by Yasmin Angoe
He cracked a smile. “Word on the street,” he began, “is that a couple of Royal Flushes got clipped on Fifth and Mercy, by a female.”
“A female what? Elephant?” She hated when he—when any man—referred to women as females. She’d keep correcting him for as long as he kept speaking ignorantly.
He rolled his eyes, throwing a hand in the air. “A wo-man, okay.”
“You know, male, female, those are the sexual distinctions of animals. Shall we discuss sexual classification? There are more than just male and female now—for people, I mean.”
He waved her off.
“But the story would be much more interesting if it really was a female elephant,” she deadpanned. Nena normally had two facial expressions, serious and very serious. Hers was currently the former.
Keigel released a slow, exasperated breath, ignoring the nearby snickers of the gang members lucky enough to overhear Nena’s once-in-a-lifetime joke. They had business to square away. The streets were probably abuzz after her late-night diner save. He snapped his fingers, and within seconds the immediate area around the porch cleared, leaving them alone.
“Real talk, you nearly caused a war, Nena, a war I can’t have right now. I’m trying to get this money up, not lose lives.”
She took a seat next to him, choosing the chair with its back to the wall. She preferred to minimize her blind spots.
“You already have plenty of money.”
He snorted. “Could always use more.”
She analyzed him. “You could give up selling the drugs and guns. There are other ways to become wealthy. Better ways.”
Keigel scratched his perfectly groomed beard. “Maybe when I grow up.” He cracked a wry smile.
The corners of her mouth held a whisper of amusement, and she relaxed just a degree, waiting patiently for what she knew was coming next.
He leaned in, placing his elbows on his knees, matching Nena’s look of seriousness. “Real talk, what happened last night?”
She pursed her lips. Nothing much. Nena swallowed. Just met an interesting girl and her father. Turns out I’m supposed to kill him.
“What are you thinking about, kid?” he asked, narrowing his eyes. “Your face just got all dreamy.”
Nena blinked, ignoring him even though she was older than his twenty-five years by six. “The night might have taken some unexpected turns.”
She cleared her throat and her mind of all things Baxter.
“Talk to the Flushes. They encroached on your territory, which means two things. First, they disrespected you by starting trouble on your turf. Second, they would have left a body, and a young one at that. That’s police attention.” She shrugged. “Sounds like whatever woman clipped them—that was the word you used, yes?—did you a favor.”
Keigel’s look was begrudging. “Well, dude she let live says otherwise.”
“Of course.” She hadn’t let him live. He’d already been running away by the time she’d killed the second one, but that was inconsequential.
What else would the Flush say? That one woman had taken out all three with no backup? Her lips curved into a tiny smirk. Actually, she wished he would say it.
“They want retaliation.” Keigel looked at her firmly. “And the one dude who survived describes a woman who looks a lot like you.”
It wasn’t Nena’s concern. It was Keigel’s. He had to figure out how to clean this up. If it were left to Nena, she’d order a dispatch of the whole crooked Flush crew for the simple fact they liked to prey on the unprotected, something she and the Tribe vowed to disallow.
She studied him. Keigel needed to start thinking on another level if he wanted to continue in the Tribe’s good graces. People joined the Tribe because they wanted to, not because they were forced. And to do so, they needed to be aligned with the Tribe’s beliefs. Keigel dealt drugs, and while the Tribe didn’t believe in peddling poison to their own people, they didn’t stop him from doing it either. They allowed him free rein to do as he pleased in his little Miami world. Because he was under Nena’s protection, he was under the Tribe’s as well. That was their gift to him.
Maybe one day, Keigel would move beyond wanting to only make fast money and seek more for himself and the people in his territories, find a greater cause to fight for. Nena could only hope. But right now, Keigel served a purpose for her. She needed to be able to move freely about this area of the city. She needed to be like a ghost to do her dispatching and Tribe business unencumbered, and Keigel kept the other, smaller gangs in check so she could do so.
“I’m sure all she did was remind them they were on your turf, especially after they said, ‘Fuck Keigel.’”
His jaw tightened, and his eyes went flat. Keigel could be a clown, rough around the edges even, but he knew what respect should look like and demanded it.
“Don’t tell me that.”
“If I were you, I would make a clear statement. You’re chief around here. Send a clear message. Let them know they owe you for causing trouble and bringing it to your turf. You won’t have any more problems from them or any of the others if you do that. They owe you.” She kept her voice even. “And you owe the woman for taking care of those idiot would-be rapists.”
He pulled a face. “How do you figure that?”
“She put you in the perfect position to affirm your authority over your territories. Who knows, maybe they’ll be scared now, thinking you have some secret killer to take them all out. Maybe they’ll all fall in line now, hmm?”
They had an understanding, Keigel and Nena. No one messed with the quiet woman who lived alone at the corner house in the neighborhood. The woman who came and went as she pleased, looked like a goddess, and was lethal as hell—Keigel’s words, not hers. Keigel would clean up the mess with the Flushes. He’d send a message like she recommended. And he’d do it because he had no plans to end up like them, taken down in a dirty-ass alley. There wasn’t a need to tell him the girl was the child of a federal attorney.
Nena sighed, begging her mind not to think about Cortland Baxter, how he’d looked at her when she’d brought Georgia home, and how she wanted him to look at her like that again. The feeling was unsettling. Her hands, she realized, were trembling, and so she folded them into her lap, where Keigel wouldn’t mistake her emotion.
Nena had thought she would never want a man to look at her with the interest and the want that Cortland had looked at her with the other night. She didn’t want it, love, a relationship, did she? Was it even possible for her after all she’d endured?
No, she didn’t want it. She couldn’t want him. Because tomorrow, she’d have to do her job, be Echo again. There was no room for Cortland Baxter in her world, or any world, because the Tribe had decreed his dispatch. And Echo was the one assigned to carry it out.
16
BEFORE
When I come to, my stomach heaves, but nothing but bitter bile comes up. I turn my head, spitting out the slimy mess so I do not choke or vomit even more.
Maybe I should choke and die. Death would be better, so I am not forced to live with what these men have done to me. Nor do I want to live with what I have seen: the death of my brothers, the dissolution of my father, the destruction of my home and everything I know. The destruction of me.
My body is ablaze from the insects scurrying across the ground beneath me. It burns from the inside; the molten lava between my legs liquefies every part of my insides. I do not need a doctor to tell me something in me is ruined. I know my body well enough to know it is broken beyond repair, somewhere inside, somewhere down there. Never again healed, and I, never again whole.
Someone—I do not know who, nor do I care—eventually cuts me loose from the tree. They do not attempt to make me walk, hoisting me up roughly upon their shoulders and tossing me into the bed of a truck already teeming with girls of various ages. Whoever drops me among them does so with no care, and my body is again awash with new pain. But I cannot give up here. I must see to Papa. I must see wha
t has become of N’nkakuwe in my absence. With effort, using the sides of the vehicle to assist me, I pull myself to a sitting position, ignoring the whimpers and squeals of the girls around me.
The sky is the blackest night stretching like a canvas above us, dotted with white blinking stars that are as clear as if we were standing on the cliff. There is no moon, for even it does not want to bear witness to this genocide. There are bodies strewed everywhere in the square, the bulk of their extermination done. Paul’s men drag the bodies into homes with no ceremony, as if yanking the carcasses of dead warthogs. The homes are then set ablaze, illuminating the blanket of thick, tall trees that covers us. Paul’s end goal takes shape. There will be no autopsies. With the right amount of money and threats, no real investigation will take place.
The girls in the truck wear hollowed expressions I likely mirror. We do not speak, fearing we will call more attention upon ourselves. We have had enough attention to last a lifetime.
“Michael.” Paul’s voice pulls my attention away from the other girls.
A flutter of hope blooms in me. Papa still lives! I locate Paul, maybe ten meters away, standing amid a circle of his men. Papa sways on his knees in front of Paul. His shoulders are hunched, his hands tied before him. He lists heavily to the left, and each time his body falls too far, Bena tugs him up viciously.
“Kwabena,” Paul says. “Easy, o.” I will never forget it, or him. Behind Papa is Attah Walrus, who brandishes a large machete, larger than I think I have ever seen, coated with dark, thick, sticky residue I can only imagine to be dust and gore. The blade is so long it drags on the ground when he lets it. My eyes widen.
Paul removes a hunting knife from his belt and uses its curved tip to clean beneath his fingernails. His actions, his tone, belie everything going on around him. It is his preternatural calm that renews fresh fear in me. Paul has no soul. I know this now like I know my name is Aninyeh Ama Asym.
“Michael, our time has ended. Any last words?” He speaks as if asking Papa to quote a final price at market after hours of haggling.
“Brother, Paul, haven’t you done enough? Haven’t you taken everything from me? My children? Please release the people in the trucks.”
When Papa says “brother,” Paul flinches as if stricken. I am stricken as well. For the briefest second, I hate my father for his stoicism, his duty to save the rest of the villagers. What about his duty to save me?
And then a deep chasm of shame erupts in me, for my evil thoughts, for my anger at Papa—because he still tries to do what is right despite all he has lost.
Briefly, Paul looks unsure. Maybe Papa’s words hit their mark and have reminded Paul of his humanity. Perhaps Papa has removed the veil from Paul’s eyes, showing him all the horror he has inflicted like a movie reel. But the next instant, I see I am wrong. Paul’s moment of doubt is so fleeting no one catches it except me.
“Brother,” Paul repeats incredulously. “I haven’t heard you say it in, what, ten years? Never thought I would again.” He gathers himself, shaking off all remnants of nostalgia.
“Was I your brother when you left me behind for university after my father beat me so badly I couldn’t properly take the entrance exam? You swore you would never leave me behind, and yet you did. Was I your brother when you thrived and prospered abroad while I wasted away here? Did my brother remember to come back for me? Remember when we were boys, planning how you would become chief, and I would be on your council of elders? You returned from uni, took a bride, and became chief here, forsaking your own village and people.”
“I didn’t,” my father replies. He raises his head to look at Daniel’s crumpled form. “You have forsaken them. You killed their chief.”
Paul follows my father’s gaze. “Who, that boy?” He scoffs. “Was I still your brother when I came to you just last month, palms out”—he splays them before him—“asking you allow me these trade routes? This mountain serves as great cover against the government. If I am your brother, is N’nkakuwe not my home as well?”
“You turned criminal, running around cheating and stealing from honest people. Your commodity now is selling people. You are better than that, me nua.”
“How do you call me your brother,” Paul says, the cords of his neck bulging, “when your sons are dead and your girl sits in my truck, with a fate worse than theirs?”
Paul bends until he is eye level with Papa. He tilts his head, shaking his index finger as if he’s now understood the joke. “I know you too well. You use this word to try to break me, and you cannot. You lost sway with me when you left me behind, here, to rot.”
Papa’s body bows from fatigue, from his losing hope. “I never left you behind.”
Paul regains his full height. He looks regal against the backdrop of homes consumed by red-and-orange flames with oppressive plumes of black smoke and heat billowing from them.
“And now one good turn deserves another, right?” Paul says. He cracks a gregarious smile, that preternatural look about him again, then spits out, “Nua.”
I thought I knew fear. I thought I had already experienced the worst acts imaginable.
But when Paul says brother, dread rolls over me, emanating in waves that roil up into the ink-black sky.
I know Paul’s worst is yet to come.
17
AFTER
Nena surveilled the grounds of the federal courthouse. There was law enforcement everywhere. Expected. The setup wasn’t ideal, but there wasn’t a better option, so she would make it work. She’d gone over the intel repeatedly, driven the streets in different autos to learn the routes in and out. Her eye in the sky, Network, did its thing monitoring cameras and police chatter, but today’s mission would happen without Network in her ear and in her head. She needed to be alone with the feelings still warring with her duty. Witt had opposed her cutting comms, but he’d allowed it.
What if this time I didn’t pull the trigger? Her thought was treasonous.
She’d situated herself in the back of a run-of-the-mill family SUV, a Toyota 4Runner, on the eighth level of the University of Miami medical school’s parking garage. It was a bit farther than she would have liked from where her mark would arrive on Twelfth Avenue, but with her high-powered rifle and scope, she’d be able to do what she needed. The advocacy center across the street from the courthouse would have been perfect, but it was much too close and visible. It would be the first place locked down when the bullets flew.
She’d parked the burgundy mom mobile backward in its space, then set up her tripod and rifle. She found the car acceptable, the way its roof jutted out like a visor over the back window, providing more cover. That, along with the tinted windows and the blinds she’d added over the partially open one, ensured she’d go unnoticed. She checked her nav system. The tracker on Cortland Baxter’s car indicated he was close. She ignored the flutter of her heart and the way her stomach soured at what she was about to do.
Through her scope, she scanned the front of the courthouse. Smith was scheduled to attend a pretrial hearing, though word was he and the prosecutor’s office were going to meet in a last-ditch effort to make a deal that would keep Smith out of prison.
They said he was a bad man, financial crimes and the like. Didn’t mean anything to Nena. She’d known bad men half her life. This one was no different, and since the Council decreed him an asset, he was of no consequence to her mission.
She checked the tracker, ignoring the twist in her gut when she saw that Cortland had arrived. She knew he’d park his vintage Chevelle SS in the employee lot and then cross the street, entering the federal building from the front entrance. He’d linger to catch a glimpse of the defense team’s arrival. From intel she knew getting a first look at the opposing team was part of his ritual on “game day.” How Network secured information like that, she couldn’t fathom.
A succession of sleek town cars pulled to a stop in front of the federal building. Figured Smith would come with an entourage. She let out an annoyed
breath as she rechecked her rifle’s calibrations. The crosshairs needed to be just right. The suppressor was on, so she wasn’t worried about sound. She used the scope to search for Cortland, finding him as he made his way toward the building. He was joined by another suited man—could be a coworker—and they shook hands, chatting casually as they waited for the others to exit their cars. Cortland grinned at something the other man said, and Nena, watching through the scope, recalled how that grin made her feel when it was directed at her.
She had to let this go. She’d be taking away Georgia’s last parent, but Georgia would survive the loss. She was a survivor, like Nena.
Nena glanced at her watch. Eight o’clock. Her heart thumped. It was time. Now she’d pull the fucking trigger.
But.
She faltered, her finger hovering. Swallowed the forming lump in her throat. Beat back the pounding in her heart. Could she? She couldn’t. There had to be another way that the Tribe could pacify the new member. Maybe they could buy Cortland off. Persuade him to drop the case against Smith. Anything but kill him like this. That was not the Tribe’s way.
She tried pushing those treasonous thoughts from her mind. Focus. Her job was not to understand the Tribe’s decrees or to find solutions to their problems. Hers was only to execute them.
A grim expression replaced the smile Cortland had worn seconds earlier, tightening as he watched the defendant get out of his car. She saw Smith from the back. Who was this man? She hadn’t asked for intel on him. She should have. But when she received an assignment, she had tunnel vision, her sole purpose being to learn the ins and outs of her mark. Smith was insignificant since he was supposed to live, for better or for worse—worse, she decided.
She swung the scope toward the bustle of local news media jostling for the perfect shot of the defendant. Smith turned and waved as if he were some politician on the campaign trail and not a criminal.
And Nena’s world stopped spinning on its axis.
