Suitcase City (8 page)

Teach was a football hero, a guy who told a good story about the good old days. Blood sitting out in the trashy Camaro in the hot sun thinking about Teach and the good life. Hell, if one of the men who worked for Blood did two hours in the office, a two-Corona lunch in Old Hyde Park, then called it quits at three thirty, that nigger would be down the road. So Blood knew a few things about Teach, some of them from experience, some from observation, and some from research. Blood figured he even knew things about Teach that Teach didn’t know.

Watching Tyrone’s eager eyes, Blood bent over the glass tabletop and chopped the white powder with the single-edged razor blade. He knew about people’s secret problems. Tyrone’s was this powder here and Teach’s was bourbon. And he knew from reading the sports pages of the long ago that Teach had a very bad temper. Oh, the guy had a reputation for cool under fire like any good quarterback, but there was a disturbing pattern of violence in his life. It was right there in the record for anybody who wanted to read it.

Blood divided the powder into two equal portions and cut them into lines. “Now, you got to take it easy with this. It ain’t that high school shit you used to.” Blood knew the people who supplied the shit Tyrone and his friends used, and he knew what he was talking about. Tyrone took out his wallet, removed a ten-dollar bill, and rolled it with shaking fingers. Blood let his voice go soft, made the sound of an older brother, the sound of caution, good reason. “Just do a line and wait a minute. See how it takes you.”

The boy leaned over and inserted the rolled bill into his nostril. Too eager, too eager by half. Blood loved that youthful eagerness. It made the world go round. It made business run smooth and the money roll in. He watched the boy draw in the line of cocaine and then jerk back with the shock of a pure dose. Pull back like his skull had been seized from above by the talons of a giant, ravenous bird. Well, it had been seized, and so had his spinal cord. Every nerve in his strong, young body was singing the Cartagena conga.
Ta, ta, TAH . . . BOOM!
Oh my, my, yes.

Blood always cut some lines for himself. Good customer relations. But with the boy, he hadn’t yet. And the boy didn’t seem to notice: that eagerness, Mr. Impatience, telling the boy there was more for him if Blood didn’t take any.

Two weeks ago, Blood had brought the boy back here among the boxes and the crates and told him he had a choice. He could do what Blood asked him to do with James Teach, and Blood would continue to supply him with the thing he loved most in the world, the Special Reserve, or he could go without the drug (Blood described some of the physical unpleasantness of this to the boy) and Blood would see to it that certain people were made aware of some of Tyrone Battles’s activities. Blood had expected some of that phony football anger, some of that young-buck-raging-around-and-confronting thing, but the kid had just looked at him and thought about it, realized that Blood had his balls in a vise, and said, “All you want me to do is confront the guy, piss him off, and see what happens?”

“That’s right, my friend,” Blood had said. “You just get in his face a little like the mean little nigger you are and see what he does. He does nothing, you just walk away. No problem. But he bows up on you, gets in there eating your breath, goes dog to your dog, then you improvise, see where it goes. I told you, the guy has a history of losing his temper. But remember, we want
him
in trouble, not you.”

The truth was that Blood didn’t know what Teach would do, but he figured it was worth a try, this thing with Tyrone Battles. Even if Teach didn’t take the bait, Blood might learn a thing or two. What had happened, the story Tyrone had just told, was righteous beyond Bloodworth Naylor’s wildest dream.

Tyrone fell backward into a Barcalounger that was about to be shipped out to some whores in an apartment in Suitcase City. The football star sprawled there with his mouth gaping, his hands twitching, his eyes the size of cocktail coasters, muttering, “Oh man. Oh shit.”

“I told you it was good shit.” Blood didn’t think the kid heard him. Whatever. The kid knew what to do next. The kid would hear him when the time came. And if he didn’t, Blood would crank the vise a little tighter on those eager young balls.

It was hot back here in the storeroom, hot and private. Blood left the boy sitting in his coca-leaf hyperdrive dream and walked out to the loading dock. He rolled open the big steel door and let the evening breeze blow across his face. He looked at the two-acre fenced lot where the delivery trucks were parked,
Naylor’s Rent-to-Own
painted in bold black letters on their sides. He glanced up and down the alley.

To the west, where the sun was setting now, he could see the two whores who usually stood under the jacaranda tree behind the laundromat moving into position for the night. They’d stand there under the tree in a litter of cigarette butts, fast-food wrappers, and crack vials until somebody came along and they started hollering, “Booty for sale! I got the softest mouth in Tampa.” Shit like that. They were crack-addicted whores. The walking dead. Blood Naylor had invented a word for them:
zombitches
.

Blood ran whores, but he did it the smart way. His scam was neat, efficient, and safe. He ran the rent-to-own as a legitimate business, and it did all right, nothing spectacular. But the bulk of his income came from the whores whose apartments he furnished. He shipped cheap furniture out to them, kept them on the books as rent-to-own clients, and recorded his share of their take as monthly payments on the furniture. The cocaine business provided a small part of his revenue. He only dealt with upscale clients: connections in the universities and some people in the medical and legal communities who liked their recreational drugs to come from a discreet and reliable source. It never hurt to have friends in Armani suits.

The sun had gone down over the jacaranda tree, and the two whores were doing business. A white man in a van had pulled up next to them and was negotiating. The two girls strutting their pathetic, skinny butts and talking that whore trash to a redneck from across the bay in Kenneth City. Blood heard Tyrone muttering to himself inside on the Barcalounger. That Special Reserve gave a man power dreams. Blood figured he’d better get back inside before the boy wandered off to stick up a convenience store with his dick. He’d give the boy some cocaine to take with him, put the photos of the boy’s face in an envelope, and stick them in his pocket, maybe tuck a couple of hundred-dollar bills into the boy’s wallet for good measure. Customer relations.

Bloodworth Naylor dreamt his power dream at night, and it was always the same story, and James Teach was always in the starring role. And James Teach was always surprised, beautifully surprised, when his sweet white world turned to blood and shit all around him, and in the dream Bloodworth Naylor was always laughing. And there was someone else in the dream. She was the reason for all of this. A beautiful woman. And, oh yes, wasn’t that always the story?

NINE

Teach awoke to the ache in his elbow. He rolled onto his back, wondering why it hurt. Then it all came back. The bar. The men’s room, that angry ebony face, the shirttail flagging to the side for a second, showing Teach what was almost certainly the handle of a razor.

He lay staring at the ceiling, feeling the sweat of fear break on his face. How had he gotten himself into this mess? Why hadn’t he waited a moment to see what the boy would do, ask him again what he meant? Then he thought:
No, damnit
.

As a kid, Teach had read about the murders of Sharon Tate and her friends in a wealthy house in the Hollywood Hills. How a band of lunatics had just walked in smiling and laughing and killed everybody. No one had sounded an alarm; no one had resisted because everyone had assumed the freaks had come for the party. The story had changed Teach. Taught him that it would always be better to trust instinct and strike when the alarms went off in your head than to wait the extra second to be sure. You could die in that second. Abigail Folger had waited. Wojciech Frykowski had waited, smiling, asking if he could help Tex Watson, who drew a pistol and shot him, then jumped on his back, stabbing him as Frykowski staggered across the lawn. Teach wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing in Malone’s Bar, but he was sure he’d do the same thing again.

He worked the elbow that ached because it had split a boy’s cheek and wondered if Dean was awake.

She had come out to the auditorium dressed in jeans and a thigh-length T-shirt, still glowing with stage makeup and the excitement of her triumph. She’d brought two friends with her—Missy Pace, a cheerleader, and the black girl, new to ballet. Teach had nodded and smiled at the two girls and opened his arms to Dean who gave him a brief hug. He’d whispered into her warm, fragrant neck, “Beautiful tonight.” When she pulled away, her eyes glittering with that energy she turned into movement on the stage, Teach said, “As usual.”

“Thanks, Daddy.” She smiled at some club women passing up the aisle.

Teach said, “Time to go, Deanie. I’ve got reservations at Bern’s.” Dinner at Bern’s was their after-recital tradition.

Dean frowned, then smiled. “Daddy, would it be okay this once if I skip dinner? There’s a party at Marty Flipper’s house.” The two friends watched Teach solemnly.

He tried to think of how to say no to all three of them. He could invite the friends to dinner.

Dean fired the heavy artillery. “Daddy-please-can-I?”

Unable to come up with a good no and worried about the bloodstain on his sleeve, Teach cleared his throat to summon his Stern Father voice. “No drinking at this party, young lady. And I want you home at eleven.”

“Oh, Daddy,” Dean groaned, mortified to have drinking (or was it coming home on time?) mentioned in front of her friends.

Teach had played golf with Harold Flipper who owned the local Volvo dealership. He was a dim but affable fellow and so, Teach reasoned, must be his son, Marty. The two girlfriends examined their fingernails and studied their Doc Martens to see if the scuffing on them was just right.

Teach abandoned Stern Father in favor of Old Guy Trying to Be Humorously Hip. “Will you girls give me your word you’ll say no when the wine coolers are passed around?” Missy looked stunned, as though she did not have a word to give, but the black girl looked Teach in the eye and said, “I promise you, Mr. Teach, if Deanie tries to go the way of all flesh, I’ll place my body between her and temptation.”

Teach kept his jaw from dropping, but he could not keep from chuckling his appreciation.

She stepped forward and extended her hand. “Hi, I’m Tawnya. It’s nice to meet you.”

* * *

Teach swung his legs out of bed and sat working the aching elbow. He felt Saturday-morning sad. It was sad but not fatal that Dean had ditched their celebration dinner for the giddy delights of a party at Marty Flipper’s house. Sometimes life was losing things. He had lost Paige, and he was losing Dean to the fate nature intended for young girls. (Not, please God, Marty Flipper, but someday a young man with a future.) The phone rang. Teach hurried from bed.

“Hello, I’m trying to reach James Teach. Is he there, please?”

Teach summoned his vice president’s voice. Easy and affable. Ready to meet what the day brought to his door. “This is he.”

“Mr. Teach, my name is Marlie Turkel. I’m a reporter at the
Trib
. Do you have a minute?”

Teach thinking:
What does a reporter want with me on a Saturday morning? Something about Dean, her dancing?
There had been a couple of pieces in the Sunday supplement. Dean’s success at the American Dance Festival. Her prospects for a New York career. Teach kept his voice low, pleasant. “Sure,” he said, “I’ve got a minute. What’s this about?”

“It’s about yesterday afternoon, you and a Mr. Tyrone Battles.” The woman’s voice changed. It went from brusque efficiency to a husky purring that couldn’t hide her excitement.

Teach felt the worm of fear move in his belly. Jesus, a journalist, and a woman. How in God’s own name had she gotten hold of this thing, and so soon? And what did she plan to do with it? Teach said only, “Yes?” aware that his voice had lost its affability. Aware that he was buying time without any idea what he would do with it.

The woman cleared her throat and in a low seductive throb said, “I’d like to get your side of this thing before we go to press with it.”

She sounds like sex
, Teach thought. Like she had known him for years and not in Sunday school. Like she had enjoyed knowing him in a way she wouldn’t deny, and she knew he wouldn’t either.

“Listen, uh, my daughter’s asleep. I want to take this downstairs. Can you call back in a minute or two?”

The woman—what was her name, Turkey? Surely not. Turkel, that was it, said, “Fine, Mr. Teach. It’s eight forty-five. I’ll call at eight fifty. Will that be all right?”

“Tell you what, give me ten minutes. I’ll make a cup of coffee. Wake up a little.”

Marlie Turkel said ten minutes would be fine with her, but now her tone said,
You won’t fuck with me if you know what’s good for you.

Downstairs, Teach put the coffee on. With a cup in his hand, warm and reassuring, he considered simply refusing to talk to the woman. She had probably seen the police report, knew what he’d told Aimes. Elaborating might get him into more trouble than letting the facts speak for themselves. And it would be easier, at least for the time being, to ignore her.

When the phone rang again, he snatched it from its cradle thinking of Dean upstairs. She’d wonder who was calling so early on a Saturday. Teach decided that elaborating a bit would serve him better than the bare bones of a police report. And he had no idea what the cop, Aimes, had written. He said, “Hello, Ms. Turkel. What can I tell you about yesterday?”

“Anything you want to tell me, Mr. Teach. I’ve got Mr. Battles’s side of the story. I thought it was only fair to call you.”

Fair
? Teach thought.
Right
. He told her what had happened: the good fellowship of two men who liked football, the necessary but regrettable trip to the men’s room, the boy coming in, calling them . . . Teach faltered. Should he say the word to a woman? Hell yes, he should. If she was any kind of journalist at all, she’d want the facts. So, he told it: the boy calling them
white bitches,
telling them to give it up. He told her about his certainty that the boy had a weapon, the probability that he would use it.