Turning Angel (51 page)

”Triton Battery?“ I ask.

Cyrus nods. ”My old employer. They helping me out now in ways they never dreamed.“

”I used to work here, too. The summer after my freshman year in college.“

”Yeah? Most everybody worked here at one time or other. Here or IP.“

The Triton Battery Company came to Natchez in 1936 to build batteries for Pullman railcars. In 1940 they retooled the line to manufacture batteries for diesel submarines. After the war it was truck batteries, marine batteries, whatever fit the changing market. When the plant shut down three years ago, Triton was using its ancient equipment to produce motorcycle batteries for European and Asian manufacturers.

”What part of the plant are we in?“

”Testing area. It’s the only part where the air-conditioning still works. This and the guardhouse. This is my temporary crib.“

If I’m not dead, it’s because Cyrus needs me alive for something. Probably information. Again Jaderious’s stories of torture zing through my head. How should I play it? Tell everything I know right away? Or hold something back so that I’ll have something to ”give up“ later? A predator like Cyrus won’t believe I’ve revealed everything until he sweats something out of me. But what does he want to know?

”What am I doing here?“

”You on ice, man. That’s what they call it in the gangster movies.“

”Why am I on ice?“

”’Cause I can’t have you running around town stirring up shit and causing aggravation. Old Shad’s got the right idea, and we need to let him get his business done.“

”Are you talking about the trial? Or the election?“

Cyrus looks puzzled. ”The mayor’s election?“

I nod.

”What you got to do with that?“

”Nothing.“

”I’m talking about the
trial,
man.“

Of course. ”You don’t want me investigating Kate’s murder?“

At the mention of her name, the humor vanishes from Cyrus’s eyes. ”Like I said, I can’t have you stirring up any shit. And you been stirring up a lot of it this past week.“

With drug-induced stupidity, I say, ”Did you kill her, Cyrus?“

His bullet head draws back on his neck. ”You think I did that?“

”I don’t know. I know you wanted to sleep with her.“

A slow, almost reptilian blink. ”Yeah, I wanted her.“

”But she didn’t want you.“

He looks over at Blue, then studies me in silence.

”I read your e-mails,“ I say softly. ”You threatened her.“

The drug dealer’s black eyes flash with anger. He gets up from his chair, closes the distance between us, and squats beside me. ”That wasn’t any of your business, you know?“

”You’re right. I just…it’s the dope talking.“

Cyrus flexes his right forearm as though doing imaginary curls. ”Everybody know who killed that bitch anyway, right?“

”Who?“

”Dr. Elliott.“

An image of Cyrus tracking Kate’s cell phone by computer comes into my head. But arguing with him about Kate’s murder under these circumstances could be suicidal. ”How long am I going to be here?“

”That depends. How long you think the trial will take?“

”A week, maybe?“

”That’s how long you gonna be here, then.“

When Blue first dragged me into the van and I saw Cyrus’s face, I was certain I would die. When that fear lessened, the horror of torture rose in me. But now the reality is settling in: I’m going to be held prisoner until Drew’s trial is over. I won’t be able to investigate further for Quentin. He’ll be facing the trial in two days with little or no good information. A private detective hired at this point won’t be able to learn anything meaningful. And that’s why I’m here—to ensure Drew’s conviction.

The side effects of my kidnapping will be more personal. Unless Cyrus demands some sort of ransom, my family will believe I’ve been murdered. My father and mother. Annie…

”You gonna be on the nod most of the time,“ Cyrus says. ”That week’s gonna go by like a day for you. Maybe two. You ain’t gonna get hungry, you ain’t gonna get horny…you just gonna get happy.
Numb,
baby. The weight of the world gonna be lifted off your shoulders. You gonna be thanking me.“

”And when the trial’s over?“

He shrugs. ”That’s up to you.“

”You’re going to let me go?“

”If I wanted you dead, you’d be lying in that alley behind the restaurant.“

”I don’t get it. From what I hear, you’re not a half measures kind of guy.“

Cyrus begins cracking his knuckles, starting with his left forefinger. He maintains his squat as effortlessly as a Major League catcher during this operation.

”I tell you how it is,“ he says. ”I’m thorough, all right. I checked you out. You ain’t no civilian. You sent a lot of people to Huntsville Prison. Bangers, killers, Klan, everything. And about five years ago, you damn near got the head of the FBI sent to jail.“

It’s true. Of course, the crime committed by the FBI director was not committed as director, but as a field agent assigned to Mississippi in 1968.

”I kill you,“ Cyrus says, ”there’d be consequences.“

This is a nice idea, but probably untrue. My father would likely commit the rest of his life to finding out who had murdered me, but no nationwide quest for vengeance by a cabal of powerful cops would result. There’s an ex–Delta Force operator who might get upset about my demise, but he has a living to make. Although now that I think about it, Daniel Kelly might just take it into his head to get some payback if I were murdered. And anybody with Kelly on his ass truly has a problem.

”Did Jaderious set me up?“ I ask.

Cyrus stands and walks over to the counter where the TV and microwave stand. ”We got Lean Cuisine and Dr Pepper. Got some Dannon in that fridge over there. You take what you need. But don’t be getting up in my Pringles. Got it?“

”Leave your Pringles alone.“

Cyrus looks at Blue and says, ”He’s smart, ain’t he?“

Blue’s big belly rolls with laughter.

”You just bide your time,“ says Cyrus. ”Enjoy the ride. When the trial’s over, if you’ve been a good boy, you can leave here the way you come.“

”Good as new?“

”A little rehab, maybe. Or you can become a customer. I wouldn’t blame you. Not many people can chase the dragon and walk away. It’s too good. Like classy white pussy gone bad.“

”Why do you want to keep me high?“ I ask, genuinely puzzled. ”Why not just lock me in here?“

”‘Cause this is where
I’m
staying part of the time. And I don’t need you bugging me, trying head games and shit. You on the nod, it’s less stress on you and me both. For me it’ll be like you ain’t even here. You’ll be like a pet dog or something. You okay with that?“

”Fine.“
If I’m still alive, I’m okay with just about anything.

”I thought so. But you listen, right?“ Cyrus points at me ”I don’t want to kill you. But I
will.
Understand? You cause me any kind of shit, you become even a minor inconvenience, and I’ll send you right back to the void. Clear?“

”Clear.“

”And don’t even think about not taking the dust. ’Cause I
know
how to hurt a motherfucker. So does my crew.“

I don’t reply.

Cyrus takes a cup of yogurt from the fridge and rips off the foil top. ”After two or three days, you gonna be begging for the shit anyway. Wait and see. You won’t want to live without it.“

”How do you come and go from here?“ I ask. ”Don’t they have security?“

Cyrus spoons yogurt into his mouth. ”Triton’s got an old nigger manning the guardhouse at night. He works for me, though, not those motherfuckers.“

How much more perfect could it get? Cyrus can live in relative luxury two miles from town, and keep tabs on his drug business without any fear of discovery by the police.

”Me and Blue gotta make a couple runs tonight,“ he says, setting down his yogurt. ”So it’s time to hit you up again. Don’t make us hold you down. You do that, you gonna pay a price.“

I tell myself not to resist the injection, but when Cyrus starts cooking the heroin, my adrenaline begins to pump. When he picks up a loose syringe off the counter, I can’t help but back away.

”Fuck!“ Cyrus mutters. ”Blue?“

Blue pulls a small revolver from his pocket and points it at me. He forces me into the nearest corner, then cracks the gun against my left shoulder with deceptive speed. My arm goes numb from shoulder to wrist.

”Lay down, now,“ he says in a surprisingly mild voice. ”Ain’t no use fighting. Just gon‘ make it worse on you self.“

”Has anybody else used that needle?“

Cyrus shakes his head. ”It’s the same one I used on you in the van. Come on. We’re running late. Don’t make me hurt you.“

Fighting all my natural instincts, I lie on the sleeping bag and let Blue squeeze my biceps to pump up my antecubital vein. Cyrus slips in the needle again, no pain whatever. As a test, I begin counting softly. When I hit seven, the rush begins. Again it starts in my belly, then spreads outward through my limbs. A heat like the warmth of plunging into a woman envelops my entire body.

”Is it good?“ asks Blue. ”How you feel?“

”Like a jellyfish,“ I murmur. ”But I’m part of the water.“

”Most people say it’s like their mama’s womb.“

I nod in vague agreement. ”Could be…don’t remember.“

Blue giggles like a little boy.

”I get back to the womb another way,“ Cyrus says. ”Right, Blue?“

”Oh, yeah. Best way there is.“

”Maybe I
can
remember,“ I think aloud. ”Go back in time, you know?“

”No,“ Cyrus intones. ”Don’t work that way.“ He kneels beside the sleeping bag and lifts my sagging chin until I’m looking into his deep black eyes. ”Let me tell you ’bout time, brother. I done some reading on that shit. People say time be like a river. That’s bullshit. You can swim upstream and downstream in a river. Can you do that with time? Hell, no. Time ain’t no river. Time is a big fucking razor blade scraping across the universe. And the edge of that razor is
now.
See? That’s all there is, man. No upstream or down, no past or future—just
now.
And all the stuff we feel, like hoping and feeling sorry for shit, that’s nothing. Useless. Nothing matters in this world but now.“

”I…understand your metaphor,“ I manage to slur. ”But things we do in
this
now can change our reality in the
later
now. See? That’s why…why what we do matters.“

Cyrus stares at me, working out my logic. Then he shakes his head. ”You missing the point, dog. It’s ‘cause you’re on the dust. That’s the only thing that can take away the now. Dust
blurs
it, like. Stretches it out into this big warm blanket. That’s why people kill to get it.“

”No,“ I whisper, but my grip on reason is fading fast. ”This stuff
is
the now. It takes away the past and future. It’s the only thing that can.“

Cyrus laughs. ”Oh, yeah. You
way
up in the good now.“

”Am I?“ I ask, wondering if I’m speaking at all.

Cyrus stands. ”Sleep tight, brother. Enjoy the ride.“

He walks toward the door, but before he opens it, my eyelids fall, and I snuggle under the warm blanket that heroin has thrown over my soul.

Cyrus was right about the passage of time. Soon I had no idea whether it was day or night, whether five minutes had passed or five hours. The heroin came and went like a warm tide, and my consciousness waxed and waned with it. People came and went, too, but I paid scant attention. An elderly black man in a uniform. A white girl. Jaderious Huntley. A teenager. And always Blue, who administered my heroin as lovingly as a gifted nurse. If Cyrus looked like an NFL cornerback, Blue was a nose tackle. Blue was Refrigerator Perry with a kind face. Blue was my nurturing angel.

Heroin was something else.

Heroin was an epiphany.

Suddenly all the disjointed images I’d never understood made sense: the generations of Englishmen who gave up everything to lie in opium dens in India; the ragged junkies in the Houston court system; the Scottish fuckups in
Trainspotting
; Tuesday Weld in
Dog Soldiers
; even Frank Sinatra shooting up in
The Man With the Golden Arm,
back in my father’s day. This was why those people did what they did.
This
was what they were after. You go your whole life without understanding something. You know people who do it—who are even obsessed with it—but you feel no pull yourself. And then you experience it.

And the earth shifts on its axis.

I think the fact that I’d tried other drugs in college created my misconception of heroin. Marijuana took away anxiety, made my head thick and mellow. Powdered cocaine—the three times I tried it—sent me into a euphorically controlled high, during which I felt capable of anything. But heroin short-circuits pain right at its source. It bathed me in a primitive bliss that must indeed be the closest thing to the womb. Hour after hour, I lay half comatose on the floor of the lab, trying to get my conscious mind around what was happening in the base of my brain.

I couldn’t do it.

Eventually I realized that time was indeed passing. Drew’s trial had begun. Cyrus showed me copies of the
Examiner.
The changing front pages showed photos of Shad, Drew, Quentin, even me. But it was all so far away, like something happening on the other side of the world. I knew I should fight what was happening to me, but how could I? Blue outweighed me by a hundred pounds, and Cyrus wore his pistol all the time. He even wore it while watching DVDs in his recliner.

He watched them on the little thirteen-inch Sony on the counter against the wall. Even when he wasn’t watching movies, he played them. His taste surprised me. He watched a lot of science fiction: the original versions of
The Thing
and
The Planet of the Apes
; Kubrick’s
2001: A Space Odyssey.
He watched conspiracy films from the seventies:
The Conversation, The Parallax View.
War films:
The Bridge on the River Kwai
and
The Great Escape.
Perhaps most surprising of all, Cyrus watched westerns. He seemed to choose his westerns by their stars: Steve McQueen, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda. And he watched
The Godfather
—over and over again. I figured his cinematic tastes might have developed during his service in the Gulf War.