Toni picked herself up off the floor and sat on the edge of the bed. The pain throbbed from the places on her back, buttocks, and legs where Savage’s kicks had landed. Despite the violence, she wanted to crawl back into bed, curl up into a tight ball next to him, and never again wake up. But the powerful craving for a fix overwhelmed her sudden and acute desire for a pain-free, sleep-induced death and forced her to stand and stumble out of the room.
Savage was pissed and wide awake. Damn how he hated being woken up in the middle of the night over that bitch’s addiction, he thought angrily. Serves the bitch right if she ODs on that shit. He rolled over onto his back. “God damn it, Toni,” he hollered out in frustration. “Even though that fent looks like Oxy, shit will still fuck your ass up. Don’t do more than half a tablet, you hear me girl?”
Toni heard him all right, but she didn’t answer. Of course she knew how potent the drug was. It was he who taught her how to snort it up to begin with. He taught her everything she knew about all the many different drugs she had taken since he forced her first high on her in the club. At the bottom of the stairs, she looked through the darkness to try to get her bearings straight. A switch for the hall light was mounted on the partial wall separating the small foyer and the living room. She opted to remain in the dark, not wanting the shock of the bright light to aggravate her headache any further. Standing there naked, she felt goosebumps break out all over from a cold draft blowing from somewhere. She shivered and wished she would have put on some clothes before coming downstairs. She turned and looked back up the steps. No, she wasn’t about to go back up now. Not with Savage as pissed as he was. Not without her high.
As she made her way down the hall, she discovered where the cold draft was coming from: the door leading down to the basement was partially open. She closed the door as quietly as she could and then tried to rub away the goosebumps on her arms as she entered the kitchen. Without thinking, she flipped on the light switch. The shock from the bright light was like a slap in the face. She slapped at the switch to turn it back off, but the damage was done. Partially blinded from the after-effects from the light, she held her hands out before her like a blind person until she found the counter. She then followed the granite countertop around the kitchen with her hands, first coming to the high-end Miele dishwasher, then the Blanco Diamond granite kitchen sink, then several feet more of countertop, followed by the Thermador Induction cooktop, until finally coming to the sleek, stainless steel Sub-Zero refrigerator in the back corner of the small room.
When Toni saw Savage’s home for the first time earlier that night, it surprised her to find out how stylish it was, and how neat and exact he maintained it, especially after having spent so much time in the decrepit and disgusting houses from which he ran his prostitutes. She opened the bottom drawer of the refrigerator and she was immediately struck by streams of cold clouds radiating up at her, drawing forth from her even more goosebumps and hardening further her already hardened nipples. Shivering, she began digging hastily through the small cartons of Taharka Brothers ice cream, the packs of frozen grass-fed steaks and hamburger meat, and bags of frozen fruits until finding what she was looking for beneath it all – a large plastic freezer bag full of green tablets, each with the letters OC stamped into them on one side and the number 80 stamped into the other.
Her numb, shaky hands were unable to manage the bags frigid zip-lock seal, so she shut the drawer with a foot and, with the bag in hand, she grabbed a bowl out of the cupboard and a spoon from the silverware drawer. She then tiptoed as fast as she could back up the hall and into the living room, not noticing as she passed that the basement door was once again open. In the living room, she grabbed the mink blanket that was folded neatly atop the back of the couch and wrapped her shivering body up tightly within it.
But she was too impatient to wait for the blanket to warm her up, so she got busy setting up her fix. With chills still wracking her body, a headache still pounding in her head, and hands still shaky from both the cold and the drug craving, it was impossible for her to open the plastic bag without spilling most of its contents out onto the coffee table and down onto the floor. The sound of the scattering pills raining down atop the glass coffee table sounded deafening against the still of the night. She listened closely for any indication that she had wakened Savage. When she was confident she hadn’t, she plucked one of the pills from the mess and dropped it into the bowl. Using the tablespoon as a pestle, she began to carefully crush the pill into a white powder.
Setting in the middle of the coffee table was a vintage lacquered box. On its lid was a gold hummingbird and hibiscus flower engraving inlaid with mother of pearl. According to Savage, when his grandmother was still alive, she used to keep the gloves she wore with her Sunday best in the box. But when Toni opened the heirloom now, inside was Savage’s drug kit – razor blades, a strip of twelve-inch rubber tubing, cotton swabs, a lighter, a residue-stained baby spoon, a one-hitter, several three-inch plastic straws, syringes, needles – all the paraphernalia a sophisticated addict needed for using.
She cleared a spot among the pills scattered across the table and poured out the now powered fentanyl. Using one of the razors from the glove box, she chopped at the white mound to refine it even more. Satisfied, she cut it into two thin lines. She took a straw from the box, unconsciously wiped at her nose, and then smoothly snorted the first line into her right nostril.
The potent drug blasted into her brain like the knockout punch of a heavyweight boxer. She preferred the warm, comforting effect heroin had on her body as it was shot into the vein over the burning, acrid taste of the fentanyl, but that was a small price to pay for the relief from the withdrawal symptoms she had been experiencing. Besides, she knew that she and every other heroin user around Baltimore needed to get used to the fentanyl’s effect since so many dealers, including Savage, were switching their product line from the Mexican Black Tar and Columbian White heroin that had dominated the Baltimore market for so long to the mass-produced Chinese fentanyl that was now flooding the streets. With its low cost and much higher potency – upward of 100 times more potent than heroin – dealers like Savage could sell fewer pills by volume at a much higher price point than they could of heroin. One hit of fentanyl can sell from anywhere between ten and fifteen dollars, a similar price as heroin, but with a far higher profit margin. Heroin had a wholesale value of anywhere between $50,000 to $60,000 a kilogram; whereas a kilo of fentanyl can be had for as little as $2,500. The lower risk and higher rewards the pills offered were too great for a conscientious dealer to pass up.
The profit potential of the fentanyl she had just snorted, or apache as it was known on the Baltimore streets, was the furthest thing from her mind as she slipped further and further into the high that was spreading its savory warmth throughout her freezing body, and bringing along with it a pleasant, tingling numbness that eased away the pounding in her head and any anxiety she might have had from the challenges that lay before her. She curled herself up into the soft down of the off-white Italia sofa, the blanket slipping off her and falling to the floor as she did, and floated blissfully away from her pain-filled reality as, on the other side of the wall separating the living room from the hallway and foyer, the killer exited the basement and silently made his way upstairs.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Savage began coughing violently from the smelling salts that were being waved under his nose. Once made fully awake by the noxious blast to the brain, it didn’t take him long to realize that he was now down in his basement, that he was bound naked to a chair, that his mouth was taped over with thick duct tape, and that the point of a machete was poking threateningly, painfully into his chest. His first thought among the many that began racing through his head was that he was being targeted by a local rival. If that were the case, he knew then what a hopeless predicament he was in. Throughout his long, felonious career, he had placed many of his rivals in similar such predicaments before, and it had never ended w
ell for any of them.
He looked up the length of the blade to the large man holding it and knew right away that whatever predicament he was in, it was not the doing of any thug killer from around the way. Thug killers like himself preferred their treachery to be known. If they were going to do something as drastic and as dangerous as taking out a rival, especially if it were the elimination of such a high-ranking gangster as Savage, they would want to be sure to receive their propers from the street for the effort. And even if the hit were to remain discreet, off the books, the chances were this thug killer on the rise would still want Savage to see his face, so Savage would know who it was who was about to both end his life and displace him on the streets. As Savage himself had a reputation of doing, this thug killer would be all up in Savage’s face talking maximum shit, evil shit, letting Savage know in the most degrading of terms that he had been vanquished and that all Savage had worked so hard for would now belong to he who had vanquished him. But the man digging the machete into Savage’s chest was no thug killer from around the way as was evidenced by both the full-faced ski mask he wore to ensure his anonymity and the penetrating, hostile silence he maintained to ensure his murderous intent was easily understood.
While Savage had never found himself in such a dire predicament like the one he was in now, he had been in many violent situations throughout his long, violent career when he did have to fear for his life; however, he had never been in a situation in which, like this one, he had absolutely no control over its outcome. Yet, even as dire as his present situation seemed, fear had not yet set upon him, only confusion had, a confusion as to who his captor was and as to why he was being targeted. And, if there were even the slightest chance whatsoever for him to come out of this predicament alive, it was this confusion that he had to overcome, and fast. In his effort to bring about clarity, he did not struggle against his bindings, nor did he try to call out in anger through the thick tape across his mouth. He knew doing so was pointless and would only serve to empower his captor even more. His best bet would be to play it like he always played it: cool.
As he focused on playing it cool, on regulating his breathing, on calming the rapid pounding of his heart, on trying to bring silence to the cacophony of thoughts screaming through his mind, he attempted to meditate on the man standing tall above him and who, except for the fact that he had to remain hunched over due to the basement’s low ceiling, looked like all kinds of badass. Dressed in all black from his combat boots to his leather gloves to his ski mask, he looked like a modern-day thug ninja. As the volume in his mind began to lower, it dawned on Savage that this thug ninja with the long-ass blade digging into his chest had been sent to kill him on behalf of Toni’s New Orleans buyer. Since it obviously wasn’t a local hit, who else could it be but those bitch-ass mother fuckers?
This thought, while eliminating the confusion, brought about a strong surge of anger. This greedy-ass New Orleans mother fucker, now that he had the tracking ID for his purchase, had decided that he would rather not depart with Toni’s rather costly agreed-upon sale price. Savage’s heartrate shot back up. He couldn’t catch his breath from the fury now howling inside him. Fucking Blackman. Mother fucker should have never given them bastards the tracking code until after the money was transferred. It tore him up that he was going to be killed over such a stupid fucking reason. Fucking amateur shit.
As he struggled to reassume calm, Savage noticed in the man’s other gloved hand, the hand not holding the machete that was digging into his chest, a sheet of white paper with several paragraphs typed on it. Something about the paper troubled him. What was it? As he struggled with that thought, he then noticed that behind his captor stood a tripod with a phone mounted atop it. He looked closer at the phone. Was that his? Was this mother fucker going to record the hit with Savage’s own mother fucking phone? He looked back up to the killer’s face, into his eyes. They were blue, a cold, icy blue, a blue that said to Savage very distinctly that his time remaining with the living was not long. And when the man finally blinked, Savage saw that the skin of the eyelids was white, the pale, unsettling white of death.
All at once everything became clear to Savage. This was no typical hit, his mind screamed out to him as fear began quickly displacing the anger. A typical hit he could live with, die with. No, this cracker mother fucker wasn’t down here to settle any street scores or to eliminate him on behalf of an overpriced sex slave transaction, this crazy ass ninja fuck digging into his chest with his crazy-assed ninja blade was down here to immortalize him in the most humiliating of manners.
Yes, he had seen this cracker-assed freak and his cracker-assed freak show before. Blackman had insisted on showing him those sick-ass snuff videos whenever they popped up on the internet. It was no surprise to Savage then when the cracker mother fucker held up the piece of paper and told him that he had to read what was written on it. Savage knew from the videos that the sucker in the chair always dies in a bad way at the end of the readings. And those who refuse to read always lose a few body parts before eventually complying and then dying in a bad way. Bottom line: no matter what he did he was a dead man, and the world was soon to know about it. The only choice he had remaining in the short time he had left alive was whether he would go out in maximum pain from an act of defiance, from refusing to die in humiliation, or whether he would comply like a coward, just so he could go out quickly and with minimal pain.
Having had grown up on the mean streets of Baltimore where pain in all its forms was as common to life as was happiness and stability uncommon to it, and where every hood rat like himself who had learned how to survive the streets would rather die than to be caught crying like a punk-ass bitch about their overwhelming and inequitable struggles, and where, instead, they trumpeted their ability to survive against all odds and wore their accumulated life scars proudly like chevrons on a sleeve, the choice for Savage was an easy one. He would die like a soldier, not like some punk-ass bitch. Without having to have the tape from his mouth removed, he indicated with the narrowing of the eyes and a slow shaking of the head that he was unwilling to comply with the bitch-ass cracker’s request. He would not read what was on the paper.
Even though he knew it was coming, it happened so fast he didn’t realize it had come until he heard the thud of his right hand hitting the basement’s dirt floor. He tried to take cover behind that hard place within himself that he liked to command from whenever going into battle. But for the pain which had just been inflicted upon him, the hard place wasn’t hard enough. Even with his mouth taped tightly shut, his scream could not be contained.
It took Savage some time before he had calmed down enough to where the killer could once again pose the request for him to read the statement that had been written for him. Again, Savage took himself mentally through the choices he had, this time through a filter colored by the pain of an amputated limb. Would he read the statement and forever be regarded as a man who could so easily compromise his integrity, or would he be regarded as a man willing to suffer for his own personal honor?
Fuck that, Savage thought. He was born into a world of pain, he was raised on pain, he solicited and profited in pain, so why the fuck shouldn’t he die in pain? He took in a deep breath through his nose, stiffened himself to what he knew was to come, and once again narrowed his eyes and shook his head.
After Savage had lost his second hand, and after he had processed the pain through a long series of screams, and after the cracker-ass freak – who else but some crazy-assed cracker would go romping around the country dressed like some demented superhero thinking he could rid the world of Savage’s special kind of evil? – had once again posed the request for him to read the statement, and, after Savage once again had refused to read the statement, Savage saw the first signs of uncertainty from the cracker-ass freak. Instead of automatically hacking off Savage’s left foot as he had indicated he would, the cracker mother fucker just stabbed the point of the machete into Savage’s leg, over and over again,
each stab digging deeper and deeper, and demanded that Savage read the statement or he would hack him slowly into tiny pieces.
Despite the pain, and the tape covering his mouth, Savage laughed. Even though he knew his death was only moments away, by being able to throw the freak off his game even just a little bit, Savage felt he had won. The harder the freak stabbed him in the leg trying to convince him to read the statement, the harder Savage laughed, until finally, in a blind fury, the freak began hacking wildly at Savage’s right ankle, not cutting it off cleanly like he had the hands, but instead chopping away chunks of it as if he were chopping down a tree. Savage passed out.
Instead of the smelling salts again, the killer slapped Savage in the face until he finally came back around. Savage was at the point now where it no longer mattered what the killer did to him. It would be impossible for him to read the statement even if he had wanted to. All he could do now was shake his head back and forth and laugh like a madman.
It was after the freak had hacked off Savage’s left ankle and both of his arms above the elbows and was in the middle of a wide sweeping windup to cut off Savage’s head that Savage saw a beautiful angel come floating down from above.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Toni lay on the living room couch moaning and tossing restlessly as she slept. The blanket she had covered herself with when she drifted off into the initial welcoming comfort of her fentanyl high lay piled beside her on the floor. Instead of the blanket, her naked body was now covered with a thick layer of goosebumps. But the goosebumps weren’t brought on by the cold; they were brought on by the vivid, fentanyl-induced nightmare she was having, a nightmare in which she now found herself trapped. Even as she was suffering through the terrifying experience, she knew all along that it was only a dream, a lucid, surreal, violent nightmare of a dream; yet, no matter how hard she tried, she was unable to wake herself from the horror of it.
The Good Kill Page 18