by K'wan
Hank shrugged. “Swung by his pad twice and even checked with his baby mama, but ain’t nobody seen him.”
“You think the police got him?” Vita asked. She had been so quiet, none of them even noticed her standing there. She was a cute girl, but not sexy, with smallish breasts and just enough ass to make you take a second look but not stare. Behind her rose-colored, pouty lips, she sported a mouth full of gold teeth. Instead of her usual wardrobe of loud-colored clothes and even louder weaves, she was dressed down in a simple black skirt set and black wig. The expensive flat shoes on her feet had been ruined by the mud, but she didn’t seem to notice. Vita was clearly overdressed to be standing on the banks of the Mississippi at a Viking funeral, but she insisted on showing John-Boy the same respect as she would someone being laid to rest in a funeral home.
“More like larceny got him,” Hank said in a disgusted tone. “I didn’t want to say anything until I was absolutely sure, but when I was loading the dope, the bird count came back shorter than it should’ve been. Looks like he got us for two.”
“I knew we shouldn’t have took that closet dope-head with us on this run!” Goldie fumed, angry at Dip’s betrayal. Dip had never been part of their inner circle, but besides Buda, he was the only other person they knew who could operate an airboat. “I say we ride by that nigga’s house and spray it.”
“I told you he ain’t home,” Hank repeated.
“So what? Maybe his mama home. I’ll bet if I put the screw to that bitch, she’ll tell us where her ol’ fuck-ass son hiding,” Goldie suggested.
Diamonds gave his brother a cold look. “Etes vous fou?” he asked, questioning Goldie’s sanity. “After all we’ve already sacrificed, you willing to throw it all away to go after a piece of shit like Dip? Them two bricks ain’t shit compared to what we took off from Slim. Let that thirsty nigga have them two birds. Whatever he think he gonna make off what he swiped, he’d have made ten times that by keeping it trill with us. Niggas who big on greed are small on brains, and it’ll only be a matter of time before his karma settle up with him and save us the trouble.”
“You think it’s gonna be backlash from what we did, bruh?” Goldie asked.
“It always backlash from death and money, tadpole,” Diamonds told him. “Wrongs always got a way of righting themselves, but I think I’ll owe on this here debt for a while.”
“Well, if y’all killed Slim, we ain’t got too much to worry about in the way of retaliation. He is dead, isn’t he?” Vita asked.
Diamonds didn’t answer at first. He knew he’d hit Slim, but he’d lost sight of him after he went out the window. As he thought on it, he couldn’t recall seeing the body outside when they cleared out. In all likelihood his body had been washed away by the flood, but Diamonds wasn’t certain. He thought about expressing his concerns to the team, but there was no sense in adding to their already dismal moods.
“Slim dead as a wounded dog lying on the riverbank, waiting for the gators to come for him.” Diamonds hugged Vita to him. “Get your mind off them ghosts and on this money, baby girl. Our lives are gonna change big-time when we finally pull up in New York City.”
“New York? I thought we were going to Florida after we pass through Texas?” Buda asked, clearly not feeling the sudden, and unexpected, change in plans.
“That part of the plan hasn’t changed. We grab this quick paper in Houston and then push on to Florida to set up shop, but we’ll only be in Miami for as long as it takes us to get strong enough to start broadening our horizons,” Diamonds said. Seeing that his crew still didn’t look totally sold on his new plan, he decided to elaborate. “We’ve been hustling and killing in the South for so long that our names are starting to ring like church bells on a Sunday. Everybody know what we about, so they’ll know what to expect. That’s going to make it harder to stretch our legs, but on the East Coast they’ll never see us coming.”
Goldie frowned. “Bruh, I’m down for expanding, but why the fuck we gotta go all the way to New York to do it? Just off what we could make in Miami alone is enough for us to live like kings.”
Diamonds clasped his hand behind his brother’s neck and gave him a serious look. “Why settle for being kings when we can be gods?”
“I don’t care where we go, so long as we leave this place,” Vita added. Her clothes were now soaked, and the cold settling into her bones made her shiver.
Diamonds looked at the faces of the rest of his team and saw no objections. “Then let’s see our little one off and be done.”
Tied to the shore was a raft they’d constructed from an old door and some loose wooden planks. The rickety flotation device was piled high with branches and whatever dry leaves they could find. When the wind blew, you could smell the pungent stench of kerosene. Resting atop the mound was John-Boy, decked out in a black pinstripe gangster suit and a pair of black Stacy Adams polished to a high shine. Clutched in his dead hands were a bottle of Crown Royal and his favorite gun. They were two of the things he had loved most in life, so it was only fitting that he carried them with him in death.
The funeral pyre was how ancient cultures honored warriors who had fallen on the field of battle. Instead of committing them to the earth, they burned them. Most civilizations had abandoned it in favor of traditional funerals, but it was still one of the most time-honored traditions in Diamonds’s family. He once asked his grandmother why they burned the bodies of their dead instead of burying them, and she replied: “So they won’t be tempted to come back.”
Buda approached almost timidly. The blunt between his lips bobbed when he spoke. “Rest easy, little brother.” He splashed whisky onto the pyre. “Get as twisted in heaven as you did on earth.”
One by one they came and said their farewells to John-Boy, each offering up some personal artifacts of theirs for John-Boy to carry with him into the afterlife: Buda, the book he had used to teach John-Boy to read when he was little; Hank, an expensive cigar; Goldie, the bandanna around his neck; and Vita gave up the oil cloth she used to polish her horn. The offering of things they held dear to them were so that they would all be able to find one another on the other side when their times came.
Diamonds was the last to approach. His face was dark, his eyes darker. He stared silently at John-Boy for a long while, trying to organize the dozens of jumbled thoughts bouncing around in his head. Seeing his comrade laid out in his Sunday’s best and bound for greener pastures made Diamonds contemplate not only his own mortality, but also of those in his charge. He had promised them a better life in exchange for their loyalty, and it was time he made good on that promise. He removed a knife from his pocket and sawed off one of his locks, which he placed on the raft with John-Boy. “See you on the other side, mon amie.”
Once the last good-byes were said, the pyre was ignited and cut loose from the shore. The fire ate up the leaves and branches before slowly consuming John-Boy’s earthly shell. The flames cast an eerie glow on the saddened faces of the five friends standing on the riverbank. They watched in silence as the raft floated down the river, carrying John-Boy to his final reward.
The silence was broken by Goldie slowly clapping his hands in a rhythm. Buda came to stand next to him and began softly humming a tune they had become familiar with on the streets of New Orleans. Vita joined in, blowing softly through her horn in tune with their rhythm. Then quite unexpectedly, Hank’s voice boomed soulfully.
“Don’t shed no tears for me when I die, but bet yo ass you better Second Line!”
Under the soft glow of the moonlight, Goldie, Buda, and Hank danced and sang their farewells to their fallen brother while Vita played her horn like she was single-handedly trying to call all the angels home. Diamonds watched them from a distance.
Kneeling, he scooped up a handful of the moist soil and rubbed it between his palms. He listened closely and thought he could almost hear the whispers of all the souls they’d lost during the storm. He savored the sensation of the cold, wet mud, knowing it would be the
last time he would ever feel it. It would be concrete and steel from there on out. It saddened him to be leaving the only home he’d ever known, but he wasn’t as attached to New Orleans as the others were. The Big Easy held too many dark memories, and he was ready to put them behind him. It was time for him to move on, but first he had one more soul to offer back to the soil.
CHAPTER THREE
Dip sat on the edge of his sister’s couch, drifting in and out of a nod. White powder was dried and caked around his nostrils, but he made no attempt to clean himself up. He was so gone that the cigarette between his fingers had burned down past the filter and was threatening to burn him, but he hardly noticed. Dip was on such a beautiful ride, nothing seemed to matter. Resting on the table was an open package of heroin.
The crew was so twisted over what had happened to John-Boy that it was almost too easy for Dip to cuff two bricks of the dope when they’d robbed Slim. Dip hadn’t set out to pull a grease move, but when he’d laid eyes on their haul, larceny had gotten the best of him. He had never seen that much product in his life, and it made him dizzy. The next thing he knew, he was filching the two birds and planning his exit strategy. They could have their dreams of setting up elsewhere, but Dip had no plans on leaving Louisiana. The streets of New Orleans were all he knew or ever cared to know, and his brain couldn’t fathom a life beyond them.
Considering the fact that Diamonds and the others had always treated Dip like family, what he was doing was a scumbag move, but Dip reasoned that since he’d only taken two bricks from the entire haul, it wasn’t that bad. In contrast to all they had made off with, the dope he’d stolen wouldn’t hurt them one way or another, but it was enough to change Dip’s life. With all the competition in New Orleans being wiped out by either Diamonds’s bullets or Hurricane Katrina, when the market finally opened back up, Dip would be the only game in town.
A knock at the front door snapped him out of his nod. Dip managed to force his eyes open, but he was still having trouble focusing. He tried to push himself to his feet, but it was a wasted effort, so he fell back into his nod and ignored the door. When the knocking turned into a loud banging, it drew Dip’s sister Pauletta into the living room. She was dressed in a floral housecoat and slippers, colorful rollers in her hair.
“Nigga, don’t you hear the fucking door?” Pauletta stopped in front of her nodding brother, arms folded over her large, saggy breasts.
“Nah, I ain’t heard it,” Dip lied, scratching at his neck. He looked every bit the dope fiend he was turning into.
“See, this pitiful shit is why you need to be out trying to sell the dope instead of snorting it all up!” Pauletta scolded him. For as long as she could remember, her brother had always been a fuckup. The only reason she let him stay with her is because she wanted a cut off his dope money. “Get your shit together, Dip, and get this dope to moving or get the fuck out of my house,” she said before shuffling off to answer the door. With an attitude, she snatched it open, a barrage of curses pursed on her lips and ready to fire off at whoever was behind the banging. Instead she received the business end of a shotgun that opened her chest.
Hearing the roar of the shotgun brought Dip back to sobriety. He got to his feet in time to see his sister’s body fly across the living room. Two men stormed in, both wearing black, both heavily armed. Dip managed to dive behind the sofa just before the shotgun kicked again, dismantling the chair he’d been sitting in. Dip crawled on all fours, trying to make for the kitchen, where he hoped to slip out the back door. He’d nearly made it when a strong hand snatched him up by the back of his shirt.
Dip knew that the only chance he had was to fight, and fight he did; it was just too bad he wasn’t very good at it. The man holding Dip by the shirt swatted off his punches and delivered one of his own to the gut, which landed with so much force that Dip shit himself. He lay on the ground, his body racked with pain, the rank smell coming from his pants assaulting his nose. As the two men who stormed the house yanked him roughly to his feet, Dip couldn’t help but think how his situation couldn’t possibly get any worse. But when he saw who else had entered the house, he realized that they could and they had.
He was in a wheelchair now, a result of his two broken legs. His arm was in a sling, his head heavily wrapped in gauze. A gnarled cigar was clinched between his teeth as he sneered down at Dip. “So, this is one of the rats who made off with my cheese?” Slim asked in a sinister tone.
“Big Slim, what you talking, man? I don’t know nothing about no cheese,” Dip lied. One of the men who was holding him slapped Dip so hard that blood and spit flew from his mouth.
“So you mean to say that the dope fairy dropped that off to you?” Slim nodded at the package on the table.
“I can explain that—” Dip began.
“You can’t explain shit to me except where to find that hillbilly Diamonds and the shit he took from me!” Slim cut him off. “Now, I know you were part of the crew that robbed me, killed two of my closest friends, and contributed to breaking both my legs. Best believe you got something coming to you for that, but how severe the punishment that comes down on your head is entirely up to you. You’re gonna talk or you’re gonna die.”
Quite unexpectedly, Dip broke free of the two men who were holding him. Everyone in the room tensed, thinking he was about to attack or, at the very least, flee. Instead Dip threw himself at the foot of Slim’s wheelchair and clawed at his pant legs, sniveling. “Slim, I swear on my mama, this wasn’t on me. Diamonds gave me a stack to drive one of the airboats, but he never said it was you he was planning to rob! It was all on him!” he insisted.
Slim backhanded Dip with his good hand and sent him skidding on his rear. “Pussy, don’t give me them crocodile tears. Was you crying when you and that hillbilly crew were making off with my bag? Get this nigga on his feet,” he ordered his men.
Dip continued his sobbing while he was jerked back upright. “Slim, man, all I got is what you see; Diamonds and them got the rest of the work and the money.”
“And where is Diamonds?” Slim asked.
“Slim, I don’t know. I was supposed to meet them tonight to figure out where we were moving to next, but as you can see, I missed that meeting.” He motioned toward the dope. Dip intended to keep up his lie for as long as he needed to, because as fearful as he was of what Slim could do to his body, he was more terrified of what Diamonds could do to his soul. Though Dip had only been working for Diamonds a short time, he was well aware of the rumors about him trafficking in things Dip dared not speak of aloud.
Slim shook his head in disappointment before tossing the gnarled cigar out and plucking a fresh one from his jacket pocket. He fished around in the satchel hanging from his wheelchair and produced a small butane torch. “I guess you fancy yourself a real ride-or-die nigga, huh, Dip?” He sparked the flame and lit his cigar. “I could almost respect the act if I didn’t know you were a chickenhearted son of a bitch. But fuck all that—let’s talk turkey. If I know Diamonds, as I’m sure I do, this wasn’t some random jacking. Sneaky bastard has probably been planning it for months. Right now he’s probably in the wind with my cash and my dope, having a good laugh at my expense. You know, had it been about what he stole, I may have been able to overlook it and spare myself the trouble of having to chase him down, but when he put a bullet in me, that made it personal.” Slim adjusted the flame on the torch to its highest setting and began wheeling himself toward Dip.
“Big Slim…” Dip pleaded while struggling against Slim’s men, who were holding him again.
“It might take me a few days, weeks, or even years, but I’ll never stop chasing him. I’m going to be nipping at that piece of shit’s heels until the day comes when I see the life drain from his eyes. I will find Diamonds, and you’re going to tell me where to start looking.” He turned his attention to his men. “Get his pants down.”
CHAPTER FOUR
For a long while Diamonds didn’t move. He just stood there, in the shadows o
f an old willow tree, while misty rain soaked his face and hair. His eyes stared out into darkened thicket of seemingly endless woods as if he were looking at something only he could see. Overhead, something squawked from a tree before flapping off into the night, followed by a roll of thunder. It was like nature was speaking to him, letting him know it was a bad place and he had no business there. Diamonds ignored the warning and moved toward the darkened thicket.
The closer he got, the more manageable the path became, the mud and grass giving way to a small stone road that had been all but completely washed away by nature and the passing of time. Just ahead he could begin to make out the shape of the small building that had been almost completely hidden under the dense foliage. On either side of the black hole that served as the entrance were two large toads, carved from wood and painted over. Their red eyes seemed to stare accusingly at Diamonds as he approached the entrance. The thunder rolled again, and it began to rain harder than it had all that night, giving Diamonds a final warning before he stepped inside.
It was dark, save for the fire burning at the far end of the hut. The air inside was thick, warm, and smelled of dead things. People who ventured there for the first time were often overwhelmed by the smell and opted to wait outside, but Diamonds had long ago become numb to it. He wandered to a table that was cluttered with small jars, pieces of parchment, and other things that Diamonds couldn’t quite identify. In the center of the clutter was something that he had become quite familiar with over the years, a dagger that was as black as night. Diamonds picked it up and ran his fingers over the handle, which had been carved from human bone. Though it was humid inside the shack, the knife was cold to the touch, as if it had just come out of the freezer. The handcrafted dagger had more ghost stories attached to it than the old woman who had first shown it to him. When he closed his eyes, it was almost as if he could hear the souls the knife had snuffed out whispering to him from the great beyond.
