God Makes Them Mean

Chapter 5

Jay lives in an old three storeys house of wood and aluminium kept together by mold and the ghosts of overdoses past. He occupies the first floor, with quick escape routes on the right side and the back. He rents the rest to all manner of human rejects, from crooks on the run and bastards in need of a cheap roof over their heads, to crack whores and crack heads. Mostly crack whores though. Usually he has a stable of three or four girls on call at all time, and it doesn't count like running a bordello because he doesn't get a cut, but he's paid rent, and has no saying in whatever manner of transaction happens upstairs.

That's how the State Prosecutor explained it to me. It feels he's not trying his hardest to get Jay locked up. Not trying at all really. I don't like the man.

This is where Brandy spent her first few months in Chi-town. Place gives me the creeps.

The neighborhood is charming, if you're into urban decay. If somebody were to tell me the place was haunted, I'd have no problems believing it. The last time the potholes were filled, Man had not gotten on the moon yet. Last time the street was cleaned the Bulls still had to draft Michael Jordan. Story has it the last ambulance to park here for an emergency was completely stripped while the paramedics were inside the building trying to resuscitate an old man. Ransacked down to the tires and the steering wheel. The old man died.

I park the car right in front of Jay's. He's sitting on the front porch with his buddies. Jay is tall with a scarecrow look and a bossy attitude. He's gaunt and haggard, like he hasn't had a proper meal in ten years, and tattoos cover most of his skin, stretched thin over bones too long, kind of like his skeleton kept growing after the rest of his body had stopped. His buddies are every inch as scary as he is. White trash with a penchant for living on the edges of society and morality. They are vessels for bad habits,  drugs and all sorts of STDs.

They like to be tough, but most of them wince as Jeff emerges from the car. He's so huge they must think the only way he fitted in the sedan was if she had been built around him. It's December. This is Chicago. The weather is freezing, but he's in his Chi-PD t-shirt, muscles bulging out of sleeves that look ready to rip. The cold wind that would make polar bears rattle their fangs does nothing but make the hair on his neck stand. He closes the door behind him with a noise that reminds me of a snapped bone, then leans against the car, arms crossed on a chest so wide two strippers could dance on it.

It is my turn to get out of the car. If I were alone, they'd laugh. But Jeff is here. I emanate power, I deserve respect. I hold the leash keeping Jeff at bay. I am the monster's tamer. I enter Jay's lawn, a desert of dirt and trash. I walk up to the porch. I take only the slowest, most deliberate steps.

'Got a warrant?' he asks.

I shake my head. 'Don't need one, I'm here just to shoot the breeze.'

'What are you trying to pin on me now, cop?'

I shrugs my shoulders innocently. 'Do you know of anything that needs to be pinned on you?'

'I've been a good boy, Detective.'

'Last time you were a good boy, you were still sucking milk off your mother's tit.'

He creases his mouth. 'Watch it now, boss, no need to involve the family.'

'Where were you last night?'

He looks at his buddies. It's a follow-my-lead-boys kind of glance. 'I was a Barov's. Shooting pool and drinking beer.'

'Any witnesses, apart from these reprobates?'

'The Barovs. This girl I talked to. Everybody really. I was real drunk yesterday, I must've been loud as hell, they must've noticed me.' He grins like a bully that knows the teacher can't punish him for what he's done.

'I don't believe you.'

'You never do. I bet they make jokes about it down at the Station, don't they?'

'Yeah,' I say, nonchalantly, 'I'm the subject of many puns. They don't hurt me any, you see, I know I'm always right. Do you know this man?' I pass Burt's snapshot to the first of the idiots, skinny fella with a harelip, a shaved skull with three indentations and a moronic grin. They call him Lenny Lips. He did three years in juvie for rape. He was taken out with forceps, this one, and the experience has left him short on wits. That's no excuse for raping anyone. He gurgles a demented laughter as he takes the photo and rips it to pieces.

I take out another and pass it to somebody looking more trustworthy. Even if the only thing I'd trust these fuckers with is a live grenade ready to explode.

'We know his name is Burt,' I tell them. 'He added some local color to the Loop, impersonating Santa Claus and using the money to have a good night on the town.'

When the photo gets to Jay, his mouth says he doesn't know him, but his eyes, shifty and oblique, spin a different yarn. He passes the photo to one of his cronies and nods.

The man is a tiny mountain of muscles, wider in the shoulders than he is tall. He's as tattooed as anything I've ever seen, so colorful he looks like the side of a circus tent. He sports a white man hater under his lip, and studs on his left eyebrow. He examines the photo and scratches his neck with nails that have last been brushed in a different century. He did five years for attempted murder and two more for possession with intent to sell. Name's Brick. Not because he looks like one. It's truly Brick. His father must've looked at him and say, you can't be anything but a Brick.

'Yeah.' He nods. 'Yeah, I know this dude.' He flickers his finger twice at the photo to underline his words. 'He's a homeless guy, right?' He looks at me. I urge him to keep talking with my eyes. 'I do some bouncer work. I've seen him around a couple of times. Real nice with the girls, a big tipper. They went out of their way to make him happy. What happened to him?'

'Got shot in the stomach.'

'No shit?'

'He died.'

He clicks his tongue, like saying some-stay-and-some-go. Like saying life can't be helped. The photo finishes making the round but nobody else talks. The atmosphere it pretty much like a wake at an institute for mutes.

'Jay?' I ask.

'Detective?'

'I'd like to have a word with your girls.'

'They are not my girls. They are tenants, and I am nothing more than a landlord.'

'Is that a yes?'

'It is. When they are anywhere but in my house, feel free to stop them and shoot the breeze. Such grand conversationalists they are too. I'm sure they'll be happy to talk to someone who's not after their tail.' He grins like a rat that just eyed an half-eaten sandwich. 'You know what I heard, Detective?'

'What?'

'I heard you can't work like a man should. I heard you're so pathetic not even little Brandy puts it out for you. How's little Brandy by the way? Still ugly as sin?'

I don't reply. The only reply I can think of is getting my Smith&Wesson out and put a bullet in his balls sack. I don't want Jay's sack to evaporate into tiny bits. Not yet. Some of Lombroso henchmen are particularly skilled at making a man wish he didn't have any balls at all. I want to leave all the fun to them. I just walk back to the car, and lean against it, side by side with Jeff. The big man doesn't say a word. We let an hour go by. Not a single one of the girls walks out. It was to be expected.

I start feeling like an icicle.

'This is boring,' Jeff tells me at one point.

'I know.'

'Want me to use their heads to plow the loan?'

'Not yet.'

'We should go to a judge and get a warrant.'

'Yep.'

'I'll wait here,' he tells me.

'Won't you catch your death of cold?'

'Nope,' he replies. 'Devil's not ready for me to take hell over.'