subsidized housing. The dilapidated buildings look like sets built for a Blaxploitation flick from the seventies, like you could walk up and push them down with your foot. Thirteen big saltboxes grouped on the edge of St. Catherine’s Creek, all centered around a massive square of asphalt crowded with one of the strangest collections of motor transportation in the nation.
At least fifty people are sitting or standing within sight of me. The oldest ones sit on their stoops beneath dented metal awnings. The middle-aged stand in little knots, the men sharing bottles wrapped in paper sacks, the women holding babies. I don’t see any teenagers-it’s as though they’ve been drafted for some special war-but several toddlers walk unsupervised through the parking lot. Three of them are naked.
”How long has he been gone?“ asks my father.
Dad is referring to James Ervin, a retired black police officer he has treated since the 1960s, when he was the doctor for the Natchez police department. After Dad agreed to help me get into Brightside Manor, he recruited Ervin to make the initial foray into Jaderious Huntley’s building. Ervin graciously agreed, and also volunteered his beat-up pickup truck for the mission.
”Eleven minutes,“ I answer.
Dad clicks his tongue against his teeth. ”I don’t like it.“
”Let’s give it a little longer. Ervin sounded calm before he went in.“
Dad nods thoughtfully.
When I called him from the lobby of the Eola, he and my mother were only minutes from leaving for Jackson with Annie. He told me he’d visited Brightside Manor many times in the old days, which to him means the era when he made frequent house calls. Back then, he carried a spotlight and a pistol in his black medical bag. He rarely makes house calls these days, but he still has patients who live at Brightside Manor. He understood my anxiety about visiting the place uninvited, but he felt confident that with him along for the ride, we could do it. I was inclined to believe him. No white doctor in this town has treated more black patients than Tom Cage. More important, he’s treated them exactly as he treats his white patients, and the black community knows that.
Today could be the acid test of that goodwill.
Our plan was to send James Ervin up to Jaderious’s apartment to verify that the informant was inside. Then we would go up ourselves, pretending to make an emergency medical call at number 28. This subterfuge was primarily designed to protect us, not Jaderious; that it might also give the snitch some cover is incidental.
The ring of my cell phone makes us both jump in the seat.
”Hello?“ I say, putting my cell on speakerphone.
”Your boy’s up here,“ says James Ervin. ”He tried to rabbit. I’m holding a gun on him now.“
”Damn,“ says Dad. ”I didn’t know James took a gun up there.“
”Bring your black bag,“ Ervin says. ”He’s more likely to talk if we give him an out with Cyrus’s people.“
”We’re on our way,“ I promise.
Any hopes that we might make a covert approach to Jaderious’s building were dashed when we arrived. Our white faces began to draw attention as soon as James Ervin left the truck. A lot of people have pointed at our truck, but no one has yet confronted us. If we weren’t sitting in such a junky vehicle, they’d probably think we were cops. They may think that anyway.
Dad and I are both armed, but something tells me we should leave our guns behind. Dad doesn’t agree, so we compromise. I leave the Browning behind, but he brings his small Smith amp; Wesson.38-the ”Lady Smith“-in his bag. We cross the parking lot with purposeful strides, but not too fast. People sense fear the same way animals do. We’re just two guys with a job to do.
Two white guys.
I’m glad one of us is over seventy. The people milling around the buildings don’t know what to make of that.
Like most apartments in the South, the staircases at Brightside Manor are outside the buildings. We climb to the door that James Ervin entered fifteen minutes ago, give a perfunctory knock, and walk inside.
The stink of burnt grease and garbage hits me like a sucker punch. Jaderious Huntley is sitting on his hands in a wooden chair at the center of the front room. James Ervin stands eight feet away, a nickel-plated pistol in his hand. Sonny’s notes said Huntley is twenty-eight years old, but he looks forty. He’s wearing nothing but a pair of gym shorts, and his torso is so gaunt that I wonder if he’s eaten in weeks. His face is hollow, his eyes set deep in their sockets. If he’s a drug courier, he’s been using the product he carries for a long time.
I walk to the chair and kneel in front of him. ”Let’s make this quick and painless, Jaderious.“
Refusing to meet my eye, he shakes his head as though he’s being addressed by a moron. ”You don’t get it, dog. You done killed me already.“
”I tried to do this long distance. You wouldn’t play.“
Huntley leans back and folds his arms. He seems to equate this gesture with donning a suit of armor. ”I ain’t saying
Ervin’s face remains as unmoved as the face of a cliff.
”You’re right,“ I say patiently. ”We’re not cops. That’s why you’re looking at this the wrong way. You’re thinking that if you don’t tell me what I need to know, I’m going to have you busted for that old drug charge.“
Jaderious sniffs with the arrogance of an exiled dictator. Then he begins picking his fingernails.
”But I’m not going to do that,“ I go on. ”Because it doesn’t help me any. No, if you don’t tell me what I need to know, I’m going to put it out on the street that you’ve been Sonny Cross’s snitch on Cyrus for the past year and a half.“
The informant’s whole body jerks.
”Then I’m going to give your name to the task force. They’ll haul you over to Tracetown and question you for about six hours. And all your homeys will know about it.“
”You can’t do that, man!“ he cries, shaking his head violently.
”I don’t want to. Because if I do, you won’t see the end of the week. Maybe not even the end of the day. And I really don’t have anything against you personally.“
Jaderious’s eyes watch me as they might an angry rattlesnake. ”You don’t know Cyrus,“ he says softly. ”You don’t know the things he do.“
”I have an idea.“
”No, you don’t. I’m talkin‘ ’bout mutilating people, man. Cutting off
Spittle flies from Jaderious’s mouth, and the whites of his eyes betray true panic. His tale of torture has taken me by surprise. I would have expected such tactics from an Asian drug gang, but not from a Natchez drug dealer. If Jaderious were to suffer such a fate because of my visit here today, what would I do? If I were still a prosecutor, I could offer him police protection. But as a private citizen, I can offer nothing. Yet when I think of Sonny Cross dying in his front yard, afraid for his sons’ lives, and Kate Townsend jammed half-naked into the waterlogged limbs of a tree, my concern for Jaderious Huntley quickly bleeds away.
”You’ve got one way out of this,“ I tell him. ”This man over here“-I jerk my hand at my father-”that’s Dr. Tom Cage. He can give you something to make you puke like you’re going cold turkey. And when people ask what we were doing up here, you can say he made a house call as a favor to your mama. You got a mama, Jaderious?“
He nods suspiciously.
”The story may be thin, but it’s all you’ve got. And you’re not getting
Huntley blinks with jittery speed, as though his eyelids are a meter for brain activity. I look over at James Ervin. The retired cop has the eyes of a beagle, perpetually sad. What does he think about me interrogating a fellow black man? Does he see Jaderious as a brother? Or does he see a lost soul who long ago gave himself over to evil?
”If he’s that scared,“ Ervin says quietly, ”Cyrus must be close by.“
Jaderious turns to Ervin. ”Close enough to cut your motherfucking head off, old man. You Tom-ass mother
Ervin stares at the drug courier for a bit, then takes three deliberate steps toward him and looks down into his face. ”Boy, you nothing,“ he says. ”You know that? You worse than nothing. You dragging your whole people backwards, and you don’t even know it. And you ain’t got nobody but yourself to blame.“
