A Traitor to His Blood by M. P. Wright

Author:M. P. Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black & White Publishing
Published: 2021-08-12T14:53:42+00:00

24

It’s not a long way from Cheltenham Road to the Bishopston suburbs.

It’s the same city, but a darkness descends as you progress northwards. You pass from black and brown realities to the beginning of white dreams. A mile and a half to cover from one part of town to the next. But distance was the least of it. It was another world where I was going. I felt drunk and shouldn’t have been behind the wheel of a car. The only reason I didn’t have an accident going the short distance I travelled was because I didn’t think about driving and somehow steered from instinct.

The Smokey Row was a three-storey featureless pile that sat on the corner of Kings Drive and Bath Road. There was no sign or promise on the tar-coloured door that got you inside the brothel, and if you didn’t know what lay on the other side, you’d just walk on by. I knocked and a slit in the door slid open above my head. Yellowy eyes anchored in dark flesh glared at me, and then the black door opened.

Seated on a tall stool was Abe Bolden – twenty-two stone and then some extra pounds of muscle, hard fat and nasty intentions. His skin was only a little lighter than mine and the baseball bat in his hand was in lieu of the .38 tucked in the waistband of his trousers hidden underneath his jacket. Abe’s shiny, silver Moss Brothers suit had been stolen to order straight off the peg. The red tie around his neck was dragged so far down his chest that the knot was almost in line with his belly button.

‘If it ain’t Joseph Ellington. The Jah’s kin,’ he said aloud, as a servant to royalty might announce an arrival at a monarch’s ball.

There were maybe a dozen patrons in the illegal bar that separated the incoming customers downstairs from the brothel business above. Thomas ‘Tommy-A’ Charles Anderson was standing behind the bar. His darkness, strength and proportions were mythic. He was both ugly and handsome. Tight-lipped with heavy-lidded eyes that told you all you needed to know. I walked up to where he was drying a glass and took a seat.

‘What’s wrong wid you?’ he chided.

‘I’m sitting in this place, ain’t I?’

There was both evil and forgiveness in the man’s grin. He took a bottle with no label from under the mahogany bar and poured a long drink in a slender glass that he then set before me. I looked at the high-proof white rum a moment; a spirit I was sure had been illegally supplied by Vic’s organisation, and swivelled around to take in the view. The Smokey Row’s clients were mostly around my age. Black and white, and mainly all men. All of them hardened by lives of crime, drink, gambling or drugs. I truly felt out of my depth, and yet strangely at home.

‘You gonna take a drink o’ that liquor?’ Tommy-A asked me.

‘Don’t know yet. I’ve just about had my fill of booze tonight.

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