by D
Darker caresses the broad’s all-but-bare ass as she stands next to him at the bar. He listens to what she says like it really matters. She brushes the back of his perfectly cropped Caesar the way a woman does to her man. This is why you didn’t see him out at the club. He was at a different club with some blonde who’d probably rather not be down in the SWATS. Once again, the Good Lord has given you quite a break.
As he’s just gotten here, you know that he’s going to stay for a while. Get a few dances, maybe even a quick blowjob in the VIP room. Then he’s going to take her back to wherever he’s laying his head. With any luck, they’ll be going it completely alone, so caught up in their romance that they won’t see you coming.
You switch over to club soda but you keep buying dances. You’ve still got plenty of money so you’re okay. Besides, ten bucks a dance isn’t going to kill you. You spend enough money where the girls finally start to ask your name. They want to know where you’re from and how come they haven’t seen you before.
You tell them that you’re from D.C. and that you’re down here on business. You’re the sales manager for an office supply chain store that’s just moving into the area. Lisa, a Salvadoran with a g-string on her perfectly round ass, asks you if you have a girl.
“Why you askin’?” you reply, happy that you cut off the tequila, because the buzz is coming in like strangers when you leave the door open.
She looks you up and down. “’Cuz I’ll give you pretty babies, papi,” she says seductively.
You’re seriously considering taking her up on her implied offer when you see your boy and the blonde making their way out on the other side of the crowded room. You tell the broad that you’re going to take a piss, but you head for the door instead, maybe thirty paces behind them.
She’s driving a fuchsia Honda Accord with chrome factory rims. It looks very trailer trash, very cheesy. But what do you expect? She’s a fuckin’ stripper.
You follow them back into the city to the IHOP in midtown. The broad puts away pancakes like they’re going out of style. You can see through the window that all he’s having is coffee.
From there, it’s to an apartment complex in Buckhead. You consider going in all alone, but then you think better. Meechie’s just a phone call away.
9.
You’ve been there close to an hour when Meechie and Jamar pull into the lot. Both of them look beat. But why shouldn’t they, it’s pushing 3 in the morning.
“So these niggas fuck while we out there grindin’?” Jamar asks from the backseat of Meechie’s brand-new ride, a champagne-colored Yukon with tinted windows.
“The nigga above them probably just fuck at his crib. They prolly have pussy flown in for his ass.”
They both laugh.
“Prolly ain’t far from the truth,” you say.
You have explained everything to them, not just because you don’t want to keep them in the dark, but so they’ll understand just how fucked they are with or without you. Not only have you all gotten played, but they’re trying to make you turn the product around just because. Meechie and Jamar are just as angry and confused as you are. But they agree that you’re right.
“So what’s the plan?” Jamar asks.
You reach into the backpack and pull out the chrome .380.
“You stay in the car and wait with the engine runnin’. If somethin’ goes wrong, you either wheel us out of here or break out. Somebody tries to jack you for the ride, you shoot ’em.”
You doubt if there’s going to be any gunplay in this part of town. It’s quiet, relatively wealthy, and rarely in the news. But if Darker isn’t holding a piece, he’s the dumbest muthafucka south of Charlotte.
You and Meechie cock your pistols and make your way across the parking lot to the unit entrance and climb the stairs to the third floor, where you saw them go in. The door reads, 415B.
You can both hear the sounds of fucking from inside, male and female moans and the abuse a mattress is taking. If you had a lock pick kit you could ease right in. But you aren’t a locksmith or a burglar.
Meechie puts his ear to the front door and starts to giggle.
“Ole boy sho’ is fuckin’ the shit outta her,” he says with a smile.
“How we gon’ get in?” you ask in a whisper.
“Way I see it, we gotta kick it down.”
You can say that you’ve kicked a door in before, but you can’t say that you’ve done it well. Plus, you’re worried about the noise you’re going to make. All it takes is one neighbor and three digits before the cops have themselves two niggas with guns in the wrong part of town.
“Wait here,” you whisper to your lieutenant. “If somebody comes, head back to the truck.”
He gives you a nod and you creep down the stairwell to the rear of the building, where you find that each unit has a small terrace at the back. If you can climb three stories without falling, you’ve got a much easier entrance.
The wood railing is made of long thin beams, perfect for grabbing onto. But you’ll need a running start and a decent vertical to make the leap from the ground floor up to the first rail. You take a few steps back and then you charge, building momentum with each step.
You throw every muscle in your body into defying gravity and you get just high enough to reach the bottom rail. You grab on with the other hand and pull yourself onto the ledge of the terrace, making sure not to knock anything over, making sure not to breathe too loudly, your eyes checking each of the three windows leading to the first-floor apartment. Nothing stirs.
You climb your way up to the second floor and then to the third. By the time you get there, the sounds of intercourse have died down. The sliding terrace door is open, but the screen is locked. This is indeed a whole lot easier to handle.
You remove the Swiss Army knife you’ve had since the Boy Scouts and use the big blade to slowly cut a hole in the screen. Then you reach in, flip the lock, and slide the screen door open.
Even in darkness you can tell that the place is decorated well. There’s a thirty-five-inch plasma mounted on the wall with two pairs of ballet slippers mounted on opposite ends. The coffee table is made of crystal. There are framed photographs of a middle-aged man and woman who are most likely her parents. They smile for the camera, holding hands. It’s so syrupy sweet that you almost want to hurl.
The bedroom is at the rear of the apartment, so you creep across to the front door. You unlock it and open the door a crack. You can see Meechie on the other side looking off in some direction. Then you hear footsteps behind you.
You spin around to raise your piece but your arm collides with what looks like a golf club. Darker is naked but ready, and he swings the iron in every direction. You duck and dodge, dip and stumble, not knowing where the hell your gun went.
He catches you across the back and then the knees. He winds up to hit you straight in the head, but Meechie tackles him out of nowhere. They struggle, knocking into things and shattering others on the carpeted floor. First thing you do is close the door and lock it. The second thing you do, while Meechie tries to apply a weak-ass choke hold, is kick the dude straight in the face. He goes out like a light.
You fall to the floor next to both of them holding your injuries. The floor is soft enough to sleep on, so soft that you forget about the white broad in the bedroom who’s probably calling the cops. You turn around to say something to Meechie, but he’s gone. Now there’s a ruckus in the other room.
“Shut the fuck up, bitch!” Meechie yells to what sounds like the rhythm of open-handed slaps. In sixty seconds, he drags her out like a calf tied up at some state fair, her wrists and ankles bound by a pair of dress belts. He flips a switch and the room floods with light. The glare stings your eyes.
You race past both of them without a word, acting faster than you can think, and dig through her chest of drawers. Naturally, the handcuffs are underneath three pairs of bloomers at the very back of her top drawer. You head back into the living room, cuff Darker’s wr
ists behind his back, and tie his ankles with your own belt. Then you find your gun, which is poking out from under the couch, a long ways from where he batted it out of your hand.
Darker is bleeding at the temple when he comes to a few minutes later. “You must be here for something,” he groans.
“We’re here for you, baby,” you say. “So who’s the man?”
“What do you mean?” he asks, as if you said the words in another language.
“Who sent you here for us?”
He cracks a smile and an icy sensation runs through the length of your body. The truth is about to come out. But it may not be the truth you were expecting.
Meechie’s looking at you and you’re looking at him. But no one’s watching the broad. Someone should be watching the broad.
“Why the fuck would anybody trust your stupidass cousin with that kind of product? I know you asked yourself the question.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Somebody wants to remind you of who you are, no matter where you rest your head.”
His eyes meet yours. The image you see has to be wrong. You have to be jumping to conclusions. A hammer hits a round in a chamber, sparking gunpowder, which in turn sends a bullet at a speed of 400 miles per hour for the five feet between the gun and the side of Meechie’s head. It splatters into his skull and he falls to the floor, dead.
Instinctively you shoot her in the chest and immediately train the gun on Darker. The interrogation is over now that cops are presumably being called because of the sound of gunfire. But there’s a new decision that must be made.
You only kill when you have to. This has been a rule of yours every since shit got hectic. But now you’re in a situation where you may need to kill a man who you don’t have to. You need to, but you don’t have to.
You don’t have to look over at Meechie to know that he’s dead, and you don’t have to look at the broad to figure the same. Sure it was self-defense, but which way will your boy here spin it once the cops arrive? You can’t implicate him without him doing the same to you.
He could easily get away with saying that you changed the crime scene to make it look like selfdefense. Put one in his head and he can’t tell the story. Make a quick run through the crib to see what you can grab. And then go out the terrace door, down the three stories, and make the hundred-yard dash back to either Jamar or to your own ride, dodging the cop cars all the while.
And if you leave him, you still won’t get to heaven. You’ve gone too far and done too much.
You look him straight in the face as you put one between his eyes, petrifying him upon the moment of impact. You run to the back of the apartment, find his wallet, and are out the back door to the lawn underneath.
You can see Jamar in the Yukon across the lot just as the squad cars arrive with sirens blazing. You hide in the path of evergreen trees that separate the complex from the sidewalk. Then you call Jamar on his cell and tell him to meet you in front of the Barnes & Noble just across the way.
You jaywalk across the nearly empty Peachtree Street and squeeze behind a column, out of view from any cops who might be coming from the complex. Jamar pulls up moments later. It occurs to you that you’ll have to go back for your car or run the risk of getting it towed. But if they run the plates, you don’t have a record. For all the cops know, you ran out of gas and went for help. Besides, as long as you dump the gun you should be good. Too bad this town doesn’t have a river.
“Where you wanna go?” Jamar asks.
“Your house,” you say.
You realize that you are running out of both homeboys and places to hide. Jamar begins to sob at the wheel, tears coming down his face one at a time, like a doll or an actor in a movie. You can’t blame him though. He’s seen two of his boys killed and another run out of town. It’s down to you and him. The business is a joke. Your futures are a joke. Nothing matters until you finish this once and for all.
Jamar’s house is a tiny two-bedroom apartment on Oglethorpe Street down by the train station. His father is a truck driver who is rarely home. His mother’s doing five for possession with intent to distribute. A lot of the money Jamar makes goes into her commissary.
Someone has frozen a game of BioShock on the Xbox in the living room just before their character is about to be killed.
“My brother always leaves that shit on,” Jamar complains as he locks the door behind you.
There are textbooks all over the ratty leopardskin couch and the only picture on the wall shows a black Jesus, a painting you’ve seen somewhere before, probably in a pile on a roadside where some vendor was selling them. You’ve never understood how so many people could want to own the same picture, how so many people could want nothing more than to be like everyone else.
You’ve had Darker’s wallet in your hand ever since you left the complex. But you’ve been afraid to open it. You’ve been saving it for a time and place where you could sit down and examine it.
You plop yourself on a floor that smells like soy sauce and cat piss, then flip the leather wallet open. In it you find an ATM card, a Blue Amex, and a non-driver’s ID from the State of New York. Turns out that Darker was always being escorted because he isn’t licensed to drive. Maybe he’ll take the time to learn in his next life.
But it’s the ID that comes with the biggest surprise of the early morning. Stephen Mackintosh. Mackintosh. That’s Will’s last name. And as you stare at the letters, you can see him mouthing those words about his cool-ass twin cousins (one dark and one darker) who he kicked it with on his one trip out of town, to Chicago, when he was fifteen. Will is who they were protecting. Will is the reason why there’s nothing left of your cousin’s crew but the high school kid.
All of this had been a message crafted carefully for you. He knew you wouldn’t have voluntarily gone back into the game. He also knew that you would be tempted to play detective. He knew that you would kill if you had to. He knew that you didn’t think he could reach that far, that he couldn’t touch you from 900 miles away.
What he wants is for you to fulfill your obligations. What he wants is for you to come home.
Despite all your dreams of cake to go with your coffee, in the end there will be nothing. In days or hours, those working for you will be told that you’re no longer in charge. Your brand of crack rock will come and go like a washed-up rapper’s career. You are back at zero and a lot of people are dead … again … and all because of you. At least you kept the kid alive.
There never was a normal life for you, not at long as you had Will in your rearview, not as long as you refused to face the music from Tony Star’s jukebox. You did what you were told, but you didn’t end up dead as planned. The man who raised glasses with you wants your life to be over.
Maybe you’ve become a target for everything you can’t control. You are Moby Dick. You are Stringer Bell. You are Frank Lucas. Livin’ ain’t livin’ until he’s seen your corpse. So if you want to move on, you have to give it to him. But you ain’t gonna make it easy. There’s no way in hell you’re going to make it easy.
10.
By the early afternoon, that white broad’s apartment complex is completely cop-free. Your CRX doesn’t have so much as a smudge on it. You take the bag you packed out of the back of Meechie’s truck and load it into your own, right next to the sack of guns. You tell Jamar you’ll be back as soon as you can. Interstate 85 will take you right to 95 North. Then it’s a straight shot all the way up the coast.
You could’ve taken the train or the bus. Security checks on those are usually a joke, so the bag full of guns could just as easily be stuffed with candy as far as they’re concerned. But you need the time to prepare yourself. You need the time to come up with a plan.
You can’t get Meechie out of your head, the way that bullet took him out in less than a second, how he got killed by some white broad you had planned to let live. At least you didn’t see Alonzo die. At least your cousin got away. At least you have some kind of consolation in
the fact that the very plan seemed to be killing them off until you were the last left, until you were all alone again, just like it had been the last time.
But what was supposed to happen then? Were the twins going to throw you in some car trunk and take you back to Brooklyn? Will must have an outstanding warrant, so he can’t fly anywhere. Maybe he was planning to have one of his crew drive him to some midpoint, where he’d break it all down like some B-movie bad guy. He would look you in the eye and tell you why. But you already know why.
When it all comes down to it, you were Abel to his Cain. Even when you were dirty, they treated you like you were clean. It had been brewing for so long that it had naturally woven its way into Will’s plans for takeover. He had to get to you as a part of rebuilding himself.
But that’s not really the way you should be thinking about it. Based on what you know now, you’re a dead man the minute you cross the bridge. Or at least he’ll want you to be. But with one of his cousins down and the red tape of the APD, it could be weeks before they get a positive ID on Darker’s body, unless he had a record. Even then, it should still take at least a little while to run him through the criminal database, hopefully long enough for you to get to Will, even though that’s the hardest part of your new situation.
If he can reach you this quickly in Atlanta, he’s most likely sitting pretty in New York. Plenty of men. Plenty of money and eyes covering every inch of ground he has to roll across. You, on the other hand, have no one—no one to call, no one to help you in any way, not even a place to lay your head anymore. There’s about ten grand in that savings account you left behind, but you don’t think you’re going to need it. If you do this well enough, you won’t even have time to make the withdrawal.
The first thing is to find somewhere to rest, somewhere cheap, somewhere below the radar. You think about trying to track down your Rover, the one that’s probably riding it out in an impound lot, but once again you don’t have the time for that kind of luxury. You’ll have to deal with cabs and a motel somewhere outside of the neighborhood, maybe one of those Russian joints down in Brighton Beach.