Eraserheads
Page 3
“Where is Stitch?” I asked Lelo.
The camera started to shake as he moved. Lelo turned his head and showed me Stitch, who was sitting on a boulder, holding a bloody T-shirt to his left eye.
“He took a hit to the eye from one of their guns,” was all Lelo said.
Silence settled loudly in the room before I asked Auto, “What are we going to do?”
“I’m thinking.”
“We have to do something. This is the third time,” I noted.
As much as I knew he hated to agree with me, he knew I was right. It was rare that Auto had to flex his muscles, but he knew we had to do something. If we didn’t, others would think it was okay to come for ours, and that would never be the case.
You embarrass yourself, you embarrass this familia, I could hear my grandfather saying in my head.
His Cuban accent was as thick as his face, and he was stoic. He’d made it clear that when I branched out on my own, I’d better keep our family’s name as revered as it was before I branched out. He was livid that I’d chosen to do my own thing instead of family business, but I was his favorite. That meant I got away with shit no one else in our family could. There was no way we could let this go unanswered. If the old man got word that my crew was being robbed and basically bullied, he’d have a problem with me not handling business.
Auto told Lelo, “Find a safe haven.”
Lelo asked, “You don’t want us to dip?”
“Nah,” Auto said, then turned to me. “Call Reagan and tell her to get the Cessna ready.”
Reagan was another mechanic, friend, and crew member. I nodded, and then I headed back out to the main floor.
* * *
Bullets rained down all around us. The yells and screams of those who had become victims of war serenaded me.
“Get the truck!” Auto yelled at me. “Get to the fucking truck!” he roared.
My heart was beating so hard against my chest, it hurt. A bullet had grazed my arm. The thick T-shirt I had on had been dyed red. I didn’t know if it was all my blood or not. I was sweating. The Las Vegas heat wasn’t being nice to me. I didn’t know where Lelo and Stitch were. Two big rigs had been abandoned on the side of the road.
“Code, y’all gotta get the fuck outta there,” I heard in my earpiece.
Seymore had been tracking us. Through the crew we had in Vegas, he had been able to pinpoint the exact time when five-o would arrive.
I shouted, “We can’t. We ain’t got the truck yet.”
“Don’t matter. You got twenty minutes, and then them folks gone be on your ass. Get the fuck outta there!” his voice thundered in my ear.
I slowly peeked around the bumper of the car I was hiding behind. A bullet whizzed by and almost sent me to my Maker. I could hear Auto yelling for Lelo to get down. Auto had never been one to like guns. He’d never been a fan of murder-death-kill-type shit. But sometimes, sometimes one had to get dirty when one’s hand was forced. That was where my skill set came in. I didn’t mind dancing with the devil. Didn’t care to let my hammer loose and watch it praise the gods of death.
The grunts of my brothers could be heard in the distance. I knew we were surrounded. No way were we getting out of there. We had flown all the way from ATL in a Cessna 172 Skyhawk, following a half-cocked plan to retrieve Lelo and Stitch. Now it was possible that we were all on our way to hell.
The smell of gasoline from wrecked cars burned my nose. My hand was steady as I held on to the Beretta Px4 Storm. Even though I was one of the best shooters on the team, I still knew we were in a fucked-up situation. The heat had my skin tight and was pulling all my electrolytes out through my sweat. Dusk was on the horizon, and I knew if we got caught out there at night, we were in for it.
“Auto, we can’t get out, bro,” Stitch yelled over the melee.
A shrill laughter echoed. “Fucking right. None of you getting out of here alive,” a male voice taunted. “None of you.”
“Auto, we tried to do right by you. Tried to come to you like men and discuss a way around this, but you had to do this shit the hard way,” another male voice shouted.
I knew it was the voice of the boss running the shakedown operation, Mouse. My research for Auto, which I’d done while we were waiting for Reagan to gas up the Cessna, had told me he was a Scandinavian low-level crime boss who had worked his way up to create his own crime syndicate. I had no idea how we’d gotten on his radar, until Auto confirmed that our connect had been selling us out. Despite all the years we’d been doing business with Chandler, he had sold us out to the highest bidder.
My ears perked up when I heard Auto’s voice. “No, no. What you did was try to infringe on my business. You tried to muscle me out of something I built from the ground up.”
“Anything that passes through our territory, we get a cut of.”
“This isn’t your territory,” Auto yelled at our enemies. “We’ve been running this route for years. This is Chandler’s highway.”
“This is new management, and unless you give us what we want, you’ll run into this problem every single time,” our rival assured us.
Static rattled in my ear. “You have only sixteen minutes, Code. Tell Auto to get out of there.”
I knew I had only four bullets left. No way would we get out of here without some kind of help. As if the gods had heard my pleas for help, I heard Panjabi MC blasting in the distance.
“Pascal,” Lelo and Stitch yelled.
I sighed in relief, made a cross over my chest, and blew a kiss to the skies. That Knight Rider theme, laid over that Panjabi beat, with Jay-Z spitting, was music to my ears. Pascal was always our ace in the hole. Anytime we came out to Vegas, Auto always hit him up to let him know we were there, just in case we ran into trouble. He and his crew specialized in explosives weaponry. If anybody saw Pascal and his crew coming, they prayed Pascal was on their side and was not the enemy. It was only after getting to know him that we found his fascination for Trans Ams comical, especially after we discovered he liked the cars only because of KITT from the old TV show Knight Rider. That was why he had had Auto transform all his cars so that they were similar to the old car.
“Hell fucking yeah,” Auto belted out as I heard bullets fly through the air again.
As those ten modified 1982 Pontiac Trans Ams bent the steep curve, I used it to my advantage. I stood quickly, fired two of my last four bullets into the skull of one of Mouse’s men, a dude who looked as if he ate steroids for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Ducking and dodging, I took a running leap over the overturned car I’d been hiding behind. The earpiece fell from my ear, and I cursed. Grabbed ahold of the open driver’s-side door of the big rig and tried to get in. Old man Law, the neighborhood creep who’d taught me how to handle what I’d called an eighteen-wheeler when I was a kid, would have been proud. For a few nude pictures and a couple of fresh feels every now and again, he’d taught me all I needed to know.
I jumped in with a wild, panicked look in my eyes, hoping the keys were still in the ignition. When they weren’t, I went into a profanity-laced fit.
“The keys, Auto! They keys are gone,” I shouted.
I got no response, though, at least not from Auto. I looked up to find Mouse, a Mads Mikkelsen look-alike, breathing down my neck.
He swung his fist. Missed breaking my jaw by an inch. I jumped across to the passenger side of the truck only to have the door snatched open behind me. I took a long tumble down to the hard ground. I swore I felt all my bones break. That Knight Rider beat was still in my ear as my body rolled. Then big black boots tore into my sides. One caught me in my privates and made me curse the day I was born. I saw no way I could go head to head with the blond-haired, blue-eyed superhuman. His strength had to come from some kind of god.
My whole body shook from the kick to my womanhood. I got my bearings, though. Found a way to my feet and put the training my grandfather had instilled in me to use. Even while I was fighting, the old man stayed in my head. I didn’t kn
ow what was taking Pascal so long, but I needed what he specialized in to get under way, and soon. I did a roundhouse kick and backed the man away from me far enough to put some distance between us. It only angered him, if anything. He rushed in, threw a punch, which I dodged, and then he caught me with a kick to the stomach.
In his hand was a knife, which I didn’t see until it almost sliced across my chest.
“Son of a bitch,” I spat.
“Your boss should have left well enough alone,” he growled at me.
“And you shouldn’t have fucked with me to begin with,” Auto growled.
I looked up and saw Auto throw a swing, which rocked the man. The man’s lips turned up into a menacing smile. One that would have put the fear of God in most niggas. It only strengthened Auto’s resolve. He pulled his shirt over his head and quickly wrapped it around his hand. I stood there in pain and watched as Auto dodged that knife-wielding Viking. The Viking went right. Auto ducked left. Caught the Viking with an uppercut that bloodied his mouth. Auto didn’t give him time to recover; he rushed in with a flurry of punches that had blood dripping down the man’s nose like water from a faucet. The Viking fell down to one knee. Auto ran in and gave him a foot to the face that sent him sprawling onto his back.
I heard Pascal’s voice. “Happy Independence Day,” he yelled.
Something oval shaped and green came sailing over the big rig and rolled right between us. Our Scandinavian opponent looked confused. Auto grabbed my hand, and we took a running dive behind a big boulder. Only seconds later the ground shook, rattled, and rolled underneath me. The explosions sounded like a symphony as they occurred one after the other.
“Auto. Code. My friends, take your team and go,” I heard Amina say after the dust had settled.
I had no idea where she’d come from, but I was happy to see her. Amina was Pascal’s sister. She was just as dangerous as he was when it came to explosives. I swore it was like looking into God’s face when I saw her beautiful earth-toned eyes looking down at me. She was wearing a full hijab, but in her hand was a gun that would put the biggest and strongest of niggas in the dirt. I couldn’t see her face, but the twinkle in her eyes told me she was smiling.
“Thank Pascal for me and tell him his payment will be there before morning,” Auto told her as his breaths came out rapidly.
She nodded. “We thank you, as always.”
I ran for the truck and then remembered we didn’t have the keys. I cussed again. “Shit!”
“Looking for these?” a voice said behind me.
I turned to find Jaahlive, Pascal’s brother, standing there, holding a set of keys in his hand. No matter where Pascal went, his siblings were never too far behind him so I wasn’t surprised to see Jaahlive. He looked as if he should be in someone’s modeling agency. Eyes as golden as honey. Long lashes and dark brown hair, which hung to the middle of his back. His body showed that he worshipped it as he did his religious deity. He was tall, long, and lean. Looked like he could run track or dribble a ball up and down the court. Looking at him, you couldn’t tell his race, but when you spoke to him, you knew that he was proud of his Hindu heritage.
At any other time, we all would have taken the time to catch up on what we had been doing since the last time we spoke, but now wasn’t the time. I took the keys as I gave him thanks. Promised to check in with him and the fam soon. I rushed into the truck, closed the door, and made that big highway bully roar to life. Auto jumped in on the passenger side. Blood decorated his face, and cuts and scratches adorned his arms and torso.
While Mouse and the rest of his men ran for cover, Lelo and Stitch hopped into the back of the truck, and then we got the hell out of Dodge.
Chapter 3
Boots
My responsibility and my family were also on my mind. The man I was named after and the family we had been searching for, for a very long time, stayed with me. Now that we had found them in Atlanta, everything was set in motion. That would be something to discuss later. Right now I switched my mind to my money and my product. My mind was now on Nevada.
As I was rolling through the A, headed to see a man who made my nuts hurt because of my hatred of him, I leaned back and listened as Scarface thumped on the speakers of my Audi R8. I’d just seen a cutie with a phat booty and nice tits get shaken down by five-o. Now, what they wanted with a chick sporting ghetto-goth attire, I had no idea. But being the gentleman that I was, and a brotha who had no love for cops, I had to ghost my whip and try to signal to the shawty about the crew that was following her. I mean, it was only the right thing to do, black man to black woman.
In the South, especially the dirty South, if we couldn’t look after each other, then there wasn’t no point in living. Sadly, the latter was going on with all my people, and if my pops were here, the whole thing would have him pissed off. But that was neither here nor there. That was the past, shit back in the city of my birth, which matched my initials: BK
But back to little Miss Rihanna. Other than the long locks she had, the slightly darker skin tone, and the way her ass and breasts were just a few notches fuller, little mama was RiRi. She had my attention, especially with the seriousness in her eyes. But, again, that was neither here nor there. I didn’t want her. Just enjoyed the view, and something in my gut said—my gut was a gift that I had learned to listen to—she might have an interesting story. However, I wasn’t about to find it out. I had business to attend to, and she had too many cops on that ass.
I revved my engine. Watched her eyes light up, then narrow. I nodded, then headed on my way. Money was on my mind, as well as a hidden agenda. I was a knight with a thug mentality. A killer with an honorable disposition.
People on the streets to whom I made my presence known called me BK. People back in Houston called me Boots, and my old man called me Junior or Radio Raheem, while the government called me Raheem Kweli. But that was a lot of information for one sitting, and what the government called me was my business and no one else’s.
After I stepped out of my ride, the comforting and familiar sound of my shitkickers, also known as cowboy boots, scraping the pavement put a smile on my country face. I reached back for my blacked-out, wide-brimmed cowboy hat, which shielded my eyes and kept my face slightly hidden. Was I being cautious about my identity? Not in the least bit. The man I was doing business with had a long history with my family.
As for my identity, in terms of most of my physical attributes, I took after my deceased Eritrean mother. But I took after my pops when it came to my mentality, swag, height, girth, dimpled smile, and amber eyes. My soon to be business client would not be able to recognize my true lineage at all, which was perfect for me given how I ran my business.
Again, I was an enigma.
So, I ran a hand over my long, thick chin beard and wavy fade. Rolled up the sleeves of my black button-down shirt, which was open just enough to reveal my white beater but not the bulletproof vest under it. I allowed my bourbon-red flesh to soak up the rays while I smoothed down the vest, which hid a sample of my product. Sliding my cell into the pocket of my dark gray jeans, I headed into Morton’s The Steakhouse. Once inside, I enjoyed the smells of the food, which caused my stomach to break down in the Holy Ghost.
Not that I was a Christian man. In my practice, I was a god. However, I gave my respects to my version of the Most High and to my Yoruba deities. Right there I kissed the Ankh around my neck while chuckling to myself. Pops would enjoy seeing this meeting go down, and so would I.
At twenty-two—thanks to the education I had got from my pops—I was considered an old soul. I handled myself very differently than a lot of dudes my age. Yes, I could act my age if I wanted to, but in business, I had to be ancient as a means to keep people out of my business. This was why I had many contacts, and why I could be professional in this seedy world. Besides the fact that I made banging product—a special grade of military-issued bullets and other weapons I chose to re-create just for fun—I was a shrewd businessman.
As I stood in the restaurant’s lobby, I was greeted by the house attendant. “Mr. Sunjeta, welcome to Morton’s The Steakhouse. Your private room is this way. Follow me.”
I followed the attendant, and a minute later we arrived at a decent-sized room with various square wooden tables covered with green tablecloths. The walls were a dark green, with chocolate-brown trimming. The lighting in the room was a little dim. While the incessant chatter behind me told me the place was full, my private room afforded me seclusion to do business. The smell of succulent steak wafted through the air. Sitting at a table at the very back of the room was my client, with two of his people.
Now, don’t think I came alone. I gave a nod to my own people, Oya and Shango. They wore matching colors, royal purple and black. Shango was in all black, with a purple tie; and Oya wore black leggings with thigh-high boots, a small feminine black suit jacket that flared out, and a purple shirt under the jacket. Each one sported my insignia, BK, somewhere on their person, a location that only I knew.
Pride had me acting arrogantly. However, my face held no emotion as my team nodded at me, letting me know everything was good. I approached my client. Held out my hand to greet him. My client stood, acting equally smooth and suave, and took my outstretched hand in his firm grasp. This well-known intimidator was a man who made NYC quake with just his last name, and he was making Atlanta slowly become murder capital number one. All while operating from his home base of Cuba.
My Houston accent ebbed and flowed like smooth molasses as I gave this man a show of respect in Spanish. “Senor, I am pleased to have this time with you to discuss our doing business with each other.”
“Gracias. Senor . . . ?” my client said with a raised eyebrow upon his face.