"Holy…" Lex scampered away from me. "Ice, that fucking thing blinked!"
Still staring at the marble, my hand in the same place it had been when I'd first held the thing up, I said, "Lex, I need help, bruh. I can't stop looking at this thing. It's, like, I'm uh … can you throw something over the top of it for me?"
"You're on your own, Ice. I don't do spooky, bruh. You know how I roll."
"Lex, get yo big ass over here and help me! This thing's got me bad, man."
A few seconds later, Slip's empty backpack landed on top of my hand, covering the marble. I dropped that thing like a hot rock and darted to the other side of the room. My heart was racing and my head was hurting. Even my eyes felt like someone had put hot matchsticks against them.
Lex's voice was hollow. "Yo, man, what's going on here? Shiny bones and blinking marbles, bruh? Really? What we done got ourselves into?"
I looked at Lex. For the first time in over twelve years, the big man looked scared. I don't mean nervous. Lex looked like he was ready to run, screaming for the hills all the way.
When I tried to speak, I began coughing. I could hear, as well as feel, my blood pumping through my veins. Pulse pounding and my temples felt like they were going to explode.
From the corner of my eyes, I saw Lex open his cell phone. "Yeah," he answered. I could hear Fatso blowing up on the other end. "I'll have him call you back," Lex said when the tirade ended.
Breathlessly, I said, "Lemme guess; Fatso is pissed about Abe."
"Nah, he knows the game. He's pissed about the safe being empty. Said cops are setting up a manhunt for a large black man in black running gear, suspecting him as the burglar and murderer." He snorted and added, "Your wispy ass is clean and I'm a white guy. Shit, we could walk circles around the law and they'd never suspect us."
"That's the whole point, bruh. By the way, I'm total now, Lex. You should be, too. We gotta get outta the game."
"If you don't mind me saying, Fatso paid me a hundred large, Ice. You cool with that?"
I couldn't help but chuckle at him. "I got a quarter for this job. I'll drop you twenty-five for the hit on Abe. That's what; your third takeout?"
"Fifth. I did two others in back-to-back jobs after you bounced on me. I woulda been outta the game now if you hadn't come back. Primaries cain't be greedy, bruh. For a six like me, that ain't good business. I had to wait for them to quit sniffing around for extras before I could leave the scenes. Hell, I ended up popping both of them after hitting the drop points. Unreliable, ya know."
I reached over, resting a hand on the big man's shoulder. "Don't do me, Lex. You know I got your back."
He looked at me and smiled. "Ice, I'd pop myself first. You'da only cat who's ever been straight with me. Got me paid in six digits, time and time again, too. Bruh, I'm paid enough to get fat for the next fifty. Ya feel me?"
I sighed and looked over at Abe's battered body. He was still out, which probably wasn't a good thing. For all I know, he could be dead. Humph. It ain't like really I gave a damn.
I nodded my head and said, "Big Man, let's hit the drop and we can get fat together for the next fifty. How bout' that?"
"Gravy, baby."
***
A minute later, Lex came back inside with two paper bags, one from his van and the other from my trunk. Both held our clothes, wallets, and toiletries. I hit the shower first.
It felt good to rinse off the stress. Two dead pinchers were still dead men, and the loss of life always affected me. I didn't shed any tears for them, but hey, I'm not that cold. Somebody was gonna miss those guys. Trouble is; dumb is terminal, and those two bastards were infested with the disease. At first, I thought Abe might have been stupid. He wasn't, though. Him being dead, or close to it, was proof enough. That job had been too easy to die fro…
"Wait a minute. Easy?"
I finished my shower and dressed as fast as I could. Then I ran down the hall and found Lex standing in the frame of the back door. "Lex, we been set up!"
He turned around, looking at me with a confused expression.
I asked, "Bruh, why did I have to train two primaries on a job rookies could do by themselves? Hell, they coulda got the safe combo from Biddy. And why limit the insurance claim to those particular jewels and not the whole cache in the damn safe?"
Lex shook his head at me. He didn't know and I could tell that he'd been thinking about it, too. He said, "I left my smokes on the window sill. Let me take a shower and think on it. Try to figger it out why while I'm gone, Ice. This ain't good for us, baby boy."
After checking Slip's pulse and finding him still alive, I repacked his backpack. Then I went down to the curb and whistled to the dope man's runners. They walked over without a care in the world, not once looking around or over their shoulders. This block was safe and they owned it.
"Wassup, Ice?" The taller one asked.
"Torch the car and van. Don't do it here, though. Tell Onyx I got five for the favor and a fence's name on the rebound."
The other kid shook his head. "Ice, we can't leave the block. You know how Onyx rolls. Keep it tight."
I looked at the kid. He couldn't have been more than fifteen years old. Hell, in this hood, you either got in the game or got run over by it. I said, "Get him the message. He'll do me right. Tell him I need a driver in about fifteen minutes, too."
The tall kid said, "How come you don't work with Onyx no more? He talks you up all the time, Ice."
I looked at the kid sadly. He probably felt invincible. He wasn't. He would get hit by thug warfare today, tomorrow, or next week. Maybe with his last breath he would figure out why I didn't run for Onyx anymore. I just paid my taxes when I did business in his set and tried hard to stay out of his way. For a dope man, Onyx was fair, but killing came easy for him. He used to tell me, "Ice, killin' is like Tylenol. With no mo' worries, no mo' headaches. See what I'm sayin'?"
I did see.
I said, "Anyway, holla at the man for me. Tell him to get a new throwaway and call me next week."
When the kids left, I went back inside. Lex was just pulling his shirt on and tucking it in. Standing over Slip, he pointed at the marble on the floor. "Pick it up, Ice."
I could have run out the back door at that point. That marble scared the hell out of me. When I had repacked Slip's backpack, I never even looked down at it, avoiding it like the plague, but now my eyes were drawn to it. There it was, just sitting there, looking up at me, blinking. Blink … blink.
"It doesn't seem so scary anymore, Lex." My voice was small, even to my ears.
"Yeah, well, good. Just get the damn thing and let's make that call."
I looked up at him and then back at the marble. Somehow, I knew I could safely pick it up. Hopefully, it wouldn't do that tractor-beam thing to my mind again. That shit had sucked pretty bad. It was like mind-control or something.
"Do it, Ice. We ain't got all day."
"Okay!" I walked over, confident steps lying like a champ, bent over and picked the damn thing up. Raising it to eye level, meeting its gaze, the eye closed and remained that way. "See? No problem." I put it in the change pocket of my jeans and zipped my hoody.
Lex passed me his cell after pressing send, which meant I was gonna be live in a second or two.
"Lex!" Fatso was shouting already.
"It's Iceman. Look, your trainees didn't work out. Abe's still warm and I'll be dropping him somewhere safe. I'll call you when I do. He'll have the jewels on him, too. Everything that was in the safe and the stuff we went for. After that, my game is over."
"I want everything!"
I couldn't believe this guy. "Fatso, how many times do I have to tell you, do-not-raise-your-voice-at-me! You ain't shit and never have been. You popped Robby and Pete, you fat shit. You did it because you were greedy and got scared that they were gonna do you first."
Fatso laughed at me and said, "Boy, Robby and Pete were in the same game you're in right now. Let's hope you're sharper than your boy was. And
for the record, I didn't pop them. Call me when you have my shit." Dial tone.
He hung up at the right time. I was about to lose my mind over that boy shit. I gave Lex his cell and said, "Our ride should be here any second now."
"Where to after this?"
The big man wanted out and a safe place to go. I had one and he was welcome to it. "Fairbanks."
Lex's eyes widened and his mouth hung open. "Alaska? Are you shittin' me?"
"Nope." Then we heard squealing brakes. "Ride's here."
***
Thirty minutes later, we were at Lincoln Square Mall in Matteson, about forty-five minutes away from Fatso's place in Hyde Park. Onyx's driver got out and walked to another car that had followed us. He hadn't said a word during the whole drive, except, "Where to?"
After he left, I called Fatso. "A red Plymouth Reliant parked outside of Macy's at Lincoln Mall in Matteson. By the way, you did pop Robby and Pete."
"Ice, don't fuck this up. Leave everything with Slip. Don't be like Robby, son. Don't be like that. Okay? Make sure I have everything."
I looked across the back seat at Lex. He turned away after a moment, looking out at the sparse parking lot. A few people had come to work at the mall, preparing for a day of business. Ours was just about over, but then we'd be running. Had to. After a messy job, one had to get real clear, real fast.
I said to Fatso, "One day, you're gonna tell me what happened to Robby's body. I mean that, Fatso. As for Abe, give me one reason I shouldn't drill his ass. He scooped the safe after I told him not to. I even had to bust his ass about it. Still, he scooped it. Now I'm all dirty. Primaries don't overstep the mark, Fatso. Where'd you get these two dummies anyway?"
"Fuck them. They're throwaways at best. Just leave the ice, Ice. All of it."
I could feel the cats-eye warming in my pocket. It was comforting, enthralling even. I said, "You got it."
After the call, me and Lex caught a taxi to my place in Ottawa. That was another one-hour ride. When we got there, I grabbed my runaway bag and we jumped in my car, on our way to his place in Kankakee. Ninety minutes this time.
Lex grabbed his runaway bag and we dumped our heaters in the Kankakee River when we locked-up his motorcycle shed. Lex was a biker, just as I had expected. He had a color-flagged, leather jacket with a 1% patch on it, too. No wonder dude was intimate with thugging. Yeah, Lex was a doer all the way. Either for his biker gang or in the pinch game, my six was not the one the fuck with.
Less than ten minutes later, we were rolling south again. By the time we got to Bloomington, Illinois two hours later, we had ignored two calls from Fatso. Then we headed west to St. Louis. There, we caught a flight out. That night, we caught the last flight out of Seattle. Several hours later, we were in Fairbanks.
Talk about cold, Alaska was hell's freezer. It bit into my flesh like a beast and hurt like a mofo. Of course, neither of us had coats on, which certainly didn't help, and we had to go out to the curb to catch a taxi to my real home.
I lit a fire upon arrival while Lex looked around the place. After I pulled the covers off the furniture, I dusted where it really needed it. This was going to be home for the foreseeable future, and well, we had to be comfortable.
From the kitchen, Lex said, "Ice, you do know you ain't got no food in here, right?"
I laughed and said, "Last time I was here had to be five months ago. So, uh, if you find food that ain't in a can, I wouldn't recommend eating it anyway." I went to the coat rack and pulled some keys off one of the hooks. "Here." I tossed them to him. "There's a new Suburban in the garage. The store's two blocks down, take a right, and go two traffic lights. You need some cash?"
"I'm good. They got fast food up here in the fuckin' wilderness? Dude, we ain't in Fairbanks, either. You got us an hour out. Hell, probably nothin' but bears and us out here. And how does a black man find a log-fuckin'-house in Alaska and call this shit home? Is that why you go by Iceman?"
I never laughed so hard in my life. Lex was dead serious, too. He looked pissed and I could hear his stomach growling across the room. "I got my name from being a big fan of George Gervin. He was a…"
"NBA Hall of Famer. Played with San Antonio most of his career. Yeah-yeah. Shit. The name fits, asshole. Gervin didn't give a damn about passing to his teammates and you don't give a damn about my comfort, you shit. I'll be back!"
"The battery-jumper is right inside the garage access door to your left," I shouted when he walked away.
After making the beds in two of the three bedrooms, I sat on the bear rug in front of the warm fireplace. I was cool now and my mind was at ease. And home? Well, it just kind of makes you feel safe. I don't know how Lex was going be able to deal with this environment, but he was welcome to it. The only other place I had to get away was in Montreal. Even if I wanted to go there, I had to get here first. All of my fake papers, passports, driver's licenses' – all of that stuff is here. But now, I was comfortable.
Then I felt it again.
The enthralling mood-shift took me by surprise. Hell, I'd forgotten.
I pulled the cats-eye out of my pocket and looked into it. It was blinking rapidly now.
"What?"
Ii didn't respond, of course. If it had, my brains probably would have started oozing out of my ears.
I noticed that the eye wasn't looking at me. It was going around like an emergency light, but not continuously spinning. It was stopping and spinning back the other way, after pausing in several directions. Talk about spooky. It looked scared.
But I wasn't.
Come to think of it, I liked the eyeball thingy. It was cool, in a freaky kind of way. Like a friend or something. I don't really know why I kept it. It had to be the reason Fatso kept calling Lex's phone. Since I'd turned my off and left it that way, he really had no other way to contact us. Nevertheless, looking at the eyeball thingy, I could easily see why someone would want it back.
Fuck em'. It was mine now. Getting it back was going to cost. After putting me and Lex in a shit job with dummies, they should have paid us way more. Dummies could cost you your life, and Fatso knew me better than that. Me and Lex used to pinch like it's cool for him. Fatso kept the cash heavy and we did tight work for him. No evidence, no trails, and no drama.
The thingy stopped blinking, spinning, and looked directly at me. The damn thing grew two sizes and glowed like the damn sun, too. "She's here."
I freaked all the way out. The damn thing spoke!
Still not smart enough to drop the thingy, I got to my feet and ran to the hall closet. I pulled out a shotgun and a .44 magnum. I also put a .380 in my back pocket. Why? I don't know. But when Thingy echoed "She's here," like a damn ghost, ringing in my head and shit, I had to do something.
I heard the Suburban pull into the garage. Humph. It was only Lex. Poor Thingy probably got nervous because it hadn't seen the big man when it woke up. I put the .44 in my waistband and shouldered the shotgun. Walking toward the back door, I quickly put thingy in my deep pocket. It was too big for the change pocket, now, and stuck out anyway, but I didn't want Lex to scare it worse than it already was.
When I opened the door for Lex, he came flying through, backwards. Luckily, I had stepped aside. If not, both of us would have landed in the living room. When I turned my head back toward the opened door, there stood five people. They were wearing hooded black robes down to their ankles with gold ropes tied around their waists. Talk about freaky spooky, they looked like druids and shit.
They parted and Fatso came toward me on a dead run. I quickly backed away and slammed the door shut. I drew my pistol and tossed the shotgun to Lex, who had stood up, looking like he was going to kill me.
Lex racked the slide on the shotgun. "Greedy ain't ever been you, Ice! You done fucked me, boy!"
I started to reply, but the door blasted off its hinges, sailing by me. I turned and quickly put three rounds into Fatso before diving into the hallway. I heard two blasts from the shotgun, too. With my three and Lex's tw
o, Fatso should be down in pieces.
Nope.
When looked back, I saw him slap the shotgun out of Lex's hands and punch right through his chest. I couldn't believe it. Lex had to be six-five, two-seventy, but dude was all see through and Fatso's fist dangled out of Lex's back.
"What the hell?"
I rolled onto my back and pumped the remaining three rounds of the .44 into Fatso's head. Now I had done some damage. Dude's shit looked bad. He wobbled around a little and I got a rifle out of the closet. Two 30.06 rounds later, Fatso didn't have a head anymore and was dead beside Lex. Right on my nice fucking rug!
I had to kill that damn bear and pay a taxidermist to hook it up. Now I would have to go out and find another damn Yogi to chill with. Shit.
"Mr. Iceman, you have something that belongs to me. In ways you could never understand, I and my followers are mystically drawn to the item, never not knowing where it is. Now, tell me; did you see into the stone?"
It was Biddy. She must have been one of those hooded freaks I saw in the backyard. I dove around the corner with the rifle and let off two rounds. Hitting nothing, I rolled and grabbed up the shotgun. It had four more shots and I wanted that against the freaky hooded crew. I came up on my knees, aiming.
"Do not fire again, Mr. Iceman."
Biddy had dropped her hood and stood in my dining room with her … people? Whatever. They were behind her, still with their hoods on.
Looking at me with crazy blackened eyes, no whites, she said, "How much for The Eye, Mr. Iceman."
Humph. That was easy. I opened my mouth to say one mill, but "mine" came out instead.
Just like her, I wasn't prepared for it either. Thingy had pulled that mind control shit on me again. But this time, I liked it. Thingy was mine. All mine.
"Mr. Iceman, it has no control over you. Simply close your eyes and pass it to me. A man like you, used to taking for personal gain, well, you have no control over your desires at this point. We can do it that way, or you can simply drop your pants and step out of them. There is no requirement for further violence. Although, I must admit, a mere man killing a Goblin is quite remarkable. Your ammunition must have been …"
Seven Deadly Sins Page 6
