Done for a Dime (32 page)

“Sounds to me,” Mack Silas said, “you got plenty goddamn effect.”

Miss Carvela rose from her chair. “I have had just enough vulgarity, gentlemen.”

Dan stepped toward Mooney. “I think that’s your cue. We’re done.”

Mack Silas slid up, grabbed his arm. “You gonna take a seat now.” The first thing he said quietly. Dan shook him off, but the big man regained his hold, two-handed now. “Don’t mess. Hear?” They struggled for a second in the middle of the room. Then, with a swiftness Toby hadn’t seen since his days watching playground fights, Dan snapped his arm free, spun around, and landed three fast punches—the nose, the throat, the stomach, right, left, right. Mack Silas bent double, staggered back, and dropped hard to one knee, the breath coming out of his mouth in a soupy whistle.

“Stop it!” Miss Carvela pointed to Mooney. “Stop this.”

Mooney just stared. A smile formed. “Seems to me pretty much stopped already.” He made a gesture of peace to Dan, then told his man, “Plant yourself in a chair someplace.” He looked from face to face, Miss Carvela, Dan, Toby, to be sure they were all appeased. Then he turned, eased toward Nadya, gesturing to the picture in her hand.

“Can I have that back, miss?”

Nadya held out the picture and Mooney took it from her, but instead of returning it to his pocket he studied it himself for a moment, thinking. Slowly, he sat down beside her, placing the picture on the coffee table and positioning it so they both could study it together.

Finally, he glanced up, trained those honey-colored eyes on her. “It’s hard sometimes, for people like yourself, to understand what it’s like. Be accused of something you didn’t do. Go to prison for it.” His face was blank, not threatening, not kind. His voice was soft, hypnotic. “For folks like us, it’s everyday. That don’t mean, though, we gonna sit still for it.” He glanced at the picture, tapped it several times with the tip of his middle finger. “Now, unless I’m mistaken, the po-lice didn’t quite get what you had to tell them. Might be their fault. God knows that happens. Then again, maybe you didn’t understand how important it was. So maybe we ought to work on that.”

He glanced around the room, face to face, as though to be sure everyone agreed. He’d made no threats; he’d crossed no lines. This was too important to get wrong. Turning back to Nadya, he continued, “I’d like to know if you’re gonna tell them again what you saw, okay? ’Cause to me, sounds like you saw this Manny, same one tangled with Mr. Carlisle, outside that house. I believe that. I do. Maybe it’s buried inside, maybe you’re scared, but you know—you
know
—the truth. You know what he looks like, you saw him there, front yard, pull out the gun, rain comin’ down. Boom.” He mocked up a gun with his hand, lowered his thumb. “
Boom.
Am I right? Say it. Like I’m the po-lice. Tell me what you saw.”

The warehouse was U-shaped and stood on a three acre lot, surrounded by an aging hurricane fence. The grounds showed long neglect, waist-high grass thick with weeds and haphazard piles of toxic debris—old paint, dirty motor oil, rusty cans of acetone and other solvents—fruits of illegal dumping. Spotlights once lit the perimeter, gone now, victim to kids who’d used rocks. Same with the windows.

“I know the crowd, one that squats here,” Manny said. “This won’t work. They’re smart.”

Ferry steered around the southerly side of the building, down a strip of buckling asphalt outside the fence line. “Guess that means we gotta be smarter.”

He’d cased the building. The squatters numbered half a dozen at most, and they clustered in the northeast corner. You could tell by the black plastic hung where the windows used to be. Given the need to hijack water and power, there was no advantage to spreading out. They’d be at the opposite corner of the project. The place was big enough, they might as well be in a different neighborhood.

“There’s a toolbox, behind the seat,” Ferry said as he killed the motor. “Got a bolt cutter inside. Get it out and follow me.”

He went around back, opened the doors, and took out the first tub. Manny brought the bolt cutter, holding it like a dowsing rod. “What about light? How we gonna see?”

“Stay close.” Ferry closed the door and headed for the fence.

Someone—kids again, or vandals, or the same toxic dumpers, Ferry supposed—had cut a passage through the fence along the rear perimeter, the clipped edges of the chain link weathered with rust. A truck yard and loading dock waited beyond. Thistle and blackberry sprouted through cracks in the asphalt. The rusted clamp on the tether on a fifty-foot flagpole chimed metal-to-metal in the wind.

“First door on the dock, this side, that’s where we’re headed.”

They crossed fifty yards of busted asphalt, weaving past scattered junk and thorny coils of blackberry bush. Manny stumbled twice, Ferry reaching back each time without a glance to drag him along. Their steps echoed in the silence as they neared the warehouse wall and climbed up the iron stairway to the loading dock.

“Give me the bolt cutter.”

Ferry took the tool from Manny and cut the weatherworn padlock on the roll-up door. He eased the door up, one hand on the corrugated metal to keep it from rattling. It snagged a foot from the floor, the rollers thick with rust. He had to work it free with a gentle up and down, needing to clear no more than the distance required to slip in the tub with the flare sticking up. “Don’t just stand there. Help me, work the other side. Gentle. No noise.” Manny joined in. They rocked it up and back, inch by grating inch, till they had the clearance. Pushing the tub in first, they crawled in after.

“I can’t see. It’s like pitch-black in here.”

Ferry knelt. “What’s to see?” Pushing the tub against the wall, he eased the lid off, then ripped off the cap of the flare. “Make a wish.” He struck the tip of the flare twice and it caught. A willowy spume of white smoke rose as the flame burned hot and bright. Not pitch-black now. He saw the exposed framing of the wall above the flare. Old dry wood.

Manny stared at the flame. “Can we stick around, out in the van, I mean. At least watch the first few minutes?”

“You can’t be that stupid. Come on, move.”

They slid back beneath the door, jogged across the asphalt. Ferry nudged Manny along, the kid wanting to turn back every few steps. He lost his hat going through the fence, fumbled around in the grass for it. Ferry’d had enough. He grabbed the kid by the ears, hissed into his face, “You fuck around like this the whole damn night, I swear to God, you’ll pay.”

The space beneath the open roll-up door grew brighter with a rubbery light. The flare had hit the floater layer of diesel fuel.

“We’ve got five minutes. Run.”

“You ain’t even trying,” Mooney said.

“I’ve been trying ever since it happened,” Nadya replied.

“Not hard enough.”

“You have no idea how hard I’ve tried.”

Mooney rose from the couch, tapping the photo of Arlie against his knuckles with growing impatience. Nadya, her face ashen, remained seated.

“She didn’t see what happened,” Toby said, stepping in to protect her. “There’s no other way to say it.”

“Oh, well now.” Mooney uttered a caustic little laugh. “That’s deep.”

Toby sighed and shook his head. “Think what you want.”

“What I
want
?” Mooney’s eyes flared. He looked at Toby like he wanted to shake him. “What I
want
is to set the record straight. I didn’t shoot your daddy. Arlie didn’t, neither. I know. He was with me. But I ain’t puttin’ my head on a chopping block to prove that point.”

“Course not,” Toby said. “Better to use her head.”

Mooney stared at him, eyes dull. “Like cops gonna fuck with a white girl says she saw who really killed your daddy.”

“But something did happen downtown. Between you and Pops. That’s not just made up.”

Mooney recoiled a little, clenched his fist to his lips, then wagged a finger.

“Your daddy.” He turned toward Veronique. “I mean no offense now, a’ight?” Back to Toby. “But your daddy, he had a mouth on him. Arlie was just minding his own, outside Fielding’s Liquor’s, no bother to nobody. Up walks trouble. Your daddy, tacked to beat Jesus. To’ up from flo’ up. But he ain’t done for the night. Heads on in, buys himself a pint, then swerves on out and lights right into Arlie. No cause.”

“You were there.”

“That point, yeah.”

“So Arlie wasn’t just minding his business. He was minding yours.”

Mooney pressed his hands against his chest. “I am a
promoter
. I stage
events.
I provide
a venue.
Arlie and other folks I employ, they bring the people in.”

Sarina Thigpen sat listening, a sad, faraway look in her eye, like this was the one last thing she needed to believe. Mooney’s two men sat there, too, Mack Silas still rubbing his midriff, Chat Miller tapping his callused fingers together between his knees, otherwise the two of them inert as stones.

“He’s handin’ out handbills—”

“Handbills?”

“
Handbills.
I go down, check it out. That’s my
job.
Your daddy, half in the bag, starts callin’ Arlie and his whoadies a bunch of punks. ‘Dumb as ducks,’ he says, I remember that. Arlie asked him nice, ‘Mind your own, old man,’ but your daddy’d have none of that. I step in, try to broker the peace. Your daddy just escalates. Off on me, now. Me, his sister here, calling us names I won’t repeat outta respect for the dead. Took out a matchbook, all theatrical and shit. ‘Tell you what, Mooney,’ he says. ‘You want my house, you put down on this matchbook what you think it’s worth. Then stick it up your ass and strike.’”

Toby had little trouble picturing the scene. Meanwhile, sensing another scolding on the way, Mooney spun around. “I’m just repeating what he said, Miss Carvela. His words, not mine.” He did a little conciliatory nod, then spun right back around to Toby. “Some point, enough is enough. Arlie stepped in, gave your daddy a nudge.” He demonstrated, hand on Toby’s shoulder, like waking a sleeping bum. “Told your daddy to go on home, before he embarrassed himself.”

“A nudge,” Toby said.

“Just.”

“Then?”

Mooney shrugged. “Staggered his wackity ass on up the hill and that’s the last time I saw him. Me and Arlie both.”

Miss Carvela rose from her chair. Tufts of silver hair had sprung loose from their pins; she looked eccentric, fragile. “James Mooney, you will leave now.” She pivoted, made eye contact with Veronique and Arlie’s mother, Mooney’s two men. “All of you.”

“I told you I meant no disrespect, Miss Carvela. But this business is crucial.”

“I said get out.”

Mooney just stood there, like he hadn’t quite heard right or didn’t want to. A meanness crept over his face. His eyes flared and he marched to the window, pointing out into the night.

“Where’s the money come from, people up here need cash? Millie and Big John Summers need to patch their roof. Serella Jones got to get a new furnace, Mazy Roberts a water heater. Other folks—you want the names, I’ll give you the names—fix the dry rot in the bathroom or the plumbing, build an add-on for the grandfolks they gotta take in. Who, I’m asking. I’ll tell you who. They can go to one of those check cashing joints, like Payday America, get ripped off that way. Or they can sign up with the thieves down at Frontline Financial. Bleed the needy. Christ, you even got real estate brokers coming up here, pushing hard money seconds on people, just so they can foreclose.”

He scoured every face with those cold amber eyes, making sure everyone was paying attention

“People can put up with that. Or they can come to me. I’ll pay off Payday America or whoever, so you can get out from under the nine hundred percent yearly vig. You pay me a straight ten percent, no compound interest, no bullshit fees on top of fees.”

The vehemence built as he talked. He’d schooled himself. He was proud.

“You need to refinance, I’ll take a deed of trust, ten percent again, straight as a rod—sure, it’s above market, but you tell me where people up here gonna find a deal like that. You got a dozen houses on this hill sitting empty, people run out of their homes. That ain’t me. Know why? I believe in the neighborhood. Call me names, go on. But hear me out—I am the one source of money on this hill who’s jake for real with folks up here, knows what they go through, how they gotta struggle, gives a good goddamn about it.”

Miss Carvela locked eyes with him. “To hear such talk. Make yourself out like Jameson Carswell himself.”

“I can live with that. Man I admire.”

“He built these homes up here.
Built
them. What can you honestly say you’ve—”

“Miss Carvela, don’t push now. There are things you just don’t know.”

“I shudder to think what happens when people foolish enough to trust you can’t pay.”

Mooney’s eyes went wild. “How many people up here lost their homes ’cause of me? None. Not one.” He was shouting. Veins bulged in his neck. “Those homes Frontline foreclosed? I sent her”—he pointed at Veronique—“to the bank auctions, tried to outbid the loan folks and the vultures show up at those things, buy back the property so folks could stay put. Had cash in hand, just like they wanted. But every time, property got yanked off the bidding block. Every goddamn time. Not because folks paid up, got a grace period. Unh-uh, nothing like that. Because the properties got sold on the sly. That’s illegal.” He looked to Veronique for confirmation. “Something’s goin’ on, Miss Carvela, I don’t know what, but every one of those houses is just sittin’ on that hill, no fix-up, no turnaround, no nothing. If it was me there’d be people living there. You ought to give me props, thank me, ’stead of trying to shame me way you do.” He pointed again at Veronique. “Ask her, you don’t believe me. Go on. Ask.”

Veronique winced at the focus, avoiding the glances that turned her way.

“I’ve got a question.” It was Toby. He stared across the room at his aunt. “What’s all this have to do with the forged deed you recorded?”

Veronique shot up straight, eyes livid. “That’s a lie. I forged no deed.”

“Okay, Exeter did.” Toby nodded toward Mooney. “Or he did. Why else would Pops lump you together the way he did, home in on you two wanting the house?”