The Syndicate

by Brick

  “You okay?” I asked when I saw the five bodies lying around.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  I watched as Javon ripped the masks off several of the men. The four-leaf clover tats on their necks told who they were.

  “Fucking Irish,” he spat. “These niggas won’t quit.”

  Just as quickly as it began, it stopped. The streets were quiet. Sirens were in the distance.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked him.

  “Deal with it,” was his response.

  “Yo, boss, you better get down here and look at this,” one of the Thieves said as his chest heaved up and down. “It’s your brother and Inez, fam. This ain’t good.”

  My heart dropped to the ground as Javon and I took off running. Out of all the shit the family had just gone through, to have Cory and Inez snatched away from us was sobering. I was right behind Javon as he ran full sprint to Willowbrook Street where we saw the truck Inez and Cory had driven off in.

  “We found the truck like this,” the guard said.

  There was blood everywhere, but there were no signs of Cory or Inez.

  “The Irish had to take them, fam. All this blood and no sign of them?” the guard said.

  Javon brought both his hands to his head and let out a roar that would have intimidated even the alpha in a pride of lions.

  “Fuck, fuck fuck,” he yelled.

  I knew there was regret mixed with his frustrations. He’d been so angry after fighting with Cory that he hadn’t been thinking clearly. He’d forgotten that he had stepped into a whole other lifestyle. He’d had tunnel vision when he should have been seeing the bigger picture. I could see it in his eyes when he gave me a wild look that he was blaming himself.

  “Boss, you need to get back to the house. Cops near. Get back to the house and let us handle this,” the guard said then looked at me when he realized Javon wasn’t listening. “Get him to the house.”

  “Javon, come on, baby. We gotta go,” I said pulling on his arm.

  “Give me your gun,” the guard said to me.

  I’d forgotten I even had the thing. I tossed him my weapon and Javon’s. Javon grabbed my hand and we hightailed it back to the house. We rushed in to find Jojo, Melissa, and Monty surrounding Navy, who was laid out on the floor. Uncle Snap was at the table holding a bloody white towel to the wound in his shoulder. My eyes watered. Just that fast, I’d forgotten Navy had been shot. I rushed in and kneeled beside him. If we had lost three siblings in one day, I’d need Jesus to help me keep it together.

  “He ain’t bleeding,” Jojo said. “I saw him get hit, but he ain’t bleeding.”

  Javon walked over and kneeled down.

  “That’s because I got on a bullet blocker, you stupid piece of shit,” Naveen croaked out then strained to sit up.

  A sigh of relief swept through all of us.

  “A what?” Melissa asked.

  “It’s a bulletproof fleece,” he said. “Got it when Mama was killed. Ordered it online. Was scared to get gunned down in a drive-by shooting like she did.”

  Only Navy would have been paranoid enough to do such a thing and, in that moment, I was glad he did. Sirens outside the house silenced us all. I rushed over to the couch to push the button so it would go back to being an unassuming sofa. We knew the cops would be inside of the house soon. I looked at Javon wondering how and when we were going to break the news to the rest of them that Cory and Inez were gone and, most likely, dead.

  * * *

  The next few days were hectic. Between police interviews, the media camped out in our neighborhood, and no news of Inez and Cory, the family was a wreck.

  “I’m sorry, Javon, but with that much blood loss, it’s safe to say they’re dead,” Detective Monroe had said one day after the shooting. “Who would do this? What enemies, if any, do you have?”

  “I . . . I don’t know who or why. I don’t know anything other than someone came into our neighborhood and shot it up. I don’t know why,” Javon lied.

  “Yeah, but why would they target you and your siblings?”

  “Why you think they targeted us? Couldn’t we just happened to be caught in the crossfire?”

  Stillwaters scoffed then said, “Yeah fucking right.”

  Detective Monroe smiled. “I’d like to believe that. I want to believe that, but your mother was killed in a drive-by. Your sister, fiancée, or whatever y’all are, got assaulted in the parking deck coming from work. Cory’s and Inez’s bodies are gone and, I can’t say for certain, but I’m sure I saw Jojo over there hanging out with those two members of X-clusive we found dead some days back. So, now see, Javon, I can’t believe your family just got caught up in anything.”

  Javon and the detective stared one another down. “Tell you what,” Javon said, “if you want us to keep talking, do so through our lawyer. We got nothing else to say otherwise.”

  “You sure that’s the route you want to go, son?”

  “I ain’t your son. You want us to talk, call my lawyer.”

  “Told you, Monroe, you can’t be nice to the likes of him,” Stillwaters said.

  Javon shot daggers through Stillwaters with his eyes.

  “We’ll be in touch,” Monroe said then walked out calmly.

  The day after that Javon left Mama’s house at six in the morning and didn’t come back until two the next morning. He didn’t say much. Ate even less. The stress that was on him could be seen with the naked eye. I had no idea what he was doing while he was out until he told me.

  “Can’t find them nowhere, baby. Nowhere. I’ve looked high and low,” he said.

  We were in Mama’s room sitting on her bed. I hadn’t left the house since the shooting. It was safe to say, with so much police presence, the Irish wouldn’t be back anytime soon.

  “I been to that apartment they got in midtown. Praying and hoping they were alive and would show up. Pooled in all my resources and nothing. Can’t find them.”

  “I’m sure the Irish have them . . . their bodies. They want you to come to them on some ‘falling on your sword’ type shit,” Uncle Snap said.

  We hadn’t even realized he was in the doorway. His arm was in a sling and he had that Mason jar close to his chest. Uncle Snap had been trying to get Javon to reach out to the Irish for days now.

  “It’s okay to lose one battle, nephew. But they, Cory and Inez, deserve a decent burial. Mama deserves to hold them again,” Uncle Snap told Javon.

  I wouldn’t let on I agreed with Uncle because, with all the stress Javon was under, he needed me on his side no matter what decision he made. The house had been quiet. There had been no fighting between Navy and Jojo. Everything had been hush-hush.

  “Send word to them that I’d like to meet and get my brother’s and sister’s bodies back,” Javon said. “I’ll lay the guns down if they just let me have their bodies back.”

  Uncle Snap nodded and set out to do what Javon had ordered. Two days later, the Irish responded. Two dead raccoons were sent to Mama’s address with pictures of Cory’s and Inez’s faces taped to them. The raccoons had been shot then sliced down the middle with the guts flayed open. Javon’s eyes didn’t leave that box for a long time. Melissa started crying loudly. Jojo dropped his head then locked himself in his lab in the basement. Navy sat stunned on the couch. Monty had been hiding somewhere only Javon knew and Uncle Snap couldn’t be read. I swallowed back bile at the disrespect shown. My stomach twisted in knots knowing Cory and Inez were dead and that we would never see them again.

  Javon disappeared for two days after that. It had been five days since the shooting. He didn’t call. He didn’t text. Uncle Snap had no idea where he was. I had to step in the role Javon normally filled. Monty came home and told me he had been chilling with the female leader of Rize. I didn’t even question him. Just told him he wasn’t to leave the house, not until Javon got back. I’d never too much believed in God or prayed much, but for two days and two nights, I prayed harder than I ever had. I prayed for my
surviving brothers and sisters. I prayed for Uncle Snap but, most of all, I prayed that God brought Javon back home to me.

  God must have been on stand-by for me. He must have just been waiting on me to reach out because Javon walked in soon after my prayers that last day. As soon as I woke up and realized he was in the room, I jumped from Mama’s bed to his waist. He was dressed in black from head to toe.

  “Oh shit, baby. Don’t do me like that ever again,” I whispered in his ear.

  He held me just as tightly as I held him. “I won’t. I’m sorry,” he said.

  We stood that way for the longest.

  “Where have you been?” I asked.

  His only answer was to put me down. He walked over to the chair by the bay window in Mama’s room and undressed in silence. “How is everyone?” he asked me.

  The hardwood floor was cool underneath my feet as I watched him. “Hanging on,” I said.

  “We have to plan a memorial for Cory and Inez. We can’t find their bodies, but we’ll still send them off in style,” he said.

  He was confusing me. He was way too calm. Something wasn’t right. Once he was only in his boxer briefs, I walked up behind him and laid a gentle hand on his back. “Baby?”

  “I was wrong for how I treated them. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t be so angry,” he said.

  “Javon, where did you go? What did you do?”

  He turned to look at me. “Both of them loved to dance so make sure we get a good DJ who knows how to blend different styles of music. Also, make sure nobody wears black. We’ll celebrate them instead of mourn them. Can’t do another drab funeral so we’ll celebrate.”

  At that point, I knew he wasn’t going to tell me where he had been or what he’d done so I left it alone. When he pulled me into his embrace, I knew I had to trust him. Whatever he did when he was away, it was for the good of the family.

  Later that night, the phone woke me up. Javon had been watching it all night. The TV was on in Mama’s room. BREAKING NEWS flashed across the bottom of the screen on Fox News channel. Something or some group called the IRA had been ambushed outside a popular pub in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Several members had been gunned down. That was after a building known to be the IRA headquarters had been bombed. Javon flipped the channel to the local news station. Fox 5 was reporting another bombing at an Irish pub in Sandy Springs.

  “Hello,” Javon answered.

  I didn’t realize he had the phone on speaker until an old, deadly, and stern voice came through. “It’s done,” was all the voice said on the other end before the line went dead.

  I sat in stunned silence. I didn’t know what Javon had done and how he had enough pull and power to do it, but I had no words. There was an aggressive knock at Mama’s bedroom door.

  “Who is it?” Javon asked.

  “It’s your uncle, li’l nigga,” Uncle Snap answered.

  “Get the door for me,” Javon asked of me.

  I complied, my feet slapping against the cool floor as I made my way to the door. As soon as I opened it, Uncle Snap nodded at me then made a beeline to Javon.

  “Nephew, the phone call I just got . . . You had something to do with this?” he asked Javon.

  Javon stood to his full height and walked over the window to look out. “I tried to be nice, Unc. Tried to do shit with decorum, but they wouldn’t let me be. So I pulled out my ace in the hole. I know people, you and those in the Syndicate, thought I was flying by the seat of my pants on a lot of shit I’d been doing. Granted killing Cormac was a random act of violence; yet, the rules stated I had the right to do that. Still, the Irish gunned for me. And they kept coming.”

  “Rules of the game, nephew,” Uncle Snap said.

  “Rules?” Javon asked then turned around. “Ain’t no damn rules. Always cheat. Always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.”

  Mama’s words rang loudly in the silence of the room as Uncle studied Javon. Clearly he was a changed man. He was hurting. So was I. So was Uncle. We all were.

  “The Irish ain’t shit without the IRA and you went for the jugular? You just started a war that the Syndicate didn’t approve,” Uncle Snap said. There was something in his voice akin to nervousness and apprehension.

  “I don’t need their approval.”

  “Nephew, you do. That’s the way shit works around here.”

  “You’re still operating on old rules and the old system. The Syndicate as you know it will be no more, Unc.”

  “But, Javon, listen—”

  “No, you listen. Ain’t nobody gon’ come in and take my members of my family and I not do shit. They couldn’t even give me their bodies back so I could give them a proper burial.”

  “They don’t ha . . .” Uncle Snap started then caught himself.

  I tilted my head and frowned a bit. Uncle Snap glanced at me. I tried to read him, but he quickly averted his eyes. What the fuck was that about? Was he about to say that the Irish didn’t have Cory and Inez? Or was I tripping? I had to be tripping. Maybe he was about to say something else. Had to have been.

  But before I could say anything, Javon continued. “I asked nicely. Lay down my own sword and those motherfuckers laughed at me. Sent me two dead coons to show the level of disrespect they had for me. I did what I had to do,” he said.

  “Yeah, but how, nephew? How the fuck did you do this?” Uncle Snap asked, pointing at the TV.

  I knew he was referring to the bombings and shootings. Javon was quiet for a few seconds, but it seemed like forever.

  “Some secrets . . . If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you shouldn’t blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.”

  Another famous quote from Mama. I could tell Uncle was offended that, as his right hand, Javon refused to tell him what he had done. Uncle’s face reddened and he sucked his bottom lip in. He backed away from Javon. The look on his face was flat as his eyes narrowed.

  “A’ight, nephew. If that’s how you wanna run the ship,” he said, shaking his head disapprovingly before exiting the room.

  Once we were alone, Javon turned to me. I had my mouth fixed to ask all kinds of questions, but he stopped me with two words: “Trust me.”

  I opened then closed my mouth before nodding. Javon had done something that he couldn’t even reveal to Uncle Snap. That was so telling that it chilled me to the bone.

  Chapter 22

  Javon

  A Week Ago

  “My baby, almost every well-laid plan starts with good intentions. Sometimes, it just goes south if you are weak of mind and if the universe just deems it not meant to be. You might mean well and end up doing wrong. It happens, and you can’t be mad about it or hurt about it for long. That never solves the wrongs that were done. One day you’ll understand that and you’ll see that you can’t be everything for everyone, baby boy. I just pray if that day comes it doesn’t break ya,” I heard in my dreams.

  A light tap on my shoulder woke me from my dream of me and Mama sitting on her back porch shucking peas. I was about twelve then and had gotten in trouble for fighting some kid for Cory. My baby brother was being bullied for a bike and the kid tried to beat his ass and take it. When I found that out, I went after the kid and almost cracked his head in. I later learned that my sticking up for Cory was in the wrong.

  Cory had taken the kid’s bike and he just wanted it back. Funny thing with that though, the other, flip side to it was that Cory had taken the bike because the kid he stole it from had taken it from his little sister and Cory was just protecting and defending the girl. So, long story short, I learned that day that in Cory’s actions, he had good intentions, he just went about them the wrong way and dragged me into it. That was always how it was between Cory and me. It seemed that that never was going to change. Well, it had now.

  Thanking the stewardess for waking me, I shifted in my seat, and opened the bottle of water given to me to take a deep swig from it; then I glanced out the window of my plane to see the cityscape of N
ew York City. I had the weight of the world, namely my family, on my shoulders and the pain in my knuckles was proof of that. Rubbing them I listened to the words of the woman who adopted me as a means of saving me from my fate, only to damn me in it later in life. I shouldn’t have gone at my brother like I did.

  Never should have laid hands on him and treated him like the stranger I thought him to be, but I did. I had regret over that the moment I kicked him and Inez out. I had remorse now that I had lost him and my little sister. In that moment, at that time, I felt like there was nothing for me to do with them both. They were killing each other just to succumb to drugs. The shit was baffling to me. What hurt worse was that they felt ignored and unsupported by me as well. I thought I had given my all to every single one of my siblings, while trying to grow in my relationship with Shanelle.

  I never thought the day I chose to shift my love for her from a sibling to one of romantic investment that it would flip my whole family upside down. Had I really been that selfish in that regard, to ignore them and stunt my siblings’ connections with one another? I really didn’t know. All I knew now was, after searching through Atlanta and having connects searching around every nook and cranny, I came up empty in finding Cory’s and Inez’s bodies. That reality broke me to the core. It had me extending my PTO into vacation time at work and had me on a plane to New York City.

  The shooting had jeopardized the family and I needed to rectify it by any way possible. Tucking Mama’s journal in the front of my jacket, I sullenly walked through the airport with my lone Forty Thief as my security behind me until I saw a familiar face.

  “Welcome to NYC friend. I’m here with whatever you need,” Lucky said in his Bronx accent. “I’m deeply sorry for your family’s loss.”

  Gripping him in a quick warrior handshake, he led me to a waiting chauffeured car. “I appreciate it,” was all I said as we drove away.