The Apostles (21 page)

Solemn Shawn never missed a beat. “Know anything about what, sir?”

Bellows tossed the pictures on the desk in front of Solemn Shawn and picked up the report. “Go ahead and take a look at your handiwork, kid. I've got to tell you. You guys are good. Corey never saw a thing.”

Solemn Shawn picked up the pictures and began to look at them one by one.

Bellows watched the boy's seemingly unconcerned face over the report in his hand. “Report says that they found traces of feces in his mouth, nose, and ears. He had chemical burns on his genitalia and a steel pipe was lodged in his rectum, which required surgical removal and thirty-four stitches. He also suffered a dislocated jaw, a skull fracture, and the letter
A
was carved into his forehead and chest. Still don't know anything about this, Terson?”

Never looking up from the pictures, Solemn Shawn said, “No, sir, Captain, sir. I still don't know anything about this.”

Not expecting the crafty teenager in front of him to admit to the beating, humiliation, and degradation of another inmate, Bellows said, “I didn't think you did. I can't prove it, but somehow I know that this is your doing. If you didn't participate, you had it done.”

Feigning a wounded look, Solemn Shawn tossed the pictures back onto the captain's desk. “Captain Bellows, I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Cut the Oscar-winning performance, Terson. I watch your crew. I've read up on you, too. I know full well what you're capable of doing to someone. I also know that this kid has been talking shit to everybody since he got here. Also, Corey has raped or attempted to rape at least three other inmates. So I'm not saying that he was an angel. I know that because of the behavior he exhibited he had to incur some enemies. I also know that he threatened at least one of your little gang. I know that you hoodlum motherfuckers did this to this fuck. Come clean now, give up your homeboys and I can assure you that I'll be lenient with you.”

Solemn Shawn sat forward in his chair, a steel glint in his eyes. “Captain, are you charging me with something?”

Bellows bellowed, “You know you little motherfuckers didn't leave any evidence for me to charge you with anything!”

Solemn Shawn sat back in the chair again. “Well, sir, if you're not charging me with anything then I don't see the point of this meeting.”

Captain Bellows was taken aback. This kid had the poise of a mob hit man and he was only seventeen years old. He felt a prickle of fear at the fact that soon this little monster would be released back into society. “You think you so gotdamn smart, don't you, Terson. Well, you're on my radar now, you little fuck. If you step out of line once, I'll be there to run you through the fucking wringer. Now get the fuck out of my eyesight before I decide to suspend your privileges on GP. On your way out send Michael Moore in.”

Solemn Shawn opened the office door and stepped out. He nodded his head at Murderman, indicating for him to go into Captain Bellows's office. Dante was there too, waiting to see the captain. As Murderman stood and headed for the office, he mouthed the word “Apostles.”

T
HE ENTIRE STREET WAS QUIET
. S
O QUIET YOU COULD ALMOST
hear the electricity powering the streetlights. The sun was just beginning to turn the sky purplish orange as it pushed night's blanket off the bed. Jermaine “Maine-Maine” Hayes looked at his watch as he walked to the stoop of an abandoned building in the middle of the block. Maine-Maine quickly skipped up the steps of the building and ducked into the dark maw of the hallway. With care he removed his pistol from under his Denver Nuggets jersey and tucked it in the mailbox in the hallway. Stepping back onto the porch, Maine-Maine looked up and down the block, then at his watch. Six a.m. on the dot.

With his fingers in his mouth, Maine-Maine whistled twice. The loud, shrill sound echoed up and down the dark street. In response to the whistle the light popped on in the second-floor hallway of the building across the street from him. From the hallway window a whistle sounded. Maine-Maine looked at the cars lining the curbs on both sides of the street. Again he put his fingers in his mouth and whistled two times—the all-clear signal. Maine-Maine climbed to the concrete porch shoulder and shouted, “Shop's open! Nod Squad got a bomb!”

The street came alive as the sun began to tiptoe across the eastern sky. Car doors began opening, ejecting heroin addicts onto the pavement. Early morning sounds of birds and distant traffic could
no longer be heard as the small stampede of dope fiends headed for the hallway with the light on the second floor.

One teenage drug dealer stepped out of the hallway. His job was to keep order, though the look of his baby face would have made that seem like an impossible task. In his hands the young Apostle carried a small black White Sox bat from a Comiskey Park giveaway. His black Angels hat sat on his head with a rakish tilt. His big brown eyes weren't soft and the ragged, sparse growth of a beard was just beginning to show underneath his chin. While the youth outside the hallway kept the fiends in line, another youth right inside the hallway collected the money. Once the money was given over, a third boy, the pitcher, would give the customer the appropriate number of bags and the consumer would exit the building. No muss, no fuss—keep it moving was the order of the dope line.

“Get the fuck in a straight motherfuckin' line!” the youth outside shouted. “You ain't got to push, it's enough for all you motherfuckas! If y'all get to acting rowdy ain't gone be no wake-ups in this bitch! White boy in that little-ass shirt! Take yo raggedy ass and that nasty bitch of yours and get to the back of the fuckin' line.”

The Caucasian youth the drug dealer was addressing looked around. The young white dope fiend whined, “Hey, bro, I ain't done nothing. I was right here.”

With a grimace on his face that would have made Tupac proud, the young Apostle said, “Bitch-ass honky! I'll bust yo motherfuckin' head if you don't get yo ass to the end of the line! You know what— fuck that! If you don't get yo ass to end of the line ain't no blows being sold, funky-ass cracker!”

The other addicts in the line began to turn and glare at the white youth. They would be damned if he would prevent them from getting their sick off. A lot of them were functioning addicts and had to be at work in a while; it would fuck up their schedules to have to try to go somewhere else to cop, especially while the
Nod Squad had some of the best dope in Chi-town. No, that definitely wouldn't do.

A tall dope fiend ten places in line behind the white boy assured him, “If they shut down ‘cause of you, we gone whup the shit out you out here.”

That was enough for the offender. He told his girl, “C'mon, Peggy.” Her dirty sundress swished as she followed her boyfriend to the end of the line.

Feeling like he had struck a small blow for Black people everywhere, the young drug dealer shouted, “Now you motherfuckas better get this damn line straight before I bust somebody head!”

Magically the dope line became straight as an arrow. It wasn't the threat of physical violence that scared most of them, it was the thought of not being able to purchase one of those good early morning blows. The cruel little bastard with the bat could have told them to take off their clothes; 98 percent of them would have done it—anything for a good-ass bag of diesel.

Maine-Maine was still across the street on the stoop. He removed a Black & Mild cigar hanging from the NBA headband on his head. He peeled the wrapper off the cheap cigar and rolled it between his fingers to remove some of the tobacco to make it smoke more easily. Proudly, he looked at the dope line of fifty plus and smiled as he lit his cigar. He had reason to be proud; Nod Squad was his operation. After he paid the crew and broke the Apostles off their 10 percent every week, the rest was all his. Right now he was making close to ten thousand a day. He was definitely getting his weight up.

He didn't even have to get up and come out on the strip every morning. A lot of the dealers would be content to chill and let their money come to them, but Maine-Maine had to watch every penny of his get made. While most cats, seeing the kind of paper he was folding, spent all day riding around smoking weed and fucking with bitches, Maine-Maine spent every day on his grizzly. He owned two cars, a ‘94 Camry, a pretty-plain vehicle, and a ‘92
Fleetwood Cadillac, but he rarely ever went anywhere of importance. At the age of twenty-two, with no children and living in his mother's basement, he didn't have any bills of his own. His real passion was collecting basketball jerseys.

I'mma hurt the club at Charlene's this Saturday
, Maine-Maine thought to himself. There was a big party at the Apostles' social club this weekend celebrating the life and death of Domino, a deceased Apostle, and he planned on shining that night. He couldn't help smiling as he thought about how fly he would look in his jersey, leaning on the bar buying shots of Rémy. Happily, he puffed on his Black & Mild. He didn't even notice a dope fiend walk up to the bottom steps of the stoop.

“A, homie, is Nod Squad working?” the dope fiend hissed, breaking Maine-Maine's early morning daydream.

Maine-Maine looked down from his perch on the stoop at the dope fiend. The addict looked to be about in his late twenties. On his head was a filthy North Carolina blue bucket hat covering most of his brown facial features. “Yeah, Nod Squad got a bomb, A. Just follow the light.”

The dope fiend turned and looked across the street at the line of addicts. He turned back to Maine-Maine and rasped, “Family, I want some diesel, but I ain't got no cabbage.”

“Well, you need to get the fuck on,” Maine-Maine stated cruelly. He wondered what was wrong with the dope fiend's mouth.

“Don't get me wrong, baby boy. I ain't dry-hustling or nothing. I got me some shit that I'm trying to sell.”

Maine-Maine laughed. “What the fuck you got, A? Oh, I know. You probably got some bootleg DVDs or CDs. Or better yet—you probably got some useless shit like a baby blanket or something.”

The dope fiend allowed a good-natured but weird laugh to slide from between his lips. Nonchalantly, he said, “Nall, baby boy, it ain't nothing that priceless. It's just a semiautomatic shotgun that I'm trying to get rid of.”

The mention of a shotgun managed to get Maine-Maine's
attention. He already owned three hand pistols and he knew that a semiauto shotty could definitely come in handy.

“Where is it, A?” Maine-Maine asked as he climbed down off the stoop and descended to street level. He stood face-to-face with the dope fiend.

“I couldn't carry that motherfucka up here on no dope strip. And how I don't know that you gone try to stick me up for it?”

“Apostles don't steal,” Maine-Maine stated proudly as he noticed for the first time that the dope fiend was speaking through clenched lips with wires and broken rubber bands all over his dental landscape.

Insane Wayne said, “In that case I got it in the trunk of my whip.”

“Where's that at?” Maine-Maine asked.

“Right in the vacant lot on the next street over from here. I didn't want to park too close to the dope strip.”

“What you want for it, A?”

“It's a good gun, family. I want at least a big-face hundred or three twenty-dollar blows and a forty piece in cash.”

“That's a lot of scratch for a big-ass shotgun, A,” Maine-Maine commented. He was lying though. He knew if the shotgun was in good condition that was a steal. “Let's go check it out, A.”

Before leaving, Maine-Maine checked out the block. The early morning dope traffic was moving around as the dope fiends copped and bounced. Security on both ends of the block was on point, and the shorty with the bat was keeping the line straight. Satisfied that his operation was tight, Maine-Maine made up his mind to go and cop the shotgun if it looked good. For a second he hesitated as he started to retrieve his pistol from the mailbox, but he put that idea out of his head. He would already have to take the alleys to make it home with the shotty. Even if the dope fiend gave him a ride, he still didn't want him to know where his mother's house was located. Also it wouldn't do to have a gun on his person in the event they got pulled over by the cops. If he'd already given
the dope fiend the money for the shotgun and they got curbed by the twisters that was the addict's problem.

Insane Wayne asked, “You ready to go and have a look at this?”

“No problem,” Maine-Maine replied. “Lead the way, A.”

“Follow me,” Insane Wayne said as he dipped through the gangway beside the abandoned building.

Through the gangway and past the garage leading into the alley Maine-Maine followed Insane Wayne. Across the next street in the vacant lot Maine-Maine could see the rear of the dope fiend's Honda Accord. In a couple of moments they reached the small foreign car parked in the vacant lot full of glass and debris.

“I'mma pop the trunk, family,” Insane Wayne announced as he walked to the driver's side of the vehicle and opened the door. “The shotgun is in there under all them clothes and shit. I'll watch out for the po-pos while you take a look at it.”