Hard Candy

by Amaleka McCall

  Candice was great at applying all of the things Uncle Rock had taught her over the years, but her obsession with getting her marks had made her oblivious to the obvious. A set of eyes focused on her, following her every move.

  Broady sat in the small compact car that he had a hood rat chick named LaLa rent. Dark shades covered his bruised eye, but the dark circle that rimmed his neck was still visible. The gun he’d recently purchased lay on the passenger side floor, covered with Shana’s leopard print Snuggie.

  He shifted uncomfortably in the small, box-shaped Honda Civic. The car was a perfect disguise. No one awake in the predawn hours of Harlem would notice it. The street was empty, except for the occasional hand-to-hand corner boy emerging from the dark shadows to make a transaction, and their customers, who, after making their purchases, scurried back to their holes like rats to get high.

  Broady was parked about seven cars away from Phil’s barbershop. His initial plan was to wait until Phil showed up and just go Rambo and start shooting up the place with the brand-new toy he’d just laid six stacks on. But he knew better. Jail wasn’t his final destination.

  He watched the sun peep up behind the tall Harlem buildings. There was really nothing like a sunrise in the concrete jungle. He yawned and cracked his knuckles. He hadn’t slept in two days, since his incident with Junior. His insides boiled each time he thought of Junior’s betrayal, believing Phil over him. He hadn’t even gotten a chance to show Junior the evidence that proved Phil had indeed murdered Razor. His anger and his habit wouldn’t allow him to rest easy. Broady would deal with his Judas of a brother in good time.

  “Early bird gets the mu’fuckin’ worm, nigga,” Broady whispered to himself. He fumbled with a note he had clutched in his hand. He read it to renew his anger for Phil.

  Broady had been waiting almost six hours before Phil’s sleek black S550 pulled up outside of the barbershop. It was ten o’clock in the morning and still no real hustle and bustle on the main street. Broady knew that although Phil was pulling his gates up at ten, there wouldn’t be anybody strolling in before noon.

  As he watched Phil climb out of the car, fish for his gate keys, and go about unlocking the iron gates, Broady had an out-of-body experience. He had murdered once and knew he could do it again. He pictured himself blowing Phil’s head off and then returning to the car.

  Broady’s plan to push Phil inside the store, tie him up, and kill him was thwarted when another person climbed out of Phil’s car. Although tall, it was clear that the boy was young. The boy was dressed in a maroon Polo shirt, a pair of fitted jeans, a maroon Yankees fitted cap and a pair of maroon and grey Prada sneakers.

  Broady squinted his eyes into slits and bit down into his jaw. “Where the fuck you come from, li’l nigga?” he grumbled under his breath. He immediately hated the kid for breaking up his plan. Trying to tie up two people at once wasn’t a risk Broady was willing to take. Broady seethed inside. He had sat in that little-ass car for all of those hours, and now this little boy had fucked shit up.

  He watched as the young’un helped Phil pull up the gates on the barbershop. The boy was either Phil’s son or brother. He couldn’t be sure which. Broady could see the love for the kid in Phil’s eyes and actions, his pats on the back and their shared laughter and smiles.

  Broady was instantly jealous. He honed his attention in on the young boy. When Phil and the boy disappeared inside of the barbershop, Broady thought the adrenaline rushing through his veins would make his heart explode.

  The boy reemerged after a few minutes to retrieve a CD from the car. He rushed back inside the barbershop with a big smile on his face.

  Broady captured the boy’s smiling face in his mind. He started the rental car and pulled out of the Harlem neighborhood, his anger palpable but controlled. He would write that face to his memory for use at a future date.

  Rock rushed into his apartment after being out all day. He was on top of his game lately, sickness and all. He had a mission, just like Candy did, except his was to protect her from herself.

  He flopped down onto his favorite raggedy recliner and unfolded the papers he had picked up from his lawyer’s office. Rock’s hands trembled as he read the words over and over again: Last Will and Testamnet.

  Rock had never thought he’d need a will, since there was a time when he didn’t have any family, through blood or affiliation. As far as he was concerned, his last will and testament could have been just one sentence that read: “Everything to Candice Hardaway.” But there was someone else he needed to leave something for, not materially, but more so in the form of an explanation or maybe even an apology.

  Rock had some years to make up for, but his pride and hurt heart wouldn’t allow him to do it in person. He decided that in death he would be able to speak and make his peace. Time wasn’t really on his side anyway, but in the meantime, while he was still alive, he had to continue carrying out his plan to keep Candice out of harm’s way.

  After placing the document down on his worn wood coffee table, he went to pick up his cell phone to call Candy, but a couple of rapid-fire knocks on his apartment door prevented him from completing the task.

  Gently placing the cell phone down on the table, Rock stared suspiciously across the room at the door. He knew it couldn’t be Candice, because she had the keys to his apartment. No one else visited him. Period. He remained quiet and waited.

  There were three knocks again, this time harder and more insistent.

  Rock slowly rose from his recliner and, walking as lightly as a man his size could, went into his bedroom. He retrieved his .357 Heckler & Koch and stuffed it into the back of his pants. Sweat droplets lined up like ready soldiers across his forehead, and a few drops ran down his temples. Rock felt an overwhelming urge to cough, but he stifled it.

  “Barton!” A familiar voice filtered in from the other side of the door. “Open up!”

  Rock’s chest tightened with dread. He couldn’t swallow, and he could no longer hold in his cough. Suddenly, a loud cough erupted from his chest. They said they’d never come back. I was done with their program and set free, he thought. His stomach muscles clenched, and the burning in his chest flared up like a newly kindled fire.

  “Barton, don’t make us put your business in the streets for all of your neighbors to hear. Now, open up,” the voice boomed again.

  Those words propelled Rock forward, his steps heavy and mechanical. Flipping and twisting locks, he finally pulled back the door, fear flitting through his heart. Rock had experienced this feeling only one other time in his life—when he’d been captured in Vietnam and offered over to the CIA.

  “Barton, what’s the matter? You don’t look happy to see us,” a tall, wrinkled white man said with a crooked Clint Eastwood grin.

  Rock knew the man well. They were around the same age. Only, Rock had aged much better. He took a few steps back, stumbling as the man and his younger counterpart pressed forward, invading his personal space. Rendered powerless, Rock eyed them with unsuppressed hatred. He was willing himself not to kill them on the spot and quickly dispose of the bodies. Rock knew his plans were futile at best; the old white man most definitely had countersnipers posted outside his place. That was their style. Rock had, after all, been one of them.

  “So I guess you won’t be inviting us in for tea,” wrinkled face stated, his false teeth clicking slightly against the roof of his mouth. He looked around at Rock’s meager living arrangements.

  “Okay, we’ll just make ourselves comfortable, if you don’t mind,” the fake Clint Eastwood look-alike said, patting a place next to him on Rock’s threadbare sofa for his partner to sit on. “So this is what became of one of our best-trained assassins, huh?” the man commented, with a smirk.

  Rock’s face remained stoic, his eyes hooded over, and fists clenched.

  “Barton, I’ll get right down to it. This is, of course, not a pleasure visit. I know we haven’t spoken in eons. How long has it been? Thirty-plus years, right?” Wrink
led face looked up at the ceiling like he was recalling their past from some far-distant place in his mind.

  Rock could still hear traces of the man’s British accent. He regulated his breathing and calmed himself down.

  “How’ve you been feeling these days, Barton?” the old man continued, trying to goad Rock into talking. “We’re all getting old, I suppose.”

  “What do you want?” Rock finally spoke, his words barely a whisper.

  “We have one more job for you.”

  Rock’s facial expression turned stony; his mood dark.

  “I know after your debriefing we told you that you were free to go forever, but now there is one last thing we need from you.”

  Rock shook his head back and forth. The Agency had told him he was free to go. They had put him through a very painful debriefing, complete with mood and mind-altering drugs, trying to deprogram him from being a “cleaner,” and Rock played along with it, enduring the ordeal. But he had never forgotten what he’d learned, as much as he wished he could at times.

  “I’m free. I won’t do it,” Rock said firmly. He had more than paid his dues for the murders he’d committed in Vietnam.

  “Oh, this is not optional. We are not asking,” wrinkled face replied, his tone deadly.

  Rock flexed his jaws back and forth.

  “Barton, when we let you go, you were supposed to stay out of our business, but you couldn’t. Somehow you got linked in with a couple of our most valuable street assets. We found you in the middle of one of our operations in the mid to late eighties. Ah, yes, Operation Easy In,” the old man said, as if the name just popped up in his memory.

  The CIA program began by distributing crack cocaine in low-income neighborhoods in New York City and Los Angeles. The distribution was to fund Reagan’s Contras. Through the controlled distribution of the new and cheap spin on regular cocaine, the government was also able to set their plans in motion to rid cities of the worst ghettos, like a self-inflicted genocide.

  In New York, the CIA had duped Eric “Easy” Hardaway into taking part in their distribution scheme, and in L.A. they had duped “Freeway” Ricky Ross into signing on to their scheme. The promise of a better life with riches galore had lured Easy right into the CIA’s trap. When Rock learned about it through some of his old sources, he put himself in a position to protect Easy. He had tried talking Easy out of the game, but he didn’t realize the only way out for Easy was through death.

  “So you will do this one last thing? Or else you will go to jail for the rest of your life for the massacre of your favorite drug dealer, Eric Hardaway, and his family. We will paint the picture so vividly of how you killed them and kept one girl alive for your depraved desires,” Rock’s old nemesis calmly informed him.

  The words flowed from the man’s tight lips with ease, as if he was ordering toast and eggs for breakfast.

  “You couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you, Barton? Do you think she was left alive by accident? Shame on you if you did,” the man said.

  Rock grew angrier by the minute.

  “What did you do, Barton? Feed the girl the evidence we planted so she came up with suspects? She opened up a can of worms again when she started digging. It has been four years. You should’ve let sleeping dogs lie, or at least controlled your protégée a little better. We will let her live if and when you complete this job.”

  Rock shook his head left to right. He had never told Candice anything about who had killed her father. Candice had heard about suspects on the news. Rock had locked the information he’d acquired over the years in a safe. It wasn’t until long after the family’s deaths that he figured out that the suspects were just fed to the media.

  When Candice started showing an interest in the planted suspects—the pawns—he quickly set out to protect her, following her almost everywhere. His mission every day was to keep her safe, and he took that job very seriously.

  “It was you that threw her to the wolves this time, wasn’t it, Barton? What will we call our new operation? How does Operation Hard Candy sound to you? That has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?” he taunted.

  Rock clenched his fists behind his back. He swayed on his feet. He thought about taking his gun from his pants and killing the two devils occupying his personal space. He bit down into his jaw harder now. The metallic taste of blood made him feel animalistic.

  “So, either you do this, or you go to jail for life. If you go to jail, we will see to it that the last Hardaway is taken care of. How does that sound?” Wrinkled face was goading him.

  Rock blinked rapidly, truly at a loss for words.

  “I take that as a yes. Well, that is just splendid,” the old man said, standing up like he’d just gotten great news.

  The other man stood up as well.

  “Barton, you didn’t even ask me what I’ve been up to these days. How rude! Well, I’ll just tell you. I run the same program you were in, but for all government agencies now. Even the DEA. Too bad we will never have one as good and dedicated as you. You were like a machine in your day,” the Clint Eastwood look-alike said, lifting his hand and placing it on Rock’s shoulder. “But even machines get old and need replacing after a while.” The man laughed at his own joke.

  Rock’s nerve endings were on edge. His skin burned where the man touched his shoulder.

  “When we leave here someone will be contacting you with information about the job. This one has to be done smoothly, or else things could go terribly wrong. I am confident in you, Barton. I’m sure you don’t want to go back to where we first met,” he cautioned, walking toward the door to leave.

  When the door slammed behind the two devils, Uncle Rock raced over to it and secured all of the locks. He bent over and dry heaved on the hardwood floors. He felt like a wild animal, wanting to rip his prey to pieces with his bare hands and teeth. He had no choice in the matter. Candy’s life was at stake, and there was no room for error. Whatever they asked him to do, he would do it, even if it meant killing someone to save Candy’s life.

  Chapter 8

  “Yo, son, these niggas are always late. It’s like they make a point of doing this shit to prove their power.” Junior looked at his watch impatiently.

  Avon Tucker was noncommittal. The anxiety welling up inside of him was enough to make him vomit, so he decided to just keep his mouth shut. Avon was so close to finding out who Junior bought his drugs from, it made his dick hard. That was all he needed to get the recognition and redemption he so desperately needed from the DEA. Brubaker had been putting a great deal of pressure on him lately. Now the possibility of a clean slate was dangling in front of Avon like a carrot in front of a starving horse.

  Junior looked at his watch again and let out an exasperated sigh. “These motherfuckers playin’ tonight, and everything in the streets is on E since we been caught up with that Razor shit.”

  Avon remained silent.

  “Yo, Tuck. Motherfucker, is I’m up in here by myself or some shit?” Junior said.

  Tuck nodded his agreement.

  Junior furrowed his eyebrows and stared over at the side of Tuck’s face as he stared straight ahead, clearly preoccupied with other matters.

  “Yo, nigga, you givin’ me the silent treatment or some shit?” Junior asked, screwing his face up even more.

  Avon quickly snapped out of his trance.

  “Nah, I’m listening,” Tuck replied, glancing over at Junior.

  “You seem distant since the other night . . . you know, at my brother’s crib. I ain’t got to explain myself to nobody, son. You was right there and heard that nigga Phil give his word that he ain’t murk Razor. This nigga Broady been out of control for a minute. I’m tired of the nigga.”

  Tuck was now giving him his full attention.

  “I been taking care of that nigga since my moms had him. I’m thirty-five years old, and I been acting like a father to this nigga since I was ten. My moms treated that nigga like shit from birth. She decided after she had him t
hat she hated his pops. That nigga pops used to beat my mom’s ass. When he got killed at a gambling spot, it’s like she just started hatin’ him. Nah, more like despising him. If I wasn’t around that li’l nigga, he wouldn’t even eat. It’s like she was depressed and blamed that nigga for her depression and shit. I was a kid, man. I couldn’t see my baby brother fucked up like that. I tried to school the nigga when he started playing ball in school. Stay in school, stay in school, I drilled that nigga hard body, but it’s like Broady was fuckin’ determined to be like me.” Junior checked his watch again.

  “How did you wind up in the game?” Tuck inquired. They had nothing but time anyway.

  “It was simple. Same story, different hood. Where I lived at in the eighties, shit was serious. Heroin and expensive-ass powder coke had been replaced by cheapass crack, and niggas was making tons of money. Once that shit made it to the hood, it was like magic for some and destruction for others. I was hungry and fucked up. My moms had been struggling after Broady father got iced, and she lived off the system. That was it. Occasionally, she would get a boyfriend that helped out here and there. So, in essence, she either waited on men or the man to give her loot.” Junior reflected somberly.

  He made direct eye contact with Tuck to see if he had his attention now. Tuck was glued. Satisfied, Junior continued on with his rags-to-riches tale.

  “I used to walk through my hood dreaming of driving those big cars and wearing the big chains and shit I used to see motherfuckers rockin’.” Junior chuckled as he reminisced. “Then one day, I was being chased out of a corner store by the owner for tryin’a steal a loaf of bread for me and Broady to make sandwiches outta whatever crap we had in the crib. Shit, I used to make the best syrup and sugar sandwiches around.” Junior smiled. “Anyway, that’s when I ran into Eric ‘Easy’ Hardaway. I’m sure you heard hood legends about Easy, right?”

  Tuck nodded in the affirmative. Who hasn’t heard of Easy? Tuck only knew about Eric Hardaway from a brief he’d received before going undercover. Basically, he’d been told who killed Easy and why, but he wasn’t sure how much the government’s version of events could be trusted.