Bad to the Bone (26 page)

“Marcy say, ‘Money isn’t everything, Davis. She’s just a little girl.’

“Davis say, We’re talking about murder, Marcy. So far, the cops haven’t connected us to Mr. Williams’ demise, but if they stumble onto Mr. Williams’ daughter and she starts talking about the time her Auntie Flo picked her up at the circus,
you’ll
be eatin’ pussy for the next fifty years.’

“Now check this out, Abou. We all sittin’ butt naked in the bedroom. Matty’s in a chair with one leg thrown over the arm. Little blond pussy jus’ winkin’ at us. Invitin’ us. Me and Davis be on the bed with our dicks hangin’ down. Talkin’ ’bout killin’ some little kid.”

Abou let his head wobble a bit. It was as close as he could get to a nod of agreement. “That’s hard, man. I said that before. The man is sure as shit hard.”

“Marcy say, ‘I don’t care about that. Ever since Flo got hurt, I’ve been Terry’s bonding mother. I can’t
kill
her. For cryin’ out loud.’

“Davis Craddock get this big smile on. Say, ‘You’re not afraid to go to jail, Marcy?’

“Marcy say, ‘You’ve got to draw the line somewhere, Davis. You just have to.’

“Davis say, ‘Okay, that’s good. But we can’t let the child stay here crying for her daddy, can we? That would be suicidal.’

“Marcy say, ‘You’re right, Davis. What should we do?’

“Davis make a face like he thinkin’ deep on the subject. Then he look straight across at his bitch, lookin’ at her eyes. He say, ‘Let’s take the kid out to the lab and stash her with Michael till we finish the manufacturing phase. Once we have our product secured, we can let her go.’ Michael is Davis’ kid. He keepin’ his kid away from the commune for some reason I ain’t heard about.

“Marcy run across the room and give Davis a kiss. A real wet motherfucker. She mostly a kid, her own self.

“Davis push her away. Say, ‘But we can’t tell her she’s going to meet Michael, because she thinks Michael’s living with Flo. We have to tell her she’s going home to be with her daddy. You tell her we’ll be starting out for her daddy’s tomorrow night at seven-thirty. Tell her to pack some clothes. Enough for maybe three days. If she asks why her daddy isn’t coming to pick her up, say that her daddy’s angry with the people in the commune. He won’t come to us, so we’ll take her to him.’

“Marcy get dressed and go out to find the little bitch. Davis take off, too. Say he got bidness. Next night at seven-thirty we bring the little bitch out to the van. Davis axe me to drive and we start workin’ our way out to Long Island somewheres. Davis and the two bitches is sittin’ in the back, singin’ songs.”

“
Singin’
” Abou interrupted. He was drunk, now, and suddenly happy. “Motherfucker
always
be singin’ somethin’.
Crazy
white man.” He was lost in admiration for a moment. Then he remembered that he
hated
crazy white men.

“I got to take the heat for that shit,” Wendell observed. “I done started the man up on makin’ beats.”

“Look like he caught on fast.”

Wendell shook his head, laughing. “Well, this time it ain’t
my
music. They goin’ on ’bout some small world. Same words over and over. The little bitch don’t even notice that we ain’t goin’ to the Bronx. Probly don’t know nothin’ ’bout geography. Course, I don’t know shit about no Long Island either, but he get me on a parkway and say just keep drivin’. Then they goes on talkin’ and singin’. Me, my mind ain’t tight to they bullshit. Ah’m mostly thinkin’ ’bout how ah’m gon’ see the lab. Ain’t seen it up till that point. Then I hear a loud crack like a stone done hit the back window. I turn around and Davis be holdin’ the little bitch and her head be layin’ down on her chest. When I was a kid, I remember pickin’ up a dead mouse and its head done flopped over jus’ like that little bitch’s head.

“Marcy done went crazy. Screamin’, ‘How could you do it? How could you do it?’ Ah’m thinkin the white man ain’t gon’ take this shit off his bitch and sure nuff I hear the bitch start chokin’ and Davis got his hands round her throat. The bitch is kickin’ out and scratchin’ at his arms, but he hold on tight. Davis ain’t big, but he
strong
and he got no mercy in him. Meanwhile the bitch eyes buggin’ out her head and she slowin’ fast. Stop kickin’, stop scratchin’. She starin’ in Davis’ eyes and he steady laughin’. Then the bitch’s eyes freeze up and she shit her pants.

“Davis drop her down and climb up next to me in the front. He say, Wendell, in life you got to have a goal. You got to put that goal in front of you and not let petty concerns prevent you from reaching it. I
had
to eliminate Terry, because she stood between me and my goal. But I knew that if I eliminated Terry, I could never trust Marcy again. In a month, I’ll be far away from Hanover House. There will be no way for the cops to put it together, even if they find the bodies.’

“I say, That’s chill, baby, but for now, I settle for rollin’ down the window. What the bitch eat for dinner?’ ”

“Now
you
start singin’, right?”

Wendell worked up a wide grin. There was no disrespect in Abou’s voice. “Ah’m teachin’ the boy ’bout how to make beats.”

“Now I
know
you done gone crazy. The white man got to be near forty years old. How you gon’ teach a old white man to rap?”

“Yeah, well I ain’t expectin’ the man to make no
dope
beats. But he tryin’. When you cruisin’ down the parkway with two dead bitches in the back and shit stink in your nose, y’all don’t have to be good. Fact that you singin’ at all be enough.”

“Can’t argue with the straight truth. The white man is
crazy
. What you do with the bitches?”

“Oh, man, Davis got that shit
down
. We drive out to some kinda woods, find this little dirt road goin’ in. He got the graves already
dug
. We drop the bitches in, push down the dirt and spread leaves and rocks. Time we done it, look like we never been there, and ah’m wondrin’ what we gonna do for pussy.”

Wendell looked down at his drunken lieutenant. The man he called his ‘Crew Chief.’ “I got big plans for us, Abou. Davis say he gon’ sell off his formula once I distribute this first bit. Bro, I got that shit three quarters sold already. Gon’ spread it out ’cross the whole motherfuckin’
country
. Then, when PURE be more famous than Batman, ah’m gon’ take man bank,
buy
that formula and take it to
Africa
. We be kings, Abou. Shippin’ PURE all over the
gottdamn
world. Fuck them Colombians and their cocaine. Africa, baby. We goin’ home.”

Abou opened one eye. Tryin’ to keep his voice cool. “You ever get to see that lab, Wendell?”

“I can hear your brain grindin’, Abou. No, we come right back after we buried the bitches.”

“The white man know the people you sellin’ to?”

“No, he don’t know nothin’ ’bout it.”

Abou finally smiled, turnin’ his face into the couch cushions. His head was spinning, but he held onto one idea until he lost consciousness. He
hated
crazy white men.

T
HE MOST VICIOUS FOUR-LETTER
word in New York these days,
the
four-letter word for the 1990s, has nothing to do with excrement or the various forms of human sexual expression, though it’s definitely a curse and rarely uttered in polite company. The word is AIDS and the damage it has done to certain segments of New York’s population would, if those segments were white, middle-class and heterosexual, have drawn a massive response from the politicians who control the American tax dollar. If the victims lived in Bayside instead of Harlem (or if they had insurance and the costs of their medical care would have to be paid), the medical community would have long ago mobilized all its resources in pursuit of a cure and the Nobel Prize sure to follow. But, of course, the victims of AIDS have not, by and large, been middle class and the words used by impolite society to describe the victims include epithets like fag, nigger, spic and junkie. In the minds of most voters (especially in the era of ‘read my lips: no new taxes’), fags, niggers, spies and junkies are the ultimate expendables and New York politicians have responded to the will of the electorate by refusing to provide money to expand the public health-care system.

The footage, on the other hand, has been great. Skeletal victims dying in the subways, in shelters, in abandoned tenements, in packed emergency rooms—it all makes for powerful theater. Just as in the 1960s and 70s, families could gather round the roast beef and watch the carnage in Vietnam, New Yorkers can view elderly black women caring for terminally ill two-year-olds without the slightest sense of personal danger. Statistics like the projection that 30,000 to 40,000 black and Latino children will lose both parents to AIDS before the decade draws to a close can be dissected with the detachment of agricultural bureaucrats discussing a plague on Australian chickens.

Meanwhile, the victims keep dying. The junkies continue to use infected needles and the crack addicts continue to engage in mindless promiscuous sex. Stanley Moodrow, as cynical as any cop who ever carried an NYPD shield, had understood the situation on the day the politicians decided not to give clean needles to the junkies. As a cop, he’d been forced to view the carnage directly, but his post-retirement clients had usually been a step above the denizens of the Lower East Side, so except for the odd junkie with the
chutzpah
to die on the sidewalk, he’d been able to avoid the physical reality of AIDS. This critical distance forms part of the explanation for his shock upon entering Bronx Municipal’s emergency room. The rest of it stems from his preoccupation with Davis Craddock and what Craddock would almost certainly do if he uncovered Betty’s true intentions. Moodrow felt there must be some way to communicate his fears to Betty without seeming like a typical male trying to bully his girlfriend, but he hadn’t been able to find one.

The noise hit him first. The emergency room was packed with poor, sick people. A half dozen babies were crying loudly. Families gathered around improvised meals, chatting in English and Spanish. Moaning junkies, too sick to go out in search of a fix, sat as close to the bathrooms as they could get. One man, his shirt pressed to a bleeding head wound, was having an active conversation with the empty air.

A tall, thin woman with a child in her arms stood at the information desk, screaming at the nurse-receptionist. “I don’t care about how many doctors you
don’t
have,” she shouted. “My baby is sick and I want one of the doctors you
do
have to examine her.”

“You’ll have to go to the clinic and make an appointment with the pediatrician,” the nurse said patiently.

A security guard stood behind the woman, one hand on her shoulder, making it clear that it was all right for her to voice her complaint. As long as it didn’t find physical expression. He, too, seemed bored.

“I been here for ten hours,” the woman continued.

“Hell, you just arrived,” the guard explained. “We got folks in this room been here two days. There ain’t no beds. Ain’t no gurneys. Ain’t even no room in the hallways. The evening clinic opens at seven o’clock. They’ll most likely see you tonight.”

“How come nobody said anything about the clinic when I came in this morning? I been sittin’ here all day with a sick child. Why didn’t somebody say something?”

Moodrow stood in the doorway, staring at the scene as if trying to retrieve a lost memory. He flashed back to Connie Alamare holding her daughter’s hand, then walked quickly to the receptionist’s desk and tapped the guard on the shoulder. The guard turned angrily, only to receive the full force of Moodrow’s best blank cop stare.

“I’m lookin’ for the toxicology lab,” Moodrow explained.

“You go through that door over there,” the guard replied impatiently, “and all the way down the corridor to the exit door. That’ll put you in the main entrance where you should have gone in the first place.”

Moodrow was sorely tempted to go back outside and walk around the building, but it was almost four o’clock and he suspected that Dr. Benari would seize on any excuse not to see him. Steeling himself, he pushed through the door into the treatment area. Despite the fact that virtually every square foot seemed to be occupied by a gurney with a patient on it, his first impression was of motion. The staff, aides, nurses, doctors, all seemed to be running. Patients, reaching out with a hand or a complaint, were ignored. The only exception was a knot of white uniforms gathered around a bleeding man who’d just come in a side entrance used by ambulances. Even here, instruments and commands flew through the air with equal speed as the doctors and nurses struggled to keep the man alive while surgeons were located and the operating room prepared.

You’re gettin’ to be an old man, Moodrow told himself. You used to be able to walk past this without thinking twice.

He gathered himself once again and threaded his bulk between the gurneys and down the corridor. The reception area was much quieter, with only the occasional visitor stopping to make an inquiry. Moodrow waited his turn, then asked for toxicology, adding that he had an appointment with Dr. Federico Benari. The receptionist patiently wrote out a pass, then directed Moodrow to the fourth floor.

“Try the elevators,” the receptionist advised, “if they’re working today.”

The elevators were, in fact, working, but they kept arriving full of doctors, aides and patients. If Moodrow had been a little smaller, he might have pushed his way between the odd gurney and wheelchair, but his six-foot six-inch frame would have brushed the elevator ceilings, and the aides and doctors glared instead of making an effort to find room for him.

“Why don’t you try the stairs?”

Moodrow turned to find a security guard standing by his elbow.

“This time of afternoon, all the basement services are trying to clear enough time for dinner. Radiology and physical therapy and like that. You could stand here for an hour.”

“What about them?” Moodrow gestured toward a knot of visitors.

“They gotta take the elevators. You’re here on business. I heard you tell the lady you were going up to see Benari and he’s never in his office after four. I’m the guy who checks the doors to make sure they’re locked, so I know.”