The Cut (Spero Lucas) (22 page)

He turned and walked off the porch, retracing his steps. He went back to the alley, and at the rear of Holley’s house he vaulted the fence, picked up the Stinger off the ground, and headed for the back door. He looked to the right and left and saw no one and took the iron steps up to the door. With
one hand gripping the rear handle of the ram and the other on the top handle, he swung the heavy steel bar with great force into the door a few inches from its lock, and he felt the door give. The sound did not seem alarmingly loud to him, and he swung the Stinger again, putting his hips into it, and the door splintered and moved, and Lucas kicked the heel of his right boot into the same spot with a grunt, and the door opened and he stepped inside. He closed the crippled door with his back.

Lucas was in a small kitchen with old appliances and a sink filled with dirty dishes. The room stank of unemptied garbage. He placed the Stinger ram on a cheap laminate countertop scarred by burn marks. He walked from the kitchen into the living room and did not stop to look around.

Lucas knew what every burglar knows: people, straight and criminal alike, keep their cash, jewelry, and valuables close to where they sleep.

There was no second floor, only a crawl space. He found the bedroom that looked to be Holley’s by virtue of the fact that it held the largest bed. It was the master; there was a bathroom inside accessed from the room. Lucas went into the bathroom, saw men’s toiletries, long black hair in the sink, a shower stall covered with mold. A tube of mascara and lipstick, no doubt left behind by one of Holley’s tricks.

Lucas went back into the bedroom and surveyed it. An unmade king with no headboard; a cheap particleboard dresser with three drawers, an open cigar box doubling as a jewelry box atop it; a large velvet wall painting of a full-figured woman, naked, on her knees; a poster of the zodiac
signs showing men and women coupling in various positions; and a closet filled with shirts, slacks, sport jackets, and shoes.

Lucas drew the blinds and closed the curtains. He got down on his chest and looked under the bed. There was nothing but dust bunnies there. He stood, threw the sheets back, drew his Leatherman from its holster, and pulled from it a small but very sharp serrated blade. He cut the mattress open from head to foot and cut it crosswise and inspected its stuffing and springs. Nothing. He went to the dresser and pulled its drawers one by one, emptying them onto the floor, tossing the drawers in a jumbled heap to the side. He looked in the cigar box, saw several bolos, cuff links, and rings with glass jewels, and he emptied this onto the floor as well. With his hand he swept off whatever was left on the dresser and felt his face grow hot. He removed the velvet painting from the wall, held it aloft, punched his right fist through its center, and dropped it. Lucas heard himself laugh.

That’s for sending the little man
.

He went to the closet, which had no door. He pulled all the clothing out by the hangers and tossed it onto the bed. There were many pairs of shoes lined up on the floor, side weaves, fake gators, country-to-the-city, boat-to-America shit, and Lucas kicked them to the side and got down on his haunches and saw the plywood wall in the back of the closet that was obviously false from the way it hung. He got a grip on its edge and pulled it back and he smiled.

There were three ghetto safe-deposit boxes on the floor behind the false wall, stacked on top of one another. Lucas picked up the stack of Nike shoe boxes and put them on top
of the dresser. One by one he opened them, and inside he saw banded stacks of cash. Twenties, hundred-dollar bills, tens, and fives.

The cell rang in his pocket. He pulled it and answered.

“Yes.”

“It’s me,” said Waldron. “Our boy came out a massage parlor ten minutes ago. I’m guessing he got his self yanked.”

“And?”

“Seems to me he’s headed back to his house. He just turned off Georgia onto Missouri.”

“I need ten minutes,” said Lucas.

“Copy that.”

BOBBY WALDRON
passed the Lincoln on the right, raced ahead, and got back into the left-hand lane. Now he was in front of Holley. They were on Missouri Avenue headed east. At the red light at the 9th Street cross, Waldron came to a stop. Ricardo Holley braked the Mark V behind him, his left turn signal activated. Waldron, wearing a pair of Bobster wraparound goggles with amber frames, checked the rearview. He waited for Holley to look down at his cell, the modern habitual stoplight behavior, and when he did, Waldron put his truck in reverse and gave it a touch of gas. The Lariat rolled back slowly and tapped the fender of Holley’s Lincoln. Waldron quickly threw the shifter into park and stepped out of his truck.

Holley got out of his Mark and limped forward, his face set in an angry frown. The light turned green and horns sounded as both men walked toward each other. The traffic
on Missouri streamed by. Waldron and Holley met in the street, four feet apart. Holley towered over Waldron. Waldron spread his feet.

“What the fuck you think you’re doin?” said Holley. “You backed into me.”

“No, I didn’t,” said Waldron calmly. “You hit me.”

“Motherfucker—”

“That’s not necessary, sir.”

“You—”

“I
saw
you, sir. You were looking at the screen of your cell phone. When the light turned green you came forward without observing that I was still stopped.”

“That’s not true. It’s not.”

“Is there any damage to your car, sir?”

Holley turned his head and inspected the bumper of the Lincoln. There wasn’t a scratch on it.

“That’s not the point,” said Holley.

“Maybe you’d like me to phone the police.”

“No, I
don’t
want that.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Motherfucker, I want you to
apologize
.”

Waldron stared impassively at Holley from behind amber lenses and spoke in a monotone. “I told you, sir. That kind of language is completely unnecessary.”

Ricardo Holley looked at Waldron, his redneck haircut, his redder than red sunglasses, his arms and shoulders stretching out the fabric of his long-sleeved shirt, had a picture of some white sucker riding a motorcycle. Holley had eight inches on the man standing before him, and reach, but
the short man had quiet confidence. And with that tree stump build of his, he would be hard to hurt. Still, if he were twenty years younger… but he was not.

“Apologize,” said Holley, because he could not give it up.

Waldron said nothing. Holley’s face darkened and he limped back to his car.

Waldron got into his truck and drove away. Down Missouri, near Kennedy, he phoned Lucas.

“He’s one click away from his house,” said Waldron. “He’s on his way.”

RICARDO HOLLEY
pulled up in front of his bungalow and killed the Mark’s engine. He was running a little late for the meeting at the warehouse, what with the extra time he’d spent with that Korean gal, but he decided to come back to his crib and pick up his bottle of high-dose naproxen, which he’d forgotten that morning. The prescription painkillers did help to soften the pain in his hip. Doctor said that the bone deterioration since his shooting all those years ago was “pronounced,” and that he should think about getting the replacement surgery, that is unless he wanted to be physically impaired for the rest of his life. Holley knew what they did to you in that operation; they took a table saw or something like it to your ass. Just thinking of that saw cutting into his bone made him sick. He’d stay on pills and gut it out.

Holley got out of his vehicle, went up to his front door, turned the key, and stepped inside his house. Right away he sensed that something was off. He could smell the foreign perspiration in the room. The light was different than it
should have been, straight back in the kitchen, for this time of day. He had lived here many years and he knew.

He moved quickly to the kitchen and saw that the back door was open and listing, its frame splintered. He looked out into the backyard. There was no one there, no cars in the alley. He turned and limped back through the house toward his bedroom, hearing his own heavy breathing, and then he was in the ruin of his bedroom and he knew he’d been violated and tossed.

For a moment he stood frozen, staring at the mess. His dresser drawers and clothing heaped on the floor, his mattress sliced both ways, his jewelry in various places about the room. That nice painting of the full-figured freak he’d bought at that flea market on Morrison, a hole punched through its center, its frame busted up.

He felt his hands shaking. He moved to the closet, empty of clothing. He knew before he saw the piece of plywood lying haphazardly on top of his best pairs of shoes. Knew before he saw the empty space where the Nike boxes had been.

He felt dizzy. He stumbled back and turned and made his way into the bathroom. He needed to run some water on his face. He looked at the mirror and saw the message, in big bright letters, written in red lipstick across the glass.

You Lose, Rooster

If the neighbors had been home, they would have heard Ricardo Holley’s howl.

L
UCAS COUNTED
the cash when he got back to his apartment. There was ninety thousand dollars, in various denominations, stacked in the boxes. He was on a high since he’d burgled Ricardo Holley’s house and left the childish message on the man’s mirror. And then, staring at the money, he grew puzzled.

Anwan Hawkins had told him that the initial theft of the first package had occurred several weeks before they’d first met. The second package, taken off Lisa Weitzman’s porch, had disappeared a week before they met. Another full week had elapsed before Lucas began work on the case, due to some work he had previously committed to Tom Petersen. A third package was stolen in Northeast the day Tavon Lynch and Edwin Davis had been murdered. Three packages, worth roughly one hundred and thirty thousand dollars each on the retail level, which equaled close to four hundred thousand dollars. Even allowing for the six weeks that had elapsed, even allowing for the cutting up of the money, for
the payoff to Holley’s crew and to Tavon and Edwin, if they were paid at all, it was highly unlikely that there would only be twenty percent of the take left. Ricardo Holley did not seem to be the type to allow his minions to spend frivolously and potentially draw unneeded attention. The man himself drove a car that was twenty years old. Where had all that money gone?

It was curious, but it was less pressing than the problem at hand. He’d completed the task for which he’d been hired, which technically meant that he was finished. But Lucas knew that for Holley and his men, it couldn’t be over. They’d come at him now.

Lucas counted out his forty percent, which came to thirty-six thousand dollars, then took a hundred-dollar bill from the stack and put it in his pocket. He stashed the rest of the thirty-six grand in one of the Nike shoe boxes he had taken from Holley’s house. He placed the remaining fifty-four thousand dollars, which would go to Anwan Hawkins’s ex-wife, in another shoe box. He tore up the third shoe box and threw it away. He carried the other boxes back to his bedroom and set them down. He went to his closet, where his shoes sat on a small throw rug, and he pulled the throw rug, carrying the shoes with it, completely out of the closet.

Beneath the rug was a cutout that Lucas had made in the floor. He had done a clean job of it, and Miss Lee would most likely never know. He pulled on a hinged ring he had set in a grooved-out section of the wood, and the piece came free. Beneath the cutout, in a solid-bottom frame, also constructed by Lucas, sat a steel Craftsman toolbox that had belonged to his father. Lucas placed the two shoe boxes on
top of each other beside the toolbox. He replaced the wood piece, fitted it properly, put the rug and his shoes back over the cutout, and closed his closet door.

He locked his apartment, took the stairs down to his separate entrance, and went outside to try and find one of his neighbors, a young man named Nick Simmons. Simmons was on the street, standing by his Caddy. The car was parked in front of Nick’s father’s house, a wood-shingled colonial with a large front porch. Nick was working under the hood, rag in hand.

“Hey, Nick.”

“Spero.”

Nick Simmons stood to his full height. He was a tall man of twenty, had hang-time braids, was physically imposing but not aggressive, and wore a mustache, long sideburns, and some kind of business on his chin.

“What you up to?” said Lucas.

“Just checkin the fluids,” said Nick. “Trying to beat those idiot lights.”

He owned a rare and sharp 1990 baby-blue-over-dark-blue Eldorado coupe with gold spoke Vogue wheels. His father, Sam Simmons, who worked for the US Postal Service, had gone in on half of it and loved it as much as his son did. Nick’s mother was deceased. The father had kept him in line and made him stay in school. He was in his second year at Howard. He was always broke.

“You about to find some work this summer?” said Lucas.