Animal (19 page)

Dee suddenly felt a tinge of panic in his chest. He knew if he gave them any money he wouldn’t see them for the rest of the night and he had worked too hard for the pussy to wait another week. “A’ight, I’ll let Meek shoot across the street to grab y’all some snacks to hold you down for now, and as soon as No-Good is finished, we can go to Red Lobster and eat real good.”

Both Keisha and Karen’s eyes lit up at the prospect of a lobster dinner. It sounded far more promising than the Chinese food they were going to settle for when they skipped off with Dee’s money. “A’ight,” Karen agreed.

“I don’t know, Dee. La said we supposed to stay two up and one down at all times.” Meek reminded him of Lakim’s decree before he left the block. He wanted them to work in threes, one man to hold the drugs, one man to hold the money, and one man to hold the gun. He didn’t elaborate on why they had changed things up, and they didn’t question him; they just nodded and said, “Okay.”

“C’mon, son, you just running across the street. What the fuck could possibly happen in five minutes? Stop acting like a li’l nigga,” Dee teased him, and Keisha and Karen laughed.

“Fuck outta here, I’m a boss too!” Meek poked his chest out. Dee always knew the right things to say to put a battery
in Meek’s back, and it had been like that since they were kids. Outside of his mother, who he hardly saw because she was strung out, Dee was the only family Meek had in the world. He looked up to Dee like a big brother and valued his opinion of him above anyone’s.

“Then
boss
yo’ ass to the store so we can finish this shit up and bounce. I got something I wanna show Keisha,” Dee said slyly, looking at her. The look she gave him back let him know it was going down that night.

“A’ight, well, hold this for me.” Meek handed him the .25 he had in his pocket. He didn’t want to walk to the store with it in case he became the victim of a random police stop and search.

“A’ight and hurry yo’ ass up.” Dee tucked the gun in his jacket pocket. “We gonna wait for you by the mailbox,” he told Meek as they walked down the narrow path to the mailbox on LaSalle. Dee leaned against the mailbox and watched Meek make hurried steps toward the store across the underpass.

“So it’s just y’all two that run this whole shit?” Karen asked unexpectedly.

“Nah, it’s a few of us, but me and Meek are the brains of the operation,” Dee lied.

“We heard it was some dudes in Grant getting big money, but we had no idea it was y’all,” Keisha said.

“Yeah, we them niggaz.” Dee was feeling himself. Then he noticed a gray Mercedes riding slowly up the block and dipped his hand into his pocket where the .25 was stashed.

There was a Puerto Rican girl behind the wheel, and he could make out a figure in the backseat, but couldn’t really see who it was because of the heavy tint on the back windows. On the passenger’s side was a brown-skinned dude who had his arm
dangling out the window smoking a cigarette. He looked up at Dee, and when their eyes met, a chill ran down Dee’s spine, causing his palm to sweat and making the gun in his pocket slippery in his grip. There was something about his face that rang familiar with Dee, but his fear had his heart and brain out of sync. Smelling Dee’s fear, the brown-skinned dude smiled at Dee, raised his fingers in the shape of a gun, and pointed it toward the corner. The Puerto Rican girl mashed on the gas, and the car sped toward Broadway.

Dee was confused at first, but when he looked in the direction the car was traveling and saw Meek walking across the street he realized what was about to go down.

“MEEK!!!!!!” Dee screamed, but it was already too late.

For a long while Ashanti and Fatima walked in silence. He had his hands shoved deep into his pockets and his eyes on the ground. Every so often he would look at Fatima, but whenever their eyes met he would quickly turn away. Ashanti was as brave as they came when it came to battle, but around Fatima he felt like a coward.

“You okay?” Fatima asked, startling him.

“Yeah, I’m cool. Why do you ask?”

“I dunno, you’re just real quiet,” she said.

“I’m always quiet,” Ashanti replied.

Fatima raised her eyebrow. “Knock it off, because you know I’ve seen you cut up something fierce when you’re with Lakim and the rest of those ignorant fools,” she laughed.

“Yeah, I guess we do get a li’l wild sometimes, but no wilder than you and your homegirls,” Ashanti half-smiled.

Fatima rolled her eyes playfully. “We are ladies.”

“You might be a lady, but I think Pam is part dude. I seen her throw hands before. Not for nothing, if it had gone down between her and No-Good, my money was on Pam.”

“Speaking of that, I never got a chance to thank you. You know, for what you did,” Fatima told him.

Ashanti shrugged. “It wasn’t about nothing. No-Good is a bitch-ass nigga for being out here trying to hit on a girl. It was only right that I stepped up.”

“God knows none of them other cats out there were gonna step up,” Fatima shook her head.

“Them niggaz ain’t built. Dee and them out here playing gangsta, while the rest of us are living it.”

“You’re definitely about your business,” Fatima said with a smile. “Could I ask you something?”

“Sure,” Ashanti said, slightly nervous as to what she might ask.

“Would you really have shot No-Good over me?”

Ashanti thought on it for a minute. “I would’ve shot No-Good for the principle of it; defending your honor would’ve just been a bonus.”

Fatima smiled. “I’ve never had a man defend my honor before.”

“I find that hard to believe. I know some cats that would kill and die for a chick like you, Fatima.”

“Well, please introduce me to them because these scumbags I keep running into ain’t about nothing but themselves.”

“Maybe you’re running in the wrong circles.”

“It’s possible. Any suggestions which circles I should be running in?”

“I can think of a few.”

Before their flirting could go any further there was the sound of a scream somewhere in the projects.

“What the hell was that?” Fatima asked.

“I don’t know, but it can’t be good. Come on.” Ashanti took Fatima by the hand, and they hurried back in the direction of the building.

When Meek started out for the store he was still feeling salty about how Dee had talked to him in front of Keisha and Karen. He could take a good joke just like the next guy, but because of the fact that he looked up to Dee it always stung when he did it.

Dee had been looking out for Meek since he found him on the receiving end of an ass whipping in the fifth grade. Meek had always been smaller than the other kids and because his mother was on drugs, he never had clean clothes so he was an easy target for bullies. It was Dee who taught Meek how to defend himself and eventually get money selling drugs. Meek had never really had the heart for the hustle, but it was the only thing he was good at and it kept him from going back to nothing. Meek just wanted to make enough money to where he could bounce down south to Atlanta and start his life over. Unlike Dee, Meek had no desire to retire in the streets, but sometimes the streets stole the choice from you.

Just as Meek was about to go into the store he heard someone calling his name. He turned around just as a gray Benz whipped around the corner and skidded to a stop a few feet away from him. It only took Meek a few seconds to figure out what was going down but that was more than enough time for Jesus to roll the window down and aim the TEC at him.

“Say good night,” Jesus told him and pulled the trigger.

Instinctively, Meek closed his eyes and prepared for the end but several heartbeats later he was still alive. He opened his eyes and saw Jesus fumbling with the bullet that had jammed in the gun. God had thrown him a lifeline, and he had no intentions on squandering it. He dipped his hand in his pocket, looking for the .25 Lakim had told him to carry at all times . . . and came up with lint. His last thoughts before his brains sprayed all over the bodega window is that he wished he’d listened to Lakim.

When Ashanti and Fatima rounded the corner of the building the first thing they noticed was that the courtyard was now empty. All of the workers had unexpectedly abandoned their posts, which was a sure sign of trouble. He heard the scream again and looked up in time to see Dee dashing down the block in the direction of the corner store. Directly across the street he saw a gray Mercedes screech to a halt. He recognized it as the same Mercedes he had seen earlier.

“Stay here,” he ordered Fatima, drawing his gun.

“Wait, what’s going on?” Fatima asked in a panicked tone.

“Just stay here!” he shouted and ran down the block.

Ashanti made it to the corner just as the first shot rang out. He saw Meek’s head snap back right before he hit the ground. From the stain on the bodega window there was no question of whether he was dead or not. When the man who had shot Meek turned his gun on Dee, who was fumbling with the .25, Ashanti got a good look at his face, and it was familiar. When he realized where he had seen him before his heart filled with rage. It was the same man who had shot Gucci in the club. He
had promised if they saw each other, one of them was going to die and the moment was at hand.

“Remember me, muthafucka?” Ashanti shouted before the flash of his cannon turned night to day. The shooter ducked back into the Mercedes, narrowly missing having his head blown off. “Don’t run now!” Ashanti kept firing until his clip was empty and the car had disappeared into the night. His enemy had escaped but only temporarily. The shooter owed Ashanti a debt that could only be paid in blood, and even if it took the rest of his life, he would not be denied his due.

The girls and No-Good had disappeared as soon as the shooting started, which was expected. No matter how big they talked, none of them were really built for war. A few feet away, Dee knelt over the body of his childhood friend. Dee’s sobs were so heavy that Ashanti felt them in his own chest. Meek was just a kid, but he had chosen to play a very adult game and ended up losing.

Soon the police would arrive and start interviewing witnesses to see what had happened. Ashanti wasn’t worried about what anyone would say because everybody knew King James ran the hood and to snitch on him was a death sentence. What troubled him more was having to break the news to Meek’s mother that the streets had claimed her baby.

NINETEEN

H
OLIDAY SAT WITH THE SMOKING GUN ON
his lap, while Marisol sped down Broadway. Every so often he would nervously look out the shattered back window, fearing that he would see the police hot on their heels. So far, they had made it eight blocks and all seemed clear, but it still didn’t make him feel any better about the botched hit. He sighed heavily because he knew he had nobody but himself to blame.

The plan was a simple one: roll through the projects, lay down whomever they saw that was affiliated with King James, and get ghost, but the plan went horribly wrong and almost cost Holiday his life. When Jesus tried to pop off, the TEC jammed and he was so zooted that he couldn’t clear the bullet. Murder was a time-sensitive thing and every second they wasted put them one step closer to a prison cell, so Holiday had to get his hands dirty. The first shot was a head shot, which killed the kid instantly, but Holiday dumped two more in his body to be sure. He was about to finish off the boy’s partner when
he
showed up.