by Gary Sapp
heartless killer.”
“Tell me about some of his imperfections.”
“He has some convictions. If your car isn’t parked in the garage he would steal it. If you tell him not go there he will trespass on it. If you can get high or drunk off of it he will try to sell it to you.” Davis rattled them off the top of her brain from memory. She combed her wig with her fingers and then snuffed the half smoked cigarette out in the ashtray next to all the other butts. “But more than any of that, Trey’s first love…and first failing, is that he loves a sexy hood rat more than anything else in this world.” She leaned in close to Roxanne again, to guarantee the younger woman wouldn’t miss what she disclosed next. “But he didn’t adore women any more than his running partner…Erica Lovings.”
Roxanne cocked a brow.
“Are you telling my Erica was bisexual?”
“Bisexual my ass, she was a stud.” Davis said and offered a hoarse laugh that lasted far too long. “My Trey told me he’d never been around a more sexually aggressive person in his whole life, man or woman.”
“Alright,” Roxanne wondered why either of the Prince’s mentioned Erica’s sexuality to her. “Okay, so what did go wrong?” Come on Councilwoman Davis, you and your son sound close. He had to tell you something specific?”
Davis slid another cigarette between her lips but had seemed to have misplaced her lighter in her bed covers.
“Maybe,” Was all that she offered Roxanne.
Roxanne eased the rifle down some ninety degrees to remind the other woman they were still locked under the terms of their agreement that she’d established earlier.
“Maybe you should finish talking, I’m all ears.”
Vanessa Davis cleared her throat. “Like I said, Erica was hyper aggressive towards other females and I just didn’t get this info from my son. That girl was the talk of the streets, especially in some of the rougher neighborhoods where she and Trey spent entire days drinking and hoe hopping. Where she may have bitten off more than she could chew though, is when they stepped to some young bitches from Carver.”
Shit. “Let me guess, one of these young women was a girlfriend of an Usher.” Roxanne didn’t grow up in the Carver Housing Projects, but she went to middle and high school with enough of the residents to know the territory and the stories that originated out of that hell hole all too well. Some in the media called Carver the most dangerous complex of its type in America to live in. A man who called himself the Bishop attired himself something that made him look nothing short of a Catholic Priest, ran the place pounding a bible with one hand and holding a gun in the other. He had deployed his lieutenants, his Ushers to establish and then maintain order in the project. The tenants living there were little more than modern day indentured servants. Their belongings, their homes, their very lives were subject to be taken by the Bishop, his Deacon or the Ushers if he were so inclined. It was recently rumored that he had his own harem of young women who were daughters and mothers and wives of other residents that he regularly fathered children with.
“Yep, I knew you were bright Little Girl, she bedded one of his main squeezes and bragged about it to anyone who would listen.”
Damn. “So your son believes this Usher killed Erica simply because he felt disrespected or the usual street bullshit young people swear by. Do you know any of this for a fact?”
Davis found her lighter. A fresh stench of cigarette smoke clouded the room. Roxanne shook her head in disgust.
“I only know that my Trey believes this to be true.” Davis said. “But sure or not, I couldn’t take any chances of any harm coming to my baby. Anyway, like I said before, he didn’t have anything positive going on here anyway. If it wasn’t this mess with Erica, then he was going to probably end up dead in the streets of Atlanta for something else. I wasn’t having that, no way.”
Roxanne nodded in understanding. “You could have gone to the police.”
Davis stood and pointed at the holes in her ceiling. “And you could have knocked. Anyway, like I said, he was facing other charges, and like you said, I ain’t terribly popular downtown. The APD wasn’t going to pin this murder on Trey simply because they can’t or won’t find the real killer. What you know, Little Girl, is what they know as well.”
Roxanne watched the other woman make her way over to her massive walk in closet that one end seemed to reach towards Augusta and the other end towards the Alabama state line. She dropped the housecoat and pulled an oversized nightshirt over her head, unhooked her bra and let it fall to the floor and slipped on some pajama pants.
“And anyway, I didn’t have a whole lot of choice. The APD was the least of my worries. The Choir Boys may have had Trey on their radar for different reasons. He has had ties to the Black Knights gang on near north side of town as well.”
Roxanne shook her head again. As much as she hated to admit it, Councilwoman Davis had done all of the things she would have if their roles were reversed. She didn’t know how rotten a kid Trey Davis was at his core, but he apparently was stupid enough to be mixed up in a lot of crap that put his life at risk.
And Roxanne knew all about stashing someone where no one would find them. All the roads seemed to be leading to the dead end which was Carver Street Housing Projects. She turned—
“Do you have any kids?”
“No,” Roxanne said and then added, “I don’t have anyone.”
Davis waved an accusing thick index finger at her. “Then don’t ever try to tell me what I should or should not have done when it comes to the safety and well-being of my baby.”
Roxanne switched the safety on her rifle and threw its strap over her left shoulder. She stood on the desk that seated the computer, disengages two wires above the window seal, betraying how she managed to get inside this mini mansion in the first place. She began to squeeze her thin frame—
“What are you planning to do with this information I’ve given you?” Vanessa Davis wanted to know.
“I’m going to Carver.” Roxanne said as a matter of fact. “All trails lead me there. I’m going to find Erica Lovings, dead or alive, and bring her home to her mother.”
Davis reached into her underwear drawer in the same cautious manner she did before when she found her pack of smokes. Roxanne has already disengaged the safety on the rifle just in case this woman gets stuck on stupid and tried something irrational. Although Roxanne can feel her pulse in her ears, she tells herself that she is calm and in control of this situation.
Roxanne Sanchez is surprised when the older woman draws cocaine from a zip lock bag onto a sheet of paper, and eventually takes a small hit up each nostril.
Roxanne’s stomach churned.
“Sweetheart, I’ll let you in on another secret besides all of my nasty habits I’ve displayed for you tonight.” Davis said. “You tough and all of that, but the Carver Housing Projects is as about as far from an ideal travel destination as you get in this city…if not this hemisphere right now.”
“I’m touched.” Roxanne failed to mask her sarcasm. “But I was born and raised in this city. And by all accounts I shouldn’t have ever made it back here from Mexico alive. I know the turf. I know how dangerous it can get over there.
“Then you don’t know a damned thing. I should show you something.”
The older woman had gained enough of Roxanne’s attention for her to climb back down to the carpet. Vanessa Davis pulls her blouse back over her head and exposes a heavy breast with Tell me what you see when you visualize our future, tattooed on left boob and I visualize a future filled with misery and pain, inked on the right one. A chain seemingly meant to connect the passages lies on her chest wall in between.
“I saw you at Mayor Ernestine Johnson’s press conference on the day that Senator Lavelle announced to the world that she had been a member of A House in Chains.” Roxanne tried and failed to keep astonishment out of her tone. “I thought you were playing for the camera. You’ve taken the mark. You are a member as well.”
Counc
ilwoman Davis left her blouse in the floor where it was and reached for the housecoat instead. When she felt it was adequately secured, she opted to return to her stash and took another long whiff of her nose candy. When she raised her head again, blood had begun to trickle down her left nostril. She must have felt it dripping because she wiped the blood and the tears associated from the hit from her left eye as well.
“Listen, sweetheart, any fool with a right hand and a pair of lips can read Isaac Prince’s mandates and become a full-fledged member.” She said. “But to join the ranks of The Peacekeepers they put you through various mental and physical test and an extensive background check and training period before you are initiated. And to admitted to the Board, well, I’ll tell you that the secondary governing body is an honor only bestowed to 12 people nationwide and you must be unanimously be voted in by the Circle.”
“And you’re on the board?”
“Were would be the more appropriate term for it, Little Girl. It only takes one circle member who can prove you as unworthy to excuse you from the Board and Grace Edwards has her sources and exercised her authority in doing so a couple days ago.” They stood in silence a moment. “You see, I suffer in the ‘self-respect’ part of the mandate, as you probably can tell.” Vanessa Davis looked down at herself and then the plate of cocaine. “I’m sure these tattoos will