Read Online Dead of Night by Barbara Nadel - Free Book Online Page B

A Turk!’
    ‘Lieutenant Diaz—’
    ‘What Diaz know!’ Angry now, Zeke Goins’ eyes flashed with spite. ‘Motherfucking Detroit police! In Grant T. Miller’s pocket!
     That’s why nothing never done to avenge our Elvis! Miller hates our kind. Miller ran drugs, and Elvis, one of us, he was like
     a thorn in his side!’
    ‘Ssh!’ Samuel put his finger up to his lips and lowered his voice. ‘You don’t want young Keisha to hear you cussing, do you?’
    Suddenly ashamed of his outburst, Zeke muttered that no, of course he didn’t want Keisha to hear him.
    ‘Zeke, your Elvis was not some sort of great gang godfather,’Samuel said. ‘I know he started the Delta Blues. But they were all small-time players. And anyway, there’s only ever been
     rumours about Grant T. Miller and drug-dealing. There’s never been any concrete evidence, has there?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Richie McLennan, a black man, was Elvis’s enemy. Richie headed up the Purple Mobile Crew, the Delta Blues’ main enemies.
     Zeke, it was a Purple Mobile who killed Elvis.’
    ‘We don’t know that!’ Zeke said. He’d had this conversation with his brother before. ‘All them gangs dead now!’
    ‘Exactly! They all ended up killing each other or dying from their addiction to heroin. Elvis just died early on in all that.
     I don’t know why! Nobody does!’
    There was silence. Just for a moment, Samuel actually thought that he might have got through to his brother. But then Zeke
     said, ‘No, Miller killed him! He killed him, because when I tell the other men on the line that Elvis died, he laughed.’
    ‘Miller is a monster,’ Samuel said. ‘But that doesn’t mean that he killed Elvis.’
    ‘He dealed drugs all that time.’
    ‘Maybe, but we can’t really say that—’
    ‘Then why he don’t have me arrested when I go up Brush Park that first time and sink my teeth into his flesh? Eh? Diaz and
     Sosobowski pull me off him, throw me outta the house, and then Miller, he does nothing! Why he always run out after me when
     I goes up there? Like a crazy man he is shouting out he killed my boy.’
    ‘Zeke, you shouldn’t be going up to Brush Park,’ Samuel said. ‘Miller could have you arrested.’
    ‘Let him try!’
    ‘He may well do that,’ Samuel said. He ran an agitated hand through his thick grey hair. ‘Zeke, Miller taunts you because
     you attacked him, and because you’re a Melungeon. You have to leave him alone.’
    ‘You just worried about your job!’ Zeke Goins said bitterly. But then just as quickly as his anger had arisen, so it subsided,
     and he took one of Samuel’s hands in his. ‘I’m sorry, Sam. I didn’t mean that,’ he said.
    ‘It doesn’t matter what you say to me,’ Samuel Goins said as he looked at his brother’s bowed head with tenderness. ‘And contrary
     to what you sometimes think, I’m not worried about my job. Grant T. Miller has no power over me. But he can make life unpleasant
     for you, Zeke, if you keep going on with these accusations. He can have you arrested. You have to keep away from him, and
     you have to stop trying to drag other people in too. Promise me you’ll do that, Zeke. Promise me.’
    The younger of the two Turkish officers was just like him, in some ways. Divorced, not happy about it, paying for a kid. Gerald
     Diaz put a carton of Chinese noodles in the microwave and pressed the button for it to cook. He sat down at the kitchen table
     and lit up a cigarette while he waited. More fucking plastic food!
    The older Turk, İkmen, would smoke all the time if he could. Like Gerald, he was quite open about that. But unlike Gerald,
     he was also, in part at least, happy. Married with a huge number of kids by all accounts, he was a respected man back in his
     own country, at the top of his profession. But he’d lost a child. Something to do with a drugs raid. His kid, like Zeke Goins’
     boy, had died by a bullet.
    It had to be hard to take. Gerald thought about his own son,