“This ain’t no muthafuckin’ negotiation! You want me to do this then the price is ten muthafuckin’ gees!”
Scratch’s voice came thundering through the phone. Something about it sounded more powerful and threatening than the man had ever sounded in person. It reminded me of the way Scratch had sounded years ago just before he’d blown that Jamaican’s head apart.
“Fuck that! You owe me!”
“Owe you? How you get that notion in your head? You ain’t never did shit for me. Many niggas as I done put to sleep for you for bullshit chump change! I don’t owe you shit and I don’t need shit from you!”
Scratch hissed into the phone and it was like the warning before a cobra’s strike. Rage boiled off him in waves. I could feel his anger like a physical force radiating through the phone, burning into me. I refused to be moved.
“Alright, bro. You got your ten fuckin’ gees.”
“Then I’m down. Should I come heavy or light?”
“This is light work. I’ll pick you up in about a half.”
I hung up the phone and stared at the yellowing white walls trying to dispel the ominous feeling of dread that had come down on me after agreeing to go on yet another hit. This had to be the last one. If I kept this up I’d never get out. I shouldn’t have even taken this last job, but the lure of money was too strong. I turned and looked across the room at the mirror on the bathroom door. It had been a long time since I’d looked in that mirror and saw the boy I was meant to be instead of the killer I had become. I wondered if I’d ever be a kid again. I wondered if I’d ever be able to hug my mother without the blood on my hands forming a barrier between us. I lifted the holster with the loaded Beretta still inside out of a pile of dirty laundry and hooked it onto my belt. I slipped a box of 9mm. Black Talons into my pocket along with an extra clip just as my mother called up to me from the kitchen.
“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 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.
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
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.
