George Pelecanos - Soul Circus

WHEN McKinley opened his eyes and his vision cleared, there were a couple of men in the room with the girl, all of them standing over him, talking about him like he wasn’t there. It was Strange and the white boy, the one he’d chased down the alley. McKinley burped and smelled the garlic and meat on his own breath.

“Look who woke up,” said Quinn.

“Told you he was all right,” said Strange.

McKinley was propped up against the plaster wall. His hands were together behind his back, and he moved to separate them. They were tied. He went to move his feet, and they were tied, too. McKinley turned his head to the side and spit out some blood. He rolled his tongue in his mouth. His teeth ached and one of the side ones he chewed with was loose. It was just kind of sitting in there, connected by threads. He could move it all around with his tongue.

Strange had fucked him up. That thing in his hand, looked like a sap, it must have been what he’d hit him with. He was slipping it into his back pocket now. And there was his own new Sig sticking out the waistband of the man’s pants. This man has no idea what I can do to him, thought McKinley. None. But the thinking made him tired, and he closed his eyes.

“He’s going out again,” said Quinn.

“He’s just resting,” said Strange.

“What now?”

“We make a trade.”

Strange took McKinley’s cell phone off his belt holster, getting down in front of him. He grabbed McKinley by the chin in the spot where he had laid the sap up into him. It opened McKinley’s eyes.

“That doesn’t smart too much, does it?” said Strange.

“Motherfucker,” said McKinley sloppily.

“Mind your language,” said Strange. “What’s your boy’s cell number?”

“His name is Mike,” said Devra, her arms crossed with her purse clutched tight, looking down hard at McKinley.

McKinley gave Strange the number and Strange had him repeat it, knowing it hurt McKinley to talk. He punched the number into the cell.

“He gets on the line,” said Strange, holding the phone to McKinley’s ear, “I want you to tell him to bring the boy here. Tell him the condition you’re in, and how important it is that he not even dream about doin’ anybody any violence. Because you will be the first one to suffer. Do you understand?”

McKinley nodded. He listened to the phone and said, “Mike ain’t pickin’ up.”

“Leave a message when it tells you to. We’ll try again.”

They did, with the same response. And tried again, ten minutes later. McKinley left his third message, and Strange stood.

“Get her out of here,” said Strange to Quinn. “Take her back to her apartment. I’ll be in contact with you by phone. We’ll meet up in a little while.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Talk to our friend here alone,” said Strange. “We got a few things to discuss in private.”

Devra Stokes spit on McKinley on her way out. Neither Strange nor Quinn moved to stop her.

AFTER Quinn and Devra left, Strange shut down most of the lights in the house and returned to the living room. On the floor was a lamp with no shade, holding a naked bulb, and he picked it up and carried it over to McKinley. He placed it beside him and left it on. The bulb threw off heat, and its glow highlighted the bullets of sweat on McKinley’s forehead and the tracks of it moving down his face.

Strange got back down on his haunches and pulled up McKinley’s wife-beater, exposing his chest and belly.

“What you doin’?”

Strange drew his Buck knife from its sheath. He held it upside down and pressed the heavy wood-and-bronze hilt against the blackened area of McKinley’s jawline. McKinley recoiled as if shocked.

“That hurts, I expect,” said Strange. He moved to press the spot again but did not make the contact. “What’s your partner Mike’s full name?”

“Montgomery.”

“And where’s he stay at?”

McKinley gave him the address. Strange asked him to repeat it so he could remember, and McKinley complied.

Strange rested one knee on McKinley’s thigh and put his weight there. He touched the edge of the blade to the area below the nipple of McKinley’s right breast.

“You got titties like a woman,” said Strange. “You know that?”

“Man, what the fuck you doin’ ?” said McKinley in a desperate way.

Strange moved the knife so that the blade now rested with its edge above the purple aureole of McKinley’s nipple.

“You put your hands on that girl, right about where I’m touchin’ this blade. Didn’t you, boy?”

“I didn’t mean to hurt her. I didn’t cut her, man.”

“You like the way this feels, Horace ?”

“Don’t.”

“You tellin’ me?”

“God damn , don’t be cuttin’ on me with that knife.”

“You gonna leave the girl alone, right?”

McKinley nodded.

“The boy, too.”

“Both of ’em, man.”

“ ’Cause I don’t want you gettin’ near her at all. Her or her son, you understand?”

“I hear you, Strange. We good, right?”

Blood splashed onto Strange’s hand as he sliced into McKinley’s flesh, sweeping the knife savagely across his breast.

McKinley bucked and screamed. The tendons stood out on his neck as he writhed from the pain. The scream became a sob that McKinley could not stop. Strange found it odd to hear a big man cry so free.

“Now we’re good,” said Strange, wiping the Buck off on McKinley’s shirt and sheathing it. “You just sit there and try to relax.”

STRANGE moved the lamp as close as it would get to McKinley. The heat from the bulb, he guessed, was now hot on his face. Strange then dragged a chair over and set it before the fat man. He had a seat.

McKinley had stopped sobbing. His breathing had subsided to a steady wheeze. The dirty flap of nipple, nearly severed and dangling off McKinley’s chest, had begun to turn from purple to black. The blood had stopped flowing from the cut Strange had made.

“What now?” said McKinley, elbowing the lamp away from him as best he could. “Ain’t you done enough?”

Strange drew the Sig from his waistband. He pointed it at McKinley’s face and moved his finger inside the trigger guard. McKinley’s lip trembled as he closed his eyes.

Strange lowered the gun. He turned it and released its magazine, letting it slide out into his palm. He checked to make sure a round had not been chambered.

“Just wanted you to experience what you put that girl through,” said Strange. “That kind of helplessness.”

“ Fuck you, man.”

“I’ll just keep this.” Strange stood, the magazine in his hand. “You can have the rest.”

He dropped the body of the.45 onto McKinley’s lap. McKinley was cut, bleeding, and beaten. Worst of all, a piece of his manhood was forever gone. McKinley was past being frightened now. One eye twitched, and a thread of pink spittle dripped from his mouth.

“What makes me so different?” he said.

“What’s that?”

“You out here trying to save Granville Oliver, and at the same time lookin’ to harm me? Shit, him and me, we’re damn near the same man. He ain’t no better or different than me. I worked for him when I was a kid.”

“I know it,” said Strange. He had been thinking the same thing himself, trying to separate it out in his mind.

“So why?”

“Cops, private cops, whatever, they got this saying, when one of y’all kills another one like you: It’s the cost of doing business. What it means is, you got your world you made, and we’re in it, too. And no one outside that world is gonna shed tears when you go. But it’s an unspoken rule that you don’t turn that violent shit on people you got no cause to fuck with.” Strange slipped the magazine into a pocket of his jeans. “You shouldn’t have done what you did to that girl.”