Detective Paul Young isn’t a detective anymore. He was sad at first and he spent his first full day as a civilian drinking in his garage and blasting music that reminded him of his youth. He spent the second full day recovering from the hangover, and on the third day, he went to talk with his ex-wife Darlene. She was sitting on the porch with their family when he parked on the curb; he stood watching them from the sidewalk for a minute and he smiled. Both his adult daughters were there and his only grandchild, though his oldest daughter was pregnant.
“Y’all just keep getting more pretty, I swear,” Paul said when he walked up the few concrete stairs that led up to the covered porch. Both his daughters hugged him and his grandson latched lovingly onto his leg until he picked him up and they wrestled around on the porch swing.
“Haven’t seen you around in a while,” Darlene said. “It’s good to see you healthy.”
“I came by because I ain’t a detective no more.”
He looked around at the shock and disbelief on the faces of the three women that meant more to him than anything else in the world.
“Shut up!” Darlene said chuckling in disbelief.
“For real daddy?” Sabine, his youngest daughter, said with a look of worry on her face.
His other daughter, Farah, just stood looking at him with her mouth open in shock and a hand on her belly.
“Why you ain’t a detective no more, grandpa?” his grandson, Linus, asked. He’d always known his grandfather in the context of his job; the detective who tracked down the bad guys.
Paul hugged him close and then he looked at Darlene. She was just as beautiful as the first time he met her all those years ago in the diner where she worked, but she had a lot of gray hair that she wasn’t ashamed of.
“You never wanted me to be a police officer, I remember that. You didn’t make me feel bad for doing it, and you loved me enough to make a family with me, even though you knew. You knew didn’t you? You knew they weren’t protecting nobody the way I wanted to. You knew it was all for show. I guess I had a blind spot because it seemed like the police protected people. They protected the people I knew anyway.”
He looked around at his family and knew that he was just waking up to the experience that people with their dark complexion had with law enforcement for years.
“But I see it now, and I’m sorry for not being there for you like I should have been.”
“Paul,” Darlene said, wiping a tear from her eye. “You were a good husband, you are a good father, and we love you. We’ve learned a lot from each other over the years and you always made me feel safe. I just didn’t want to be second to that job that isn’t always the positive force it’s supposed to be.”
“I get that. I quit because there is something happening and it scares me that the law enforcement in this city isn’t working harder to stop it. I don’t want to alarm y’all, but I have to be honest that there is a cover-up and I’m going after it. If something happens to me…”
“Daddy,” Sabine said with concern on her face, “don’t do this. I done watched enough tv to know that when a detective quit his job and then expose a cover-up, he usually dies at the end.”
Farah slapped her shoulder. “Shut up dummy, this is serious. Daddy is going through something, stop making jokes.”
“I’m not joking!” Sabine said. “If you’re retiring, you should sell your house and go to the rich part of the low country in South Carolina. You can play all the golf you want.”
“Baby girl, I don’t play golf. I’m not here to tell y’all I’m killing myself, I intend to get to the bottom of everything and put some people in jail. I don’t have to die to do that. I just want y’all to know what’s going on.”
Darlene stood in front of him and grabbed his hand. He stood before her and she hugged him, then held his head in her hands.
“I trust that you are doing the right thing, but this is the last one. Then you come back to me old man. I’ve missed you so much.”
They kissed until Paul heard someone whistling at them.
“Who that?” Sabine asked, looking out at the sidewalk.
Paul was stunned to turn and see Yuri standing on the sidewalk in front of his wife’s house. It was almost like the first time they met, only Paul was much more angry that first time when he was just with Linus.
“Yuri James!” Paul yelled after asking his family for a moment. He stood on the pavement smiling at the young man.
“You happy to see me?” Yuri asked.
“Unless you here to kill me cause you heard I ain’t a detective no more.”
“Kill you? You my oldest friend, I couldn’t do that. And when I say oldest friend, I mean…”
“I get it. So what you doing here?”
“I was for real in the neighborhood, I got a lot of meetings all over town today, and I don’t know, I felt you here being completely undeserving of all those beautiful black women that seem to love you so much. Honestly I was just driving by and saw you, but it ain’t coincidence I don’t think.”
“Why is that?”
“Cause I know something that you might want to know, and since you ain’t police no more, you might be able to actually help somebody.”
“Who you ratting out?”
“You know it ain’t that simple. You take some people off the board for me, it’s actually a humanitarian act, otherwise I would just dead them. But there’s a man out here looking for me, you probably don’t know him, you know his work though. And he got your boys out in Durham. That gay couple.”
“Ivan and Clay?” Young asked urgently. “Why does he have them?”
“He into some crazy shit at that secret facility of his, and them boys can do some crazy shit.”
“So what? You want me to take him out? I can’t arrest nobody.”
“That ain’t stop you from chasing me. You know you wasn’t ever gonna arrest me. But if you get your boys, maybe you can take out his whole operation.”
“You coming with me?”
Yuri smiled, “I can’t do that, I got a very important image to maintain. But I got somebody that can help you.”
“Why should I trust you?” Paul asked.
“Cause believe it or not, me and you always been on the same side. I’ll be back this way tomorrow. That your daughter on the porch? Tell her to be here too.”
“Meet me at my house,” Paul said, stepping between Yuri and his view of the porch. “I’m sure you know where I live.”
“See you soon.”
Yuri walked to a nearby car and drove off, after blowing a kiss to Paul’s youngest daughter.
“Wipe that smile off your face!” Paul yelled. “I don’t ever wanna see you talking to that boy!”
When Yuri meets Falon, it is dark at the old, dilapidated house where she usually meets with Clete and his goons. He is tired; he had been running errands for Chau all day around Knoxville, which meant that he was killing the people she had learned were speaking with Dr. Worthington, helping him to find her.
“I was told that someone wanted to meet me, but I can’t imagine how he came to find us here,” Chau said. “Talk to everyone who arranged this meeting, kill them, and bring this doctor to me. I’ll be here cleaning blood out of the rug. Stop killing people in this house!”
Yuri didn’t like killing people as much as he pretended to, but it is part of the persona that he has modeled after Dr. Eakran who had taught him a lot about the art of intimidation. Eakran had been a ruthless partner without all the showy theatrics, but he definitely earned the fear that he inspired in others. Eakran had an unnerving presence and Yuri never really felt safe with him, like the man could decide to kill him on a whim at any second. He has done a good job of putting everyone he encounters on edge.
Falon doesn’t seem to be rattled by him, though. When he arrives at the house, he does a sweep of the area and then the inside of the house before he finds her rocking in a chair on the back porch.
“Good to finally meet you,” Yuri says.
She indicates for him to sit in the other rocking chair next to her. He doesn’t.
“This shouldn’t take too long, should it?” Yuri asks and crosses his arm. The guns tucked into the waist of his pants are obvious.
“Not if you tell me where I can find my daddy. Name is Phil, he’s pushing fifty.”
“Rebel mentioned you was looking for somebody, but tell me why you would cause this kind of ruckus to find him? You know I could shoot you now and all my troubles would be over.”
“Do what you gotta do,” Falon says and puts both her hands over her head.
“You for real this stupid?” Yuri says as he pulls a gun and aims it at her.
“Are you?”
“Let me guess, you die, somebody get a bunch of money to kill me? Who dumb enough to come after me?”
“You asking the wrong question. You should be asking how much money can I possibly offer that would make somebody dumb enough to come after you.”
“Ohhhh, so you got it like that? How much? Maybe I’ll kill you just to kill myself and collect. They say I’m pretty crazy.”
Falon laughs despite trying very hard to be serious.
“You see how easy I made the white boys fall in line. Wouldn’t I be an asset to you? All I got to do is say so and they do whatever you want.”
Yuri laughs and replaces the gun in his waist.
“Damn you good. You used your dear old daddy to sucker the bikers and now they all answer to you. You know I don’t know nothing about your daddy.”
Falon turns her head to look at the stars as she smiles to herself.
“Yeah, but I got something you want, peace from the bikers, and now to get it, you have to help me.”
Yuri laughs again.
“If we go to war, you think enough of them will die for you before they realize they wasting they life for nothing and come crawling back?”
“You know they don’t like you? They scared shitless of you, but it make them so mad to have to answer to somebody like you. Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t dumb enough to be racist, dumb shit like that make you blind to people’s faults just cause they look like you. Or it make you too stubborn to realize that somebody who don’t look like you can help you. Most of them ain’t that smart, too busy living to make they dead relatives happy that they let another white person take advantage of them because they gotta keep the darkies in they place. They would give anything to make you look stupid, and they would die to help a white woman be the death of you. Please don’t make me use that, I really don’t want to fight you. I just want to use your resources to see if my father survived that mess you made. Will you help me?”
Falon stands before him with her arms crossed. She is shorter than him by at least a foot, but she stands before Yuri fearlessly, presenting as his equal.
“There’s somebody I want you to meet,” he says. “Ride with me tomorrow, but only if you get your boys in check tonight. No more dumb shit or, you know, I shouldn’t have to say it. I’m gonna help you. I’ll call you early, we meeting a real old man.”
He nods his head at Falon and she can see the sincerity in his eyes.
“I’ll make some calls, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
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