'We're working on that, too. Things improve with your mom any?' Wayne knew there was no point in asking about her father.
'Nope.'
'You still see the baby's daddy anymore?'
Lady G balled her hand and punched her thigh repeatedly, drawing their attention. Familiar with her case file, Wayne didn't press her. Her life didn't start easy as her mother tried to cut her out of her stomach while pregnant with her. Despite being born addicted to crack, her mother took to beating her, the worst typically coming at Christmas time when the Christmas lights became an improvised whip. After a house fire, she fell into a pattern of moving from house to house, becoming a couch surfer before she hit her teen years.
'No, I don't see him anymore,' Rhianna lied, more to Lady G than Wayne. She planned to meet Prez later on that day.
'Don't waste no time with petty niggas,' Lady G said with a sing-song lilt as if along to the words of a new joint.
'I know, I know. 'Do better'.'
'I'm just saying, no dude better touch me, much less hit me over no butt. Do better.'
'I ain't gonna trip.' Rhianna's whisper sounded even more hoarse.
'You stand by yourself, you stay by yourself.'
'Girl,' Rhianna searched for a retort but found none, '…boo.' Then she upticked her chin toward another table. The trio's attentions shifted to the large boy sitting by himself.
'What you looking at?' Lady G's tone raised up in the posture of attack that was now reflex. No perceived slight or challenge went unmet.
'Nothing.' Nearly tipping three bills, Percy had been watching them as his personal dinner theater. Mounds of food — half already consumed — filled his plate. Sheets of paper lay scattered next to his plate as he doodled while lost in his thoughts. He had a darker knot above his left eyebrow in the shape of a crescent moon, his downcast eyes searched for the television remote. The batteries for it rolled along the table; he'd taken them out after fumbling with the buttons in an effort to get it to work.
'Oh, I know you're looking at something,' Lady G said.
'You want you some of this?' Rhianna rose to the sport. Neither of them knew how to react to someone, a male especially, who was always around without the agenda of getting into their pants. Yet Percy was always nearby, trailing them more like a faithful puppy than anything creepy. They didn't trust his faithful protectiveness either. 'You are way too special.'
'You got to get some game. Can't come up in here looking like Super Mario in black face.'
'Look here, Negro Gump…'
'Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so,' Percy began to sing to himself. He rocked back and forth, contenting himself to wait them out. There was only so much for them to make fun of: he was slow, fat, had yellow teeth, was not especially handsome, and his clothes were secondhand filthy. Though his nose was long numb to it, he knew that he stank. Wayne's eyes filled with pity every time he saw him and it made Percy sad to see him sometimes. Lady G and Miss Rhianna, they'd laugh and laugh and laugh — they had such pretty laughs — but eventually they exhausted themselves. There were worse fates, he knew, like being ignored entirely.
'Ladies, that's enough,' Wayne snapped. He made a production of him clearing his plate in disgust, letting the girls' eyes linger on him, and joining the boy at his table. Percy lowered his eyes even more, his shoulders sank and he leaned his head away from him, the same body language Kay assumed when painfully cornered but not wanting to attack. 'They didn't mean anything, Percy.'
'I know.' The world was a simple place to Percy. There were good people (like Wayne) and there were bad people (like Prez). Better to be born simple and not realize the horrors around you. He looked up at Wayne with complete trust in his eyes. Theirs were a simple little band, assembled by loss.
'Sometimes they go a little too far.'
'I know.'
'I happen to know they care about you.' Wayne placed his hand on his shoulder. The boy flinched at the touch then shied away as if shamed by the contact.
'I know.'
'You're probably the safest guy in their world and they don't know how to act around you.'
Lady G got up and walked over to the piano that sat at the other end of the room. It had been donated by a family which had no further need of it, but hadn't been serviced in a while. She pecked tunelessly at it. Percy closed his eyes as if enjoying a concert recital.
'They can't trust. When you trust someone only to have them do you dirty…' Percy trailed off as he observed Wayne studying a crumpled piece of paper. He pushed the piece of paper under another.
'Who is she?' Wayne noticed the resemblance to Rhianna but said nothing.
'Just a girl,' he said. 'Little ones to Him belong. They are weak but He is strong.'
CHAPTER FOUR
If the corner were a slave plantation, Dollar was the overseer, the Negro chosen to ensure the other Negroes performed their assigned tasks. His tall, gangly frame — like a basketball player with not enough bulk — filled out his white Notre Dame jogging suit, his bloodshot glare held the menace of a whip ready to scourge any who weren't keeping up their end. A poorly grown goatee outlined his jaw. A black wavecap pulled snug under the jogging suit's hood. His crew were the field Negroes, steady grinding, toiling away; from the lookouts down the way to the runner passing product. The fiends? They were house Negroes, come to beg scraps from their master's table. Some he knew, others were just faces. These brokendown fools he knew because they ran with his boy, Tavon. Loose Tooth, the player formerly known as CashMoney, carried quite a bit of weight to him for a fiend. Though he had to be pushing forty, his body hadn't quite given into the wasting yet, but his mouth hadn't seen the inside of a dentist's office probably since the mid-'80s. Miss Jane, on the other hand, her dusty ass had to have an eye on her at all times. Always running games, she'd be the one who'd alert the master to any slaves trying to make an escape. In the end, they were all slaves to the game.
Junie studied the scene with the desperation of a man cramming for finals he forgot were that day. He and Parker had waited until Green left. Though neither would have used the word 'preternatural' to describe his mien, they knew that Green cast an aura that filled their veins with water. Once sufficient time had elapsed after his departure — his presence still managing to hold court for a time — they were ready to make their move. While Dollar's crew was occupied bullshitting with a couple of fiends, the pair crept toward them. They kept their weapons pointed toward the ground in their loping gait toward their targets. Young, black, and poor, they were the most dangerous men in America, with no hope and nothing to lose.
'They coming up the block, yo,' a lookout on a bike yelled as he whizzed by Dollar.
Dollar chose the entrance of Breton Court for a reason (as if he had a choice once Green told him where to set up). Two rows of townhouses ran alongside the main drag of Breton Court, plus outstretched arms from the court proper, each having another row of townhouses facing each other separated by a grassy yard. The rears of the two rows between the main drag and the outstretched arm of condos formed an alley of sorts, the fenced-in back patios providing a series of nooks where bodies could hide or deals be transacted with minimal intrusion. Rising up from one of the posts that served as his seat, Dollar dispatched his boys to the bushes that decorated the ends of the townhouses, wasted landscaping that served mostly to hide stashes and weapons. Guns were also hidden among the concrete bricks used to prop open the back patio doors. With the choreography of a ballet company, their movements swift and sure, the troops were ready for them.
Parker didn't have much more of a plan than to walk up and start busting caps. Their only other real option was a drive-by, but that lacked the personal touch, the demonstration of heart, that would cause their names to ring out. Hitching up his baggy jeans as he broke into a jog — another gun firmly in the waistband of his boxers hidden beneath his black hoodie and trailing white T-shirt — Parker aimed his Glock 17. The fiends and bystander scattered with the first shot, though Miss Jane ducked into the bushes with the presence of mind to use the distraction to raid Dollar's stashes. Parker turned his gun sideways, the way he'd often seen it done in movies, only
