The Tragic Flaw (22 page)

“Oh, okay, I wanted to check that out,” Brad nervously comments.

“Yea, my dad used to take me all the time. It was one of his
favorite ristorantes
,” Cicero says with an Italian accent and a smile.

“Cool,” Brad says as he pulls up two silver barstools.

Brad checks Cicero's hands again, then looks at the island, and notices there is no red plastic cup present.

“You ain't drinkin' today, dog?” Brad asks his friend.

“Nope. Not today. I'm tryin' to live a little healthier,” Cicero says as he removes the Styrofoam containers from the plastic bag. “I even ate a salad earlier.”

Brad's eyes squint.

“A what?”

“Dude, don't start.”

“Whatever, man. Say, you want something to drink?”

“Naw, I'm cool,” Cicero replies as he hands Brad the container that was on top.

Brad opens it and eyes a delectable portion of fettuccine alfredo with grilled chicken and crushed white pepper. Two lemon wedges grace the right side.

“Damn, dog, this looks real good,” Brad says. He struts over to a drawer and removes two forks.

“A, man, grab me a spoon too.”

“All right,” answers Brad.

They sit next to each other and begin to partake.

With the spoon in his left hand and the fork in his right, Cicero twists the fettuccine noodles in the spoon with the fork, then neatly lifts it into his mouth.

“Yep, this is some good shit,” Cicero says with a full mouth.

“You ain't kiddin'. This is real good,” agrees Brad. “Kinda spicy, though, for alfredo sauce.”

Cicero slurps his noodles and glances over at Brad, who is eating slowly, as if thinking about something.

“What's on your mind, man?” Cicero inquires. “You look like something is bothering you.”

“Ah, naw, man, I'm just a little tired, you know? Been busy with the product.”

“Oh, yea. Man, that paper is rollin' in. Kinda slow though. What you think? I mean, what do you see us doing in the next few months?” Cicero asks with a smile on his face.

“Yea, we're just about ready to start expanding, you know. You know, hittin' Topeka, Lawrence, Warrensburg, and St. Joe.”

Suddenly, Bradley begins coughing. He places his right hand to his mouth to cover it; he's never been a rude person.

“Damn, what's on this?”

“It's just white pepper, man. What, you can't handle it?”

“I'm cool, man. I just need something to drink, some fucking water,” Brad says as he stands and walks toward the refrigerator, coughing more ferociously.

“Naw, dog, you know what? I don't think that's the white pepper that's causing you to cough like that,” Cicero says as he continues to eat his meal.

Brad looks back at Cicero with one hand on the silver refrigerator door, still coughing. His eyes water and phlegm flies out of his mouth.

“Yea, man, I think that's that poison I put in your food,” Cicero says, smiling.

Brad's eyes go huge and he drops to one knee and places his left hand on the floor to keep from falling.

“Why, C? Why would you do that?” Brad asks as he continues to cough and gasp for air. He glances over to the bulge in the sofa, but he lacks the strength to get there.

Cicero's smile turns to a menacing look, and Bradley comes to know the depth of his friend's wickedness. Remorse knows him not.

“What you mean, why? Because you tryin' to fuck me, Bradley, that's why. Next time you plan on skipping town with my money, and my drugs, close your bedroom door, dumb ass. You deserve to die for that dumb shit.”

Fear rolls up into Bradley's heart as he continues to cough forcefully and his eyes turn bloodshot red.

“Oh my bad, there won't be a next time,” Cicero tells him as he finishes the last of his fettuccine.

Then Cicero smiles as Bradley completely collapses to the kitchen's cold gray linoleum floor, his bare skin slapping it. Vomit oozes from this mouth. His toes curl with disgusting tension.

“Man, I have to admit I was a little nervous at first, because I forgot which one had the poison in it. That's crazy, huh? But thanks for figuring it out for me, dog. You are a good friend.”

And Bradley dies. His breathing was restricted and his oxygen was cut off. His brain functions ended, then his heart abruptly stopped beating. The descendant of Acadians leaves the world of the living via toxin-induced asphyxiation, delivered by a dear friend.

“Rest in confusion, Bradley Micheaux,” Cicero says before grabbing both Styrofoam containers, forks and his spoon and placing them in the plastic bag.

He walks into Bradley's bedroom and grabs the bag stuffed with the dope and chemicals and the hundred grand.

He carries the satchel out to the living room, sets it on the stainless steel coffee table, and looks through it.

“Cool. I can give this to Jimmy and get back in his good graces,” he says out loud. “He thinks the money has been coming in too slow; like we've been holding out on him.”

Then he has a second thought.

“Shit, then again, I could give this to him and he can still whack me. Just for general purposes. To prove a point to his other lieutenants. Fuck that. Plus the feds are watching him. Fuck. Shit. What if Jimmy is
working
for the feds?”

Cicero grabs his cell phone from his hip and dials a familiar number. He checks his watch; it's almost 5:30 p.m., so it has to be someone fairly close to his location.

“Hello,” a female answers.

“Hey, what's crackin'?”

“Not much, still with my cousin. We're actually in the movies,” Lana says.

“A, I need you to meet me right now at that spot in North-towne,” Cicero instructs. “It's hella crucial.”

“How much you got?” Lana asks. Her talking during the movie is frustrating a few people near her, and her endearing older cousin looks upset and offended.

“I got you, girl. Just meet me in about forty-five minutes. I got something to do first. Cool?”

“All right, cool.”

And she hangs up.

He places the phone back on his hip and walks into the kitchen, where Brad's body lies in an awkward dead man's position.

Cicero grabs a black plastic bag, then bends down and puts his arms around Brad's chest. He then lifts his body and drags it down the hall along dusty hardwood floors to a messy bathroom, and tosses his slender muscular corpse into the white porcelain tub.

Brad's arms land over his face, as if shielding his eyes from a stunningly bright light.

Water from the silver showerhead sprays at full force on his body, and Cicero leaves momentarily only to return with a large butcher knife from the kitchen.

He removes his sweater and his T-shirt and begins to dismember his former friend. He removes all of Brad's clothing, and is surprised to see his friend had three balls.

“What the fuck?” Cicero briefly chuckles, then positions himself to begin cutting.

Starting with the fingers, Cicero chops Bradley into bits and pieces.
Chop
. The left pinkie. Blood immediately flows.
Chop
. The right ring finger.
Chop
. He separates the ulna from the radius in Brad's right arm, slicing the sinewy flesh as blood squirts. Blood is everywhere, but the water from the shower helps to wash it down the drain. The stench fills the air.

Cicero starts to perspire as he gets to the larger bones in his legs, so he goes to Brad's basement in search of something more substantial. That's when he finds a hand saw.

“Yea, this will work,” he says, staring at the blade. He looks over and notices there's no lab equipment. The basement is spotless.

“This asshole was really gonna fuck me.”

Back in the shower, Cicero saws into Brad's muscular thigh, and into his left femur with conviction. The grinding sound is intense and nauseating, but he proceeds nonetheless. Specks of blood splatter on his face as he applies more pressure, using more strength.

“Fuck,” he says out loud, nearly out of breath. He gags at the awful smell. He stands and walks unsteadily toward the medicine cabinet. Inside he finds a bottle of Old Spice, and quickly begins splashing it over Brad's body parts.

“Fuck,” he mumbles.

Once Bradley's body is cut into manageable pieces, Cicero turns off the shower and tosses all the drained parts into a black trash bag, including Brad's severed head. The look on his face is one of utter horror.

Cicero grabs the head by its blond hair, holding it in his hands and staring at it with contempt.

“You pussy. When I go, I won't have a scared-ass look on my face.” He carelessly tosses the head into the bag, then ties it up.

Cicero cleans off his body and face in the restroom sink with soap and steaming hot water.

“I hope this mothafucka didn't have any STDs,” Cicero says jokingly to himself. “That's all I need.”

Then Clorox, Ajax, and Lysol work to break down all the organic leftovers unseen by the naked eye. The household products work their magic as Cicero scrubs the bathroom clean. He's careful not to miss a spot. He even cleans old shaving cream and soil stains Bradley never got to.

He puts his clothes back on and checks his watch: 6:09 p.m.

“Cool.”

Cicero grabs everything he touched and puts it into another bag, tossing in Brad's jeans and the food as well. He then searches Brad's house, high and low, for the million plus. He looks in closets, cupboards, under mattresses and floorboards. He finds nothing.

“Fuck.”

He grabs a handkerchief from his pocket and wraps it around the doorknob as he closes the front door and leaves.

Without being noticed, he slides to his Maybach with the brown satchel draped from his shoulder as he places it and the two large bags in the spacious trunk.

Cicero starts the engine and mashes the gas pedal, headed toward the location where Lana awaits his arrival. On the way, he dumps Brad's body parts in the dumpster behind that little Italian restaurant in Gladstone. He honks the horn three times and drives off. That's the real reason Antonio used to go there: to dump bodies. Cicero was with him, many times. As Cicero heads to the airport, dense clouds glide into the skyline and the air begins to smell of rain.

H
e stared at those hills for two weeks. He stood in his plush white robe, smoking cigars and sipping expensive cognac from his corner balcony at the Four Seasons on Doheny Drive. For two weeks, he ordered exquisite room service and gazed at the bright dots of light on the rolling hills just to his north. And now, for two days, Jimmy has been calling his cell phone. He hasn't answered. Is it a trap? The view of Beverly Hills and the west were tranquil and reassuring, before the last two days.

Now, paranoid, thinking Jimmy (or the feds) has caught up with him, Cicero thinks about what he told Lana as he heads to busy LAX. Wearing a baby-blue sweater, he passes countless movie billboards, advertisements and palm trees, all while his Middle-Eastern cab driver swerves in and out of traffic at a mad-man's pace. It is the month of Safar, and the seventy-two-degree California weather is perfect.

“In the event of a water landing, your seat cushion may be used as a floatation device,” the television monitor smoothly explains after descending from the 747's ceiling.

As a forty-something beauty goes about asking the passengers for their beverage preferences, Cicero can't help but look outside the window at the baggage handlers, carelessly tossing luggage around as they laugh and crack jokes.

“Lana better not fuck me,” he whispers to himself, stroking his bald head with a look of worry on his haggard face. He'd kept it brief. Told her only what she needed to know: hold this for me till I get back in town, don't open it, see you in a few weeks.

Quick and to the point. He knows he really can't trust a chick he first met while she was stealing. While in L.A., he recalled following her out of a store at Bannister Mall, and she thought he was security. That is, until he asked her how much she charged for her services.

“Damn,” he says in a low voice from his window seat, realizing he may have made a major mistake. But there was little time to think; he'd had no other choice. The aircraft's four huge jet engines rev as the silver, red, and blue mechanical bird slowly and deliberately taxis to the crowded LAX runway.

The Wright Brothers smile from Heaven as the bird propels forward and thrust equals lift. The six-person crew and passengers take to the sky while Cicero requests the airline's cheap cognac.

The aircraft ascends above the oncoming clouds in a turbulent climb to thirty-thousand feet. The landscape below, now appearing like tan rectangles, squares, and blue circles, shrinks into the Earth's abyss.

The elderly woman seated next to Cicero nestles in and begins reading a tiny brown prayer book. Reading glasses rest unsteadily near the end of her nose while light-gray hair pokes out from under her bright pumpkin-colored hat. Cicero glances over at the old woman, peers at her reading material, then back out the window.

Red lights remain illuminated above each passenger's head indicating that seatbelts are still required.

He stares out the window with a smug look on his face at the ever-whitening nimbus and stratus clouds passing by at over three-hundred miles per hour.

“Heaven,” he says mockingly to himself. The woman next to him hears his comment and looks over at the young bald man. She's on her way to visit her ailing sister in New Orleans, and she can't help but sense the negativity and urgency coming from the troubled soul next to her.

“How are you, young man?” the woman asks.

Cicero looks at her with a smirk, but Ruth always taught him to respect his elders, so he responds politely.

“I'm fine, ma'am. How are you?”

“Well, they say my sister won't make it past this weekend,” she says while looking down at her tan wrinkled hands. The chestnut rim on her eyeglasses is thick. “So that's why I'm reading my prayer book.”

Bing
. The seatbelt light goes dim, and a middle-aged man with a ridiculously huge prostate jumps at the chance to drain his engorged bladder. He heads toward the rearward restroom while a frustrated mother takes her fussy one-year-old to the forward restroom for a diaper change and some baby talk.

Cicero looks back out the window at the seemingly endless blue sky, while two flight attendants make their way from the front of the plane with a cart full of beverages and snacks.

Feeling his contempt, the elderly woman digs into Cicero's heart.

“So do you pray, young man?” the woman inquires with a slight grin on her thin lips. Her lipstick has been applied unevenly.

Cicero turns back to face her, fighting his hardest to hide his agitation. As he begins to answer, a flight attendant steps into his view.

“Sir, your cognac,” she says with a wide smile, handing Cicero a cup of ice and a small plastic bottle.

“Thank you,” he answers as he tries to hand the flight attendant a nice twenty-dollar tip.

“Oh, thank you, sir, but we're not allowed to take tips,” she tells him.

Unoffended, he stuffs the money back in his pocket.

“Miss, your ginger ale,” the flight attendant tells the elderly woman.

“Thank you, dear.”

Passengers chitchat with elation about their weekend plans in the Big Easy, and several kids whine as pacifiers and sippy cups fail to appease them. The plane's cabin is without a doubt energized.

Cicero pours the cognac into the short stout cup and the ice pops and crackles. He looks at his hands and briefly notices the calluses and embedded stains from gunfire. He pauses, then takes a swig from his libation.

“So, do you pray in thanks for your many blessings?” the elderly woman asks once again. Once again, she grins, affably.

“No disrespect, ma'am, but I don't know you. And I'm somewhat bothered by your question,” Cicero says as nicely as he can. He takes a swig of his cognac and looks back out the window to the expansive blueness.

“Well, my sister used to say the same thing,” the woman says looking at Cicero. Her hands gesture as only those of an elderly woman can. “Yea, we used to run down this dirt road barefoot. Just laughing and giggling. Life really wasn't that great back then. But you would never know by the way our teeth shone so bright.”

Cicero glances at her once again, noticing how the woman's story seamlessly jumped to another topic.

“Yes, indeed. My father was a farmer, and my sister, she just didn't like going to church or reading her Bible,” the woman says; the smile leaves her face. “Yep. And now, she's trapped in her own body. They say she can't recognize anybody but my brother.”

Cicero swigs his drink, feeling neither joy nor pain from the woman's tale.

“Yep. And you don't want that to be you, young man,” the woman says. “They says it's a medical reason for her illness. But I think it's God's way of punishing us when we do wrong.”

She stares at Cicero.

“You know? When we don't heed His word. Especially when there are people in our lives that bring the Word, and Him, to our attention.”

Having heard enough, Cicero finishes off his cognac and places the cup on the floor between his feet.

“Thanks, but my mother says the same stuff to me all the time,” Cicero tells the old woman. “Life is too difficult and fucked up for me to ever think there is someone or something out there that gives a damn about any of us. Excuse my language, but I heard enough. So please leave me the
fuck
alone.”

The elderly woman turns from looking at Cicero and goes back to reading her tiny brown prayer book, and says not another word to the young bald man until their flight lands in the boot-shaped state. Her wrinkled tan fingers ruffle the thin pages as she flips through the many prayers.

Green swampland comes into view as the metal bird begins to descend into what was once French territory.

Bing
.

“The captain has turned on the fasten seatbelt sign,” the lovely stewardess pleasantly mouths into a hand-held intercom. Her red fingernails are long and well manicured. “Please return to your seats and place your tray tables in their upright positions.”

It seems fitting somehow that Cicero return to the state where he met Brad, where he learned more about life, and where he decided to hustle full steam ahead.

The plane smoothly touches down at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport just before 4:00 p.m. It's late February: the Friday before Fat Tuesday.

The passengers deplane and Cicero enters the bustling airport. He eyes the elderly woman who sat next to him as she disappears into the crowd, carrying merely a small black purse and her prayer book. Cicero follows the signs to the baggage claim, carefully making his way through the throng of partygoers and local black Indians and coon-asses.

Eager college kids, returning crew members, and dirty old men hastily step through the airport on their way to bars, pubs, parades, and balls. They don purple, green, and gold beads and various doodads and odd knickknacks. The pace is frantic and electric.

Cicero grabs his black suitcase from the slowly rotating carousel and calmly walks toward the exit and a long line for a cab. His flawless platinum timepiece reflects the light of the sunny day in multiple directions off thousands of faces.

While standing in line holding his suitcase, Cicero eyes a celebrity rap star. Even though he isn't usually impressed by television stars or recording artists, Kansas Citians rarely see celebrities, so Cicero takes a moment to gander at the rare sight.

Flamboyance heaped upon flamboyance. Diamonds crammed against diamonds. Platinum entangled with platinum. The rapper, who calls himself Scrill, is overwhelmingly gaudy and flashy in his jewelry as he strolls from inside the airport out through the automatic sliding doors.

He usually travels with a huge entourage including a personal barber, a chef, and a Swedish masseuse, and innumerable flunkies and yes men. But today, the five-foot-six Scrill is with only a hired bodyguard and two flunkies. His dark-brown sunglasses are encrusted with yellow diamonds on all sides. And his mouth is actually the blueprint Kameron used for his platinum and diamond teeth.

“Damn, he's a short little mothafucka,” Cicero says to himself in a low voice, gripping his solitary suitcase. People always look taller on TV, Cicero supposes.

A long black stretch limousine arrives just to the left of where Cicero waits in the slowly moving taxi line, and Cicero smirks.

“Shit, I could have done that too,” he says out loud in an attempt to downplay the glamorousness of a limousine ride.

Cicero's face looks tired and beat as the twenty-year-old Scrill, dressed in baggy jeans, sneakers, and a Hank Aaron baseball jersey, nears where he's standing. At nearly five feet wide, his former-college-football-playing bodyguard walks toward Cicero in almost a straight line, right at him.

Unconcerned, Cicero notices the three hundred pounds coming toward him, yet he decides with his street mentality not to edge out of the bodyguard's way, who is now just three steps away. The black suit he wears clings tight to his back and bulging shoulders as the large man pushes Cicero in his back, shoving him several feet away.

“What the fuck?” Cicero yells as he looks back.

“Chill the fuck out, little dude,” the bodyguard says to the six-foot Cicero in a deep menacing tone, with his right hand still on Cicero's baby-blue sweater.

The coffee-skinned Scrill and his two flunkies laugh at Cicero as the bodyguard opens the sleek black limo door for them with his left hand.

Never one to be disrespected, Cicero takes a step to the right and frees himself from the huge paw of the bearded bodyguard, then turns to make eye contact.

Cicero stares the six-foot-four behemoth in the eyes, who unflinchingly stares back.

“What you gon do?” the bodyguard asks. His dark eyes are piercing and intense.

Cicero takes a quick survey of the area. No gun by his side. No car for him to jump in. No friends or family within five hundred miles. Way too much security presence. So he smiles.

“It's cool, dog,” Cicero says with a grin, stroking his scruffy face with his right hand. His left grips his suitcase.

“Yea, I know it's cool,” the bodyguard says loudly, as Scrill and his boys burst into screeching laughter. The giant slides into the limo and it lowers several inches due to the added weight. He slams the door as the black rubber tires spin and the group departs, leaving a fuming Cicero waiting in a long line for a cab.

Cicero grits his teeth thinking about what just happened, and at that moment, the skycap finally motions Cicero forward for a taxi of his own.

“Yea, last year's Zulu parade was fire, ya dig?” a disc jockey's voice blares from the taxi's radio. “And yes indeed, this year's will be like dat, fa sho!”

“Where to, bruh?” the native New Orleans cab driver asks his pissed-off fare.

“The Quarter,” Cicero answers with a growl.

“You from Nawlins, bruh,” he asks, looking in the rearview mirror, noticing Cicero's European facial features and abbreviation of French Quarter. Spent cherry-scented cardboard trees hang from the cigarette lighter near the radio controls.