by Gary Sapp
brains that Percy has so nonchalantly blown out of the back of his skull.
And yet, no matter, how hopeless his own position seemed, his thoughts never veered far from the plight of Angel. He’d ridden with Roxanne just hours ago. If he’d stayed with her he was sure that they’d found his wife by now.
And either he would have idly stood by while Roxanne killed Angel or he would have killed Roxanne during her attempt on his wife’s life.
Either way he wouldn’t be here.
And in the here, Seth watched as a middle aged white woman whose hair looked as if she had just pulled her finger out of the socket parked her car in the sleazy hotel’s parking lot and got her key out. A man, who looked as if he’d taken one in the nose for the team once too often, happily drunk, and even happier in anticipation of what would be going down inside got out of the passenger side.
They were swamped by the Peacekeepers almost instantly.
The two of them never had a chance to scream.
The Hertz had stormed towards a nearby alley in no time afterwards as if the driver had the coordinates programmed in a GPS system. Next, Seth heard four of the doors opening and then slamming shut as the two pale riders were thrown unceremoniously to the concrete with the rest of the trash. The wind picked up expeditiously.
Seth wished for his jacket or a nice warm death, whichever came first.
Seth decided for better or worse he’d direct any inquiry he had with Quincy.
He asked, “What did he do?”
“Nothing,” Quincy leaned over in his seat so Seth could hear him clearly. Percy pounded the drunken man across his skill repeatedly with the pistol until he drew blood at last. The woman screamed. Seth felt a cold shiver run down the sides of his neck fearful for her. She had chosen the worst of nights to be caught with this man.
“Why would you bring her along, Quincy?” Seth asked, he could hear the pleading in his own voice. “Please don’t tell me you’re going to kill and unarmed, defenseless woman in cold blood and call it justice. I won’t accept it. I won’t.”
Quincy grabbed Seth by the collar of his shirt and they both stepped out of one of the opened doors of the Hertz.
“What part of justice allowed white men to gang rape the women who were their black slaves?”
“This isn’t the same thing and you know it.”
“Don’t be so sure, Doctor.” Quincy inched ever closer to him.
Seth heard the woman tall to her knees, crying. Percy held her by the wrist. The rest of the Peacekeepers blocked any and all avenues of escape for all three captives.
“How about black women being separated from their children the way you and I would take a pup from its mother.” Quincy continued on. The longer he spoke, the more fire seemed to spark in his eyes. He grabbed Seth’s shoulders in his large hands. “Don’t you dare lecture me about justice, Doctor.”
“Killing this woman won’t change our country’s sad history, Quincy. Murdering her and discarding her body in this alley like garbage won’t put any of those families from all of those years ago back.”
“You’re right, of course, Doctor.” Quincy made simple eye contact with Percy. The dark skinned man with the clean shaven head ripped open the woman’s blouse, produced a knife, cut her bra and exposed her breast to them all.
She cried louder.
Percy said over her noise, “On your knees.”
“No, Please, God, no.” The woman begged Percy as she scraped the ground as she went to her knees.
“Quincy, don’t order Percy to do this.” Seth said in a quiet voice. “Please.”
“Bring her to me.” The other man ordered instead. Percy caught her by her thick brown hair mostly, and dragged her to where both of them were standing.
After a moment Quincy said to the woman without taking his eyes off of Seth. “I want you to tell our good doctor your name and the nature of your probable crime that would make you the focus of such a vicious retaliation this morning. And spare us your lies. Your lying has gotten you into this in the first place.”
“Please. Don’t.” The woman continued to sob, covering herself where she could. “I just want to go home.”
And it all clicked for the Gray Man just then. The man who they’d pistol whipped into submission wasn’t the focus of this…whatever this was.
This woman was.
“Tell. Him.”
“You are right…I shouldn’t have lied. Please. I would take it all back if I could. I’ll do any—“
Percy twisted and squeezed her hair as tightly as he could manage. “Lady, he’s not going to ask you again. You need to talk and fast.”
“It will be alright, Miss.” Seth said to her. What are you saying? What the fuck are you doing, you idiot. “Percy’s not going to hurt you, if you do as you’ve been asked. My name is Dr. Seth Dupree. I’m a surgeon by trade. What is your name?”
The woman looked doubtfully through her smeared mascara from Seth to Quincy to Percy and back again. She didn’t bother covering herself anymore. She wiped her tears away instead.
“My name is Amy Kissinger. Four years ago I filed a false police report.” She said through a quivering lip and tried to compose herself. “I guess that’s what all of this is about.”
Seth asked, “A police report?”
“Four years, eight months, and seven days ago I filed a police report stating that I had been raped.”
“You did, Amy.” Quincy said. “Now tell the doctor the rest.”
She did another round of looking and fresh tears littered what would have been otherwise a pleasant face to gaze into. “My lie centered on a man named Stanley Jordan who was a promising young attorney at a law firm I worked at in Atlanta at the time. I was initially going to try to get back a lover who wouldn’t leave his wife for me. But when the police pressed me for information I changed my mind and my story and blamed it on Stanley who had been trying to ask me out at work. Stanley was a black man.”
Seth actually remembered reading about this story but couldn’t piece together how it turned out for young Mr. Jordan.
“Don’t stop now, Amy” Percy yanked unforgivingly at her hair again. Seth swore he’d heard several strands rip from her skull. “Tell the doctor what became of your former co-worker.”
The woman cried out. She sounded as if she would soon hyperventilate. Seth took a giant leap of faith and step forward when Quincy halted his progress with the back of hand and forearm. He shot him a warning glance and shook his head once and then again.
Amy managed to say, “Stanley committed suicide after spending the first 18 months of a ten year sentence in Calhoun State Prison after the State denied him a retrial.”
Quincy said, “And now you and your latest lover will join him in Hell.”
The Sargent at Arms of a House in Chains yanked a gun out of the inside of his jacket and blew Amy’s brains out of the back of her head. The Peacekeeper who was standing in closest proximity to her man pulled the trigger on him killing the man instantly as well.
All the Gray Man heard over the next few minutes was the echo of the shots rattling around from his eardrums to his brain. The leaves swirled in the wind and his teeth chattered.
Quincy finally said into the ensuing silence, “Well, at least when Amy faces God at her Judgement she can’t say that you lied to her Doctor Dupree. Percy didn’t harm her after all. He walked by Amy’s fallen body, waited for the latest gust of wind to pass and said, “Are you still convinced that all of the wrongs done people of color are from ages long passed?”
“Oh my God…” Seth got in Quincy Morgan’s face. He wanted to be absolutely sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. And just like that—there it was—the slightest hint of a smile. “You’re enjoying this.”
Quincy snatched Seth into his grip, careful to keep the barrel of his gun away from the doctor’s temple. For now. The other man’s grip was so powerful it nearly lifted Seth off of the pavement.
Quincy snarled at him.
“Do you truly believe what you just said, Doctor?”
“At this point, I don’t know what to think of you. Of any of this.” He replied back with equal venom.”
“You just need to know that this—all of this has to be done.” Quincy shoved him away.
And then he did something totally unexpected.
Quincy straightened his wrinkled shirt and ran one of his large hands over his over his nose, mouth, and hairy face.
And then he stopped as suddenly as he had started and checked the time on his watch once again.
“So much more has to be done tonight.” He peered out into the nothingness. “Our enemies have us outnumbered and outgunned,” Quincy stepped into Seth’s shadow, eerily calm. “Can’t you see it too, Doctor? This is my people’s last chance to right four hundred years of wrongs.”
Behind them Percy and the other remaining members of the Peacekeepers seat themselves in the Hertz and methodically wait until they are beckoned by their leader to do otherwise. Quincy extends his arms towards Seth as if he were a valued customer taking in an expensive limo ride around town.
Ten minutes and several blocks later, Seth could barely feel the motion of the engine as the cased Atlanta’s streets for a House in Chain’s next victim.
The night was still young enough.
Seth asked, “When did it all come apart, Quincy?”
The other man lounged in his seat and closed his eyes.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“When did you lose your humanity?” Seth asked. “No human being short of a narcissistic psychopath could possibly do