J. Kerley - The Broken Souls

“Harwood exploded like a volcano?” Harry asked the rearview mirror. “Think it has anything to do with our case?”

I thought a moment. “He was a smug smart-ass, a gamester,” I said to the back of Harry’s square head. “Probably didn’t make a lot of friends. Could have been payback.”

“Or just some bad prune-o,” Harry said, referring to an alcoholic concoction brewed up in prisons everywhere. “What’d he say about Taneesha?”

“He was being a funny boy, but when I mentioned her murder it was like throwing ice water in his face. He serioused up a bit, said she was naive and didn’t know how the world worked. And that he was going to be set up when he got out. He wasn’t going to be a day laborer anymore.”

“Set up? Like being taken care of financially?”

I said, “That’s what I took it to mean.”

“So Harwood thought Taneesha didn’t know how the world worked?”

“We’ve met a hundred guys like Harwood, Harry, how do all of them think the world works?”

Harry thought a moment. Looked in the rear view.

“You got enough money, you do what you want. When you want. To whoever you want.”

“That about sums it up,” I said.

To Lucas it looked like any deserted warehouse near the State Docks: brown brick, busted windows with boards behind them, shattered glass on the sidewalk. There was a single door in front, rippled steel painted green, the kind of closure that retracted upward. A loading dock was to the side of the building, strewn with crumbling pallets. He could smell the river in the distance.

Lucas took a seat on a short wall a quarter block away, dropped shoplifted sunglasses over his eyes, and watched as twilight settled in. Friday night would be a good night, Lucas figured. If, that is, the name his five hundred dollars bought wasn’t bogus. If he’d been lied to by the guy, he’d go back to that bar and cut the obese bastard’s lying throat – what was his name? Leroy Dinkins? – slice Leroy’s fat throat open like a –

“Clouds, Lucas. Concentrate on the clouds.”

Lucas heard the words in his head and closed his eyes. He replaced the violent thoughts with pictures of clouds. White and puffy and gentle. Clouds from earth to sky.

“Float on the clouds, Lucas,” he heard Dr Rudolnick intone in a hypnotist’s voice, deep and soothing. “Float like a boat on a calm pond. Breathe away the anger as you float. Out goes a breath, out goes anger…Let it flow out like water.”

Lucas listened to Dr Rudolnick for two minutes, breathing deeply and floating on the clouds. When his eyes opened, he felt calm and refreshed.

He resumed watching the warehouse. The street was one-way. Semis drove by with containerized cargo racked on trailers. It was almost twilight before the first car arrived, a Corvette as white as snow. The second, a half-hour later, was a black Benz. Forty-five minutes passed before the third car rolled into view, a silvery T-bird, a classic. The green door swallowed them whole and quickly.

I bought the right name, Lucas thought, slapping his knee in delight. I invested well. He stood and ambled to the warehouse. Stars were beginning to poke through a darkening sky. He walked past the door to the corner of the building, leaned against it and waited.

Twenty minutes later he heard a vehicle enter from a block down, headlights shining across the deserted street. The car stopped and Lucas figured the driver was phoning inside the warehouse. Seconds later, he heard a whining electric motor and the sound of the door ratcheting open.

He stepped around the corner and saw the taillights of a gold Lexus disappearing inside the warehouse, the door dropping like a portcullis. Lucas sprinted to the door and rolled inside the warehouse.

A dozen vehicles sat in the wide space, several little more than automotive skeletons. The burp of pneumatic tools punctured air smelling of petroleum and cigarettes. A short man, bald, his outsized arms blue with tattoos, jumped from the Lexus, eyes widening when he saw Lucas.

“Who the fuck are you?”

Lucas stood and brushed himself off. “I’m looking for Danny or Darryl Hooley. They around?”

The guy yelled, “Intruder!”

In seconds Lucas was surrounded by three men in grease-stained denim, two holding tools, the third pointing a black pistol at Lucas’s midsection. The men muttered among themselves as Lucas stood with his hands held innocently out to his sides.

“Who is he?”

“Guy rolled under the door.”

“Somebody get Danny.”

“He’s coming.”

A trim, thirtyish man appeared from the rear of the building, pencil tucked behind one ear, cigarette above the other. Red hair flowed from his head. He wore a blue work shirt tucked into denim jeans. A few steps behind him was a younger and skinnier version of the same man, hippie-long hair ponytailed with a blue bandana. His T-shirt touted one of the Dave Matthews Band tours.

“What do we have here?” the older man asked, raising an eyebrow at Lucas.

“It’s a bum,” one of the grease monkeys said. “I think.”

The man with the weapon said, “He said he was looking for the Hooley brothers.”

The older man slipped the cigarette from behind his ear, lipped it, lit it with a chrome Zippo. He blew a smoke stream to the side, his eyes never leaving Lucas.

“What do you want to talk to them about?” he said. “The Hooley brothers?”

Lucas smiled, crossed his arms, returned the man’s gaze evenly.

“I want to schedule a presentation,” he said.

Saturday arrived, the day of Dani’s Channel 14 bash. The Franklin case had overridden the mental circuitry I use for day-to-day transactions, and I’d neglected to rent a tuxedo. I was out gathering materials to build a storage rack for my kayak when I had the memory-jogging fortune to pass a formal wear shop by the University of South Alabama. I know tuxedos as well as I know theoretical physics, and had let a young, spike-haired clerk prescribe one for me.

“Nothing old and stuffy,” I instructed, remembering this was a big deal to Dani. “Something classy and contemporary.”

At five, I put on the leased tux and headed to Dani’s, pulling stoplight stares on the way, a guy in evening wear piloting an eight-year-old pickup painted gray with a roller.

Dani lived at the edge of the Oakleigh Garden District, stately homes from the 1800s. It was a lovely old home and Dani had lined the walk and fronting trees with flowers. A white limo sat at the curb of her modest two-story, the driver leaning back in his seat and reading the Daily Form. I parked ahead of the limo, walked the tree-shaded and flower-bordered walkway to her door, knocked, let myself in. Her living room was bright and high-ceilinged, with an iron fireplace at one end and a red leather grouping of couch and chairs at the other. A scarlet carpet bridged the distance. It was cool inside and smelled of the potions women use for bathing.

“Dani?”

She entered from the dining room. Her gown was a rush of red from shoulders to ankles, sleek and satiny and melded to her slender form.

“Helluva dress.” I grinned and slid my palms over her derriere.

“Whoa,” she said, grabbing my hands and stepping away. “Gotta keep the wrinkles out, at least for a while.”

“Of course,” I said. “Sorry.”

She had a chance to take in my rakish evening garb. I expected delight, instead received a frown.

“Where did you get that thing?”

“Tuxedo Junction. By the university. Très chic, no?”

“It looks like something Wyatt Earp wore.”

I patted the crushed-velvet lapel. “The kid at the store said it’s a western cut. Very popular.”