Gibson knew that Barry’s backpack contained the zippered bag that the owner slipped into the bank’s night deposit slot each evening. Barry double-checked the lock on the front door, then crossed the quiet street to walk the half-block to the bank. Gibson stepped back fully into the darkness.
Barry’s footsteps grew louder as he approached, the heels of his boots clapping on the sidewalk. Soon he was inches from Gibson, his eyes focused straight ahead. As Barry passed, Gibson moved out behind him and swung the bottle violently, connecting with the back of Barry’s head. To Gibson, things seemed to be moving in soothing slow motion. Blood jumped into the light of the streetlamp, and Barry’s body thudded to the ground.
Gibson’s heart beat rubbery in his chest, but he was otherwise calm as he reached for the backpack lying beside Barry’s still form. The colors on the street were vibrant and clear. The night breeze was pleasant on his face.
For the first time that day, Gibson felt at peace. His headache, and the weight upon his shoulders, had lifted.
The messenger of Soulsville
by Norman Kelley
Cardozo, N.W.
Connie D’Ambrosio rose from her slumber and slowly rubbed her tingly right ass cheek. Normally she would have smiled remembering the sensation from the powerful slaps her posterior had welcomed the night before; she would have looked at herself in the full-length mirror and marveled at the reddish splotches on her rump. Connie had told her new lover, Douglas, that this was the only thing that carried over in her blood from Sicily, it having been invaded by the Moors, George S. Patton, and others over the centuries.
She was proud of her Mediterranean heritage, especially with people like Fellini, Sophia Loren, and Marcello Mastroianni on the world scene. Her olive complexion, a hint of melanin, meant she could pass for anything from the old, Old World: Arab, Jew, Spaniard, Greek, a southern-coast French woman, or even a Gypsy. With a head full of deep curls and raven-black hair, she knew that she was one generation away from not being considered white. When she had explained to Douglas the previous night the numerous ways in which Italian-Americans had been discriminated against (before becoming officially designated as “white” like Jews and Slavs), he merely smiled and gave her some serious tongue, working her in a way that only a saxophone player could.
But this morning there was a new sensation. It wasn’t the morning afterglow from their lovemaking, or even the receding skin-burn of a wondrous butt-slapping. No. This was an extremely localized sensation pinpointed just below the curve of her luscious right ass cheek.
She instinctively reached for the bed’s linen, only to discover that no sheets or blankets were covering her. Then she felt something else over her: burlap. She was wearing a burlap gown? The texture of the cloth almost made her ill. The thought of such a vulgar fabric touching her skin, covering her body, was beyond the pale. The finest linen, fabrics of the highest order, had graced her since birth. Constance D’Ambrosio was to the manor born: one built on the numerous misfortunes of former associates of her father, Carmine D’Ambrosio, a businessman of indeterminate affairs.
Sensing something was wrong, she rolled over to reach for the night lamp on the evening table. The cold concrete smacked her hard as she hit the floor.
“I don’t like this fucking dream,” she moaned in her Jersey-girl accent that only revealed itself under the most extreme circumstances. Slowly, she sat up and began collecting her wits, adjusting her eyesight to the darkness. She noticed a shaft of dim light slashing through the room, but what truly caught her attention was a shiny reflection off some polished surface. Two polished surfaces. Within seconds her mind began filling in the blanks and she realized that those surfaces were her shoes.
Connie tried to rise, but her foot slipped, landing her on her rump, shooting pain to the tingly spot. “Damn it.”
“Are you all right?” inquired a man’s voice from over by the shoes.
Connie scrambled backward upon the bed and drew her legs in. “Who are you? What’s going on?”
“Don’t be alarmed,” said the man. “No one is going to hurt you.”
“Where am I?” She lowered her volume. “Where’s Douglas? Do you know who I am?”
“Yes,” said the figure sitting quietly in the darkness. “That’s why you were brought here.”
“Then you know who my father is and what he’ll do to anyone who lays a hand on me! He’ll—”
“Does that include Douglas?”
Connie said nothing.
“I’m sure he doesn’t know about Douglas, nor would he approve of your taste for… what do your people call us, mouliani?”
The stains of Connie’s lust were conveyed in a series of photos that the man slid to her across the concrete floor. Though it was dark in the room, she could make out enough of the images to recognize herself in a series of explicit contortions with her black lover. She fleetingly recalled those moments of pleasure, but the wondrous feelings turned to shame and self-recrimination as she imagined her father seeing the photos. Don D’Ambrosio was a man of respect.
“Miss D’Ambrosio,” continued the man from the shadows, “we have a situation that requires your assistance.”
“My assistance?!” she shot back. “You kidnapped me! That’s what this is about, isn’t it? How much do you want? Do you think that you’ll live long enough to get it from my father? He’ll—”
“Not if he sees the photos,” interrupted the voice. It was cool and cunning. Connie had become familiar with the timbre of black men’s voices, and he sounded like one, only educated.
The photos meant blackmail. He was right: Her father would have a genuinely violent reaction if he saw them. Whatever situation she was in, she would have to get herself out of it.
“What is it that you want?”
“This is a delicate situation, Miss D’Ambrosio. We want you to call your father.”
“What?” She shook her head in bewilderment. “No.” The fear had set in. She knew the consequences of breaching her family’s honor.
“Your father has taken something that belongs to another man, and he wants it returned.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re a hostage, Miss D’Ambrosio. Your father and his associates have taken something that doesn’t belong to them, and the rightful owners want it back. At the right time, all you have to do is make a phone call to your father and ask him to return it. Nothing else will be required of you; you’ll get the photos and negatives.”
“Return what?” replied the woman. “I wake up in a sack and you hold me responsible for something I didn’t take?!”
The man stood and stepped back into the deeper shadows of the room. She heard him knock three times on a door, then a dead bolt sliding.
“Sophia Devereaux.”
“What? Who the hell is tha — Hey!”
The light that entered the room was quickly extinguished, but it silhouetted the man’s lean body in a dark suit as he left.
“Wait!” She rushed to the door, almost tripping over the burlap gown. “Look, I’ll do it!” She pounded with her small fists. “Just get me some clothes! Get me some real clothes! GET ME SOME REAL CLOTHES!”
Dr. Minister Mallory Rex’s footsteps echoed through the cavernous basement as he made his way past the warren of rooms to the stairs leading him away from the devil’s bitch that the Messenger had instructed him to cage. When he got to the ground floor of Washington, D.C.’s Temple of Ife No. 1, he told the chief sister, Maaloulou, to get the captive something better than burlap.