calypso music, laughing people, golden-yellow sponge-painted walls, and the smells of coconut shrimp and curried chicken.
Cindy was at the bar in the front room. She was wearing pink with a sparkling barrette in her hair and was putting down a cold one.
She waggled her fingers and at the same time gave me the evil eye. She was unhappy with me. I knew why, and I didn’t blame her.
I ordered a root beer and when the bottle was in my hand, I took a swallow, and then I tried to make peace with my friend.
“I know you’re pissed at me.”
“I’m pissed at Richie too, so go ahead, both of you can take it personally.”
“I brought you something,” I said.
I opened my bag, took out a printout, handed it to Cindy, and watched her expression change.
“Oh. No. I mean. This is one of the Ellsworth house victims?” She was staring at the artist’s sketch of Jane Doe, the woman whose head was in Claire’s cooler.
“We need the public’s help in identifying this woman.”
“What else can I say?”
“She may be the victim of a crime.”
“And what about Ellsworth?”
“I’ll tell you what I can, but don’t say that she was found at Ellsworth yet, okay? We’re not ready to officially open the story to the press.”
“And what about unofficially? The Post has the damned story, Linds,” Cindy said. “Everyone does.”
She was mad, but she was clutching the drawing and not letting it go.
“I’ll tell you officially when I can. But we can go off the record now.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“Seven heads were exhumed. All of them are female, buried over the course of a number of years. We can’t identify any of them. We don’t have a clue what happened to them, how they were killed. We don’t know anything.”
“If I write that, I’m going to have to apply for a job at the post office.”
I guess my frustration was showing, and maybe some panic too, because Cindy was saying, “Okay, okay, Linds. Calm down. Take it easy,” as Yuki and Claire came in together.
Cindy settled the tab. About forty-two seconds later, the four of us were at our booth in the back room and had ordered jerked pork and pitchers of beer. Yuki was off to the races about how in love she was with Jackson Brady.
And speak of the devil: Brady picked that minute to call me and tell me he needed my butt back at the Hall.
Chapter 32
That night, Revenge sat in his Hyundai SUV, engine running, under a shot-out streetlight on Sunnydale Avenue, an ugly and dangerous artery that wound through the decrepit heart of the Sunnydale Projects. All around him, packed tight and wall to wall for a square mile, were squalid housing units on streets dominated by two violent and warring bands of thugs, the DBG and Towerside gangs.
A four-dimensional map of these badlands and its occupants was engraved on his mind — every unit and alley in the projects, every felon, juvenile offender, innocent citizen.
Revenge was watching both vehicular and pedestrian traffic centered on the Little Village Market up ahead at the intersection of Sunnydale and Hahn, and he was also focused on a block of tan stucco housing units to his right: two stories high with bars on the lower windows and burned-out grass between the footings and the street.
A shadow emerged from between two units.
It was Traye, a slouching young man wearing a ball cap and baggy gangsta clothes that swallowed his slight build.
Accompanied by the pulsing music pounding out of cars and windows, Traye made his way across the avenue, slipped into the passenger side of Revenge’s car, and slumped below the line of sight.
He was nineteen and had burn scars on his neck and arms from a meth-lab explosion that had occurred inside his housing unit while he was playing outside, almost out of harm’s way.
The boy had survived, but he had never had much of a chance until a year ago, when Revenge took him on as a confidential informant.
Revenge said, “I spoke to the arresting officer. He’s not going to show up in court.”
“You for sure?”
“I said I’d get the charges dropped.”
“You say so.”
Revenge gave the boy a paper bag. Inside were three meat-loaf sandwiches his wife had made for Traye, a bottle of chocolate milk, a bag of Chips Ahoy, twenty dollars, and a pack of smokes.
The boy opened the bag, unwrapped a sandwich with shaking hands, and said between bites, “I don’t got nothing for you.”
“It’s okay. Take your time.”
Revenge dialed up the volume on the radio. Car accident on Mansell. Domestic violence on Persia. Backup requested at the Stop ’n Save. It was a slow night.
The boy chugged down the milk, put the twenty inside his shoe, rolled up the mouth of the bag, and then put it under his shirt. He looked at Revenge.
It was thank-you enough.
“I gotta go.”
“Another time.”
Traye got out of the vehicle, crossed the street to the alley between the buildings, and went from there to a basement hole, where whatever was left in the bag would be commandeered or the kid would get hurt — or both.
The man known as Revenge worried about Traye, wondered how long he would survive. Another year? Another week?
Deafening so-called music grabbed Revenge’s attention, coming from a car heading up the avenue behind him. He checked the mirror, saw the black BMW with the death’s-head stencils on the chassis.
Okay.
Now things were getting interesting.
Revenge put the SUV in drive and when the BMW passed him, he pulled out into traffic behind it.
Chapter 33
Revenge knew who was driving the BMW and who was going along for the ride.
Jace Winter, Bam Cox, and Little T Jackson were small-time drug dealers with long sheets for heavy crimes. They forced children into theft and females into prostitution; they broke down families; they caused destruction and desperation; and they sent young kids toward certain death.
They were, in a word, scum.
Revenge took a Boost phone from his glove compartment. He’d confiscated it during a bust and it couldn’t be traced to him. He dialed 911 as he drove up Sunnydale, the BMW’s taillights in view right up ahead.
The 911 operator asked him what his emergency was, and he put on a ghetto accent stained with panic.
“They’s a shooting going down right now. Oh God. They’s shooting at cops. They shot a cop!”
