by K'wan
Larry was pulled from his revolting thoughts of the lawyer and their unwitting young victims when he spotted someone coming down the street. He was a young man dressed in all black with a hood pulled over his head. A red bandana hung from his right pants pocket, flapping on the night breeze like a blazing battle flag while Converse the color of blood burned like neon lights across the cold concrete. As he neared the entrance of Pesto’s, where Larry stood guard, one of his hands dipped into his pocket. Larry’s hand inched closer to the gun tucked in his pants. If the young man made any sudden moves, Larry was going to give him the business end of his .45. When the man’s hand came out of his pocket, holding a pack of cigarettes, Larry relaxed a bit. The young man tapped one of the cigarettes out of the pack and put it between his lips.
“You got a light, Blood?” he asked getting closer. His head was lowered so Larry couldn’t see his face.
Larry kept his eyes on the man while he fished for the lighter in his pocket. “Here,” he handed it to him.
The man lit his cigarette. “Much obliged,” he exhaled a cloud of toxic smoke and extended the lighter back to Larry.
When Larry reached for the lighter, the young man let it drop to the ground. Instinctively, Larry bent to pick it up, and when he felt the press of cold steel against the side of his head, he realized his mistake. Larry’s eyes slowly moved up and for the first time he saw the man’s face. It was a familiar, but Larry couldn’t place where he had seen it before until the young man’s lips parted into a sneer and revealed a mouth full of gold plated teeth, sprinkled with diamond cuts. It was then that Larry realized where he had seen the face before. It was two years prior when he had been in the day room at Attica and the news ran a segment about a serial killer who had been dubbed the Animal.
“Wrong place, wrong time,” Animal told him in an almost apologetic tone before blowing Larry’s brains all over the concrete. Before Larry’s body hit the ground, Animal had already disappeared inside Pesto’s.
*
Richie Stein was a man who liked to indulge in the finer things in life, fine food, fine women, and fine drugs. That night he had helped himself to a healthy portion of all three. He was seated at a private table in the back of Pesto’s Italian restaurant with several of his associates and his current flavor of the month, a young chocolate stallion by the name of Lisa. He’d met her when she came into his office looking for a lawyer to get her drug dealing baby daddy Scooter out of a jam he’d gotten himself into.
During a routine traffic stop, Scooter got busted with an ounce of cocaine and an illegal firearm. With his prior record, his best bet was probably to take the seven to ten year plea agreement the D.A. was offering, but Stein had convinced him that he had a good chance at beating the charge. He didn’t advise Scooter to take it to trial because he really felt he could win, but because he knew Scooter had a shit load of dirty money tucked away. By the end of the trial, Stein had bled Scooter of his entire stash, and the judge sentenced him to twenty years when he blew the trial.
Lisa was devastated when Scooter was sent away. She was left a single mother with no job, no man, and no prospects. Lisa found herself in desperate need of a shoulder to cry on and Stein was right there. It wasn’t long before he went from consoling her in her time of need to knocking the lining out of her pussy. Lisa was a true freak and did things to Stein that made his eyes pop. Stein convinced Lisa that he really liked her and had even dangled the prospect of moving her into his condo, but it was all bullshit. As soon as Stein got bored with Lisa, she’d be cast off like the rest. But in the meantime, he was in the mood for a little fun.
“Sweetie, how about you bring us another bottle of Dom,” Stein told the waitress when she came to their table to see if they needed anything else.
“Right away, sir,” the waitress said and scurried off to do as she was told. Stein was a big tipper and she liked to keep him happy.
“That’ll be the third bottle in less than two hours, Richie. If you don’t slow down on that champagne you’re going to be too drunk to drive home,” Harvey warned. He was an older man, who wore horn-rimmed glasses that always seemed to slide down on his nose. Harvey served as Stein’s personal assistant and errand boy, but he doted on him like a mother hen.
“That’s what I’ve got you for, Harv.” Stein laughed. “Stop being such a killjoy. These young ladies came out to have a good time and I intend to make sure that they do. In fact, I should’ve ordered two more bottles instead of one!”
“Damn, you wasn’t lying when you said you knew some ballers, Lisa,” Claudette said, downing the last of the champagne in her glass so she could get first dibs when the fresh bottle was brought out. She was one of Lisa’s hood rat friends who she’d brought along to her birthday dinner.
“I told you that my boo was about that life,” Lisa boasted. She loved to show off for her friends and that night Stein made sure her stunt game was on one thousand. She was so into herself that she didn’t even notice the sneaky glances that had been passing back and forth between Stein and Claudette all night.
“So, do you ladies come here often or is this your first time?” Joseph Levy asked. He was one of Stein’s associates, a data analyst from a company called NYAK. Stein represented them when their employees needed legal help, which lately seemed to be often.
`“Shit, I can’t afford this place. It’s my first and will probably be my last time,” Claudette said.
“Bitch, you better stop playing. I told you Richie said I can have my official birthday party here tomorrow night, and you know I need my girls in the building,” Lisa bragged.
“No disrespect, honey, but you must have one awesome shot of pussy if this cheap bastard is going to throw you a party here.” This was Lou, a low-level button man for a local crime family. Lou’s father, Big Lou, was a client of Steins. The lawyer didn’t really care for Lou, but he kept him around because he always had a line on drugs and parties.
“Why don’t you watch that gutter mouth of yours?” Stein scolded him. “I’m not cheap, I’m frugal. Besides, nothing is too good for my girl,” he threw his arm around Lisa, but purposely let his fingers brush Claudette’s shoulders. Claudette flashed him a knowing look that sealed the deal. After Stein dropped Lisa off, he planned on doubling back and trying his luck with her friend.
Stein’s scheming was interrupted when an unfamiliar face walked into Pesto’s. “Who the fuck is this?” Stein asked with a sour expression on his face. From the way he was dressed, Stein could tell that he wasn’t a regular customer because Pesto’s enforced a strict dress code. More importantly, he wondered how the intruder had gotten in because he’d left specific instructions with both Larry and the manager that no one was to be allowed in without his approval during the celebration. Heads would roll for his orders not being followed.
“Don’t worry, I got this,” Lou wiped his mouth with a napkin and got up from the table. He ambled across the room and blocked the young man’s path. “This is a private party, dip- shit. Why don’t you take a walk to the Chicken Shack down the street?”
In response to his insult, Lou received a bullet to the face.
The sound of gunshots and the body in the middle of the floor caused a panic inside the restaurant. The waitress who had been sent to get a fresh bottle was on her way out of the back and when she saw the gunman, she dropped the bottle and took off back the way she had come. A few seconds later, two brutish men came out wearing off the rack suits. They were the muscle for Pesto’s, but their muscles did little to help them against Animal’s bullets. They had barely cleared the doors when Animal riddled them with bullets.
Levy was the first one at the table to try and make a run for it. He leapt from his seat and made a break for the side door. Animal let him reach it before he put a bullet through the back of his head and flipped him forward. Animal advanced on the table, where the rest of the party sat, too terrified to move. The man called Harvey threw his hands up in surrender.
“I�
�m just an assistant,” Harvey blurted out.
“Then consider yourself fired,” Animal told him before putting two in Harvey’s chest. He turned his hard eyes to the girls. “I need a word with the counselor. Get gone or get dead.” Lisa and Claudette wasted no time scrambling out of the restaurant and leaving Stein to his fate. Animal pulled up a chair and sat across from the terrified lawyer. “I presume you’re Richie Stein,” it was more of a statement than a question.
Stein swallowed hard. “Yes, I’m Richie Stein, but I don’t know what this is about,” his voice trembled. If it weren’t for the fact that he was wearing a three-thousand-dollar suit, he might’ve pissed himself.
“This is about your other life, and your connection to the cartel.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Stein lied.
Animal placed his gun on the table, facing Stein. “I’m going to act like you didn’t just piss on my head and try to tell me it’s raining. You’ve represented several members of Poppito Suarez’s cartel over the years. You’re one of Tiger Lily’s whores, but I’m not interested in your pussy, I wanna see what that mouth do. I need information on a man named Luther Graham.”
“Who?” Stein faked ignorance.
Animal fired a shot, nearly missing Stein’s head, and knocking off the chair he was sitting on. “Don’t play me, you fucking snake. I’m talking about your little pet project. See I did some digging before I came in here and shot up your little party, and found out a few interesting things about you and Luther Graham. It seems you two have been spending quite a bit of time together lately. Just as recently as two weeks ago you cleaned up a solicitation charge for him.”
“Well…ah, my firm has been very successful so sometimes we like to pay our blessings back by doing probono work. Giving back to the community and such, you know?”
Animal reached across the table, grabbing Stein by the tie and dragging him through abandoned platters of pasta and champagne glasses. He dumped Stein on the floor and placed his foot on his throat, cutting off his oxygen. “Bitch nigga, do I look stupid to you? Muthafuckas like you don’t do shit for poor communities but bleed them, so miss me with that I care about the ghetto shit. You’re a four hundred dollar an hour lawyer who makes his money off the suffering of rich folks, so don’t think for a minute that I’ll believe you actually give a shit about a guy who works as a messenger whose biggest accomplishment is supporting a hundred dollar per day drug habit on a minimum wage salary. Two weeks ago, you cleaned up the solicitation, but three months before that you got him off on possession and the year before that you stood with him on an assault charge. Ain’t that much pro-bono in the world. This ain’t no casual sex, y’all are in a relationship.”
“Okay, yeah. So maybe I did represent the guy, but I don’t see why that has you waving a gun in my face,” Stein said.
Animal leaned forward. “It’s got everything to do with me waving this gun in your face,” he brandished the gun for emphasis, “and it might be the deciding factor as to whether you walk out of here or get carried out. It’s obvious to a duck that Graham didn’t pay all those legal fees, so I wanna know who his guardian angel is?”
“I’m bound to my clients by confidentiality!” Stein gasped.
Animal pointed his gun at the lawyer’s face. “These bullets are about to bind you to the afterlife.”
Stein weighed his options. If he talked then nine times out of ten, he was dead, but if he didn’t talk then death was a guarantee. He decided to take his chances. “I handle all the criminal law cases for NYAK. They’re the ones who wanted me to get Graham out.”
NYAK stuck a cord in Animal’s head. In addition to Graham, and Stein’s names, he’d also seen NYAK mentioned in the files he’d stolen from Sonja. According to what he’d learned from a Google search on the name, NYAK was supposed to be a biochemical company that specialized in clean energy. “Why the fuck would a multimillion corporation care if a low life like Graham went to jail or not?”
“On my mother’s eyes, I don’t know.”
“Then your mother must be a blind bitch, because I think you’re lying.” Animal yanked Stein to his feet, and hurled him through a nearby wine rack, shattering several of the bottles. Stein was just struggling to his feet when Animal grabbed one of the shards of broken glass and jabbed it into Stein’s leg, causing a fountain of blood to squirt out.
“Oh my God, I think you hit an artery!” Stein yelled, clutching his thigh, trying futilely to stop the flow of blood.
“I’m no doctor, but from the way you’re leaking, I’d say I did. Now we can play this little game all night, but you’ll bleed out long before I get tired of fucking you up. Why did NYAK want Graham released?”
“Okay, look…all I know is that it was important to someone on NYAK’s board of directors that I get Graham get out. Other than what his charges were and how much I was being paid, I didn’t ask a lot of questions.”
“Typical of a lawyer, all cash, and no care.” Animal shook his head sadly. “Where can I find Graham? You’re his lawyer so I know you know how to reach him.”
Stein considered lying, but thought better of it. “I don’t know where Luther lays his head these days. The only time I see him is when he’s made a mess that I have to clean up. The last few times I had to see him in person he’d come to my office or we’d meet at Original Sin. He’s been spending a lot of time with a broad who works there named Momo. She’s an Asian chick who’s got an ass like a Black girl and Graham is crazy about her. If anybody can tell you where to find him, it’s her.”
Animal was familiar with Original Sin. It was a member’s only club where you could indulge in just about every vice imaginable. It was also a viper’s nest, and getting in to press Momo about Graham wouldn’t be an easy task. They didn’t fuck around in Original Sin and if you got caught wrong they didn’t call the police, they buried you. “Since you’ve been inside you must be a member. Set that card out, blood,” he snapped his fingers to hurry him along.
Keeping one hand on his wound, Stein reached into his pocket and handed Animal his wallet.
Inside the wallet, Animal found the membership card, which resembled a hotel key. On the front of it was the club’s log, a snake swallowing its tail. There was also a few hundred dollars, which Animal helped himself to. “Spending money and such,” he said sarcastically before tossing the wallet at Stein’s face.
“Do you know how long I was on the waiting list to get that card?” Stein asked, suddenly more worried about his exclusive membership than his bleeding thigh.
“Probably longer than you’ve got to live,” Animal ejected the clip from his gun and slapped a fresh one in.
Stein’s eyes widened. He thought because he’d played nice and crossed Luther he’d be allowed to live, but it wasn’t to be. “Wait, I told you what you wanted to know and you’re still going to kill me? Kid, I don’t know who you are but you don’t want to do this.”
“You’re right. I don’t, but I’ve been robbed of most of my choices,” Animal chambered a round and pointed his pistol at Luther’s face. “As far as who I am I’ll happily tell you; I am the broken dreams of a man who only wanted better, the sobs of a murdered lover as she took her last breaths. I am the bastard child of a man who served the devil and called it God’s work and the last thing you’ll ever see before you leave this world,” he told him before he opened fire and pushed the lawyer from this life, never to swindle again.
CHAPTER 6
Original Sin wasn’t hard to find. It was a popular watering hole for criminals and misfits who handled heavy paper. The establishment was located in a privately owned house deep in Brooklyn on a non-descript block. They tried to keep it low, but the spot stuck out like a sore thumb because of all the luxury cars lining the block and in the adjacent parking lot next to the house. They only reason the police didn’t come snooping around is because the people who owned it paid them a hefty sum to look the other way.
&
nbsp; The man guarding the door was a beefy cat, who was known on the streets as a killer. He was a no-nonsense dude called Devil who had been putting dudes to sleep for more than a decade, and even though he was getting on in years, he was still quite lethal. He had recently come into the employ of Original Sin when things started going sour with his regular job, which was providing security for rappers. He had sometimes complained about it, but standing outside like a bookend, he found himself missing those long nights in warm smoke filled studios and even the discomfort of being inside a packed club trying to keep screaming fans away from his charges. Those days were becoming further and further between, and the gigs coming less. That’s how he found himself in his current position, one of the Gate Keepers at the infamous Original Sin.
Had you told Devil six months ago that he’d have to start moonlighting doing security gigs for extra money, he’d have laughed at you. He was the personal bodyguard of one of the biggest rappers in the game, Don B., and head of security at a multimillion-dollar record label, Big Dawg Entertainment. When Devil was running with Big Dawg in their heyday, the world was their playground and money flowed in rivers. They were kings riding a wave that at the time seemed endless until the bottom fell out.
Devil’s employer, Don B’s, shady business practices had come back to bite him on the ass and the lawsuits started flying like singles at a strip club. All it took was for one artist to force him to open the books and it opened a floodgate. Big Dawg still sold a huge amount of records, but between the IRS, lawsuits, and back royalties he was forced to pay off, money started going out faster than it was coming in. Everybody at Big Dawg had to tighten their belts. Those who were smart enough to plan for rainy days were able to weather the storm, but the ones like Devil who spent money like there was no tomorrow found themselves in bad shape. Devil hated what he had been reduced to, but he hated being dead broke more so he did what he had to do to keep his head over water.