by Foye, K'wan
“Let me check that piece of shit out.” Holiday reached for the TEC.
When Jesus went to hand it to him, Holiday closed his hand around Jesus’, locking his finger on the trigger. The two struggled while Holiday turned the TEC toward Marisol. She came out of her nod just as Holiday squeezed Jesus’ finger and discharged the TEC. Her entire face came off, taking part of the driver’s window with it. With his free hand, Holiday brought his 9 mm around and fired two shots into Jesus’ chest, knocking him into the backseat. He was twisted but still alive. Holiday then placed the 9 mm in Marisol’s dead hand and held it up so that it was level with Jesus’ face. Jesus let out a gurgled plea for his life, but it was drowned out by the bang of the 9 mm.
Holiday didn’t bother to wipe anything down because he’d been wearing gloves the whole time he was in the car with Marisol and Jesus. Had they not been so blinded by their greed, then they might’ve noticed that he was wearing gloves in the summer and suspected that they would never make it back from the fool’s errand. Marisol and Jesus had been doomed from the moment they got into that car with Holiday. When the police found them in the car with the money and the drugs they would chalk it up to a deal gone wrong.
Holiday got out of the Benz and hobbled four cars down in the lot, where Angelo was waiting for him in a white Escalade. Holiday jumped in the passenger side, and they exited the garage as if nothing had happened.
“I trust all went well?” Angelo asked when they had made it a few blocks from the parking garage.
“Yeah, I slumped that nigga something proper,” Holiday said proudly.
Angelo gave Holiday an angry look. “The plan was for you to pay somebody to do it.”
“Sometimes plans change, fam. In the end, I ended up saving us four stacks on the job,” Holiday pointed out.
Angelo just shook his head. “Anyway, do you think we made our point?”
“Absolutely,” Holiday said with pride. “After this shit, ain’t nobody in they right minds gonna come at Shai’s neck.”
TWENTY
ANIMAL MADE THE TRIP FROM HARLEM TO Brooklyn in less than twenty minutes. Traffic was light on the FDR so before he knew it he was sailing across the Brooklyn Bridge and into downtown Brooklyn. Taking Atlantic Avenue would’ve saved him some time, but he didn’t want to run the risk of getting pulled over on the busy street so he took Park Avenue into Bed-Stuy.
He crept slowly through the seedy Brooklyn blocks in his rental, drawing the occasional stare but otherwise going unnoticed. Passing the grim brown buildings of Marcy Projects, Animal was taken back to his youth when he and Tech used to put in work for a local cat named Shine. Shine had been a good dude who always took care of the people in the neighborhood, but he was also a beast who many feared. They feared him so much, in fact, that some cats gunned him down in front of his girlfriend and infant child. When Shine died, he took a piece of Animal with him, because they had become very close. The police never found his killers, and they never would because Animal and Tech had burned their bodies and scattered the ashes to the four winds after they tortured them to death.
Animal took Tompkins Avenue deeper into Bed-Stuy and made a left on Jefferson, where the landscape changed from project buildings to renovated tenements and brownstones with freshly paved driveways. To the unsuspecting, the strip looked like a nice block to raise your kids in, but Animal knew the truth behind the new construction and skyrocketing property rates. For as nice as Bed-Stuy might’ve looked on the outside, the bowels of it were still defiled with killers and miscreants, and these were the people who really controlled everything that moved in the hood.
When he crossed Throop he turned his eyes to the corner bodega, and it tugged at his memory. Tech had always told him stories about a thorough young soldier named Spooky who had met his end on that corner. The exploits of Spooky and Jah were the gospel Tech always preached when Animal was coming up, and it was the deadly duo who he and Tech had always aspired to be like. Tech wanted them to walk a mile in their shoes, and in a sense they had since Jah, Spooky, and Tech had all died violently. Animal had often wondered what his end would be like, or if he would even care when it happened.
Across the street a group of young men glared at the rental as it passed, trying to see who was behind the wheel. Animal sank a little lower in his seat and slipped his burner on his lap. He kept his eyes on the kids but didn’t mug them to force a confrontation. One of the kids brazenly threw up the gang sign for his hood, and Animal simply nodded and kept it moving. They couldn’t have been more than teenagers with mischief written across their faces, but these days, the killers were getting younger and younger, and Animal was living proof of that.
The parking gods were kind, and Animal was able to find a spot on Jefferson between Marcus Garvey and Lewis so he wouldn’t have far to walk to his destination. Slipping his burner back into his pants, he got out of the car and headed up the street. Passing a building near the corner he noticed a group of young girls on the stoop. All eyes were on him. Animal heard one of the girls hiss at him, trying to get his attention, but he ignored her, watching her friend out of his peripheral. She was brown skinned, wearing a powder blue sweater dress and white boots with matching white earrings. She was a very attractive girl, but Animal was watching her because he thought he knew her. Her face was familiar, though he couldn’t think where he’d seen it. The look that she was giving him said that she recognized him from somewhere too. Remembering the incident with the maid in North Carolina recognizing him, he pulled his hoodie up tighter over his head and sped up. As he was turning the corner he heard one of the girls say, “He looks like that rapper.”
Animal ignored the girls and walked across the street to a spot called Blood Orchid. The sign on the front gate of the basement stairs said closed, but that was only for nonmembers, and Animal was a member. Fishing a key from his pocket, he undid the front door lock and stepped inside. The place was empty, or so it seemed. Animal made his way across the room, past the wooden tables that looked like they had seen better days. The horseshoe bar was abandoned, but a half-empty glass sat on the glass top. Behind the bar was a door marked private, which Animal pushed through and descended the dark stairs.
At the bottom of the stairwell was another door, this one was thick and had no visible locks. Animal stood in front of the door and looked up at the right corner of the hinge. There was a round bolt securing the corner of the door that doubled as a camera. He looked into the lens, flashed his gold-toothed smile, and waited. After a few seconds, there was a click and the door came open a crack. Animal could immediately smell the weed seeping from the room and hear music playing in the background. He stepped through the doorway and into a cloud of thick weed smoke. Behind him he heard two familiar clicks; one being the door locking after he entered and the other being the sound of a bullet being chambered. Animal made to turn his head, but a threatening voice gave him pause.
“You move that pretty little head one more inch and I promise you I’m gonna fuck up that perm of yours,” a voice said in a raspy whisper. “Who you be and why you here?”
“Came to holla at a loved one,” Animal said, still with his back to the woman.
“Impossible. Love don’t live in this place and ain’t lived here in a long time. Come better than that or prepare to read your own thoughts on that wall,” she told him.
“If you got designs on killing me, then at least give me a soldier’s death,” he said.
The words staggered her. Death before dishonor, and when I die give me a soldier’s death so I can look into the eyes of my killer. Her mind ticked off the words they had all spoken on that drunken night after one of the homie’s wakes many years ago. Very few had taken the oath and fewer still were alive to recite it.
“Turn around and do it slowly,” she ordered. Her voice was shaky.
Slowly, Animal turned, keeping his hands in sight and his palms out. Under the dim light of the basement he faced his adversary. She looked a bit older tha
n he had expected, but still held her youthful glow. Her hair was now black with red streaks and woven into tight boxed braids that were pulled back into a tight ponytail that drew attention to her weed-slanted eyes. She was slim, with a pecan complexion, rocking tight jeans that hugged her slight curves and Timberlands that she wore untied. A red bandana was tied neatly around her neck like a choker to hide the scar beneath. A blunt dangled from her Mac chocolate lips, taking the smoke in on one side and expelling it on the other. She stood wide legged not three feet away from Animal holding a big .45 level with his head. When the light of recognition went off in her head she loosened her grip on the gun and her eyes began to mist up.
“What’s up, Kastro?” Animal smirked, flashing the diamonds on his teeth.
Kastro backpedaled until she was pressed firmly against the door and as far away from Animal as possible. He made to take a step toward her, but she quickly raised the gun and pointed it at his heart. “I seen a lot in my life, but I ain’t never seen the dead walk. If you’re Satan, then I’ll leave it to you and this four-five to negotiate the terms of the deal.”
“Baby girl, this ain’t no figment of your imagination. It’s me, Tayshawn, live in the flesh, ma.” Animal patted his chest. Carefully he moved toward her with his hand out. Keeping his eyes locked with hers, he slowly reached for the gun. Kastro tensed, but she eventually let him move the gun harmlessly away. Animal’s other hand took Kastro about the wrist and placed her hand on his chest. “It’s me.”
Kastro ran her hands up his chest, over the groves in the breast plate of the bulletproof vest. Her fingers traced a line from his chin up to the temples of his head and tangled themselves in his mane of curly hair. She buried her face in his chest and at that moment, the floodgate that had been holding Kastro’s tears back burst and she broke down.
Kastro spent all of ninety seconds as an emotional wreck before she was back in G-mode, scowling and angry. “You dirty muthafucka! You had everybody thinking you were dead and buried.” She punched him in the arm.
Animal shrugged. “The circumstances were beyond my control.”
Kastro folded her arms and glared at him. “God, you were the centerpiece in one of the biggest hood stories since Larry Davis, then you pop up almost three years later talking about circumstances? This is me, so you know you gotta come better than that.”
“Where I’ve been is a long story; why I’m back is a shorter one.”
Kastro shrugged. “I ain’t got nowhere to be. Come on in the back. I’ll pour us a drink while you bring me up to speed. I gotta hear this one.”
TWENTY-ONE
TWO DRINKS AND A BLUNT OF KUSH later, Animal had recounted the events of his life from his disappearance to the moment he showed up on Kastro’s doorstep. Kastro listened intently and watched with saddened eyes as Animal fought to keep from breaking down when he spoke of Gucci and what had befallen her. It pained her to see someone she had always known to be so strong seem so vulnerable, but she knew Animal well enough to know that it was only the calm before the storm.
“Damn, baby boy. You been through some shit these last few years, huh?” she said, pouring him another shot of cognac.
“Indeed.” He accepted the shot and downed it without flinching. “But as they say, what does not kill me will kill them.”
“I don’t think that’s quite how the saying goes,” she said.
“I know, but that’s how it’s gonna play out. The gauntlet has been laid, and I’ve already picked it up.”
Kastro studied his face. “So, you mean to say you’ve gone through all this, only to throw your life away in a battle that you don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of winning?”
Animal pondered her question. “At this point, it ain’t about winning or losing with me, Kastro. It’s about settling the score. If I’m to die righting a wrong for someone I love, then so be it. Let the chips fall where they may. As long as I can drag a few of their souls to hell with me, it’ll be worth it. I know you of all people can understand what it feels like to have someone you love stumble into harm’s way and be powerless to do anything about it.”
The statement took Kastro to a dark place in her mind, the day she had lost her niece Mimi. Kastro had never been blessed with children of her own, but she had helped her sister raise little Mimi as if she were her own. Even when Justice came into the picture and helped her sister with some of the parental burdens, Kastro remained a fixture in Mimi’s life. Kastro was a street person and had always tried her best to steer Mimi down a different path, but the blood that pumped through the young girl’s veins drove her to the streets and footsteps of her aunts and uncles. When Kastro saw that she couldn’t sway Mimi from the streets, she figured she could at least instill the survival skills Mimi would need to have a shot at winning the game she chose to play. Mimi was a natural and quickly went from hustling under her aunt Kastro to hustling with her.
Mimi became the darling of the hood because of her unyielding loyalty and resourcefulness when it came to getting money. Mimi was a jack-of-all-trades and excelled at being a criminal. The young girl was on track to becoming a ghetto star, but fate had double-crossed her into an early grave instead. They had come for Animal, but the bullets found Mimi, and she traded her life for his. The men responsible had only lived sixty seconds longer than Mimi, but it did nothing to lift the yoke of guilt that had been placed around Animal’s neck when Mimi closed her eyes. It was one of the darkest days in Animal’s life, and the relationship between him and Kastro had never been the same.
“You know I hated you for a long time after Mimi was killed,” Kastro admitted.
“I know,” Animal said softly, “and I can’t say that I blame you. Mimi should’ve never been there, and I should’ve died that night.”
“Mimi shouldn’t have been there and wouldn’t have been there if I had been there for her like I was supposed to. I didn’t turn her onto the streets, but I turned her out to them. It takes a village to raise a child; instead, we helped put her in the ground. The damned are we . . .”
“. . . for we are the damned and will never know peace,” Animal finished the quote. It was from the story of a fantasy author Animal had introduced Kastro to, named Kris Greene. Animal had always been big on supernatural books and eventually turned a few of his friends onto them too. “Ironic how true that rings in the real world, huh?”
“You ain’t never lied. So what now?” Kastro asked.
“I keep trying to right the wrongs I’ve caused,” Animal said standing up. He had a mean buzz going and was borderline tipsy, but it was nothing some fresh air wouldn’t clear up.
“Once The Animal has been sent for you, he doesn’t stop until he gets you.”
Kastro shook her head sadly, knowing there was no deterring her friend from the suicide mission.
“Ain’t nothing changed with me, Kastro.”
“So I see. Fuck it; if you’re gonna go on this ride to hell I might as well keep you company.” Kastro drew her pistol. “You might’ve beat me to the punch with killing the men who murdered Mimi, but at least I can blast on a few muthafuckas in her name.”
Animal smiled. “Kastro, I’ll take your wild ass into a firefight before any ten dudes I know, but not this time. I gotta take this ride on my own, ma.”
“You would deny me a chance at glory?” Kastro’s jaw tightened. She lowered her head sadly.
Animal tenderly lifted her chin and looked her in the eyes. “I ain’t denying you glory. I’m giving you your life.”
“I know, but I just feel so helpless. I can’t sit on my hands and do nothing, not again.”
“I got a-plenty for you to do to help the war effort without getting your head blown off, baby, and you can start by giving me what I came for so I can do what I gotta do.”
“It’s like that?” Kastro surprised.
“Straight like that. Go grab my armor, ma, so I can ride on these niggaz properly.”
Kastro disappeared into a room in the
back. A few minutes later she came back carrying a wooden box which she placed on the table in front of Animal. It had been several years since he’d given it to her, and his heart beat with anticipation as she undid the clamps and slid the box across the table for him to open.
Animal peeled the lid back and smiled at the contents, which were resting on a bed of soft velvet. There were two rose-tinted chrome Glocks with red grips that Animal had gotten as a birthday gift one year. He called them his Pretty Bitches and loved them dearly. He had only fired them once, and that was when he had tracked and murdered the stepfather who had abused him and his mother when he was a kid. The next round he was saving for when he finally bumped heads with the biological father who had abandoned him without so much as a look back, but his turn on the receiving end of the Pretty Bitches would have to wait until the immediate business was handled.
The last item in the box stole Animal’s breath when he touched it. It was a link chain with a jeweled figurine hanging from the end of it. It was his namesake and favorite character, Animal. The fourteen karat gold and diamond piece was the first custom chain he’d ever bought himself. When he got his weight up he retired the smaller chain for the gaudy Animal bust that had become his calling card, but he had always kept the original chain. It represented an era in his life when he was young, hungry, and dangerous, and it was about time he got back to that.
“Ain’t you gonna try it on?” Kastro snapped him out of his zone.
Animal lifted the chain and hesitated. Staring at the little Muppet swinging back and forth taunted him to take the next step. Animal slipped the chain around his neck and a chill swept through him when its coolness touched his skin. It was heavier than he remembered, but then again, so were the burdens he was carrying. He smoothed the chain out over his chest, and for a few fleeting seconds, all was right with the world.
Kastro smiled. “Now, that’s the Animal I know.”