by Darrell King
Deadly Phine
By Darrell King
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2010 Darrell King
Published by Darrell King Productions
darrellkingproductions.com
Deadly Phine. Copyright © 2010 by Darrell King. All rights reserved. No part of this e-book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages to be included in a review.
All characters, names, descriptions and traits are products of the author’s imagination. Similarities to actual people – living or dead – are purely coincidental.
Introduction
The worldwide fear and apprehension of AIDS with the rare but shocking cases of those infected individuals who’ve purposely transmitted this fearsome disease to others out of revenge or indifference have worked its way into the darkest reaches of our society’s subconscious angst, influencing everything from urban legends to popular culture. A German film entitled “Via Appaia” portrayed an airline steward who has a one-night stand. The very next morning he awakens to find his lover gone and a disturbing message welcoming him to the “world of AIDS’ on his mirror. Television’s Law & Order ran an episode called “Carrier” in 1998, in which a man with HIV attempted to infect scores of women.
Chapter 1
Every 15 seconds, someone—somewhere—dies from complications related to AIDS.
He had committed the ultimate act; there was no turning back now. The one and only person in the world who loved him and whom he loved was now dead … thanks to him. It took only two minutes to smother her with the white foam-filled pillow. He was the sole witness to the jerking of the small, brittle-boned woman who was once vibrant and full of life. He heard the last breath escape her dry lips just before she gasped for air. Her eyes, although saddened with pain, had signaled that it was time for him to do what has been asked of him. And now she was finally at peace.
He had been called Ant Man by his sister, derived from his childhood love of bugs in general and his large collection of ant farms in particular. She used this moniker in reference to her younger brother so often that he eventually only responded to it, although he had been born to the name of Brian Atwood. He had known this day would come, he just hadn’t known it would be like this—or this soon. With a heavy heart, he had to bear witness each and every grueling day for the last six months as he watched his only sibling waste away. Her big, beautiful, teasing cat eyes had dwindled down to look like broken-in-half green marbles in her deeply sunken eye sockets. They told the unspeakable story and relayed the suffering she was enduring. Her once-pretty olive-complexion was now dark and ashy, despite the many lotion-moisturizing sessions that he gave her two to three times each day. Her once brick-house figure with big, thick hips and a bubble ass now gave off the appearance of a woman from a third-world country; a starving, worn down, desolate female. She had deteriorated right before his eyes and it had been painful.
Belinda was only five years older than Ant Man, but she had always appeared more so, not due to her looks, but her actions. She had inherited the role of both father and mother when their parents were suddenly killed on New Year’s day ten years before in a car accident caused by a drunk driver who ran a red light. They were returning home from the twilight service held at their church.
Belinda had just turned eighteen and her brother was thirteen. She put her dream of going away to college on hold and enrolled in a local university. It was there that she met her first and only lover, Pedro Octavius Valentino. By all accounts, Pedro was gorgeous! Although three years her senior, this did not stop Belinda from falling head-over-heels in love with him. In fact, dating a junior when she herself was a freshman added even more excitement in Belinda’s eyes. It wasn’t until later that she would find out that everything that glitters isn’t gold. But little did she know, until it was too late, that she too would fall victim to Pedro’s long history of “love ‘em and leave ‘em” attitude. It was only after her grades had fallen, she was threatened with losing her scholarship, and had found out that she was pregnant with Pedro’s baby did Belinda realize the true effect that his love had on her.
Many nights Belinda had cried to her best friend, Rita Ann Ricks, about her. The two had a special relationship dating back to elementary school. The two were so close that Belinda had even been blamed for the break up of Rita Ann and her thug lover, Maurice “Lil’ Mo” Gentry. According to Lil’ Mo, he got tired of the countless times that Rita Ann would run to be by Belinda’s side. He even went as far as accusing them of being lovers. But it wasn’t until Belinda found out that she tested HIV-positive that the two women would make life-altering changes.
“Promise me that you will look out for my little brother and continue being the big sister to him that you already are,” Belinda pleaded to Rita Ann with tears in her eyes. “And promise me that you will finish school and become the lawyer that you always dreamed of becoming.”
“Girl! Damn! You talking like you are already dead or close to it!” Rita Ann snarled as she fought back her own tears.
“I’m just a realist and I have to deal with reality. Although my spirit can be ever enduring, I don’t know how long my body can withstand the torture. Rita, I am really worried about my baby and my brother. Before I had my baby, I thought long and hard about my death ‘cause I know that I’m fadin’ fast… my lil’ boy Larry is only eight months old, but you know with me bein’ sick with the virus an’ all my son may not get to know his mother, so it will be important to me that you and Ant Man let him know how much I loved him and what a good-hearted person I was. Make sure—”
“Hold the fuck up! They did not tell you that you were dying! People live for years with HIV. There are new antidotes and procedures coming out every day. The FDA probably will have a new breakthrough drug come out tomorrow. So please, stop talking like you have one foot in the grave and the other one on a banana peel!”
“I just want to make sure that I have everything covered when my time does come,” Belinda said.
Belinda’s preparation took less than a month. She gave guardianship of her infant child to Pedro’s parents with the stipulation that visitation would be given to both Rita Ann and to her brother, Ant Man. Belinda had been a little concerned with Mrs. Valentino one day returning to her native home of San Juan, Puerto Rico and taking her grandson with her. Belinda did not want her brother and son to be strangers to one another. Besides Mrs. Valentino and her husband Ricardo were quite the well-heeled couple and would no doubt offer little Larry a most comfortable childhood.
Rita Ann had visited Belinda every day that she could. As Belinda’s illness progressed, she chose a modest hospice program over that of a sterile, impersonal medical room in which to live out her final days. Her own home would provide the necessary comforts for her until the inevitable end. Rita’s work schedule was tight, but she made time to spend with her friend at the hospice care center which had been set up in the master bedroom of her southeast Washington, DC row house by caring friends and teachers, who honored her wish to die at home, rather than in an impersonal and communal hospital room. They had been best friends since elementary school, and through the years, their friendship had elevated to more of a sisterhood. They were much closer than Rita Ann and her biological sister, Trina. There were secrets between the two of them they would take to the grave. And that’s what happened on December 4: Belinda Atwood took their secrets to her grave.
After Belinda’s passing, Rita Ann took in 17-year old Ant Man. Although he felt as if he was left in the world alone to fend for himself, Rita Ann remi
nded him on a daily basis that he could be anything that he wanted to be. However, Ant Man was consumed with seeking revenge because he knew the man responsible for his sister’s disease had caused her untimely death. He vowed that he would make Pedro pay for the loss of his sister.
Predictably, late on the night of December 11, the 17-year old confronted his late sister’s lover on the front porch of his Manassas, Virginia home, arguing with heated intensity before their bickering gave way to a violent fist fight, which raged along the entirety of the mid-sized porch before gunshots rang out, felling Pedro Valentino to the wooden floor below, where he died shortly thereafter. The enraged gunman didn’t stop there, but instead charged into the house, murdering Valentino’s wife and two daughters before finally shooting the family’s pet German Sheppard, who’d barked nonstop from the back yard. He then threw out his blood-spattered clothes, as well as the murder weapon, and quickly drove back across the state line into the District of Columbia, where he remained silent for at least a week before disclosing his dark secret to Rita Ann Ricks.
Rita Ann urged Ant Man to enlist in the military so that he could get away; perhaps start a new and more meaningful life. Taking her advice, he enlisted in the United States Army shortly thereafter. Ant Man knew very well that he was running away from everything, including his nephew. But there was always this voice in the back of his head telling him that he could run, but that he couldn’t hide, and that eventually he’d have to return someday for his nephew.
After the horrific mass murder of their son and his family, the elder Valentinos wanted to part of the so-called “bastard child” of their late son, and promptly left for their native Puerto Rico. They were never seen nor heard from again. Rita Ann raised the curly-haired child for five years before Belinda’s grandparents took custody of the cheerful, bright-eyed toddler, relocating him to Virginia’s Tidewater area—specifically Hampton Roads. The young man grew up to be a fine athlete, excelling at sports such as football, basketball, and baseball. He joined the jock lore ranks of such local Tidewater sports stars as Allen Iverson and Michael Vick.
By the time he’s turned thirteen, the boy was committing petty crimes throughout the neighborhood and selling drugs to boot. It was around this time that his ne’er do-well maternal uncle, Brian “Ant Man” Atwood, would explain to him the origin of his parental heritage. Though taken aback by the unpleasant reality of his parents’ relationship, young Larry began using “Valentino,” his late father’s surname. First he used it as a nickname, but it stuck and he later legally changed his name to Lucien Octavius Valentino, a moniker that would later be spoken with hatred and dread by many.
Chapter 2
“The United States government did something that was wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens…clearly racist.”
– President Bill Clinton’s apology for the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment to the eight remaining survivors, May16, 1997
Dusk fell on the trash littered streets of Old San Juan’s most notoriously violent barrio, known as “LaPerla” or “the Pearl.” It is the 16th of May, 1997, and on this day many miles across the Atlantic Ocean, far away from Puerto Rico’s capital, the president of the United States had publicly apologized to eight weary-looking old men for the U.S. Government’s top secret syphilis experiment. The Tuskegee Experiment, as it was known, took place from 1932 to 1972, and consisted of purposely infecting 399 rural black men with the most virulent form of syphilis, which at the time ranked as the world’s most deadly sexually transmitted disease.
Seven years after the experiment ended, in October 1979, a certain Dr. Szmuness, a Polish Jew working in a secret U.S. laboratory, successfully fused together a cattle virus known scientifically as bovine leukemia and sheep visna cell cultures (HELA), and gave birth to the single most lethal STD mankind has ever known—AIDS .
An outdated rust bucket of a taxicab chug-a-lugged downhill. Dirty-looking children with snotty noses ran, barefoot, along the muddied road, throwing pebbles at the yellow checkered hooptie. The driver defiantly raised his left fist and angrily shook it, hurling insults at his juvenile tormentors as they ran, along with a dog and the occasional chicken or goat, back and forth across the road before the oncoming vehicle’s approach. Finally past them, the taxi cab driver settled himself and casually lit a cigar, enjoying the Latin jazz flowing from the radio speakers.
The island’s tropical beauty cannot mask the stark scenes of poverty and filth that looms large all around them as they drew toward LaPerla. As the tanned, bearded driver observed the well-dressed government official casually reading an issue of Jet in the backseat, he couldn’t help but feel fear for the Americano’s safety. Surely the young man from the Washington, DC suburbs could not know about the crime-infested underworld of LaPerla. And though his English was not strong, the driver would try his best to talk the young doctor out of vacationing in the barrio. He hoped that his stern warning would be enough to protect the bold but weary mainland traveler from bodily harm or worse. Looking up into the rearview mirror, the cabdriver smiled at this passenger as he turned the volume down on the radio slightly.
“Señor, we are getting close to the entrance of LaPerla. There are many bad men who live here in this barrio, on the streets, and along the alleys of guapo; namely the puntos, who sell the yayo and heroin. They are very mean and evil hombres who will not hesitate to kill you if you get in their way. The many tecatos who buy their drugs can also be dangerous, so they too are best to be left alone.”
The thirty-one-year old Army doctor from Fort Detrick had been persuaded not to venture into the notoriously bloody neighborhood of LaPerla ever since he arrived on Puerto Rican soil. The staff at the luxurious Condado Hotel & Casino Resort specifically pointed out within the pages of their travel brochures that LaPerla was a Code Red area of old San Juan, and was to be avoided at all costs. Being a military man who had been born and raised in the rough and tumble Kentland Village community in Landover, Maryland, he had, at first, shrugged off the warnings of the locals concerning LaPerla’s alleged go-hard nature. But as the rickety old car rolled down the dirt road closer toward the infamous gated barrio, he slowly began to feel a sense of uneasiness.
“Well, we have now approached the gates of LaPerla, Señor. Your fare will be $10.50, please.” He got no reply from his passenger who was looking out of the taxi cab window, observing his surroundings. “Señor, rapido! Rapido! I must go now! I have other fares to pick up!” the cabdriver barked out nervously, looking around the impoverished projects as night fall descended around them.
“Slow your fuckin’ roll, old man! Tonight mi amigo’s cab was for free. You feelin’ me?” a deep-throated menacing voice boomed outside the window from a young thug dressed in baggy jean shorts, a red baseball cap turned sideways and an oversized tee-shirt with an airbrushed picture of the Puerto Rican national flag emblazoned on the front.
The youngster’s thick gold chain swung back and forth from his neck, causing the diamond-encrusted praying hands pendant to shimmer under the flickering streetlights. He stepped out of a candy apple red painted Mercedes SL 500 that thumped the reggaeton lyrics of Daddy Yankee and Hector Bambino. An alluring Puerto Rican beauty sat crossed legged in the passenger seat. The visibly shaken cabdriver fell silent as the gangsta approached his window.
“You gonna be leavin’ outta here and don’t lemme see you back here no more, you understand?” the young thug said gruffly in Spanish.
“Si! Si! Mi Amigo! I will leave as soon as the Americano gets out of my cab. I told him that I wanted no trouble and that I needed to get back to downtown San Juan,” the driver explained, trembling as he glanced up at the tough kid, then back at the passenger sitting silently in the backseat.
“Buenos, now turn this piece of shit you call a taxi around and get the fuck up the road!”
The very presence of the twenty-something hoodlum sent the old cabdriver speeding up then winding, muddied road away fro
m the entrance of LaPerla’s gates.
Once the Army doctor had exited the taxicab, the Puerto Rican thug assisted him with his luggage, engaging in lively but brief small talk with his American peer, as they loaded the suitcases into the trunk of the Benz. Though he was treated rather well by the man, he felt uneasy still.
“Mi Amigo, hop in the whip. I won’t bite you, and neither will my girl, Rosario!” the driver said jokingly as his sexy girlfriend smiled brightly at the American doctor entering the plush backseat of the car.
As the sleek red Mercedes Benz rolled through the rusted gates surrounding LaPerla, Doctor Edward Goddard looked around at the old, shoddy looking apartments stacked on top of one another among the palm trees and the multitudes of bronze-skinned residents peering at the fancy vehicle that stood out like a sore thumb against the filth and destitution of the neighborhood. The car cruised slowly along the cracked barrio streets, and the doctor, for the first time since he had flown in from the mainland U.S., realized that he was indeed more than just a little bit frightened.
As they rode along, the constant pumping reggaeton music pulsated from the speakers. The deeper they drove into LaPerla’s midst, the more unpleasant the sights seemed to become. Drug dealers sold to their numerous customers along the side streets boldly in plain view beneath the bright white streetlights as though the local authorities did not even exist. Audible gunshots occasionally rang out both in the far distance and, at times, dangerously close to where they were driving down the street. And from the sounds of the shots, these were not simple peashooters, but powerful rapid fire military-issued assault weapons that were popping off. Now Dr. Goddard was as terrified as the old cabdriver had been. Slowly the tricked out Mercedes continued its trek through the mean streets of LaPerla’s barrio.
