A Kingpin's Obsession: Ajoni's Story

by London Starr

  “Then there is nothing else to talk about, Raw. It’s business as usual, and I do not want to talk about how shit went left that night. I know how. X and Leek let their positions go to their fucking heads, and Ajoni’s jump in got out of hand. I’d rather make moves and get all of our futures back on track, plus a few other things I need to take care of.”

  “Name it,” he says quickly, like I knew he would; always down no matter what needs to be done.

  “Officer Hankin stole from me, and Ajoni needs to be found ASAP.”

  Raw blows air out of his mouth and shakes his head. “Find her for fucking what, King? Do you realize you are obsessed? The whole crew is torn apart because of your obsession, and we are damn lucky we did not do the football numbers that Larkin was handing out like candy. Your obsession won’t do nothing but take the Kings down again—what is left of us anyway. How much are you willing to lose for this girl?”

  I turn my head and stare at him.

  “That damn much, huh?” he asks sarcastically.

  “It’s her birthday tomorrow, Raw,” I say simply.

  Raw frowns at me like I am talking out the side of my neck. “What makes you think she wants two fifths of the Blue Kings to pop up at her crib and say surprise, it’s the two motherfuckers that tried to see about you after we damn near got you killed? King, you must have tripped, bust your dome to the white meat, and lost your entire damn mind in The Pen. We can’t even leave Mecca without someone giving us permission, and we sure as hell don’t suppose to be in the same room together while we’re both on parole.”

  “I hear what you putting down, Raw, but are you down?” I ask, wondering if I lost his loyalty, and willing to find Ajoni by myself if I have to.

  His eyes begin switching between me and the road, and then he takes a deep breath and starts to laugh dryly. I know he is in all the way when his humor is in play, but people can change when you have spent almost eight years apart.

  Then Raw pounds his fist on the steering wheel. “Man, shit… yeah… whatever. But I’m singing like a bird the next damn time I find the pigs in the drop house with your ass in cuffs and guns pointed at you, waiting for the rest of us to show up. Just as sho’ as they offer my ass immunity again, I’m taking it and your money, and getting the fuck out of Dodge. It ain’t easy being a pretty boy in jail that likes boys,” he jokes, or maybe he is not joking. It does not matter. Raw can talk shit all he wants, but he is still the one person that will follow me into a fire and drag me out the other side if I need him to.

  After I found him starving and digging in a trashcan for something to eat in an alley at only eight years old, I gave him an apple that I had just stolen from a corner market to feed my damn self. He followed me back and distracted the owner while I swiped another. Since then, we have been tight and grew up together. I taught him the rules of the streets and how to work them to his benefit, just like I did for all of the original Kings since I was twelve years old, but I know I have Raw’s undying loyalty.

  I have met only one person that will not follow me anywhere, take her rightful place in my family after she was given a position, or live by the oaths of the Blue Kings; loyalty to the crew before all others, no getting high off your own supply or anyone else’s, and no snitching no matter what any of the Blue Kings do to you or anybody else. The consequence for breaking those codes is death and I handle that shit myself.

  “So what now, King?”

  “We go to my house, move Lea and Nina’s bum asses out of it, give them this foul ass truck as compensation along with the ten grand I promised her for holding me down, and then burn my fucking bed and these clothes I have on. They’re too damn small, Raw. Then we will track Hankin and Ajoni’s addresses down on the internet. I want Ajoni brought to me today by any means necessary, and I will see Hankin tonight. He needs to learn a lesson about taking another man’s shit and being disrespectful afterwards.”

  “King, I understand that Hankin stole something from you, but I’m not helping you hurt Ajoni. She has not done anything to us that I wouldn’t have done if I had family. She didn’t ask for what happened to her that night either, just wanted to run with us to get that paper, and see about her moms. There are some lines that should not be crossed even in the streets where anything goes.”

  “I’m not going to kill her Raw, and she did do something to me.”

  “What was that?”

  She made me want her more than anything else in this world. “She broke the oaths to the Blue Kings.”

  “After you made her take them King, in a way she did not want to at first.”

  “But she took them Raw, and there are consequences for breaking them.”

  “What the fuck are you going to do with her?”

  “Make her mine again.”

  Raw swipes a hand down his face. “Abu Dhabi, here I fucking come. I am not going back to damn jail for a piece of ass I wouldn’t stick if somebody offered to pay me. Ajoni’s cockpit must have gold inside it, the worst kind to stick and makes men lose their damn minds.”

  “I wanted her badly before I made love to her, Raw.”

  “So you love her?” he asks disbelievingly, but even I do not have a clear answer to that question.

  “I guess. How the hell can I know what love is when I’ve never had it.”

  Raw turns in his seat to face me, forgetting he is driving. The truck swerves into the other lane of an oncoming car traveling on the two-lane highway with us. I wonder if I am going to die before I can get out of these damn clothes, and grab for the wheel.

  “Raw, watch where the fuck you going!”

  He gains control of the truck again, and then turns his head to me again. “You guess you love her, King! Motherfucker, you better know it if we’re about to risk everything again to find her. And you didn’t say you fucked her; you said you made love to her. There’s a difference, you crazy bastard.” He shakes his head again and turns his eyes back to the road. “You’re going to get us killed! I just know it!”

  I start to laugh. “You’re the one going to get us killed with your damn driving. Do I have to teach your ass how drive all over again?” Raw is the only one I let speak disrespectfully to me with bass in his voice, call me out of my damn name, and get away with his life afterwards—well, make that one of two people—but there are three that I will not let get away with it, and they are still missing from the family. “Where is the rest of the Kings, Raw?”

  “All over the damn place, and I guess I’ll tell you where Ajoni is since you’ll only probably try to romance her ass again.”

  I stop laughing and ask, “You know where she’s at too?”

  “Yeah. When Larkin relocated her, he forgot to change her damn name. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wants us to find and kill her since she wouldn’t play his politics game his way. But what about Lex?”

  “We scope out his ass and my runners that he is paying. I’ll let that pass since everybody has to make a living, but we will remove him and whoever is loyal to him from Mecca permanently and quietly as soon as possible. I’m not going back to prison either if I can help it. For that, we’ll need all hands on deck.”

  *The same day in Hillcrest, Washington, DC*

  Ajoni

  “Mama, come look at what I made for your birthday tomorrow,” Anjuwan yells through the house from the kitchen on a rare furlough day from school, making me shake my head one room over in my office. She is seven-years old, and neither I nor her grandmother can break her habit of shouting every time she gets excited about something, no matter where she is at. That could be because neither of us tries that hard.

  Admittedly, she is spoiled for several reasons; mostly because of what happened between me and King eight years ago. Even though I am hundreds of miles away from the warehouse, I have to deal with constant reminders of what happened there. Every morning, a three-foot, spiral-hair, mini-version of Calen Kingsley gently taps me on the face, ordering me to get up. Every night, King comes for me in my d
reams, condemning me for ruining his and my daughter’s life or making love to me. I cannot remember a single night that he does not crowd my head, and have no hopes of ever forgetting about what changed my life forever, for mostly the better.

  Do I blame King for all of it?

  Yes, I do. If he had not thought it was his right to make me queen of the Blue Kings, I would not be a mother of one of the sweetest little girls we both do not deserve; he is a lifelong criminal and I feel guilty for depriving Anjuwan of him, no matter what he is. Never in a thousand years would I have imagined that King wanted me to take a position as one the heads of his gang, that my child would be just as fatherless as I was, or that my crew name would turn out to be Queen in every sense of the word.

  Hell no, I did not want to wear that crown. I settled for being a street runner making drops between his trap houses for a reason; hustling was temporary and I did not want to rise to the top of the food chain. I had dreams for myself just like Seeri did, but I never knew King felt some type of way about me and would insist I live a Queenpin’s life with him instead. The drug world was supposed to get me out of the life that I lived in Mecca, not keep me chained to it.

  First, I had to get away from the one that wanted to put those chains on me, so I did what I had to do. I gave King what he wanted from me in the warehouse then convinced him that I needed to go home, and that I would need at least a day to convince my mother I wanted to live with him, or she would bring the cops to his door. She would have and he knew it, so he took me home himself, needing to keep the law out of his business as much as possible.

  When I got in the house, I called my grandmother, intending to get out of King’s reach for the night and deal with him the next day with a level head, hoping I could persuade him to change his mind about making me his for life. But when Addie drove up, I made the mistake of getting in her car faster than I got into Leek’s. My odd behavior spooked her; I was never that glad to see her. The dome light in her car allowed her to see my injuries; I forgot to cover them up because I was more worried about getting away from Teamon Avenue before King saw me leaving. He was at his drop house two doors down.

  Addie started asking questions as I made her drive off. I knew I had to tell her something that was close to the truth and everything that she would find out anyway, but I kept as many details about the jump-in as I could to myself, like sleeping with King. I am not the greatest of liars, and she is not the stupidest of people.

  She was furious that I was jumped into the Kings and took me to the hospital to have my head examined—literally—and I needed it after what King had just done to my body and mind.

  A doctor checked out my injuries caused by X and Leek then called the cops though I begged him not to, but it was the law and he was not interested in losing his job for me. My grandmother left me to go find my mother though I begged her not to. Neither one of us was interested in losing our life to Seeri. Addie would have if she did not tell her daughter what happened to me. I would have if Addie did tell her, but someone was going to lose their life, and Addie happily threw my ass under the bus.

  Fortunately, the MPD got to me before my mother rushed around the hung curtain separating my makeshift exam room from the others just as I was informing an officer that I did not want to press charges against the Kings after giving a watered down version of my jump-in at the warehouse. Seeri took one look at me, and somehow knew that I was a grown woman in every way. She lost her shit right then and her job later, demanding very loudly that I tell the whole damn story from beginning to end or she would beat my ass like I had stole something.

  Next, a tall, dark, and handsome white man in a tuxedo stepped through the curtain and introduced himself as Henry Larkin. He obviously had been at a high society function and left immediately to question me, but everyone knew that he had been after the Blue Kings since he took the District Attorney’s office in Mecca four years ago, and wanted to smooth his way into another term. We both knew that taking down the notorious Blue Kings single-handedly would certainly accomplish that for him. I wished him good luck with that, and kept my mouth shut about the Kings.

  Frustrated, Larkin gave me all the names of the innocent children that had been relieved of their parents by the Kings and left in the State of Georgia’s care. I asked him why he was talking to me about a simple jump-in if he knew they had committed so many murders. He had to admit that he had only suspicions, no evidence of any of the Kings’ illegal activities, and no one would testify against them.

  Well, I did not want to testify either, nor did I want Larkin to use the most disturbing night of my life to bring the Blue Kings down, and I told him I would not help him. That only made him, Seeri, and Addie more upset with me, but I knew my family would forgive me eventually for not snitching. The Blue Kings would not.

  Larkin warned me that he would use what happened to me one way or other. I had already given a police report that implicated the Blue Kings and myself in illegal gang activity, and given him grounds to lock us all up. Suddenly, I had an adult decision to make only hours after becoming a true Blue King and learning that Larkin was going after them in any way he could. He left me with two choices; I could die for snitching on King or go to jail for not snitching on King. Though neither option appealed at all, I had to consider that if I went down with the Blue Kings, Seeri would be left to fend for herself and at the mercy of her habit.

  Disasters were striking all over the damn place despite my intentions of keeping that from happening, and my mother and I were worse off after my jump-in than we were before it. I knew she would not survive for long on her own, so I made a decision to save us the only way I knew how; snitching on the Kings.

  Before I would tell the whole truth to anybody, I made Larkin sign an agreement on a paper towel that he would get my family out of Georgia as soon as possible and would not use the method of my jump in as evidence against the Kings, only the crimes that X and Leek committed against me. Seeri had to promise me that she would go to rehab.

  We all kept our end of the deal. I finally got what I wanted most of all, but I paid a higher price than I wanted to for it in the end; my hometown and all the close relationships that I had with Jonny, Addie, Laila, and my childhood friends were gone. In place of helping Larkin take the Kingpin’s down for ten years, I got a free plane ride to Washington DC from the hospital, a padded bank account, and Seeri in a rehab program in Hillcrest on Mecca taxpayers’ dime.

  Three months later, Seeri came home clean for the first time in eighteen years, to live with me in my first apartment. I could not help her celebrate our new life together; too busy feeling like somebody had poisoned me. Seeri forced me into a cab. We stopped at the first pharmacy she could find. After we got back home, we learned that I would feel much better in about six months and we would need a bigger place to live.

  The money from Larkin and King held me and Anjuwan over for our first five years in Hillcrest until I finally graduated from high school and college, then got my graphic design company off the ground with a big account from the city for revamping all of their public logos and designing book covers for writers and publishers. I could have gone to work for an advertising firm, but I wanted to be able to set my own hours and not miss Anjuwan growing up.

  Seeri has supported herself and helped out with the bills since she got out of rehab by working as a nurse on the neonatal ward ten miles away at Hillcrest’s Hospital, where Anjuwan was born. We all live drug-free in a four-bedroom house on a quiet street where my daughter can play well out of the range of gangbangers and drive-bys. The only thing Anjuwan knows of my struggles in life is that I had to get where we are now by finishing school with a baby on my hip.

  Now, my baby walks, talks, demands things from me, and gets them just like her father did. I give them to her the same way I gave myself to King too, willingly, trying to make up for all that she has lost but does not miss because she never had it in the first place—a father. I fear the day when she will ask
where he is, or if he will get out of jail and find us first.

  “Mama,” Anjuwan calls from right beside me and startles me. I did not hear her little feet cross the oak hardwood floor in my office.

  I smile down at her in a fur-lined leather vest, matching skirt and boots, white turtleneck and tights, then reach over and toss her tightly-spiraled hair behind her shoulders.

  “What, baby girl?”

  She plants her tiny fists on her hips, just like Seeri does when she is pissed. In one of Anjuwan’s hands is the poster board that I bought at the store earlier today, along with a sixty-four pack of crayons at her insistence to help decorate the house for my birthday.

  “I’ve been calling you a long time,” she fusses then holds the poster board out to me. “I need you to approve this before we use it for your birthday tomorrow.”

  I giggle at her repeating my shtick to business clients on the phone, take the poster from her, and scan three different girlish figures holding hands and representing me, her, and Seeri in front of our home. Across the top is written Happy Birthday Mama in big bubble letters.

  “It’s beautiful, Anjuwan. Thank you. Where do you want me to put it?”

  She points out the doorway of my office to the grey-stone fireplace on the other side of the living room, in plain view of my glass desk. My eyes wander up to the large family portrait of the Mitchell and Anders women sitting on the shelf that we took when Anjuwan was just two months old and Laila and Addie came to visit from Mecca for the first time.

  The house phone on my desk begins to ring. I assume it is one of the Anders women calling now to plan their next visit. They come up five or six times a year, so they do not miss Anjuwan growing up either.

  I grab for the phone and put it to my ear.

  “Laila or Addie?” I ask.

  “Ajoni Mitchell?” a woman asks hesitantly.

  “Ah, sorry. I thought you were someone else. Yes this is Ajoni,” I answer. Anjuwan giggles besides me.