Chapter Forty-four
As it turned out, Ace’s scheming on Jonas turned out to work to his advantage. He had something that in all Jonas’s years of working with the detective he had never managed to uncover . . . a home address.
Ace wanted to mount up and ride in a small army, but Jonas shut that plan down. He didn’t know what he could potentially be walking into, and if things went wrong, someone would have to remain alive to continue the legacy of what they had built. He didn’t want it all to have been for nothing.
The detective lived in a one-story house out on Staten Island. It was a modest-looking place with manicured lawns and a small white fence around the front yard. It appeared very ordinary, hardly where he had expected someone as eccentric as Lou Ceaver to call home.
Jonas made a quick survey of the property. He looked for cameras, motion detectors, and anything else that might announce his arrival before he was ready. He found nothing, not even so much as an ADT sticker on any of the windows. What was more peculiar was that when he went to pick the lock, he found the door already open. It felt like a setup, but he had come too far to go back.
He crept inside the house, 9 mm held firmly in his right hand. His left arm hung awkwardly at his side. He had popped enough pills to numb the pain, but the arm still wasn’t much good to him. It was no matter, so long as his shooting arm worked. As he made his way through the darkened house, he heard music coming from a room at the end of the hall. He eased up and peered through the door.
There was Detective Ceaver. The room was dark, save for the light from the fire burning in the fireplace. He had his back to him, hunched over a black piano. His fingers moved expertly over the keys as he played a tune that struck a familiar cord in Jonas. He wasn’t sure, but it sounded like “Crossroad Blues.”
“Are you going to stand there gawking at me or come in?” Detective Ceaver called over his shoulder. Jonas had no idea how he even knew he was there.
Jonas looked around the room cautiously, as if he expected someone to jump out of the shadows and ambush him.
“No need to worry. I can assure you that we’re alone. I gave Willie instructions to stay away for the day, not that he would’ve come even if I had asked him to. He is genuinely quite fond of you.”
This made Jonas feel slightly better. He had naturally assumed that Willie had been in on the attempted hit and planned to track him down and settle up as soon as he was done with Ceaver. Jonas entered the room. He kept his gun at the ready and eyes still sweeping back and forth for signs of danger.
“You know, this has always been one of my favorite songs,” the detective continued. “From the first time I heard it in that backwater dive down in Mississippi, I knew that I loved it. It was so special that it deserved to be shared with the world, and so I pulled a few strings and made sure that it was. Did I ever tell you that I was once in the music business, Wrath?”
“And explain to me why I should give a fuck,” Jonas replied. Then the detective did stop his playing.
When the detective turned to face him, he looked different. The flames from the fireplace played tricks with his cold blue eyes. They almost seemed to glow. His stare went from Jonas’s angry face to the gun in his hand. “Is this what we’ve come to?” he asked almost sadly.
“This is what you made it, Lou,” Jonas shot back. “You couldn’t just let me go, could you?”
“Of course not, and I told you as much, but you didn’t listen. You just had to go and fuck everything up, all because of that bitch who had your nose so open. And where is she now?” The detective stood. “I never liked that girl. She was always messing with your head for her own personal gain. I’m glad she’s gone. Now, Jewels, she was a keeper. She was ambitious, dedicated . . . A perfect princess for my young prince. I would’ve loved to see what you two could’ve accomplished, but I guess that will never be, thanks to Ace.”
“That girl’s blood is on your hands!” Jonas shot back. “What did you offer Jewels to turn her against me? Money? Power?”
“We both know that none of those things interested Jewels. I simply offered her what her heart had always desired . . . you. I knew that you still held love in your heart for Jewels, and all it would take was removing a small obstacle so the love could blossom. I was saddened to hear that Jewels had been killed, but even more upset to hear that she had failed to take that bitch Alex with her.”
“Watch your fucking mouth!” Jonas pointed the gun at him threateningly.
“What? Your little feelings hurt that I called your beloved Alex out of her name? She is a bitch; a manipulative bitch who only wanted to control you. She was threatening to upset our plans. Now that she’s gone, we can get back to business.”
Jonas laughed. “If you think I’m going to continue working for you after what you’ve done, you’re crazier than I thought.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. We had an agreement, and where I come from, a deal is a deal,” the detective told him.
“And where I come from, if a muthafucka shoots at you and misses, you don’t give him a second chance,” Jonas told him and opened fire. The first two bullets took the detective high in the chest, knocking him back into the piano. Jonas stood over him and placed his gun against the detective’s forehead. “Consider our contract voided,” he snarled before blowing the detective’s brains all over the piano.
Then Jonas collapsed onto the couch. He was so tired that he felt like he couldn’t stand. He was only 20 but felt 40. He was tired . . . so very tired. The game was over, and for the first time, he had actually won. Jonas had closed his eyes for a second—but they immediately snapped open again when he heard the sounds of clapping. He turned white as a ghost when he saw the detective pulling himself to his feet.
“Bravo, Wrath . . . bravo!” the detective clapped his hands gleefully.
“What the fuck?” Jonas rolled off the couch, crashing onto his shoulder, sending pain up the side of his body. His eyes had to be playing tricks on him. He had put two bullets in the detective’s chest, and half of his head had been blown off. How in God’s name was he still standing?
“You don’t look so good, Wrath. Let me help you up.” The detective moved toward Jonas. Jonas opened fire again. The bullets tore through the detective, knocking him this way and that, but he kept coming. By the time he reached Jonas, his 9 mm had clicked empty. “Are you done?”
“How in God’s name . . . ?”
“God has nothing to do with this, or haven’t you figured it out yet?” the detective smiled. His once straight, white teeth were now pointed and crooked. A forked tongue danced in his mouth. “When we first met, I told you that in you I would right a wrong from my past. You were my fresh start, and my chance to avoid some of the pitfalls of that idiot Zeke.”
“What does my father have to do with it?” Jonas asked.
“Wrath, you can’t be that dense. Do you think that I just came upon you by chance? No. You were promised to me. I watched you grow, waiting for the opportunity to collect on the debt Zeke owed me.”
“You were the man my father was in debt to?”
“Bingo! A lifetime of servitude in exchange for riches. Zeke was smart, smart enough to find a way to break our agreement, and there wouldn’t have been shit I could’ve done about it. Luckily, he didn’t read the fine print . . . There are very few escape clauses in my deals, but they’re in there if you know what you’re looking for. Death can be a deal breaker, but it’s not as simple as you would think. Not about when you go, but how. The devil is in the details. No pun intended. Death would do it, but it had to be a certain kind of death. He thought he was slick by getting that woman’s boyfriend to kill him, but all that did was pass the debt to his children. This is what brought you to me, my Wrath.”
“Who are you?” Jonas asked, fearing he already knew the answer.
“I told you what my name was when we met. Weren’t you listening?”
“You said you were Detective Lou Ceaver.” Jonas repeated what he’d been told when they first met.
“Right, now say it a little faster and as one word.”
“Lou Ceaver,” Jonas repeated. “Louceaver . . . Lucifer.” Jonas’s eyes were wide with shock.
“Smart boy gets a cookie!” The detective kicked Jonas in his gut, sending him sliding across the floor. “Now, I tried going about this the reasonable way, but you want to make things hard, so we’ll play it your way. I own you, boy. For the rest of your days, your black ass will be at my beck and call. One of these days, we’ll even put your unborn child to work. Would you like that, Wrath? Working side by side with your kid?”
“Nooooo!” Jonas charged the detective and punched him in the face over and over with his good hand, which only seemed to amuse the detective.
The detective grabbed Jonas by his injured arm, digging his nails into it. Jonas howled in pain. “I love it when they scream,” he laughed and tossed Jonas across the room as if he weighed nothing.
Jonas violently slammed into the grate of the fireplace. Hot embers burned his back. He had pulled himself into a kneeling position. The detective was standing over him looking down triumphantly. “I’ll do it . . . I’ll come back to work for you. Just leave Alex and the baby out of this.”
“I’m afraid not. Thanks to you and your daddy, they come as a package deal with this blood debt. For as long as you live, you belong to me. And when the time comes that you are too old to hunt and that trigger finger of yours is too arthritic to work, that bastard Alex is carrying around will take your place.”
Jonas had never felt more helpless in his life. He had allowed the detective to make him think he was in control, but he had been the one pulling the string the whole time. In Jonas’s foolish quest for power, he had damned himself and his unborn child, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Or was there?
The detective watched with an amused look on his face as Jonas grabbed one of the fireplace pokers. They were made from pure iron. “Here we go again. You can’t kill the devil, Wrath. Have you learned nothing during our little chat?”
“I’ve learned quite a bit, Lou, like you don’t know when to shut the fuck up. Thanks to your big-ass mouth, I know where my dad went wrong and how to void our deal,” Jonas sneered at him. “By your own admission, death is a deal breaker, but it had to be a certain kind of death. My father was murdered, and his debt was passed on, so this got me to thinking.”
“Now, wait a second, Wrath. Let’s not be hasty.” The detective was suddenly very nervous watching Wrath handle the iron poker. “We can work something out. I was only kidding. You don’t think I’d ever go after your kid, do you?”
“That’s not a gamble I’m willing to take!” Jonas braced the poker against his chest and fell forward, impaling himself.
“Noooooooooo!” the detective roared, his voice shaking the entire house.
“Game over, Lou,” Jonas laughed, coughing blood. As he passed into the next life, his final thoughts were of how he couldn’t wait to tell his dad how he had beaten the devil at his own game.