It's Only Death Read online

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  “Derrick Stevens,” he said. He tightened his hand on my shoulder, turned me a little so I would have to look up at him and into the pale light of the club. I knew who he was, but I hadn’t seen him since he was fourteen. We went to the same school, his older brother, Robert Stevens, had been in my graduating class. Robert had always been friends with everybody, a real class act. His little brother seemed short in the brains department, depending on his brawn the way extremely beautiful women were conditioned to depend on their looks.

  He said, “I swear I know you. What’s your name?”

  I said, “Does Harley Jackson dance here?”

  He grinned, looking like a wolf, and licked his lips. He offered a curt nod. “I knew it,” he said, “Elmore James Jackson.” He slapped my shoulder in a playful way like we were old chums, and said, “You’re a local celebrity, you know that?”

  “I don’t pay much attention,” I said.

  He said, “I’ve been thinking about you a lot.”

  “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  He looked around, made sure nobody was too close to overhear what he was about to say, leaned in and spoke in a thin, high, reedy voice, “You still got the balls you used to have?”

  “Same balls,” I said.

  I could smell his testosterone. I wondered if he was coming on to me.

  He said, “I need some help.”

  “I’m not a psychiatrist.”

  He laughed quietly and shook his head. “No,” he said. “The cat that owns this place has a million bucks in a safe at his house.”

  “So?”

  “So, we could take it, me and you.”

  “I’m not interested,” I said. “I have enough problems.”

  “How can you not be interested in a million bucks? It’d be easy, man.”

  “Getting any amount of money is never easy,” I said.

  He studied my face for a second to see if I was perhaps joking. I wasn’t. Money, whether stolen or earned, took considerable effort. Some of it, like he was offering, came with consequences. I said, “Forget whatever half-cocked plan you have, Derrick.”

  His little kid excitement died in his eyes. He seemed offended, and had the look of a small child who had been chastised and called a fool by an older sibling. He said, “Fine. But a word of advice: watch out for my brother.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “My brother, he kind of has this thing for Harley, who is going to shit when she sees you’re back in town,” he said.

  “What do I have to do with your brother’s feelings for my sister?” I said.

  “Just do yourself a favor and avoid him,” Derrick said. “He’s a big man now, bodyguarding Fat Lou, you know him?”

  “He’s a greedy slob,” I said, smiling a little. My dad had spoken of Fat Lou many times when I was a teenager. The cops were always trying to nab the guy for something: prostitution, drugs, what-have-you. He was a jolly fat man and cared about nothing more than the game the law was playing and his own fortune. Besides the club, he was also into real estate and owned a small chain of grease pits throughout Miami called DiMaggio’s. I said to Derrick, “He’s your boss and the guy you want to rob. He’s your brother’s main source of income, you said, too? Right? Who do you want to hurt? Fat Lou or Robert?”

  “I don’t want to hurt anybody,” he said. “I just know Rob wouldn’t go for that kind of behavior.”

  “You’re a smartass kid, you know that? Who talks to somebody about stuff like this except for smartass kids who watched too many movies and think they’re a star in the making?”

  Derrick laughed. He shoved me, looking coy, said, “Saying shit like that will get you killed.”

  “I don’t think it will,” I said.

  If anything, my infamy here could work in my favor. And Derrick wasn’t any threat. Some men are still little boys inside no matter how hard they pump iron and hone their physique. Like most everybody else, Derrick thought I was the good kid who snapped, who could do anything in the blink of an eye, that I’d jump on any opportunity to buck the system and ride off into the sunset again without any feelings of remorse. That made some people step cautiously around you. Derrick studied my face, nodded again, and said, “Don’t cause any trouble in there. It might not look like much, but people come here to unwind, you know? It’s peaceful, not much in the way of trouble.”

  I said, “Does Robert like to beat up girls he likes?”

  “What? Where do you get off asking something asinine like that?”

  “If you see your brother before I do, tell him if he lays a hand on my sister again, I’ll toss him into a tank of gators.”

  Then I went inside. The bar could hold a hundred people according to the fire code plastered to the wall inside the door. There must have been two hundred sweaty, humming bodies in there; grown men in blue-collar clothes, smelling of welding rod and fertilizer and dirt; grown men in business suits with pinky rings and smug eyes; grown men who were still boys, in Abercrombie and Fitch T-shirts, blowing off steam and trying to avoid thinking about when classes started back up at U of M in the fall. Other than the way they dressed, they weren’t really any different. They just wanted to gaze openly at flesh without someone telling them they were a pig, place their expanding bellies up against the trough and rub their nose between breasts that were perky or heavy, glittered, warm, reminding them of their childhood, stirring their lust, little whispers from the working girls reaffirming for the men that they were the biggest, bravest, boldest man in not only the room, but in all the world.

  There were three stages upon which women danced. I chose not to pay them too much attention for fear that I’d see my sister stripping, or I’d see men hassling her, stupid men, really, who thought they had all the power in the world with the dollar bill between thumb and forefinger, when in reality they held no power at all over the women who thought of them as sorry excuses for the male gender. I went to the bar. An older woman with bleached hair and stone-cold blue eyes she tried to make light, and young, and playful, said, “What’ll it be, honey?”

  “Jack and Coke, please.”

  She paused a second after grabbing a fifth of Jack Daniel’s, her other hand over a tower of plastic cups. She said, “I know you, right? You ain’t been in here in a long time or something?”

  “Could be,” I said, watching the room. There were twenty fights that could break out at any second. There were at least three men who looked like they’d kill every other guy in the room for the opportunity to rape one of the dancers.

  I swallowed, my mouth dry, thinking that I had to get Harley out of this and into some other line of work. She’d been a good kid, a bright one, and it didn’t make any sense to me that she ended up doing that kind of gig.

  The bartender set my drink down by my elbow. I turned. She said, “It’s not usually this busy. We got some special girl coming in tonight or something. I don’t know.”

  I said, “Fat Lou runs this place?”

  “Yeah?” she said.

  “What do you think of him?”

  “You a cop or something?”

  A cop’s son, I thought. A dead cop’s son who likes to listen to the blues and take long walks on the beach to try and clear his conscience. I shook my head to her question, sipped my drink, tried to get her to warm back up to me but it wasn’t working, she disappeared down to the other end of the bar and called somebody over. It was dark in there and colored lights danced across the floors and walls. All I could see beyond her was a tall, dark shape, the polished skull thick and lowered so he could hear her whispering.

  I took a deep breath, figuring it would be Robert Stevens, and he was going to give me the boot before I found out who it was that had beaten my sister. From what I remembered, he didn’t have something like that in him, but people changed, I sure as hell did.

  I waited.

  A moment later I felt an aggressive presence close in on my rig
ht side. I glanced that way without expression until I saw who it was. He smiled at me and it wasn’t friendly at all. I felt something inside me shrivel up. There are bad men in the world, and then there are really bad men…

  Don Gray, my dad’s old patrol partner, must have been fifty-five, but he looked as young as Derrick, and six times stronger, although he wasn’t much larger physically. He’d always had a full head of iron gray hair, and why he’d shaved it, I didn’t know. He was even more intimidating than the last time I’d seen him cowering behind their patrol car when I broke out of the bank firing rapid shots his way. He said, “You see your mother yet?”

  “You want a drink?” I asked him.

  He held a glass out, showing me he already had one. I wondered if he was working security for Fat Lou along with Robert.

  He said, “What are you doing here, Elmore?”

  “My friends call me James,” I said.

  “Well, we both know I ain’t your friend, junior. In fact, the moment they put your mother in the ground I’m going to park a bullet in your head.” He took a long pull of his drink, stared me down and said, “What do you think of that?”

  “Is that a law I haven’t heard of?”

  “There are all kinds of laws you haven’t heard of,” he said. “Just be glad I’m a friend of the family.”

  I said, “You know who my sister is dating?”

  He finished his drink and held the empty glass as he chewed on a piece of ice. I had the unsettling suspicion he wanted to break the glass over my skull. His eyes were dark, and his voice had slurred a little. He said, “I know who she’s seeing.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Nobody you want to tangle with.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You think you’re tough because you shot somebody, right? That isn’t tough. That isn’t shit,” he said. “A five-year-old kid could do that on accident.”

  “I don’t care what you think, Don. I only want to know who beat the shit out of my sister.”

  “It’s pretty funny,” he said, “that she wouldn’t tell you herself, isn’t it?”

  “Not all that humorous to me.”

  “We got a date,” he said, “you and me. You can’t imagine how much I look forward to it.”

  I can imagine, I thought. I saluted him before he turned to walk away, but he caught it out of the corner of his eye and spun quickly, so quickly that I almost didn’t have time to turn and raise my shoulder, and his thick hand chopped into my upper arm, a strike that had been meant for my throat and probably would have crushed my esophagus. It rattled my teeth. My arm went numb and I couldn’t raise it. He grinned and leaned in, and I turned more, trying to protect my groin, expecting he would knee me there. But he said, “You’re a fucking dead kid. Dead as your old man, only it’s taken too long to catch up with you.”

  After he walked back to the end of the bar and acted like I didn’t exist, him making small talk with a tiny blonde who didn’t look more than sixteen, looking like a child on the stool next to his massive frame, the feeling slowly came back to my arm. I only had two options, really. I could hope to escape in one piece after they buried my mom, or I could hit Don Gray first. The thought of doing the latter made me queasy. But then, so did the thought of him killing me, and he would, the first chance he got.

  I hadn’t really thought about him in years. For the longest time he had just been a blurry image in my memory, and something about seeing him frightened me, and saddened me, far more than his threats. As I sipped my drink, a memory came to me suddenly and why I felt that sense of sadness became all too clear. It revolved around his daughter, Angela Gray, the only girl I had ever truly dated; a little pixie with large, playful green eyes, dark hair, another cop’s kid who understood what it was like to live with a tyrant. I’d dated Angela all through high school. She was the only girl I’d ever slept with that involved more than the investment it took to secure physical release. She had been my best friend. We spent what time we could with each other, and dreamed up a bright future that seemed beyond our reach, yet slowly seemed more plausible the longer we fine-tuned the details. She did not see herself as Suzy Homemaker. Angela had planned to open her own photography studio. I had planned to be a blues musician, a songwriter, a performer. But after I’d joined and played shows with several bands, I realized that the spotlight did not enthrall me at all. If anything, it terrified me, and to others the torture of live performance was clear in the way I had kept my eyes closed as much as possible, or how I stood like a statue in one place, little more than my toes or hands moving. Angela had a knack for her passion. She didn’t have any hang-ups like self-consciousness that I ever saw. Neither of us wanted children, we just wanted to live freely and find happiness, preferably together.

  How in the hell had I forgotten about her?

  Then I saw Harley moving across the floor, in front of the stages where other girls slid on poles of polished steel, gripping it with their well-shaped thighs and calves, hanging upside down, their breasts glistening with sweat and their arms like spindles they were so thin.

  After thinking about Angela and our dreams, and our innocence, the smells and sounds of strip club seemed garish and invasive.

  Harley wore a lacey white top that displayed her flat midriff, one button holding the blouse closed over her breasts. Her legs were long and lovely, her buttocks filling a tight pair of short shorts, the swell of them accentuated as she turned her torso from side to side and smiled at tables of men she passed. I felt a sense of great shame watching her move.

  She sat on the lap of a man who looked to be in his mid-forties. He was solid, dark-haired, wore a jean jacket with a leather vest peppered with patches of his tribe—the Tribesmen—the two of them surrounded by five other guys wearing the same biker outfits. One of them, a young guy not much older than Harley toyed with the chain that ran from his wallet to his front pocket. He watched my sister and the older man intensely, as if he expected their leader to hand her off to the group, and him in particular, at any moment.

  I was crossing the room, pushing through knots of people before I knew what I was doing. There is a dangerous quality in the way some people walk, I’ve seen it in others, an almost liquid agile stride, and I felt my body conforming to those same movements, and others, the more alert at least, seemed to sense it and parted before me, making my way easier.

  I stopped at the biker table. The leader’s name was tagged over the breast pocket of his vest: Lincoln. He had the compact build of a gymnast and looked like he spent an hour everyday doing intense exercise although he wasn’t muscle-bound like Derrick or Don Gray. His hair was dark as hell and his complexion dark from riding his bike in the endless sun. His knuckles were large and scarred. He looked from me to the other guys at his table and smiled almost shyly. I smiled at him, and then at Harley, and she looked away, acting like I wasn’t there. Lincoln didn’t acknowledge me at first either other than that small, knowing smile, but the five men at his table watched me with idle curiosity. It was probably easy for them to assume I was an ex-boyfriend, or just a pathetic guy who had a crush on a dancer and had never gotten any satisfaction. I nodded at them and the young one smirked. He said, “What’s the problem, boss?”

  His name was on his vest as well: Shane. His sandy hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in a week. His eyes were very blue and penetrating. He leaned back in his chair.

  I said, “I’m curious if any of you guys blacked my sister’s eyes.”

  “Sister?” Shane said.

  Harley said, “Get out of here, James. Please.”

  Lincoln still hadn’t said anything. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Derrick standing by Don at the bar, the bouncer and the cop watching me. I could read lips okay and I saw Robert’s little brother saying he was sorry to Don, that he should have frisked me. They thought I might have a gun on me. That was good, in a way, I figured. I said to the table, “Well? Any of you guys like beating girls?”

  Shane
said, “I don’t mind doing that sometimes.”

  “Have you done it to her?” I said, pointing my chin at my sister.

  “What if I did?” he said.

  He smirked, they all smirked, all of them except for Lincoln and Harley, who both looked very sober all of a sudden. I could see myself kicking the table over onto the kid, driving the edge of it down into his throat with all of my weight, watching that smirk evaporate and terror take its place…

  Only I couldn’t risk giving his buddies a chance to stomp me into the ground there, or give Don Gray an opportunity to act like he was breaking it up and taking me out to his car, where we could be alone and he could work on my testicles with a pair of pliers.

  But the kid, Shane, kept smirking at me and then eyeing my sister openly, a bit of his teeth showing, his jaw muscles flexing.

  I said, “You’re a pussy, kid. You should be on the stage.”

  His buddies all laughed.

  Lincoln twisted my sister on his lap so he could get a better look at me. His eyebrows were raised, he kissed my sister’s shoulder and then bumped her off his lap and she landed on the floor, stunned. He stared at me without saying anything.

  I stared back and said, “You disagree?”

  I felt myself grow light on the balls of my feet, ready to sidestep if he lunged for me, but then a soft hand settled on my shoulder. I thought it was Fat Lou there behind me, or maybe Derrick, hoping he could coax me outside where everybody could jump me and not bust the place up or disturb anybody’s good time. I looked at Lincoln. He was grinning as my sister picked herself up and dusted peanut shells off her backside. She said, “What the hell, Linc?”

  He said, “Shut up.”

  I said, “Show her some respect.”

  The hand on my shoulder tightened. I tried to pretend I didn’t feel it. All of the men except for Lincoln stood. They were more than I would have been willing to fight unless I could pull my knife—I would have been completely willing then—but then they didn’t really deserve to have their intestines draped over their beer bellies and dangling down over their knees.