“I’m listening.”
“Let’s say we go up here and try to grab ol’ Gatsby and the shit gets hectic. Then we get locked up and them Breed boys call us while we’re sitting in the stir. What if instead of going up in there like a bull in a china shop we get him to come on out and walk himself right into our arms,” Buddy Lee said.
“And how you think we gonna get him to do that?” Ike asked.
“Well, Gatsby’s an old man. And there ain’t nothing an old man likes more than a pretty young thing. And we just happen to have a pretty young thing on our team,” Buddy Lee said.
“You talking about Tangerine? She don’t even believe this bastard is out to kill her. How we gonna convince her to help us snatch his daddy?”
“Simple. We tell her the truth,” Buddy Lee said.
FORTY
Jazzy met them at the door.
“How’s Mya?” she asked.
“Stable. We need to talk to your guest. Send her outside,” Ike said. He went back to his truck and leaned against the grille. Buddy Lee stood next to him with his hands in his pockets. The moon was a sliver of white in the night sky. A thin blanket of mist rolled across the fields that bordered Jazzy’s driveway on either side.
Tangerine took her time coming down the steps. She stood in the yard just out of their reach. She had on a pair of lounge pants with white kittens on a black background. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a loose bun.
“You see the news?” Ike asked. She nodded.
“Gerald wants us to trade you for Arianna,” Buddy Lee said. Tangerine snapped her head in his direction.
“Yeah, we know. The Honorable Gerald Winthrop Culpepper is the fella who dumped you and got this whole greasy ball of shit rolling. He’s the one that had Derek and Isiah killed, and he’s the one who got your mama killed, and he’s trying to kill you like it’s his new favorite hobby,” Buddy Lee said.
“How did you—”
“We might not look like much, but between the two of us we got a half-decent brain. ‘W’ is short for Wynn. Winthrop is Gerald’s middle name. Gerald is Derek’s stepdaddy,” Buddy Lee said.
“That’s why Derek was so upset. That’s why Isiah was going to run the story,” Ike said.
“It ain’t his family, Tangy. It ain’t his wife. It’s him. He’s the one making the moves. He’s the one who told his boys to kidnap a little girl,” Buddy Lee said.
“They’d as soon kill her as look at her,” Ike said.
Tangerine shook her head violently. Her long black hair fell around her shoulders.
“Well, what do you want me to say? That I’m a dumbass? That I was an idiot for thinking he actually had feelings for me? Congratulations, you was right! I’m just another in a long line of stupid-ass sidechicks!” Tangerine said. She sat on the bottom step. Ike pushed himself off the truck and approached her.
“We didn’t come here to run you down or make you feel bad. Gerald ain’t the person you told yourself he was. That’s a hard lesson, but it ain’t nothing to be ashamed of, Tangerine. We all learn that lesson or we teach it to somebody. But now that you know, you can’t hide from this no more,” Ike said.
“We not gonna turn you over to them. That ain’t even on the table,” Buddy Lee said.
“Winthrop said he gonna send Arianna back in chunks if we don’t,” Ike said.
“We not gonna let that happen, but we need your help, sis,” Buddy Lee said. Tangerine wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“He never cared about me at all, did he?” she said.
“He don’t care about nobody but himself, sis,” Buddy Lee said.
“He killed my mom,” Tangerine cried. Her body trembled as she wept. Ike sat on the step and put his hand on her shoulder.
“Help us make it right. Help us make him pay.”
* * *
Tangerine navigated Ike’s truck down the single-lane side road that led to Gatsby Culpepper’s estate. The long branches of oak and maple trees encroached on the road from both sides. Tangerine came out of a soft curve and saw a sign that hung from the arm of a seven-foot-tall post that said NORTH POINT. The post sat at the end of an exposed aggregate driveway that stretched into the darkness for about two hundred yards. She turned in to the driveway and parked the truck off to the side near a shallow ditch. She killed the lights and shut off the engine. The Chevy was Ike’s errand truck. He used it to shuttle supplies between jobs when they got backed up or encountered a problem. He’d taken off the magnetic door signs that identified the truck as a part of his fleet.