Animal 2 (24 page)

“I don't like that dude . . .” Cain chimed in.

“. . . never did,” Abel added.

Ashanti knew the twins were upset when they started finishing each other's sentences, as if they were one person instead of two. “I ain't stunting Lakim. His bark is worse than his bite.”

“Well, all I know how to do is bite . . .” Cain said.

“. . . Fuck barking,” Abel continued.

The three of them walked to the twenty-four-hour deli and placed their sandwich orders and got some junk food. Cain told the man behind the glass to add two forties of Old English to their items.

“Yo, I swear I think y'all are the only two niggaz I know who still drink fucking forties,” Ashanti told the twins.

“You bugging, this here is the food of the gods.” Abel put the bottle to his lips to take a swig, but Cain stopped him.

“Ain't you got no etiquette?” Cain asked his brother. “This is for the brothers who ain't here.” He poured some of the beer out onto the curb before taking a sip.

“Word up.” Abel tipped his forty, spilling beer before taking several deep gulps. He then extended the bottle to Ashanti.

“I'm good,” Ashanti told him.

“Stop acting like I'm offering you crack. It's just a lil' drink,” Abel said.

“For the fallen comrades,” Cain added.

“A'ight.” Ashanti accepted the bottle. “This is for Shorty.” He poured a few splashes out. “Rest in peace, lil' homie.” He turned the forty to his lips and drank deeply.

Ashanti, Cain, and Abel slow strolled back toward the projects, passing the beers back and forth. Ashanti, who claimed not to like beer, knocked out half of Abel's forty and was working on Cain's, too. He didn't know if it was the alcohol or exhaustion setting in, but he felt like he was walking on clouds. When he rounded the corner, leading back into the projects, he collided with a kid they called Dub. Dub was a fat black cat, with a face that only a mother could love, but he was working with a few dollars, so chicks overlooked him being facially challenged. Around his neck, he wore a thick chain with diamond letters that spelled out his name. With him was a cute Spanish girl named Sarah who lived in the next building. Dub wasn't from the hood, but he was always over there to see her. Ashanti was about to offer him an apology, but Dub spoke first.

“Damn, watch where you're going, shorty,” Dub said with an attitude. When Ashanti bumped into him, he accidentally
stepped on Dub's brand-new white Nikes and left a scuff across the toe.

“My fault,” Ashanti said.

Dub examined his sneakers and turned his angry face to Ashanti. “I just got these muthafuckas, and now they're ruined.”

“I said my fault. What the fuck do you want me to do, clean them with a toothbrush or something?” Ashanti asked sarcastically.

Dub glared at Ashanti murderously. “You trying to be funny?”

“Let it go, baby. It ain't that serious.” Sarah tugged at Dub's arm. Unlike her boyfriend, she knew who Ashanti was and how he gave it up.

“Word up, listen to your girl, my G,” Ashanti told him. He was buzzing from the beer, but sensing a potential threat, his brain started sobering him up.

“Fuck all that.” Dub pulled away from Sarah. He stood toe-to-toe with Ashanti, whom he had by at least an inch or two and easily one hundred pounds. “What you trying to say?” he pressed Ashanti.

“
Check yourself before you wreck yourself
,” Cain sang in a half-drunken voice.

“What, y'all gonna jump me for your man? I ain't no sucka, I'll scrap with all three of y'all.” Dub started taking his jewelry off and passing it to Sarah to hold.

Cain stood at attention, hand inching toward his gun and ready to end Dub if Ashanti gave the word. Abel had stealthily positioned himself to Dub's left. As if by magic, a retractable baton appeared in his hand. From that angle, he could crack Dub's skull and probably kill him with one swing. It was
moments like these that they had trained for. In battle, they moved as one unit, attacking like a pack of synchronized dogs.

Ashanti saw his pups ready to attack. “Stand down,” he told them. Like a set of bookends, Cain and Abel took two simultaneous steps back. “I'll bang with any nigga, big or small. I got this.” He stared up at Dub defiantly. “You really wanna go there?”

In answer, Dub swung on Ashanti. Ashanti had been expecting it, so he was able to easily duck the blow and rock Dub's flabby stomach with a combination of punches. Dub tried to grab Ashanti and throw his weight on him, but Ashanti slipped the hold and clocked Dub twice in the side of the head. The fat man tripped over his feet and crashed clumsily to the ground, trying to figure out exactly what had just happened. The fight was clearly over, but Ashanti wasn't done.

Ashanti jumped on top of Dub and delivered two punches to his exposed face. “See, you couldn't just leave with your bitch.” He punched Dub in the face again. “You wanted to be a fucking tough guy, but look at you now, pussy!” Ashanti continued to rain on Dub until a blue-and-white police car skidded to a stop at the curb.

“Rollers, nigga. Let's dip!” Abel pulled Ashanti off Dub.

“Hey, stop!” one of the cops yelled, swinging the car door open.

“Fuck you, toy-ass cops!” Cain yelled, and hurled his forty at the patrol car. The bottle smashed against the car's windshield and drenched the cop in malt liquor.

“Come the fuck on!” Abel pulled his brother by the shirt.

Cain stumbled forward, ready to make his great escape when he had a thought. “Let me take care of that for you.” He
snatched Dub's jewelry from Sarah's hands. “Good looking out,” Cain called over his shoulder as he disappeared into the night.

•  •  •

Zo stood on the corner, fishing around in his pocket for change and cursing up a storm. When he'd left the church, he had two very important phone calls to make, with the second one to Porsha to let her know he was OK. When Zo tried to use his cell phone, he realized that the battery was dead. Through pure luck, he had managed to find one of the last functional pay phones in New York City, and he placed his calls.

Porsha was relieved to hear that Zo was safe, but that relief quickly turned to anger when she started asking him to go into detail about his whole ordeal. Zo told her about the police picking him up, but he lied and said it was drug-related. He knew she could smell the lie through the phone. Things took a turn for the ugly when she offered to come pick him up and he declined. It was bad enough that he'd left her hanging in the middle of the night when he was only supposed to be going to the store, but now he was telling her that he wasn't coming back, and the best excuse he could give her was “I'll explain it to you when I see you.” She had hung up the phone on Zo twice already, and he was trying to call her a third time to explain, but he was all out of change.

“Fuck!” Zo kicked the pay phone. He was going to have to work his ass off to make this up to Porsha, but first he needed to make sure he'd remain free long enough to even make the attempt.

The girl he had spared at the motel was returning the favor by trying to put Zo away for the rest of his days, and he didn't
intend to sit by and let that happen. She had to go. Finding her was Zo's biggest problem, but it proved to be far easier than Zo imagined. It was a shot in the dark when he called the precinct, impersonating Detective Brown, telling the half-asleep desk sergeant that he'd misplaced the address for the witness in the Jenkins murder and needed him to have someone pull it from a file on his desk. The sergeant put Zo on hold. The whole time, Zo kept looking up and down the block, thinking they had seen through his ruse and were tracing the call. Every car that passed he thought was an undercover, ready to pounce on him. A minute later, the sergeant came back to the phone and rattled off the girl's information. He was asking the detective how he was feeling after being caught up in the explosion, but Zo had already hung up the phone. The sergeant would likely be fired and, with any luck, brought up on charges when his blunder was discovered, but that wasn't Zo's problem; the girl was.

Her name was Linda Carver, and she lived in an apartment building off 161st Street and the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. The lobby door to her building was locked, but Zo just waited around until someone was coming out and slipped in. Bypassing the elevator, Zo hiked up the eight flights of stairs to her floor. He crept to Linda's door and listened for sounds of movement inside. Zo could hear the television playing softly. He wasn't sure if anyone was awake in the house at that late hour or if they'd just left the TV on, but he had to go in regardless. Time wasn't his friend, and he had to silence the witness before she could bury him.

Getting past the apartment door lock was simple enough for Zo. Breaking and entering had been his thing before he'd started trapping with his brother, and there weren't very many
locks that he couldn't pick. Moving as quietly as he could, Zo turned the knob and slipped inside.

The apartment was dark, but Zo could see the light from the television in the living room. With the 9mm he'd borrowed from Priest clutched in his hand, he crept down the hall and peeked around the corner into the living room. There was an older woman sitting up sleeping on the couch. On her lap was the crossword puzzle she'd been working on when she nodded off. Zo left the woman to her slumber and made his way to the bedroom. The door was ajar, and he could see someone sleeping on the queen-sized bed with her back to him. The glow from the street lamp outside the window illuminated enough of her face for Zo to know it was the girl he'd come to murder.

Zo crept into the bedroom, with his gun aimed at the sleeping girl's back. His heartbeat pounded in his ears so loudly that he found it hard to concentrate. He was no stranger to death or murder, but he had never killed a woman before. It went against his code, but Linda hadn't left him a choice. It was her or him.

When the girl stirred, Zo froze like a roach on the wall. She mumbled something in her sleep, followed by loud snoring. Zo figured he had to hurry up before the girl's snoring woke the old woman up. He retrieved a pillow that had fallen off the bed and placed it over his gun. It would muffle the sound of the blast. Zo angled the gun and the pillow at her head and crept forward, finger tightening on the trigger. He was right on top of her and about to ruin her white sheets when he saw what he had missed when he first entered the room: a baby nestled on the bed next to Linda.

She was a beautiful infant girl, with bright and alert eyes
that were staring right up at Zo. She stared at him curiously, while cooing and making little spit bubbles with her mouth. Zo ignored the little girl and lowered the pillow just above Linda's head so he could deliver the kill shot. He tried not to look at the baby and stayed focused on her mother, but his eyes kept drifting back. Even with him holding the big black gun, she seemed to be more curious about the man in her mommy's room than afraid of him. The child was so innocent, so undeserving of the fate he was about to condemn her to by taking her mother away.

“I can't,” Zo whispered. He knew that if he didn't kill Linda, then it was likely over for him, but he couldn't bring himself to make that little girl an orphan. Before he accepted that kind of mark on his soul, he'd rather take his chances in the courtroom. As silently as he'd entered, Zo exited the apartment. He could only hope that in the future, Linda would give the child the best possible chance for making something of herself, since it was the child she owed her life to.

•  •  •

Zo made hurried steps down Linda's hallway, shaking his head as he thought back to what he'd almost done and why he was in the position to have to do it. “I'm bugging,” Zo said to himself while wiping the gun down with his shirt. When he passed the building's compactor room, he threw the gun down the trash chute. His life was spinning out of control, and he had to restore order to it while he still could. He was going to go to Porsha's and tell her everything. In the morning, he would call the lawyer and see where he stood with the charges the police were trying to slap on him.

Zo walked hurriedly from Linda's building to the corner, where he began trying to hail a taxi.

“What's up, Houdini?” someone called from behind him.

When Zo turned around, something crashed into his face. He fell flat on his ass in the street, dazed and bleeding from the mouth. Stars danced before his eyes, and when he finally got his wits about him, he found himself staring up at Detective Alvarez, holding a nightstick.

“You know, I always pegged you as the smart one of the bunch,” Alvarez began. “But apparently, you're just as fucking stupid as the rest of them. Imagine my surprise when the sergeant calls my partner's phone to tell him that he forgot to give him the zip code with the address he requested. I wouldn't have thought much of it, if it weren't for the fact that I've been at the hospital all night with Brown while he was being treated for a concussion.”

“I don't know what you're talking about. I was just out taking a late-night walk,” Zo told him.

“Horse shit, and you know it.” Alvarez kicked him. He reached down and grabbed Zo by the collar, snatching him to his feet. “You just happen to be taking a walk in the same neighborhood where the witness to your bullshit lives?”

“Man, I don't know nothing about—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Alvarez said, cutting him off. “I've been hearing that G-code shit all night, and it's starting to sound like a broken record. I caught you with your hands in the cookie jar this time, Zo-Pound. I'm willing to bet that when we go upstairs to check on the witness, she'll be just as dead as Rick Jenkins, and I can hang two bodies on you instead of one. You're gonna ride the lightning for this one, homie.”