turned, those who had been watching Garlan and Rellik chat now craned about, searching for any trace of them. Garlan approached Rok and waved his hand in front of him. Then flipped him off. Rok gave no indication of seeing him, but grew uneasy, feeling crowded. Garlan stepped back and the boy seemed to relax a bit.
The Boars stank up close. One of those stale-sweat jungle funks some brothers couldn't scrub off no matter how many showers they took or how much cologne they put on. As he neared, The Boars tensed, suddenly on edge. Obviously a fighter, some ancient warrior sense within, alerted him; he assumed a defensive posture. His boys backed away from him, possibly simply fearing that he might swing at them.
Garlan circled the man, wary and testing his limits. The Boars' frame was even more massive up close. What some might have taken as fat was more muscle than not. From his stance, he knew how to use his weight and was much lighter on his feet than one might guess. Still, no matter the size, every Goliath could be taken down by a well-placed stone.
Garlan punched him in the throat. The Boars clutched at his neck, bending forward enough for Garlan to land a heavy punch which exploded his nose. It was strictly cosmetic damage, but he aimed for an effect of blood spurting everywhere rather than damage. Toying with him, Garlan jabbed at the man's kidneys, an ax taken to an old oak, bit by bit, wearing him down. The Boars swung wild, hitting only air. The scent of blood started to get Garlan's head up. He swept The Boars feet from under him and rained kicks into his side. The Boars curled up to protect himself as best he could, not knowing how many assailants he had to fend off.
'That's enough,' Rellik said. During quiet moments, he wondered if he'd been away from the game too long. Perhaps prison was too far removed from the grind of the streets, made him out of touch with these boys. All doubts were pushed aside because the rules never changed. Public punishments acted as a deterrence. All ambitions ran through the head and he decided when you were ready to step up. And they ensured solidarity, because they were all on the same page now.
He dreamt of being like the Black Panthers of the '60s, agitating for real change and improvement in the neighborhoods. Oblivious to the irony of drug trade and violence eating away at community. Rellik knew the power he had. Wages, shifts, spikes in supply and demand, they were all part of the calculations of industry. The game took care of its players. He felt the obligation to take care of his people. His soldiers couldn't do drugs. The last thing he needed was one of them tweaking out or having their heads not in business. He demanded they stay in school or at least got their GED. He donated money to youth centers, bought sports equipment and computers. He was all about the trickle-down theory: drug money redistributed fiends' money back into the community, and he was a key player in that system. True, there were the Nights, Dreds, Colvins, and fools of the game who were little different from corporate execs who embezzled pension plans for their own gain. But Rellik was about the system. Then there was the police, always with their hands out deciding which businesses could launder cash or which crew could operate freely. Biggest crooks of them all. Never around when you need them, but Johnny on the spot after the fact.
'Rip currents, like a levee break, form channels which pull everything in them out to the reservoir,' the sheriff, a fat white man who hid behind mirrored sunglasses and a broad hat, explained. 'Usually a wave hits the beach and flows back to the lake as gentle backwash. The way this little alcove here is set up, with the strong winds blowing towards the shore, water collects on the beach side of a sand bar. When the trapped water breaches the sand bar, it flows away real quick from the beach and forms a vortex beyond the surf.'
Gavain sat in the sheriff's car with a blanket wrapped loosely around him. He shivered under the blaring sun and toasty wind. His mother hollered then collapsed at the sight of men loading her sons, sheets pulled over their heads, into the ambulance. Gavain stared at the lake, thinking about the hands that pulled him to shore, sparing him.
He missed his brother.
'How'd that feel to you?' Rellik said to the air. 'You need to turn the ring back.'
Garlan appeared in front of him. 'It felt good. Right.'
'You get used to it pretty quickly. Sometime a nigga's just got to be beat-down.' Rellik watched some of the young'uns help The Boars to his feet, help he shrugged off. 'They have to fear you.'
'They do.'
'They do now. Before, you were one of them, you might have told them what to do, but to them you gave suggestions, not orders that demanded to be followed. Most of them followed because they were too lazy to come up with something else. The Boars was different. Just biding his time.
'I love these niggas. They my family. But I don't trust them. No one. Especially my friends. The higher up you go, the less you can afford to go soft.' Rellik didn't mind though. As he worked toward his larger ambitions, his goal was to go mainstream, to get out the game and take his people legit.
'We got any more problems, we squash them now.' Rellik prepared to wrap up the meeting. 'You pay taxes, you get to call the police or your city councilman. You niggas ain't paid a cent in taxes. But you know we all know. Round here, we all pay. And we only have Merky Water to call on. This here's your job. A job's a job and when you're here, you on the clock. Your ass needs to be here on time and on point. You put in the work, you get paid. This ain't no minimum-wage gig so you better take pride in it.'
With that, the group was dismissed.
'Any new business?' Rellik asked Garlan away from listening ears.
'Got a line on raw product sounds pretty good.'
'From who?'
'From Dred.'
'Oh, yeah?' Rellik asked. 'He play too many games. Spike that shit with something. You never know.'
'He a steady connect.'
'Got to think of this like a business. Dude over here wants to sell to me at regular rate now, make sure I'm a steady connect then discount me twenty percent next year. Dude over there wants to discount me ten percent now if I sign up with him. Who would you go with?'
'In this world, there'll always be fiends. Think longterm and go with the deeper discount.'
'You thinking. I like that, but naw. Thing you forget is that ain't nothing guaranteed. This time next year, you, me, either dude could be locked up, dead, or out of the game. Take your discount upfront.'
'Go for the guaranteed money.'
'That's my nigga,' Rellik said. 'And leave Dred alone. That nigga's never up to anything good.'
• • • •
A mural of a Jamaican flag filled the left third of the wall. An Ethiopian flag was painted on the right third, the two framing a portrait of Haile Selassie. Dred perched beneath it, ensconced in a high-backed wicker chair. A thick plume of smoke issued from the side of his mouth. Short and stocky, he had a prison workout body despite the fact that Dred had never seen the inside of a cell. Wearing a Pelle Pelle red hooded jogging outfit, the word 'DEATH' scrawled over crossbones. Dismissing Baylon with a nod — the half-dead man retreated to a far corner engulfed by shadows — his vaguely Asiatic eyes studied Merle.
Baylon thought he detected a trace of fear in Dred's eyes. From what he observed, Dred took several steps away from the streets licking his wounds and regrouping, rethinking his strategy. Perhaps he over-reached with his first charge at power, his feint at King, underestimating the man.
'I know all your thoughts,' Dred said. 'Every move you're going to make.'
'That makes one of us. Please excuse all of the gibberish going on in my head.' His mouth caught in an exuberant grin, Merle reached into one of the deep pockets of his raincoat. His slate-gray eyes sparkled with amusement. He took off his aluminum cap, wiped a thick coat of sweat from its brow — squeezing his eyes at the onset of the voices — and returned it to his head. 'Luckily, I usually say what I'm thinking.'
'I don't need you to tell me what you are thinking. In fact, it's easier if you don't because most of what comes out of your mouth is lies anyway. Everyone has body language. Most folks don't think about the message they send out: a curled lip, a hunched shoulder, a twitch here or there. I do.'
'It must be exhausting to be you.'
'It is. It really is.' Dred stepped to Merle, close, almost too close. Some might have taken it as a threat or challenge. Merle was unmoved. The artifice of the bum as crazy-ass cracka was obvious, almost on the verge of a glamour. In fact, it was a glamour of sorts: the glamour of the mundane. The lowest of the low was often ignored.
'Well, since you know all my thoughts and what comes out of my mouth is lies anyway, why are we
