That last fact got my attention. That and the soft sound I heard in the distance. Police sirens. Fading, then returning. Now a bit louder. A neighbor must have heard the shots. I looked at the snub-nosed Smith and Wesson. That’s how it falls sometimes. I pocketed the gun and made my way through the house. The red fog inside my head was slowly beginning to lift. I could hear the cruisers clearly now. Sounded like more than one. They’d set up out front and seal off the back. I didn’t hurry, but I didn’t dawdle. Instead, I was just about deliberate as I jumped over the fence and into the alley behind the Woodses’ house. I wondered where Janet was with her kid. I saw a curtain twitch at the window to my left. Fucking neighbors. I turned up the collar on my coat, slipped over one fence, then another, threading my way through backyards, heading away from the corpse.
I surfaced a half mile away, on the 5900 block of North Kilpatrick. I walked lightly down the street. My car was parked on Ionia, a block or so from the body. I hoped the cops didn’t canvass the area and take down tag numbers. It would be a big job for the uniforms. Then again, the dead guy did work for the mayor.
I’d taken twenty-five good steps down Kilpatrick when I knew things weren’t going to work out just so.
“Excuse me, sir.”
The voice came from my left. It belonged to a cop. He stepped out from the shadow of a brick three-flat, gun drawn and at his side. I could hear his partner, moving in the yard behind me. He’d have his gun out and up, trained on my left ear. That’s where I would aim and I wouldn’t be messing either.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Where’re you coming from, sir?”
I figured the neighbors had gotten a look at me. Described a man in a dark overcoat, wearing gloves with a black knit hat. Couldn’t be too many of those in the neighborhood. Especially carrying a recently fired Smith and Wesson revolver. One that would happen to match the slugs pulled from a corpse two blocks north. I lifted my hands and turned, slowly, toward the man in blue.
“There’s a gun in my coat pocket, right side. Another on my hip.”
I felt his partner grab me from behind. Felt the steel cuff slip around one wrist, then the second. The snub nose was taken from my pocket. The two cops looked at it, looked at me. One of them slipped it into a clear plastic bag. The other took the nine millimeter off my belt and began reading me my rights. Like I said, sometimes things don’t always fall just right.
CHAPTER 34
I was alone in my cell. Not quite alone. The snub nose was there. At least, in my mind. Last time I saw it was on a bookshelf in my office. Behind a copy of the Iliad. That bothered me. More than anything had bothered me in a long while.
A buzzer rang and my cell door slid open. Three-hundred-plus pounds of black man in an orange jumpsuit creaked into the bunk below me without a word. The cell door slammed shut and we were alone. I could hear voices from somewhere down the hall, harsh angry sounds, the buzz of violence humming just underneath. A metallic lock turned over and a second door slammed somewhere close. Then it was quiet again. I stared at chunks of grayish plaster curling off the ceiling and wondered how much of it was asbestos. A long slow bout with cancer, however, was the least of my worries.
“White meat.”
The voice came from the depths below. It was a voice without malice, without anger. Just a lethal sort of boredom.
“Name’s Kelly,” I said and tried to slow down time as much as I could. If I had to fight, I’d fight. That was how it went inside. Unless you preferred a shank in the stomach, that is.
“Kelly, huh. Heard them guards talking ’bout you. Said you was a cop. Done up for murder. I’m thinking you ain’t Kelly no more, boy. Just white meat.”
My new friend laughed and shifted his body weight in the bed below. I swung off my bunk, boots first, and caught him flush with a size ten in the side of the head. The connection felt good. His head slammed back against the iron post of the bed frame. That felt even better. I dragged him by the shirt, out of the bunk, and onto the floor. He was heavy and out of shape. He was also most likely a killer, locked up with me in a space eight feet long by five feet wide. Best not to take any chances. Before he could get to his feet, I kicked him again, twice more, solid shots to the back of the head. He was groggy now but still with it. I ripped his shirt over his face so he couldn’t bite me. He got one hand around my windpipe and began to squeeze. I wrestled him over to the toilet, broke his grip, and drove his head to the bottom of the metal bowl. He came up for air after about ten seconds, his head slipping free of the shirt. I waited for him to say enough but he wasn’t saying anything. Just blowing air and trying to grab at me. I was behind him now and that wasn’t going to happen. The key was to keep things moving. Keep him off balance. No time to think of a way to get the advantage. I moved him off the toilet and back to the bed. I’d stripped off my pillowcase before he’d even entered the cell. Now I whipped it tight around his neck and began to squeeze from behind. His body was still on the floor, his face and neck soaked and lying on the side of the lower berth. We’d been at it less than thirty seconds and had barely made a sound. I thought I had another fifteen to twenty seconds left in me. Either he’d be dead, I’d be dead, or we’d come to an understanding. I leaned close to my cellie’s ear.
“You want to fuck with me? That what you want?”
I twisted the linen tighter around his neck and looked for the results in his face. The mouth was open now. Eyes bulged white and red in their sockets. I could see his chest, full of air that had nowhere to go, and his tongue, playing between a set of yellow teeth and silver fillings. I leaned in again.
“We got a problem, I’ll finish this right here. Like you said, I’m done for murder anyhow. Up to you, friend.”
I waited. My cellmate gave the slightest nod of his head. I loosened my hold on the pillowcase and he slammed forward into the bed. Taking in great reaches of air, spitting up some blood.
“Fuck the matter with you?” he gasped.
I kicked back up onto my bed. Wary but willing to believe it was finished.
“What’s your name?” I said.
“Marcus.”
“Well fuck off, Marcus. I ain’t nobody’s meat. And if I have to kill a motherfucker like you to prove it, that’s okay too.”
Marcus was leaning forward on his bunk now, rubbing his neck, grabbing some more air and giving me a look of proper disdain.
“If I want you cut, white meat. You get cut.”
“You think so?”
“I do. Now stash all the fucking Rambo shit. I don’t want to fight you. Just seeing if you was going to be a bitch in here or what.”
“Now you know.”
“Okay, now I know.”
“Great, Marcus. Now leave me the fuck alone.”
“You a grouchy ass,” Marcus said and spit some more blood onto the cement floor. Then he eased back down in his bunk. I did the same. Marcus, however, couldn’t leave it alone.
“You really a cop?”
“Not anymore.”
“Who you kill?”
“Shut up, Marcus.”
“Was it a bitch? I killed a bitch of mine on the South Side a while back. Shit, ten years ago now. Screwing my brother, you can believe that. Not what I’m in here for though. Fucking cops too dumb for that.”
The buzzer rang and a skinny white guard came up. He carried a badge, a nightstick, and a bad complexion. He looked at me, looked at Marcus, and looked at some of Marcus’ blood on the floor.