Last Call

Chapter 31

Uncle Cy couldn't sleep.

Lightheadedness had forced him to leave the bar early tonight. It had come on right after Jack called to tell him that a guy named Moses had an O-Town Posse tattoo and killed a state trooper just hours after his release from TGK. Distressing news, but it didn't account for Cy's dizziness. That damn doctor still didn't have his blood pressure medication right. Cy went home and climbed into bed. It felt like the bad old days when he would drag himself home from his gigs, fall onto the bed or sometimes even the floor, and fight with the spins as he tried to find sleep.

Funny thing was, Cy had played his sax so much better when he was high. Or so he'd thought as a much younger man. The owners who fired him from the hottest clubs downtown, the managers who banned him from the big hotels on Miami Beach, the musicians who refused to play with him again – they were all racists or Uncle Toms trying to keep the black musicians down. He kept moving from one gig to the next, drinking, sniffing, snorting, popping, shooting along the way, burning bridges everywhere he went. Eventually he couldn't find work anymore – except in a place like Homeboy's, that dive of a joint where Theo's mother used to hang out. Night after night, he watched her, stoned and stumbling from one bar stool to the next in search of a twenty-dollar trick. When those pockets were emptied, she'd turn to the street. Everyone knew that story's ending.

Except that her death really wasn't the end of anything – especially not now, with Isaac Reems's promise hanging out there for Theo to grasp.

Cy sat up in the darkened bedroom and draped his legs over the edge of the mattress. Things were spinning again. A little blood in his head would sure have been nice. He allowed a minute for it to pass, but the mattress was turning, then the floor, and then the entire room. Slowly at first, but steadily gaining speed. The motion was counterclockwise, as if carrying him back in time and to another place – a snippet from his past that he had all but erased. It was rushing back to him now, and even though his room was a blur, his memories played like a movie in his mind's eye.

A LOUD POUNDING ON the front door woke Cy from a deep sleep. It took him a moment to recognize his surroundings. Not his bedroom. It was the living room. He'd passed out on the couch this time. That was one way for a man of so much talent to cope with playing a hellhole like Homeboy's.

More pounding on the door. He forced himself up and shuffled across the room. The morning sun assaulted his eyes the moment he opened the door.

"Cyrus Knight?" the man on the porch said.

His head was throbbing, and the cotton mouth was so bad that Cy could barely form words. "What of it?" he said.

The man flashed a badge, as did the younger guy with him. They introduced themselves as Harmon and Kittle, homicide detectives. Harmon was clearly the veteran, teeth stained from years of addiction to coffee and tobacco, his face creased with the lines of too many crimes, solved and unsolved. Kittle looked too young to be a detective, still battling acne and his hair buzzed like a high-school jock.

Harmon said, "We'd like to ask you a few questions about your niece."

Cy scratched his head and cleared his throat. The blinding glare of the sun forced him to keep one eye closed. "It's about damn time you guys come around," he said. "Come in."

"That won't be necessary," said Harmon.

Cy glanced inside his messy apartment, then back at the detectives. A couple of white guys in an all-black neighborhood. "What's the matter? My place ain't good enough for ya'?"

"Seen worse," said Harmon. "This will just take a couple minutes."

"Couple of minutes? This isn't jaywalking. A woman was murdered."

"How can you be so sure it was murder?" the younger detective asked suspiciously.

Detective Harmon rolled his eyes, as if to say, "Rookies." "Kittle, the woman's throat was slit. Let me handle this."

Cy was sobering up quickly. It was clear that the homicide division hadn't put its best and brightest on this case. He directed his question to Harmon. "What do you want to know?"

Harmon pulled a pen and small notepad from his breast pocket. "When's the last time you saw your niece alive?"

Cy thought about it. "Sometime that same day she was killed. I play the sax at Homeboy's. She… she sort of hangs there."

"What do you mean 'hangs'?"

"Hangs… you know. It's her spot."

The detectives exchanged glances. Kittle smirked. Harmon said, "Did your niece have a job?"

"She, you know, made money as she could."

Kittle said, "We hear she was a prostitute."

Cy shrugged. "Might have been."

Harmon asked, "How well did you know her?"

"Better than most folks."

"And you can't tell us what your niece did for a living?"

"She's got kids, okay? Two boys. Good kids – well, one of 'em is, anyway. I just don't see why you gotta write all this stuff down and put it in the damn newspaper" 'We're detectives, not reporters." 'It's all the same club." 'Sir, I just need the facts," said Harmon. 'Okay, she walked the street. Big deal." Harmon was deadpan. "She have a pimp?" 'Beats me." 'She do drugs?" 'What do you think?"

"Know anybody who'd want her dead?" said Harmon. 'Not really."

Harmon made a quick entry in his notebook and tucked it back into his pocket. "Thanks very much for your time, Mr. Knight."

"That's it?"

He gave Cy a business card. "Call me if anything comes to mind. Anything at all that you might think is important." The detectives turned and started down the steps. "Hey," said Cy.

The detectives stopped, but only Harmon looked back. Cy said, "You ain't gonna do squat to find the guy who killed her, are you?"

Harmon paused, as if to consider his response. It hardly seemed possible, but Cy would have sworn that the old detective looked even more jaded than when he'd arrived.

"Another black whore gets high on crack and picks the wrong john," he said. "I'll do my best. But we can't work miracles, pal."

THE BEDROOM SUDDENLY stopped spinning. Cy's memories faded, replaced by a pit of nausea in his stomach. This time, it had nothing to do with blood pressure. It was Theo he was worried about, and the memories of police indifference had only heightened his concern. He grabbed the phone on the nightstand and called Jack Swyteck at home, who answered in a sleepy voice.

"Sorry Jack. Hate to get you out of bed."

"It's okay" said Jack, a frog in his throat. "What's up?"

"I wouldn't bother you like this in the middle of the night, but I just got a bad feelin' in my bones. It's Theo."

"What about him?"

"I been layin' here in bed thinking ever since you called me about this Moses. And it finally just comes to me. Theo got shot while Moses was in jail and Theo was on the outside."

"Yeah, so?"

"Now Moses is on the outside and Theo's on the inside. See what I'm sayin'?"

The line was silent as Jack mulled it over. "Makes perfect sense," he said finally. "A convenient disconnect between the hit and the man who orders it."

Cy's response came from deep inside him, a place laden with emotion. "We gotta get my nephew out of that jail."