Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time (36 page)

Cut Man blew spittle and blood from his mouth; he coughed then spat out a mixture of the two across the desk and wall. He was close to passing out. Vic gave him a slap to bring him round. His eyes sparked up in their sockets and he reconnected with the conscious world and, looking, at me began to talk.

“He’s a big-time player . . . a real piece of work, loaded. He owns thousands of acres of prime undeveloped land here in Bristol and further out into Somerset.”

“Oh c’mon . . . ! Tell me someting ’bout him I don’t know, Cut Man.”

Vic slapped him across the face again, only harder this time; the sound of skin connecting with skin recoiled around the small office, which was starting to stink like a latrine.

“He knows Papa cos he’s into whores, but not just any kind: rumour has it he like ’em young and clean.”

Vic applied a little more force to Cut Man’s other outstretched arm to keep the information flowing.

“And it’s not just girl’s he’s into. I heard talk that he’s game fo’ anyting that moves, a real sicko!”

“That’s rich coming from you, Cut Man,” Vic interjected.

I shook my head at him and he went back to pushing on the fresh arm.

“Tell me ’bout Warren.”

“Warren is on the payroll from Papa, has been fo’ years. Warren gets a cut from the dope and girls that Papa peddles and he’s got a couple of guys on the force who moonlight fo’ him when he needs some grunt work doing, but as far as I know they’re pretty low grade . . . they ain’t players, not like Mickey is.”

“What’s your end, Cut Man . . . ? You gotta have an angle to know all this.”

“Me and Hurps, we let Papa use the Speed Bird fo’ private functions: you know, gala nights, soirées, somewhere with a bit more class than the shebeen Papa hangs out in on Richmond Road.”

Vic laughed. “Yeah, I could see all that class last time I was hanging down at the Speed Bird, Cut Man.”

I shot Vic a pair of hard eyes and shook my head at him again.

“You ever hear of a place called the Erotica Negro Club?”

“Yeah . . . some gentleman’s club . . . Blanchard’s behind it; he holds these hot parties at his country pad, gave it some jazzed-up name, but it’s just a place fo’ him and his rich honky cronies to fuck black bitches.”

“And Papa Anansi?”

“Papa makes his money outta Blanchard; he scours the streets, clubs and pubs lookin’ fo’ fresh meat fo’ him fo’ his damn club!”

“What you know ’bout a girl called Stella Hopkins, Cut Man?”

“The deaf mute that went missing from round these parts? Nothing . . . why?”

Vic went to break Cut Man’s other arm.

“No!”

I shouted at Vic and pushed my hand against his tensed shoulder, holding him off from doing any more damage. I leant down towards Cut Man’s face and hung the photograph in front of him one more time.

“Who’s the woman standing in between Blanchard and you?”

He squinted at the photograph and blew out warm air, his appalling halitosis almost knocking me on my back.

“That’s the alderman’s wife . . . That’s Alice Linney.”

I sat a petrified Cut Man in his plush chair, grabbed the telephone from off of the floor and put it in his lap. He stared down at it as if I had just presented him with some kind of strange, poisonous fruit that I was expecting him to eat. I perched myself on the edge of his desk and he looked up at me with eyes that told me that he was beat. Vic stood behind me, leaning against the door of the office. I noticed him staring at Cut Man, his eyes hard and dangerous. I looked back at Cut Man, rocking in his seat, holding his broken arm against his chest. Beads of heavy sweat dripped from his brow. He gave a little scared smile when I eventually spoke to him again.

“Last night I went to see Hurps down at the Speed Bird and, like you, he wasn’t too hot ’bout me paying him a visit. Got himself all worked up and nasty just because I wanted to ask him a few damn silly questions that he didn’t wanna answer. I had to do some serious persuading with the man to get him to answer what I wanted to know. Now, I told ole Hurps to git a message to Papa Anansi ’bout how I wanted to meet up with him at the Star and Garter later last night, only he didn’t come in and face me; the nasty piece o’ shit waited outside in some back street hoping to take a knife to me in the dark when I left the pub. Ting is, in his eagerness to take me out he gits the wrong guy. He guts Carnell Harris and leaves him to bleed out in the gutter like a stuck pig.”

I paused for a moment, giving Cut Man time to take in what I had said.

“Now as you can imagine I’m pretty eager to reconvene that engagement I shoulda had with Papa and I need you to help me reschedule it. You getting my drift, fat man?”

Cut Man winced and began rubbing at the top of his shoulder with his hand, hoping that it may offer some relief from the pain he was in.

“Yeah . . . yeah, I git it. But Papa don’t take too kindly to people putting the screw on him, making him do stuff he don’t wanna.”

“Yeah, I kinda got that feelin’ as I sat in the pub last night. That’s why I want you to ring that bent cop Mickey Warren. “

“What, Warren? Why the hell should I call him up?”

“Cool it, Cut Man, I don’t wanna have to let Vic git heavy on your knees cos you starting to git all shirty with me again. You’re gonna call Warren and I want you to tell him ’bout how I’ve been here this morning, what I’ve said to you ’bout Stella Hopkins and how I know ’bout him being on the take and his dirty work fo’ Terrence Blanchard. Tell him I know he’s up to his neck in it and if he wants to settle this with me then he needs to drag his worthless ass and Papa’s out to meet me out at Blanchard’s place at six tonight . . . You got that?”

“Yeah . . . I got it.”

Cut Man wriggled uncomfortably in his seat and slouched forward, grimacing in pain as he did.

“Good . . . Then do it now, brother.”

I nodded towards the phone, which was resting on his knees.

“Look, JT, I’m in pain, I ain’t thinking straight, I can’t talk to no police . . .”

Vic shut Perry up as he walked towards the desk, took out his knife from the back pocket of his jeans and released the blade, then slipped the razor-sharp edge up underneath Cut Man’s throat. He nervously lifted the receiver and made the call to Mickey Warren.

It was a short phone conversation, but it was done. Mickey Warren sure got the message real quick. The fear in Cut Man’s voice and his repeated insistence that this was serious got across to the crooked copper, and the line went silent. I leant towards the phone in Perry’s hand in time to hear Warren suddenly shout, “You see that black bastard befo’ I do . . . you tell him he’s dead meat, you hear me?” before slamming the phone down on him.

The portly gym owner looked up at me, his face etched with pain and dread, the receiver still gripped in his trembling hand. Vic withdrew the knife from Cut Man’s throat and turned to me; he rested his huge hand on my shoulder and whispered into my ear.

“I’ll be back in a minute; I just need to git me a few tings outta my office. Befo’ we leave I need to have a private word with my friend Mr Perry there.”

Vic smiled at Cut Man and walked out as I took the receiver from him and picked the phone out of his lap.

“OK . . . Now give me Terrence Blanchard’s number.”

Cut Man gave a heavy, pained sigh before bringing himself forward and nodding over the desk towards the carpet.

“It’s in that grey Rolodex that ape of a cousin o’ yours just t’rew across my office floor.”

I rescued it from underneath a heap of paperwork, set it down on the desk and leafed through it until I found two numbers for Blanchard: one his home number with a Somerset dialling code and the other his business contact details in Queen Square in Bristol. I tapped down on the phone’s cradle to get a new line. The receiver made a familiar burring sound as I spun the numbers on the rotary dial and waited for a reply.

“Blanchard Stewart partners, can I help you?” A young woman’s voice chirped at me from down the other end of the line.

“Good morning. I’d like to speak to Mr Terrence Blanchard please.”

“I’m sorry, Mr Blanchard is with a client at the moment, can I take a message, and get him to return your call later?”

The young woman was precise, efficient and obviously good at cutting to the chase. I was staring to dislike her already.

“No, but I need to speak to the man now. So you go tell your boss that you have a Mr Joseph Ellington on the telephone and that he would like to urgently discuss the important matter about his club with him. Now, you be sure to tell him my name and that it’s urgent, got that?”

The other end of the phone went silent for a moment as the switchboard operator mentally went over her options before replying to me.

“Mr Blanchard isn’t able—”

I interrupted the receptionist before she had a chance to give me any more of her pre-scripted spiel.

“Look, I ain’t interested in what he isn’t able to do, sweetheart. I just wanna hear his ten-guineas-an-hour voice on the end o’ this phone in the next two minutes or tings are going to start getting real awkward fo’ the man. Now, write this down so you don’t forget: you give Blanchard my name – it’s Ellington – and tell him that I wanna talk to him about the Erotica Negro. He’ll know what I mean.”

I heard the telephonist cover the mouthpiece of her receiver and waited for a few moments before coming back to me.

“I’m just putting you through to Mr Blanchard now.”

I was about to thank her, but she nervously cut me off before I could express my gratitude.

“Good morning, Mr Ellington, this is Terrence Blanchard speaking. How can I possibly help you?”

His voice was calm, cool with a hint of patronising, arrogant superiority inflected in the way he addressed me. He reminded me of nearly every white officer who had casually flipped me an order back when I was on the force. I didn’t reply and instead waited for a moment before speaking, trying to get a measure of the man by how patient he was.

Patience clearly wasn’t one of Terrence Blanchard’s best qualities. I didn’t have to wait long before he snapped dismissively at me down the phone.

“Now look here, I don’t know what this is all about. My girl said you wanted to speak to me about something she could barely pronounce. What is it that you want exactly, Ellington?”

Blanchard spoke my name as if it were a reminder not to step into something unpleasant in front of him. But despite all his self-assured public-school bullishness, I could tell he was bluffing. And for a man who spent his working days pulling the wool over the eyes of his fellow legal opponents in the Crown Court, he was pretty easy to shake up.

“Erotica Negro . . .” I said the two words slowly, sounding them out in a way that gave Blanchard no uncertainty that I knew what their true meaning was.

“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, and if you think that you—”

I interrupted the slippery barrister, quickly looking at my watch. I realised that time was against me and that once my call to Blanchard was over the clock would be ticking and every second was going to count if I was to nail him.

“I think you best shut your mout’ and listen up, Mr Blanchard. Now git this straight: you stop playing games and I’ll tell you how it is. You may not want to admit it right now, but you know me and you know why I’m on the other end o’ this damn phone, don’t you?”

Terrence Blanchard was silent, just a trace of his breath on the other end of the line. I continued.

“Ting is, you hoped that I’d never git the chance to make this call. You thought that with the help of a little bent law and a few well-placed scumbags to scare me off or frame me fo’ a crime I didn’t commit that you could draw me off your scent. Well, surprise, surprise, Mr Blanchard, guess what? Your scent stinks a whole lot more that you thought it did.”

“Now look here . . .”

He was about to come back at me, but I didn’t give him the chance.

“Shut up and listen. I know ’bout your place in the country and those invite-only parties you’ve been having. You do know the ones I mean, don’t you, Mr Blanchard, the Erotica Negro parties? I met one of your lady guests from one of those knees-ups, a Miss Virginia Landry. You remember her? She was a sweet ting, beautiful. Ting is, she was murdered and dumped in some godforsaken coppice in the middle o’ nowhere a few days back. Befo’ she died I had a real good chat with Miss Landry: she remembered you, remembered you well.”

I lied ’bout Virginia seeing the barrister, but I didn’t care; I just wanted to get Blanchard all wound up, and I was. I kept on at him.

“Now I just got off the phone talking to another friend of yours, a sack o’ shit that pretends to be a police officer, by the name o’ Mickey Warren. Anyhow, we got to talking ’bout another guy who finds you all those pretty tings: girls like Virginia Landry and the others that you take a shine to. This fella drops them off at your gate door, fo’ a price, of course . . . goes by the name of Otis Grey.”

Blanchard remained silent. I kept winding him in.

“Oh, course . . . you may not know him by that name: truth is he don’t normally answer to what his mother first called him the day he crawled out from between her pussy and the best part of him slid down the inside of her leg with the afterbirth and dropped onto the floor.”

“I don’t have to listen to this filth.” Blanchard went to slam the phone down on me, but I soon stopped him in his tracks.

“Stella Hopkins . . . Let’s talk about Stella,” I bellowed at him.

The barrister remained on the other end of the phone; I could now hear his breathing quickening as he waited for me to continue.

“She’s the reason I got messed up in all your crap, Mr Blanchard. She went missing a few weeks back, I was paid to find her, and the more I look, the more shit I find myself in. Now, I know you know someting ’bout her disappearance, so I’ve decided that I best come down to see you in that pretty old place o’ yours, sort this mess out. I gonna be waiting around fo’ you when you git back this evening, see if we can find her. I assume you’ll want to bring your hired help along, so I’ve invited Papa Anansi and Mickey Warren to hold your hand.”