things in the alley went very, very quiet.

“Hey, wait a second,” Merle whined as one of the men advanced on him. “What do you think you’re doing?”

There was a click. The man swung at him, hand at neck level. Merle barely saw it coming. The switchblade that slit his throat nixed the scream before it could escape. A wretched, gargled sound spilled from his mouth instead, blood following it out. Merle fell first to his knees and then flat on his face. His assailant stood over his twitching body and watched as he bled out. The other man went back into the apartment and searched room to room until he found Matty cowering in the bathtub, intoxicated and in tears. For all of his slender build, Matty managed to struggle with his attacker for almost a minute before his throat was cut.

NOW.

D
awn was breaking when the voices stirred Nash from his painful slumber. He’d spent the night in a fetal position in an attempt to quell the stabbing in his stomach, but it hadn’t helped much. He’d managed a little sleep, much the same as he would get with a fever: restless, with frequent spells of cold sweat and confusion. Felix’s rumbling baritone and Ginger’s high-pitched squeak forced Nash to give up on the prospect of any further rest, yet he continued to lie still, face turned away just enough to watch them without their knowledge.

“So where was you, last you remember?” asked Felix. “Y’know, before you woke up here?”

“Lying on my so-called boyfriend’s couch,” said Ginger.

“Boyfriend?”

“Boyfriend, roommate, dealer, call him what you want.”

“I thought you was a dyke.”

“Never said I was.”

Felix gave a little cackle at the revelation. A low wolf whistle followed. Ginger made a noise halfway between a snort and a giggle and shook her head.

“You wish, buddy.”

Felix chuckled. “Hey, you know what they say. Once you go black—”

Ginger didn’t miss a beat. “You might get stabbed.”

Felix stared at her, jaw slack, momentarily speechless. Then he threw his head back and let out a hoot of laughter.

“Ice
cold
, lady.”

Ginger chuckled. “Believe it or not, that’s just me warming up to you.”

“Alright, so you were on your boyfriend’s couch and then . . . ?”

“Dunno, passed out after my hit, I guess. Next thing I know I’m waking up here with the rest of you guys.”

Felix shook his head. “It wasn’t the junk that put you out. Whatever we all got drugged with was meant to keep us under for a good while. The last thing I remember was coming back to my apartment and putting my key in the door. I was out of it, drunk and dazed from a spoonful, but I thought I heard something behind me. I remember an instance of pain . . . then nothing. Pretty sure I got injected with something.”

Ginger nodded, but said nothing. If she was going to admit to being drugged like Felix, then she’d have to admit that Curtis might have had something to do with it. Felix turned to an exhausted, but wide-eyed, Kenny.

“What ’bout you, kid?”

“I was at a friend’s place. These guys I hang with, Merle and Matty, hooked me up with a fix and I remember sitting in an armchair staring at the TV. First time I’d ever done intravenous.”

Felix laughed. “Never needled? Shit, son, you hardly qualify as a junkie.”

“I freebased a fuckload to make up for it, but I’ll never go back now. I learned what I was missing out on when Matty pumped me full of that bliss. Last thing I remember was Merle fixing me a bowl of ice cream. I ate it in front of the TV as I started to come down. Something about it tasted funny. . . .”

“So you guys were with other people, last you remember . . . and people you knew. And you were also in the middle of your last hit.”

Kenny and Ginger nodded reluctantly, not liking what it was adding up to.

“What about him over there?” Kenny said, thumbing toward Nash’s supposedly sleeping figure. “What’s his story?”

Nash didn’t move an inch, but his response startled everyone.

“I went to bed with a devil woman.”

“Haven’t we all?” Felix said and looked at Ginger and Kenny. “Present company excepted, of course.”

“Had my share,” said Ginger with a shrug and turned to Nash. “You’ve been awake this whole time?”

“Fuck,” Nash groaned. “With you bunch yakking away there’s no way I could be anything else.”

He sat up on his elbows, blinking in the morning light. His attention was drawn to Maria. She sat away from the others, staring silently at the sunrise with bloodshot eyes. Nash didn’t feel much like talking himself, but Felix wanted to hear more.

“Alright, so who’s this devil woman? And what’s she got to do with anything?”

“Nothing,” Nash replied. “Or everything. I don’t know. She was the last person I was with before ending up here.”

“How well do you know her?”

“I don’t. Never met her before in my life.”

Nash put his hand down the front of his jeans and gave his balls a good scratch while he collected his thoughts. Ginger grimaced at the sight.

“Aw, have an ounce of class, man.”

Nash ignored her. “Two nights ago I’m at a club in Opa-locka, dealing the odd party favor, when I catch sight of two guys that look out of place on the dance floor. It takes me a moment to realize that I’ve seen one of these fuckers before, a couple days before in a supermarket. At the time I was convinced that the guy was tailing me. Something about him screamed
cop.
I thought the narcs had got wind of me somehow and I figured they were setting up a trap, so I bolted out a back exit and hightailed it.”

“They come after you?” Kenny asked.

“I didn’t give them the chance. I head to my apartment to lie low, take my medicine, and forget about the whole thing in a day. But I’m back out the next night, and lo and behold, this same guy is in the club. Except this time he’s got backup.”

“Only two guys?” Felix asked. “Seems a little light for a vice squad.”

“I thought so too, but I’m sure it was just the two of them. They looked the part, and they were both on the hunt, no doubt.”

“So what did you do?”

“First, I went into the can and flushed all the shit I had on me. Then I managed to give them the slip and get out of the club. Outside I hailed a cab, but some hot young thing comes out of nowhere and gets in the car the same time I do. She asks where I’m headed. I tell her I’m going east and she suggests we split a fare. Short on cash and out of product, I don’t object. In the cab we get to chatting. She invites me along for a little barhopping and I’m game. She’s crazy, no doubt, but the kind of ride you really wanna strap yourself into. We get hammered and I find out she’s more of a dope fiend than I am, so I roll with the punches until I end up at her place for a fuck and a fix. Right after we finish doing the nasty she admits she’s a fan.”

“What do you mean a fan?” asked Ginger.

“A fan of the band. She’d been to a bunch of Fuel Injector gigs . . . although I don’t ever remember seeing her.”

“Then what?”

“Got high, got sleepy, and the next thing I know I’m waking up here with you lot . . . fucked in a whole other way.”

Felix nodded. “Ain’t that the truth.”

“Which begs the question,” Nash said, sitting cross-legged on the sand. “You guys notice anything suspicious? I mean . . . earlier that day or the days before? Anything out of the ordinary?”

There was pause for thought, but it didn’t take long for Ginger to break it.

“Yeah, some weird shit happened to me at the Barracuda Room. This guy was hounding me at the bar, trying real hard to get me back to his place. Good-looking dude, built like an army boy, sounded like a New Yorker. At first I was kinda flattered. Thought he might be a sailor in port with a little shore leave, looking for a good time. Said he could hook me up with anything I wanted if I just went home with him.”

“You take him up on his offer?” Felix asked.

“Nah, something didn’t feel right. His vibe was off, too intense, too pushy. I’ve been around the block. I know what shit smells like, no matter how much cologne is dumped on it. Figured he was either a sicko or a psycho, and I didn’t want to find out which. So I ditched him first chance I got.”

“Did he try and follow you?” Nash asked.

“Like you, I didn’t even give him the chance. Told him I was going to powder my beak and blew out the Barracuda the second I saw he was distracted.”

Nash scratched the inside of his arm. “If there’s one thing our kind knows how to do well, it’s run and hide.”

Felix folded fingers into fists. “Not me.”

“Not you?”

Felix shook his head. Ginger snuck a glance at his hands, noting the prominent scar tissue and bony knuckles. She didn’t doubt the kind of damage they could inflict.

“You attack your problems, don’t you?”

“Fight or flight,” Felix said, nodding. “I choose fight.”

“You got a story too?”

“Yeah, I came home to find some piece of shit snooping around my apartment door a couple days back.”

“Good-looking guy?” asked Ginger.

Felix let out a snort. “How the hell would I know?”

“I’m just trying to draw some connections here. Wondering if it was the same guy I had hitting on me in that bar.”

“Nah, this guy talked like a cowboy, a real fucking hick. When I approached him he tried to flee the scene. He took a swing at me when I got within arm’s reach. I ducked the punch and tried to go toe-to-toe with him. Only managed to land one blow and it didn’t even faze the cocksucker.”

“Tough guy, eh?” said Nash.

“
Trained
guy,” Felix replied. “There’s a difference. This son of a bitch had moves, man. Before I knew it he had me in a clinch and planted a couple of knees in my gut, dropping me like a fucking amateur. Thought he was going to finish the job, but he said it was my lucky day and walked off, leaving me winded on the floor.”

The others traded troubled looks. Someone taking down Felix so easily was hard to imagine after seeing the man’s penchant for violence and aggression firsthand.

Kenny raised a hand. “I think I’m in the same boat. I saw a stranger hanging around in the lobby of my apartment, now that you got me thinking.”

“You too?” Felix asked. “When?”

“Two, maybe three days ago. I can’t really remember. But I do remember him clearly. He was well-built. Cropped blond hair, handsome—”

Kenny caught himself smiling at the thought, forgetting where he was for a moment. He looked around guiltily at the others.

Nash snorted. “Don’t worry, kid. You ain’t a mystery to us.”

“Got
fag
written all over you,” Felix said. “No offense, man.”

“Oh, none taken,” Kenny said, rolling his eyes.

An uncomfortable silence followed, all three men not knowing how to continue the conversation. Ginger finally spoke up, trying to draw attention away from Kenny and put an end to the idiocy.

“Maria, what about you? Care to share?”

Maria said nothing. She was looking out at the water, making herself an island by staying away from the rest. Ginger didn’t press her for an answer. It was clear the woman wanted to keep to herself.

“Cat got her tongue?” Felix asked.

“Leave her be,” Ginger replied. “I’ve heard enough already anyway.”

“You got a theory?”

“Hardly, but from what you guys have told me it sounds to me like we all had the same people tailing us. Match that with the fact that we’re all dope fiends, and I’d say we were picked out, targeted. Don’t know why or how, but we were in someone’s crosshairs for sure.”

“Or maybe we’re the dumb luck of the draw?” said Nash. “Six short straws?”

“Five now,” said Ginger.

Nash nodded. “Yeah . . .”

He scraped at his scarred forearms, wondering how life might have panned out if he’d never tried that first hit backstage three dates into his one and only East Coast tour. Ginger watched, knowing he had the worse habit between them, but only by a small margin. She glanced at her own skin, thinking how soft and unblemished it could have been if she’d never got into the habit of sticking herself.

“I will tell you this, though,” said Nash. “What that mystery girl cooked up for me was the best junk I ever had.”

“Come again?” Ginger said, snapping into focus.

“If my last hit was my last meal, it would have been some serious gourmet shit. The high was unbelievable. Felt like the first time again. Felt like I had this wonderful worm inside my head, just wriggling, dancing.”

Eyes widening, Ginger pointed a finger at herself. “Me too.”

“Me too,” said Kenny.

Felix raised a hand. “Same here.”

“No shit, who supplies you?” Nash asked.

“Recently, I been grabbing from this guy named Al Catraz,” Felix replied.

“Al Catraz?”

“Yeah, his street name. You know him?”

“No. Why they call him that?”

“They say the guy is an island,” Felix said. “Nobody can get to him. He’s careful, smart, been dealing for years and never done a day inside. He’s never had as much as a parking ticket either, so I hear.”

Nash turned to Kenny. “What about you?”

“I get my shit from Matty and Merle mostly,” Kenny said. “Once in a while I’ll grab off a corner.”

“And you?” Nash asked Ginger.

“My boyfriend, Curtis, hooks me up. And recently he’s been bringing home exactly what you said, that wonderful, wiggly worm stuff.”

A subtle smile curled the corners of her mouth. She looked at them all and discovered they wore similar expressions.

Nash shook his head in disbelief. “Jesus, I think we were all scoring the same dope somehow.”

“I wonder . . .” Felix began, looking out to the island across the channel.

“What?”

“I wonder if that’s the same heroin they got waiting for us over there. Wonder if our last high was just a taste.”

Nash nodded. “That thought crossed my mind too.”

The idea was appetizing. Even Maria looked back at the mention of it. The five shared a look of increased interest.

“God, I’d love me just one little hit of that bomb shit right now,” Felix said.

“Tell me about it—”

A sharp pain cut across the inside of Nash’s gut, doubling him over with a hiss. The others grew worried. Their conversation had been uncharacteristically calm, but they knew it wouldn’t last. It was plain to see, on each of their faces, the lines of stress, shifty eyes, twitching lips. They could only stave off the inevitable for so long. This crazy train they were riding, the same unstable locomotion that drove Tal out to sea some ten hours earlier, could only go off the tracks. The real cracks would appear soon in their psyche. Cold turkey was, in fact, not really an option. Enduring the torture of withdrawal was the last thing any of them wanted. Nash looked to the next island, his words reminiscent of Tal’s from the day before.

“It’s not that far. We could swim it. I reckon we’d make it in twenty minutes, half hour maybe.”