by Brick
Once Cheryl was done, she sat back, went inside her tethered brown bag, and pulled out what she needed to shoot up. Normally, I didn’t allow that kind of shit in my presence, but shit happened. I watched Cheryl tie a rubber band around her arm, then shoot up. What she had in her veins was pure uncut heroin. The least I could do for her daughter was to make sure her mother felt nothing when death came for her.
I moved to the hall as I watched Lily walk behind Cheryl and then proceed to blow her brains out. Cheryl fell face forward onto the plastic, spoon and lighter falling from her hands, while the needle was still stuck in her arm. I’d warned Cheryl the last time that if she ever tried to sell me her underage daughter again, I would kill her. I’d meant that.
Lily rolled Cheryl’s body in the plastic and taped it up so no blood would get anywhere or on anything in my office. She lifted her body and took it out back to her truck. Lily was a lot stronger than she looked.
“Look in the cigar box on the top shelf for your pay,” I said once she was done.
Lily stood and looked at me. “Free of charge,” she said.
Ever since Claudette and I had saved Lily’s life, she had been indebted to us, and not because we’d deemed it so. The woman had been sent to kill me years ago. Because of fate, my wife and I had ended up saving her life. Since then, she had been our personal hired gun. Anytime we needed the trash collected, we called in Lily.
“Take the money, Lily,” I said.
“No. Any woman, any mother who would sell her child for drugs, I’ll charge nothing to send her to hell,” she said.
I leaned against the doorpost, then lit a cigar. “I need you to stick around the area for a bit.”
“Need more trash taken out?” she asked.
I took a puff of my cigar. “I’m not too sure yet, but I can feel something in the air today.”
“Claudette okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah. She’s in Creek Town, handling some business.”
Lily studied me for a moment. To someone watching us, it would look as if she was checking me out in an intimate manner. But I knew better. She was trying to assess me and listen to what I wasn’t saying.
“You feel like some heat coming your way?” she asked.
“I just don’t—”
Before I could finish, Ella came busting into my office, a wild look of panic in her eyes. Nighthawk wasn’t too far behind her.
“Somebody attacked ya men over near the tracks by the post office,” Ella said.
“Denton and Tracy got hit, boss,” Nighthawk said.
Tracy was another one of the men on my payroll. He was a nice kid, had come from a rough childhood. It hurt to hear he had been taken down with Denton.
“Some white men in a black car rolled up on them and took ’em out!” Ella exclaimed.
“We couldn’t hear the shots, but we saw them go down,” Nighthawk added.
“Silencers on their guns,” Lily said. “Means they don’t want to be seen or heard. Sounds like a hit, King.”
“And we found this,” Ella said as she held up a chess piece.
It was a black knight. Lily’s spine stiffened.
“Found it where?” I asked.
“One of the men tossed it out of the car as they drove away,” Nighthawk said.
I knew something was off. I’d been feeling it in the air all day. I opened the closet door and grabbed my assault rifle. I called all my men inside the office and gave them a rundown of what Ella and Nighthawk had relayed to me.
“Lock the town down,” I ordered Cleophus. “You four, go with Lily, come up around Southlake Parkway, crossover Morrow Industrial, and get down to Highway fifty-four. You five, come with me, and I’m going to come up Lake Harbin. If the men who did it are still in the area, we can corner them. Nighthawk, Ella, y’all lock yourselves in the basement. Don’t come out until you hear me come back and specifically call your names. You understand?”
Both kids nodded. I tossed Nighthawk a shotgun and Ella a Beretta.
“Anybody come down those stairs that ain’t me, shoot to kill,” I ordered. “Now go,” I said after they nodded.
I waited until I heard the locks turn on the basement door before I and my men headed out. By the time we made it to the scene of the crime, whoever had killed my men was long gone. Denton and Tracy had been with me for years. They had been ambushed and left to die like animals. I got out of the car and walked over to see the carnage. Bullets riddled their bodies. Denton had died clutching his son’s picture.
Just as I got ready to open the car door to remove the picture from his hands, a shot rang out. It hit the door of the car and narrowly missed my head.
“Get down!” one of my men shouted as he tackled me to the ground.
I looked around wildly, not knowing where the shot had come from.
“Came from on top of that church across the street, I believe,” Cleophus said as he covered me.
I nodded, as words escaped me at that moment. It was a sick feeling to know someone was gunning for me and I had no idea where they were coming from or when they were coming. Blood trickled down the side of my face. I touched the right side of my head to feel where the bullet had grazed me.
All I could think about was that I had been a split second from never seeing my wife again. I needed to get to a phone to make sure she was safe. I needed to know that none of this heat had come for her. She needed to know to take extra care in watching her back. I regretted not sharing my thoughts with her earlier.
“We need to get into the Laundromat. That’s a safe haven. We get in there, we can get to more weapons,” Tiny Tim, another one of my guards, said.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea. We go in there, and we’re caged in. Out here we can move,” I said.
“Yeah, but we’re sitting ducks, boss. We don’t know where these motherfuckers are or how many there are,” he said.
“I realize that, but would you rather be closed off and cornered in that building or be out here, where you can run and move freely? Clearly, they were set up in this area. We don’t know what they see, what traps they’ve set out.”
As those words left my mouth, a car pulled up to the stop sign. I aimed, ready to shoot, until I saw it was Lily. Her hair was down, glasses still sat perched on her face, and she had changed out of her garbage collector attire. She looked at me, then gazed straight ahead. She sped across the tracks toward the church.
She parked and got out of the car with a bag hooked on the crease of her arm. The tall heels on her feet made her look taller than she was. She looked as if she was going to mass. She walked into the open building and disappeared into the shadows.
“What now?” Tim asked.
“Wait for it,” I said.
No more than twenty seconds later, we heard a man’s screaming voice, just before his body went flying from the roof the church. I looked up to see Lily standing on the roof, looking down. The wind whipped her hair around as she looked at me. I hopped up and jogged across the street. The man wasn’t dead, but the stab wounds to his neck and chest probably made him wish he was. His leg was bent inhumanely, and his arm was twisted behind his back.
“Who sent you?” I asked him.
His already pale skin drained of any color it had left. He tried to spit on me, but his saliva ended up landing right back on his face. I stood there and then kicked him in his already mangled leg. He yelled out in pain. I heard heels clacking against the sidewalk and knew Lily was behind me.
“King, you need to see something,” she said. She kneeled and yanked the man over, then lifted his shirt. I didn’t readily know what I was looking at.
“What is that?” I asked her.
“Knights of St. Assisi mark. You know how the Vatican has the Swiss Guard?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Think of this as the rogue faction. They’re killers, King. Assassins. When Ella showed you that knight chess piece, I had a feeling they were here.”
“Ho
w do you know this?”
Lily looked uncomfortable before she turned and lifted her shirt. She had the same mark on her back. She turned back to look at me.
“I never knew who sent me to kill you before,” she said. “We get the orders, and we move out, but whoever wants you dead has tried before, through me. And now they’re trying again. This is a hit squad. They want you dead by any means necessary.”
Chapter 16
Javon
When I can’t sleep, I pace. Usually, I also go and take a hot-ass shower, so as not to wake Shanelle or Honor. But since I was in NYC, I was in a bed by myself, with thoughts that wouldn’t keep quiet. King’s journal started out like any normal journal, with a discussion of his childhood and some of his adolescence, but the pages devoted to his adulthood were much more interesting. I learned a lot about the man who was a myth in our house.
Some of what I learned was, he loved the very air around Mama Claudette. Learned he saw her in some place called a juke joint in Creek Town, and then the rest was history. I learned King liked to shave by steaming his face with a cup of hot water, using a straight edge, then rubbing his face down with coconut oil. King had a love of reading crime novels to the kids in the area. I learned that Mama hated when King would leave his old records around and not put them away carefully. I also read a little about some intimate sexual shit between him and Mama, but then I skipped those pages. These were the private things I learned about a man called King.
All of what I learned, including who his allies were, which codes he used, how much money he had in savings, and more, kept me deep into King’s voice and vision. So, it was hard to read about his downfall. I had to stop the moment I read about the Knights. It was too hard to continue, and I realized why Uncle Snap had never read any further. King was a true type of dude. One whom others could hold to his word. If he was going to do something, he’d always do it. But in all of that, he was a loving husband, a best friend to his wife and to those few whom he chose to keep in his private circle, and a damned good businessman.
He and I had gone through some similar shit, especially losing a child. It was crazy to read his thoughts on that and see that we shared similar views. All we wanted was for the women we loved to be cared for through the loss, and that was what we did. King was about honor, so why did motherfuckers have to snuff his light out?
I rose from the sheets of my king-size bed. The light of the moon was peeking in through the tall paneled windows of my room. After opening them, I glanced at the night beauty that was Manhattan. The view from the building was incredible, but it was shady. Shady, as if something sinister was going down in the underbelly, and it was.
My arms crossed over my chest. I stood wide legged in gray sweatpants and no shirt. Something from what I had read in one of King’s chapters—a chapter that had been written in a rush, which was evident since it did not have the usual smooth style of King’s writing—sparked a memory in my head. Lily had been there with King. Had she been there for his last breath?
That question made me glance at the leather-bound book that was King’s. I still had a lot of questions, a lot of thoughts going on—
“Hold up,” I muttered to myself.
Quickly, I took two strides to the book, picked it up, and cradled it in one hand while the other flipped through the pages. King had said that Ms. Lily had once been sent to kill him. That she was a former Knight. Fuck my life. I had glossed right over that reveal in the journal as I’d been too tired at the time I read it, and so I had not tripped off it. But here it was written and underlined twice by King’s hand: Knights of St. Assisi.
As I stared at those words, I thought of Mama. If only she had read the book this far....
Then I called Shanelle immediately. She’d told me that Ms. Lily was there, so I had to get my woman up to date and ask Ms. Lily what the deal was.
“Baby, I’m sorry if I woke you,” I said when she picked up.
“No, you didn’t, babe.” Shanelle’s voice was soft and gentle. It made me miss her suddenly, like I missed our daughter. “We’re still up discussing everything.” I heard her say.
“Perfect . . . Wait, it’s two a.m. there, and y’all still discussing?” My brow lifted; then I chuckled, remembering to stay on point. “Is Ms. Lily still there?”
“She just put the babies to bed, so yes, let me call her down. And you know that we have to stay up though, Von. I had to wait for everyone to show up.”
I glanced at the clock, then chuckled again. CPT—colored people’s time—mixed with hustler hours did make us hard to reach as a unit, so I got what my baby was saying.
“Listen, Elle, I have some things to update you on. While you’re calling for Ms. Lily, go get your copies of Mama’s journal and what I sent of King’s.”
“Okay, baby.”
As she did that, she stayed on the phone with me, and I broke down everything for her that I could on our secure private line. Even though I was telling her everything, it was framed in a coded context that only she and I understood.
“Are you messing with me, baby?” Shanelle asked in a shocked tone when I was done.
“In no way am I messing with you. I need you to talk to Ms. Lily and see what the okeydoke is. Right now, I don’t feel that she is a threat, since it’s written repeatedly about how protective and loyal she is to this family, so you know my mind, baby. See what you can learn.”
“I’ll do my thing. I promise.”
“Thank you, baby.”
A sweet pause in our conversation happened. I could hear papers rustling. When I heard a light creak, I could tell that she was in our bedroom. Mama’s old room.
“They had an incredible love, huh?” she finally said.
“No doubt. Memorable too.”
“If something like that happened to you, I want you to know that I’d make Mama smile, because I would burn the world to find out who came for you. I love you that deeply.”
I gave a light chuckle at how down my baby was for me. “I love you, baby, because that’s some real shit right there. It’s the same I would do for you. Annihilation isn’t even strong enough for me to use in what I’d do.”
“You better.” Shanelle’s light laughter relaxed the muscles in my neck. “Tell me the page in King’s journal that you want me to look at.”
I did, and then I waited as she read King’s words to herself.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she said when she was done reading. “Okay, let me get Ms. Lily. I’ll talk to her and get back to you. For now, please rest. I know you. Honor knows you. When you’re up, she’s always up.”
“Even with me gone?” I asked incredulously.
“Yes, baby, even with you gone, so sleep. I’ll call you back. I love you. Come home to me.”
“I love you too, and I will, on both accounts.” With that, I hung up.
Something in me kept having me glance at Mama’s journal. So, since my spirit was talking to me, I read it. I knew that Mama’s journal contained pages that were blank or had illegible scribbles. Before I had read anything from it, I had leafed through her journal and had noticed those pages with the large scratched words “They killed my soul. They killed my King. . . .”
Those scratches were saturated with pain, and it hurt to see them on the rumpled and tearstained white pages. Now, after reading all that I had of her journal, I finally understood why the final pages were wrinkled and torn. It was all because of King’s death and Mama’s grief, which had turned her into a raging angel of death.
It would be a while before Shanelle called me back. I had texted her that I was going to sleep and to just hit me with a “Call me” later. I climbed in bed and fell into a deep sleep. Once I did wake up, which was sometime around seven in the morning, I showered, shaved, and brushed my teeth. Then I left my room, King’s journal in hand, and went into the kitchen, where I found the OG Snap drinking a cup of coffee. He stood solemnly, as if in deep thought, watching the city from a large open panel wind
ow, with one hand in the pocket of his slacks.
Sometimes when Uncle Snap was like this, he looked like he was in his late thirties. It was wild to me, seeing the young man he once was, not that he looked overly old or anything. But right now, he was how I had imagined he looked in Mama’s journals, standing just like that, keeping Mama protected while she stood by King. The image in my mind was something like a trinity to me. Two brothas deeply in love with their queen.
Blowing out steam, I shrugged my shoulders, dropping the classic hood love story in my mind. The need to protect one of the lasting tomes was heavy in my heart once again. Losing Uncle Snap would add to the crack in my heart. I didn’t need that.
“There’s fresh juice, espresso, fruit, cheese, and some pastry thang with an egg cooked in it and some cheese on top.” Uncle Snap took a drink from his coffee mug and kept his gaze ahead. “The chef is bringing some scrambled eggs, meats, and other stuff shortly.”
I took a glance at the mini-spread on a long kitchen island. Plates, glasses, and utensils had also been placed on the island.
“Hmm. Looks like they are pampering us, but can we get some toast, grits, and country ham in this trick?” I jokingly asked, walking up to the island to get a cup of espresso and that pastry. “How you feeling, Unc?”
“Just living, nephew.” Uncle Snap gave an amused deep chuckle. “And, yeah, I said the same thang ’bout breakfast. That’s why I sent that chef on back to the kitchen. We all grown-ass men up in here and got the hunger of a wolf pack. Can’t be up in here feeding us air.”
Uncle Snap was wild. I laughed hard, then took a seat at the table. “So, I got something that I need you to read, if you’re up to it, Unc.”
I watched the humor in my uncle’s eyes disappear as he walked over to me. “Which one? King or Mama?”
“Eventually both, but right now, just King. I need your thoughts about something as you read it.”
In my hand was that egg pastry. I almost put it down on my plate when I thought the egg was runny, but when I poked it and saw it was set, I was all good. Once I took a bite, I put it down. It was really good, but I needed more than this. I reached for King’s journal, which I’d placed next to me on the table, and set it down across from me for Uncle Snap to grab. “The page is marked for you,” I said, studying him.
