Yaccub's Curse (32 page)

“Are you going out or are you gonna stay and eat dinner with your Momma for a change?”

It was her none-too-subtle way of saying that she was lonely and wanted company.

“I’ll eat, but I have to bounce pretty soon though.”

“Come down here, boy.”

“Okay, but no arguments, alright?”

“Boy, I ain’t got the strength to argue with you.”

I slipped on my Kevlar vest and pulled a sweat shirt on over top of it before I walked down the narrow staircase into the dining room. It had been a long time since my mother and I sat at the same table together and had a meal without arguing. I was looking forward to it. It somehow made what I had to do tonight seem less horrible.

The table was set with fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and homemade biscuits. My stomach growled. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was.

“Before you eat any of this food you’ve got to make me a promise.”

My eyes narrowed in suspicion.
What the hell was she trying to pull now?

“What kind of promise?”

“Promise me you won’t get yourself killed or kill anybody else tonight.”

Her eyes filled with tears and when the first one fell the rest came like a torrential downpour racking her slender body. I ran to her and held her against me as she wept. Her hands slid down my back to my waste, to my belt. I felt her trying to lift my gun from its holster. I wrenched myself free from her.

“What are you doing?” I rolled my eyes toward the ceiling and flung my arms down at my sides in exasperation.

“Promise me, Malik! Promise me! You don’t know the dreams I’ve been having lately. And your grandmother’s been having them too. Dreams about that evil White boy you work for. I saw him sitting on his throne in hell and he was calling you to him. You were trying to resist him, but he was too powerful and he brought you down to hell with him only you weren’t on no throne. You were being tortured down there. Demons were ripping you apart, skinning you alive, and you were screaming for me, but it was too late for me to save you. They threw your broken body in the lake of fire. All your skin had been ripped away and your eyes had been gouged out and…and they’d castrated you and left you there, burning and screaming. That White boy was just watching it all and laughing at you. He’s evil, Malik. Just stay away from him. Promise me!” Her eyes were wild and desperate, bloodshot with tears.

“I can’t make that promise, Mom. Not tonight. Not yet.”

“Why? I’m just asking you not kill anybody and you can’t even promise me that? I’m only asking you not to let that devil talk you into anything that’s going to get you killed or kill anyone else. What’s so hard about that?”

It was the second time in as many days that I’d heard someone I loved refer to Scratch as a devil. Huey was a militant who thought all Caucasians were devils, but Mom was different. When she called Scratch a devil she meant it in a more literal sense.
And what the hell was up with that dream?

I knew all that demonic shit was a mystique that Scratch purposely cultivated to frighten the superstitious and add to his rep. I was just surprised at how well it had worked. My mother and grandmother weren’t even in the game, and probably didn’t know shit about Scratch’s reputation in the streets, yet even they were buying into it. I heard a car horn honking out front and Mom and I both turned our heads simultaneously towards the front window.

“Don’t go.”

“Sorry, Mom, I have to.”

My mother’s eyes were full of worry and disappointment as I rose from the kitchen table and started out the front door, but she stayed silent. She had already said her peace. In her mind I was already burning in hell being torn apart by demons. She had wasted all the words she could on trying to save me.

“I love you, Mom.”

She turned her head and refused to look at me as I walked out the door.

“I love you too, son,” she whispered, but I was already gone.

Scratch was parked in the middle of the street in that tacky-ass BMW of his. Gold twenty-four inch rims, gold nugget grille, gold nugget license plate holder with a vanity plate that read
$cratch
, the subwoofers in the back seat boomed with a thunderous gangster rap beat that rattled the windows up and down the block. Scratch waved me over to the car grinning that sly carnivorous grin, his eyes blazing with malevolence, and probably several lines of cocaine. My Timberlands struck the sidewalk, shattering miniscule fragments of glass as everything seemed to slow down.

I shrugged on my three-quarter length leather coat with the fleece lining and raised the hood against the wind that bucked and galloped through the streets. It was October now and the summer was officially over. Dark tenebrous clouds, like thick black smoke, covered the sky. Every so often the moon would poke its full round face through the layers of nimbostratus clouds to illuminate the streets. My hand gripped the Beretta tight as I walked over to Scratch’s car. He could easily have come here to kill me.

My pulse quickened, my chest tightened, and my scrotum rose up tight against me as I watched Scratch’s smile widen, his ghostly white skin looking even more cadaverous than usual. I could barely breathe as I leaned down face to face with him. It was fear. The constant senses heightening, nerve tingling anxiety that filled every second in the ’hood with a primal fight or flight desperation. Something was different about this night. I could feel it already.

Foul smelling steam came boiling out of the sewers. Street lamps dragged long shadows out of the alleys and doorways, pregnant with potential danger, lurking enemies. My head swiveled like a gun turret. The sickening sweet smell of Scratch’s cologne was making me ill and there was another smell beneath it, a fleshier, fouler smell of rot and decay.

“Come on and hop in. We got shit to take care of.”

My stomach roiled as that rancid meat smell rolled off of him. I felt like I was going to throw up.

“Naw, man, I don’t think you want me in your ride tonight. I feel like I’m going to be sick. I’d better take my car and follow you.”

“You alright? You ain’t gonna throw up is you?”

“Naw, I’ll be alright. I’m just sayin’, just in case. I’m sure you don’t want me hurlin’ all over your leather interior.”

“True dat. Go ahead and take your ride. Just follow real close so we don’t get separated.

We drove slower than usual as we made our way down G-town Ave passing row after row of abandoned businesses whose front steps were now home to bums and derelicts. We made our way through rundown neighborhoods with houses that looked long condemned. I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat as eyes seethed in the shadows of windows and doorways, following us as we drove slowly past. I wanted to empty my nine into every dark corner we passed. I was supposed to be above these kinds of feelings, but nobody in this game really was. Anyone who didn’t see enemies at every turn wound up getting crept on and blasted into the arms of his maker. My cell phone rang and I almost wet myself.

“Yo, Snap, it’s me. You ready for this, dog? ’Cause I got some real unpleasant shit for us to handle. It ain’t dangerous or nothing. I’m just hopin’ you ain’t got no moral objections.”

“Why would I? Who we doin’?”

“This crack whore snatched some product from us and she’s goin’ around braggin’ about that shit. Dog, she’s dissin’ us all over the hood. We gotta blast this bitch ’fore she fucks up our whole rep. There’s just one thing though.” He pauses for dramatic effect.

“What?”

“Last I heard she was pregnant—about nine months.”

“You know damn well I don’t give a fuck about some knocked up ass crack ho. One less for the welfare lines.”

“Yeah, well I just gotta be sure. You know some brothas get all soft about doin’ women and kids and shit. I should have known you wouldn’t sweat it though. You just like me, mad, bad, and dangerous to know, a thug for life.” Scratch laughed and the sound made me want to toss the phone right out the window.

“I ain’t shit like you, Scratch. I’m just like, if a bitch is dumb enough to get her trick ass hooked on that shit then she’s probably already killed herself. So fuck should I trip on it for? If she don’t value her life, I damn sure don’t.” I hung up and stared straight ahead at Scratch’s tail lights.

A pregnant woman? What tha fuck was I doin’?

I could talk all that cold-blooded shit, but it did bother me, more than I even knew. It was quarter to eight when we pulled up in front of the broken down crackhouse. I hopped out of the Impala and met Scratch on the porch.

“You ready for this, Snap?”

“You shouldn’t even have to ask.”

“Yeah, I shouldn’t.”

He looked me up and down like he was still trying to make up his mind about me. Then he pulled out his .45 and checked the clip.

“Nothin’ to it but to do it.”

We went inside.

— | — | —

Chapter 18

“There are in every man, at every hour, two simultaneous postulations, one towards God, the other towards Satan.”

–Charles Baudelaire

««—»»

The steps creaked, splintering and cracking beneath the weight of our cautious steps and I wondered if they might give way entirely and send us tumbling down into the dark basement below. I could hear the junkies and crackheads scurrying around in the opaque blackness. The hoarse whispers and agitated breathing from below informed us that they were aware of our presence and had at least some clue of why we had come, making ambush a very real possibility.

A crackhouse had burned to the ground the previous night and everyone inside had been immolated. Those who had not died in the fire were gunned down as they tried to escape. Every piper around the way was now on alert for the arsonist. I was pretty sure I knew who it was. I just didn’t understand why. It made no sense to me why Scratch was killing his own customers.

The crackwhore we were after was somewhere down in the mildew and filth below and these steps were the only exit. She was trapped. I had no idea how many pipers and hypers were down there nodding and scratching among the rats and roaches, but I had a fifteen shot clip in the Berretta and anyone who tried to interfere with business was gonna catch a bad one.

My senses were screaming. I could smell the sweat, the foul breath, the burning cocaine, heroin, speed, the dried blood and urine, the jungle funk of recent sex and something altogether foreign yet unnervingly familiar. Scratch pressed up against me breathing excitedly. He could sense it too. We were nearing the kill. I still couldn’t figure out why Scratch wanted to come along on this one. Why he hadn’t just given me the location and the bitch’s description and sent me to do the dirty-work myself. Killing a crackwhore in a shooting gallery wasn’t a very glamorous assignment.

“You hear that, Snap?” Scratch whispered nervously. His white skin seemed to glow in the near pitch darkness making his head look like a glow-in-the-dark Halloween skull.

“I don’t hear shit. Now shut the fuck up.”

I was still trying to place that strange smell and wondering about a new scent…burning wax, as if someone had just blown out a candle.

“Yeah, these muthafuckas know we’re here,”
I thought to myself, and then I heard what Scratch was trippin’ on. It sounded like someone trying to smother a baby’s cries. That’s when I placed the smell. It was used diapers. Somebody had a baby down here. I guess she wasn’t pregnant anymore. The thought of an infant crawling around in that house among crack vials, hypodermic needles, and broken liquor bottles sickened me.

When we reached the bottom of the stairs, Scratch turned on the big halogen flashlight he had brought with him and waved it around the room. There were over a dozen people huddled there in various corners of the room. They shied away from the light as if they truly were the lifeless ghouls they appeared to be. There was an amalgam of young, old, male, female, White, Black, Puerto Rican, and even Korean crowded together on the dusty floor. Addiction did not discriminate.

They were the living dead. Skin drawn tight to muscles atrophied to the point of near uselessness, animated only by their addiction. Bones showing through the thin layer of flesh, brittle from malnourishment to the point where each step drew pain, their souls suppurating with infected wounds that even the hardest narcotics could not remedy. They gathered around the dim flicker of lighters heating crackpipes and heroine spoons like settlers around a campfire fervently engrossed in their quotidian ritual of self-destruction. It looked like some modern day leper colony, a mirthless carnival of woe where society quarantined its diseased misfits.

We had intended to just smoke anyone we found down here, but there were too many. Spillage from the crackhouses Scratch had already raided. This many bodies would attract too much attention after the damage Scratch had done last night. One or two crackheads dead wasn’t going to make anyone’s priority list, but a massacre like this would start tongues wagging about conspiracies and bring the heat down hard.

I spotted the girl we were after way in the back clutching a bundle of rags to her face, trying to hide.

“Is that the bitch right there?”

Scratch aimed the big light at her and smiled even as he took an involuntary step backwards as if he were suddenly afraid.

“I want all ya’ll crackheads and hypes to raise up out of here unless you’re lookin’ for a quick end to your misery,” I yelled, pointing the gun for emphasis.

The walking dead started to scramble, shuffle, and drag their tired asses out into the street. The girl with the rags pressed to her face didn’t even bother to move. She knew that we were there for her and that she was as good as dead. Death would be no great divergence from her current condition.

“Here, take my baby,” she said to a man who was busy gathering up his works and trying to get out of the line of fire.