The story so far: Addicts are dying in massive numbers. Is it bad drugs, good drugs, overdoses or mass murder? Both Colin Marsh and Mamadou Dioh have recently lost people dear to them who were either casual users or not users. The police aren’t interested in helping. The dead are, after all, only addicts—the dregs of society. Colin and Mamadou, featured in the earlier book Thirst, realize it is up to them to find the epidemic’s source, halt its spread, and punish those responsible for its creation.
Chapter 11
Dani James Watson was a good kid in a neighborhood where it was hard to be a good kid. Most of the other 14-year-olds on his street had already spent a lot time at the Juvenile Detention Center on Mt. Olivet Street. He hadn’t, which made him a pussy. His survival depended on a quick wit, a willingness to defend himself when necessary, and an instinctive knowledge of when to back down, such as the time a 12-year-old wannabe gangster threatened him with an unwisely large gun.
Dani was painfully aware of his surroundings, his background, and his tenuous prospects. His mother was a heroin addict and an only partially successful whore,who often said she’d be much richer if she didn’t give it away every other night. His father was in prison forrobbery, aggravated assault, and general stupidity, the fifth conviction, so he’d be there a good long while. There were few friends; the only one who’d mattered, Antwoinne, had been found dead with a needle in his arm. Which was strange because, while alive, Antwoinne had been adamant about not using drugs.
He’d also promised Dani a future, “I’ll introduce to my friend. His name is Mamadou. He’s African. He’ll help you.” They talked about it over two weeks and Dani got excited.
“But I’ll tell you what,” Antwoinne had told him, “Don’t you ever lie to that man. He’s got some Africa juju thing, he can tell when you’re lying.”
When Antwoinne saw doubt on Dani’s face, he’d added. “Lemme tell you a story. There was this one time when he was out working and I knew he’d be gone all day, so I took one of the cars out. Just drove it around the block once is all, and then I washed it and waxed it.” Antwoinne took a deep breath. “Well the next day, he come up and he says, ‘Antwoinne, what’d you do yesterday?’ And he looked at me and he knew! It was that Africa juju thing; he looked me straight in the eyes and he knew.”
“So you told him?” Dani was fascinated. This was one powerful man.
“Course I told him! I’m no fool!”
“Did he hit you or something?”
Antwoinne shook his head. “Naw. He don’t do things like that. He never touched me. Not once.”
Antwoinne also told Dani of another man, Ru So, he ran errands for once in a while. He’d pointed to his brand new Air Jordans. “Man pays well, but I tell you, he scare me.”
Dani had really wanted to meet the African who had the limo service. It never happened; he was used to unfulfilled promises.
Dani read a lot; he was a gangly boy with glasses that gave him a premature intellectual look, and huge hands and feet. He spent at least ten hours a week at the poorly served William Booker Library. Dani had read everything there about being a lawyer, a doctor, a cop, an emergency medical technician, a counselor, a tree surgeon, a large animal veterinarian, and a drug dealer.
There wasn’t much information about the latter, mostly articles in magazines often defaced by youths with little to do save make life more difficult for others. That was okay, Dani had no intentions of becoming a drug dealer. There were a dozen or so in his neighborhood alone, and not one seemed to have two dimes to rub together. Mostly, they struggled like everyone else to stay alive.
Dani kept a small spiral notebook in his butt pocket where he recorded the events of the day and, on the back pages, the deaths of people he knew. Lately, a lot young men and boys had died:Counting Antwoinne, twenty-two, in a three-month period: Seventeen directly drug-related, three by gunshot, one by stabbing, and one by television. A teen-aged boy had dropped an ancient sixty-pound Panasonic from the third floor balcony of his apartment building onto the head of another teen, a rival for the affections of a 15-year-old girl named LaTrina who everybody knew would fuck for a bag of Doritos.
The murder had been messy. The victim’s head looked like a leftover pizza, and it tookthe ambulance more than an hour to get there. The hospital wouldn’t send medics to theneighborhood without a police escort, and the cops weren’t that eager to enter the courtyard where the boy with the crushed head lay, oozing blood and smelling bad.
Dani was right there, not twenty feet away when the television hit. It made a thud sound like a watermelon falling off truck and the boy didn’t even have time to howl. Dani hearda voice above him yell, “Take that, motherfucker,” and another voice went, “Whoa!” and within minutes there were fifty people in the courtyard, all staying a careful ten feet from the corpse. Some took photos and videos with their phones, and one man kept shouting, “Worldstar! Worldstar!” Someone said, “Man, that’s was a old teevee!”
Dani knew the dead boy slightly. His nickname was French Fry and he’d never amounted to much, mostly he wandered the neighborhood park and threw stones at birds and squirrels. He was known as an amateur arsonist and inept shoplifter who’d been caught a dozen times but rarely prosecuted because of his age. He lived with his great-aunt and two cousins in a street level two-bedroom apartment and hung around bigger boys when they’d let him. Dani was sure French Fry’s demise wasn’t important enough to warrant vengeance of any kind. And getting killed over a girl like LaTrina was plain stupid.
When the ambulance got there, they didn’t even try to resuscitate French Fry. The EMT people just slid him into a body bag, lifted the gurney into the back of the ambulance, and left without turning the sirens or lights on. The cops stayed a while longer, and a plainclothes detective talked to a few people but not a single person had seen a thing. That old Panasonic had just dropped out of the sky. Dani left before the man could question him.
Dani wished Antwoinne had stuck around long enough to introduce him to that African. He also wished Antwoinne had never mentioned the other man, Ru So. Just the day before one of the courtyard boys had found him, “Yo, D! Man been lookin’ for you,” and handed Dani a slip of paper with a phone number. Then he added, “Man says his name is Lu So, or Mo Fo, or So So. Dress real well, but got a weird accent.” That, thought Dani, couldn’t be good.
Dani knew who Antwoinne’s African benefactor was. He’d once followed Antwoinne to the AfriCar garage, seen the limos and their owner, a tall, very black man who wore his chauffeur’s uniform with authority. Dani had almost stepped forward but the man was so imposing, it was almost like he was white, and Dani did not approach white people.
That night in the apartment, Dani listened to his mother and one of her ‘friends,’ a stooped, round-bellied man who came by once or twice a month. They were talking and laughing in the master bedroom, with long pauses between conversations.
Dani had no problems with this friend who did not get drunk or threaten violence or bring heroin. This friend usually arrived with food from Popeye’s, enough for the three of them, and a twelve-pack of Miller Lite. He asked Dani questions and seemed interested in his answers. He complimented the boy on spending time in the library, talked about sports and cars until Dani’smom suggested it was time for Dani to go to his own room and watch television.
Dani knew his mom would skin-pop a little heroin while the man drank a beer or two. They’d have not-very-energetic sex and eventually his mom would shoot up and nod off. The man would get dressed, gather what was left of the 12-pack, and leave.
After the man was gone, Dani checked on his mother. Everybody knew dope fiends shouldn’t lie on their backs after shooting up; they might choke on vomit or on their own tongues, so Dani made sure his mom was lying on her side and breathing evenly. He placed pillows on the front and back of her so she wouldn’t roll over and suffocate. When she was safely swaddled and propped, he went to the kitchen to see what was left of the Popeye meal. There weren’t any wings, so he made do with watery coleslaw and a couple of hushpuppies.
☻ ☻ ☻ ☻
The next day, some three weeks after Antwoinne’s death, Dani James Watson put on his good jeans, a clean t-shirt, and his church shoes. The sky was the color of dead fishand he rode his bicycle the three miles to the AfriCar garage. He circled the garage slowly twice and, when he was satisfied no one was there, he hid his bike behind some bushes, stacked a couple of empty wooden boxes under one of the windows, climbed up and looked in.
There wasn’t much to see—two large shiny cars took up space, as did shelves of cleaning liquids and spare parts. There was a stack of seven wheels, and another stack of a half-dozen tires. He was on tip-toes trying to see more when he felt something very small and solid prodding his back.
“You move, you’re dead.” The voice was elegant, deep, and very foreign and frightening. Dani didn’t move for what seemed a long time, and then said, “I wasn’t going to steal anything. I just wanted to see.”
The pressure on his back didn’t let up. “Is that your bicycle in the bushes?”
Dani nodded. “Yessir. I’m a friend of Antwoinne’s.”
The pressure twitched and Dani held his breath. Then the voice said, “You knew him?”
Dani answered, “Yessir. I’d see him at the library. We’d talk.”
There was a pause. The pressure on his back lessened.
“You’re Dani?”
“Yessir.”
“You didn’t come to the funeral.”
“Nosir. I didn’t have no way of getting to Suitland. I don’t even know where that is.”
“It’s in Maryland.”
“Yessir.”
“Come down from there.”
It hadn’t been a gun after all. It was a tire iron. The African man held it loosely in his right hand. He stared at the boy.
“How do I know you are who you say you are?”
Dani fumbled for his wallet, a worn leather thing he’d stolen a yearbefore from a Target store. He took out his library card and handed it to the African, who scrutinized it.
“Why are you wearing your Sunday shoes?” The African pointed at Dani’s feet with the tire iron.
The boy shrugged. “Antwoinne told me that if I ever met you, I had to make a good impression.”
The African smiled for the first time, but it was a very thin smile.