City of Heretics (4 page)

Two stupid, ruthless, amoral people, him a strong-arm thug for the Old Man, supposedly Chester Paine’s best buddy, and her a fashion-obsessed party girl, too young for him, married to a very dangerous little man who was also too old for her and living it up for all she was worth.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

Crowe said, “Chester didn’t mention a kid.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, I reckon he wouldn’t. Okay. Tom, eh?”

She nodded. “Thomas Paine. Like… the guy, you know.”

“Thomas Paine, yeah.
Age of Reason
.”

She nodded again. “I’ll tell you the truth, though. That was a complete accident. I didn’t know who the hell Thomas Paine was until later. Don’t tell anyone that.”

Crowe laughed shortly. She knew perfectly well who Thomas Paine was. Women can be strange sometimes, he thought; why pretend you don’t know something when you do?  Do some women still cling to the idea that men like a stupid broad?  But what did he know, maybe some men do. Dallas Paine was a lot of things, but she wasn’t stupid.

The thought that she was playing him crossed his mind, but only for a moment. If he’d wanted to, he could demand DNA tests, solid evidence, all that. But no. She wasn’t playing him--- well, she
was
playing him, but she wasn’t lying.

He said again, “Okay. What can I do?”

She said, “You don’t owe me anything, Crowe. I know that you don’t. I… I came here to see you, not because I think you have some responsibility to me. You don’t. I came because I need your help. I do. And I thought, if you knew about Tom, it might… persuade you a little. It might give you a good reason to help me.”

“What sort of help?”

She leaned forward in the easy chair. The green tee-shirt tightened against her breasts, and now that he knew she was a mother, he thought he could see it a little—she was a little thicker around the middle, maybe. The breasts were fuller or something. It could have been his imagination. She said, “I want to leave. I want to take Tom and leave Chester and just… get out of Memphis. I want to get far away.”

“Well, why don’t you, then?”

“Money. I need money.”

“So withdraw a few thou from the old joint account and split.”

She shook her head. “It’s not that easy. Chester is… well, he’s different than he used to be. Like I said, a lot of things have changed these seven years. Things you couldn’t imagine. You know that Marco Vitower is Chester’s new boss?”

“I remember hearing something about it.”

“Well… Vitower’s wife was murdered, just a couple of years ago. You know that, yeah?  And after that, Chester started… well, he started keeping me on a short leash. He… he fixed it at the bank so that I couldn’t withdraw any money without his permission. He took Tom out of public school and hired a private tutor. He just went… well, he went kinda weird.”

“And you think it has something to do with Vitower’s wife getting killed?”

“Yes. Well, maybe. I don’t know and it doesn’t matter to me. But that’s not even the real reason, Crowe.”

“What is?”

She looked at the floor. “The real reason is… please, please don’t laugh at me.”

“Just spit it out.”

“I need to get away from this life, Crowe, because I found God.”

That one stunned him a bit. He couldn’t tell if she was pulling his leg. He said, “You found God.”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know he was missing.”

“I know you’re cynical about things like that, but don’t make fun of me. I took Jesus as my personal savior, and I just want out. I want to scoop up Tom and go somewhere far away.”

Crowe leaned back in his chair and looked at her. Found God?
I go away for seven years
, he thought,
and everyone gets all delusional on me
. He tried to look thoughtful and said, “You need money, then.”

She nodded, and the green-gray eyes glistened a bit. Helpless little animal. Helpless little Goth raccoon, with her black eyeliner and crazy oxblood hair and wistful scent. She said, “But you don’t have any money. I don’t know what made me think you might. If you had money, you wouldn’t be staying here, would you?”

She grinned at the lack of hope promised by the flat.

He said, “Tell you what. You stop bullshitting me, maybe I can get some cash.”

“Bullshitting you?”

“About this ‘God’ thing. You’re no Jesus freak, so stop lying to me. What did you think, I’d cave if I thought you’d lost your goddamn mind?”

She stared at him for a long moment, and then a guilty smile crept over her face. “Okay. The truth is, I did try it out while you were gone. I did join a religious group for a while. It didn’t take.”

“So.”

“So… it didn’t take, but some of the things it made me realize stayed with me.”

“Like the need to get away from Memphis.”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “Fine. So maybe I can lay my hands on some money.”

She swallowed hard and licked her lips. “How?”

“Don’t worry about how. Just go home now. Give me a call in a few days.”

“You have a phone?”

“Oh. No, I don’t. Right. Well, swing by then.”

She stood up, and for a moment she was entirely too close, close enough that he could feel her body heat radiating. He stepped away from her.

She said, “But how?”

“You probably don’t remember, Dallas, but I really hate answering questions. Just do what I say, okay?”

She frowned. “I’ll come by in a few days, then. And Crowe…”

“What?”

“Thanks. Thank you.”

“Shut up, Dallas. And leave the Christians alone, what did they ever do to you?”

She said, “Do you… well, this is sort of an awkward question, but do you want to meet him?  Do you want to meet Tom?”

He said, “No.”

She nodded, grabbed her coat off the loveseat and started toward the door. He watched her, and when she had her hand on the knob he said, “Hey. I have a confession to make.”

She turned to face him. “What do I look like?” she said. “A priest?”

“I never read
Sanctuary
. I never read a goddamn Faulkner book in my life. I got all that info from the Cliff’s Notes.”

She threw her head back and something like an actual real laugh came out of her. She said, “I should’ve known. I can’t believe a word you say, Crowe.”

And that was something they had in common.

He trotted down to the package store for a six-pack after Dallas left and then went immediately back home. He spent the rest of the day drinking beer, sitting at the window and staring at the sliver of the Mississippi that he could see over the rooftops. Tugs drifted up and down, black smoke pluming out of their stacks and into the gray sky. By four o’clock, the gray had deepened and a cold rain started, sluicing away whatever traces of icy snow had been left from the night before. A smattering of half-ass fireworks went off somewhere close to the bridge, a muted green and red; a last pathetic left-over from the New Year celebrations.

By five, he’d downed three bottles of Amstel Light and felt pleasantly light-headed. His tolerance for alcohol wasn’t what it used to be; another side-effect of seven years as a guest of the state. He burped luxuriously and stood up.

He hadn’t foreseen the complication with Dallas and the kid, but after thinking it over decided it didn’t matter. He kept sort of examining it, though, thinking it
should
make things more difficult, thinking he
should
feel something about having a son he knew nothing about.

He was a father.

No, that was bullshit. He was no father. Having a kid doesn’t automatically make you a father, does it?  Not in the strictest sense. He didn’t know the kid, didn’t want to know the kid, would never know the kid.

But he wished she hadn’t told me about it. He couldn’t afford that sort of distraction.

It didn’t change anything, though. He would have a great deal of money before this was all done and he could afford to throw some Dallas’s way.

In the bathroom, he took a piss that seemed to last ten minutes, and then wobbled to the kitchen and found a box of saltines he’d bought his first day back. He sat in the easy chair and ate them, indulging his inner gourmet.

He fell asleep in the chair for a while, which kept him from fretting about what to do for a few hours. He had fitful dreams about Dallas. He woke up about eight, had the usual moment of disorientation, wondering why his cell looked different, but shook it off, ate some more crackers and brushed his teeth.

Then he set about putting together a make-shift sap. With a kitchen knife, he sawed a big chunk out of the back of the imitation leather chair, about two feet by two feet. He had a jar of change on the kitchen counter-- He dumped about three dollars’ worth of dimes onto the chunk of material, bundled it up, and secured it with a heavy piece of twine. The lump it made was about the size of his fist, and a good solid weight that he could swing easily. He shrugged on his suit jacket, shoved the sap in his outside pocket. He headed out the door.

Memphis had always been attractive to organized crime for the same reason Fed-Ex loved the place: location. If nothing else, Memphis is well-situated as a hub, a place to launch off from to someplace with better prospects.

The Old Man had been a relic, even before Crowe got sent up. He was a hold-over from the days of the Irish mob that saw its hey-day in the fifties and early sixties. They’d never really got a great toehold in Memphis to begin with—while other cities had been easy pickings for crime families, Memphis was more or less protected by Boss Crump, an officially-elected criminal. But they managed at least to get by, under the radar.

But by the seventies the L.A. gangs like the Crips had started setting up and it wasn’t long before others from Chicago followed. The meager old white guys had gotten lax and lazy, sitting around in diners or strip clubs counting money, while the young Turks took it to the street and got their hands dirty. The new generation had a sense of unity and purpose that the old guys had forgotten.

The Old Man saw all these changes happening, but by the time he decided to do something about it, it was too late. He started courting the black gangs, making deals, treating them the way he would’ve treated any powerful rival—with respect. He started employing blacks and Hispanics into his ranks, even letting some of them into the inner circle.

No one would ever have guessed the remnants of the Irish mob would ever make nice with the black gangs. There was too much animosity, stretching all the way back to right after the Civil War, when newly-freed blacks managed to snag the jobs in Memphis that used to belong to the poor Irish. Crazy that something like that would dictate the tone of relations for almost one hundred and fifty years, but that’s the way things worked.

But the Old Man saw the writing on the wall and did what he had to do, and that was how Vitower eventually came to power. The white mob went down without a shot fired; it just transformed itself into a black mob. Easy as that.

The Old Man was shell-shocked, out of his element, in those long years of transition before Crowe went to prison. He didn’t seem like the Iron Man he’d been before. He hesitated. He hem-hawed on important decisions. He knew he’d become a dinosaur, and that meant that Crowe was one too, he and all the other white guys in the ranks. Extinction couldn’t be far off.

It didn’t trouble Crowe. In those days, he actually believed that eventually he would be out of the life. He’d go to the country somewhere, or maybe the ocean, and live out his peaceful old age in a shack or something. He didn’t care what would happen to the mob after that. It would have nothing to do with him.

That was before prison, though, before he understood. He was already in his old age. Forty-nine wasn’t particularly old for most people, but for men in his position it was downright ancient. He was already extinct.

The cab driver was an old black guy with strangely reddish hair. Driving south on Danny Thomas, he kept sucking his teeth and saying things like, “Back in my day, it didn’t look nuthin’ like this. It’s a damn shame is what it is, the way it’s all fell apart. This city used to be something. And now look at it. You know, I been robbed three times in the last two months. I don’t even know why I keep comin’ out. I don’t even know anymore.”

Crowe ignored him, spoke only enough to give him directions off Danny Thomas and back into Jimmy the Hink’s neighborhood. The driver looked at him in the rear-view, wondering what a middle-aged white guy wanted around these parts, but he didn’t ask, just said again, “I don’t even know anymore.”

About a block from the Hink’s place, Crowe spotted them—three young black guys, huddled at a corner in front of an abandoned house. They were under the yellow acid glare of a streetlight. It was cold but they wore only hoodies with the hoods up to protect themselves from the wind.

He told the driver to stop, then snapped a fifty dollar bill at him. “Drive around for five minutes, then come back to this spot,” he said. “There’ll be another one of these for you.”

The driver took the bill, said, “It’s your funeral, I reckon,” and then took off before Crowe even had the door closed behind him.

The three youngsters noticed him getting out of the cab, but didn’t respond. They only watched from within the shadows of their hoods. He walked over to them.

When he was only a few feet away, one of them said in a quiet, deadpan voice, “You want somethin’?”

Crowe stopped, close enough to reach out and touch his chest if he wanted to. “What you got?” he said.

They eyed him up and down, checking out the suit and tie, and the one doing the talking pushed his hoodie back and cocked his head. He was a good-looking kid with a strong jaw and eyes that glittered in the pale streetlight. He had about two inches on Crowe.

He said, “You a little over-dressed for the occasion, old man. Maybe you lookin’ for a dinner party, huh?”

“I found what I’m looking for.”

“You lookin’ for trouble, then. Blow, old man.”

Crowe said, “You’re in the wrong neighborhood, kid. What you wanna do is find someplace else.”