She was his music and he soloed magnificently, blowing hot, unashamed jazz licks. Triple-tonguing the instrument. Playing riffs he never thought possible. His embouchure so flawless the mere touch of his lips made her come to life beneath him. Nice 'n' easy and then penthouse-wild and finally jail-house jam. Kissing the delicate hollow of the throat, the edible declivity of the lower tip, the back of the knees, above her metatarsal arch, the delicate ligatures; tactile symphony of smokin' hot, mouth marmalade. And then easing out in a dreamy coda and back for a steaming, cookin' finish to blow minds, loving each other with the loose insouciant ease of soulmates.
And they loved it. It had never been better between them. And after a long time Rita turned and whispered, "Oh, boy? The memsahib would like to fool around with the natives again? Speak to me, gun-bearer."
But he was gone.
The mob had hit Spain's home in Ladue and gone through it like a cyclone. Leveled it. Buddy Blackburn's live-in lady had come home from Walmart's and felt something clamp over her mouth and suddenly she was in an awful world of danger and pain.
"We want Frank . . . Spain . . . understand?" It was the softness of the voice. The mock gentleness of the swarthy, scarred man who held her face cupped in one of his huge hands. Other men were holding her arms behind her.
"I don't —" Her face was being crushed by a grip of steel.
"No. You . . . ain't . . . listening. You say I don't again I give you to Shake. He likes to hurt women. Where . . . is . . . Frank?"
She blinked back tears and thought carefully. These men were going to kill her. She tried to talk and remembered she hadn't breathed in a while and took in a big gulp of air and gasped as she sobbed, "Our little gir . . . he hired . . . this you know, this . . . detective and he . . . Frank said ..." And she started crying and somebody had an arm twisting her hair the pain her shoulders elbows dislocating pulling hurting. "He was a private detective. Traskle or something like that, I swear . . . That's all I know. I don't know where Fr —"
"You did a no-no," the scarred man whispered. "You said I DON'T."
And she heard a raucous laugh as he made the lights go out.
* * *
Willie Ray Campbell was his name and he was about 379 million miles away from Jack Eichord ethnically, spiritually, mentally, anywhichway. Any honkie was galaxies and races apart from the North St. Louis ghetto that was home turf to Willie Ray. Yet Jack and Willie would touch, in a way, as strangers sometimes do, when destiny beckoned with her long and crooked middle finger.
Unblinking, hard, midnight-deadly. Outrageous and old-timey do-rag over his conk. Perfectly razored pussy-tickler drawn in a straight black slash over a cushiony pair of swollen-looking Naugahyde lips, Willie Ray looked the part. Big cokey nostrils. 110-proof Jamaican straight gangster with a dangerous, sullen mood, a nose full of bad dream, the stale tuna taste of unwashed twat on his tongue; 229 pounds of snatch-licking, rum-sucking, coke-tooting, pipe-packing, mean motherfuck of a no-nonsense nigger.
Standing out there on the corner of Struggle and Die, out there with the bad bros and the fierce fros, out to scuffle up some geetus, out to COP, you understand, 'midst the chicken-shack, chump-change, no-dick, no-chance, bust-out shooters, street-dealing hustlers, bogus flimflammers, sugar pimpin' chile macks, hos, bros, and fros. Out there with the junkie hypes, black bloods and princes of the netherworld, with allllll them other assholes, waiting to hear on some fucking humbug sham charges The Man had trumped up the way that terrible, worthless, chuck white devil likes to do. Keep a man down. Shhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttttttt!
Hi five to a boy he knew.
"What it is."
"Yeah—down."
"Keepin' on."
"Same old same ole'."
"Work it on out. Later." They parted with the sign. Past Soul Food and HairQuarters and Barbee-Q, the smell of hot home-boy cookin' comin' over and gettin' into his blow.
"Doctor Good," he greeted the man behind the counter.
"Say Hey, Willie Ray. Today's the day."
He finished his soul food, shot the shit with the brother for a while, and walked back out and stood around on the corner jivin' with the passersby.
A mean street subghetto called Sunset, the shacks across the tracks from the projects. Willie Ray "married" to a pouty little mama who had started tricking part-time. Bringing him a little trap money. He'd done a little plundering outside the family. Moved up to some gunwork. A little hit-and-miss action to cover some mistakes he'd made in his stock portfolio, don't you know? He'd been all right if he'd stayed with smack and snort and shit, but he hadda go be a big goddamn fucking GANGster. And now Willie Ray
Campbell was standing there waiting for the next load of deep shit to get dumped on him.
Waiting for nighttime and the sound of sirens that was the symphony of the subghetto after dark. Waiting for the neon night and the smells of this open prison that held him like a black, stinking armpit in the shadow of the high-rises — Willie Ray could have taught them about soul. Miles of that motherfucker. Taught those whiteys how to talk that talk. Bunch of jive no-good shit. And as if she'd heard the thought, Destiny's bony fingers curled around her quill and she dipped it in the darkest ink and added the name Willie Ray Campbell to the shit list.
Many miles away, on the other side of St. Louis, a man who called himself Carl Duncan at the moment, a.k.a. Frank Spain, was printing Willie Ray's name midway up a list of names. C-A-M-P-B-E-L-L. Proving that no matter what they say, it doesn't always pay to get your name in the paper.
* * *
Jack "met" Willie Ray a couple of days later. He'd been working on his revised, updated "family tree" and crime chronology. On it the crime families were the international automobile industry. It was a thing he sometimes did as a learning trick — giving things a metaphorical identity. He looked at the National Council or Commission as the CEO and VPs from the big automakers. The Colombians and Syrians and other factions were the Japanese car market — hated competition but in bed with the Americans. He gave Sally Dago the rank of general as in General Motors. Tony Cypriot, Gaetano Ciprioni, was the admiral in charge of Ford. Rikla was Oldsmobile and Measure was Buick, and so on.
Certain patterns in the kills had begun to emerge. There was something else. A thread running through all the gangland wet work. Drugs? An internal power play by a rogue lieutenant? Who was left? The X factor. It was in the murders at the lower end of the spectrum. Jimmie the Hook Russo and Lyle Venable still both appeared to Jack to be gang whack-outs. But the way wise guys were turning up missing, and the civilian hits — something there. His mystery madman involved.
Eichord had not been watching his television or hearing a radio that morning so he had no idea there'd been another hit — a black dope dealer tied to the family, two cops and a bus driver had all been killed in another bombing. So he was doubly amazed to learn that Paul Rikla, his "Buick" competition also now dead and gone, was waiting at Police Headquarters to "turn state's evidence." Rikla wanted protection, as he had told a bewildered cop.
Rikla had "given himself up," as he put it, because of a black dope dealer by the name of Willie Ray Campbell. They'd never met. Campbell, thirty-two, coal-colored, with Son of Kong lips and smack-brown eyes, was aboard a federal prison bus headed for extradition to Kansas, where he was wanted for bank robbery.
When the television newscaster had reported the story about Willie Ray being extradited he had accurately referred to him as an "alleged narcotics dealer in the family headed by Paul Rikla. Rikla, owner of the Rikla Towing Service, is believed by police sources to be tied to the sale of narcotics and child pornography in the St. Louis area. Rikla, allegedly an underboss in the Dagatina organization, could not be reached for comment."