Painted Black, page 6
“She tried to rob me.” The words barely made their way past the clamp squeezing his throat tight. “She sent someone to steal …. Or maybe you. Was it your plan to cheat me?”
“My plan? You gonna talk to me about the plan?” Riley threw his toothpick to the sidewalk and stepped closer, poking one finger at Sidney. “Since when the plan mean you get to lick a little free sugar off a my girls, huh? Lexie tole me what happen the first time she go see you.”
This time Sidney’s gaze focused on the other man’s eyes and froze. King was five inches shorter than him, younger, scrawny. Yet the dark irises, the hard body, the shoulders tensed and ready to spring, brought a flash of agonized memory. Cornered and cowering in the playground, a chain link fence at his back and pee dribbling down his leg. He closed his eyes, drew breath slowly, let it out.
Find out who the boy is. Quinlan’s words again. Find out where he lives, what he saw, and what we need to do to keep him quiet.
Face Riley King, or face Philip Quinlan. That’s what cleared his head. Sidney opened his eyes, looked at King like he had no fear of a blade sliding beneath his ribs. No urge to tighten his fingers around King’s neck like it was a lump of pliable clay. He had done nothing wrong. Was, in fact, in the right. He was better than this drug dealing pimp who sold formaldehyde-soaked product that could make his customers blind.
“Whatever your lying whore told you,” he was able to say, “someone broke in last night and tried to steal what you’ve been buying from me for the last five months.”
Riley settled back a bit, pulled a cigarette out and tugged at his pocket for the lighter.
“Only reason I deal with a freak like you—” he paused as he drew the flame through the tobacco, “—is to keep the overhead low, hear what I’m saying? So you sweeten your deal now and then.” He shrugged and exhaled a cloud of smoke that hung stinking between them. “Ain’t much mind to me. But my girls don’t lie to me and my girls don’t cheat me ’cause they know I bust ’em up good if they do. Now you say that Lexie bitch have something to do with this bash and snatch job. Yet you know nothing about why or how or who. Only thing you got is, that girl, she nowhere to be seen today. Not on the street last night neither like she s’posed to be. So something sure the hell was up. Just go watching who you be pointing fingers at, cause you likely to get it chopped off at the knuckle, I got anything to say about it.”
“It had to—” The eastbound #72 pulled up in front of them. People boarded the bus, grumbling about how late it was. Sidney waited until it pulled away before finishing. “She had to be in on it, because he knew exactly where to go. Someone had to tell him that. So who was this girl friendly with? Did she have a boyfriend? Brother?”
“Only boyfriends my girls got be dates. They know what’s good for ’em. Lexie learned that fine last time I caught her hanging out with that bastard Cry. No Sir, you got a problem, it be your problem. Ain’t nothing to do with me and mine. Only problem you got with me is you owe me some jungle juice or you owe me lots of money. Now I don’t wanna hear no bullshit,” he said quickly, holding up one hand as Sidney tried to talk. “Say she never give you no money all you want. Who I gonna believe—some sick dick likes to freak out little girls? Or one of my stable been taught right from wrong the hard and painful way? You figure it out. And you better do it fast or word is gonna be out you is risky business. Bad press gonna make life not so easy for a man likes to get it off fucking corpses or whatever.”
Rage rose like a black curtain. Sidney’s head jerked, eye twitching. Sliding down the wall. Cheek smooth as silk. He could see her like she was right there, slumped, seated, back against the bricks. “Why’d you make me do this to you, baby?” Tossing and turning beneath the covers, waking with a start, sheets sticky with sweat and cum. Mama, mama.
His hands lifted, fingers curled, but the man was gone. The screech of air brakes, the wheeze of hydraulics as the bus door opened, and Riley King was up the stairs and out of reach, leaving Sidney Cole to stew in anger, confusion, and a strange, hollow sense of loneliness.
Only one thing seemed clear to him. A name. Cry.
Chapter 14
It was close to lunchtime when Chris woke, or past it even. The “L” rumbled overhead, sending a vibration through the concrete under him. The first night he’d spent here he’d been sure he’d never sleep with that racket rolling over him, but the body knows what it needs, noise or no noise.
The rain had stopped sometime during the night, but the dark clouds and weak sun meant there wasn’t much hope of getting warm anytime soon. Damp clothes, too much on his mind, plus a hangover, stiff neck, bones aching like an old man. He had to wait a whole damn day before the meeting with the reporter. With no money for booze or weed to get him through it, there was only one other option. He made a fist with the hand he’d injured the night before and winced. Sore, but not broke, thank God. He grabbed his backpack, paint cans clacking together as he strapped it on, and set out toward the alley behind the arcade on Belmont.
For the next hour, he almost forgot it all, the cold, the wet, the hunger … last night. All that mattered were blacks and grays and drizzled threads of red pulled across the uneven concrete wall. A female, long legs, skinny neck, dark skin, with back turned. The face tilted to profile, distorted by shadows, with hooded eye, and cheek pale and hollow. Lexie.
He signed the painting CRY, no periods, just C-R-Y, all caps. Christopher Robert Young. Crybaby. Cry for short.
Stepping back, he studied the work. “Hey, you,” a man yelled, and Chris’s studio became an alley once again. His canvas turned back into a wall and he ran.
“Get back here, boy.” The shout followed him into the street. “You hear me?”
That made him laugh. He turned a corner and slowed to a walk, weaving through the pedestrian flow. If he had a dollar for every “You get back here, boy.”
The paint, though. Chris shook his head. He’d dredged three dumpsters before finding the half full can of black he’d left behind. When the hell was that going to happen again?
The mini-mart on Broadway sold spray paint. And candy bars. He spent some time looking over the varieties—Payday, Hershey’s, York’s Peppermint Patty—watching the store, looking for his opportunity. He was getting pretty good at shoplifting, but it still scared the hell out of him. When he grabbed his moment, along with a can of black paint, his heart beat like a Goddamn rock band against his chest.
“That all you want?” the cashier asked him when he put a Kit-Kat on the counter.
He looked her right in the eye and said, “Yeah.”
“Eighty nine cents.”
He dug into the back pocket of his jeans for the crumbled bill wedged down in the corner. The front edge of his jacket covered the telltale outline tucked into his briefs.
That a can of stolen paint in your pocket or are you just happy to see me, he quipped in his head as he smiled at the clerk again. He dropped the worn dollar bill into her hand. She pressed it flat without looking at him and turned to the next customer almost before he could pocket his change. Still, it took a couple blocks before he could get rid of the feeling a hand would clamp down on his shoulder any second.
When he got to the Night Moves center, he heard the ping of the pinball machine right away. Jack was in a corner of the gym, hunched over the machine, hammering the buttons like a wrestler poking out the eyes of his opponent. Ping, ping. Ping, ping, ping. The basketballs waited at his feet.
“Damn.” Jack slapped the side of the machine as the metal ball escaped through the chute.
“Where is everybody?” Chris asked as he walked up. No one was here, no one. He’d half expected Lexie to be standing here waiting, like last night had only been one mother of a nightmare.
Jack propelled the last ball up the ramp. “Tito isn’t coming.” Ping. Ping. Ping. “He was picked up over on Waveland and Halsted last night.” The ball shot between the bottom flippers and dropped out of sight.
Chris put his fists in his pockets. Waveland and Halsted meant Riley King. After a year and a half on the streets, Tito had finally started working for that bastard. And got caught. He was fifteen.
Chris tossed his hair out of his eyes and stuck out his chin. “So we’re not playing today or what?”
“We’re playing. You’re just early.” Jack’s eyebrows drew together. Chris pinned a basketball down with one foot and rolled it back and forth.
“You know, Chris,” Jack started. “I—”
Chris turned at the echo of a call.
“Teach is here,” he said. “Look, I gotta go. Tell ’em I’m not playing today, will you?”
Jack tried to say something again, but Chris just shot a friendly finger at Teach, traded words with the guys walking in at the far end of the court, and stopped at the bulletin board a sec before he left.
Chapter 15
Lunchtime. That’s when Keisha had told Lexie to be at the center. Jo looked at her watch as she got out of her car. 12:45. Along the street, cars sat nose to tail, and hers was no exception, her rear bumper barely outside the no parking zone.
The Night Moves Youth Center shared space with a Presbyterian Church, though the Center was not affiliated with any particular denomination. A chain link fence surrounded the tarmac surface of an overflowing parking lot, with the gym and old high school building set at the back. The gym served as a church sanctuary for Sunday morning services, then doubled as a sanctuary of a different kind throughout the week.
Basketball hoops hung from the gym ceiling on iron arms decorated with orange and yellow crepe paper. Three teens played horse at one hoop with a beat-up basketball. Their shouts and the slam of the ball against the backboard rebounded off the high ceiling and concrete block walls. The wap, wap, wap of a basketball in play and the squeak of rubber soles on hardwood floors brought back memories of Jo’s junior high days—sitting in the Jepson School section, rooting for Todd Fisher.
A back stairway led to the youth workers area. At the back of the Center, the remains of a meal littered an extra long table along one wall in the kitchen, but no one was eating now, or cleaning up. Youth and youth workers alike sprawled in the sagging couches, bean bag chairs and on the stained carpet in the “living room” area at the front, watching TV.
The nineteen-inch television with a built in VHS player had been placed in a niche in one wall. The set was boxed in with two by fours so the only way to steal it was by ripping apart the wall. An untidy stack of tapes with handwritten labels sat on a crate that served as an end table. Jo hadn’t seen a VHS player since she was a kid. She was surprised it still worked.
Laughter erupted at a ribald and profane line uttered by Martin Lawrence as he shot at the bad guys from behind an overturned car. Keisha glanced up at the same time and noticed Jo standing there. She motioned her over, standing and moving to the empty kitchen.
“What you doing here?” she asked quietly when Jo got there. “I told you I’d call when she shows up.”
Jo didn’t answer, studying the faces of those in the lounge area. There were only two grown men present. A large black man wearing a stained but well pressed white apron, and a skinny guy who kept picking at his nose while he watched the movie.
“You looking for someone in particular?” Keisha asked.
“Not really. Well, yeah, I guess. I met some guy last night who says he works here. A counselor, maybe?”
“Oh, I bet I know who it was. Deep, sexy voice, right? Hazel eyes, dark hair, good bone structure. Tight little behind?”
If it had been anyone but Keisha, she’d have denied any knowledge of the tight little behind, but as it was, she just smiled. “Add rude and uncooperative, and we have a match.”
“Well, now, that don’t make sense. Jack Prescott is a pussycat, girl, believe me.”
“Must be me then. I certainly managed to draw his claws.”
“So what did you say to the man, Jojo? I’ve seen him wait while someone spits curse words in his face, then he tells the kid to leave the Center, calm as you please. The kid did it, too, mouth shut tight.”
“You know me, Keish. I just ooze charm. It’s why so many men are beating down the door to date me.”
“This man could knock on my door anytime,” Keisha said. “Rumor says he quit a high paying practice to work at the Center, and you can just bet the man’s not getting $100 an hour working for Night Moves, girl. But never mind, don’t worry—” She held up one hand like Jo had tried to interrupt. “You’ve sworn off men, just like you said, and I’m sticking to my promise. No more setting you up with fine looking men.”
“I’m particularly leery of ‘fine looking’ men, Keish. It’s no fun competing with their egos.”
“Fine with me, woman. Open season for me, then. Jack was here earlier, I saw him unlocking the gym equipment locker. Probably in his office or something.”
“Let’s get back to Lexie. You say there’s been no sign of her?”
Keisha glanced over at the crowd transfixed by the tube. “No. I’m starting to think something is wrong.”
“Because …?”
Keisha nodded toward a skinny blond sitting in a beanbag chair in the far corner. She watched the movie with her hands clasped between her knees, eyes fixed on the screen, but face expressionless.
“I asked Sheree if she’d seen her. ‘Why?’ she asks, all suspicious-like. Like I was trying to trap her into something. Even after I convinced her I was just worried cause Lexie promised she’d be here, it was like pulling teeth to get her to tell me she hadn’t seen her since Thursday. Finally she told me that her old man’s been looking for Lexie today.”
“Her old man?”
“Meaning her pimp. That can’t be good. I’m worried she maybe got in trouble for talking to us?” She shook her head like that didn’t make sense to her. “I don’t know. Just a bad feeling I got. She was acting so strange last night.”
“I was feeling a little strange myself after seeing that Tommy the Brit she talked about. You think she was scared enough to go home to her mother instead of back on the streets? Or try to get to that aunt of hers—if she really has an aunt.”
“I doubt she could make it to Rockford, even if she wanted. Her mama now, well …” A frown line drew her perfectly plucked eyebrows together. “If she was desperate, maybe.”
“She sounded damn close to desperate last night, if you ask me. I think we should at least check it out. Didn’t you say you know where she lives?”
“I said I know the neighborhood, is all. When Lexie told me her mama used to send her to the same corner grocery I remember it was, I don’t know, like—well, hello home girl, you know? Different people owned it then, is all.”
Keisha started picking up the plastic plates left on the table, stacking them as she talked. “Why you wanna talk to Lexie so bad anyway, girl? Don’t make no sense to me. Even if somebody was following that old man, what would Lexie know about it?”
“She knows something about the funeral home where Tommy turned up. That’s a good a place as any to start asking questions.”
“Well, before we go traipsin’ all the way down to the Southside, why not talk to her caseworker first. See if the girl said anything about that mess to her.”
“Her caseworker? Someone here at the center?”
“Yeah, except I’m not sure she could say anything even if she had something to say. Confidentiality and all. You could talk to Marge and ask her what she thinks. She’s here today.”
“Marge?”
“Marge Cumpton, the Director. She can tell you if talking to the caseworker would do any good. If that gets you nowhere, then you and me can take a joy ride to the sunny Southside if you want. I get off another half hour or so.”
The main offices were on the north side of the second floor, small rooms off a narrow central hallway. Marge Cumpton’s door stood wide open and she looked up from her desk as Jo stopped in the doorway. She was in her late fifties or early sixties with a short cap of mostly graying hair. White button earrings decorated her lobes, matching the trim on her navy suit. A red scarf flamed from the breast pocket.
“Hi, I’m Jo Sullivan. A friend of Keisha Taylor’s. She said it was okay to come up.”
“Come in, sit down.” She waved toward the chair at the front of her desk. “Wait now—Jo Sullivan. Why does that name sound familiar? I’ve got it. Don’t you write a newspaper column? For Winds of Change, that’s it. You’ve been writing that new column they’re running on street life.” Her smile widened. “Well, I am so glad to meet you. I read every one of those stories. Refreshing, that’s what they are, refreshing. True to the real world. Thank you for calling attention to the people everyone would just as soon forget.”
Jo squirmed, uncomfortable with the praise. Why did people tend to attribute great humanist motives behind her intent? They were just news articles, for God’s sake. She was just a reporter—a damn good one. That’s all there was to it. And the prick of uncertainty she felt as she thought that meant nothing.
“I’m actually here hoping to talk to Lexie Green’s caseworker. Keisha said I should check with you first. When we saw Lexie last night she was really upset. I wanted to see if there was anything I could do.” It wasn’t all a lie, she told her conscience. “But Lexie didn’t show up today.”
“Lexie? Lexie? Oh yes, Alexis Green. She’s only been coming here for a few weeks. I think she’s been seeing Jeannie Hanover. But Jeannie’s gone—on vacation in Door County for the next week and a half. She has family up there.”
Damn. As if Jo had said it out loud, Cumpton went on. “I’m sorry. I’m sure she’d be happy to talk with you when she returns if you like. I think Alexis might make a good subject for one of your columns. In fact, I’m sure she would. Wait now—” The director opened a side drawer of her desk and rummaged as she talked. “I have a copy of a DVD somewhere of a new program we tried. Alexis was involved in it. Hmm, I know I had it here somewhere.” She got up to look through a file cabinet in the corner.
