Animal (43 page)

“Excuse y’all,” Frankie said with an attitude.

“My bad, li’l mama,” one of the dudes said, looking up at her.

“Thank you,” Frankie said, and descended the last few steps. As she passed she felt the dude grab her ass.

“Soft as cotton,” he laughed.

Frankie didn’t even reply, she just punched the dude in his face. He tried to get up, and she rocked him twice more. His friend grabbed her from behind and locked her arms over her head in a full nelson. She struggled, but the dude was too strong. Frankie watched in horror as Bess stepped in front of her and extended a long box cutter.

“You punk bitch, you couldn’t see in a fair one!” Frankie shouted.

“Guess we’ll never know, will we?” Bess laid the box cutter against Frankie’s throat. “Maybe this will teach you that it ain’t where you’re from, it’s where you’re at.” She ripped the blade across Frankie’s neck.

Dena came out of the corner store just in time to see Bess and the others scatter from in front of the building. She shook her head, wondering what kind of fuckery the two stoop rats had stirred up. When she reached her building she found out.

“Oh my God!” Dena dropped the bag of groceries she had been carrying. Frankie lay on the stoop, clutching at her neck and gasping for air. “No, no, no, no!” She rushed to Frankie’s side. “Why’d you have to be so hardheaded, Frankie? I’ve been trying to tell you they were gonna get at you, but you never had time to listen to me,” she sobbed.

“Why they do this to me?” Frankie croaked. She was now bleeding from her mouth too.

“Don’t talk! It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna get you some help.” Dena placed her hands over Frankie’s throat to try to stop the bleeding. “Somebody help! Help us!” Dena roared, but no one stirred. She knelt on the stoop next to her lover, wailing as she was forced to helplessly watch Frankie bleed out onto the stairs.

FORTY-FIVE

A
LONZO HAD EXPECTED
L
AKIM TO DRIVE BACK
to the projects where King held council, but instead, he jumped on the FDR and headed downtown. He’d tried quizzing his brother about the big meeting, but all he could get out of him was “King will explain when we get there.” Generally, Lakim couldn’t wait to boast on whatever plans they had brewing, but he was tightlipped about this one, which immediately raised Alonzo’s antennas. He and Lakim had come from the same womb, so the thought of his brother betraying him never entered his mind, but he didn’t like going into situations blindly, no matter who was leading him.

Their journey ended in a housing project on the Lower East Side, where they parked and headed inside the projects. Alonzo wasn’t familiar with that particular project, but he could tell that Lakim had been there more than a few times by the way he expertly navigated the maze. The brothers ventured deeper into the heart of the projects to a playground. There were a group of men loitering on the playground, some he recognized and
some he didn’t. Off to the side he spotted Ashanti. When they made eye contact, Ashanti gave Alonzo a look that he didn’t like. King James stood off to the side speaking to a Spanish cat. When he noticed Lakim and Alonzo enter the park, he excused himself and moved to intercept them.

“Peace, peace.” King gave Lakim dap, then Alonzo.

“What’s good, King?” Alonzo greeted him.

“You tell me. We ain’t seen too much of you lately,” King said.

Alonzo shrugged. “I been around, just lying low like you told us to.”

“So I’ve noticed. I guess it ain’t been too hard for you to get MIA since you’ve been so preoccupied lately, huh?”

Alonzo was thrown by the question. “What do you mean by that?” he asked King, but his eyes involuntarily cut to Ashanti who had just joined them.

“I’m talking about your shorty. You’ve been kicking it heavy with the joint from Brick City, haven’t you?”

Alonzo was both relieved and surprised. “How’d you know?”

King smirked. “C’mon, God. You know I make it a point to know what my peoples are up to at
all
times.”

“So what’s up? I know you didn’t call me all the way down here to ask me about my love life. What’re we doing here, and what’s up with all them Germans?” Alonzo was speaking of the Spanish cats who were out there with them.

“We’re holding a war council, what does it look like?” King motioned to the hardened faces congregating around them. “It seems as if things have heated up unexpectedly. Somebody hit Shai Clark’s card game last night. You heard about that?” King stared at Alonzo as if he could see directly into his soul.

Alonzo hesitated. “Yeah, I heard about it.”

“The whole hood is talking about it. These cats had to be some real cowboys or real stupid to disrespect Shai so blatantly. Now, I’d love for our team to take the credit for something so brazen, but I know none of my young boys would jump out the window like that, especially without my approval . . . would they?”

Alonzo opened his mouth to say something, but King James stopped him with a raised finger.

“Before you answer,” King James continued, “just know that loyalty and honesty are all I’ve ever asked or expected in exchange for eating off my plate.”

Alonzo started to gamble on a lie, but when he saw the hurt look in King’s eyes he couldn’t bring himself to do it. “I took the spot,” he confessed.

King shook his head as Alonzo confirmed what he already knew. “Zo, are you fucking stupid? If I was able to find out you were there, how many other muthafuckas do you think placed you at the scene? Do you know what Shai Clark is gonna do to you if he finds out you were there?”

“Then he’s gonna have to do it to both of us, because I was there too.” Ashanti stepped forward.

King looked at the two of them as if they had both lost their minds. “It’s a fucking mutiny.” He threw his hands up in frustration. “I hear there were three of you. Who was the other cat?”

“Just some nigga I was locked up with,” Alonzo lied. King didn’t look like he believed him, but that was the story he intended to stick to.

“Who’s to say this clown y’all rode out with decides to start running his mouth?” King asked.

“Nah, niggaz like him don’t break,” Ashanti assured him.

“You willing to bet your life on it?”

“Absolutely,” Ashanti said without hesitation.

“Good, because you just did. I won’t have nobody’s careless-ass antics fucking up my grove, Ashanti, feel me?”

“Yeah,” Ashanti nodded. He didn’t miss the threat in King’s tone.

“Fuck it, we can’t do much about it now other than damage control. It’s only a matter of time before Shai puts this together . . . if he hasn’t already, so the first thing we need to do is get dumb and dumber out of his reach.” He pointed at Alonzo and Ashanti respectively.

“I got a bitch who stays down in Philly that they can crash with for a week or so until we sort this out,” Lakim offered.

“Bet, get on it,” King told him.

“Wait a second. I don’t remember agreeing to go nowhere. If Shai wanna get it on, then I’m gonna stay right here. I ain’t no coward.”

“Zo, we ain’t trying to
son
you, but this is for your own good. You a working dude now, Zo, and instead of encouraging you to keep at that, I let you get caught up in this bullshit,” Lakim said sadly. “This isn’t a request, baby bro.” Lakim placed his hand on Alonzo’s shoulder.

“La, I love you for wanting to look out for me, but I’m not the same kid brother you used to send to stay with relatives whenever you went to war in the streets. I carry my own weight.”

“Zo, I know you’re a tough nut, but I’m not sure if you’re built for where this is about to go.”

Alonzo looked his brother dead in the eyes and spoke slowly and clearly so that there was no misunderstanding. “I’m built
for more than even you understand, big bro. I wasn’t
given
the name Zo-Pound; I earned it. Thanks for the ride down, but I’ll take the train back to Harlem.” He walked off.

Ashanti stood there looking confused. He wasn’t sure if he should follow Alonzo or stay with King and Lakim. He looked at King with questioning eyes.

“You know damn well you wanna follow him, so go ahead,” King told him. He watched as Ashanti jogged off to catch up with Alonzo. They were promising soldiers and would make more promising generals but only when they outgrew the ignorance of youth.

“You believe that shit about the third dude being some nigga Zo was locked up with?” Lakim asked King once Alonzo and Ashanti had gone.

“Hell, no,” King said.

“Who do you think it was?”

King took a long pause. “I have a theory, but I hope I’m wrong.”

FORTY-SIX

I
F THERE HAD EVER BEEN A SHADOW
of a doubt in Animal’s mind as to what Shai’s true intentions were, seeing the massive scrap yard looming in the distance removed it. Before he even approached the gates he could smell the stench of death reeking from the place. Shai meant to make the yard Animal’s final resting place, and even knowing this didn’t stop him from coming.

His cell phone vibrated on the center console. Animal looked at the caller ID and hit ignore. Ashanti and Zo had been taking turns blowing his phone up all day, but he hadn’t answered any of their calls. The two young men had pledged their loyalties to Animal and their lives to his cause. For as noble as their selfless acts had been, Animal didn’t fool himself. It was a fool’s mission that he was on, and the chances of survival were slim to none. They were good soldiers but too young to die, so he left them and made
other
arrangements.

Animal pulled up to the high gate and flashed the headlights on the rental twice, as he had been instructed to. A few seconds
passed, then Animal heard the engine that powered the automatic gate roar to life. Gravel crunched under the tires of the rental as Animal drove slowly into the yard. Though it was nearly pitch-black, he could see figures moving around in the shadows. There had to be at least a dozen of them, give or take. He absently rubbed the grip of one of the Pretty Bitches for comfort. Behind him the automatic gate rolled closed, letting him know he had reached the point of no return.

Every few yards Animal would see the flick of a flashlight, letting him know which way to go. By the time he had navigated the twists and turns of the scrap yard, he was so disoriented that he doubted he could find his way back out without some assistance. After a while, the rows of cars opened up into a clearing that was brightly lit by the headlights of the ring of cars that formed a horseshoe around it. Sitting tied to a chair in the middle of the ring of light, like a shining angel of mercy, was the woman he had come to rescue . . . Gucci.

Animal threw the car in park so quick that it jerked forward. Ignoring the fact that he was surrounded by armed men who all wanted him dead, he rushed to Gucci’s side. “Baby, are you okay? They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

Gucci looked up and strained her eyes to focus. “Tayshawn, is that you? You shouldn’t have came. They’re gonna kill you.”

“Don’t worry about none of that shit, ma. I’m gonna make sure you get outta here, I promise.”

“Never have a saw a more touching scene.” Shai stepped forward from the shadows. Instead of his usual business suit, he was dressed in jeans and Timberlands with a dark colored hoodie. “The tortured lover flies headfirst into danger to rescue his lady.” He clapped his hands. “Bravo!”

Animal looked up at Shai with rage in his eyes. “You piece of shit,” he whipped one of his Pretty Bitches out and aimed it at Shai. “I should blow your brains out for touching what’s mine.”

“You’re welcomed to try if you like,” Shai said coolly. Suddenly, a dozen infrared lights winked to life all around them. There were more beams than Animal could count, and they were all trained on Gucci’s head like a crown of cherries. “But I wouldn’t if I were you.”

Animal kept the gun aimed at Shai. He wanted to shoot him so bad that his finger trembled on the trigger. One shot and his nemesis would finally be dead, but so would Gucci. Reluctantly, Animal lowered his weapon.

“Good boy.” Shai smiled. “Disarm this fool before he gets any big ideas,” he said over his shoulder.

Swann stepped from the darkness. His face was a mass of bruises and cuts from the beating Animal had put on him, but the smirk on his face remained intact. He took both guns from Animal, then checked him for any more concealed weapons. When he was sure that Animal wasn’t hiding anything else he leaned in and whispered, “When Shai gives me the order to clip you, I ain’t gonna be as merciful as I was with Tech. I’m gonna kill you slow . . .
real
slow.” Swann punched Animal in the stomach, doubling him over and dropped him when he brought both of the Pretty Bitches down on the back of his head.

Animal saw the most beautiful stars before the ground slamming into his face dissipated his vision. The metallic taste of blood mixed with dirt filled his mouth. He braced his fist against the ground and pushed himself up, but the moment he tried to stand he was overcome with a wave of dizziness, so the best he could manage was a kneeling position. He heard the
crush of gravel under a boot and looked up expecting to see Swann, but it was Shai.