When I got back to the Crips, Sam beckoned me over. “This is what Moe’s been needing to tell you.”
Big Moe licked his lips. “If it’s okay to ask, I was wondering just how long you’re going to be sticking around.” He held up both hands as if in placation. “You were always free to come and go as you please. Natalie was just messing with your head, a’ight?”
I considered. “Well, I was going to lie low long enough for this media thing to die down a tad, and then take off. No offense, but some place far away from Stagger Bay. I got nothing keeping me here.” I looked at Sam, who looked away.
“Little Moe, come here,” Big Moe said. A wiry black boy wriggled his way through the Crips to stand in front of me.
“This is my nephew. Little Moe, tell Markus about the Driver.”
Little Moe was pumped to be hanging with the men, and also seemed excited to be talking to me. “The Driver comes and takes kids if they don’t listen to they mama, or if they be alone,” he said hurriedly, his words piling up on each other.
“Ah,” I said, wondering what this was all about, wondering when they were going to cut to the chase. Why were they using this eight-year-old kid to be their spokesman? They were all tap-dancing respectfully around me and I fought impatience. “Like the Boogey Man or something?”
“Oh no,” Little Moe said, his eyes wide. “He real. I seen him. He drives one of those big old hotrods. It’s fast and it’s loud.
“One time, he drove right past me while I was at the playground, the one up past the hospital at Boat Park. Mama told me never to play alone, never to leave the Gardens, and I knew I was being bad going there by myself. I was scared when I saw him coming, and he smiled at me, and I thought he’d come to take me where he takes all the others.”
“Others?” I said, watching his face close for signs he was lying. Whatever else, this wasn’t a put-up job by the Crips. Little Moe obviously believed he was telling no more than the truth; he looked less and less happy as he told his tale.
“Sure. He took my big sister last year, from the Mall. We never found her, but we all knew.” He abruptly stopped his narrative and tugged sharply at Big Moe’s flannel shirt. “It be getting late; I gotta get back, I gotta be to home. Take me to Mama, Big Moe.”
“I gots to talk to Markus, Little Moe. Jojo, walk him to the crib.” Big Moe’s skinny white partner reached out to Little Moe and the two walked away down the row of bungalows, hand in hand.
“He has dreams about the Driver,” Moe said, moping at me like an undertaker. “All the kids around here dream about that beast. Like Little Moe said, son of a bitch took my niece.”
“I don’t know why you’re talking to me. Maybe you need to go to the cops,” I said.
All the 18th Street Crips had a laugh about that one but I shook my head. “I’m serious, dime him. Fuck anyone that calls you a snitch over being a cop caller; you got women and children to watch out for here.”
“Think we haven’t tried? The local cops don’t do crap – and any time out-of-town law wanders in to look around, nothing ever comes of it.”
“Not like I’m a big fan of the Man, but some might find that a bit surprising.”
Moe snorted. “Shit, dude, you know first hand no one down in the City gives a damn what happens up here in the sticks. And like I say, SBPD don’t never seem to get very excited over it.
“It used to be he only hit the disposables: hookers and runaways, hitchhikers, street people and such like – he worked Old Town a lot. You may have noticed how squeaky clean it is now. Tell the truth, I didn’t much mind them being gone – a lot of them people had no class at all.
“He almost never ever touches the locals, though – unless they raise a stank about what be going on. Then they gone, too – a lot of upright white Citizens has disappeared around Stagger Bay.
“Now he’s after us; it’s our turn. Maybe we should have made our stand before this. Sometimes he still takes out-of-towner white trash from other neighborhoods. But lately, yeah, it mainly be Gardens folks that disappear around town, whenever we leave here.”
“Sometimes you have to take the law into your own hands,” I observed.
“That’s been tried, too,” Big Moe said. “More than one person has gone after this guy, some of them old family locals with something to lose.”
“What happened?”
“We doesn’t know. They was never seen again, none of ‘em. No one he’s taken has ever been seen again, neither.” Big Moe scuffed the ground with his sneaker. “It occurs to me this is the same guy who killed the Beardsleys.”
“Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out,” I agreed. I waited for him to continue but he was silent. Instead, Moe and his Crips squirmed around like little boys caught playing hooky.
“G-Thug-Units,” Natalie said from her doorway. “Macho men.” She jerked her chin at Big Moe. “This one’s too manly to ask for anything. Does my proud brother really need to say what we want from you?”
Moe was too dark for me to tell if he was actually blushing, but he sure seemed to find the ground exceedingly interesting.
She smiled in my direction. “Do I need to ask you to do it for me? I’d think you’d be as red hot for the Driver as your own son is.”
I smiled right back at her even though Sam didn’t. “You don’t think I’d do it just to help out? You don’t think I’d do it even if I wasn’t involved?”
Natalie snorted, and then turned to go back inside. “You’re a lucky one. Maybe some of your luck will rub off on us.”
I had my own opinion about just how lucky I was, but as I had no incentive to pop anyone’s bubble I kept my mouth shut. “Take me to Elaine’s office,” I told Sam.