Crimes in Southern Indiana Read online

  “What about Daddy?”

  “Leave his ass hangin’ like meat in a cooler, make sure he’s really dead. We make the call in the mornin’.”

  “And we start new?”

  Bellmont abraded Carol’s stomach, thinking about the child they both wanted but hadn’t been able to have, mashed his lips against hers, and said, “Yeah, we start new.”

  Crimes in Southern Indiana

  Loss lubricated the sixteen-by-sixteen pit where four canine legs twitched muscle beneath soiled fur. Red the color of roses drooled from the teeth of Boono, a black-tan Walker hound. Puddled onto Ruby’s lifeless golden cur hide. The referee declared the winner.

  Outside the heated glow of the pit, Iris stood like a bastard child with a clubfoot and Elephant Man features, fighting back the mucus and the tears of his loss. He watched opal-skinned men dressed in bibs, some with T-shirts, others without, count crumpled bills to the winning bettors of Boono. While tobacco-skinned men in denim sagging below their asses traded small squares of cellophane for cash from grizzly-faced white men whose arms were graffitied up with Marksman crosshairs, American flags, M16s, and big-breasted females.

  But not Iris. He was deep in the hole after his third hound, Ruby, was beaten.

  Going over all that he’d lost. The wife. The morals. And now, the dogs. Five fingers lay heavy as regret over Iris’s right shoulder. The words of Chancellor’s broken southern Indiana tongue rang in his ear.

  “Mr. Iris, looks to me you’s about fift een grand in the hole.”

  Iris kept his back to Chancellor and said, “Ain’t got it.”

  Chancellor chuckled in a deep bellow and said, “Them’s three words I don’t never care to hear.” He went silent among the hopped-up screams of unshaven, gap-toothed men swilling drinks and snorting the crystalline powders from their purchases. Knowing Iris was a renowned trainer of coonhounds, he drawled, “You got two choices. You labor my dogs under my rules for a few fights, work off what you owe, or—”

  Chancellor paused, waited for Iris to acknowledge him.

  Iris turned around. His cataract eyes met the pugilistic glow of Chancellor Evans, whose hair thorned up into oily intestinal nails, framed his floured skin and bristled beard. He had hubcap shoulders attached to iron-ore arms. Stood with a black shirt worn to the shade of spent charcoal. A .45-caliber Glock was tucked below his navel. Chancellor was a war veteran of Afghanistan who returned home, hating America for the war it had started and never finished. He ran guns throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio. Had meth brought in for his family’s mid-level dogfighting ring and, after all the generations before him, he was now eyeing the big-money fights.

  Anger festered behind eyes split with red vein. Iris swallowed his pride and asked, “Or what?”

  Chancellor smiled. His metallic blue eyes rolled down toward the pistol tucked in his front, came back to Iris as he lifted his hand to his temple, index finger pointing, thumb high like a hammer, and he said, “Or one of the Salvadorans can take ye out behind the barn, put a nine to your pan.”

  When Chancellor’s supplier for meth caught his abandoned cookhouse on fire on Lickford Bridge Road, he’d gotten word of men who pushed a purer form of amphetamine within the small riverboat towns that ran east along the Ohio River. He approached these men and worked out an arrangement for them to supply extra muscle at the dogfights and drugs to the locals who worked the power plant and automotive and oil factories in the surrounding counties. Aging men and women who callused their grips for a wage and craved carnage. The men Chancellor approached were the Mara Salvatrucha. He conceived the MS-13 gang to be soldiers like him and his men, playing by the rules of the grotesque. And they agreed.

  Iris’s bones itched with fear and crashed with loss. What he wanted was to kill this savage to whom he’d gotten indebted.

  Iris sucked up his pride, leveled his tone to Chancellor. “Know a lotta faces are here to wager. See somethin’ bleed. I gave ’em that. I work off what I owe. Not a penny more.”

  Chanellor’s lips shaped into a smirk and said, “Clean that dog of yours outta my pit. Take ’im out back, toss him in Crazy’s truck with the others.” Iris turned, felt his insides go warm. No burial for his hounds. He made his way through the shadowed frames. Walked toward the lighted pit where Ruby’s motionless shape lay as a testament to his mistake, stepped over the wooden wall decorated by the dead. Wrinkled bills for the next round of bets were passed.

  Gothic clowns morphed from Crazy’s shoulders, inked into ropes down around his elbows. Daggers ripped over his forearms and beneath the cuffed wrists that twisted behind his back.

  Crazy had been IDed as Felix Martinez, a man who worked at a local chicken factory by day. By night he networked a cocktail of mayhem, stealing, cashing out dope, and when needed transporting dead canines.

  Detective Mitchell stood in the interrogation room, eyes spent, carbon hair matted against his head, a jawline of stubble. He had run Crazy’s prints, scanned his sheet. Discovered Felix was an MS-13 lieutenant. Wanted for car theft s, misdemeanors, and even tied to a few malicious-wounding charges in other states. His ID was falsified.

  Crazy leaned into the metal chair more than he sat in it. His black-and-white skull-and-crossbones boxers rimmed out of his loose-hanging denims, which were spotted with crimson.

  Mitchell leaned down in front of Crazy. His words bounced within the eight-by-eight room of carpeted floor and wood-paneled walls as he asked, “Name Iris got any meanin’ to you?”

  Mitchell had been investigating the bloated hides of dead dogs scattered down in White Cloud, Indiana, from two months ago. Where a single road of gnarled blacktop led to a few fishing cabins spread out along the Blue River and the antique gas station that hadn’t operated since the sixties or seventies. The dogs, dumped behind the station, had been discovered by a local.

  The dog’s necks had been torn out by teeth. Flies had taken shelter within their ears and nostrils, depositing larvae, swelling their eyes. The innards had begun to reek of decay. His hunch was he was tracking a dogfighting ring.

  Mitchell had no leads, knew dogfights didn’t happen every week, they were spread out. He had been staking out the gas station on weekends. Parked his old truck within the shadows of willow trees and waited. Headlights cut through the dew of Sunday morning. Inhaling a cigarette and sipping cold caffeine, Mitchell watched a Nissan truck putter to a stop, then reverse next to the gas station and kill the engine.

  From it stepped Crazy in his T-shirt with sagging jeans and big white tennis shoes, a wool ball cap cocked to the east. “The fuck?” Mitchell muttered. “Damn fish outta water.”

  The young man dropped the tailgate. Cradled out several stiff shapes. Threw them down the same embankment of dried leaves and rock. Mitchell unholstered his piece and got out of his cruiser.

  Now Crazy sat smelling of tainted hides, staring holes in the white-and-gold table before him, and said, “No hear of him.”

  The dogs Crazy had dumped had been tagged, the letters I.P. branded within the left and right inner ears of each hound. The owner’s initials. Iris Perkins. A local breeder, hunter, and legend amongst the coon hunters of Harrison County. A man Mitchell’s father had hunted with when he was a boy.

  The dogs could have been stolen and sold. But no reports had been filed on missing coonhounds. Mitchell said, “Them dogs was killed by other dogs. Meanin’ they was part of a dogfighting ring. Big fuckin’ no-no ’round these parts. We love our dogs here. I wanna know who runs it.” Crazy said nothing.

  “Fine, your prints tell me you got forged documentation. You’ve a sheet that’s been opened for a bit, it’ll likely take you some years to close it, servin’ time in prison.” Crazy didn’t even blink. “World’s most dangerous gang, that’s your title. ’Course, you do time your face and ass’ll be gettin’used in all kinds of dangerous ways.”

  Crazy was still calm.

  Mitchell said, “And they’s the duff el bag of cash I found in your truc
k.” Crazy lifted his gaze from the table, eyed Mitchell but didn’t say anything. Mitchell had gotten his attention and said, “You’s fucked.”

  Mitchell exited the room. Let his words worm through Crazy’s head. He walked to the break room, refilled his takeout cup with coff ee. Went over to another room and set the thermostat of the interview room’s A/C to 58. Let that fucker freeze. Knowing he was from way down south, couldn’t be used to the cold.

  In the room, Crazy thought about how everything started thirteen years ago in El Salvador, where poverty and hunger had run cold, pained his mother’s and father’s guts in a drift wood shack with a tin roof nestled upon a mound of dirt and dreams of saving enough to immigrate to the States. Until Crazy found a new family, which was green script entwined with crossbones, daggers, and teardrops from forehead to heel. They hopped trains to the north. Crossed the Rio Grande. Paid the coyotes to bring his set leader, Angel, and him to the Midwest with ten other members six years ago. They’d an objective: spread out to the small cracker-ass redneck towns. Get a job with other immigrants. Blend in. Start recruiting members for the MS. Set up trafficking routes for drugs and humans.

  Now he was second in charge of that family, directly under Angel. But the thieving, smuggling, and killing had taken its toll, making him question when he’d be the next statistic. He started skimming cash from the dope he and his set smuggled from another MS set who delivered by boat along the Ohio River and sold throughout Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. He and his homies exchanged cash from the previous sale of product after they’d gotten their cut. Loaded the new product. Sometimes cellophane bricks of weed, other times meth. Crazy drove the drugs in one car while another ran interference if needed for the conservation officers, as well as the state and county cops. Then they broke it down, cut it up for resale to the locals throughout the surrounding counties. Crazy planned to take the money he’d stolen, disappear, begin a life without violence.

  Recently, Angel had formed an alliance with a local gunrunner who held dogfights, thought it would help to spread their reach deeper into the rural landscape. A cracker named Chancellor Evans, who held bouts every couple months for locals and out-of-towners. His supplier had been busted after his cookhouse found a spark and burned to the ground, or so he thought. Angel and Crazy got word of its location, rigged it to burn to get more meth territory. As an added bonus, he helped sling amphetamines and provided some of his clique’s extra muscle for Chancellor’s fights. The deal Evans laid on the table was simple: supply the narcotics and get a 30 percent cut on his take. Angel took it. Crazy was drafted to dump the losing dogs, only tonight he’d planned on dumping the hounds and disappearing with the money he’d been skimming over the months, piling the cash up and hiding it in the spare-tire compartment behind the seat. But tonight the cash was sitting next to him because he was planning to run away, start over, and the cop came out of nowhere.

  He’d been sitting for what seemed like hours. The joints of his arms and legs ached, his skin pimpled. He was cold and stiff. He wanted out.

  Mitchell entered the room with a steaming cup of coffee. He sipped it. “Ahh,” he said, “somethin’ to take the chill out.”

  Crazy sat up in the chair, shivering.

  Mitchell eyed Crazy, remembered the dogs: one golden, one fudge, and one raven. But what Crazy had dumped was chomped and clawed into Chiclets of red. Necks busted with gums smeared and teeth filed to points. Hinds and fores sprained and broken.

  Crazy sat silent, inhaled deeply, exhaled.

  Mitchell took in Crazy’s candy-corn scars, knife wounds. And his eyes, bottomless pools of unknown savagery. Mitchell sipped his coffee. Crazy wasn’t playing hard, he was hard. Mitchell wanted to get inside Crazy’s head. Try to flip him. The dogs weren’t going to work. He thought of the way Crazy had looked up from that table when he mentioned the cash and he said, “Shame, all that money you had. Know what happens to it? Twenty percent automatically goes to Uncle Sam. The other eighty goes to the department. Buy us new equipment.”

  Crazy’s sight was burning when Mitchell said this. All of the work he’d done. Time and risk taken to not get caught. And Crazy said, “Muthafucker.”

  Mitchell smiled. “Not only do I got your money, I got your plate number, know where you work and sleep.”

  “That money belong to me.”

  The bag had been sitting on the seat with a change of clothes, deodorant, and soap. His Nissan had a near full tank of gas. Was Crazy stealing from the hands that fed him? Plannin’ to run away with money earned from the dogfights? It was a long shot but Mitchell would take it. He threw out his lure and said, “Bet it belongs to your set, your gang.”

  Enraged, Crazy repeated, “Belong to me.”

  Mitchell said, “What’s it worth to you?”

  “Worth?”

  “Yeah, what would you do for it? I could get word to your gang, let ’em know you’re dirty. Cut you loose and see how long you last.”

  The chill in Crazy’s bones was breaking him down. He wasn’t afraid of Angel anymore, Angel was going to come after him anyway once he left, but he’d risked his life over the course of a year skimming that money and this pig was trying to make him walk the coals.

  Mitchell told him, “You give me names. Locations. Maybe we can work somethin’ out.”

  Somethin’, Crazy thought, meant ratting out Chancellor, whom Crazy had stolen some of the money from. The rest he’d stolen from the MS. If the MS or Chancellor discovered he had turned rat, he’d be hunted and maimed. He was standing on a cliff with a bottomless drop.

  “I say anything I’m dead man.”

  Mitchell had him and said, “Waive your rights, turn informant, get me what I need, I get you assurance and relocation.”

  Crazy said, “Relocation?”

  “Federal protection. New name, job, home in another state, but you gotta give me everything you know.”

  If Crazy wanted out, this could be his only chance. Staring through Mitchell, he said, “What about money?”

  Mitchell hadn’t turned it in as evidence; it now belonged to him. He lied, “See what I can do.”

  And Crazy said, “Orange County, me and my set sling dope at dogfights, help muscle the crowd. I dump dogs who lose.”

  A cannon sounded in Mitchell’s mind when Crazy said dope. Mitchell asked, “That where the money came from, dope?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The fights, the dog ring, who runs it?”

  “Man call himself Evans.”

  “Chancellor Evans?”

  Crazy pursed his lips and said, “Yeah.”

  Chancellor Evans came from a long line of backwoods gunrunners and dogfighting. Had a lot of reach even with the law enforcement in that county, hard man to bust, paid a lot of people off, rumor was even the cops bought and sold from him. But mixing with the Mara Salvatrucha? Goddamn, every cop had been trained to know their story. Immigrants who came up from El Salvador to the West Coast in the ’80s. Got harassed by others. Formed their own gang to fight back, to survive. Eventually became the most vicious of all gangs, and why? Because we busted them, housed them in our prisons, where they were schooled in savagery. They didn’t just kill men, they’d disembowel them, hang their insides up like party decorations. Taught their new tactics to others. Were now street soldiers for the cartels of Mexico, and those guys were even scarier. They had embedded themselves within most major cities and now were showing up in the heartland, as Crazy’s presence attested. They’d all heard about it, knew they were coming. Mitchell knew the Mexicans all worked down at the chicken plant, but Crazy was the first real-life MS-13 gangster he knew of who’d been in custody in all the surrounding counties.

  This could be a big break for Mitchell, a promotion.

  “How the hell the MS get hooked up with Chancellor?”

  “We, the Crazy Blades, we get word that Chancellor need meth to sell during fights, Angel wanna spread our trade deeper.”

  “Angel?”

 
“First in command.”

  “These fights, they held at Chancellor’s place in Orange County?”

  “In Orange County, yeah. Never at Chancellor’s.”

  “How often?”

  “Every so many months. Take time to set up. Secretive.”

  “And the dope?”

  Crazy teethed on pause, ran this through his mind. The other MS set they ran dope with didn’t have a problem killing cops or an MS rat.

  Mitchell sensed his hesitation, leaned forward and said, “You want my deal I need ever’thing you know.”

  “Twice a month we meet other MS members on the Ohio River. They travel by boat. I trade money from what we sold for more dope minus our cut. Sometime is weed but most time is meth.”

  “Damn, we used to make all that stuff here on our own,” Mitchell interrupted, mostly talking to himself.

  “I don’t know,” Crazy said. “People say your stuff shit.”

  Mitchell came back to the interrogation. “The cash in your truck?”

  “From crystal at the dogfights.”

  “You said it was your money.”

  “My money. I take it. You want me to deal, I need keep it or I become a question floating on river.”

  Deal? Looked like Crazy was willing to talk. Fucker had been skimming from the hand that feeds him. Letting him keep the cash was a risk, but Mitchell couldn’t blow Crazy’s cover, he’d have to let him take it. The dog ring he’d place on the back burner, use it after he busted the network running drugs on the Ohio River and into Indiana. The drugs would net a bigger bust, more attention for Mitchell. Another notch in the food chain of law enforcement’s politics. This was big-time. Crazy needed to document his story on paper and video, the how and the who, and quick.

  Early-morning sun heated the rusted tin roof of the barn where the bark and whine of caged dogs vibrated down the hand-planed walls, chipped the lining of Iris’s conscience. It had been two weeks since the fight. Two weeks of training dogs from dusk to dawn. Every night he left Chancellor’s farm, returning to his own mattress. Pouring whiskey down his throat, wanting to wash away his wrongs, to bring back what had once been right.