The city of Clarksdale Sunflower River Clarksdale
Through Riverton, parallel to the Sunflower, turn right on Second Street, where a faded mural of Muddy Waters looks at the heavy Chevys parked in front of Corner Grocery. Turn left, at the intersection of Second and Sunflower, before you get to Madidi, and go to 121. City Hall. Clarksdale Police Department is in the basement, and that’s where Doyle and Torrez were leaned up against a cruiser, smoking cigarettes.
Captain Mickey Doyle is the chief of the Narcotics Division. He’s short and cockstrong. Glasses and a mullet. Thick fingers constantly curled around that Marlboro. T-shirt tucked in his Wranglers. Work boots with the steel toe and non-slip sole. Glock .40 on his side, handcuffs on the other.
Corporal Earnesto Torrez is his right hand man in the narcotics division. Tallest Mexican I have ever seen, checking in at about 240. Black moustache and a face that can switch from smile to steel before you look away. He’s one of those quiet Mexicans, that kind that you don’t really know what’s going on in his head just by looking at him. Got a mean open hand slap, coming from the left side cause that’s where they never expect it from. Doesn’t leave bruises like an open fist would. Especially on the darker ones. But that’s what Mickey says. Torrez doesn’t say much.
I consider Doyle and Torrez partners, though its not official. I know they have been thorough some scrapes together, gotten into some tight spots, and covered for each other….once or twice. Doyle told me early on that it’s all about how you write the report. That’s all I needed to know.
Their Chevy 1500 was gunmetal gray, with a big toolbox on the back of it for the ARs and tactical shotguns. Airbrushed license plate on the front that read “ToolBox”, but it wasn’t just a noun. It was a verb. As in “to be toolboxed” or to “get toolboxed”. Upon inquiry, they would just laugh and say it wasn’t something I wanted.
We would go ride through the Brickyard and Riverton, looking for white girls and checking in with people on the street. “Snowbirds” they called them. Nine out of ten were either buying drugs or hooking, you could tell by the type of car they were driving as to what they were into. We’d follow them around looking for some sort of probable cause to make a stop – a missing tail light or no seatbelt. Run their tag and see who it comes back to. Sometimes you would get a little dope, sometimes scales and sandwich bags. We’d just throw it in the backseat, and tell them not to come back to this part of town again.
Delarian Wide would ride with us every once in awhile. He was a short bald man, coal black, with broad shoulders and powerful legs. Like he was made to bust concrete for a living. Whenever the narcotics unit would breach a door, with their body armor and their shields, Wide was always the first one to go in with the fifty pound door knocker. People on the street called him Yak. Always a smile, but slow with a joke, when you put him on the witness stand his silly ass would just rock back and forth in that chair, chew the gum that I already told him to spit out, and answer questions best he could. Sometimes he would make the jury laugh, though he wasn’t trying to. But he was always honest. I don’t think he could come up with a believable lie. You couldn’t help but love the son of a bitch. His investigations were bad, his reports were worse, but goddamn he was fun to be around.
They were the Jump Out Boys. And that’s exactly what they would do. They would show up at a crack house or a whore house without notice in their unmarked truck. Jump out, bust the door, and start cleaning house. Picking up the crack rocks before they could be flushed. Run the 15 year old girls outta there. They didn’t do it for the money. They did it for the respect. And they sure had it. And when I rode around with them on those afternoons when things were a little slow at the DA’s office, I had some of that respect too.
There are two main gangs in Clarksdale
And that July, a hot dusty day when you could feel the sap rising in the veins of the young bucks walking up and down the streets, looking, eager, blood unnatural, toxic, waiting for something, we had a daylight execution in Riverton
His name was Cheese. He was a Gangster Disciple. More than a soldier, but not yet a boss, Cheese had sold some fake dope to the wrong person. Called it “rabbit food”. It literally was. Just the kind you can buy at Wal-Mart. Green and wrapped in a tight brick. Some of the dope boys, to punk each other and make extra cash, would take the wrapping off, put real marijuana around the outside, and re-wrap it themselves. It still like it, felt like it, and weighed the same. But it wasn’t.
Big Lip Chris didn’t take too well to Cheese selling him rabbit food. And that afternoon, outside of the Walnut Game Room at the corner of Walnut and Adams Alley, in Riverton, Big Lip Chris and a handful of Vice Lords caught Cheese alone, walking back to his momma’s house. Made him get on his knees and shot him in the head with a Taurus .38 in front of four eye witnesses, one of them being Cheese’s momma. Just like that. Big Lip Chris was found a few hours later, hiding in a tote basket in the closet of his cousin’s house. We put him in solitary, with a Bandit on his leg. 50,000 volts with the push of a deputy’s remote. For his own safety. After we hosed him off.
Two nights after the murder, Cheese’s mother had selected to use Century Funeral Home owned by Mayor Espy to lay Cheese’s body in repose.
The visitation lasted for five hours, the line stretching outside of the funeral home, into the cracked and broken parking lot of the Brickyard. The Africans in their dark mourning clothes with hints of color, the women falling on each other’s shoulders covering their faces, sobbing, their bodies in the hot July sun sweating out cocoa butter and Johnson’s baby powder. Fat feet stuffed into too-small church shoes. Just waddling and wailing. The old men with their caps on and best suits. The Gangsters, with their black t-shirts from wal-mart and cheap designer jeans, dark blue tattoos barely visible against the skin of their necks and forearms. Sunglasses and huddled off to the side. Talking. Planning. Not going inside. Watching their backs on this side of town. Staying in groups.
At about ten o’clock that night, after all the singing and crying and praying and telling the world what a child of God that Charles “Cheese” Taylor was…everybody went home. And the body lay still, quiet, undisturbed, and dead.
I was sitting in my backyard, smoking the last cigarette of the day and listening to the cicadas. Mosquitoes buzzing in my ears and popping as they hit the blue bug zapper. Air sweet with honeysuckle and magnolia. Rocking in my chair. Half drunk. Doing nothing. Aggie asleep at my feet, his tail thumping once or twice as I scratched his back with my boot. That was about all he was good for these days. He knocked over my empty PBR cans when he saw a frog.
The scanner clicked on through my screened-in back door. “Clarksdale FD all FD units…..” I grabbed my badge and my keys, and went to 506 Ashton.
The blaze had started from Cheese’s coffin using an accelerant. Maybe Coleman lantern fuel or Zippo lighter fluid, according to the state fire marshall, Borganoni. Nothing explosive, just something to cause a good roast. The body had been burning for about 20 minutes before the Clarksdale Fire Department was able to put it out. There was a five point star in red spray paint on the outer wall, representing the Vice Lord dogma of Love, Truth, Freedom, Peace, and Justice. An upside-down pitchfork was stabbed through the body, the charred handle resting against the wall.
Doyle and Torrez where there, spitting and smoking, excited as hell. Chief had told them to post up on the top of Metropolitan Second Baptist Church
I watched the patrolmen wind yellow crime scene tape around the building as we waited for MBI.
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