by Brick
“Not nice to call a man’s lover a racist epithet, you piece of shit,” Stitch said coolly.
One of the men made the mistake of moving. Stitch moved his right arm underneath the left one and blew a hole in the man’s chest. Another of Reagan’s ass kissers tried the same thing and met the same fate. Reagan jumped over the couch like she was on some Mortal Kombat shit. Sent a flying kick into the sternum of one dude—who was smaller and had been quiet in the corner—when he tried to tackle Stitch.
I moved from the kitchen just as they realized what was going on.
Big man snarled at Reagan. “You set us up, bitch.”
She sent her heel into his face. “I’m nobody’s bitch, fat boy.”
I grabbed the smaller one, the one Reagan had kicked in the sternum. Scarface’s eyes widened when he saw me do this. I shoved the man over to the couch, where the big man was.
“Now that we have your attention, we need to have a conversation. Now, this is going to go one of two ways. You’re going to talk, or we’re going to kill you,” I informed them. “It’s that simple.”
“Fuck you. I’m not telling you shit,” Scarface spat.
“Shoot him,” I ordered Stitch.
Stitch gave a crooked smile. “Gladly.”
It was safe to say the bullet to the heart at close range killed the man, but I guessed Stitch wanted to make sure by adding a bullet to his head.
“Anybody else not talking?” I asked the two who were left.
The big man grunted and then chuckled before saying, “You have no idea, no fucking idea, who you’re toying with, man.”
“No? Why don’t you tell me,” I said to him.
I had Lelo and Reagan tie both men down; then I grabbed a chair from the kitchen. I placed it in front of them and just stared for a moment.
“All I want to know is, Who sent you after us?” I finally said. “We know Chandler gave you our routes and delivery times, but y’all got photos of us from weeks ago, almost eight weeks back, because I remember what I was doing on the day of some of the photos. Who sent you?”
The big one spoke up first. “You may as well kill us, man. The people who put you in our sights are going to kill us, anyway. So, do it and get it over with.”
I shrugged, then signaled to Stitch to give the man what he wanted. A kill shot to the heart ended that discussion. Reagan nodded at the small dude. Standing at least six feet tall, he was the runt of the group. I grabbed my knife and cut the shirt away from the man’s body. I wasn’t in the mood to give him the option to choose death. While he looked around with a cocky disposition, I slammed the hunting knife down in his jean-clad thigh. He yelled so loudly that his voice gave out at the end, and all he could do was whimper. Before he could come down from the high induced by that pain, I put my fist into his jaw. For good measure, I ground it there, just to hear him squeal. The thumbtacks were making a bloody mess of his face.
“Arrrgh! Fuck, man!” he squealed.
I pulled out my other hunting knife, the one that was strapped to my ankle, and slammed it into his other thigh. By now, he was sweating. Tears had rolled from his eyes, and piss had soaked the center of his jeans. Once that was done, I pulled out “the kit,” as Code called it, from the backpack I had. I didn’t know exactly what she had in the white bag, but I was sure it wouldn’t be to the Scandy’s liking.
I rolled my shoulders, then clapped once. “Since I’m sure you don’t want to talk to us, I’m just going to use you as bait, you feel me?” I asked, taunting the man, whose eyes had gotten wide as saucers.
“Damn, Auto. You on some other shit,” Reagan said.
I looked up at her, expecting to see a frown. Instead, she was smiling, as if she had just won the lotto.
“Been wondering when you was gone go ham on these niggas for real,” Lelo quipped.
“If I were you, man, I’d start talking. I seen what’s in that bag, and I assure you, you don’t want it,” Stitch gibed as he glared at the man.
I pulled a blowtorch and ajar of Blue Magic hair grease from the kit. One could only guess what Code did with this shit. I unscrewed the top on the Blue Magic. Dipped my hand in the jar, stood, then spread the grease all over the man’s chest. Then I lit the blowtorch, took a seat in front of him.
“Fucking aye, man,” he sobbed. “Wh-what you doing?”
“About to see what burning flesh smells like,” I told him.
His eyes widened again, but it didn’t bother me in the least. When the fire hit the grease on his chest, it sounded like his skin was sizzling, then popping. The sound reminded me of when fries hit hot oil. By the time I was done, we had Mouse’s personal cell number, the place where he was holed up, and a lead on who had really paid Chandler to sell us out.
* * *
Two hours and a phone call from Code later, I knew where Smiley was and had found out we had placed ourselves into another little situation, which annoyed the fuck out of me.
Reagan pulled up, and from my spot in the back seat, I beheld a scene that looked something like a standoff at the O.K. Corral. Code had gotten Smiley back, but she also had the man I’d come to know as Boots, the bullet manufacturer, in her sights. Reagan swerved our ride to a stop. Lelo and Stitch hopped out before she even put the car in park. Although Code was older than all of us, we protected her like the sister she was. I think Lelo and Stitch babied her a little too much, but it was their thing. Dressed in fresh baby blue jumpers that boasted the name of our auto shop, they rushed up to flank her. Reagan hopped out next, then did the same.
Seymore and the rest of the team were in a truck behind me. Keeping a lookout on the road. Ready to go, if need be. And me? I’d tapped into that part of myself that I hadn’t wanted to. I hadn’t wanted to wake up the sleeping monster inside of me. But as always with the ways of the hood, it was a dog-eat-thug world. You just had to decide if you were going to be the dog or the thug. I personally wanted to be neither, but if you pushed me, I could become both. A hybrid of sorts.
Dressed in a black suit, with a white, collarless shirt underneath the black blazer and a bloodred rose in the breast pocket, I looked like I’d just stepped out of a movie about triad crime syndicates. I stepped calmly from the back of the car. I walked over to where Code was. She was dressed in all white. The white-on-white Ford Mustang she had driven here had been parked haphazardly. I had my left hand clasping my right wrist loosely as my gun rested against my thigh. I took in the tense standoff. Saw that while Smiley might be a little shaken, judging by the Glock in her hand, she had no problem with getting down. The phone call I’d gotten from Code had rattled me. You could turn only so many cheeks before being taken out altogether. And I had no intentions of being taken out.
“Smiley, you okay?” I asked her. “They hurt you?”
I saw the faint bruising around her wrists and neck. The thought of her being harmed for something she had nothing to do with made me roll my shoulders to release some tension there.
“I’m okay, but there is some freaky shit going on,” she spat quickly. “He said you stole some bullets from him, and they got kids in the back of that truck.”
I looked over at Code, and she nodded once. There was a look on her face I couldn’t read. Men whom I didn’t recognize flanked her, but that was Code. I figured she’d called in help from the old man. That was something I’d have to question at another time. I looked over at the nigga in the cowboy boots and frowned.
“I’d like to know why you felt you had the right to come into my home and take a member of my family,” I said to him.
There was a look of disdain on his face as he spoke. “When I’m wrong, I have no problem admitting my wrong action, but there is some shit going on here that doesn’t make sense to me.”
I shrugged. “None of this shit makes sense to me, so I figure we can take a few minutes to try to square shit away to both of our likings before we leave a trail of bodies and a truckful of fucking kids.” I frowned hard and asked out of curiousit
y, “Nigga, why do you have a truck full of kids?”
I regarded the man with caution. There was once a time when the hood was shaken because of all the kids, especially young girls, who had gone missing. If the nigga in front of me was on some “selling kids” shit, I would kill him myself and not care about the consequences.
“You have the same questions I have. Tell your people to lower their guns,” he said, then scowled at Code. “For real this time, so we can talk. And my name is Boots, not nigga. Address me as such.”
Judging by the drawl in his voice, I knew he was the one I had talked to right after I spoke with Chandler on the phone. I told Code to lower her guns. She told her men to do the same. I watched as Boots kept his end of the bargain. He lowered his gun, and then his people did the same, although begrudgingly.
“Okay, Boots. Let’s start with the Scandinavians. You send them after my shit?” I said.
Boots chuckled. “Homeboy, I don’t even know you. Why would I send them after what? Some cars? I specialize in weaponry, not auto parts.”
“That’s good and all, but they took not one, not two, but three of my shipments. You mean to tell me this is random? Don’t piss on me and tell me it’s raining, man.”
“You want to talk about random? Let’s talk about why your girl over there is flanked by men from my client’s cartel?”
I cast a glance in Code’s direction. We both knew that it was the old man who’d made a deal with Boots. We’d known that the moment she laid eyes on the bullets. I didn’t have to tell him that, though.
“That’s not important to me right now,” I said. “I would like my shipment back.”
“That’s the thing, my man. I don’t have your shit. I don’t know where your shit is, but I do know you have my shit, and I want it back.”
It was my turn to chuckle. I shook my head before answering, “Now, why would I give you back your merchandise—if I had it—without a return on my investment?”
“Why we doing all this talking, Boots?” one of his men asked him.
Homeboy looked like he was straight out of the Zulu Nation. Tall, with Dove chocolate skin. He was so loaded with muscles, I bet even his personality was on steroids.
“Because somebody is playing us toward the middle, and until we figure out who’s pulling our strings, what the fuck are we fighting for? We’re going to kill each other and, in the end, still not have our shit,” Boots barked at him.
Clearly, the man was just as annoyed as I was, and I was really in no mood myself to “talk” the shit out. But since we were at an impasse, it was all we could do.
Boots looked back at me and kept going. “Not only am I a businessman, Auto, but I’m a business too, man. Do you get me? I put blood, sweat, and tears into my merchandise. You’re a businessman yourself, so you know how I must be feeling right now.”
I gave a slight head nod. “I do.”
“Then you have to know I’m not bullshitting you, right? I got a truck full of kidnapped kids and drugs. This ain’t my business. I don’t do this kind of shit here. Now, both of us, as of this moment, have a common enemy, the Scandinavians. Now we need to figure out who’s behind the scenes, giving them orders. My shit was supposed to be packaged and shipped through legal means. How you got involved is anybody’s guess, but here we are. And quiet as kept, judging by the way your girl is looking, I’m going to guess that she knows a little more than she’s letting on.”
“You can kiss my ass,” Code blurted out.
“If you survive this, maybe we can arrange that. Until then, start talking.” Boots nodded at one of the dudes behind Code who had a scar running from ear to ear on his neck. “Homeboy was with the man I was supposed to deliver those bullets to. I find that eerily coincidental. Especially since your boss’s merchandise is missing, and now you have mine,” he told Code.
“I paid a little visit to our Scandy friends,” I interjected. “Now, you had a deal with their leader, Mouse, right?”
Boots nodded.
I continued. “Well, seems like Mouse had a little deal with somebody else. All this time we thought it was Chandler who had betrayed us on his own. However, someone pulled his strings, right along with Mouse’s. So, looks like we both got played, my man.”
“So, Mouse played me?”
“Pretty much. Looks like he made a deal to sell your bullets to somebody else. Now you’re after me, and whoever you made a deal with to buy your merchandise is going to be after you for not being a man of your word.”
“You’re basically just a casualty of this thing, then, a pawn?” Boots asked.
“To them, me and my team are the weakest link.”
“But you proved to be more.”
I smiled coolly. “And now we’re here.”
Seymore yelled in my earpiece, drowning out whatever Boots said next. “Got about ten black Hummers racing up the back way from Fulton Industrial. Dunkin and Jackknife can hold them off only for so long.”
Judging by the urgency in Seymore’s voice, it was safe to say the people in those Hummers weren’t our friends. All I could think about were the kids in the back of that truck.
I looked at Boots. “You got another way outta here?”
I could tell by the way his eyes went to the kids that he, too, knew if we let those Hummers get any closer, we would have a problem.
He nodded. “Shredder, you and Dinzo get this truck out of here. Take the kids as far away from here as you can. Then call our contact at the Atlanta PD to see if we can get some help in rectifying this problem on the low.” He turned back to me with a stern look on his face. “Meanwhile, it looks like you and I need to put our heads together to get this heat off our backs.”
I agreed with him. We agreed on another location at which to meet; then we all got ready to head out. I was truly tired and didn’t feel like getting into another fight of any kind. I glanced around at my crew. Noticed Code was acting strange.
I asked her, “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she answered a little too quickly.
“You sure?”
“Yes, Auto, I’m sure.”
I studied Code hard. Had known her long enough to know when she was lying or not being all the way one hundred with me. The fact that she averted her eyes from mine, then glanced around before meeting my eyes again told me she was lying to me.
Code said, “Let me take Smiley, to get her cleaned up.”
I shook my head. “Nah. She’s coming with me. I need to make sure she’s safe. I’ll call you later, and we’ll go from there.”
Chapter 13
Smiley
Standing between a rock and a hard place, I glanced at the guy who’d held me as collateral and then back at Auto. Getting kidnapped had been a fucked-up deal for me. Yet it hadn’t been as bad as I thought it was going to be, because Boots’s main agenda hadn’t seemed to be about hurting me. I had soaked up a lot of information while I was with his team. Had made sure to remember every little thing he had in his office, especially the pictures he had on his desk.
Dude was weird to me in a crazy but cool kind of way. He had that kind of personality that reminded me of an old dude, but at the same time, he had that young dude quality to him too. His style of dress was important to him. He’d even gotten his face clean shaven and his hair lined when he was holding me hostage. Had talked to me about the news, and to Shango about sports and hip-hop. He reminded me of an old-school gangster. I just wondered if he’d be able to live up to that role. With how niggas were gunning for him, his life count was ticking away every day.
A flash of light came from the truck and drew my attention away from Boots and Auto. The flash was followed by a sharp chemical odor, something akin to bleach and ammonia, which oversaturated the air. I could see Shredder and Oya, the pretty, tall chick with the long, dark, crinkled hair, working the truck. Oya had stripped off her top, then had put it on one of the girls. I watched her take strips of clear plastic material from Shredder and put them in a case
while handing him spray-type cans.
“Lelo, Stitch, go help them out. Make this go quicker,” I heard Auto say in a low voice.
Boots shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He put his weapons away, then brushed off his arms.
He spoke to Auto. “Now, for our arrangement, how will we do this?”
Code moved forward, cutting off Auto before he could even begin. “I’m going with you. That’s how we are going to do this. We want back what you took, and, frankly, I don’t trust you, culo. So I’m keeping my eyes on you. Fair exchange.”
I got ready to open my mouth to protest, but Boots laughed, then gave a curt nod. “Yeah, no doubt it’s no robbery. I’ll be gamed for that if your boss is gamed.”
Auto’s hand snaked around my arm, then pulled me back sharply. “If you harm her . . .”
“Yo! Look, again, I’m not that type of guy. Respect is given even when it’s not earned from me. She’ll be safe, and it’ll be like she’s one of my crew. Unless she acts a fool . . . By the way, Smiley, if you ever need a team to call your own, call me. I like your skills, Mama, especially those tech skills. If we survive, I could use you with something,” Boots said with smooth authority.
He turned his back to us. The click-clack of his black, scratch-free boots as he moved was like a song. Boots slid a hand in his pocket, pulled out a toothpick, and stuck it in his mouth. Then he turned back around and addressed Auto. “Once we all are settled, your partner . . . Code? She can hit you with a call to get this shit handled. That sound good to you, friend?”
There was a quiet anger going on behind Auto’s eyes while he watched Boots. Judging by how he and Code had spoken to each other in hushed tones just minutes before, I knew that they had some deep connection. It worried me for a second, because I thought Auto was going to pop off. But I was shocked when the color of his eyes changed, as if he was adapting to the situation, and he gave a slick smile.
“Code can handle herself. We’ll speak in due time, my brotha,” Auto said in return.
“Just to be clear here, what I did was done to ensure a response from you,” Boots told Auto. “There’s no love lost here. I could be a good friend, because we are dealing with the same shit, but I can also be a better enemy if you turn on me. I figure, in time, we can work on that ally thing—if this works out first.”
