Black Gangster (5 page)

"That's right, baby," Prince replied. "You got the picture now. Whatever men you might need, just let me or Roman know, and you can have them."

Prince glanced around at all the astonished faces. The magnitude of his plans had jolted them out of their fantasies of toughness.

"I didn't bother telling you," Prince said, his voice harsh, "but it goes without saying: there's no such thing as quitting. You're all in it 'til the bitter endif it should happen to go that way."

Preacher, a tall brown-skinned Negro wearing a midnight-black silk suit, stood up. He casually displayed the exquisite jewelry on his wrist with a swift motion of his left arm. "Prince," he began, "I'm having a little trouble down in the Hastings projects."

"Oh! And how is that?" Prince asked.

"Well, to begin with," Preacher said, "everybody here is hip to the stud I'm having trouble with. The stud thinks he's a little too big for this thing you're trying to work out of, Prince. He also told me to tell you not to come down in the projects with that shit of yours, 'cause he don't want to hear it."

Prince studied Preacher coldly. "How many guys does he have following him now?"

"I'd say he's got at least a hundred, if not more."

"If something happened to Dave, Preacher, who would fill his shoes?" Prince asked softly.

"That's easy," Preacher replied. "You're lookin' at him right now."

"Can I depend on that?" Prince asked softly.

"You can damn well depend on it, Prince. Once Dave is out of the way, I'll be the big dog down there."

The meaning of the conversation was not missed by anybody in the room. Everybody knew that Square Dave was big not only in his own neighborhood but anywhere in the city he chose to go.

A young girl with hair bleached bright blonde yelled, "Say, Prince, when are we going to start celebrating your homecoming?"

"Soon, honey, soon, but first we're going to take care of the business at hand," Prince said sharply. "So, first of all, I want all of you to put your Ruler outfits on, and then I want you to make sure you're seen all over the city."

"That means there's going to be trouble in the city, don't it, Prince?" Shortman asked.

"You hit the nail on the head, baby boy, that's just what it means," Prince replied. "Make sure all of you have an airtight alibi. Stay in the lights wherever you've taken a notion to be. Make sure you're seen, but make sure you can prove where you were at, too."

IN A PENTHOUSE ACROSS town in the heart of the city, two identical blondes dressed in skintight black satin dresses swayed to the beat of soft jazz. A door opened from one of the bedrooms and a young man stepped into the wall-to-wall carpeted living room.

"Jesus Christ!" he exclaimed. "Don't tell me you two are still doing that funky dance!" He stared at the two women in disgust.

"Can we help it if we like to dance?" one of the blondes replied. "Tony," the other woman called, shaking her hips meaningfully, "come dance with me."

Tony ran his hand through his wavy, jet-black hair, and stared at the woman who had spoken to him. "Why don't you go into the bedroom and wake Racehorse up if you want somebody to dance with you," he said without anger.

"Donna better not wake up my old man," the first blonde said loudly. She stared at her sister, daring her to go into the bedroom. A silence settled on the room as the sisters stared at each other. They had both come a long way from that small town in tipper Michigan. Yet they stuck together, neither one trusting the other but true to each other in their own way.

"Don't worry," Donna answered, running her hands through Tony's hair. "I got me a pretty little wop to play with."

"You keep running your mouth," Tony said roughly, "and I'm going to slap some of the goddamn lipstick off you." He turned to the other woman. "Rhonda, why don't you go wake up your old man and find out whether or not he wants to go out for dinner or stay cooped up in this damn joint."

"Shit, Tony," Rhonda replied in a frightened voice, "you know how mad my old man is when I wake him up. Why don't you try waking him up?"

"Gee whiz, Rhonda," Donna yelled, "you act like you can't even talk to your man without him jumping all over you."

Rhonda drew a long breath, letting it out slowly. "I don't care what you say, I'm not about to go into that bedroom and wake Racehorse up. If you want to find out where he wants to eat, go ask him. But don't expect me to do it."

Donna laughed sharply. "I sure wouldn't let any man have me that frightened of him."

"Watch your mouth," Tony warned. He pushed her hand away from his hair.

"Well, I mean it," she continued. "If any man had me that afraid, I'd sure do something about it."

"Like what?" he asked, suddenly interested.

Not heeding the warning glitter in his eyes, Donna continued, "Well, for one thing, I wouldn't let no man whip me the way he beats her up. I don't care if I had to wait until he went to sleep, I'd fix his wagon."

Before the words were out of her mouth, Tony had slapped her viciously across the face. "Why do I always have to warn you about running off at the mouth, woman?"

Donna, holding the side of her face, screamed at him. "What the hell did you go and do that for? You sonofabitching bastard!"

Tony swung and knocked her down with one blow, then removed his belt and began to beat her. She squirmed on the floor, screaming in pain. "Please, baby, please! I didn't mean no harm!"

Rhonda, screaming, ran into the bedroom for Racehorse. A harsh, masculine voice responded. "Bitch, if you don't get the fuck out of here with all that goddamn noise, I'll get up from this bed and kick a mudhole in your ass."

Rhonda left the bedroom door open as she turned and fled back to the safety of the living room. In panic, she jumped on Tony's back in an attempt to save her sister from the brutal beating.

Without even a struggle, Tony pulled her from his back and pushed her onto the floor beside Donna. His face was twisted into a snarl as he swung the belt down on the two screaming women.

The shrieking of both women filled the apartment. The commotion finally produced what Rhonda was hoping for. Racehorse appeared in the doorway. He stared at the spectacle before him. There was a look of exasperation on his ebony face.

He looked as out of place as a housewife at a stag party as he stood in the doorway in a velvet black robe; around his head was the bright yellow scarf he wore when he slept to keep his processed hair in place. After observing the scene quietly for a few moments, he spoke up. "What the hell are you planning on doing, Tony, beat them until the police come up and pull you off of them?" He stared at the two women squirming on the floor, their skirts above their hips, red welts on their thighs from Tony's belt.

Tony was too absorbed in the beating to lay off immediately. With difficulty, he gained control of himself and stopped.

"If you can't get along with them fuckin' whores, Tony, why don't you just put their fuckin' asses out?" Racehorse asked coldly. His eyes were bleak as he stared from one woman to the other.

"I didn't do nothing, daddy," Rhonda yelled as she scrambled up from the floor. "Please, honey, it wasn't my fault," she pleaded. "I was just trying to stop him from beating up my sister. He looked as though he was trying to kill her, daddy."

Racehorse stared at her. "All you white whores are crazy," he said harshly. "You should know better than to interfere with their fights. Whatever they do, it don't have a damn thing to do with you, you understand that, bitch?"

"It won't happen again, daddy, I promise!" she cried, nodding her head vigorously. Her bright red lipstick was smeared and there was a dark mark over her right cheekbone. Her blonde hair fell down around her shoulders as she tossed her head back and stared up into Racehorse's face.

Racehorse gave her a slight shake. "You better make sure it don't, 'cause if it does, I'm puttin' your ass out."

Tony gave Donna a kick before he turned and spoke to the tall Negro. "I'm sorry, Race, about beatin' your woman, but the bitch put her ass in where it didn't belong."

Racehorse shrugged. "The bitch was wrong, so she got what she was lookin' for."

The phone began to ring and Racehorse walked into the bedroom. In a moment he reappeared in the doorway with the phone in his hand. "Tony," he said, "come in here for a second, will you?"

Tony followed him into the bedroom, closing the door silently.

"Don't worry," Racehorse spoke softly into the receiver. "We'll take care of everything."

He hung up the receiver and walked over to the dresser, pulling out the bottom drawer. After remov ing some shirts, he pulled out two snub-nosed thirtyeight automatics.

Racehorse examined the pistols carefully before speaking. "That was Prince, Tony. He's got a little job for us to do down in the projects on Hastings."

"Damn," Tony said lightly. "He didn't waste any time, did he?"

"That's right, baby. I figured he would get home sometime this week, but I sure didn't think we'd be going into action this fast."

Laying the guns on the dresser, Racehorse walked over to the closet. "We got to take an hour to get to Wilkins and Hastings. By then a hot car will be sitting there waiting for us. I told Prince that we didn't want a driver, Tony. I figured that you and I could handle it better by ourselves."

"I dig that," Tony answered. "The less people know about it, the better off we are."

Racehorse took his time dressing, putting on a black suit. He stuck both pistols down inside his belt and stopped in front of a floor-length mirror to make sure the guns didn't bulge. His dark brown eyes were unreadable as he studied himself closely. Sharp hawklike features stared back at him from a cold black face.

"You about ready, Tony?" he asked, his voice trembling slightly with excitement over the coming job.

"Yeah, Race, I'm just about ready. I got to pick up my hardware from my room, then we can pull up."

Forty-five minutes later a black coupe pulled up in front of a crowded tenement. A tall black Negro leaned out of the car window and spoke to one of the kids playing on the steps.

"What the hell do you want with Square Dave?" a cocoa-brown-skinned girl asked from the top of the steps. She was about thirteen years old.

The young Italian driver spoke quietly to the sharpfaced Negro next to him. Before the Negro could answer, a tall, husky, pleasant-faced black man came out of the apartment building. The girl at the top of the steps nodded toward the car.

"Them guys want to see you, Dave," she said in a small voice.

Dave stopped for a moment, then started on down the steps. The motor of the black coupe leaped to life. People walking up and down the trash-littered street stopped in their tracks and looked around. From dilapidated ruins that still passed for houses, people peered out, smelling trouble with the built-in instinct of the oppressed.

A warning flashed through his mind, and Dave hesitated. Flames of death streaked from the car window as shot after shot found its mark. As Dave staggered the rest of the way down the steps, the coupe roared away from the curb, leaving behind the beginning of murder and the promise of terror.

A clamoring crowd gathered around the dying man as two young hoodlums, dressed alike, pushed their way out of the crowd. The sounds of the distant sirens grew stronger as the street lamp's glare fell across the sinister looking R's on the backs of the men's jackets.

THE STIFLING AFTERNOON heat began to carry foul odors up from the gutters and alleyways. Charles Morales, a detective from the homicide division, took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow. To a stranger, he could have passed for a well-dressed insurance collector, but to the inhabitants of this neighborhood, this short, powerfully built middle-aged man, with his bullneck and bowed legs, spelled cop, with capital letters.

Morales, glancing up and down the street for his partner, missed none of the poverty with his piercing blue eyes. He saw his big, red-faced partner coming out of a tenement building, and from the way he walked he could tell his partner hadn't had any luck. Waving disconsolately, Detective Gazier went into the apartment building next to the one he had just left. Morales shook his head sadly. Gazier was a good policeman, but he was just too short-tempered. For homicide, a policeman had to have patience. He wondered again how long it would be before the captain finally transferred one of them to another partner. He wished he had a rookie to work with. That way, you didn't have any problems. A rookie would listen, whereas with an experienced man like Gazier, it was hard to do things any other way besides the ingrained way.