"Exactly."
"Do you want to go out sometime?"
"You ask out all the girls you rescue from a fight?"
"Only the interesting ones." He stood up to kiss her, but she pulled away.
"I keep myself to myself. I can give you a hug, though," she said with the crooked smile of a child who'd been caught in a lie.
King saw the little girl in her then. The light and potential, the fragility and strength, that innocent part of her she still tried to cultivate as well as protect. The one who'd been fucked over too often by life along the way. And he felt as if something in his chest was broken, as if just realizing it for the first time.
Both of them stood rigid within the embrace, as if neither knew what to do with the display of affection. He was pissed that he gave up something personal about himself within a few minutes of talking, but it happened right away like that sometimes. When he peered into those damaged almond eyes of hers, however, he belonged to her and she knew it, too. Their eyes smiled, hopeful despite themselves.
They all had to play their roles.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Fall Creek ran through the east side of Indianapolis, non-discriminatory to the neighborhoods it flowed through. As it passed the Phoenix Apartments, a grove of trees lined its banks forming a natural green space that had become popular as a walkway. During early morning hours, many a citizen walked its path for exercise, each armed with a stick or bat in case of emergency. On some evenings, such as this night, cars crowded the rear of the Phoenix Apartments parking lot, sealing it off into its own little world. As people made their way down to the woods, they knew they were entering Switzerland, a "no beefs allowed" zone. Dred's crew, Night's boys, ESG, Treize, Black Gangster Disciples, any of a number of independents, all noise had to be squashed for the evening.
Stands of bootleg CDs (including homemade mixes), DVDs, T-shirts and hoodies (with portraits and quotes of Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, and Bob Marley), and shoes lined the parking lot. Vendors sold beer from coolers. All the faces wore similar masks: jaws set, faces hardened, no gazes lingering too long. Fight night brought a tenuous peace and it couldn't afford any sparks that came with the fronting of machismo.
It wasn't but the early to mid-'90s when everyone thought it a needed accessory to have a Rott or a Pit. As with any fad, they soon fell into disfavor except among those interested in protection or fighting. Tonight, a temporary ring had been set up, an area of folding chairs nearby, though most people stood, crowding in with money clutched in raised hands.
Dog handlers, bookies, and referees crowded the ringside area. One of the undercard bouts was about to start. Their handlers released them and the two dogs ran to center, two gladiators clashing at full speed. As they were trained, ever wanting to please their masters, they lashed out in demoniac frenzy. Neither made nary a sound, their vocal cords severed, making them deadly weapons when they were at home, not alerting unsuspecting prowlers. Or police. Even though it meant senseless blood and death, the dogs showed more heart than most soldiers on the street.
So Omarosa thought.
Nearly invisible among the trees, she skulked about with a natural ease. Having already secured Lee's eventual presence, she bided her time and buffed her nails. Her eyes, with their perfect night vision, focused in the low light. Soon a couple of runners, no more than eleven years old, tore ass down the hill.
"Time out. Time out, yo." They announced the police's arrival.
About time, she thought, as she prepared to go to work. The grumbles of the dispersing men filled the night. The old hands, nonplussed by the arrival of the police, took the time to finish their drinks, grind out cigarettes under their heel, and collect their bets in nonchalant strides. Those with more to worry about, say a bench warrant out in their name, beat feet in a hail of mutters and curses, showing out to the police for their boys' benefit.
Between the crowd clearing out and the police making their way down, the press of bodies led to confusion, just as she planned. She smelled the gentle scent of the red rose clipped to her lapel which served as her calling card. She always left one at the scene of one of her robberies. Theft was so common, better to do so with a touch of panache. It was in such short supply these days. To her, this part of the game was like playing football: the offense was going to throw a certain look, the defense took its own posture, but the key to any given play was to follow the football. In this case, it meant trailing Dollar as he banked his money. He gave an uptick of his chin as he prepared to jet, a shoulder roll and a dip in stride as he received his package and threw it into the back of his ride. Omarosa, like all of her kind, had a talent for learning the players and their histories: in Dollar's case, he had a tendency to do his counts at his mom's house before making his final drop to Night.
Boys and their moms.
Dred's mother, Morgana, squatted alone and determined, in the filth beneath a bridge. She cradled the full swell of her belly, and resolved herself to the fact that it was time. The scurry of rats in the hollows above her head didn't distract her. The concrete embankment was cold against her back, her legs spread and water long broken. Drops plinked in the distance, falling from the bridge. It had rained earlier that day and the creek had swollen in its bed. The susurrus of the creek as it wound its course served to focus and calm her, but her pain proved too excruciating. He saw to that. She pushed and breathed with little more than a few grunts, not giving him the satisfaction of a sob. Theirs was a love — if one could call their bond "love" — forged in war with one another. Lessons taught from his first moments.
Dred fought then and even now, only the battles changed.
Contrary to popular belief, the streets had rules, traditions by which folks comported themselves. Even the young bucks coming up stuck to the rules of the game, those who abandoned them for the sake of making a name for themselves quickly found out there were stern reprisals to be faced. One such rule was parlay. Under the rules of parlay, two rivals/parties otherwise beefing with one another could come together — usually in neutral territory, sometimes brokered by a third party — in order to work out their disagreement. At its core, this was a business. Every now and then, circumstances dictated exceptions to the accepted conventions.
Escorted by Green, Night made a rare foray away from the safety of the top floor — entirely his, a ghetto penthouse — of the main building of the Phoenix Apartments. The more power he accumulated, it seemed, the more its reward was isolation. Instead, he chose to meet Dred at his place of power. Night was diving-suit black, a straight-up thug-nigga. With a low-cut fade, big chest and huge arms, he walked with that survival stride learned from several bits in prison. At one time, he was the chief enforcer for the crew. Not smart enough to set up his own operation, but vicious enough to stage a palace coup at the right time. Backed by Green. It was said that there would be no Night without Green.
Though many knew about Dred's situation, few dared speak of it openly. One, out of respect; two, out of — if not fear of reprisal then — recognition of the fact that nothing had changed. Dred still ruled his crew and would continue until he showed weakness. The wheelchair didn't mean he had lost any heart and many bodies had been dropped to demonstrate that case. As an allowance, however, Green accompanied Night.
Stale air filled the outer chamber from blunts, cigarette smoke, sex, and overturned beer bottles. Baylon sat behind a desk poring over figures and accounts while Junie attended to the mess. Both men hard-eyed Green and Night as they approached. Junie's veins pumped water at the sight of Green. Baylon's chin up-ticked in the direction of the door leading toward Dred's sanctum. Green took up a position outside the door as Night entered alone.
"Pleasure before business?" Night asked as Dred took the opportunity to spark up himself, his marijuana heightened by his own mystical concoctions.
"The Rastafari consider it a sacrament." He wasn't as skilled in the Dark Arts as his mother, but he knew enough to be dangerous.
"And yo
u're what? Ecumenical?"
"All in the game, son. All in the game." After all the nonsense that had gone down lately, few believed the street mantra much. Night's tone was hoarse and weary. He took out a bottle of lotion and rubbed some onto his keloid-scarred arms.
"Damn, boy. You look positively peaked." Dred pronounced "peaked" with two syllables.
"Been running wild lately, you know how it goes. Nothing I can't handle." Not that Night, that either of them, would admit to anything that sounded remotely of weakness. Weakness invited attack. "You're one to talk. You lookin' a might bit rough yourself."
"We got us a situation."
"What?"
"King."
"Not trying to tell you your business, but you telegraph your moves long before you ready to make your play."
"The mage is back."
"He never left."
"Well, they've found each other."
"I don't see how this is a 'we' problem. If King is such a big deal, just smoke the motherfucker."
"It's not that simple. There are rules to this thing. A larger picture to consider."
"Of course there is. You motherfuckers play too many games. He a mark. Just like any other mark. And marks can get got."
"He's coming into his own now."
"What the fuck does that mean?"
"You think Jesus always knew he was Jesus? You think he burst out the womb thinkin' 'Damn, I'm the Son of God. Let me get a little bigger so I can drop some miracles on your ass.' He had to grow into it. I mean, maybe he grew up reading about who the Messiah was. Studying, learning, a nag in his spirit about how it was starting to sound familiar. Then one day it clicks. 'Oh snap. They talking about me. They been waiting on me.'
"I bet he had to sit on that shit for a minute. Sure, he had all the hype. Folks been waiting for him to show up from the jump. Been persecuted, living hard, got all sorts of Romans walking up and down they space. They were looking out for him to show up. Thing is, it also came with a price: the burden of knowing.
"Don't get me wrong, he step up and accept his title, his mantle, his responsibility and BAM… his days are numbered. In the end, he's gonna get got. Everything in its own time."
"See what I mean? Too many games."
"Look here, I'm about business and business can't get done if we're steady beefing. It'd be one thing if there was serious drama, but I want to head things off before it gets to that point." Dred was in the game for the power. When all was said and done, this was a business with margins more thin that people realized. After payroll, houses, cars, and the accoutrements expected for a man in his position — granted, it was the accoutrements which tempted people into the life — not much was left over. However, he provided a sense of family for his men until jail or death caught up to them. Dred didn't know about jail and he had no plans to know about jail.
"Agreed. Agreed," Night said.
"I'm just saying, there's plenty of money to go around…"
"Plenty of that product. You seem to have a steady enough pipeline."
"I get mine direct. No middle-man, no mark-up. You get your supply out of New York, right?"
"Something like that."
Dred's heavy-lidded eyes cast a knowing gaze on Night. They would continue to dance around each other with verbal feints, testing for weakness, and teasing out information. Dred knew that Night was supplied from New York after he split from the Egbo Society to go on his own. Dred's drug connect was locked into him. Dred's name rang out for several reasons. His hands no longer touched drugs, instead he operated a community center by Avalon Park and made sure the park's basketball court always had fresh nets. When he had two able legs, he got to know the neighborhood kids from Haughville to Woodruff Place. For those youths, Dred was a role model of respect. And he gave back to the community, donating to church fundraisers, passing out turkeys at Thanksgiving, buying Christmas gifts for neighborhood kids, and sponsoring ball teams. No charges stuck to him, the police was the enemy; he was the folk hero wronged who kept his head up and stayed true to the game. Kids dreamt of one day being him.
Night hadn't learned the finer points to establishing himself as a folk hero; and if he couldn't be loved, he'd be feared. Dispatching Green for any of a number of perceived infractions or slights to his accorded respect, his name was whispered more as the boogeyman of Breton.
"Say I let you in on part of my package," Dred said. "You let my people ease into some of the Breton Court territory. Off my package and with what you pull in from Li'l Nam, you'll be doubling your profits."
"What's in it for you?"
"Spread in territory. Another revenue stream from distribution through you. And peace. No business gets done if bodies keep dropping and the police come in to grind things to a halt."
"True dat."
This was a temporary measure at best. Once he got a feel for the new set-up, at his first opportunity, Night would slit his throat and leave his body for all to see as he took over the entire operation. Dred understood that. He also understood that soldiers were trained for combat. So every now and then, there had to be a war.
Fountain Square Mortuary was no stranger to burying the far-too-young. Just the other day, the old man who managed the mortuary had to watch a family grieving over an eight year-old. Those were the hardest on him. Funerals for teenagers, though often just as tragic, caused his blood pressure to rise for other reasons. Jowly with a graying mustache, his body with the contours of a cruller donut, he mopped his beaded brow with a handkerchief. Wisps of his good hair, combed over to cover his thinning pate, clung to his forehead.
The funeral of Alaina Walker was well attended with the requisite friends, family, police, media, and publicity seekers. The mayor gave a brief address decrying the rising tide of violence in what was proving to be the most bloody year in the city's history. The concerned clergy took turns denouncing gangs, hip hop, and Republicans. The newspapers ran columns on the story, but the incident would be forgotten in the next day or so once some famous-for-no-reason would-be actress did something equally vacuous in public.
Everyone would return to their steady state of benign neglect, the numbing consistency of the violence silencing them. With eyes both friendly and frightened, the old man did his best to greet each mourner neutrally, but the ways of this generation eluded him. The mourners came in, most not much older than the girl. Sagging pants. Underwear showing. Untied shoes. Basketball jerseys. Tattoos on any exposed flesh. Piercings in their ears, noses, lips, tongues, and chins (and those were the ones he could see). Gentlemen not removing their hats. Ladies revealing their bras and wearing pants with words written across their bottoms. The art of decorum lost on the lot of them.
Towards the rear, studying each face, the police weren't too hard to spot. The girl must've been caught up in something fierce, though no one could tell from today. Dressed in her Sunday best, she was the spitting image of a lady of occasion. The woman she could have been juxtaposed against the trappings of the woman she was, judging from the flower arrangements made into gang symbols and guns.
King arrived at the funeral escorting Lady G, not that he felt obligated or anything. She wished to attend the funeral and he thought it prudent to accompany her. He recognized few of the people, but all of the faces — set hard with no tears, impassive and inscrutable — were masks of barely checked rage. He stepped closer and put his arm around her. Lady G didn't object to his proximity. It was a non-threatening intimacy.
Regret was a powerful emotion. It gave weight, if not words, to ideas and feelings unable to be expressed in life. Things like mourning the waste of her life. The futility of their constant fighting. The lost opportunity to have been friends. No, these things were sealed behind another layer of armor as she stared, hard-faced. She knew her presence might upset a few folks, but Alaina was… she didn't know what Alaina was, only that they had been connected somehow. She knew that she owed Alaina some measure of respect in death that she never had the chance to give in lif
e.
The graveside service was at Bethel Cemetery. The casket lowered into the ground, another seed planted though what fruit would come of it King didn't venture to guess. He eyed the crowd warily. Car doors slammed shut as most of the mourners departed. An air of unchecked resentment lingered. Word had it that no one knew who fired the shot. Just the same, blood was in the air and demanded more to be appeased. He knew where the trouble would come from as a few boys tarried, pointing to King and Lady G, and laughed.
"He do one of us, he's got to fall," one of them called out, daring King.
King had his fill of violence for one week. For one lifetime, really. One of them caught his disaffected sigh.
"What 'chu lookin' at nigga?"
"I'm tired is all. Not everything is about how you carry it."
"Might be time for you to tip on out," the young one said.
"We will when we're ready. We've come to pay our respect. When we through, we're gone." King had to stand tall or else those chump-ass busters would think he was shook.
The boy, tall and good-sized — barely out his teens, if that mattered at all — stepped forward, inches from King's face, nearly bowling him down with his butt funk. He had some flex in him, but having no fear was easy when you had little to live for. No dreams of tomorrow. For next year.
Lady G let go of his slowly balling fists.
King met his eyes without fear. He could feel the flare of his heated blood. The boy said something to him, but King didn't answer, just hard-eyed him with a hint of disdain. By the code, the boy couldn't back down. The eyes of his boys were on him.
The boy put his weight on his back foot, preparing to throw a punch. When it came, King sidestepped and countered, planting his fist solidly in the boy's kidney, turning him, then shoving him into the wall of a memorial. The anxious squawks of the crowd had suddenly been reduced to mumbles. From the corner of his eye, King spied a light-skinned girl with fine braids, observing the proceedings from behind a nearby tree, then, like a will o' wisp, she was gone.
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