Holy Death (16 page)

That scream, tho. Piercing. A woman. Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus.

*

D
idn’t matter what the fat motherfucker had to say. Like he was in charge? Like he was going to be the one lay down the law? Fuck Lo-Wider. And fuck DeVaughn Rose. The Mob was doing DeVaughn a favor, not the other way around. A BGM kills Lafitte, that’s some righteous shit. Put DeVaughn in his place. Old man. Couldn’t clean up his own trash.

So YP climbed out of the Armada—seriously? Could’ve had an Escalade. Could’ve had a Lexus. Motherfucker picked a
Nissan
?—and was going to do some damage to somebody somehow. Didn’t matter if Lafitte was here or not. They knew this was his people’s house. Step-people, anyway. Hurting them meant hurting Lafitte. It went without saying. Unless Lafitte already did them himself. I mean, motherfucker already killed his own
wife
today. But seriously, she was a crazy bitch, what YP heard, so she didn’t count. Crazy bitch wife ain’t the same as your people, even your step-people.

YP took a peek for dogs through the slats. Some neighbor dogs yapping, sure, growling, but not in the backyard he was about to go in. Call it luck, call it God. Call it something. The gate was locked. Okay. Pulled himself up, pulled himself over, easy. Nothing much back here. Deck furniture, Weber grill. Few pots with tomato plants, hot peppers. YP took out his blade. Badass. Folding knife, black, titanium, stumpy but serrated. He’d done some damage to motherfuckers with his little blade. Or one motherfucker, and then this dog had barked at him, someone’s pit. Fuck that. One less pitbull in the world, he did that bit-to-shit hound a favor.

Flat against the back wall of the house. First window he came to, sneaked a look. Right? It was what he expected—garage was half boxes, half some sort of guest room. He moved on. Next window. Kitchen. Empty, but a little TV was on. A sliding glass door was next, also into the kitchen. He tried the handle and it slid right open. Made a bad screeching noise, so he slowed it down, eased it along at glacier speed. Felt like it, but glaciers, man, that was some real slow shit right there. Glaciers could pulverize mammoths, houses, all kinds of shit. And they were melting, which would fuck things up even more. He should name his blade “Glacier.” And he should keep it in the freezer until he was ready to use it.

The thing about YP, he was book smart. He liked science. He liked history. But, goddamn, he didn’t like the other kids who liked that shit. So he played his part. Loyal banger, even if he was taking classes at the community college in secret. A couple at a time, paying cash. As far as his mom knew, it was scholarship. Smart wasn’t the problem at all. Being dissed for being smart was the problem.

YP. “Young Psychopath.” Bored and brilliant. Bad combo. He liked to hurt people. He liked to show he was smarter than them. He knew how to hide in plain sight and play white people games and also hide in baggy jeans and boxers and play black people games. Two lives. Like Batman.

Inside the kitchen, he didn’t bother closing the glass door. The cold air from the house rushed out the back and vaporized and left YP feeling clammy. But he hardened himself to the fear and nausea and kept on. He was hunting. It was a motherfucking rush. Let the fat fucker outside do it DeVaughn’s way. Black man seeking revenge shouldn’t be wearing a fine suit like DeVaughn’s if he was afraid to get it dirty. Should only be wearing a suit like DeVaughn’s if he played for the NFL or if he preached in church. YP would carve up this Lafitte and send DeVaughn some pics from his phone. Dead dead dead. Now pay up and go back to your card games.

Poker bored YP. Too easy.

The house was quiet. There was a TV on the counter on, but muted. And wouldn’t you know it, there was some breaking news: a plane crash on one side of the screen, and a reporter on the other standing outside a hospital, it looked like, in Mobile. Big news day. He walked lightly. He had spent hours and hours walking around at night at home, learning how to make himself a ninja in Jordans. How to anticipate creaking boards, squeaky shoes, sticky linoleum. Took weeks and weeks, but he got to the point he could get the tip of his blade a millimeter from the eye of whatever piece of shit was passed out in his mother’s bed without them ever knowing. If he had wanted to, he could’ve snuffed out every one of them useless, leaching bullshit wannabes. It was only his mother’s happiness kept him from doing so. Maybe it was the wrong way to be happy, getting used and abused the way she did. But everyone had a different happy, and he’d learned this was hers. But it still made him feel good to know that if he wanted to, lights out.

“The Glacier” in the eye, and that was that.

Lots of framed photos on the walls of the hallways. Spic family portraits, but mostly a small woman with flyaway hair and wild eyes, and a dark-toned man with a slick pomp and a heavy mustache. Tired eyes. Looked thirty years out of style. Then the den. Dark except for some candles burning in the far corner. Those Saint candles. And skulls and shit. Voodoo.

Bullshit, all of it. YP knew better. He was all about reason. He was an atheist. As long as his mom and his friends didn’t know, he was cool. Made it a lot easier to explain why he was wired the way he was. Same with other psychopaths. He’d read tons about them, the serial killers, the dictators, the cult leaders. YP made more sense when he put himself among their ranks.

Some chirping, chattering, coming from the next hallway. Was it a bird? Canary? He thought it might be. No, no, it was a person. A whistle here and there, a little sing-song. But in-between were words. Not English. Spanish. He knew a little Spanish. Had to if you were dealing with drugs. Had to go to the source for better prices, so he’d learned enough to do deals. Nothing this voice said, high and chirpy, made much sense. Things like, “My grandson, I never knew you,” and “Sweet boy, may the Holy Death guide your father back to you one day,” and even some singing, like, “We drank a toast to innocence, we drank a toast to time.” A slight echo, her voice bouncing off tile.

Yeah, no bird. It was the crazy-haired lady from the photos. Another step farther along. The bathroom door was not closed all the way, a line of light glowing from it.

One, two, three.

He kicked the door wide open and moved fast. Blade up. The woman was on the toilet, shorts and panties on the ground. She dropped the phone she was texting on. Looked at him with wide-open crazy eyes and let out a scream.

YP smiled. “Bitch! I ain’t give you a reason to scream yet!”

*

L
o-Wider ran towards the scream. He hated running, goddamn it, but he had to get in there and stop YP from fucking this up any more. He’d known there was something about him. How he had this look, like he was always better than everybody else. Smarter.

But meaner, too.

Fuck trying to jump the fence. Why not try the front door? So he tried it. Locked. He pounded on it. “Yo, P. C’mon man. C’mon. We’ve got to book it.” Pound some more. “Let me
in
, nigga! You hearin’ me?”

The dogs around the neighborhood were going nuts. Even one inside the house right here, barking at him pounding on the door. Lo-Wider was a big boy, right? He could bust this thing down. So Lo-Wider stepped back and took a hard look at the door. Took a run at it and slammed his shoulder into it. It was a bowling ball on a waterbed. Fucking ball didn’t feel a thing. The waterbed, though—

“Fuck!” He held his shoulder. He seethed a little before going back to the door, trying the knob again, a hard twist, while pushing all he had against it. Hard, man, hard! Hold your breath! Nothing. He pounded again. “C’mon, man!”

Lady was still screaming.

“Come on! Let! Me! In!”

The door swung open while he was still attached to it, and he almost fell into the front hallway and on the angry little dog, barking and growling. Only thing keeping him up was sheer will because it was this Lafitte motherfucker, the same one who’d killed Bossman and Isiah, same one who’d stolen his grampa’s Monte Carlo, who opened the door. All cleaned up, but still, yeah, still him. Lafitte held up a finger. “You! You stay here!”

And he headed off down the hall towards the screaming, little dog right behind him.

His guts pained some more, but Lo-Wider got over it and stepped into the house, knowing there were others now watching from their front yards and the street. Disaster. Why was he even bothering to stick around? Go ahead, leave YP to his fate, thinks he’s so smart.

But no, running away wasn’t the BGM thing to do. Couldn’t leave a soldier behind. Even though he wasn’t BGM, he didn’t want them so pissed that he got blacklisted. He leaned up against the wall in the front hallway and caught his breath. Hearing the woman shouting, “He’s got a knife! Be careful!” and YP shouting, “Mother
fucker
let me go mother
fucker
!” and the dog still, “
GrrrrrARK grrrrARK!
” and not a word from Lafitte. A whole lot of slamming into walls and banging and shaking.

Even with shin splints, Lo-Wider kept on going, letting the wall hold him up, flinching when it boomed again and the picture frames rattled. He stepped down into the den, dark except for candles in the corner and the light coming from the next hallway. Lafitte banged backwards against the wall outside the bathroom. He had YP’s arms locked up above him, the little knife tight in his fist. YP kicked at the doorframe, kept slamming Lafitte into the wall, but Lafitte wasn’t letting go. The little dog danced around and nipped at YP while he kicked the doorframe and pushed and then kicked the dog and then tried to turn his head to bite Lafitte’s arm but nothing was working.

Lafitte saw Lo-Wider standing there, shouted, “Stay the fuck back! I told you to stay put!”

YP all like, “Motherfucker, get this motherfucker off of me!”

Lo-Wider looked around. He wasn’t about to let Lafitte get a hand on him. He saw what had happened to Isiah, tough nigga, and Bossman, tough white boy. Twigs, man. Like motherfucking twigs. Looked around, needed something heavy. Like, what, one of those framed photos on the wall? Too light. How about the TV? Too big. Shit, where was a baseball bat or a golf club or a fucking shotgun when you needed one?

The candles, though.

He ran to the corner and grabbed one of the glass Catholic candles, a long wick and big flame, and ran over to the fight and waited until YP kicked the doorframe again, pushing him and Lafitte towards the living room, back first, and a little spic lady escaped the bathroom and ran the other way, and Lo-Wider started banging the fucking candle on Lafitte’s head over and over until the fucker smashed into pieces and cut Lo-Wider and burned his hand a little and—

Whoosh

—Lafitte’s head went up in flames like a barbecue. Holy shit! Like Michael Jackson back in the day. Lafitte let go of YP real fast and starting screaming and trying to bat out his hair fire with his hands, turning in circles, all over the den, some flames slinging off and starting smaller fires. Screams. Bad screams. Lo-Wider looked at his bloody hand with shards of glass and some blisters coming up and, shit, it really hurt, but holy shit—

YP got himself together and was all smiles. Gave his arms a couple of spins in the air to loosen up, twisted his neck, and then took two big steps towards the screaming Lafitte and planted his stubby blade into the man’s tricep and
twist
and out and into his shoulder and
twist
and out and aiming for his neck but got his arm again and
twist
and—

The pops weren’t loud. Lafitte screamed louder. But there were a lot of them. YP looked all confused for a few seconds. Left his knife in Lafitte and turned left and right, slapping at himself. But it was the old woman from the bathroom, advancing towards him, arm straight out with a pistol popping off shots. Lo-Wider figured it out, a twenty-two, the last couple in YP’s face before he went down. By then Lafitte was on the floor, the old lady rushed over, trying to put out the fire with her T-shirt, and the other fires in the room were spreading fast. Everywhere Lafitte slung his head, new fires popped off, some rising fast up the wood panel walls.

Once she’d put out Lafitte’s head, the woman swung around, gun out at Lo-Wider, and fired off a couple of shots before he could get his hands up, and
bam
in the belly and
bam
in the ear and it didn’t hurt for a good ten seconds or so. It was...pressure. The sort of pressure that made you tighten your gut and grunt and think if you ever let go again, you was going to die. But when the pain started, it
fucking started
, and he wailed, oh, did he ever wail.

Not only because he was bad hurt, but also because there was the grim reaper standing in the corner, surrounded by hellfire.

––––––––

T
he smell of burnt hair and pomade made Lafitte’s throat tighten up. Coughed. The skin on his scalp rose, blistered, same on the back of his neck, and a long stripe across his face, over his eye, nose, cheek. Jimena had gotten the fire out, but the damage had already begun creeping out to every patch of fried skin, pulsing the pain signals bad, man, so bad, and Lafitte knew he had to get up and go before it incapacitated him. He would heal, again. He would be ugly for a while and it would hurt like shit and steal his sleep, but he would heal. It wasn’t important right now.

He blinked. A blistered eyelid, man. Jimena brushed the glass from his hair and shoulders. Then he noticed the fires, how the flames were tickling the fingers of the dead banger on the floor beside him. It was freaky watching a body get taken by fire, just lying there and taking it when you expect anything human-shaped to jump up and run the fuck away.

“Out, Jimena, we’ve got to get out.”

“Look at you! Oh, Billy, look at what they’ve done to you!”

“Outside!” He gave her a push and felt a sting. His palms, blisters popped, now wet, the skin coming off in rolls. Shit, when he’d grabbed his hair, shit, his hands. Shit. He looked around, but the fire was growing and he was one big wick and there was no time. He saw the fat kid rolling on the floor, a couple of gunshot wounds, one in his gut and one that had made his ear a mess. Those damned twenty-twos. Took six or seven and a lucky close-up to the face to kill the one with the blade.