Cold Medina

by Gary Hardwick

  The Big Three, no Big Two he remembered, were still loyal, but their people were killing each other, robbing houses, stealing money, doing anything to get their hands on Medina.

  T-Bone ordered a stoppage in production, but the way it was set up, the dealers were able to keep making it. He had Mayo take Dennis, their makeshift chemist, off the production line, but not before Dennis had made several large batches of the chemical and sent them out. So T-Bone was scrambling to stop the hysteria that was out there and restore order.

  He realized he was close to losing everything. He thought about his father and the man's lifelong belief that his son was destined to be a screwup. T-Bone's hatred burned as he threw more furniture.

  The drug was out of control and the money had stopped coming in. Santana and his men were paid up, but they would want more soon. He was going to try to save his business but had to face the fact that he might fail.

  T-Bone had several emergency plans for situations like this. They were each different in concept, but all involved one common step.

  He got up and went to find K-9.

  He had to keep the boy close until he knew for certain that he had to close down his business. In that event, K-9 would have to disappear. K-9 was a wonder, but possessed too much dangerous knowledge. T-Bone would have to make sure the boy did not leave his sight.

  T-Bone walked into the small back room where K-9 lived. It was like a child's room, messy and colorful. There were two televisions and comic books littered the floor. But the boy was nowhere to be found.

  T-Bone panicked for a second, then calmed himself. K-9 often hid himself in closets and other darkened areas when he was afraid and lately, T-Bone had been yelling and screaming like a madman about everything.

  T-Bone looked in the room's closet. Nothing. T-Bone's heart began to race. He knew that K-9 was not stupid, indeed he was a genius of sorts. Maybe he had figured if T-Bone's business was crumbling, that his life wasn't worth anything.

  That was silly, T-Bone told himself. K-9 was not dumb, but he was not smart enough to come to that conclusion.

  T-Bone searched the house, going from room to room, calling the boy. Still no sign of him.

  T-Bone grabbed a gun and searched the outside of the house, then got into his car and cruised the area. But the boy had vanished.

  T-Bone went to a pay phone and dialed a number.

  “Hey; it's me ... yeah I'm on a pay phone. Look, my little friend is missing ... no, I don't want him back. I want his ass eliminated. Put the word out, a hundred thousand for his little fucked-up ass ... I want him gone!”

  T-Bone hung up, then drove back home. He hit the dash of the Cadillac angrily. Everything was going wrong. He picked up his car phone and dialed. He had another job to attend to. It was time to get in touch with the police.

  4

  One in a Million

  The girl danced seductively in front of Magilla. Her long braids, dirty and frayed at the ends, covered her drug-ridden face. She stumbled as she did her drugged-out striptease for him.

  The girl was down to her last stitch of clothing, a pair of silk panties. She wriggled out of the underwear and fell on her side. She laughed a little then got up, standing naked before him.

  Magilla sat on the end of the bed, unaroused by the dance.

  He looked different these days. His face had deep lines etched in it, his cheeks were hollow, his skin ashen. He was thinner by some thirty pounds and actually looked better for it.

  Jamilla came to him. She had left her sometime boyfriend, Phillip, and taken up permanent residence with Magilla.

  She tried to walk seductively; but still looked high. She got to Magilla and knelt between his legs.

  He took a rock of Medina and lit it up for her. She smoked it quickly.

  Magilla put her on the bed and put his hands to her throat. She didn't resist. He often liked kinky stuff.

  “Come on,” she whispered as Magilla squeezed harder, but soon she couldn't breathe and she fought him, slamming her fists into his face and body.

  Magilla shifted his weight on her and tightened his grip. He could almost hear her heart racing inside her, struggling to work against the lack of precious oxygen. Soon her pounding fists were harmless love taps on his sides.

  Magilla stood over her body for a few minutes, running his hand over the corpse, his eyes closed.

  He let the power of the dead girl fill him. Soon he was exhausted and lay down next to her, contented.

  A few days ago, after smoking a huge quantity of Medina, Magilla had solved the riddle of existence.

  Life was not a sun-soaked happy existence, filled with family, friends, cookouts, and shit. That was a dream. Real life was a painful, intense, and mostly unhappy existence, a shadow zone of despair, doubt, and hopelessness.

  He began to see the profundity in life's simple things. The beauty of an open wound, the art of a knife edge, the depth of blood. Yes, his eyes had opened in ways that he'd never dreamed possible. Regular people could not see it, but he had sight beyond normal comprehension-he could see into the human soul.

  Magilla had figured out how to drain the life out of a person and make their life force his own. For a while, he thought that he was becoming a crackhead, that his newfound knowledge was drug-induced. He used Medina almost nonstop each day and he even occasionally had blackouts, blank periods when he couldn't remember what he had done. He figured that it was just lack of sleep. He stayed up for three days straight last week, thinking and planning how he would use his new powers.

  But he wasn't an addict like those dog-assed crackheads who frequented the house. His use of the drug helped to fuel his already formidable intellect. He had taken to reading the dictionary every day and using new words that he found. He began reading the newspaper and even watched public television to expand his mind.

  Medina was getting scarce due to its popularity, but he had hoarded a great deal of it to keep the house going and was still making it every day with that chemical stuff. He still had a lot of it left in his bedroom for his own personal use.

  The phone rang. Magilla picked it up and heard the voice of Steven Mayo.

  “I hear you still selling the shit, gorilla,” Mayo said. “I told you to stop it.”

  “And I told you. I don't take orders from you. I answer to a higher power-- me.”

  “You dead, muthafucka.”

  Magilla laughed.

  ''I'm not playing, fat-ass bitch!” Mayo yelled.

  “I know,” Magilla said.

  “You fucked up on that shit right now, ain'tcha?”

  “If you mean Medina, yes I use it, but not like you think.”

  “Stop selling it. That shit is killing niggas left and right!” Mayo said.

  “That's not my problem.”

  “Oh, yes it is, lardass.”

  “I have a question for you,” Magilla said.

  “What?”

  “You think you could read better if you got Hooked On Phonics?”

  “Fuck you! OK, dead muthafucka. This was your last chance. Now; I'm coming to get you myself.”

  “I'm counting on it,” Magilla said.

  Mayo hung up.

  Magilla laughed and looked for another hit of Medina. This was Mayo's third call today. He was on a mission to stop Magilla from producing Medina and to destroy the chemical used to make it.

  Magilla had seen some people flip out after using it, but they were just weak. It took a real man to use like he did. Mayo was just trying to keep him down. He could say anything he wanted about Medina, but the people wanted it and he needed it. So fuck Mayo. Medina was a mere high in the hands of weak, foolish crackheads, but Magilla knew its deeper powers.

  He found a stash of the drug in a sock under his bed. The pale blue crystals clinked together as he lifted it.

  Magilla had assembled his own team of bodyguards, paid with Medina or money, to protect him from the Union. He laughed again. Soon, there would be no Union. Because of Medina, every
one was going their own way, making their own deals, and Mayo and his flunkies were scrambling to keep up, trying to keep what they called order. They would see that Medina was greater than anything they had ever known.

  Magilla looked at the girl's corpse. Her power was so sweet when it rushed into him. He alone knew the secret of life's power and how to absorb it. It was like drinking water for him. He had not shared the information with anyone. They wouldn't understand. Only he had the power to make it work. He simply opened his mind and let Jamilla's life force course through his body. She was as sweet in death as she had been in life. Now he had all of her, forever.

  Magilla had no idea why he was not affected by the drug like some of the others. He figured he was just special. And he was right. If he had gone to a doctor, he would have learned that he was an extremely rare individual, possessed of a metabolism that could handle the drug in large quantities. One in a million.

  Magilla lit the rock of Medina, took a long drag, and thought about seeing Steven Mayo.

  “Come and get me,” he said.

  5

  The Conversation Piece

  Tony walked up to the apartment of the rookie Fred Hampton. Hampton lived in a nice complex on the west side, near Wyoming Street.

  Since he'd seen Hampton doling out the payoff money, Tony was undecided about what he would do. He thought of going to Jim or the Chief, but he had to make sure first. Besides, he reasoned, it didn't make a whole lot of sense.

  But then it had come to him, like the name retrieved from the tip of your tongue. The money. That was the only thing about the Handyman crimes that didn't make sense.

  He had asked himself, Why did the killer take money from drug dealers, but not their drugs? Where did the rookies get the money for payoffs? Why would the rookies be working with the Brotherhood to payoff cops? And how could a white killer walk unnoticed in Detroit's ultra-black community?

  The answer he got made sense. The killer could be a cop. And not just one.

  It was a long shot, but it made sense to Tony. The cops killed the drug dealers, stole the money, and made the murders look like a psycho committed them. The blond hair sounded like a Mbutu idea. He had a PhD in racial politics.

  So Tony decided to talk to Hampton and make sure there was a connection. If there was, then he would bust Hampton and go to the department. If not, well, he didn't care about a bunch of dirty cops.

  Tony rang the doorbell. The door was opened by a surprised Fred Hampton.

  “Come on in, sir,” said Hampton.

  Hampton looked shocked, but then again he should have been. Tony had no reason to be there.

  “You'll have to excuse the place. I'm a bachelor, you know.”

  “Thanks,” said Tony. He swept past Hampton and surveyed the room with phony interest. Tony had his interrogation attitude on, and he was trying to infuse his every movement with it.

  “Can I offer you something to drink?”

  “No,” he said in a hard voice, then, “Thanks,” as an afterthought. Tony sat down in a chair and stared at Hampton.

  Hampton sat down on the sofa opposite him. He looked uncomfortable..

  “Well sir, what brings-”

  Tony removed his gun.

  Hampton's eyes showed fear. Tony's eyes were filled with great energy. Hampton looked at Tony as though the latter had gone crazy. Now Tony knew he had the man's full attention.

  Hampton breathed a little easier when Tony put the gun on the coffee table and sat back. Tony stared at Hampton, then at the gun, then back at Hampton.

  Realization showed on Hampton's face. Putting the gun on the table meant it was a Conversation Piece, an archaic police tradition that started in the fifties when there was a big corruption investigation in which over forty cops were indicted.

  During the interrogations, the investigator would slam his piece on the table in front of the suspected cop and begin to question him.

  It was an act of disrespect and aggression. The meaning was, if the suspect was guilty of betraying the police code of honor, he should just kill himself and get it over with.

  Tony was certain Hampton knew what the Conversation Piece meant. It was information every rookie was told in the academy.

  “What's going on, sir?” Hampton asked.

  Silence. Tony stared him down.

  “I don't get it, sir, what do you want?”

  Another look, even colder.

  “Well, if you don't want to talk, I’ll--”

  “You know,” Tony said.

  “Look, sir, this is my day off and I want to try to enjoy what's left of it, so--”

  “Taking some time to spend your payoff money?”

  Hampton was shocked but did a good job covering it. After all, he was a pro. He knew that whenever he was threatened, aggression was necessary.

  “I think you'd better get the fuck out of my house before I kick your ass out-- sir.” Hampton stood, clinching his fists.

  “I don't think so,” said Tony. He reached into his jacket again and Hampton looked at the gun and was about to lunge for it, when Tony dropped a videotape on the table.

  “I don't feel like playing with you,” Tony said. “I saw you on the payoff run and I videotaped it. This tape is the story of a cop who distributes drug payoffs to other cops. Are you getting the picture?”

  Hampton sat down and stared at the tape and the gun. He had a look that said his young life was over.

  “I know a great deal about what you do, and what I don't know, you're getting ready to tell me or this tape will find its way to Internal Affairs.”

  Hampton grabbed the gun and pointed it at Tony. He looked at Tony and froze, his fingers trembling on the weapon. Hampton looked at Tony fiercely, but the stare wavered and he began to shake even more.

  Tony smiled a little. Hampton was obviously guilty. And Tony was an expert on guilt lately. He placed his hand on Hampton's trembling one, removing the gun.

  Then he fired point blank in Hampton's face. Hampton jumped as the hammer struck. The impotent clicking of the weapon was like someone jabbing a needle into his skin.

  “I guess no one ever told you about a Conversation Piece. It's never loaded.”

  Tony put a clip into the gun, cocked it, and rested it on his lap.

  “Now that we understand each other, let's talk.”

  “You working for IAD?” asked Hampton. He was still shaken.

  “Don't insult me, Hampton. I'm a cop.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “I want to know if cops committed the Handyman murders for the money.”

  “Wha-- what?! No.”

  “No?”

  “What I said. No. We ain't killing nobody.”

  “Bullshit!” yelled Tony. “The killer slips in and out of black neighborhoods and he's white with blond hair?” “We ain't--”

  “Did you know that we were getting a search warrant for the Shalon Street dope house right before the Handyman knocked it am”

  “So what?”

  “So, rookie, only a cop could know these things, do these things in Detroit and never be suspected.”

  “I'm telling you man, we ain't killing nobody for the money.”

  “But it is drug money?”

  “How do I know you won't tell on me anyway?”

  “You don't, but you do know I will give the tape to IAD if you don't talk.”

  Hampton waited a moment, then, “This ain't got nothing to do with the Handyman.”

  “Is it drug money?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where from?”

  “I don't know. We just pick it up, different places.”

  Tony knew he was probably telling the truth. The rookies never knew anything; in fact, there were probably very few cops who had an abundance of information. It kept anyone person from giving it all away. But somewhere, there was a person who had all the answers.

  “If you don't know where the money comes from, how do you know it's not the Handyman money
?”

  “I don't. Like I said, we just pick it up.”

  Tony put his gun away. If I Hampton tried anything, he could still get a shot off. He poised for the big question. Hampton was holding back and he was going to see how much.

  “Why did you go into the Brotherhood's headquarters on your last run?”

  Hampton looked away from Tony for a moment, thinking.

  “I need a drink.” He started to get up.

  “No drink, Hampton, answer the question.”

  ''I'm a member.”

  “No, I checked that out,” Tony lied. “Now that you've used up your one lie, tell me the truth. How is Mbutu in on all this?”

  Hampton looked as if someone had told him that his whole family had been murdered.

  “There are a couple of cops who are members. And don't ask me who. You want to turn me in, fine, but I'm not giving up any names. Look man, this thing's been going on long before I was even a cop. I don't know anything but where to take the money.”

  He was telling the truth, unfortunately, thought Tony. These dirty cops were just like the goddamned criminals. They were smart. They kept the bagmen out of the loop.

  “OK, let's say I believe you for now,” Tony said. “Now I want to know if you had to shoot Larry Drake or did you want to shut him up?”

  “He was trying to get off a shot at you!” said Hampton. “I had to get him. For Christ's sake, I saved your life!”

  “Maybe,” said Tony refusing to show any compassion.

  “Why are you doing this? You're not a cop anymore. Everyone's saying that you went nuts on the job. Is that why you're doing this?” asked Hampton.

  The question made Tony angry. He was doing it because he still needed to be a cop, despite his fall from grace. But that was none of Hampton's business.

  “It's none of your concern why,” said Tony. “} just want to know one more thing.”

  “What?”

  “It's been my experience that cops on the take hang out with drug dealers, so they know a lot of shit they can never tell. Who's making this new drug?”