Turning Angel

”I just asked him some questions. But young master Bakic indicated an unwillingness to cooperate. He emphasized this with some well-chosen sarcastic remarks. He seemed quite pleased with himself, all in all. So I stuck my gun in his mouth.“

I shake my head in disbelief.

”To tell you the truth,“ Sonny reflects, ”even that didn’t rattle him much. I think that boy saw a lot of shit over in Bosnia, and guns by themselves don’t scare him. I don’t think he believed I’d really use it.“

”You didn’t, did you?“

Cross shakes his head slowly. ”No. But I convinced him I would.“

”How did you do that, exactly?“

An unguarded smile. ”Some things we must pass over in silence, my son.“

”Was that what I heard when I called you before the board meeting? You torturing Marko?“

”No. That was somebody else.“

”Who?“

”One of Cyrus’s guys.“

I’d like to sit Sonny down and have a talk with him about the niceties of the Constitution, but right now I have a different priority. ”Enough foreplay, Sonny. Give me what you got.“

”Marko’s basically Cyrus’s punk, okay? He registered in the student exchange program hoping to get New York, L. A., or Miami. Instead, he got Natchez, Mississippi. Imagine his dismay. Marko saw himself as the next Scarface, a young Al Pacino coming to America to take over the drug trade. But when he got here, he didn’t find Robert Loggia, an old dealer soft and ready to fall. He found Cyrus White, a kind of nightmare he’d never seen before. Cyrus recognized something in Marko, though, maybe because they had both seen war up close. He saw Marko’s ambition, and he used that to open up new markets. White markets. Through the older brothers and sisters of our high school kids, Marko made contacts in the white fraternities at LSU, Ole Miss, USM, Millsaps, Louisiana Tech…you name it. This network is far more extensive than I imagined. The Asians on the Gulf Coast wholesale to Cyrus, massive shipments moving north by several different routes. When it gets here, Cyrus sends out his boys to supply Baton Rouge, Jackson, Oxford, Ruston, Hattiesburg-all the markets Marko opened up. It’s a massive operation, Penn. Mind-blowing, really.“

The drone of an engine echoes through the trees, then a pair of headlights sweeps past us in a long arc.

”Why are we out here?“ I ask.

”My kids are inside,“ Sonny explains. ”My ex-wife hears any more about this cowboy shit, she’ll be asking the judge to modify our custody agreement. Mosquitoes getting you?“

”I’m good. Go on. You said you had something that would help Drew.“

Sonny grins. ”I know why Kate Townsend was seeing Cyrus. She was buying Lorcet from him. You know what that is?“

”Pain pills, right? Like codeine?“

”That’s right. She tried to buy it from Marko first, but he doesn’t keep Lorcet in stock. It’s more of an adult drug. The kids don’t use it much. Anyway, Marko goes to Cyrus and asks for some, but Cyrus won’t hand it over just like that. He’s curious by nature. He wants to know why Marko suddenly wants hydrocodone.“

The word ”hydrocodone“ triggers something in my mind, but I’m too interested in what Sonny discovered to ponder it.

”Marko tells Cyrus he’s going to use the Lorcet to buy the finest piece of ass in the city. Cyrus asks who he’s talking about. Dumb-ass Marko tells him, and that was that. Cyrus knew damn well who Kate Townsend was. Her picture’s been in the newspaper about twenty times over the past couple of years. Tennis, swimming, her scholarship to Yale.“

”Harvard.“

”Wherever. Cyrus told Marko that if Kate wanted Lorcet, she’d have to come to him to get it. Personally. That’s how all this started.“

”I don’t get it,“ I say softly, suddenly afraid that I do. ”Drew told me Kate never used drugs.“

”Then she was buying them for somebody else.“

Another set of headlights appears in the distance, moving slowly this way.

”Tell me about Kate and Cyrus.“

Sonny watches the lights come and go. ”Once a month or so, Kate would tell Marko she needed a new bottle. She was buying at the rate of a hundred a month. A hundred pills, I mean. She bought a hundred and fifty per visit, the last couple of months.“

”Would the medical examiner have tested for hydrocodone in Kate’s body?“

”They always do toxicology in a young girl like that, because suicide is so common. I already checked. No hydrocodone or metabolites in Kate. No drugs at all.“

”What about the sex angle? Did Marko say Kate and Cyrus hooked up?“

Sonny nods emphatically while drawing on his cigarette. ”No, but this is even better. Once Cyrus got a look at Kate, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Marko said every time Cyrus saw him he asked about her. Who she was talking to? Who she was fucking? Who had she fucked in the past? What music did she listen to? Everything. Every last detail. The guy was obsessed.“

”But Marko didn’t think they ever had sex?“

”No. She just drove Cyrus nuts, the way women like to do.“ Sonny gives me a conspiratorial smile. ”Marko thinks Cyrus killed her, man.“

A rush of excitement goes through me, but I try to stay calm. ”Can he prove it?“

”No. But here’s the gold, man. Here’s something you can throw right in Shad Johnson’s face.“

I feel blood pounding in my ears. ”What?“

”You know what that crazy Cyrus was doing?“

”How could I know, damn it?“

Sonny laughs at my impatience. ”He was tracking her cell phone. He wanted to know where she was all the time, right? Well, there are companies you can pay to digitally ping somebody’s cell phone every fifteen minutes. As long as the target person’s cell phone is on, this company can give you their GPS coordinates every quarter hour, and they’ll never know it.“ Sonny cackles with glee. ”It doesn’t evencost that much. These companies are all over the Internet, Penn. Paranoid spouses keep them in business.“

I don’t even bother telling Sonny that I knew about this technology. ”If I can prove that Cyrus was tracking Kate’s cell phone, especially on the day she died…“

”It’s looking like something just might stick to the Teflon nigger this time. And get this: Marko says whenever Kate left the apartment, Cyrus would be crazy mad. He told Marko he didn’t think it was him being black that bothered her. It was that he sold drugs. Which was crazy to him, since she was there to buy drugs.“

”Drugs she wasn’t taking,“ I murmur, my mind on Drew’s words in his car on the night he told me he was involved with Kate: Ellen’s addicted to hydrocodone… You can’t imagine Ellen popping Lorcet Plus like M amp;Ms? ”Goddamn it,“ I whisper.

”What is it?“

”Nothing.“

”Don’t bullshit me, Penn. If it’s something I need to know, tell me.“

”It’s not,“ I assure him, wondering if Drew could really have sunk that low. ”Give me the rest of it, Sonny.“

”You’ve got most of it. Except that Marko’s scared shitless.“

”Why?“

”Because Cyrus doesn’t need him anymore. Now that Cyrus has the contacts at the colleges, Marko’s just one more middleman he doesn’t want to pay.“

”That’s good,“ I reason, thinking like a prosecutor. ”Maybe Marko will testify against Cyrus to save his ass.“

Sonny grins. ”He’s considering that as we speak.“

As we stand in the silent darkness, I realize it’s not silent at all. The high-pitched drone of crickets is almost a scream, and a spring breeze rattles the millions of oak leaves surrounding us. Across the road, a car engine starts, and a pair of headlights clicks on.