Free That Old Black Magic by Mary Jane Clark Page B

the whip.

Chapter 25
    S tanding just a few feet from the street musician and the police officer, Piper recognized the man she had seen in Muffuletta Mike’s sandwich shop yesterday, the one who’d seemed angry with Mike when he stormed out of the store.
    Now she’d heard his conversation with the cop. She looked across the street at the muffuletta shop. Yellow tape crisscrossed the front door. Despite the heat, Piper shivered involuntarily at the thought that the shop owner had made her sandwich just the day before. She wondered what had happened to the poor man. How painful had his death been? His last conscious moments must have been truly frightening.
    Her mind slipped to thoughts of what she went through last month. The minutes had seemed like hours as the poison coursed through her system, paralyzing her, blocking her ability to breathe. She’d been certain she was going to die. Piper had been terrified, but she’d also been angry. How dare someone try to take her life?
    Had the butcher felt the same way? Had he put up a fight? In the last moments, did he accept his fate?
    And what now for his family and friends and customers? Piper supposed the customers would miss him for a while, but they’d find another place to buy meat and sandwiches. Obviously his friends would be more affected, thinking a lot about him in the beginning, then less and less as time went on. It was the family members who would have to live with the memory of their loved one and his violent death, year in and year out, at every family dinner, at every birthday, at every Christmas, Easter, or other special occasion. Piper wouldn’t even let herself imagine how her parents and brother would have taken it had she not survived.
    As she forced herself to move on down the sidewalk, she thought of the teenage boy who’d been complaining to his father yesterday, not wanting to come in early and open the sandwich shop. Piper felt so sorry for the kid now. How many times had she whined to her own parents about things that didn’t really matter all that much, never thinking that the next day they could be dead? The poor kid must be in horrible pain.

Chapter 26
    T he murder on Royal Street had come at the perfect time.
    Even before the tense conversation with his program manager, Aaron had been consumed with anxiety. His contract was up for renewal, and the ratings for his radio show had been evincing a consistent downward trend. Calls from listeners, which he depended on to stoke the show’s energy, were down as well. He wondered if people were finally getting tired of his incendiary taunts and criticisms.
    He gnawed at the nails on his pudgy fingers, wincing as he tore one nail so far down that the ripped skin began to bleed. He sucked on the damaged spot and considered what he had been haranguing his listeners about on past shows. There was a wide selection from which to choose. Government corruption, police malfeasance, urban poverty, drugs, the homicide rate, depression and suicide among teenagers trying to cope with the legacy of Hurricane Katrina.
    No wonder people were changing stations. Who wanted to listen to that misery all the time? Many nights when he left the studio, Aaron himself felt sad, dejected, and exhausted after pounding at the same gloomy subjects. The show was stale. He needed something new.
    When the police scanner on his kitchen table called for officers to proceed to Royal Street, Aaron opened the French doors to the balcony and stepped outside.
    The police activity excited him, and he’d hurried down to see what was happening. The first cop he asked merely shrugged and motioned him to keep moving. The next one was more forthcoming.
    â€œGun wounds are bloody, but they look antiseptic compared to the gashes on poor Muffuletta Mike. The guy was whipped to shreds,” said the officer, shaking his head. He gestured to the corner across the street to the musician wearing a porkpie hat while