Smoke Kings
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Synopsis
"A fresh and fierce new voice to crime fiction...a stunning book that takes the reader on an intense and harrowing journey that is truly unforgettable. Consider me a big fan." — Don Winslow, New York Times bestselling author of The Cartel, The Force and City on Fire
"Jahmal Mayfield roars to the top of the writer-to-watch list with this sizzling debut. Smoke Kings is straight fire. Every page simmers with an undercurrent of rage, each line a hard dose of smoldering truth. I can't wait to see what Mayfield does next." - Eli Cranor, Edgar Award Winning Novelist of Don't Know Tough
In the vein of Get Out and Razorblade Tears, a feast of noir fiction and probing social commentary that asks us to consider what would happen if reparations were finally charged and exacted.
Nate Evers, a young black political activist, struggles with rage as his people are still being killed in the streets 62 years after Emmett Till. When his little cousin is murdered, Nate shuns the graffiti murals, candlelight vigils, and Twitter hashtags that are commonplace after these senseless deaths. Instead, he leads 3 grief-stricken friends on a mission of retribution, kidnapping the descendants of long-ago perpetrators of hate crimes, confronting the targets with their racist lineages, and forcing them to pay reparations to a community fund. For 3 of the group members, the results mean justice; for Nate – pure revenge.
Not all targets go quietly into the night, though, and Nate and his friends' world spirals out of control when they confront the wrong man. Now the leader of a white supremacist group is hot on their tail as is a jaded lawman with some disturbingly racist views of his own.
As the 4 vigilantes fight to thwart their ruthless pursuers, they’re forced to accept an age-old truth: "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves."
Smoke Kings is a powerful and propulsive novel with a diverse and unforgettable cast of characters. Like Steph Cha’s Your House Will Pay it explores decades of racial tensions through a fictional landscape where the line between justice and revenge is blurred.
Release date: February 6, 2024
Publisher: Melville House
Print pages: 256
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Smoke Kings
Jahmal Mayfield
1
Two years later…
Searching the swamp for bear scat wasn’t originally part of the deal. Neither was listening closely for grunting feral hogs. It didn’t help Rachel’s mood, either, that the crotch of her waders was cut too low, and where the boots and legs seamed there was a sharp edge that bit into her calves, and the waterproof nylon trapped heat and perspiration against her skin. Once this was finished, her sweaty clothes would have to be peeled from her like an orange rind. Calamine lotion for mosquito bites.
“Tried to tell you all,” Isiah called out. “There’s nothing here.”
For all his gifts, he didn’t seem to pick up on Rachel’s state of mind.
She ignored him and trudged forward through muck the color of pea soup. Keeping an eye out for the silk of a banana spider. Webbing that could stretch across the path, glowing a golden yellow as it reflected the sunlight.
“Rache?”
“Let’s head back,” she snapped.
“Wait. You’re upset with me?”
There was so much Rachel could’ve said in response but, again, she chose to focus on her movement through the swamp. With each step she took; especially mindful of snakes.
She hated snakes.
She also didn’t like Isiah’s recent hesitance to the crew’s plan.
“I never wanted it to be like this,” he said.
Rachel stopped, turned to him, an angry scarlet blush to her café au lait complexion. “Yeah? What did you want it to be like? I’d really like to know, Isiah. ‘Cause your bitching is getting old.”
“My bitching?” he said, the wound clear in his voice.
Plus, that hangdog look in his eyes.
Rachel sighed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m just…never mind. We’ve all got to stick together.”
She wasn’t sure the apology was landing smoothly, but Isiah held up his arm. “Lead the way.”
They walked on in silence. Finding nothing on the path worth reporting back to Nate.
The boathouse where they’d set up operations was a heap along the bank of a stream carpeted with duckweed. Bleached gray from years of abandonment and mucky swamp air. Ratty, once-white sheets still hung in the windows as curtains. A rusty barbecue grill, small table, and two mismatched chairs took up what passed for a porch. One of the chairs a straight-back cane model, the other plastic, and the blaze orange of a hunter’s vest.
Rachel eyed the dumpy lean-to and before taking its steps up to the front door she paused. “I know you’re not feeling this, babe. But…we need you.”
“Don’t worry, Rache, I’ll be a good little soldier,” Isiah said, and tried to smile. It didn’t reach his eyes.
“Thank you,” she told him, and as a mea culpa added, “And I can’t wait to marry you.”
Isiah nodded and climbed the makeshift cinder block steps to the boathouse like a man condemned to the gallows.
Rachel had no such reticence. The sweltering heat and uncomfortable waders aside, this was what she was here for. The real action. She pulled a pair of clear latex gloves from her waders and snapped them on. It was jarring seeing her right-hand ring finger bare. She’d left her engagement diamond boxed back in Jersey so it wouldn’t get damaged out here in the swamps of Alabama.
Inside the boathouse, Scott York was as he’d been when they’d left, propped up on an orange chair that matched the one from the porch. His arms were secured behind his back with cable zip ties.
Nate glanced over as Rachel and Isiah rejoined the “party.” Rachel gave him a nod.
All clear.
Nate, not skipping a beat, focused back on their captive. “Do you believe me to be a serious man, Mr. York?”
Scott York’s voice was an embarrassing croak. “Ye…yes.”
Rachel eyed the stain down the front of York’s pants, the damp pool beneath his feet. A strong ammonia odor in the air. Scratches and bruises on his face. He trembled like a washing machine in spin cycle.
Nate placed a hand on York’s shoulder and the captive flinched. “You’re familiar with the Tyler-Goodwin Bridge?”
“I don’t think so,” York said, eyes starting to tear up.
“No,” Nate said, shaking his head. “None of that, Mr. York. Chest out, head raised. Have some pride.”
“What is…what is this about? What are you going to do with me?”
“I asked you about the Tyler-Goodwin Bridge.”
“I…I never heard of it.”
“Quite possible,” Nate said, nodding. “They tore it down when you were a toddler.”
York swallowed, said, “Okay.”
“You’ve heard stories about ’57, though?”
“The…the year?”
“Yessir,” Nate said. “There’s one story in particular I’m keen to discuss with you.”
Rachel couldn’t help but admire Nate’s calm, the precision of his language, as if he were negotiating a business transaction.
“Mr. York…”
“Okay,” he said again.
Nate paused to take a sip of a Muchacho, the can slick with beer sweat, then set the can back on the floor by York’s feet. He belched, wiped his lips with his hand, then got back to it. “One of your forebears and three other whites forced a black man to jump off the bridge.”
Up until then, Joshua had been standing in the corner, silently holding a crooked tree limb at port arms across his chest. He’d used the tree limb to poke York forward through the muddy sloughs of the swamp. He murmured now at the mention of those white men from the past forcing Johnnie Williams to leap to his death. Very little had changed in the more than sixty years since. But Rachel figured Joshua was more concerned with the last two years. The injustice in Darius’s murder was the reason they’d allcommitted to do this work.
His death couldn’t be in vain.
They wouldn’t allow it to be.
Nate frowned at the captive. “An innocent black man losing his life at the hands of someone in your family doesn’t even elicit a reaction, Mr. York?”
“Which…which forebear?”
“Your grandfather.”
“Pawpaw? Impossible.” York shook his head, and his posture straightened. Energized, it seemed, by the task of defending his family’s honor. Or, less benevolently considered, holding on to the lie of his past to keep from getting the comeuppance he deserved in his present.
That’s how Rachel saw it.
“You doubt what I’ve told you?” Nate said.
“Somehow you’ve got your wires crossed.”
“My wires crossed?”
“I mean no disrespect.”
“Hmm.”
There was menace in Nate’s utterance of that one exclamation. Scott York seemed to realize it, too. Rachel noticed him looking more closely at the four of them, most likely to gather whatever he could make out through the openings of their coal-black balaclavas.
She pictured it as York must’ve, from his bigoted perspective.
Nate. Six-five, the brown of cinnamon. Slim and sinewy. Eyes as intense as an out-of-control blaze.
Joshua. Black as licorice, stocky. Wielding that tree limb as a weapon.
Isiah. Smooth, tawny skin, sharp cheekbones, and small, nearly lidless eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses.
And Rachel herself. Pale-green irises, skin so light that few connected her with a black-and-white heritage. She was confused for Puerto Rican, Italian, but almost never black. Even by black people.
She wondered whether Scott York was perceptive enough to realize what he’d gotten into.
The answer came quickly. Of the four of them, York chose Isiah to address. A Korean ally? Would someone like York even know the difference between a Korean, a Chinese, and a Japanese man?
“You’re okay with what they’re doing here?” he asked Isiah.
Rachel was pleased that her fiancé didn’t respond.
“Cracker judge dismissed the charges,” Nate interjected, getting back to the bridge. “Claimed no cause of death had been established.”
York shook his head. “Pawpaw wouldn’t have been involved in any of that.”
“‘Merely forcing a person to jump from a bridge does not naturally and probably lead to the death of such person.’ Those were the cracker judge’s exact words.”
“Listen. I feel your pain. I do. The man on the bridge was kin to you?”
“No.”
York frowned. “Why are you taking it so personal then?”
“Each week, by five p.m. Friday at the latest,” Nate instructed, ignoring the question, “you will deposit three hundred eleven dollars and fifty-four cents into an account we will provide to you.”
“What?”
“The exact amount I quoted you,” Nate said.
“Every week…for how long?”
“In perpetuity.”
“Jesus. What’s the money even for?”
“We like to think of it as a community-building fund,” Nate said. “But you can consider it reparations.”
“Reparations? You mean like to make up for slavery? I had nothing to do with that. And I know you’re trying to pin something on my pawpaw, too, but…”
Nate’s eyes clouded over, and he reached out his hand to Rachel. “Rope.”
She glanced at Isiah before unfurling a snake of chunky lariat from a compartment in her waders. One end tied off in a familiar loop. A hangman’s knot. Noose. She tossed it to Nate.
York lurched back in his seat. “The hell…”
“Your bloodline is tainted,” Nate said. “And it’ll remain an endless cycle if you aren’t held accountable. Your daughters are already following in your grandfather’s footsteps. Following in your footsteps. Ava liked a post making fun of Mexicans and the wall. Maddy wrote in a post that AOC might be tolerable if she was any other color. Clever, I’ll give your Maddy that.”
“How do…how do you know these things?”
“Signaling System vulnerabilities are easily exploited, Mr. York. We’ve been listening in on you and your family’s cell phone calls, reading your texts.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
Nate edged close to York again, touched the man’s face. A gentle gesture with no good intent. The captive tried to shirk away from him but couldn’t.
“Your company was awarded a 4.8 million-dollar grant to repair the sewage system in a place called Uniontown. You were supposed to build a spray field but have yet to do so even though you took the money. Can you explain why that is, Mr. York?”
“I don’t even know what a spray field is,” York whined. “My company is in recycling. We haven’t received any grants.”
“Every time it rains,” Nate continued, flexing the noose now, “the lagoon spills over, flooding fields, cow pastures, contaminating the water supply. I suppose you don’t care because the affected are mostly black farmers and residents. Well, a little boy got very sick and nearly died. It’s a miracle he lived. Others probably won’t be as lucky.”
“Listen to me,” York said, revving his voice. “I’m in recycling.”
“You should’ve made this easy for yourself, Mr. York. All you had to do was agree to deposit the money each week.”
“You’ve got this wrong.”
“Hold him, please,” Nate said, turning to the others.
Joshua gently set the crooked tree limb on the floor. Rachel rubbed her gloved hands on her thighs and shot Isiah a look. He frowned but pulled a digital camera from his waders, trained it on York. And they all moved at once, a sublime synchronicity that came with practice, lots and lots of practice. Six of these so far.
York shook his head. “Don’t do this. Please. You’ve got this all wrong. I’m in recycling.”
He squeaked his chair backward, and it almost toppled. They grabbed hold of him, dragged him and the chair back to the room’s center. Nate eased the noose over York’s head and down around his neck. “Come on…please,” York begged. “You don’t have to do this.”
Rachel could sense Isiah’s hard gaze trained on her but wouldn’t look in his direction.
Nate said, “The pull at the end of your drop will lever your jaw and head upward. Wrenching your vertebrae apart.”
“You’ve got this all wrong.”
York sobbed, closed his eyes, the rope cutting into his windpipe as he was forced to his feet.
whoever done this to him not shorn it off and tossed it to God knows where.
“Dollars to donuts, we’re dealing with asphyxiation. Looks like rope of some kind.”
Teddy Terry, an old partner of Mason’s still with the BPD.
Mason nodded in acknowledgment. Even though the victim’s flesh was bloated and discolored, he could clearly see the necklace of an abrasion around the span of his throat. He hadn’t been in the water long. “Sick, someone would do this.”
“Hate,” Teddy Terry replied. “This looks personal.”
“I’m thinking more than one doer.”
“It’s possible. He got worked over pretty well. One holding him down, while a second and third…”
“Yeah.”
One of the techs, a pocket-size Asian woman, peeled off her gloves and stumbled toward a clump of bushes. Vomiting at a volume that made it seem as though she were exaggerating with each retch. But it was genuine.
Teddy Terry’s nose wrinkled in displeasure. “There goes the chow mein.”
“I see you skipped the fine city of Birmingham’s sensitivity training,” Mason said, smiling.
“Tell me you weren’t thinking the same, Farmer?”
“I’m not police anymore, Teddy. I don’t get to banter.”
“What a shame. The private money must be good if you’re willing to stifle man’s inherent need for rejoinders and repartee.”
Feeling as though an entreaty for some on-the-side work was imminent, Mason clapped his old colleague on the shoulder. “Thanks for following this through for me, Teddy. I’ll get out of your hair now.”
“Sorry it wasn’t a better outcome. Your firm will still see some money?”
“We were contracted to track him down. I’d say he’s been tracked.”
They shook and Mason started the climb up the slope of grass. He was about halfway up when Teddy called his name. Mason sighed and turned back. “Yeah, Teddy?”
“Bella doing all right?”
Mason hadn’t expected that. He would’ve preferred Teddy try to hit him up for a recommendation to the firm than ask about his wife. “Same steady battle ax,” he said, forcing himself to smile, to keep his voice even.
“Good to hear it.”
Mason could tell his old partner hadn’t believed him, and by the time he reached his car a brush fire of rage was sweeping through his gut. Fuck Teddy for dredging up a fresh wound. He banged the wheel and accidentally bleated the horn. Then pulled out his cell phone and shakily dialed the house. The landline rang and rang and eventually dumped him into voicemail. No point calling Bella’s cell phone; she didn’t even bother keeping it charged anymore. But now his head was swimming and he needed to talk with someone to get his mind off his wife. There weren’t many options. Nicole, his daughter, was out of the question in his current mood. Despite everything, she’d surely ask him how her mother was doing. And what would he say?
Same.
A fucking recluse not participating in her own life, just because some homeboys hanging around UAB’s campus had tailed her from yoga in Five Points South one night and forced her off the road. She’d had the presence of mind to lock all her doors and call 911, kept her cool as they banged on her windows and jumped up and down like a shrewdness of apes. It hadn’t lasted long, the homeboys gone by the time a patrol car showed up, four minutes and thirty-six seconds after Bella’s call to emergency services. Four minutes and thirty-six seconds that left Mason with a wife who wouldn’t step out of the house now to pick up The Huntsville Times from the curb. And to think he’d sold the old house and moved ninety minutes north to buy her a sense of comfort. Had to take on private work after retiring from the BPD to stay ahead of her prescription costs—an arm and a leg even with his pension’s medical insurance.
“Same, my ass,” he said aloud. Bella had gone most of the weekend without showering. He sighed, started his car, and pulled onto the highway. A few minutes into his drive, thoughts of his wife had receded, and his focus was fixed solidly on his next stop. He wouldn’t need Vicks for this job, thankfully. White-collar crime was tidier.
The landing page of Oxmoor Management Corporation’s website explained they were an investment management firm focused on alternative ventures, with approximately $6.6 billion in regulatory assets under management as of January 31, 2019. Mason had done a deep dive into their business over the past few weeks and could do a decent impression of an asshole with seventy thousand in student loan debt. Risk parity, managed future accounts, commodity pools. Now hand over my MBA.
Oxmoor’s headquarters were on Richard Arrington Jr. Boulevard, named after Birmingham’s first black mayor, which was fine with Mason. He didn’t understand, though, how some of the same people who championed the dedication of an entire street to the man could then turn around and fervently demand a simple statue of Jefferson Davis should come down, that it didn’t deserve its place in history. Hypocrites.
The building loomed up ahead, at the corner. Mason found a spot on the street side, got out, and took care of the parking fee. Turned and let out a long, slow exhale.
Inside the building, he walked directly to the security desk. The woman on sentinel had shoulder-length black hair, ...
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