Blood Magic

Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

I kept a first aid kit in my car’s glove box. I applied some antiseptic to my wrist and covered the bite marks with a bandage, wincing as my flesh wound stung.

I put a bandage on the back of Bo’s neck. With his bald, fatty head, he looked like Ving Rhames’s character from Pulp Fiction. He didn’t like that reference too much.

But, boy, was it nice to be away from my house, cruising down my alley, and then into the streets of my city.

Despite everything we’d just been through, my ‘93 Lincoln Town Car’s cruise factor was like comfort food. Tan paint, chestnut-colored soft top, windows down, and the breeze blowing oh so fine, baby.

Bo drove my car like he owned it—slumped back, one hand on the steering wheel.

Hazel poked her head out the rear driver’s side window, her tongue flailing.

I had Lonnie Liston Smith & the Cosmic Echoes’ classic 1976 jazz album, Renaissance, in the tape deck. Good introspective jazz album, one my pops and I used to listen to on starry nights. Lonnie put a crazy effect on his keyboard that made it sound like he was playing jazz piano at the bottom of the ocean. Kind of matched how I felt. It was the kind of thinking music I needed. My jazz drove Bo nuts, and under normal circumstances, he would have taken the opportunity to school me on the virtues of rap. This time, he left me alone to think.

My neighborhood was all masonry, trees, and grass. Boulevards full of three-story brick houses and empty lots where weeds and tall grass swayed over the foundations of what used to be the city’s most historic homes.

If you want to know what an inner-city neighborhood looks like, all you have to do is drive down any of the streets around here: renovated houses next to condemned houses next to burned out houses with boards over every window next to block-long empty lots, with liquor stores and storefront churches on the ends. And don’t forget the discount cigarette shops, chop suey restaurants, and loan sharks—that’s Academy/Sherman Park for you.

We turned onto Martin Luther King Boulevard. Rush hour. Stop-and-go traffic and strings of ruby brake lights for blocks. The Metro bus dropped folks off from work, slowing everything down. If you had somewhere to be, there was nothing worse than getting stuck behind the 4:15 bus. It rumbled and stopped, rumbled and stopped, its hydraulics whooshing as it rose up and down.

A bird flew overhead, making me think of the bats. Who sent them? What did the bite marks mean?

I still hadn’t even had time to reflect on the decision I had to make: talk to the police or meet the girl at the casino?

The older I get, the more I realize there aren’t easy answers. It seems like everything gets more ambiguous every year you’re alive, like God’s way of keeping things interesting so you don’t become wise without working at it. My neighbor, Granny, put it poetically: around my age, you gotta start showing the youngsters the reason you’ve been alive so long, so help you Gawd.

I wasn’t choosing between right and wrong. This was like heartburn, and I was choosing between ibuprofen and antacids to treat it. Both got the job done, but you couldn’t take them at the same time.

The most relevant question was, who did I prefer to piss off?

Yeah, not the police. I could handle whoever was on the phone. I didn’t want to handle jail time, though. Funny how a little thinking time gives you some clarity that you should have had all along.

“I’m going to talk to the detective,” I said.

Bo nodded triumphantly as we slowed down for a red light. “Good call, boss man.”

“For the record, you were against this before you were for it,” I said.

“A sensible brother is entitled to change his mind,” Bo said.

The light switched to green and he cut a quick left and into a parking lot under construction next to a masonry building with an empty storefront.

A crew of construction workers gathered around the tailgate of a black pickup truck, drinking water from plastic cups.

Bo honked and popped the trunk. One of the workers in a red hoodie, jeans, and work boots saw us and waved. He lugged a toolbox out of the back of the truck. He threw his tools in my trunk and launched himself into my backseat.

“How was school, baby?” Bo said jokingly. “What’d you learn today?”

“Sup, fellas.”

Anthony Rice lived directly across the street from me. His family let him move back in a couple of years ago after getting out of prison. m*******a possession with an intent to sell. He got six years, but they let him out on parole after three. His parole ended last year, thank goodness. At thirty-seven, Ant’ny made some bad mistakes, but he still had a good heart.

“Crazy traffic today,” he said, rubbing his goatee. Hazel nudged him. “What’s up, Hazel?”

“Sorry we’re late,” Bo said. “We got attacked by a flock of bats.”

Ant’ny’s eyes went wide.

“Just kiddin’,” Bo said, easing the car in a smooth, backward circle. “It was the 4:15 bus.”

Ant’ny didn’t know about my necromancy. No one in my neighborhood did.

So you’re probably thinking, how did I explain Bo? You know, why a six-foot-tall man-mountain was living in my house all of a sudden?

I said he was my wife’s cousin who came to live with me. I downplayed the fact that he smelled a little funny. Nobody could quite place the faint but lingering smell of embalming fluid and rotting flesh. It’s a unique assault on the nostrils, and you ought to be glad that this adventure isn’t available in a scratch-and-sniff edition.

“How was work?” I asked, changing the subject as Bo eased out of the parking lot.

“Just about finished,” Ant’ny said. “Once we’re done, the Second Chance Center will be able to move in. The city wouldn’t let any moving trucks in until we redid the parking lot.”

Ant’ny worked for a contractor who did construction work for all the inner-city nonprofits in town. He was a day laborer, about the only job he could get in this part of town being an ex-con.

He bent forward and poked the bandage on the back of Bo’s head. “You get into a fight?”

“Don’t ask,” Bo said.

A wide grin spread across Ant’ny’s face. “You look like Ving Rhames from that one movie.”

“Ha ha,” Bo said, frowning.

“Just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it any less true,” I said.

“You’re saying I’m Lucifer,” Bo said.

“Whoa, didn’t nobody say that, man,” Ant’ny said.

“I read that on the internet once,” Bo said. “Fan theories.”

“I take it back then, damn,” Ant’ny said. “You can’t take a joke tonight.”

He pulled on my seat.

“You got a bandage too, Lester,” Ant’ny said, tapping my seat. “What the hell were you both doing together?”

“Pure coincidence,” Bo said.

When silence fell between us, Ant’ny settled back in his seat and said, “Y’all are weird sometimes. You still up for cards?”

“Can’t,” I said. “I’m meeting someone back at the house.”

“Dang, man,” he said. “You in, Bo?”

“Depends,” Bo said.

“You both are acting weird today,” Ant’ny said. “Let me guess: you robbed a bank.”

“Robbed it dry,” I said. “We can’t share any of the money with you either.”

“We spent it all on a hacienda in Mexico,” Bo said.

“Y’all are something else,” Ant’ny said.

I laughed. “That’s one way of putting it.”

Silence grew between us as Bo drove.

“Seriously, though,” Ant’ny said, “you’re not going to tell me anything?”

Bo slowed down for a red light.

A baby blue hatchback pulled up next to us.

You know how sometimes you drive on autopilot and you see things without actually seeing them?

For example, you see people’s license plates, but you don’t read them. You see people at a crosswalk, but you don’t pay attention to their faces. You pass by the same buildings every day, but you don’t actually know what they look like.

But even then, you know when something is missing. If the church you pass every day gets painted, you notice. If a telephone pole is cracked in half, you notice. Our eyes are masters at spotting breaks in everyday patterns.

So imagine the look on my face when I noticed that the blue hatchback didn’t have a driver.

I craned my head to get a better look. There wasn’t a single soul in any of the pristine leather seats.

Another hatchback pulled up next to Bo. It was also empty.

I nudged Bo.

“Call me crazy, but neither car to the side of us has any passengers,” I whispered.

Bo glanced over.

“I’ll be damned,” he said.

In the rearview mirror, another hatchback pulled to a stop. No one inside.

Sure enough, the car in front of us was an empty hatchback too.

Same make and model, same baby blue color.

“Shizzle,” I said.

“Mmm-hmm,” Bo said, wrinkling his lips. “Shizzle.”

“Shizzle what?” Ant’ny asked. Then he noticed the hatchbacks.

“Look at those babies,” he said. “Are those Teslas? They don’t look like it. Wait, where the drivers at?”

The light turned green.

The front car pulled forward. Bo followed, and the other cars rolled with us down the street.

The turn-off into my subdivision was one block away.

Bo gunned the accelerator and tried to cut off the hatchback on the left. The hatchback accelerated, blocking Bo’s attempt. The front car braked hard, forcing him to a stop.

The cars hemmed us in.

“Watch it, Bo!” Ant’ny yelled.

Traffic honked at us.

Bo accelerated cautiously, and we missed our turn. My subdivision slid by and into the rearview mirror. We had no choice but to continue down the road.

We had been followed—and taken hostage—by driverless cars. As they guided us onto the highway, there was only one destination we could be going to—the casino.