"Isaac was your good buddy huh?" he said.
Theo didn't answer, which brought MacDonald's boot to his belly. Theo went over on his side, the wind gone from him again.
"You seem to have a knack for making friends with the wrong people, pal."
Theo stayed low, the right side of his face on the floor. Obviously MacDonald wasn't part of the undercover team, but Theo was beginning to think that MacDonald knew why Theo was in jail – and didn't like it one bit.
"Get up," said MacDonald, as he grabbed Theo by the collar. "In the chair."
Theo sat in the interrogation chair, his cuffed hands behind the backrest.
MacDonald faced him directly, boring the blunt end of his nightstick into Theo's chest. He turned it like a screwdriver as he increased the pressure, which hurt like a bitch.
"Nobody sits at Moses' table on his first trip to the cafeteria," said MacDonald. "Nobody but you."
"He invited me," said Theo.
"Just like that, he decides you're his new pal."
"Yeah," said Theo. "Just like that."
MacDonald bent over and stared straight into his eyes, close enough for Theo to smell the coffee on his breath. The guard said, "I can see this is gonna be a real painful lesson for you, boy."
He jammed the nightstick into Theo's groin, and Theo fell to the floor again. Theo looked up at the ceiling, but he could barely see straight. He rolled onto his side and assumed a fetal position. It had been a long time since he'd felt pain like this.
MacDonald was circling again, taunting him with that tap of the nightstick against the palm of his open hand.
"You and your buddy Isaac Reems stained my perfect record with that escape."
"It was his jailbreak."
"But you helped. That's why you're here."
The residual stabbing pain in his testicles was still making it difficult for Theo to form coherent thoughts, but that last remark suggested that MacDonald didn't know anything about Theo or his actual status. This "interrogation" appeared to be about nothing more than a petty correctional officer's bruised ego.
Theo was still lying on his side. MacDonald stepped behind him and pressed Theo's fingertips beneath his boot – slowly at first, then harder, as if trying to mash them into the concrete. Theo grimaced in pain but tried not to cry out, refusing to give MacDonald the satisfaction.
"Lucky for you, I'm a nice guy," said the guard. "I'm gonna give you a chance to help me earn back my superstar reputation."
"Is that so?" said Theo, grunting through the pain.
"Yeah. Looks like your buddy Moses killed a state trooper tonight. Shot him right in the face."
Theo said nothing. Somehow, it didn't surprise him.
MacDonald said, "You and me are gonna work together now. We're gonna catch Moses."
"What're you talkin' about?"
"I kept my eye on you and Moses. I saw your buddy-buddy act in the cafeteria. I watched you two scheming in the stairwell."
"Just jail talk, man."
"My ass," said MacDonald. "Moses blew this county five minutes after he was released. Got in his car and headed north. Police got a BOLO out, but nobody knows where he is now."
Theo's fingers were going numb, which lessened the pain. "Can't help you, dude."
"Yeah, you can. I think you know exactly where Moses was headed when he sot out of TGK."
"I don't know nothin'."
MacDonald raised his boot off Theo's fingers and gave him a kick to the kidney. This time, Theo couldn't stop from crying out in pain. He couldn't tell anyone about his undercover status – the deal was that he would take whatever came, like a regular inmate – but he wasn't sure how much longer he could keep this up.
And even if he told him, MacDonald wouldn't believe him now.
The guard knelt at Theo's side and whispered in his ear, his voice taking on the perverse and gleeful edge of a sadist: "I got all night, tough guy. We'll see exactly what you know."
Chapter 31
Uncle Cy couldn't sleep.
Lightheadedness had forced him to leave the bar early tonight. It had come on right after Jack called to tell him that a guy named Moses had an O-Town Posse tattoo and killed a state trooper just hours after his release from TGK. Distressing news, but it didn't account for Cy's dizziness. That damn doctor still didn't have his blood pressure medication right. Cy went home and climbed into bed. It felt like the bad old days when he would drag himself home from his gigs, fall onto the bed or sometimes even the floor, and fight with the spins as he tried to find sleep.
Funny thing was, Cy had played his sax so much better when he was high. Or so he'd thought as a much younger man. The owners who fired him from the hottest clubs downtown, the managers who banned him from the big hotels on Miami Beach, the musicians who refused to play with him again – they were all racists or Uncle Toms trying to keep the black musicians down. He kept moving from one gig to the next, drinking, sniffing, snorting, popping, shooting along the way, burning bridges everywhere he went. Eventually he couldn't find work anymore – except in a place like Homeboy's, that dive of a joint where Theo's mother used to hang out. Night after night, he watched her, stoned and stumbling from one bar stool to the next in search of a twenty-dollar trick. When those pockets were emptied, she'd turn to the street. Everyone knew that story's ending.
Except that her death really wasn't the end of anything – especially not now, with Isaac Reems's promise hanging out there for Theo to grasp.
Cy sat up in the darkened bedroom and draped his legs over the edge of the mattress. Things were spinning again. A little blood in his head would sure have been nice. He allowed a minute for it to pass, but the mattress was turning, then the floor, and then the entire room. Slowly at first, but steadily gaining speed. The motion was counterclockwise, as if carrying him back in time and to another place – a snippet from his past that he had all but erased. It was rushing back to him now, and even though his room was a blur, his memories played like a movie in his mind's eye.
A LOUD POUNDING ON the front door woke Cy from a deep sleep. It took him a moment to recognize his surroundings. Not his bedroom. It was the living room. He'd passed out on the couch this time. That was one way for a man of so much talent to cope with playing a hellhole like Homeboy's.
More pounding on the door. He forced himself up and shuffled across the room. The morning sun assaulted his eyes the moment he opened the door.
"Cyrus Knight?" the man on the porch said.
His head was throbbing, and the cotton mouth was so bad that Cy could barely form words. "What of it?" he said.
The man flashed a badge, as did the younger guy with him. They introduced themselves as Harmon and Kittle, homicide detectives. Harmon was clearly the veteran, teeth stained from years of addiction to coffee and tobacco, his face creased with the lines of too many crimes, solved and unsolved. Kittle looked too young to be a detective, still battling acne and his hair buzzed like a high-school jock.
Harmon said, "We'd like to ask you a few questions about your niece."
Cy scratched his head and cleared his throat. The blinding glare of the sun forced him to keep one eye closed. "It's about damn time you guys come around," he said. "Come in."
"That won't be necessary," said Harmon.
Cy glanced inside his messy apartment, then back at the detectives. A couple of white guys in an all-black neighborhood. "What's the matter? My place ain't good enough for ya'?"
"Seen worse," said Harmon. "This will just take a couple minutes."
"Couple of minutes? This isn't jaywalking. A woman was murdered."
"How can you be so sure it was murder?" the younger detective asked suspiciously.