I
November in the Piedmont, fair and clear so far, with amber and maroon leaves still clinging to trees against a background of brilliant blue sky. The rains will come, Deacon Jones reminded himself. They will come, cold and dark. But for now a sandwich at his desk, chips and soda a minor indulgence to celebrate the sunshine.
Through the front door of “Home Town Realty” stepped a black man, older in a timeless way, he could’ve been fifty or sixty-five, with graying temples on his short curly hair but smooth skin that still clung to his neck and jowls. Distinguished by a slight limp that somehow imparted a regal air, he was dressed fashionably in flannel slacks, a blue sweater vest over a crisp white shirt, black homburg tilted just so. Deacon put down his sandwich and motioned the man to the chair opposite his desk. “Mr. Henderson,” he said, “have a seat.”
“I thank you, Mr. Jones,” the man said as he lowered himself gingerly into the chair, bending a bad left knee with his left hand. It was moments like this, when dealing with clients of some refinement, that Deacon felt embarrassed by Home Town Realty’s shabby office. Located in a rundown strip mall on the city’s south side, sandwiched between a discount store and a payday loan joint, the place was little more than an assortment of second-hand office furniture and antiquated computers. “I surely do thank you,” Deacon’s guest continued. If he noticed the shabby surroundings, he didn’t let it show. “I wanted to talk to you about your phone call last night.” He had been an athlete once, Deacon suspected, his body still lean and fit despite the bum knee.
Deacon had left Jamal Henderson a message on his phone the night before. A neighbor near Henderson’s rental property at the end of Violet Street—a Mrs. Jordan, who sounded ancient and spoke in a thick Southern black dialect–called around ten the night before, saying there was “something funny” going on at the house. Deacon had the empty house listed for several months. Not a bad deal at $56,000, but the listing was now stale, and so far, Mr. Henderson resisted Deacon’s recommendations to drop the price.
“Sorry to call you so late,” Deacon replied, “but your neighbor over there seemed pretty upset, said there was cars going in and out of the house all night. I just thought you should know.” In fact, the home was rather isolated at the end of a dead-end street in a wooded area that backed up to the city’s major north/south expressway. Several other homes on the block were vacant, leaving Mrs. Jordan, a half-block away, the only resident at that dark end of the street.
“That old woman is crazy as a loon,” Henderson replied, chuckling amiably. “Back when I had that place rented she used to call me all the time complaining. Just sits in her house all day and worries about what’s going on down the street.” Deacon found himself smiling along with his client. Something about Henderson’s manner, both gracious and gregarious, was charismatic. “She’s about deaf as a bat, too. And you should see her drive,” Henderson continued, his voice rising. “All you can see is two hands on the wheel of that big old green Cadillac and a thick pair of glasses poking out from under the steering wheel.” Henderson imitated the description, stretching his long arms up over his head to clasp an imaginary steering wheel, stretching back the skin around his face so that his liquid brown eyes appeared to bulge out of his head. Deacon laughed at the impression.
“No, that’s just my daughter Celeste down there at the house,” he continued in a more serious tone. “She’s twenty-three, full of piss and vinegar. You remember those days, don’t you Mr. Jones? Times when you spent all night running around with your friends? Living large.” That wasn’t Deacon’s experience, not exactly, but he nodded in agreement. “Celeste is a good girl, and if she and some of her friends want to hang out at the house on their way to this club or that party, well I don’t mind. I told her it was OK.”
“Sure, I understand,” Deacon said. “I’m sorry I disturbed you last night.”
“Now don’t you be sorry.” Henderson’s eyes crinkled upward. “You doin’ a good job, Mr. Jones. I want you to keep up the good work. I know you think we need to drop the price on that house, but it’s a good house, worth every cent of what we’re asking. You just keep doing what you been doin’ and we’re gonna sell that house. I know it.” With this Jefferson unfolded himself from the chair, using his arms to straighten out the left leg. “Yes sir, I just know it. Now I’m gonna let you get back to your lunch, Deacon Jones.”
Deacon walked him to the door, patted him on the back as he left the building. If only all of my clients were like Jamal Henderson, he said to himself. Then, maybe, this business wouldn’t be so damn hard.
Rain that night, heavy with a damp cold that seeped in through the uninsulated floor of Deacon’s house and settled into his bones. Where the hell had this front come from, Deacon wondered, ashamed of his optimism earlier in the day. The morning’s weather forecast predicted sunny and cold, but the system moving across the city skyline felt ominous, like winter moving in.
The house was Deacon’s sanctuary on nights like this. He and his ex-wife Janice bought it together, when they were first married, but she’d never taken to the neighborhood, an blue collar area of the city called Sunnyside, an eclectic mix of mill houses and newer cottages, a few bungalows and foursquares left from when the streetcar ran north up Main Street into downtown and the area attracted middle class professionals with its reliable transportation. She let him keep it in the divorce settlement, although Deacon still owed most of the $40,000 he promised to pay for her share.
It was an attractive, one-story bungalow with Greek revival columns on either side of the brick-tiled front porch. Built around a central chimney with fireplaces in both the front living room and the den behind it, the home had a circular flow, with the two bedrooms on the west side and the kitchen and dining room facing east. Janice took most of the furniture, but Deacon craved light and space, so did not mind the emptiness of the rooms. Preferred it in fact, for it highlighted the heart-pine floors, the color of dark honey, with a glossy varnish that reflected light, imparting a sense of warmth throughout the house that the poor insulation didn’t necessarily support. His books, spilling out of shelves and onto the tables and floors, were his one indulgence to the austere interior. Mostly history and biography, twentieth-century fiction, paperback collections of McBain and MacDonald, some eastern religion and biblical history.
That night he was trying to read a biography of Geronimo but could not concentrate on the book. Was it the weather that made him get out the gun, his father’s Smith & Wesson .38 special, with a blue finish, four-inch barrel and checkered walnut grip? Probably, although he knew the impulse was more complex. The weather reminded him of his father, coming home drunk and soaked to the bone, greeted only by his mother’s rage and Deacon’s searching, scared eyes. The drinking was always bad, but something about the end of fall, the darkness of November, pushed it out of control. Screams and broken furniture, Deacon in his bed at the far end of the singlewide, with a pillow over his head trying to block out the noise.
He cleaned the gun relentlessly at his kitchen table, glad there wasn’t whiskey in the house. An unopened bill from his son’s orthodontist lay next to him. He didn’t need to open it. The bill was for $2,356, now three months overdue. A red stamp on the bone white envelope announced “Final Notice.” Unless James made an offer on a house soon, or one of his three listings went under contract unexpectedly, his prospects for paying the bill were zero, let alone the other bills stacked on the kitchen table.
At 9:45 the phone rang. It was Deacon’s cell phone, his work line, the number listed on his real estate signs. He recognized the number on the caller ID: Mrs. Jordan. What an annoyance, Deacon thought, letting the call go to voicemail. He chuckled again at Henderson’s impression from earlier in the day. The phone emitted an electronic chime, indicating a voicemail message. Deacon finished oiling the gun, rubbing one of his son’s old cloth diapers carefully into every nook of the cold blue steel. The phone rang again; Mrs. Jordan. Still he did not answer, but the second call aroused his curiosity. He checked his voicemail:
“Mr. Jones, this is Isabel Jordan, from over here on Violet Street. Lord, they at it again, down there at yo’ house. Yellin’ and screamin’. Lord, I don’t know whas goin’ on. You need to—“
The message ended abruptly.
Deacon left the cleaned gun on the kitchen table, turned on the television. He flipped channels relentlessly for fifteen minutes, cursing the advent of reality TV. The rain and wind were accelerating. The leaves on the trees outside his bedroom scratched against the window screens. Rain pounded on his roof.
Maybe he should drive over to Violet Street. He could check on the house, just drive by to make sure everything was OK, then swing by Swaim’s for a drink . . . or maybe two. God, he hated this weather. Hated the idea of December and January, when nobody bought houses, not if they could help it, and he would be alone, waiting for the phone to ring.
He got up from his chair and put on his heavy boots, a fleece pullover and his Gore-tex rain parka. He did not like to wear his favorite fedora in the rain, but fuck it, he needed the confidence he felt while wearing it. Then he loaded the chamber in the .38 and put the heavy gun in his jacket pocket, just as he’d watched his father do a thousand times, when his mother sent the drunken man back out into the night to sleep in his car, or the arms of some ten dollar whore. Miss you Dad, he thought. Then, more darkly, Like father like son.
II
Thick sheets of rain falling now. Thunder, rolling in from the southwest. Deacon parked his truck against the curb in a vacant lot next to the house at the end of Violet Street and tried to peer through the fogged window. The house wasn’t much to look at. Just a three-bedroom ranch built into the side of a hill, brick foundation, vinyl siding, a driveway that ran down the hill to a garage in the basement. A “For Sale” sign in the front yard with Deacon’s name and phone number in red lettering.
A car was in the driveway, a dark Japanese sedan with custom rims. Lights on in the living room, glowing through drawn curtains. The rest of the house was dark.
Didn’t look like much of a party to Deacon. Then again, he didn’t know what the word “party” meant these days. Drugs? He’d never been a part of that scene. Couldn’t afford it. Sex? Well, God bless ‘em. You only live once.
Down the street, Mrs. Jordan’s house was dark. Maybe she was asleep.
Deacon felt foolish for half-way believing her hysterics. And stupid for taking the gun in the car. What if he got pulled over? His probation officer would freak.
He decided to go home, try to get some sleep, when he heard a loud crack that wasn’t thunder. A gun shot. Then another. Coming from inside the house.
Deacon’s senses sprung to life; adrenalin coursed through his body. Unconsciously he picked up the gun from the passenger seat and ran through the yard of the house to the landing at the front door. There he waited, listening for sound inside the house over the pounding of his heart, feeling alive, fully alive, as he prepared to face the danger on the other side. T.J. knew this, recognized the crazed abandon in his eyes, the recklessness born in the hopeless hollows of Wilkes County, and used it for his purposes all those years. Funny he should think now of T.J., dead two years, shot down by a police detective as he held a gun to Deacon’s ex-girlfriend’s head, but still with him in these feral moments when instinct trumped courage and fear. He heard a man’s muffled voice, something moving around. “This is the police,” Deacon yelled into the night, a ploy he’d used before. Should he force his way in? What if Celeste was inside, wounded or worse? Seconds could matter. He tried the handle on the front door and found it unlocked. He pushed it open with his foot but stayed crouched behind the opposite wall for cover. “This is the police,” he repeated. “Put your gun down.”
Gun smoke drifted out the front door from the living room. The house was now silent. Deacon peered around the corner. He saw the legs of a man lying on the living room floor, wisps of smoke trailing around the ceiling. Deacon crawled into the room behind a sofa, then popped up on his knees with his gun drawn shoulder high, scanning the room.
On the other side of the sofa, in the middle of the room, lay a young black man on his back. He was dressed in a gray suit and expensive loafers. No socks. A dark patch of liquid collected in the middle of his chest on the black T-shirt he wore under the suit jacket. At the other end of the room, near the fireplace, a young woman lay curled into a ball on the floor. She was moaning softly, arms clenched around her head.
Deacon crossed the room and swung the gun into the door leading to the kitchen. At the end of that room another open door leading to the basement stairs. Sensing the gunman was gone, Deacon descended the stairs into the basement where the door leading into the back yard was open. Through the rain he saw a figure running swiftly through the back yard to the next block. He lost sight of the man in the trees but heard a car starting in the distance.
He returned to the living room and put the gun down on the fireplace mantle so he could attend to the girl. He knelt on the floor and gently turned her over. Except for the large pink bruise on the side of her face, flesh peeled but no blood, the girl was attractive. Jeans and a black sweater revealed a lean, athletic body, the swell of ample breasts. Café au lait skin. Straight, processed hair cut around her ears and combed down over her face. Eyes turned upward slightly at the corners, indicating a trace of Oriental heritage. “Oh God, oh god,” the girl moaned in obvious pain. Her eyes were milky and dilated. She groaned as Deacon moved her hands from her face. “Celeste, Celeste,” Deacon said to the girl, holding her gently by the shoulders. “This is Deacon Jones, your father’s realtor. Are you shot? Are you OK?”
The girl’s head wobbled as he spoke to her. “It was Ramone,” she muttered. Blood trickled out of her mouth from a cracked tooth. “Ramone.” Then, “my head” as she tried to escape Deacon’s grasp and return to a fetal position on the floor. Deacon let her go and gently put a throw pillow from the couch under her head as the girl groaned in pain.
He crossed the room to the other body. A black man, aged somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. His head was shaved bald, eyes closed. A thin goatee surrounded his mouth. Deacon put his fingers to the man’s neck only long enough to confirm his suspicions: he was dead. At least one wound in the chest, not a large hole from the amount of blood on the shirt, but big enough to do the job. Deacon frisked the man gently, trying not to disturb the placement of the body. No wallet, but there was a cell phone in his jacket pocket. Deacon took the phone, slipped it into the pocket in his jacket, then walked back to Celeste.
“Come on, honey,” he said gently. “We’ve got to get you out of here before the cops come.”
“Ramone,” she repeated drowsily. Deacon lifted her off the floor as gently as possibly. With Deacon grasping her tightly around the waist, she was able to support herself. Deacon scanned the street for signs of life as they crossed the yard. The rain was lighter now, a steady drizzle. Thunder still rumbled to the west. Otherwise the night was quiet; the street empty. Mrs. Jordan’s house was dark, as were other houses farther up the block.
Deacon deposited the girl in the passenger seat of the truck and drove away as quietly as possible. He was at her father’s house within minutes, the girl drifting in and out of consciousness the entire time. Jamal Henderson lived in a subdivision near the black state university, one of several upper-middle-class African-American neighborhoods on the city’s east side. Deacon had met the man two years before, when the house next door to his was listed for sale. Deacon banged wildly on the man’s door. A small woman with the same skin tone and facial features as Celeste opened it. Deacon tried to explain the situation, but the woman only stared at him impassively. Deacon suspected she did not understand English. Without comment she took Celeste and guided her into the house, closed the door on Deacon. The porch light went off, leaving him alone in the dark.
He returned to the cab of the truck and lit a cigarette, tried to let the rush of adrenaline diminish. What had he done? What should he do next? A thought hit him like a freight train. He whipped the truck out of Henderson’s driveway and sped back toward the house on Violet Street, where he had left his father’s gun.
III
The light was still on in the living room. The dead man’s car still parked in the driveway. Deacon watched the house from a block away, seeing nothing. Just rain, splattering off the asphalt, rivers of it running along the curb to the drainage grate at the end of the street, rolling in sheets off the roof of the house into the gutter, then gushing out the drain at the foundation like a burst pipe. After fifteen minutes he left his parked car and walked through the sheets of rain to the front door, turned the knob with a damp handkerchief to avoid fresh prints.
The body was lying on the floor in the same position as before. Dead now for less than an hour, the body was already shrunken and diminished, as if death was its natural state. Only a faint hint of gun smoke now in the air. Deacon walked over to the fireplace mantle quickly, ready to be far away from the dead man. Rain slid off the Gore-tex jacket onto the hardwood floor as he walked, the rubber soles on his boots squeaked from the moisture. His gun was gone.
“Looking for something?”
Deacon turned to find himself facing a large black man dressed entirely in black: black jeans, black t-shirt, black leather jacket. His hair was cut short on the sides, longer on top. Thin sideburns came to a devilish point on his jaw. A long thin scar, vividly white against ebony skin, cut a horizontal line across his right cheek. He stood well over six feet; huge pectoral muscles bulged from underneath his tight shirt. In his huge, meaty hand was Deacon’s gun. It was pointed at Deacon.
“You Ramone?” Deacon asked. His heart was pounding but his voice remained steady.
“You the motherfucker that killed Natchez and stole my money?” the man replied. He was standing in the dark hallway leading from the living room to the back of the house but now stepped into the living room, the gun steady and relaxed in his hand.
“Nope. I’m just an innocent bystander. I came back to get my gun and wait for the cops. Whom I called about three minutes ago.”
The man erupted in deep laughter. “Shit,” he said, drawing the word out as he pulled a handheld police scanner from inside his jacket, revealing a large gold ring in the shape of a skull, small rubies for eyes, on his left ring finger. “I been listening to this motherfucker for the last thirty minutes. Ain’t nobody called shit on this motherfuckin’ mess. Ain’t nobody coming to this party but me and you, so you better tell me where my money is before I shoot your ass.”
Deacon shrugged. “I’m just the realtor. That’s my sign out front. One of the neighbors called me, said there was something funny going on down here. When I get here, I find your friend dead on the floor.”
Ramone pulled the hammer back on the .38, raised it to shooting position and pointed it at Deacon’s head. “Don’t lie to me, motherfucker. If that’s true, why didn’t you call the police? Why’d you leave and come back?” He smiled evilly, revealing a series of gold-capped teeth. “And how the fuck did you know my name?”
Deacon was too scared to lie. Ramone had the feral look of a killer: his eyes glistened with blood lust, muscles tensed in gleeful anticipation of violence. “There was a girl here. A friend of a friend. She was hurt. I wanted to get her help before I called the cops. I put my gun down when I was trying to help her and left it here. It belonged to my father. I want it back.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere, motherfucker. The girl. Celeste. That’s the two-timing bitch that’s got my money. And my shit. You may be the realtor, but you picked the wrong friends, motherfucker. Take me to her.”
Deacon put his arms down, tried to inch closer to the gun. He might be able to wrestle it away from Ramone, if he surprised him, but he’d have to get closer. Ramone was wise to him, though, motioned him back against the fireplace with the barrel of the gun.
“You got it wrong,” Deacon said. “The girl was hurt. She didn’t have your money with her. Didn’t have anything. There was someone else. When I got here I heard shots and ran inside. A man, the shooter, ran out the basement door and drove away. He’s the one who has your money. That’s how I know your name. Celeste told me it was you.”
“That lying bitch,” Ramone replied. “Natchez and me been homeys since back in the day. She knows I wouldn’t kill him, not unless he tried to double cross me.”
“Maybe she was already unconscious when the killer got here. Maybe she just assumed it was you—“
“Shut the fuck up,” Ramone commanded. He pointed out the door with the barrel of the gun. “Take me to Celeste or you goin’ to die, motherfucker.”
They were in Ramone’s car, a black jaguar sedan. Deacon was driving; Ramone was in the passenger seat with the gun pointed at Deacon’s head. Compared to the Spartan austerity of Deacon’s truck, the jaguar’s futuristic interior was like a starship. The dash was lit up in green dials and glowing buttons; Deacon had to ask his captor how to turn on the lights, start the wipers, and even with instruction the controls felt awkward and out of place. They were driving through the steady rain and yellow iridescent glow of streetlights down Waughtown Street, in the general direction of Henderson’s house, past burger joints and tiendas, hair salons for black women. Little Mexico they called Waughtown now, although there were still plenty of blacks here, and pocketfuls of whites left over from more prosperous times. But even on a sunny April day, these streets felt discarded, as if polite society abandoned this part of the city to the onslaught of Hispanic immigrants. Tiendas and taquerias, used appliance stores and money order counters slowly claimed the streetscape. In the cold, rainy dark these outposts of Hispanic culture looked desolate and alien, a bizarre mutation of the ruined South.
Deacon’s mind raced as they drove through the night. He knew if he led Ramone to Celeste, they were both dead, maybe Henderson and the elderly woman, too.
It was late, after midnight. Windshield wipers disposed of the rain with steady, persistent swipes. Traffic on the thoroughfare was light, a stray car here or there. Then truck headlights in the distance, a medium-sized delivery truck. Deacon acted impulsively. He swerved the vehicle into the truck’s path. The vehicles collided with a terrible crack. Deacon mistimed the impact: he tried to place the front passenger door directly in its path, but the truck struck the back end of the jaguar instead, sending it into a violent spiral that ended with a collision into a telephone pole. Deacon’s arm slammed violently against the door; despite an attempt to brace himself, his head bounced off the steering wheel. Smoke and the smell of burning tires filled the car. Deacon drifted out of consciousness, but only for a second. When he came to, the front end of the Jaguar was crushed against the telephone poll, which was cracked and leaning precipitously. Ramone’s head rested on the airbag. He was groaning in pain but still conscious. Deacon searched the car desperately for the gun. He finally saw it, still in Ramone’s right hand, wedged between the airbag and the passenger side door. He reached for the gun across the man’s body. A burst of sharp pain seared his left side from a broken or fractured rib. He managed to put his hand on the gun, but Ramone would not release it. He pulled his arm back then cracked his elbow over the bridge of Ramone’s nose. The man howled in pain, dropping the gun into his lap. Deacon picked it up and stepped out of the car.
Sirens in the distance; Deacon disoriented by the lights, out of focus, and the rain pelting him in the face. He tried to run but crumbled to the asphalt with his first step, discovered a blood covered gash on his left hand as he pushed himself back up. The bruised rib flared again. He heard voices. “Goddamit,” then, “Take it easy mister.” He stuffed the gun into his pants, then ran unsteadily across the road through the empty parking lot of a taqueria. He crossed Sprague Street then ran into a residential area. He ran until he thought he would explode, then took refuge behind a vacant house.
A cell phone rang in an unfamiliar tone. It was not his phone, which was in his pants pocket, but Natchez’s, the one Deacon put in his jacket. He found it and read the Caller ID: “Scorpio.”
“Hello,” he said into the phone.
“Mr. Natchez, this is Scorpio.” It was a woman’s voice, deep and sultry, with a Hispanic accent. “I want my money.”
IV
Within minutes a black SUV appeared in front of the house where Deacon was hiding. He was driven by two large, impassive Hispanic men to a downtown high-rise hotel. Deacon, still dizzy and disoriented from the crash, climbed out of the car, clinching his bruised rib, and stared up at the building. The rain was lighter now, a steady drizzle. The SUV honked at him. The car window lowered mechanically and the Hispanic in the passenger seat, with slick black hair and a thick mustache, nodded toward the door. “Entrar.” With dead eyes he watched until Deacon started to walk toward the hotel. The window rolled up, and the car drove away.
Deacon walked into the hotel lobby. A clock on the wall read 1:17. He walked across thick maroon carpet to a front desk of reflective black granite. “I’m here to see the Senora,” he said to the clerk, his own reflection speaking to him from the granite counter. The clerk, a bald Indian with an eye patch, looked up at him briefly, as if it were a distasteful burden, then lowered his head as he slid a plastic key card across the registration counter. “Take the last elevator on the left,” the man said, head still conspicuously lowered. “Insert the card into the slot for Club Level. She’s waiting for you.”
As the elevator ascended, Deacon studied himself in the mirrors on the walls. A bad bruise on his forehead where he had struck the steering wheel. The deep gash on his left hand. His pants were soaked through with rain. His fedora, miraculously still on his head, also was soaked through, the brim bent absurdly in different directions. He worried it could not be restored.
Deacon replayed the telephone call in his mind as he tried to avoid his reflection in the elevator mirrors. “Natchez is dead,” he responded. “This is Deacon Jones.”
The voice did not hesitate. “And do you have my money, Mr. Jones?”
“No,” he said. “I thought Ramone had it. Now I’m not sure.”
“Yes,” she replied, as if this made perfect sense. “We should talk Mr. Jones. May I send a car for you?” Deacon wasn’t sure he could walk another block in his condition. The pain in his rib seared like hot iron. Nausea boiled his stomach; he knew if he stood he would puke. He said a car sounded like a fine idea. “Excellent,” she said, as if they’d just made a date for tea.
Deacon shuffled out of the elevator. A door at the far end of the hall opened. Deacon stared down the long, soulless corridor waiting for someone to emerge. He could not move. His body was paralyzed by shock and trauma.
He stood motionless in front of the elevator for several seconds. A woman’s head finally appeared through doorway. Long, wavy strands of black hair fell vertically from her head to the floor. She squinted black, intelligent eyes at him, arched a groomed eyebrow, then squinted again. “You would like to come in?” the woman said.
Deacon nodded his head at her, smiled. For a moment, he experienced déjà vu, as if he had stood in this same hall, been greeted by this same woman in a thousand dreams before. Still he could not move.
“If you would like to come in,” the woman said, speaking more slowly now, as if she was talking to a child, “then you should walk this way to this door.” The way she said “this” sounded like “theeese.”
The explicitness of her instructions engaged Deacon’s brain. He shuffled down the hall and entered the room, passing by the woman in the doorway. She smelled like gardenias and looked like a Latina ice cream cone, with pink popsicle toes and tan leggings that hung the curves of her toned legs, a large, oversized white turtleneck sweater that somehow, despite the folds of plush cashmere, revealed full, firm breasts.
They were standing in the living room of a designer suite. A plush red velvet couch looked out over the city skyline, black now but still lit by the stray light from an office window. Abstract art, in bold strokes of reds and greens, hung on the walls. Candles, glowing orange, burned on the kitchenette counter. Somewhere, lightly, in the distance, Cannonball Adderley moaned the theme to “Autumn Leaves” on his alto saxophone. Was it on the radio or a recording? The answer was important to Deacon.
She led him to the sofa and motioned him to sit down. “You appear as if you have had quite a night,” she said in her accented voice. “Are you injured?” She curled up on the other side of the couch so that the pink toenails peered out from underneath her legs. She was Mexican, if Deacon had to guess, although a thin nose and high cheekbones indicated some European heritage. She was somewhere near his age, late thirties or early forties, with tiny crow’s feet she did not attempt to hide stepping out from those liquid black eyes.
“I’ve been in an accident.” He felt his brain shutting down again. There was something he wanted to tell her but could not say. “Ramone” he managed. He fought to maintain consciousness, but the act of his body finally coming to a full rest on the couch, his aching muscles plunging down into its plush warmth, was irresistible. He drifted away while enjoying the pleasant sensation of a warm, fragrant woman, leaning over him, staring deeply into his eyes while softly, almost sensuously, repeating his name. “Deacon Jones . . . Deacon Jones.”
When he awoke he was in a bed. Sheets white as orange pith crinkled with heavy starch. His head floated under thick foam pillows. Someone had removed his wet clothes and wrapped him in a terry cloth robe. The sky outside the hotel window was still dark with rain, although lights appearing in the houses on the city’s eastern horizon told him morning was on the way. Scorpio was sitting in a chair opposite the bed, peering at the screen of a laptop computer through tortoiseshell reading glasses. “I’ve been doing some research on you, Mr. Jones,” she said. She put the laptop on a side table and sat down next to him on the bed. “You have an interesting past.”
“Don’t believe anything you read on the Internet,” Deacon said, then, “No one’s called my past ‘interesting’ before.”
“You have killed some men?” She spoke as much with her eyes as her voice. They opened wide in anticipation of his answer.
“Si. Yo soy un hombre malo.”
She smiled. “You should sleep some more, hombre. It is still early, and we have much to talk about in the morning.”
Deacon, drowsy and content, only nodded.
“Perhaps if I sleep next to you for a while, you will be a gentleman, no?”
Deacon did not know how to answer the question. “Perhaps,” he managed.
Her brow narrowed in consideration of him and his motives. She shrugged, as if losing an argument with herself, and lay down next to him. Even though she was on top of the sheets, Deacon felt the warmth of her body, could smell rain in her hair. “It is the weather, so dark and dreary,” she explained. The way she said the word “dreary” sounded like an exotic tropical bird, singing its evening song. “It makes me feel alone.”
““Yes,” Deacon said. He was drowsy, on the edge of sleep. “I understand.”
“Tonight is my birthday. Scorpion sky. We could see it through this window if not for all this rain.”
“Poor kid.” The drowsiness made him bold. “Come here.” He pulled her to him with his right arm, burying his face in the soft folds of her hair. It smelled like gardenias and rain.
“Tonight I am forty, and alone. Happy Birthday to me.”
“Go to sleep,” Deacon whispered. “It will be better in the morning.”
Her name was Conseulo Marquez, she explained over a room service breakfast of omelets and good, fresh coffee. The name “Scorpio” came from a tattoo, a vermillion scorpion, she got on her ass when she was seventeen. “A foolish gesture, but the name has served a purposed. It says, if you fuck with me, you will get stung.” She was born on a cattle farm in Durango but drifted into narcotics. “It was the only way,” she explained with a shrug. At first she was the local drug lord’s woman, one of several he kept stashed in apartments around the city. “But I was smart,” she said. “I figured out what to do with the money to keep it hidden. Offshore accounts. Liquid assets. That sort of thing.” By her mid-20s she was running a distribution operation in Los Angeles. “Then a relative told me about this city. We have many Mexicans here, many good roads and highways, too. And fewer federales.”
As she spoke, Deacon realized he’d seen her before. It was a few years ago, at a jazz club he used to frequent. A salsa band was featured that night. She commanded the dance floor, dancing salsa with a handsome young latino. That night the eyes of every man in the bar followed her every move.
“Ramone and Natchez contact me. I know these men. They mostly do business with the mayates. But they want to expand, so we make a deal. I give them product. Now they owe me $100,000.”
“Why tell me this?” Deacon asked. His head was clear now. The bruised rib was still sore but better. He was enjoying himself.
Her eyes crinkled in a way Deacon found endearing. “Because I have a business proposition for you, Mr. Jones. You are a real estate agent yes? You work on commission, no? Ten percent for returning me my money.”
“Why not have your boys do it? The ones in the car last night. They look like they can handle Ramone.”
“Because my boys do not interest me.” Her lips turned up in a sly grin. Her eyes narrowed and grew small. “You, Deacon Jones . . . you interest me.”
“Twenty percent.”
“That is too much commission for a real estate man.”
“This isn’t real estate,” Deacon responded. “Fifteen, and a salsa lesson.”
She smiled broadly, pleased that somehow he knew her passion for dance. “Yes, and a salsa lesson.”
V
The black SUV deposited him on Violet Street. Another storm front was moving in. Black cumulus clouds raced across the sky, bringing with them ominous gusts of wind. His truck was still parked in the empty lot up from the house. Natchez’s body was gone from the house. Somebody had taken up the carpet in the living room in an attempt to hide any evidence of the death.
He needed to find Celeste. Only she could tell him who shot Natchez and took the money. But intuition told him returning to Henderson’s home was a dead end. The cell phone in his parka pocket gave him other options.
He found several numbers stored in Natchez’s cell phone the night before while he was waiting for Scorpio’s men to pick him up. Most of them were listed with aliases, nicknames like “Boo” and “Skeezy.” One was identified as “Work.” That was the one he called.
“Ecstasy,” the voice answered.
Deacon walked out of a breezy, intermittent rain into Club Xstasy, one of those cavernous, stale nightclubs that looked like a church fellowship hall with a dj booth. The smell of sweat and lust and cheap booze greeted him at the door. Worn carpet around the padded bar; worn parquet on the dance floor. Mirrored balls and strobe lights hung from the paneled ceiling. The only person in the club at 5:23 was a black twentysomething standing behind the bar. She wore a jade green contact lenses and a crimson halter top that highlighted ample breasts. She looked like Santa’s little shorty. “Poochie in?”
The bartender stopped wiping down the bar, put a hand on the curve of her hip. “Who’s asking?”
“An old friend.”
She looked him up and down then shrugged to let him know he wasn’t worth her time. “Over there,” she said, nodding at a door to the side of the bar with a sign that read “Office.” “Just knock before you go in.”
“Thanks sweetheart.” Deacon walked to the door and knocked. A gruff voice told him to come in.
Lamar “Poochie” Shipton was sitting behind a desk, looking at porn on the Internet. “Deacon Jones,” he said, looking up from the computer monitor. “Goddamn Deacon Jones.”
He was a big man, six five. That hadn’t changed, but his gut had, grown round over the last twelve years. Head shaved bald now where once he sported a fade with little afro ringlets on top. Otherwise he looked the same. Milk chocolate skin, a cold look in his eyes.
“Hi Pooch. It’s been a long time.”
Poochie’s face clouded with memory. “Yeah. That night with that cement contractor.” The memory was still vivid for both; neither needed to say more. T.J. sent them to Yadkin County to shake down a cement contractor who would not pour the foundation for an office complex in Clemmons until he received a second advance on the job. They busted into his house after 2 a.m., wearing ski masks and carrying pistols. Screaming wife. Crying children. A dog that would not stop barking until Poochie put a slug in him. Things got a little out of hand; the contractor ended up in ICU for a week, but the foundation got poured the next day. He never called the cops. Why would he? All the money was under the table, and the cops would’ve asked questions. “Well, good to see you again, Deke. But I’m guessing this ain’t no social call.”
“I’m looking for a girl named Celeste Henderson. She hangs out with a guy named Natchez who works here.”
“Natchez,” Poochie repeated. The name meant something to his old associate. He rubbed his chin, stalled for time. “Yeah, Natchez worked security here for a while, but I never met no girl named Celeste. Why you asking?”
Deacon played a hunch. “Scorpio’s looking for her. Might be something in it for you if you help me find her.”
Poochie laughed, but it was nervous laughter. The name “Scorpio” scared him. He rose from his desk. His eyes wouldn’t meet Deacons. “Look Deke, I don’t know nothing about no girl named Celeste, and I sure as hell don’t want nothing to do with Scorpio. If Natchez crossed paths with her, that’s his problem. Not mine. I’d love to help you out for old time’s sake, but I think you’re wasting your time here.”
Deacon had one more card to play. “Here,” he said, handing Poochie one of his real estate cards with his cell phone number listed on it. “Would you call me if you hear anything? I need to talk to her before Scorpio’s boys take matters into their own hands. Scorpio’s missing a hundred large, and this girl is the only one who knows who has it.”
“Sure Deacon, sure.” He patted his old partner on the back, pushing him back out the office door. “But what you doing messin’ around with somebody like Scorpio anyway? I thought you gone straight.”
“I thought I had,” Deacon admitted. “Something about this weather maybe. Makes me feel a little reckless.”
Poochie shook his head at his old friend. “Restless is good as dead, least as far as Scorpio is concerned.”
Deacon’s cell phone rang shortly after nine o’clock. He was sitting in a restaurant on Fourth Street, in the city’s West End, turning a crummy sandwich into an evening’s entertainment. The waitress watched from the kitchen door, waiting for him to go home. The call wasn’t whom he expected.
“This is Lamar Henderson, Mr. Jones. I need to speak with you about my daughter. As you know, she’s in some trouble.” The voice was flat, subdued, as if the gregarious clown of the day before lost his funny red shoes and his funny little hat. “I have another house, a quiet place down in Davidson County where we can speak privately.”
Deacon jotted the directions to the house and paid his bill, left a two dollar tip on an eight dollar tab. The waitress tried to look grateful.
Deacon followed Main Street south until it passed under the expressway and crossed into Davidson County. Then five miles on a state road until he found Henderson’s dirt drive. Later, he would swear he wasn’t followed, but maybe he didn’t look. His body hurt, and the stress of the last twenty-four hours hit him in the face. He wanted to sleep for days.
At least the sky had cleared. A silver half moon was rising against a canopy of stars over the pasture to the east. That was something.
The house was nestled in a grove of hardwoods, surrounded by fields. Cold air revived him when he walked onto the porch of the white two-story farm house and knocked on the door.
“Come in,” said Lamar Henderson.
He was holding a nickel-plated .357 and looked like he knew how to use it. He moved across the floor like a big black cat, no limp in sight, and shoved Deacon down into a wood chair. The hammer of the cannon came back and the barrel moved down into Deacon’s face. “You’re causing me a lot of problems Deacon Jones,” he said.
Looking into the pistol’s barrel made it difficult for Deacon to breathe. Everything got quiet and still but his pounding heart would not let his raging mind think.
“I was going to walk away with the money and the dope, that little rat Natchez dead and Ramone left to take the collar or get iced by Scorpio.” He got a nasty little sneer on his face. “Hopefully the latter.
“I told you to stay away from that house Jones. I told you to stay away. My man said you were cool that way. But you had to go sticking your nose in the middle of my shit. You showed up just when that son of a bitch Natchez hit my little girl, trying to scurry away like a rat. Hell, I was going to ice that motherfucker anyway, but when he hit my little girl, he got it straight away, right in the heart. Then you show up and I panicked. Yes I panicked. You made me leave my little girl lying on the floor.”
“Some hero,” Deacon said. He needed time to regain his wits, time to figure a way out of this. He needed Henderson to talk. “I could’ve been the cops . . . or anybody. You ran away and left your daughter alone to deal with whoever walked out that door.”
Henderson laughed cruelly, dropping the gun from Deacon’s face. “That was the plan, you stupid motherfucker. Celeste was supposed to stick around and pin the blame for the shooting on Ramone when the cops showed up. I knew she could handle herself. If I stayed around to deal with whoever was coming through the door then the whole plan would have been fucked: We’d get charged for the murder of Natchez, and Scoprio would realize we were doublecrossing her.”
“What if I was Ramone? He would’ve seen through your scheme in a minute and killed Celeste.”
“Ramone was down in Charlotte, making a delivery.” The gun dropped even lower now; Deacon prepared to make his move. “We made sure Ramone wasn’t around when we iced Natchez? Tried to make sure you weren’t around either?”
A flash of gold caught Deacon’s eye—Ramone’s evil smile, gold teeth shining, watching them through the front porch window. As Deacon raised his hand to point at the intruder, the farmhouse’s flimsy front door burst off its hinges and Ramone crashed into the room carrying a large automatic handgun. The first bullet caught Henderson in the back, spinning him around toward Ramone. Blood gurgled up through Henderson’s open mouth. The next bullet crashed into the wall inches away from Deacon’s head, sending Deacon scrambling for cover on the floor. “You trying to fuck me over, old man?” Ramone screamed in uncontrolled rage. Henderson was still standing but bent over, stunned. Henderson’s gun remained at his side as Ramone crossed the room and put the pistol to Henderson’s head. “Nobody fucks with Ramone,” he screamed. Deacon braced for the explosion of bone and brains but then . . . silence. “Fuck.” Ramone fumbled with the slide on the jammed pistol. The delay was all Henderson needed. He raised the .357 and fired directly into Ramone’s chest, blasting the hulking man across the room before collapsing dead on the floor.
Deacon lay on the floor, watching blood pour out of both men and pool in viscous puddles on the tarnished hardwood floor, until he was finally able to stand. Ramone’s wound was horrific—a gaping bloody hole in the center of his chest, pieces of lung and flesh splattered against the wall from the exit wound in his back. The room smelled of gun smoke and burnt flesh. Deacon felt himself retch as he got to his feet. He swallowed it down, but once out of the house and into the fresh air, he could hold it no longer. Bile and sandwich erupted from his stomach onto a patch of grass in the yard.
He could not force himself back inside the gruesome room to frisk the bodies, the scene inside was too horrific, but he did find Henderson’s Cadillac coupe parked and unlocked behind the house. He searched the car and its trunk quickly for signs of the money but found nothing. He made his way back to his own car and drove down the gravel road slowly and without lights, windows down listening for sounds of sirens in the distance.
VI
“Here’s the way I figure it,” Deacon said as he stared across the desk at Poochie’s oversize frame stuffed into a cheap office chair. Celeste Henderson stood behind Poochie with her back against the wall, her beautiful mocha face still swollen from the blow she’d received two nights before. She watched Deacon with silent cold fury as he spoke.
Outside the office, Club Xtasy was coming to life. Through the walls Deacon heard the thump of a steady disco rhythm, even though no one had been dancing when Deacon entered the club. It was shortly before nine, the night after the bloodbath at the farmhouse. Deacon drove home carefully the night before, making several quick turns to insure he was not being followed, then collapsed on his bed and slept until noon. He spent the day monitoring the Web for updates on the shooting at the farmhouse—as of early evening it hadn’t been reported.
Poochie seemed surprised to hear from him when he called earlier in the evening. “Henderson and Ramone are dead,” Deacon said over the phone. “Celeste will be next.” Poochie had no response, only agreed reluctantly to Deacon’s request.
“The way I figure it,” Deacon continued, “is that Natchez and Ramone were dealing junk out of your club, and you and Henderson caught wind of it.”
“What makes you think I’ve got anything to do with this?” Poochie asked.
“I’ve spent some time today looking up the corporate papers for Club VIP on the Internet,” Deacon replied. “It took some digging, but I finally figured out Jamal Henderson was your business partner. He was a smart guy, loved real estate. So I figure he was the money man, put the deal together for the lease on this joint, and set you up to operate it.” Poochie didn’t respond, just stared at Deacon.
Deacon continued: “So when you two figured out what Natchez and Ramone were up to, you decided to teach them a lesson for cutting in on your turf. That’s where Celeste comes in. Henderson tells her to get in tight with Natchez, make him think she’s hot for him so he lets her in on the deal with Scorpio, then sets them up for the doublecross. Only the doublecross went wrong when I showed up.” He cut his eyes up to the girl. A sneer crawled onto her face.
“Because of you my father is dead,” she said. Her voice was cold and flat. “This ain’t over Deacon Jones. Not as far as I’m concerned.”
Deacon was surprised by the level hate in her voice. “I’m here to do you a favor, missy,” he said. “Why would you want to hurt me when I’m getting ready to offer you a deal that’s gonna save your life?”
She didn’t answer, only leaned back against the wall, swallowing her hate and vengeance, if only for the moment. Deacon found the response cold blooded. He wondered if her threats were more than simply an expression of her grief.
Poochie interrupted his thoughts. “Alright Deacon. What’s the deal? I’m ready to get this over with.”
“Simple,” Deacon answered. “You give me the money and keep Scorpio’s drugs. I tell Scorpio that Ramone was the one responsible for killing Natchez and trying to rip her off. As far as Scorpio knows, Henderson died because he was trying to protect his little girl, who was just an innocent bystander. I leave you and Celeste out of the story. You get to keep the drugs and your lives.”
Poochie didn’t even look at Celeste. Perhaps he was more of an equal partner in the deal than Deacon thought. “You got it Deke,” he said. “I’m tired of all this shit, all these people winding up dead. You and me go back, Deke, so I’m going to make it easy.” He got up from the desk and walked to a safe on the floor in the back corner of the office. He turned the knob once and opened the safe with a forceful pull on the handle, retrieved a cheap nylon gym bag from inside. He put the bag on the desk in front of Deacon. “It’s all there Deacon. I’m not stupid enough to mess with Scorpio again. But you better watch your ass, my friend.” He nodded back at the girl, whose eyes were still pinned on Deacon. “You ain’t coming out of this thing clean, old friend. You got blood on your hands in this shit, too. And I got a feeling your judgment day will come.”
Deacon waited all day for her to return his call. By the time the SUV parked in front of his house on Devonshire Street, darkness was moving in from the east, only a thin line of pink and orange sky on the western horizon. It was only five in the afternoon, the days getting so short now, and Deacon’s mood followed the course of the day. After a full night’s sleep, he felt refreshed and somewhat renewed. But the three dead men haunted him as the day progressed. He saw Natchez’s shriveled carcass, Ramone’s lungs splattered across the farmhouse wall. The laughing, clownish Henderson keeling over with a bullet in his back, blood gurgling out of his mouth as he crashed dead to the floor.
He started a fire in the living room fireplace, returned to his books. The whisky bottle was on the kitchen table; in his hand was a glass holding two-fingers worth of the swirling amber potion.
She was dressed in high-heeled brown leather boots, tailored black trousers and a black leather jacket over a pale blue blouse. Her wavy black hair hung down loose around her shoulders. Red brown lipstick highlighted full lips and tan Latina skin. She appeared to be unaccompanied, although the windows of the SUV were tinted. Death could be waiting inside the car.
“You work fast,” she said as he let her into the house. Her eyes scanned the room: books overflowing the built-in bookcase, a copy of Sun Tzu on the coffee table next to the glass of whiskey. She focused on a medium-sized canvas of a rural landscape—an old barn with a broken down tractor in the foreground—hanging over the fireplace. “Interesting,” she said, turning to him. “Not what I expected.”
“You were expecting Buckingham Palace?” he cracked.
She sensed the edge in his voice. “I was expecting a single man’s squalor. Your house is lovely. So neat.”
“All the filth’s on the inside, I guess.” Deacon heard the slur in his voice. How many glasses of whiskey had he had? Two? Maybe three?
“You are reconsidering our deal?” She moved to the center of the room and picked up his glass, passed the whisky under her nose. “Or maybe just celebrating the end of it.”
“Celebrating isn’t the right word. More like trying to wash away the smell of burning flesh. I’d forgotten how dirty that smell makes you feel. I’d forgotten alright, but now I remember.”
She sighed and sank down into the sofa next to the coffee table. “Death is always so dispiriting. Why are we alive when others must die? May I have the money now,” she asked, “and perhaps a drink?”
Deacon walked to the kitchen, returning with a fresh glass and the bottle of Wild Turkey. He poured the drink then retrieved the briefcase from his bedroom, placing in front of her on the table. “It’s all there,” he said. “One hundred grand. I counted it today.”
Her eyes stayed on him as she sipped the bourbon. “You do quick work. Who had my money?”
“Ramone,” Deacon lied.
“And you were the one who killed him?”
“No,” Deacon admitted. News of the two bodies was not in the morning newspapers, but he wasn’t surprised Scorpio knew about the killings. “A man named Jamal Henderson killed him, not before Ramone got him in the back with a slug that would’ve stopped an elephant, though. I just stumbled across the aftermath . . . and your money.”
She laughed sharply. “You are not a good liar. I know about Henderson and his daughter. Scorpio does not allow people who rob from her to continue living, of course, but in this case I make an exception for the girl. For your sake only, Deacon Jones, understand?” Deacon nodded. “I have taken care of the police also.” She swallowed the bourbon that remained in the glass and stood up. With practiced precision, like a Vegas blackjack dealer, she counted fifteen thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills into a neat stack on the table. “And now, about that salsa lesson.”
Deacon’s shoulders stooped. “I think I’m going to have to take a rain check.” Her face crumbled, just for a moment, but she quickly masked any disappointment with a practiced smile. “I was never much of a dancer. An old dog can’t learn new tricks.”
She watched him coldly, assessing him with her eyes. “Perhaps you are afraid of the Scorpion, no? Afraid you might get stung?”
“Perhaps.” Deacon smiled at her. “It is in your nature.”
She picked up the briefcase and walked toward the door. “You might like my sting,” she said playfully. “But perhaps you are right. Better not to mix business and pleasure. It is too bad though. This time of year. The darkness and winter on the way. It is better not to be alone.” With this she walked out of the house, closing the door behind her. Deacon watched her walk to the car. Was that an extra swivel in her fine, round ass, just to remind him of what he had declined? He would never be sure. But there was whiskey for the darkness and fifteen grand on the coffee table. Maybe that was all he would need to make it through November.
