Brad Parks - Faces of the Gone

“Owww,” he whined.

“Keep it down,” Kevin Mack said, putting the point of the knife on the fly opening of the guy’s boxers. Yes, bad cop was definitely well within Kevin Mack’s theatrical repertoire.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Bat Boy said in a high, panicked voice.

“Take it easy,” I told Kevin Mack. Bat Boy was legitimately scared witless and I had this brief moment of ethical pause. Should I be interviewing a source who was being forced to talk against his will? For that matter, was it a good idea to willingly participate in what was essentially a forceful kidnapping? What would Editor amp; Publisher have to say about such journalistic tactics?

And then I thought, oh right, screw Editor amp; Publisher . No one was trying to kill them.

“Remember what happened the last time you did that?” I said. “Remember all the blood? I am not helping you clean that up again.”

I turned to Bat Boy. “Nothing bleeds quite like a penis wound,” I said, in a scholarly manner. “I’m not sure how familiar you are with anatomy, but the dorsal gonadal artery and the medial erectile vein converge at the base of the penis. If you sever both, you get a real gusher on your hands. You should have seen the last guy. He was hanging upside down just like you and he ended up with a face full of penis blood.”

Bat Boy looked like he was buying it. I turned to Kevin Mack.

“Hey, what did you end up doing with that last guy’s Johnson anyway?”

“Fed it to the fish, remember?” Kevin Mack said with perfect timing.

“I swear,” I said to Bat Boy. “I think this bloodthirsty bastard enjoys this.”

“Well, the fish sure did,” Kevin Mack said. “They kept pecking at it, knocking it around, having fun with it. The big fish would gnaw on it for a while, then the little fish would dart out and take a chunk. That little blue one over there in the corner, he was a penis-eatin’ fool. I swear, he’s been begging for another one ever since.”

Even though it was hard to tell through his chocolate-brown skin, I thought I detected Bat Boy blanching.

“Look, I’m sure this guy is going to be more reasonable than the last one,” I said. “Maybe if you could give me a little time alone with him, we can get this resolved, okay?”

“A’right,” Kevin said, heading back into the kitchen with Bernie, leaving me alone with Bat Boy.

I bent down on one knee, so Bat Boy and I could be face-to-face.

“Listen,” I said in a soothing voice. “I’m a nice guy. Really, I am. These other two guys? They’re not so nice. But I did them a favor recently so maybe now they’ll do me a favor and let you off easy. But you’re going to have to cooperate, or I can’t guarantee you’ll ever be able to pee standing up again. Got it?”

He nodded.

“Good, now what’s your name?”

“Rashan Reeves.”

“Very good, Rashan. That package with the pictures in it, where did you get it?”

“It was in my last shipment,” Rashan said. “I was getting four bricks and they just put it in there.”

“Who is ‘they’?”

Rashan whimpered, his eyes shifting wildly about. He bucked a little bit, but wasn’t going anywhere. The Brick City Browns were handy with knots.

“Don’t make me call in my friends,” I warned.

“I don’t know, man,” he said quickly. “They make me wear this blindfold. Honest. I do not know. The boss is called ‘the Director’ and that’s the only name I ever heard anyone call him. They say it like he all-powerful, like ‘nobody mess with the Director.’ His people come in this white van, and as soon as I seen the van, I put on the blindfold. And that’s it.”

I believed him. This Director guy seemed nothing if not organized-he was sending out memos, for goodness sake. Nobody with that level of competence would allow a street-level hustler to know much about the operation.

“So how do you know when it’s time to pick up another shipment?”

“I do it the same time every week.”

“Same place?”

“Naw, they call me and tell me where to meet them. Then I put on a blindfold and get in a van so I can’t see nothing.”

“A white van?”

“Yeah.”

Of course it was a white van. I wondered if the Director had a fleet of them, or just one. Bat Boy, still upside down, patiently awaited my next query.

“They always call you from the same number?” I asked.

“Different numbers. I think they use them throw-away cell phones.”

“They always give you the same amount of product?”

“Yeah.”

“But what if you haven’t sold all your product from the week before?”

“Don’t matter. I signed a contract.”

“A contract?” I said. Generally speaking, distributors of Class 1 narcotics were not known to be real caught up in the use of legal instruments.

“Yeah, I sign a new one every couple of months. It’s basically, like, I agree to sell so much product and they agree to provide it to me, and it’s all done out ahead of time. My contract right now is for four bricks.”

I did the math. Four bricks was two hundred bags. Even assuming he sold each bag at a $2 profit, that was still only $400 a week. So, basically, he was risking jail, getting smoked by a fellow dealer, stabbed by a wacked-out customer, or killed by his own employer-all for twenty grand a year. True, the hours were flexible. And it was tax free. But I was guessing the health plan sucked.

“And how did you hook up with these guys? Who recruited you?”

“This dude in prison.”

“Which dude?”

“The drug counselor dude,” Rashan said. “One of my boys told me all I had to do was pretend I had a drug problem, get treatment for it, and then pretend I was cured, and they would let me out early. So that’s what I did. Knocked six months off my stretch.”

Ah, the redemptive power of recovery.

“So you met a guy in counseling who hooked you up?” I asked.

“No, no. The dude who hooked me up was the counselor.”

“The substance abuse counselor?” I asked. Just when I thought I’d heard everything.

“Yeah. He took me aside one day and asked me if I wanted to make easy money selling the best stuff on the market. I heard all kinds of stories about how hard it was to get a job when you get out because no one hires ex-cons, so I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And when I got out, one of his boys found me.”

“What’s the counselor’s name?”

“Umm. .”

“Don’t make me call my friend in the next room.”

“No, no, come on, man,” he pleaded. “I’m just trying to think. . It was Mr. Hector. . Mr. Hector. . Alvarez. Yeah, that’s it. Hector Alvarez.”

Hector Alvarez. I guess that sounded like a plausible name for someone who worked for Jose de Jesus Encarceron. But it also sounded like a name my pal Rashan Reeves could have made up on the spot. There was one way to check. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Tommy.

“You have a lot riding on this phone call, Rashan,” I said as I waited for Tommy to pick up.

He answered on the second ring.

“Hey, Tommy, it’s Carter.”

“Where have you been? Tina just asked me if I had seen you.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That you were in the bathroom.”

“Good man,” I said. “Now can you do me a favor real quick? Look up and see if a guy named Hector Alvarez works for the Department of Corrections.”

We had a database of all state and local employees that, from an information standpoint, was nothing short of gold. It came to us courtesy of an Open Public Records Act request our newspaper made each year. It made snooping on public employees as simple as a few mouse clicks.