The Tragic Flaw

by Che Parker

  “Look, we’ll give them some time, a couple months. See if they get their act together. I don’t want to act impulsively. You know I never have. Learned that from my father.”

  He willfully stares into the tall man’s dark eyes.

  “Nothing happens unless I say so. You understand?”

  The tall man cherishes his role of enforcer. Cicero could identify him as having antisocial personality disorder, making him cruel and violent, without the baggage of guilt or remorse. But today, he’s caged.

  “Understood,” he assures his obese boss.

  He then glides out of the deli, past old men and women, with restrained intentions in his heart.

  “Okay, Johnny, what do I owe you?” Jimmy asks the butcher while fingering through a five-inch stack of twenties and fifties.

  Chapter 12

  Sunday afternoon, mammoth forty-eight-inch tires harass the pavement as Cicero cruises north down Wornall Road in Kam’s shiny black flatbed truck. The new four-door model’s interior is luxuriously fitted with all the bells and whistles including a navigation system, a DVD player, and five flat-screen televisions.

  Cicero takes a sip of cognac and looks around the cabin. His own SUV is still in the shop. Cicero and his like aren’t going to drive their vehicles unless everything is perfect. Even after driving Kam’s truck for a week, he still hasn’t gotten used to it.

  “Damn. Kam, do you have enough shit in here?” he thinks out loud. Children of nothing often overdo it when they’re finally able to. Subtlety is not in their repertoire.

  Plush trees obscure homes of five-thousand square feet and up. Cicero passes estate sales and mini-vans en route to a meeting with Olivia in one of Kansas City’s most affluent areas. It is an area of inheritances and judo-trained butlers, where power of attorney is the ultimate power.

  Scattered clouds slowly pass overhead as thoughts race through Cicero’s mind. Hip-hop knocks through Kam’s tremendous twenty-speaker sound system.

  As Cicero contemplates why people do stupid shit, a soccer mom darts in front of him, nearly causing him to rear-end her Swiss-made station wagon. She’s late for her daughter’s recital, and the au pair is off today so no one was there to remind her. Cicero slams the brake.

  “Stupid-ass bitch,” he mumbles to himself. His words defy his usually laid-back persona.

  Geese fly above in a checkmark formation, headed for their winter sabbaticals.

  Cicero passes a woman in her mid-thirties jogging behind her red Irish setter. Five-thousand-dollar obedience school offsets the need for a leash. It better had.

  He makes a left into the large crescent-moon gravel drive, eyeing families of four and couples out on first dates. His drink waxes to the left in the red plastic cup.

  After parking he steps out of the truck and glances at those in the park. Frisbees whiz through the air while golden retrievers snag sticks and receive congratulations from their well-off owners. These seventy-four acres of trees and rolling hills have seen decades of visits from the upper echelon.

  And there on a wood and black iron bench, those dark curly tresses flow with the occasional light gale. Her tan suede jacket stops just before her touchable hips begin to protrude through her snug low-rise blue jeans.

  Cicero strolls toward her sipping his cognac, past an intimate red-wine and Gouda-cheese lesbian picnic and a huge French poodle taking a crap. His all-black Italian suit looks somewhat odd in a city park full of fleece and denim.

  Olivia sees him and looks up. Her beauty is astounding, but she has become the epitome of sadness, and she exudes it.

  Cicero takes a seat next to her, his ebony loafers narrowly missing some kid’s chewed bubble gum.

  “What’s on your mind, O?” he asks before taking a swig of his cognac. She sent him an urgent text message, so he responds with promptness.

  “I’ve been thinking. I, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t work for you anymore.”

  Her eyes are in their perpetual state of red swollenness. Olivia has endured much in her young life.

  Just two years ago, shortly after she found out her positive HIV status, both her parents died in a disastrous car accident. While pursuing some teenagers in a stolen car across the state line into Kansas, the KCPD slammed into her parents’ Ford head-on. Her mother, riding in the passenger seat, wasn’t wearing her seatbelt and was decapitated as she flew through the windshield. Her head was found some twenty yards away. The first emergency workers on the scene said she was smiling.

  The force of the crash turned the steering wheel into a deadly scalpel and it peeled her father’s face like a ripe banana, leaving the space a blank bloody mess resembling a real-life Picasso.

  Cicero ponders her words. He looks out over the pond in front of them as two birds fight over a piece of bread.

  “You know, Olivia, life is crazy. I’ve seen the worst of it from as far back as I can remember.” The smell of pine fills his nostrils. Olivia’s eyes are down as she rubs her manicured nails together.

  “And as far back as I can remember, I’ve kept everything inside. Mostly because real men don’t discuss their pain, you know how it is. That’s a sign of weakness.” He looks over at Olivia. “But I know that pain has festered there. It has grown into this cancer, this disease that lives in me. That’s real.”

  Olivia looks up at him.

  “And you know what? I tried to pray about it,” Cicero says, then sips his drink. Olivia’s eyes squint. She’s never once heard Cicero say he prayed, or had any belief in a higher power.

  “I used to,” he continues, talking with pronounced hand gestures. “It wasn’t often, not often at all, for real. After my father was murdered, I just lost faith. I mean, I was an altar boy and everything, did you know that?”

  Olivia shakes her head no.

  “I was. Yep. I was, I guess, eight when my best friend Gary drowned right in front of me, and about a year later I saw my next-door neighbor murder his cousin, then blow his own brains out.” He laughs. “I’ve seen some fucked-up shit.”

  Olivia looks a bit relieved, as if Cicero’s misery has helped to alleviate her own. Symbolic notations on plaques along the southwestern edge of the park mark the Battle of Westport, where armies clashed and lives were lost.

  “You know, I wish there was no such thing as murder, or crime or drugs. I really do. But one day when I was about sixteen, I found myself getting on my knees to say my prayers, and something just clicked inside.”

  “And what was that?” Olivia asks.

  “I just thought, ‘What the fuck am I doing?’ This is the real world where real bullets fly and good people get turned into a buffet for fuckin’ roaches and maggots. And I realized that I could step one foot outside my house and get plowed down at any moment. Just like that.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be that way.”

  “Yea, but that shit happens every day, so why couldn’t it happen to me? It’s Murphy’s law. I mean really, look at what happened to you.”

  Olivia appears uncomfortable and she squirms.

  “So fuck it. That’s why I do what I do.”

  The chilly winter prevents the four-thousand seedlings in the park’s rose garden from breathing new life. Cicero and Olivia’s conversation echoes off the circular stone-quarried courtyard, which has been host to hundreds of weddings and joyous celebrations over the years.

  “You were innocent enough, not conniving or corrupt, you know,” Cicero comments, then takes a swig of his aged brown. “But look at your predicament. I feel sorry for you. I really do care about you, Olivia. You’re like my little sister.”

  He pauses. A new pair of New Balance sneakers pedals by on a mountain bike, followed by a smaller pair of New Balances on a smaller bike of the same color. The blond youngster giggles as he tries to keep pace with his father.

  Cicero lets the twosome proceed past him and Olivia, then he continues.

  “I’m sure the money I pay you has allowed you and your grandmother at least some
peace of mind. I don’t think you’re worried about where your next meal is coming from, right?”

  Olivia shakes her head no.

  “It’s wrong, Cicero. I was raised in the church, and so were you. We can’t go on living like this. It ain’t right.”

  Olivia looks up and notices a large canary-yellow dragonfly-shaped kite soaring in the cool blue sky above. The kite’s handler makes it dance and barrel roll first to the right, then counterclockwise. Twin red tails stream behind the artificial odonate.

  She goes on.

  “If you believe there’s an afterlife—”

  “I don’t,” Cicero interjects. A light breeze flows through the budding trees.

  “Well, I believe in heaven and hell,” Olivia tells him as she looks Cicero in the eyes. “And when I die, I want to go to heaven. Call me stupid or naïve, but I do.”

  There’s a long pause. She wipes her face in frustration. Cicero takes a sip from his red cup. An elderly man wearing a blue baseball cap strolls before them and tosses some breadcrumbs on the sidewalk. Since the late 1950s, his tattered vest has concealed tons of shredded Wonder bread.

  Cicero stands and looks over at Olivia, who has buried her face in her hands.

  “Well, I need you, and your grandmother needs you.”

  She exhales as Cicero finishes off the rest of his cognac.

  “And don’t worry about it. If your Bible is right, then your God will forgive you.”

  And he leaves, walking through the murder of birds that part and scatter as the old man tries to offer them more of his pocketed fare.

  Olivia sits motionless, staring at the stationary water. A fountain bubbles inside a large veranda nearby.

  She eyes the ducks in the pond, majestic above the water, and kicking like hell below. The New Balanced pair has cleared the circumference of the park, and Olivia decides it’s time to go. She stands and then traverses a short narrow-planked bridge that arches over a runoff of the pond surrounded by lily pads and ferns.

  She looks back over her shoulder at the family of ducks treading water, and she smiles.

  Chapter 13

  It’s a Monday morning, and the infamous Kameron Brown is on a mission. The spokes on his old school rotate beyond the inner city to the outskirts south of town. The long winter has subsided, so dew-covered saplings see new growth and varying shades of green begin to sprout from miscellaneous earth tones. The windows are halfway down as his braided head bobs to the low tones of reggae coming through his elaborate sound system.

  Thick purple smoke flees his lungs as he exhales out the window, then coughs ferociously, pounding his chest like a gorilla in the mist. The platinum-framed Cartier sunglasses he wears seem to give him X-ray vision, allowing him to see through the bullshit of half-steppers and to immediately differentiate between a quarter-pound and a quarter-key.

  After several years of constantly smoking bomb weed in his six-four, a thin tan film of soot and residue covers the inside of his windows. The detail shop could do nothing for him.

  The area is rural, few cars are on the road, and his sneaker-clad foot goes heavy on the accelerator. The four fifty-four howls.

  Kameron’s black sweatsuit is comfortably unzipped and baggy, revealing the white wife beater underneath. Ashes evacuate out the window as he flicks his blunt in the wind. A platinum-encased second hand sweeps on his left wrist. It’s 8:46 a.m., a perfect time to hit the links.

  Baby-blue rock candy cuts through the morning suburban air crossing defunct railroad tracks as if launched from a cannon.

  The empty road allows Kam to ponder his usual thoughts: “I hope the dry cleaners can get that fucking Hennessy stain out my cream Gucci sweater; man, Larry Johnson is a cold piece of work, but the wide receivers are garbage; Kansas City needs a basketball team, bad; I bet there would be some bitches at those games; man, that bitch Shameeka had some good pussy, she needs to call me back.”

  He glances down at his silent cell phone, resting noiseless on his hip, and frowns. The weed calms him, so he takes another prolonged hit. It doesn’t help him forget his worries, it just helps him not care about them. And even after smoking blunt after blunt, he has no problems driving nor operating heavy machinery, such as AR-15s and Israeli-made submachine guns.

  He exhales like the exhaust from his Chevy.

  Suddenly, his cell phone begins to vibrate like a metallic bumblebee. He grabs it and checks the caller ID, then answers it.

  “Yea?”

  A woman’s voice mumbles a few words.

  “Yea,” he responds calmly, before taking another long toke and holding it.

  “Yea, well, just meet me and drop it off,” he says, then exhales.

  “Loch Lloyd. Yea. Out on Holmes.” He hits the weed again.

  “Alright,” he tells the woman on the phone, then hangs up, returning the small cube back to his hip.

  Kam’s lungs then release the THC into the atmosphere, and his capillaries are grateful.

  His load climbs a steep hill and upon reaching the top, a row of tall sycamore trees appears along the horizon. They enclose something.

  The steering wheel revolves to the right and that rough grumbling sound peaks as Kam pulls over onto the gravelly shoulder. He sees the sign for his destination—Loch Lloyd Country Club—and he slows a bit and stares at the enclave.

  A ten-foot-high black iron barrier, as well as surveillance cameras, surrounds the gated country club. Kameron knows they would never let him or his old school in without a hassle. So he removes his sunglasses and waits.

  At that moment, a new Lincoln Town Car arrives from the other direction and pulls to the gate and a small black box on the left. The driver, in his short-sleeve taupe polo and light green sweater vest, looks ready to tee off.

  White hair styled to perfection, the sixty-year-old small business owner inserts his navy-blue key card into the black box and the gates smoothly swing inward. Seeing this, Kameron quickly reaches over and grabs another blunt from the glove compartment, then coolly exits his vehicle and jogs in behind the Town Car.

  The gates gently close behind him as Kameron places the blunt behind his right ear and leisurely strolls up the gray gravel drive. Pine trees line the path as Kam puts one foot in front of the other, covering his snow-white sneakers in dust.

  After walking over five minutes, and having yet to see anything but shrubbery, Kameron thinks about how he should have just put a slug in the Town Car’s driver and taken his damn key card.

  “Fuck. This is some bullshit,” he says to himself. Pebbles crunch under his shoes with every step.

  Just as he’s pondering turning around and leaving, a steep rooftop appears, followed by an archway, and then glass. The teepee-shaped clubhouse is impressively designed. Its façade features triangular-shaped sunlight panels. To the north of the clubhouse is a vast one hundred-acre lake. Mallards soak up the morning sun.

  He stands out. Not like a beautiful blonde in a red dress. No, he stands out more like a curly-mustached rapscallion in a nineteen-ten silent movie, wearing a black trench coat and an elevated top hat.

  Once inside the twenty thousand-square-foot clubhouse, Kameron walks over to the front desk and enlists the assistance of the blazer-clad concierge. Oak paneling covers the walls, and the odor of fine cigars adulterates the available oxygen.

  “Yea, I’m looking for a Bradley Micheaux,” Kameron states with his deep voice. His blinding platinum teeth stun the concierge, who’s instantly impressed and repulsed at the same time.

  Assuming correctly, the young brown-haired front-desk manager frowns with disdain, then replies, “I’m sorry, but if you’re not a member of this club, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  Upset, but undaunted, Kam replies professionally, “Look, I know I’m not a member. I’m a mechanic, and I was told to meet Mr. Micheaux here with his antique Chevy.”

  The concierge thinks about it for a second, and it makes sense to him.

  The clean-shaven thirty-ye
ar-old picks up the house phone and while looking down, asks, “Yes, where is a Mr. Micheaux scheduled to be at this time? Yes. Okay. Thank you.”

  He gazes back up at Kam, who is impatiently waiting with his back to the front desk. The concierge purposely coughs, and Kameron turns around.

  “Yes. Mr. Micheaux is said to be on the driving range,” the man tells Kam. He then reaches under the counter and retrieves a laminated map of the grounds and points at it.

  “Please feel free to go through these double doors, they’ll be on your right, behind me,” he tells Kam, who looks uninterested.

  “Yea, okay,” Kam says before snatching the map from the concierge.

  “Sir, excuse me,” the startled concierge says. “That’s the only map at the front desk.”

  Kameron looks at it and begins to walk off.

  “Thanks, sunshine,” he tells the front-desk manager, who looks appalled.

  The inner-city native makes his way around the corner and collects stares from the club’s pale-faced old money. The city’s wealthiest residents lounge on velvety thrones upholstered in dyed camel hair. Stogies defile the premises. Brandies, straight, abound.

  Kam passes through dark, limousine-tinted double doors and emerges outside to the rear deck of the clubhouse, facing eighteen holes of manicured excellence.

  The day’s warm weather permits the town’s privileged few to hit the green, and young Bradley Micheaux is among them.

  After weeks of schmoozing the old money, he’s becoming an expert handicapper, particularly on the less difficult front nine.

  Brad’s efforts to attain legal funding for his illicit endeavor so far have been unsuccessful. But this round of golf may prove lucrative. Quiet as it’s kept, the potential investor has bankrolled some Sicilian and Mexican projects in the past, but they had reputations. Clout.

  Bradley, on the other hand, is a nobody, with a mediocre set of hand-me-down clubs, and his golf game needs some work. But to his credit, Brad does have a good understanding of the streets and the street mentality, which will be his only chance of securing some funds and not waking up one day with some burly Italian pouring gasoline on his flannel pajamas.