by K'wan
He’d leased the apartment a few months ago, after narrowly escaping a situation in the projects. When King came home from prison, he took up residence in the apartment he had once shared with his mother and his siblings. It was located in the center of his empire, and it allowed him to keep a close eye on his operation. When he began to grow in status and finances, the old man suggested that he move out of the hood, but King wasn’t trying to hear it. The projects had been his home for as long as he had been alive. He felt safe there. This changed on a night when the madness he had created showed up on his doorstep.
This happened shortly after he had established the uneasy truce with the Clarks. The war was over, but the effects of it could still be felt. A cease-fire had been called, but bad blood still lingered between the two sides. King James was coming home in the wee hours of the morning, after hanging out at the strip club with Lakim, Dee, and some of the others. It was Dee’s birthday, so bottles had been popped left and right. King James wasn’t a big drinker, but in light of the special occasion, he’d allowed himself to indulge. That night was the drunkest King had been since coming home from prison.
When they hit the block, King parted ways with his crew, promising to link with them that afternoon. He was blitzed and needed to sleep it off. Before going upstairs to his apartment, King decided to hit the twenty-four-hour bodega and grab a sandwich. The bread would help soak up the alcohol he had consumed. While King was at the little window, placing his order, an addict approached him. He was dressed in tattered jeans, a dirty shirt, and sneakers with holes in them. The dude looked too young to be strung out, but King had been around long enough to know that addiction didn’t practice age discrimination. He had seen both young and old hooked on the poison he sold.
“You holding, big bro?” the fiend said, walking up on King.
“Nigga, you’re either new to the hood or stupid. You know I don’t touch no drugs. Get the fuck away from me!” King snapped at him.
“My bad, big man . . . my bad,” the addict stammered, then slunk away, giving King a dirty look. There was something familiar about him, which King wouldn’t pick up on until after he replayed the night’s events.
After getting his sandwich, King ambled across the street to his building. The streets were quiet, which was unusual. They sold crack twenty-four hours a day, so there was usually someone out looking to score from one of his workers, but on this night the streets were empty. He didn’t even see the young worker named Jeff, who was supposed to be on the night shift. Knowing Jeff, he was probably tucked in one of the apartments with some young hood rat. When King caught up with Jeff, he was going to kick his ass for slacking on the job.
When King got inside the building, he hit the steps to walk up to his apartment, as was his routine. As he climbed the concrete stairs, an eerie feeling settled in his gut, but he ignored it. Had he not been so drunk, he probably would have paid it more mind. King’s apartment door was right next to the stairwell, so he didn’t have far to go when he stumbled onto his floor. As he was fumbling with his keys, the stairwell door on the opposite side of the floor opened. Instinctively, King went for the pistol tucked in the back of his pants. Out of the stairwell shambled the fiend who had approached him at the bodega.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you,” the addict said sheepishly.
“Fuck is you doing? Following me?” King snarled.
“Nah, man. I was just looking for somewhere to blast off.” The addict held up his crack pipe for King to see. “Your boy downstairs hooked me up. And sorry about that business earlier. I didn’t mean any disrespect.”
“Whatever, man. Find somewhere else to smoke that shit.” King dismissed him and turned his attention back to the lock on his apartment door. He had taken his eyes off the addict for only a second, but that was all the time the addict needed to make his play.
King James must’ve felt something was about to go down, because he managed to throw himself out of the way mere seconds before the addict tried to cut his throat. The addict swung the blade again, and in his drunken state, King instinctively raised his arm to block the blow. The knife bit deep into his arm, spraying blood onto his door and the wall behind him. The pain from the cut sobered him up. When the addict swung the blade again, King caught his arm in midair. Twisting with everything he had, he broke the man’s arm at the elbow. The addict howled in pain and staggered backward. This gave King a chance to gather his wits. Seeing that the trap he was attempting to spring had failed, the addict tried to run, but there would be no escape from King James.
The addict bolted for the stairs. He managed to make it down half a flight before one of King’s heavy boots struck him in the back and sent him flying the rest of the way down. The addict bounced off the concrete wall. Dazed and bleeding from the cut that had opened up on his forehead when he hit wall, he tried to run again, but King was on him. He delivered a powerful right cross to the addict’s jaw, nearly breaking it. The addict tried to muster up the energy to fight, but there was little he could do to fend off the jackhammer-like punches King was raining down on him. The addict tried to wilt to the ground, but King would have none of that. He wrapped his massive hands around the addict’s throat and lifted him off his feet. As King looked into the man’s hate-filled eyes, he realized why he had looked so familiar. He had seen those eyes before.
“You?” King gasped.
The addict smiled, knowing that King had recognized him and now had an idea why he had come. “This is for Shorty!” the addict bellowed before producing a second knife from the pocket of his dirty jeans and ramming it into King’s gut.
Pain shot through King’s gut as the blade pierced the lining of his stomach. The strength faded from his arms, forcing him to release the addict. The addict poked King three more times as the big man dropped to his knees. He would’ve surely killed King James had one of the neighbors not come out to investigate the noise. The last thing King remembered seeing was the addict taking off down the stairs, and then everything went black.
The next morning King woke up in St. Luke’s Hospital. Lakim was at his bedside. Dee and about half a dozen of the other young soldiers were in the waiting room, all screaming for blood. King told Lakim the story of how he had gotten caught slipping. When Lakim asked King if he knew his attacker, King lied and told him that he didn’t. In truth, he had seen the addict before. His was one of the many angry faces in Shorty’s mother’s apartment the day King and his crew had gone to pay their respects after his murder. Shorty’s family had blamed King for his death, and in a sense, they weren’t wrong. Had it been anyone else, King would’ve unleashed his dogs without giving it a second thought, but for the addict, there would be no retribution. The addict had carved King up pretty bad, but at least King still had his life, which was more than could be said for Shorty. King chalked the stabbing up to a case of karma coming to pay him a visit.
“You okay?” Aisha’s sleepy voice startled King, bringing him out of his reverie as he stood in the middle of the bedroom. She had been sleeping beside him but was now watching him nervously from the bed. Aisha was the girl King had been seeing off and on since he came home from prison.
“Didn’t mean to wake you, Ma. I just had a bad dream,” King lied.
“Do you usually try to shoot your nightmares?” She nodded at the gun in his hand.
“This ain’t about nothing.” King put the gun back in the nightstand drawer and slid back into bed beside her.
“You haven’t been sleeping much lately, and I’m starting to worry about you, King.”
“Blame it on my PTSD.” King laughed.
“That’s not funny.” She punched him.
“Who says I was joking?” King went to kiss her on the lips, but she dodged his mouth.
“Stop,” she ordered. “We both got morning breath. That’s nasty.”
“I’ve smelled a lot worse in prison.” He pulled her close and forced his lips over hers.
“Well, this isn’t pr
ison. This is the free world, and I’d like to keep you free this time,” Aisha told him.
“I keep telling you that I ain’t never going back inside nobody’s cage. I’m going to be here for you, love.”
“Not just for me, King. For us.” Aisha pulled the covers back and exposed the baby bump on her stomach.
His East Side apartment wasn’t the only secret he had been keeping from the hood.
PART III
Cross-Examination
CHAPTER 17
It was about 6:00 a.m. when Ma’s full bladder stirred her from a peaceful sleep. She hadn’t had an uninterrupted night’s rest in over a decade. It seemed the older she got, the more the organ shrank. She lay there for a time, ignoring the sensation, until the mounting pressure forced her to her feet.
As she sat on the toilet in the bathroom adjoining her bedroom, Ma began to mentally tick off the things she needed to do that day, before the send-off. Ma had planned nearly a hundred home goings in her lifetime. None of them had been easy, but after so many, they had started to become routine. This one felt different, though. Not just because it was a family member. She had buried plenty of those. This was her sister’s boy. The same sister she had given her word to on her deathbed.
Ma’s sister, Paulette, had always been the black sheep of the family, and that was saying a lot, considering all the Savages were just naturally rotten in one way or another. Being the only two girls in a litter of ten, the sisters had always butted heads while they were growing up, and the rivalry had only intensified the older they got. Ma and Paulette had engaged in some epic battles over the years, with Paulette even shooting Ma in the legs during one of them. She had been a troubled girl with a weakness for hard drugs. Heroin, cocaine, crack, booze . . . If it could give her a buzz, Paulette was all in. She would sometimes disappear for weeks or months at a time, only to resurface with a hard-luck story to tell. Paulette reminded Ma of her son Mad Dog in that way. Trouble and hard times seemed to follow them wherever they went. Ma and Paulette couldn’t stand each other, but they were still family and were bound by the Savage code to help out when a family member was in need.
So when Paulette showed up on Ma’s doorstep, looking twenty years older than her actual age of thirty-five, with a young boy on her hip, Ma couldn’t turn her away. It seemed that Paulette’s way of life had finally caught up with her. Somewhere in her travels, she had contracted the HIV virus. Back then, not a lot was known about the disease, and most of the effective treatments that had been devised were reserved for those who could afford them. Paulette couldn’t. It also didn’t help that she was so heavily into her drug habit that by the time she started to realize she was sick, there wasn’t much she could do about it, except get her affairs in order. By then Paulette had squandered everything she owned, and the only thing of some value that she had left was her son, Michael.
It was when Paulette realized that she had reached the end of the road that she showed up on Ma’s doorstep with Michael. The moment Ma laid eyes on the boy, she knew that he was trouble. He had the same darkness about him that his mother had hauled around like luggage. Ma wasn’t too keen on the idea of taking on her sister’s boy, but he was family. As it turned out, Paulette passed shortly after dropping her son at her sister’s place. They found her dead from an overdose in a crack house in Hollygrovee. Paulette had decided that if she was going to go out, it would be with a bang.
At first, Ma found having Paulette’s son under her roof quite demanding. Dealing with the shenanigans of her own five children was already a large enough task. Adding a troubled child to the mix only made things harder. Paulette had subjected Michael to quite a bit of chaos at an early age, and as a result, he was constantly acting out. It seemed like every other week, Ma had to go up to the school to discuss something he had done, be it stealing or fighting with the other kids. It was like the boy couldn’t keep his nose clean to save his life. He definitely had Savage blood in him. The boy was a natural criminal, and it was Ma who taught him how to apply his skills when she brought him into the family business. Michael wasn’t a killer, like the rest of her boys, but everything else in the criminal spectrum he attacked with a zeal that made Ma proud. This was why she had given him the nickname Big Money. He was always after the next big score.
The fact that Big Money was no longer with them saddened Ma, but she couldn’t say that she was surprised. Big Money was a Savage, but unlike the rest of her brood, he played the game with no honor. It didn’t matter to him whom he crossed or stepped on in the pursuit of his next dollar. Ma had tried to warn him time and again about the way he moved, but her words had fallen on deaf ears. Now, as it was with his mother, Big Money’s lifestyle had caught up with him.
By the time Ma had finished relieving herself, she was wide awake. There was no way she would be able to go back to sleep, so she figured she may as well get her day started. She pulled on her bathrobe and shuffled down the stairs, headed for the kitchen. As she neared it, she noticed a familiar smell. It was weed. She had warned Bug and Anthony about getting high in her house. She grabbed her baseball bat from the hall closet, prepared to hand out some Savage-style discipline. She entered the kitchen and switched on the light, expecting to find one of the teenagers. She was surprised to see Keith.
“Killer?”
Keith looked up at his mother with red-rimmed eyes and flashed what she assumed was a smile. “Morning, Mama.” Her straight-as-an-arrow son was sitting at the counter, toking on a joint and sipping Jack Daniel’s straight from the bottle. Keith hardly drank, and she couldn’t recall ever seeing him smoke weed, so she knew something was wrong.
“What you doing sitting down here in the dark all by yourself?” she asked.
“Drinking and thinking.” He hoisted the bottle and took another swig.
“And stinking up the place.” She fanned at the smoke.
“Found this stashed in Bug’s room. Pretty good shit.” Keith offered her the joint.
Ma took the joint from her son and hit it twice before handing it back. “You know I’ve got a strict no smoking rule in my house.”
“Savages don’t live by anyone’s rules,” Keith replied, repeating what his mother had always told them when they were growing up.
“Thought you were a Davis,” she said sarcastically, taking the stool across from him.
“For years the Hulk masqueraded as Bruce Banner. Keith Davis is the mask my monster hides behind.” Keith paused for a moment. “Would you like to meet my monster, Mama?” he asked sinisterly.
There was something Ma saw in Keith’s eyes at that moment that made her nervous. “What’s wrong with you, boy? You drunk?”
“Drunk as a fiddler’s bitch.” He laughed. “Can I ask you something, Mama?”
“Sure.”
“How come you never treated me like the others?”
“What you mean? I love all of you the same,” Ma insisted.
“That’s not what I asked you. When we were growing up, you let Big John, Mad Dog, and Dickey literally get away with murder, but you were on my ass for everything I did. Whether it was my grades in school or how I performed during jobs, I always gave my best effort, but it never measured up for you. What was the matter? Wasn’t I Savage enough for your standards?”
Ma thought about the questions before answering. “It was actually the opposite. Of all my children, you were the most like a Savage.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Big John was cunning, Dickey was as fearless as they came, and Mad Dog had a mean streak a mile long. They all had one trait or another of the Savage men who came before them, but it was you who embodied them all. You were the one most fit to lead this family into the next generation, which is why it hurt me so bad when you abandoned us.”
“I didn’t abandon you, Mama. I went to college.”
“And you never came back. Killer, I never had a problem with you going off and getting your feet wet in the world. Anyone with eyes knew you had d
reams that were bigger than the Lower Ninth Ward, and I guess I’d always hoped that this family would fit somewhere in those dreams. You were my knight in shining armor, but you traded your legacy in for a suit.”
“A legacy of blood and destruction,” Keith snorted. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”
“Spoken just like your daddy. He never had the heart for this life, either.”
“Don’t talk about him like that,” Keith warned.
“What? I’m just speaking the truth,” Ma said. “Your father was an amazing lover, but he was a half-assed criminal. He didn’t have the heart or the stomach for our type of life, so I guess it’s no wonder he killed himself.”
“What the hell are you talking about? The police killed Daddy,” Keith told her.
“Yes, your father died by those cops’ bullets, but his death was his own design,” Ma told him. “Tell me something. In all the years Dickey was right in the head, did you ever know him to miss even the smallest detail when it came to a job?”
“No,” Keith said honestly.
“So, has it never struck you as odd that your father fucked up on one that was supposed to be so simple?” Ma asked.
Keith shook his head. “That wasn’t Daddy’s fault. The man handling the cutting off of the alarm system—”
“Was your dad,” she said, cutting him off. “He was an electrician, remember? Your dad could hack through just about any kind of alarm system without even having to try. That alarm didn’t go off by accident. It was by design.”
“What are you trying to say?” Keith asked. He didn’t like where the conversation was going.
Ma sighed. “I’m going to share something with you that I’ve never shared with another living soul except Mad Dog. Your father was a broken man. I don’t know if it was the pressure of this life or whatever personal demons he was battling, but they had worn your father down. I knew something was going on inside him, but I figured it would pass. I never realized how bad he was hurting until I got the word that the police had killed him. Your daddy was tired, baby. So tired that he couldn’t go on anymore. So he ended it.”
