Lawless

by K'wan

  King thought about it for a minute. “Put Dee on it. As a matter of fact, not Dee. Put the little Philly nigga on it. He should be about ready to cut his teeth. Besides, if something goes wrong and we gotta get rid of him too, it won’t hurt as much as losing one of our own.”

  “Damn! You on some real Hitler shit, trying to kill the whole world at one time,” Lakim half joked.

  “Leave no stone unturned.”

  CHAPTER 19

  By the time Keith checked into his room at the JW Marriott on Canal, he was out on his feet. It had been a long night and, thanks to his mother, an even longer morning. All he wanted to do was crash.

  He stripped off his clothes and jumped into the shower. He pressed his head against the tiles and let the hot water wash over him. It felt good, loosening his tense muscles and clearing up some of the Jack Daniel’s–induced fog in his brain. Drinking all that whiskey had been a bad idea, especially on an empty stomach, but he had desperately needed something to take the edge off.

  After showering, Keith came out of the bathroom, intent on putting on fresh clothes before lying down. It was then that he remembered that in his rush to get out of the house, he had forgotten to collect his luggage. It was still too early for the clothing stores on the strip to be open, so until they were, there wasn’t much he could do about it except wait. Once again, in his attempt to spite his mother, he had ended up with the short end of the stick.

  Keith slipped into one of the hotel’s complimentary bathrobes and flung himself across the bed. On the nightstand, he noticed the notification light blinking on his phone. He retrieved his message and was surprised to see he’d missed a call from Bernie. She hadn’t bothered to leave a voicemail. He pondered calling her back, but what would he say? Keith’s head was so screwed up that he didn’t even know where to begin in repairing his broken relationship. He blamed his mother for that. He had almost believed the old woman’s “making amends” routine, until she showed her true colors. He had been a fool to believe that a leopard could change his spots, but what did that say about him? Was she right? Was he trying only to run from who he really was? Those were Keith’s last thoughts before drifting off to sleep.

  As he slept, Keith was haunted by a terrible nightmare. . . a memory, really. He was a young man again back in New Orleans, and it was shortly after Mrs. Winston’s funeral. The police were still doing a half-assed job of solving her murder. But thanks to an anonymous tip, they had managed to capture one of the boys who was responsible for her death. The other one was still on the loose. Though the boy the police had caught refused to rat on his accomplice, the whole hood knew who else had been involved in the crime. It was a boy named Tate Jones. While Mrs. Winston was rotting in the ground, Tate Jones was still breathing God’s good air, and it frustrated Keith to no end. Something had to be done, and if the police wouldn’t handle it, he would.

  He spent the next week or so looking for Tate. He had gone into hiding, but boys like Tate never strayed too far from what was familiar to them. Keith got a tip from a crackhead that Tate had been hiding out in a dope house over on North Villere in the Seventh Ward. Keith spent the next few days sitting across the street in a car he’d stolen for his task, watching the house and waiting. Tate never seemed to leave the house, and for a while, Keith thought he was going to have to go inside Rambo-style and drag him out. Then an idea hit him. He found a pay phone a few blocks away, placed a call, and then went back to the house to wait for the inevitable.

  “Five-oh!” Keith heard one of the lookouts shout just before the wagon screeched to a stop in front of the house. Both addicts and dealers scattered like roaches, trying to avoid capture.

  When Keith saw Tate slip out the back door and hop the fence into the next yard, Keith took off after him in his car. He followed him for several blocks before pulling alongside him.

  “Yo, is that Tate?” he called out the window.

  Tate came to a stop. “Who that?” he asked nervously, prepared to take off running again.

  “It’s me, Killer, from school,” Keith said in his best gullible teen voice. This seemed to put Tate at ease.

  “What’s your square ass doing round here?” Tate ambled up to the car.

  “Trying to score,” Keith lied.

  “I thought you was on some athlete shit and didn’t get high?” Tate asked suspiciously.

  “It ain’t for me. I got girls waiting for me who are looking to party, and the Ninth is bone dry.”

  “How much you need?” Tate asked. Most of his stash had gotten caught up in the raid, but he had a few loose bags of coke in his pocket that he could sell to Keith. That should hold him over until he could figure something else out.

  “I’m not real sure. I’ve never done this before.” Keith went into his pocket and produced several crisp hundred-dollar bills. The bills were counterfeit, but they looked real enough to stoke Tate’s greed. “How much will this get me?”

  “Enough to make sure you and your bitches have the time of your lives.” Tate hopped into the passenger side of the car without waiting for an invite. “I can get you what you need, but you’ll have to run me across town, to my stash spot, to get it.” He knew just the spot to lure Keith to so he could relieve him of his bankroll.

  Tate and Keith rode a few miles east, through the Seventh Ward and out past Willie Mae’s Scotch House. The whole ride, Tate was running his mouth about how he had become the man on the streets since dropping out of high school. Keith smirked and acted like he was interested, but all the while he kept seeing Mrs. Winston’s smiling face. Being that close to her killer made Keith so mad that he had to grip the steering wheel with both hands to keep them from trembling.

  Tate directed him to a large house on Conti Street. The place was dark and was falling in on itself. It obviously hadn’t been occupied in quite some time. Keith pulled the car around to the back of the house, which was overgrown with thick weeds, and killed the engine.

  “You sure this is the place?” Keith asked, giving the house a queer look.

  “What? You spooked or something?” Tate teased him. “I like to keep a low profile. Can’t have everybody in my business, feel me?”

  “Yeah, I feel you,” Keith said, playing along.

  “Give me the money, and I’ll run inside to get the stuff. Shouldn’t be more than five minutes,” Tate promised. He wanted that money so bad, his palms were sweating. He planned to get in the wind as soon as it was in his hand.

  “Here ya go,” Keith said and produced a gun instead of the money.

  “What the fuck?” Tate was shocked. There was no way that Keith could’ve known that he was planning on ripping him off.

  “Sorry to spoil your plans, but I’ve got plans of my own,” Keith said coolly. “Out of the car.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” Tate warned.

  “Nigga, I said get out!” Keith clubbed him on the side of the head with the butt of the gun. Tate stumbled out of the car and spilled on all fours into the weeds.

  “If it’s money you want, you’re shit out of luck,” Tate told him.

  “This ain’t got nothing to do with money. This is the devil collecting what’s due to him,” Keith said in a low tone. “March,” he ordered.

  He kept the gun pointed at Tate as he marched him through the yard and into the house. The whole place stank of mold, like most of the houses in the neighborhood. A lot of them still suffered from heavy water damage as a result of the last big flood. He understood why Tate had picked this as the spot to spring his trap. It was so isolated that you could literally get away with murder. He forced Tate into the kitchen. It was as good a place to die as any.

  “If you’d just tell me what this is about, maybe we could work out some sort of deal. At least give a nigga a chance,” Tate pleaded.

  “Did you give Mrs. Winston a chance before you and your punk-ass homeboy killed her?” Keith spat.

  “Is that what this is about? The teacher?” A light of recognition went
off in Tate’s eyes. “Look, man, I was there, but I didn’t kill her. That was all Steve! He’s the one who should be standing here, not me!”

  “I can’t get my hands on Steve, so I guess you’ll have to do.”

  Keith chambered a round into the gun. Keith paused, finger hovering over the trigger. He had replayed what the moment would be like at least a dozen times in his head, but now that it was at hand, he was unsure. He wanted Tate dead, but he didn’t know if he had the heart to follow through. Keith had shot at people before, but this was an execution. Keith’s moment of hesitation was all Tate needed. He lunged at Keith and slapped the gun away. It discharged when it hit the floor. Keith tried to go for it, but Tate was on him.

  “Ole pussy-ass nigga!” Tate yelled as he punched Keith in the face. “You drawn your gun on me like you built like that!” He hit him again.

  Tate hurled punches and curses at Keith, while Keith tried as best he could to protect himself. He had to admit that for a skinny dude, Tate hit hard as hell. Keith managed to land a blow on Tate’s chin, but the punch was thrown awkwardly and didn’t do much to help him. The next thing he knew, Tate had him bent over backward on the counter and was choking the life out of him. Keith’s hand slid across the counter, looking for something . . . anything that would get the man off him. His fingers ran across something cold. It was a broken plate. Keith grabbed it and swung as hard as he could. He had meant only to get Tate off him, but the edge of the dish opened up a nasty gash in the soft flesh of the man’s throat. Tate dropped to his knees, fingers clutching futilely at the wound, which was spraying blood all over the kitchen floor. With a death rattle, Tate fell over, dead, and it was done.

  It took Keith a minute to catch his breath. Cautiously, he used his foot to turn Tate’s body over. A gaping wound stretched across his throat, exposing white flesh and tendons. The sight of it was so grotesque that it made Keith retch. He barely made it to the kitchen sink before the chicken sandwich he’d eaten earlier that day spilled out in a river of bile. He wanted Tate to suffer for what he had done to Mrs. Winston, but until then he hadn’t been sure how far he was willing to go with dishing out the punishment. He paced back and forth like a caged animal. He hadn’t planned on killing Tate, only giving him a good beating or maybe crippling him, but things had gone too far, and the man had forced his hand. Now he was faced with a problem that he had no idea how to handle: what to do with Tate’s body. If he left him there for the police to find, he might wind up going to jail. The thought of spending the rest of his life behind bars scared Keith more than when Tate was choking him. He needed to do something, but he wasn’t sure what, so he called someone who would know.

  The minutes seemed to tick by like hours as Keith waited. He jumped when he heard the sound of footfalls coming from near the back door. He scrambled for the gun Tate had knocked away, and hid himself in the shadows of the kitchen, holding his breath.

  Mad Dog appeared in the doorway. He was dressed in dark coveralls and work boots and was wearing latex gloves. In one hand he carried a bucket, and in the other, a curved saw. Keith recognized it as one of the tools his father had kept in the shed behind their house. They would use it to trim the branches of the sycamore tree in their backyard when it started growing out of control.

  “You in here, Killer?” Mad Dog called in his deep voice.

  Keith appeared from his hiding spot, both shaken and relieved.

  Mad Dog’s eyes went from Tate’s body to his little brother. “What the fuck happened?”

  Keith gave Mad Dog the short version of the story. “I didn’t plan on killing him. I . . . I only wanted to rough him up . . . maybe scare him a bit.”

  “Looks like you did more than that. How many times I tell you about trying to play grown folks’ games? Give me that fucking pistol.” He snatched the gun from Keith’s hand and tossed it into the bucket.

  “It was a mistake. I’m sorry,” Keith said, on the verge of tears.

  “Snatching a life is the one mistake ain’t no apologies for,” Mad Dog shot back. Seeing how rattled his brother was, Mad Dog softened his tone. “Look, I’m gonna need you to pull yourself together so you can help me clean this mess up.” He knelt beside the upper half of Tate’s body, ignoring the blood soaking into the knees of his coveralls. Keith went to Tate’s feet and grabbed him by the ankles. “Boy, what the hell are you doing?”

  “Helping you move him,” Keith said.

  Mad Dog laughed. “Man, you must be out of your mind if you think I’m gonna risk walking around, carrying a damn body, even in this shitty neighborhood. Where he fell is where he’ll rest.” He handed Keith the curved saw.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” Keith asked, unsure if he was ready for the answer.

  “We’ll need to chop his hands off and knock out his teeth. This way, even if someone discovers the body, they’ll have a hard time identifying him,” Mad Dog explained.

  “I can’t.” Keith tried to hand the saw back to his brother.

  “You can, and you will.” Mad Dog refused the saw. “I warned you, but you wanted to play in the big leagues, so here we are. This is your mess to clean up, not mine. Get to cutting, or I’m gone, and you can deal with the consequences on your own.”

  Reluctantly, Keith did as he was told. First, he knocked out Tate’s teeth with the handle of the saw. Then he closed his eyes and tried to imagine he was back home in the kitchen, cutting up raw chicken for his mother, but sawing through a human bone was much harder than cutting through a chicken’s. By the time Keith had finished sawing off Tate’s hands, he was tired, sweaty, and disgusted. It would be a long time before he was able to eat meat again, if ever. Mad Dog wrapped the hands in plastic and tossed them and the teeth into the bucket.

  “What about the rest of him?” Keith asked.

  Mad Dog ignored Keith and began rummaging in the bucket until his hand came up holding a jar of peanut butter, which he began smearing all over Tate’s body. When Keith saw the first of the rats creep out and begin sniffing at Tate’s body, he understood what Mad Dog was planning for Tate’s remains. The thought of the rodents devouring Tate made Keith so sick that he threw up in the sink again.

  The ride back to the house was spent in silence. Keith was happy that his brother had come to his aid in his time of need, but he was also very disturbed. He had always known that Mad Dog was no saint, but back at that dilapidated house on Conti Street, he had seen a side of his older brother that until then he had only heard whispers of on the streets. Back at that house, face-to-face with that dead body, Keith had expected Mad Dog to give him a lecture or maybe even slap him around, but he hadn’t done either. In forcing Keith to dismember the body, Mad Dog had taught him a lesson.

  All his life Keith had looked up to his brothers. They were both feared and respected on the streets, but until that night he had never fully understood at what price those things came. His brothers were not only Savages in name but also in their actions. It was that night that the first seeds of doubt were sown in Keith. No matter how much he wanted to live up to the family’s expectations of him, helping Mad Dog dismember Tate’s body had made him realize that he couldn’t. If that was what it took to be a Savage, Keith wanted no parts of it.

  CHAPTER 20

  The sound of someone banging on his hotel-room door drew Keith out of his slumber. He looked over at the alarm clock on the nightstand. It read 1:00 p.m. He had been asleep for almost six hours, but it felt like moments. He dragged himself out of bed and shuffled over to the door. When he opened it, he was surprised to find Ulysses standing on the other side.

  “What the fuck?” Keith cursed.

  “Good morning to you too.” Ulysses invited himself into the room. Slung over his shoulder was Keith’s garment bag, which contained two of his suits.

  “What are you doing here?” Keith asked in an irritated tone.

  “Making sure you don’t show up at the funeral naked.” Ulysses tossed the garment bag on the bed. “Get y
ourself together. Your sister is going to kill me if we show up at Big Money’s home going late.”

  “And where is my dear sister at the moment?” Keith asked. He couldn’t wait to see her to ask why she hadn’t told him about Darla.

  “She had some business to take care of this morning and will be meeting us at the house.”

  “What is she doing? Recruiting another whore for her stable?” Keith asked sarcastically.

  “Less questions and more dressing, please,” Ulysses urged. “I’ll be downstairs waiting.”

  Ten minutes later Keith was dressed and walking out the hotel lobby. He drew quite a few stares in his tailored black suit jacket, over a black shirt and a black tie. The outfit was perfect, save for the white tube socks barely visible at the cuffs of his pants. Ulysses had brought Keith his suit but had neglected to grab the bag containing his undergarments, so he had to make the best out of what he had to work with.

  He scanned the cars out front, in search of Maxine’s Maybach, but saw no signs of it. He was about to go back inside the hotel to see if maybe he had missed Ulysses in the lobby when he heard a car horn beep twice. It was then that Keith noticed him. Ulysses was behind the wheel of a box-shaped red Chevy Caprice sitting on twenty-three-inch rims. The bass from Lil Wayne’s “Fireman” rattled the windows of the car, drawing unfriendly stares from hotel guests and staff alike.

  “Damn. How many cars does my sister own?” Keith asked when he slipped into the cream- colored leather passenger seat.

  “Three, but this isn’t one of hers. It’s mine,” Ulysses said proudly.

  “Funny, you don’t strike me as somebody who would ride in something like this.”

  “Why? Because I’m white?” Ulysses laughed. “Hang around me long enough, and you’ll find that I’m full of surprises,” he stated and peeled off into traffic.

  As Keith rode in the car, he listened to Ulysses’s colorful playlist. He bumped a variety of music, from artists as current as Migos and as classic as the Manhattans. None of the music playing in that car was anything Keith figured a man like Ulysses would be listening to. He was a strange nut indeed.