White Heat Read online

  I took a step back. Eyeing down the barrel of the Firestar.

  “You boys should—”

  “Don’ lecture me. I don’t need no lectures from Mr. White-man.”

  Maurice jacked the bolt on the Uzi. Short barreled Uzis were illegal, even before the ban on certain semi-auto rifles. I guess these guys didn’t know the law. Maurice jammed the gun into Tiny’s temple. The raw metal bit his skin, blood trickled down. Maurice smiled. There was a bit of the sadist in him. I put my pistol on the table. One of the others snatched it—slapped it across my cheek. Blood dribbled from me. I didn’t fall though. Held my ground.

  Warren approached.

  “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Duke.”

  “Got a last name?”

  “Rogers.”

  “Duke Rogers. Man, we got royalty in this house to-day.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Warren shoved me into the corner, knocking several clusters of envelopes to the floor, started rifling my pockets. Didn’t come up with much. My wallet. Extra pistol mag. Spiral pad and pen. Some change. He looked disappointed. He opened the wallet, checked my ID. Both my driver’s license and P.I. license are in the proper name Marion, not Duke. If he noticed he didn’t say anything. He forgot to frisk me, missed my boot knife.

  With my training in hand-to-hand combat and martial arts, I thought I might be able to fight my way out of there. Might get hurt in the process, but hell, I might have gotten hurt anyway. Problem was, I didn’t want to endanger Tiny. He was big and he looked tough, but looks can be deceiving. Some of the toughest guys I know are some of the smallest. And vice versa. He had, of course, clotheslined Maurice, so he might be okay in a fight.

  Warren grabbed my gun from his buddy, buried its nose in my ribs. Jammed it in. Twisting and turning it.

  “Why’n’t we prone him out?” his buddy said.

  Maurice grinned. “Why don’t we prone out this mother-fuckah white niggah? Shit, he can’t help bein’ white.” He waved the Uzi in my direction, turned back to Tiny. “This niggah can.” The muzzle of the Uzi whipped across Tiny’s face leaving a trail of blood. The big man didn’t make a sound. Hardly flinched. He didn’t need to say anything. His eyes said it all, burning with contempt. Indignation. Maurice saw the anger in Tiny’s eyes. Shoved the barrel of the Uzi in Tiny’s mouth. He gagged. Maurice liked that. He drove the Uzi in deeper, down Tiny’s throat. Blood oozed out the corners of his mouth.

  Warren had me backed into the corner, my own pistol tickling my ribs. I was biding time. Waiting for the right moment. Time was running out. Maurice was ready to play. Chomping to get out of the starting gate.

  “Now tell me who you workin’ for?” Warren said. “Tell me now, tell it all, tell it clean or I’ll let my friend there rip into yo’ friend Tiny. An’ when that Jew-zi’s done with him, he’ll be like his name, tiny strips-a flesh hangin’ out to dry.” Warren and his cuzzes laughed.

  “Different sense of humor down here,” I said.

  “Different sense of everything. Now tell me.”

  “In your mother’s house. You’d—”

  “Don’t lecture me, white boy. I’ve had enough lectures to fill a lifetime.”

  There was no point arguing with him. Tiny must have done that in the past to no avail. He was into his speech, into an almost trance-like state of mind, ready to reel off all the indignities that had been done him by the white man. Ready to make me pay.

  I was ready to kill him.

  Warren was left-handed. I’m a righty. I was primed to thrash him in the neck with my left, seize the pistol with my right. Failing that, I’d reach for my knife. As he prattled on, Maurice smirked, gouging the Uzi deeper into Tiny’s throat. Tiny kept gagging. Blood and saliva foamed around his mouth. The other two watched. A voice broke into the room like an ice breaker smashing through the Arctic. Everyone stopped. Turned.

  Standing at the back door, hands on her hips, was Mrs. Matson. “I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I just can’t believe it.”

  Warren let the gun drop to the floor. Maurice eased off of Tiny. The other two boys lowered their heads. Mrs. Matson took two steps deeper into the room. She glared at each of them in turn. She walked to Maurice. He didn’t move. She put a weathered brown hand on top of the Uzi, stepped between Maurice and Tiny. Removed Maurice’s hand from the gun. He stepped back. Tiny reached up to take the weapon. She gently pulled it from his mouth. She held onto it; he dropped his hands. Raised them again to wipe his mouth. His breath was short and raspy.

  “This thing loaded?” she said, grasping the Uzi. “I’m sure it is. You boys don’t play with toy guns no more.”

  “Listen, mother—”

  “No, you listen to me, these men are my guests and this is my house. You got a problem with that? ’Cause if you do you can find your own place to live. And the rest of you. I know all your mothers. Do you think they’d be proud of you? Do you think this is what they want for you? Do you think—”

  “This dude’s got no business here.”

  “If I say he got business here, he got business here. I don’t want to have to say it again.”

  “First Teddie, now you,” Warren said.

  “What’chu talkin’ ’bout, boy.”

  “Sellin’ your soul to the white man. Sellin’ your soul to be white.”

  Slap. The sound reverberated in the small kitchen and breakfast nook. Must’ve stung Warren pretty bad. He winced. Tried not to show it. It showed.

  “I’m black and I’m proud. I’m also proud to be an American. Maybe there’s problems, but you got a nice house. You never wanted for anything, you—”

  “My people want.”

  “My people. My people. What do you know about your people? What have you struggled? What have you—”

  Before she finished, Warren was out the door. His three cuzzes followed. Mrs. Matson did not give up the Uzi. She laid the gun on the breakfast table, went over to Tiny to see how he was doing. I dropped the magazine from the Uzi, and ejected the shell from the chamber. Put my pistol back in my belt holster.

  “I’m sorry,” she was saying to Tiny. He couldn’t talk. Was still gagging. Spitting blood. I was about to try to help him when the back door opened again. I spun ’round on my heels, reaching for the Firestar. The safety was off. It was aiming at the back door when she walked through.

  For a split second, I thought maybe Warren had done more to me than I’d realized. Maybe I was dead, dreaming. The young woman in the doorway was stunning. A stunning beauty and a stunning twin for Teddie Matson. Same eyes. Same smile and glowing caramel skin.

  Tiny spit up blood, said with almost a smile, “Looks like you seen a ghost.”

  It might have been in bad taste any other time. Now it was a good tension breaker. Mrs. Matson laughed, then Tiny. Then me. Only the vision in the doorway didn’t laugh. She was late to the party. Didn’t know what was going on. We laughed for over a minute, that uncontrollable laughter where you’ve forgotten why you’re laughing in the first place, but the laughing is self-contagious. And self-perpetuating. You’re laughing because you’re laughing.

  “What’s going on? I just saw Warren, Maurice and a couple others charge out of here like they’re on their way to a—”

  “—riot.” Tiny finished the sentence for her, laughing even harder. Spitting up more blood and sucking down air with a wheeze. He stood up, wobbly.

  “We need to get you to the hospital.”

  “I’m okay.” He waved us off with his hands.

  The woman in the door still wasn’t laughing, but the other three of us began all over again. The young woman saw the Uzi on the table. The gun in my hand. The blood at Tiny’s mouth. What must she have been thinking? All of that horror and there we were, laughing like naughty kids at the back of the classroom.

  “This is my daughter LaRita Matson. I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name in all the excitement.”

  “Duke. Duke Rogers.”

  “Peop
le just call me Rita.”

  “Rita.” We shook hands. Hers was soft and smooth. The opposite of her mother’s hard, crisp hands. She was Teddie’s older sister—twenty-nine. Teddie had been twenty-six. I had never seen Teddie in person, but from her pictures, I figured they were both about the same size, petite, same coloring, same soft hair. She had full lips and perfect teeth. She could’ve been a star too. I wondered what she did.

  “What’s going on here?” Rita asked, explaining she had been at work when the rioting began and they’d let her go early. She had made her way through the flying bottles, rocks, bullets and flaming cocktails and had gotten to her mother’s safely. Mrs. Matson told Rita why Tiny and I were there. Explained that while I was looking at the letters in the kitchen and Tiny was sleeping on the couch, she had seen some neighbors out front and gone to talk with them, then had joined them for coffee in one of their houses.

  She left the room. There was an uneasy silence between Tiny, Rita and me. Mrs. Matson returned with a bottle of Listerine, poured some in a glass full strength and asked, no ordered, Tiny to gargle with it to kill the germs from the gun. Tiny did as he was told.

  “We better get you to the hospital, just to be sure,” Mrs. Matson said.

  “I don’t need no hospital.” He had trouble getting the words out. Each movement of his mouth looked measured. Painful.

  “You know you won’t win with her,” Rita said.

  Tiny nodded. His head began to loll. Mrs. Matson and I caught him, eased him back into the chair.

  “Rita, if you and Mr. Rogers would be so kind as to drive Tiny to the hospital. Then loan him your car so he can get back to his neighborhood.”

  Rita didn’t seem to like that idea, but she didn’t say anything. At least not about that. “Which hospital?”

  “MLK.”

  Having just sat Tiny down, we helped him up. I wanted to ask Mrs. Matson if I could take some of the letters home with me. Read them and return them. It seemed inappropriate with Tiny the way he was. We took him outside and laid him in the backseat of Rita’s dark gray Dodge Shadow. It was a small backseat and the car was only a two-door. It was decided that I’d ride up front with the gun in case there was trouble on the way. It was no easy task getting Tiny into the small backseat.

  As we pulled down the driveway, Warren slammed a fist into the passenger side of Rita’s car. He leaned in, glaring at us. Nothing needed to be said. He knew where we were taking Tiny. He didn’t approve. Didn’t seem to approve of much of anything. I was sure he didn’t like a honky mothuh-fucker driving with his sister. Might even be dangerous, if there were others like him about—and there were—by the bushel.

  He leaned into my window. “You will never understand. Never.”

  Rita drove off. I rode shotgun, literally.

  CHAPTER 11

  Laurie Hoffman came home to find a letter tucked in her front door. Not in her mailbox. Jammed between the door and the molding. One way or another she knew it was junk mail, she told me later. Either some company advertising a product or service she didn’t need. Or a man—a man named Gary Craylock—also advertising goods and services she didn’t need, didn’t want and would have preferred to forget about all together.

  She debated whether or not to open it. Whether or not to call me again, or another detective. Or the police. She took it into her living room, set it on the glass-topped coffee table. She turned on the television and watched the riot news. Fires everywhere. Gunshots. The conflict heading north and west, out of South Central, toward Hollywood and West Los Angeles. Even Beverly Hills. Scary. She’d never owned a gun. Never even held one. Didn’t know how to use one. She wished she knew now. Wished she had one. Was it for the looters or for Gary Craylock that she wished it? She didn’t know. Maybe both, she thought. But guns were out of bounds. Even if she could buy one that night, she’d have to wait two weeks to pick it up. That was no good.

  Laurie went to all four windows in the living room, closing them, dropping blinds, closing the slats tightly, hoping no air, let alone light would escape them. She did the same for the rest of the small house. The phone rang, the jagged sound startling her. She was afraid to pick it up. Afraid it was Craylock. She had left the answering machine off when she went to work because the day before Craylock had called several times, filling up the entire sixty-minute tape. Some of the messages were short, not sweet. “Just calling to see if you’re home.” “Just calling to see if you got home safely.” “Just calling to see if we might have dinner tonight.”

  Others were long dissertations on this and that. Mostly on how much he loved her. How the hell could he love me, she asked me later, when he didn’t even know me? That’s why she was afraid to open the letter. She knew it was from him. There was no return address. No stamp. It was thick. For a minute she almost thought she could see his greasy fingerprints on the envelope. She imagined him sitting in his house, under a small desk lamp throwing off yellowish light, writing feverishly. Making sure every word was perfect, every letter perfectly formed. He was obsessed. She was scared.

  The riots didn’t help.

  Every channel she turned to had fire engines screaming, smoke rising, choppers hovering, people running. She turned off the TV. Sirens still wailed all over the place, choppers crisscrossed the skies. Anne Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant sat open on the coffee table next to the letter. It was a good book. Not what she wanted to read right now.

  The phone continued to ring. It had to be him. She unplugged it. She thought it wasn’t a good night to unplug the phone. She didn’t feel she had a choice.

  The walls seemed to grow closer together. The room was hot with the windows closed. It was funny, the neighbors were probably terrified by the riots, and here she was more terrified by one man than the mass violence going on around her. Should she go outside, see what the neighbors thought, what they were doing to protect themselves? She decided not to. They didn’t know each other. Didn’t give a damn about each other; as long as your avocado tree wasn’t hanging into their yard, no problem. Typical L.A. neighborhood of the ’90s.

  Laurie checked the kitchen door. Locked. She opened a drawer, stared at the steak knives. Too small. Opened another drawer. The carving knives, butcher knives. More like it. Butterflies raced through her stomach. She placed a hand on the wooden handle of a knife she’d held a thousand times. It felt different. She felt different. She wasn’t pulling it out to carve a roast. She didn’t want to think about why she felt the need to keep it nearby. A foolish feeling passed through her. She was overreacting. Craylock wouldn’t come over. Wouldn’t break in. The riots were far enough away. She put the knife back in the drawer.

  As long as the electricity didn’t go out, she felt she’d be okay. She had a flashlight in her earthquake kit and was pretty sure she’d kept updating the batteries for it. She pulled the kit out of the hall closet. Set it near the coffee table in the living room. Stared at the letter again. What harm could a letter do? It wasn’t a letter bomb, she hoped. She thought she was being paranoid. Crazy. It wasn’t like her. She was a down to earth, logical person. She picked up the letter. Hefted it in her left hand. Then the right. She tore open the end and pulled out the contents.

  The top sheet was a letter that began: “I dreamt about you last night. All night long. Ever since we met, you are the only vision in my dreams. A vision of beauty. Of loveliness. Sincerity and hope. And I do sincerely hope that we’ll be together for the longest time. The longest time is eternity.”

  That frightened her. She stopped reading. Her hand trembled slightly. She let the top two pages fall to the floor. Below them were pen and ink drawings. He wasn’t a bad artist. She saw herself in the woman’s face in the various pictures. His in the man’s. That made it even more frightening. One was of a wedding cake. The bride and groom on top. Another was of Gary and Laurie in bed. Fully clothed. Staring amorously into each other’s eyes. There was one of them on the beach, another in front of a Vegas-style wedding chapel.
They made her gag. She crumpled the wad and threw it to the floor.

  There was a noise outside. Sounded like footsteps. Was she being paranoid? Was it one of the neighbors checking things out? The rioting and looting hadn’t spread to her neighborhood yet. Was it now? She went back to the kitchen for the butcher knife. Picked out the one with the largest blade. Made sure it was sharp. It was. She was good about those things. She plugged in the kitchen phone. It wasn’t ringing. Helicopters and sirens wailed in the distance. People hunkered behind their doors. And she was alone. All alone.

  She picked up the receiver, relieved to hear a dial tone. She dialed her mother. The line was busy. Who could she call? She called my office. Left a message on the answering machine. Asked me to call as soon as possible. I was incommunicado at the moment, making sure Tiny would get some kind of care in the damn hospital. She started to call a couple of friends. Put the phone down when she heard another noise outside.

  From previous experience, she knew the blinds weren’t light-tight. They gave her a certain amount of privacy. Still, if the lights inside were on, people outside could tell. The living room was quiet and she hoped her shadow couldn’t be seen moving around from the outside. She sat on the floor in the center of the room.

  There was a knock on the door. She jumped, letting out a little gasp. Her hand shot to her mouth in an automatic response to stifle herself. She clutched the knife and shifted to a prone position on the floor.

  The knocking continued. Louder. Persistent. It had to be him. Looters don’t knock. It might have been a neighbor, checking on her. The neighbors didn’t care. No. It had to be him.

  Her heart fluttered, racing along. Beads of sweat broke out on her forehead, her back. She ran her finger across the blade of the knife. She almost cut herself.

  She chided herself for worrying too much. He hadn’t actually done anything to her. Hadn’t threatened her. The pictures were hardly obscene. He was just obsessed with her. Her mother thought she should be happy. She thought her mother was crazy. Her best friend, Sue, thought she was making too big a deal out of it when she had told her about the earlier incidents. What would Sue think now? Where was Sue now? Was she okay? No time for that. She had to worry about herself.