by K'wan
At the mention of Christian’s name, Boogie got silent. Christian was the leader of the crew Boogie ran with. Outside of the fact that he was a club promoter and ran girls, the police knew very little about him. The reason for this was because Christian was an extremely cautious man, and demanded the members of his team moved just as carefully. This is why he didn’t like them taking side jobs. When freelance work went wrong for one of them it brought unnecessary heat to the entire organization by association, such was the case with Boogie getting arrested while working security at Original Sin.
“Don’t get all quiet on me now, Boogie,” Detective Brown continued.
“This is about me and a bullshit case. It doesn’t have anything to do with Christian,” Boogie argued.
“That’s until we make it have everything to do with Christian,” Detective Alvarez added. “Christian dodged a bullet when all that shit happened with Chancellor. King’s monarchy was torn apart, and he was smart to lay low after it, but situations like the one we have here tonight tend to re-open old wounds. When we get to sniffing Christian because of this petty shit you got caught up in, he’s gonna tap dance all over your ass in them designer shoes he’s so fond of.”
“Man, y’all ain’t about to go through all that over something as small as this,” Boogie capped.
Detective Brown bounced him off the wall and grabbed him by the throat. “Try me, muthafucka! You and I both know that me and my partner are the kings of doing petty shit, so if you don’t think we’ll make it our personal mission to smear you and that cock-lover you work for, you’d better think again.”
Boogie weighed his options. Christian had warned him against taking side jobs, but Boogie didn’t listen. He made a nice piece of change working security at Original Sin and got all the free pussy he could handle. It was a sweet job, but hardly worth him fucking up his primary source of income and potentially winding up dead over a few dollars.
“What y’all want from me, man?” Boogie finally gave in. Detective Alvarez smiled. “Just a little information.”
“I ain’t no fucking rat!” Boogie spat.
“C’mon, man. You know I know that and I’d never disrespect you by asking you to tell on your fellow man, but this wasn’t your fellow man that came in there and shot this place up. Hell, you’re lucky you didn’t wind up getting wheeled out on one of those gurneys tonight. All you gotta do is tell us who did this and we’ll cut you loose and make sure the gun and your charges disappear,” Detective Alvarez promised.
Boogie looked at the two detectives. Brown and Alvarez were a lot of things, but they weren’t liars. If they promised to cut him loose and make the case go away, they would. “I don’t know his name,” he sighed.
“Did you get a look at him?” Detective Brown asked. “Briefly, before he started smoking muthafuckas. He was a young dude, dark skinned, handy as hell with a gun. I swear this nigga moved so fast that I didn’t even know he had a piece on him until the first body dropped.”
“Would you say he was a pro?” Detective Alvarez asked, jotting down notes on his pad.
“I’d say so. If he isn’t then he should be. That boy was a lethal piece of work,” Boogie said seriously.
“Anything else you remember about him? Maybe he had some tattoos or any other distinguishing marks?” Detective Alvarez asked.
“Yeah, his hair. He had this bushy ass fro that looked like it hadn’t seen a comb in weeks.”
“I guess we can knock barbershops off our lists of places to search,” Alvarez snickered.
“Shut up, J,” Detective Brown scolded him. “Is that it, Boogie?”
Boogie tapped his chin trying to think of anything else, and then he remembered a very important detail. “His teeth!”
Alvarez looked up from his scribbling. “What about them?
Were they rotten, missing, what?”
“Nah, man, I mean shiny. He was grilled up like one of them down south niggas,” Boogie explained.
At the mention of the grills, a troubled look passed between Detectives Alvarez and Brown. They were both thinking the same thing, but neither one of them wanted to speak it into existence.
“What?” Boogie looked back and forth at the stunned facial expressions on the detective’s faces. “Why y’all looking at each other like you seen a ghost?”
“Thanks, you’ve been real helpful, Boogie.” Alvarez ignored the question. “Officer,” he waved one of the uniforms over to take possession of Boogie.
“What the fuck is this? Y’all said you’d spring me!” Boogie reminded them.
“And we will, but we can’t very well let you walk away from the crime scene,” Detective Alvarez told him. “We’ll swing by the precinct in an hour or so and take care of everything,” he promised before letting the uniformed officer take Boogie away.
“You hear that description?” Brown asked his partner, beating him to the punch.
Alvarez nodded. “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s impossible. The last I heard he’d gotten rich off some lawsuit and retired to a house on the beach in California when he got out of the joint.”
“One man, a bunch of bodies, and a movie-worthy escape…it definitely fits his M.O,” Detective Brown pointed out.
“I can’t argue with you there, but it doesn’t make sense. He did something nobody before him had been able to; beat the system. He retired to a wife, a big house, and a big ass bank account. If that were me there’s nothing I can think of that would make me risk all that unless…”
“…Somebody was looking to fuck with your happiness,” Detective Brown finished his sentence for him.
Detective Alvarez gave his partner a hard look. “Okay, let’s say for the sake of argument that I entertain this fairytale of yours and somebody was actually dumb enough to wake the beast, he ain’t gonna go back into his cage willingly.”
“If this is who I think it is, I’m not looking to put him in a cage so he can get another early walk from a sympathetic judge. I’m looking to put him in the ground.”
*
Detectives Brown and Alvarez bumped their way through the crowd on the way back to their car. Brown collided with a man wearing a Cincinnati Reds hat with so much force that he almost knocked him off his feet, and didn’t even so much as look back to say excuse me. It was probably for the best because if he had, he’d probably have recognized him from their many years of playing cat and mouse in the hood and there was no telling what type of confrontation that would’ve led to. For as much as he loved a good fight, he was there as an observer that night. There would be time to settle old scores later.
After the detectives had gone and Original Sin had been officially shut down, most of the crowd had disbursed but the man in the Reds cap remained a few moments longer. He looked on with neutral eyes as the coroners wheeled out yet another body under a bloody sheet. Death was nothing new to him as he had seen many men die in his thirty something years of life, but he felt a personal connection to the crime scene. Not a connection with the victims, but with the killer. He had seen his handiwork before and knew that the few bodies dropped at Original Sin were only the beginning.
When he felt he’d seen enough, he slipped away from the crowd and pulled out his cell phone. “Yeah, it’s me,” he said watching the coroner close the doors of the meat-wagon while he listened on his phone. “He’s definitely passed this way.”
PART III
BROKEN FLOWERS
CHAPTER 9
Two hours after Ashanti had left the apartment there was still no sign of Animal. He had searched all their old haunts, but no one had seen or heard from Animal. In fact, a few of the people who he’d asked were surprised to hear that he was even still alive. It was as if Animal had vanished from the face of the earth.
Adding to his irritation were the phone calls he had gotten from the twins. Zo was in, as he knew he would be, but Shai had rejected them. Ashanti had expected as much, but he had hoped the young king went the other way. His reason fo
r reaching out to Shai had been two fold. He actually did need help, in the worst way, but it was also a test. Shai and the cartel were in the same business so that meant they ran in the same circles and had access to the same networks. Ashanti doubted that Abel telling Shai what happened to Animal came as a surprise, but it opened the door for the real conversation and a test of Shai’s character.
Abel telling Shai that Lilith had designs on his territory was a bullshit lie that Ashanti had fed him. In truth, he had no idea what Lilith’s end game was, but he needed to truly see where Shai’s head was at. In all the years Ashanti had known him, Shai had always been territorial. He hated anyone to get too close to what he laid claim to, so when he seemed unbothered by the threat of a major drug cartel encroaching on his turf, Ashanti knew there could be only one reason for his laid back stance; he had a stake in whatever the cartel was planning.
Ashanti was disappointed in Shai, but more disappointed in himself for thinking that Shai would rise to the occasion. It seemed like every time he gave the youngest Clark male the benefit of the doubt, he did some greasy shit that reminded Ashanti why Animal had stopped fucking with him in the first place. He’d always smelled the foulness in Shai; it was just too bad the rest of them didn’t see his true colors before Tech was murdered.
Tech had been the original alpha of the Dog Pound. It was he who had taken Animal under his wing, and Animal who had done the same for Ashanti when the time came. This was back when they were all still associates of the Clark family, young attack dogs that would kill or maim on command. Tech was a good dude, but also a wild card. He was a true outlaw, beholden to no rules except those of the jungle; the weak are food for the strong. The fact that Shai couldn’t control Tech never went over well with the other bosses whose toes he sometimes stepped on, and they began to put pressure on the young king to muzzle his dog. He warned Tech about his antics and the problems they were causing, but Tech continued to do as he pleased without care or concern for how Shai felt. The time eventually came when Tech had gone too far and Shai made an example out of him by having Tech gunned down.
The rest of the Pound wanted blood for what Shai had done, but Animal granted him a stay of execution. At the time, Ashanti was too young understand why he did it, and did hold some resentment over Animal’s decision, but when he got older and more seasoned, he understood why Animal had done it.
They were babies, barely able to shoot straight, talking about going against an army of trained killers. By making them stand down, Animal had saved the young lambs from the slaughter. In hindsight, after all the grief Shai would cause them over the years it kind of made Ashanti wish they’d taken their chances and tried to kill him.
After hours of driving around looking for him, Ashanti figured that wherever Animal was, he wasn’t ready to be found. There was nothing more for him to do but wait until the big homie revealed himself and what he’d been up to. Since Ashanti now had some time to kill, he decided to turn his attention to something he had been neglecting, his lady.
He and Fatima had been on the outs lately and it was his fault. Lately they had been clashing over how much time he spent on the road with Kahllah and how little time he was spending at home. Since things had gotten serious between Ashanti and Fatima, they decided to move in together. Ashanti secured them a nice apartment in downtown Brooklyn. He’d hit Fatima with some paper and let her decorate the place however, she wanted. She made a quaint little home for her and Ashanti, but the problem was that he was never in it for more than a day or so at a time. Fatima understood that when Ashanti was with Kahllah it was about getting money. Her man was seeing more paper than he ever did on the block, and she made a fair piece of change at her legit job, so they were able to stack quite a bit of bread, but it felt like the more he got, the harder he went. After a while, she began to wonder if he was really out chasing the money, or simply the thrill of the kill.
Right before his last excursion to the west coast with Kahllah, Fatima had laid her feelings on the table. She let it be known that things had to change between her and Ashanti or she was leaving. He understood and promised that after they came back from California he was going to take some time off to stay home and work on being a better man to her. That was right before they went to visit Animal and the shit hit the fan. Fatima was pissed that he was going to be away longer than promised, but she knew how Ashanti felt when it came to Animal so she accepted it. What hurt her was when he came back to New York and hadn’t bothered to tell her. She had to hear through the grapevine that her lover was back in town. Ashanti hadn’t done it to slight her, but there had been so much going on so fast that he hadn’t had a minute to think since he got off the plane. That wasn’t a good enough excuse for Fatima. He had finally gone too far and she washed her hands of him.
After some begging and pleading, she finally agreed to meet with Ashanti. She told him to come by her job when she took her break. She didn’t make him any promises, but she would at least hear him out. It was all Ashanti could ask for at that point, and he planned to plead a very convincing case in the hopes she’d take him back. Fatima was the best thing that had ever happened to him and he told her every chance he got, but now it was time to show her.
Fatima worked as a security guard at Barclay’s Center, which wasn’t too far from their apartment. Ashanti had been against her getting a job, arguing that he made enough money to support them, but Fatima wasn’t trying to hear it. She had learned from what happened to her father, Cutty, that street money didn’t last forever and she refused to end up one of those dumb broads who ended up broke and flat on their asses when their men were taken from them. Besides that, Fatima had always been independent, either working or hustling for what she needed. She loved the fact that Ashanti had been willing to take care of her, but she needed her own.
There was a game going on that night, so traffic was a mess and parking was a nightmare. Ashanti had to park several blocks away and walk to the arena. As he was getting out of the car, he remembered the metal detectors he’d have to pass through to get inside, which meant he couldn’t take his gun with him. Ashanti hated to go anywhere without a ratchet, it made him feel naked. When you lived as he did, death could come at any time so he prided himself on always being prepared. Barclay’s wasn’t too far and the streets were crawling with police, so he figured he should be okay. He planned to go in, say what he needed to say to Fatima, and get up out of there.
It was Ashanti’s first time in Barclay’s Center, and he had to admit he was impressed by the modernized arena. It didn’t have the storied history, or feel of Madison Square Garden, but they had done a great job with it. He took his place at the end of the line, waiting like everyone else to go through the metal detector. Just beyond it, he spotted Fatima. Her hair was freshly braided up, and the gray security slacks she wore hugged her ass nicely. It felt like a lifetime since he had seen the love of his life and a broad smile crossed his face as he thought of scooping her in his arms as she planted kisses all over his face. The smile faded when he got closer and noticed
she was chatting it up with some dude. He too was wearing a security uniform so it could’ve very well been an innocent conversation between co-workers, but Ashanti’s gut told him it wasn’t. There was something about the guy that made Ashanti angry. He had been around enough creeps to know larceny when he saw it in someone’s eyes.
Ashanti had been so fixed on Fatima and her co-worker that he hadn’t even realized he’d made it to the front of the line. A skinny security guard, holding what looked like a price scanner in his hands, was giving Ashanti an annoyed look like he was waiting for something and Ashanti was holding him up.
“Sir, I asked to see your ticket,” the security guard repeated for the third time.
“My bad,” Ashanti said apologetically. “I don’t have a ticket because —”
“No ticket, no entry,” the security guard cut Ashanti off before he could finish his sentence.
“Listen, blood, I’
m just trying to explain to you that I’m not here to see the game; I’m visiting an employee,” Ashanti said, trying to keep his cool.
“I ain’t yo muthafucking blood, nigga, so watch that shit, cuz,” the security guard replied angrily.
Ashanti couldn’t figure out what all the hostility was about until he noticed the tattoo on the security guard’s neck, peeking out from the collar of his white shirt. He was from a Crip set. “Listen,” he softened his tone, “I didn’t come here off no bullshit. I’m just trying to see who I came to see and go on my way.”
Seeing there was some type of disturbance, two more security guards came over to back up the skinny one. Now having numbers on his side, he decided to really get brazen. “You ain’t about to see nothing, but the lights on the outside of the arena if you ain’t got no ticket. Move on or get moved,” he warned.
Ashanti took stock of the situation. He knew that as soon as he made his move he’d have the full force of the arena’s security on his ass and might even end up getting arrested, but it would all be worth it if he got to break the jaw of the skinny Crip in front of him before it all went down.
“Ashanti!” Fatima’s voice snapped him to attention, like a parent who had just caught their kid about to do something wrong. At the mention of his name, a look of recognition passed across the skinny security guard’s face, but Ashanti never saw it. He was focused on Fatima, who stood just behind the metal detector with her arms folded and glaring at him angrily. “He’s with me,” she told them and the security guards stood down.
As Ashanti stepped past the skinny security guard, he gave him a little bump with his shoulder. He wondered if the security guard knew how close he had come to getting put on medical leave from his job.