Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time (11 page)

One night, tired of the endless abuse and beatings he’d received from a leather strap, Clarence threw his bedding from the second-storey window of the orphanage and followed it out. He hit the ground running, not daring to look back. The sisters never reported him missing and nobody cared if he was alive or dead. His speedy flight from the ruthlessness of the religious order saw him return to the place of his birth and there, at the tender age of ten years old, on the streets of the island’s capital, he found a different kind of family, and they would care for him in their own way, rearing him up as one of their own and educating his mind in the harsh ways of the street. He spent the rest of his childhood and youth among the whores, pickpockets and lawless lowlives that inhabited the city’s dark underworld. By the time he left St Kitts at the age of eighteen, for a new life in England, he had become a very different kind of human being from the skinny, scared and frightened kid who had run from his pious, punishing carers.

Now, at the age of twenty-eight, his extreme stature and a powerfully built frame had made him infamous within the Caribbean community in the St Pauls area. It had been developed through hours of pushing weights at Cut Man’s gym, going head to head with tough young boxers eager to prove themselves in the ring, and eating huge steaming plates of rice and peas, which he heartily consumed with his beloved fried chicken. If Clarence wasn’t working or fighting, you’d find him stuffing his gargantuan face with soul food.

The hard years on the streets and lack of formal schooling had made Clarence a violent-tempered and dimwitted man who stood side by side with the pimps and the criminal underclass, always on hand to do their dirty work for them. He’d muscle in on punters who were stupid enough to try to run out on paying up for the services of the local prostitutes. He collected bad debts from degenerate gamblers on behalf of greedy bookies and applied strong-arm tactics for money-hungry loan sharks. He also worked at minding the doors of local pubs, clubs and shebeens.

Everybody knew of his connections to the local criminal fraternity, and unless you moved in those circles, hung out with hookers or crossed one of the big men who used his bulk to enforce their bidding, it was unlikely you’d ever make contact with him. Clarence simply kept himself to himself. This was no bad thing. Clarence Maynard was in the employ of Papa Anansi, and like all men who live their lives in the heart of crime and violence, he had to keep secrets, and Clarence guarded the secrets of others – and his own – very well, or so he thought.

It was just after eleven thirty on Friday evening, and Vic and I were sitting, parked up around five doors from the shebeen on Richmond Road in a 1963 Mark One black Ford Cortina that Vic had borrowed from Carnell Harris. It was in pristine condition both outside and in. The comforting smell of leather had come off the red upholstery when I first got in, but that hadn’t lasted for long. Vic had insisted on lighting up and smoking a joint as we patiently waited and watched Clarence Maynard’s formidable figure open and close the front door of the illegal hooch house to his bosses’ many nefarious guests. The radio was tuned in to a late-night local station and was playing Sam Cooke’s “Twisting the Night Away”. Vic tapped his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the beat as he blew out another mouthful of cloudy marijuana smoke into the already smoky interior.

“Jesus! Do you have to do that in here?” I coughed as I wound down the window.

“Hey man, this is some o’ Carnell’s finest shit. You can’t git better. I gotta sit in this hearse with you, freezing my ass off; I sure as hell need someting inside of me to keep me mellow.”

“Where the hell did Carnell git this motor from, Vic?”

I recognised something about the car. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

“You know Errol ‘Sure Ting’ Toleman?” Vic asked me without turning his head away from watching Clarence’s activities on the door of the shebeen.

“Errol, the bookies’ runner, this is his car?”

Now I remembered seeing Sure Ting’s ugly mug driving about in it.

“Well, these wheels were Sure Ting’s.” Vic smiled.

Errol ‘Sure Ting’ Toleman was the kind of man who my mama would say “needed a good leaving alone”. He was a weasel-featured Barbadian who stank of bad luck and was as stupid as he was greedy. He made a cut out of anyone who favoured frittering away their money on the horses, dogs and anything else you cared to bet on. You could find him skittering in and out of anywhere that housed a card game and he parasitically attached himself like a leech to those poor creatures intent on losing either all the money they had in their hip pockets or the shirt off of their backs. On a Friday, if you had just received a wage packet and you liked to gamble, Sure Ting would be hanging over your shoulder like a vulture ready to tear the flesh off a rotting carcass. He was far from your nine-to-five kinda guy.

“Now ole Sure Ting, he thought he got a better hand o’ poker at the table than Carnell, tinks he’s got him on the ropes. Fair hand, the man’s got. There’s two hundred notes on the table and Sure Ting offers up his motor, cos he shit outta cash and those cards he’s holding, well he knows they’re a sure ting, or he tinks they are. You know what I mean? Carnell, well he takes the bet offa the man. Only Sure Ting forgot one real important ting.”

“Yeah, what he forget?”

Vic had me hooked. He stared over at me with a knowing twinkle in his eye.

“Carnell cheats like a real muthafucka!”

Vic shrugged his heavyset shoulders and began to chuckle to himself as he returned to watching the door of the shebeen.

We sat and I continued to listen to Vic laughing to himself as he relived the tale he’d just told me in his head. On the radio, Ken Dodd began to sing “Happiness” and Vic hurriedly snapped the wireless off, scratching the back of his head furiously with his fingers, the white-hot-tipped joint hanging from the corner of his mouth, a tiny trail of smoke rising up and gently bouncing off of the inside of the roof and soaking its pungent scent into the back seat and passenger shelf of the car. He looked over at me, his face full of bemusement at the music he’d just turned off.

“There ain’t no way I’m listening to that ugly-assed, buck-toothed honky Scouser. Not now, not ever.”

He shook his head in disgust, then returned to watching out for his chance to move.

Earlier in the evening, Vic had gone into minute detail as to what was going to go down later that night when we were face to face with the hulking doorman. My cousin had left me in no doubt of the kind of damage and pain that Clarence could inflict if he was of a mind to. I was trusting Vic to keep the giant’s mind on other things.

“OK, JT, now you clear on what we gotta do, brother?

I nodded sharply, as Vic continued to go over his plan of action again.

“Let me do the talking, it’ll be cool, man. We git the information you want real quick and we git outta there an’ drinking my rum back at your digs in twenty minutes instead o’ sitting in here like a couple o’ cold stiff dicks waiting to git laid.” Vic swung open the passenger door, readying himself to leave. “Now c’mon, let’s git this shit over and done with.” He nudged me in the ribs with his elbow and I yelped in pain. “Sorry, man, I forgot ’bout your tenderness down there.” He laughed at me as we got out of the car.

Some light flakes of snow had begun to fall as we walked over to the shebeen. We climbed the large granite steps and Vic gave a hefty knock at the dark wood-panelled front door as I stood by his side. Behind us, the only light was the orange glare of the street lamps. Clarence opened the door, with a slight look of surprise on his face when he saw the two of us standing in front of him.

“Hey, Vic. What you doin’ here, man? The pumped-up doorman frowned at us. “I don’t normally see your mean ass outside o’ here.”

Clarence spoke with all the grace of a man who had a house brick tied to the end of his tongue. He came out onto the step, closing the door behind him.

The man’s huge bulk was now blocking our further advancement towards the entrance of the shebeen, but we had no interest in going inside.

“You sure right ’bout that, Clarence. I don’t normally find myself needing to buy pussy or cheap rum from one o’ Otis’s joints. But my man here is looking to find himself a special kind o’ lady an’ I thought you might just be the fella able to help him out.”

Vic was keeping his patter nice and light, but underneath the froth he was ready for Clarence to turn on the pair of us. He started to push the doorman’s patience a little further.

“Only you see JT here, well, he’s kinda reserved, shy even, and he was hoping to git himself an introduction of a more personal nature. He’s looking fo’ someting with a little more class than him ending up knocking his ting up one o’ Otis’s cock-rats in those nasty back rooms you got going on there.” Vic pointed over the bouncer’s large shoulder towards the shebeen’s closed door. “You know what I mean, brother?”

Clarence, clearly irritated by our presence and Vic’s banter, moved towards us and we took a step back down the icy steps.

“Hey, Vic, Papa wouldn’t want you using his other name like you keep doing.”

Vic’s plan was starting to successfully unfurl, and with the cunning of a black widow spider had begun to draw the big fellow towards his web, readying himself to strike.

Clarence looked directly at me, sizing me up before speaking again.

“If the brother here wants to meet a special kinda lady then he either needs to step inside o’ here with a full wallet or git himself to church and find himself a wholesome piece o’ tail there.”

Another step backwards, closer to the pavement and Vic’s web.

“Well, like I said, Clarence, JT’s kind o’ unsure if he wants to be wiping his ting on one o’ Otis’s skanky bed sheets with the sort o’ bitch that’s gonna leave more than a lastin’ impression on his cock in a week’s time. You can see my point, brother?”

“Look, I ain’t got time fo’ any more stupid questions ’bout finding your boy there a clean whore. If he wants some o’ what we got, he pays the lady and he gets a piece o’ ass. If not, take a hike.”

“Hey, we don’t wanna spoil your night, Clarence, my man here’s willing to make it worth your while.”

Vic held up two fingers and his thumb and rubbed them together hypnotically. Clarence wasn’t the kind of guy to be hypnotised, but, if we were lucky, he could still be bitten by my cousin’s careful scheming.

“I ain’t interested in that nigger’s money, now git the fuck off my steps.”

Clarence outstretched the palms of his large hands in front of him and, still without touching either of us, used them to back us down the remainder of his precious steps away from the entrance – just as Vic had told me he would. He’d bait him one more time to get Clarence where he wanted him.

“Hey now, there ain’t no need fo’ you to be blowing no blood vessels. You need all the red stuff you got to keep it rushing to that big ole head o’ yours an’ stop you falling on that fat ass that’s hanging out the back o’ those baggy trousers you wearing, Clarence.”

That did it. The big man flipped.

“Git your muthafuckin’ asses off o’ my gate door, who you think you’re talking to?”

Vic had pushed all of Clarence Maynard’s buttons and it had nearly paid off for us.

We retreated backwards one more time, and I caught Vic darting his eyes quickly from left to right to check that the street was clear of passers-by or punters. When our feet hit the pavement, I moved quickly to my left as Vic came in close towards Clarence’s body and shot his knee hard into his balls, immediately making the big man double over in pain and grasp with both hands at his testicles. Vic then tore down with his fist across the incapacitated bouncer’s nose, blood spraying onto the path in front of our feet. He quickly forced his left hand under Clarence’s thick neck, pinching at his throat with his thumb and forefinger and gripping tightly at his windpipe, crushing his ability to breathe. I took hold of the doorman’s enormous left arm at the wrist and bent it around fiercely behind his back, pushing him forward, as Vic quickly led the incapacitated Clarence by the throat down the next set of steps into the basement area, pushing him violently against the wall and slamming his fist into his nose again.

I then heard the mechanical sound of a blade disengaging from its metal and bone handle and in a split second Vic’s flick knife was held firmly against Clarence’s jugular, the razor-sharp edge drawing blood as it sliced a thin cut into the bouncer’s skin.

“Let’s be cool now, real cool.” Vic pushed the blade a little harder into Clarence’s neck before he spoke again. “Now I know I got your attention, brother? You just smile back at me, no need to try and nod that hunk-o’-lead head of yours. I don’t wanna have to slice it off with my pen knife – you git me?”

Clarence stared at Vic, eyes watering, his anger abated by the razor-sharp cutting edge at his craw. He pulled more of a grimace than a smile as he obeyed my hot-tempered cousin’s request, showing the whites of his gritted teeth, which were stained with his own blood. Vic calmly continued with his instructions to the big man.

“Now, my man here has a couple o’ questions fo’ you, an I don’t wanna be holding this chopper at you ugly-assed head fo’ too long, cos your breath’s starting to fuck up my sense o’ smell. We on the same wavelength here, Clarence?” Vic twisted the knife into the big man’s neck to make his point. “You need to be smiling, brother.”

The doorman smiled again, the severity of his predicament now fully realised. I moved in closer towards the bloodied doorman, who stared back at me like a roped-down bull desperate to break free of its secured bonds.

When I began to speak, Clarence immediately started to suck air in between his crimson-tinted teeth as a precursor to our conversation, which simply stated in street parlance that he had nothing to say to me. Vic thought differently on the matter, and like a cobra striking at a mongoose’s unprotected hind he struck out at the giant’s shin with the toe of his shoe, dropping the huge man to the floor, then pushed down hard with the flat of his foot onto the hulk’s face, pressing his cheek and jaw into the slushy concrete. Now Vic was pissed off.