Secrets Uncovered (5 page)

Read Secrets Uncovered Online

Authors: Amaleka McCall

BOOK: Secrets Uncovered
3.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Chapter 4
Sorting Out The Truth
Avon took the long way to Dana Carlisle's house. As he pulled up, he could see Carlisle peeking through her front blinds. He smirked when she pulled the door back before he could even lift his fist to knock.
“Come in,” Carlisle greeted. Tucker walked inside just like he had for the past three weeks of crashing at Dana's place.
“Look, Dana...about the way I acted...,” he started to apologize. He had argued with her the day before. Tucker had grown frustrated when Carlisle insisted that she would help him find information on Candy and Easy Hardaway. Tucker had told her it was too risky, but she had insisted on helping him. She had never seen him so passionate about a case. He had also never seen her so hell-bent on getting involved in one.
“Shh. I understand. You were just trying to protect an old friend,” Carlisle joked, winking at him. She gave him a thorough once-over. Avon had stayed at a hotel after their argument. He looked like he had shit, showered and shaved. She stared at him, starstruck by all his sexiness.
“I can't stay long. I have a lot of things to get straight in my life,” Tucker explained, taking a seat on Carlisle's futon, which had served as his bed when he stayed with her.
“I understand,” she whispered. “Are you finally going to try to go home? You know ... work things out with her?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant. In reality, the green-eyed monster of jealousy was slowly crawling up her back.
“You said you had something important to show me, right?” Tucker got straight to the point. She had called him with an urgency to come by. He figured it would be something related to Candy.
“Yeah, I do.” Carlisle conceded his abrupt shift in subject, knowing that she had struck a nerve. She rushed into her home office, talking over her shoulder. “So you must be glad to be in one piece after all you went through,” Carlisle called out, her voice growing faint as she walked to the back of her house.
“Yeah. It's all been really crazy. Look ... let's not...” Tucker replied evasively. He had already told her he couldn't involve her.
Carlisle shuffled back into the living room, dragging a large box behind her. Tucker offered his assistance by casually brushing her hands away and lifting the box onto the pub-style dinette set in her kitchen.
“Well, this is what I wanted to give you. Don't say I've never given you any gifts,” Carlisle said flirtatiously.
“What exactly is all of this?” Tucker asked, surveying the large, dusty box.
“It's all the shit you need to know, all packaged up. It's also the thing that could get me fired from the DEA, and probably earn me the top spot on somebody's fuckin'hit list, so guard that stuff with your life. I don't really understand everything, even after I read through most of this stuff. But it seems like after the Hardaway family was killed, the DEA tossed the house and found what's in the box. I couldn't really believe it myself. Never thought I'd ever see the day when a drug dealer would be writing down his life story,” Dana said, shaking her head.
Avon looked at her strangely.
“Yeah, that's the same reaction I had when I saw what was in those boxes,” Dana told him. “I'm telling you, the shit reads just like a fiction novel, Tuck. Eric Hardaway was in deep. You have to read this shit for yourself,” Carlisle huffed, placing her hands on her hips.
“Where'd you find—” Avon started to say.
“Don't ask me any questions. You didn't want me to ask you any, and I don't want you to ask me any. Just take it and make good use of it,” she said, smiling wanly.
Tucker had no idea just how desperate she had been to help him get the information he sought. Or the depraved acts she had performed to gather these documents. She owed more than a few people in the classified archives a bunch of favors.
“Thanks for this and for everything else. I'm sorry I can't...I never intended to...” Tucker was stumbling, truly tongue-tied. He never meant to drag her into the mix. All he'd wanted to do in the first place was go undercover, make a big bust and then redeem himself.
Dana shifted her weight from one foot to the other and shoved her restless hands into the back pockets of her jeans. Avon was clearly having a difficult time saying the words that were in his mind, but not on his tongue:
I'm sorry I kind of used you, although I know I could never be attracted to you, because I am in love with someone else.
 
 
Things between them had happened so fast. The revelations that Brubaker was trying to set him up to look like a rogue agent; watching Rock Barton shoot himself in the femoral artery. Watching Candy suffer as she learned that her own brother, under the government's direction, had killed her father. It was enough to make anyone go crazy.
Carlisle had been there at the end. Her smiling, loyal face was the only comfort in the face of death, destruction and betrayal. Dana had opened up her arms and her home to Avon, listening to him pour out his heart over his wife, over Candy and over his time on the street.
In the end her porcelain skin and the lemony smell of her shampoo had made him feel clean and whole. She'd rubbed his bald head and massaged the tension out of his neck. Her long, spindly fingers kneaded him, probing him.
Their first kiss was electric. It was hot, fast and furious. Animalistic.
He'd devoured her tongue like a starving refugee. She nearly ripped his shirt from his muscular chest. Her mouth moved over him so fast—he felt like she'd set his chest ablaze.
Carlisle had made the first move by removing her jeans and then her panties to expose her woman's core. Tuck felt flush; his body betrayed him. His emotions were on overload and he mindlessly took her: forcefully, brutally, clenching his ass cheeks with every release of his hurt, frustrated loneliness.
She had screamed out more than once—mostly from pleasure, not pain—but she certainly could not have enjoyed their coupling very much.
He had been brutal and selfish and completely insensitive to her wants and needs. After ejaculating, he had collapsed on the futon, spent.
The next day, neither spoke about the events that had transpired in the dark. Instead, the focus had switched back to Avon's impending task—finding Candy.
 
 
Shaking away the memory—the mistake—Avon finally decided he would just let the heavy silence that stood between them remain intact, like the Great Wall of China.
“You okay?” Carlisle asked, noticing his glassy, blank stare.
“Oh ... yeah. I'm—I'm just gonna go,” he said, stumbling, his palms sweaty. He leaned toward her awkwardly, giving her a clumsy hug.
Carlisle felt light-headed and unsteady on her feet. She lifted her arms uncomfortably and pat his back—a friendly pat like what men would exchange. She fought the urge to kiss him on the neck. She inhaled his scent and closed her eyes. She was glad that she could help him unravel the Hardaway case. In the meantime, she planned to keep a close eye on him—whether he liked it or not.
Avon got into his car and stared over at the box he had placed on the passenger seat. His first thought was to drive to a safe place and look inside, but the anxious feeling in the pit of his stomach prevented him from moving. The dark-tinted windows on the car gave him a sense of security that no one would be able to see inside. He finally gave in to his curiosity and pulled back the thick gray duct tape sealing the box.
The first notebook on the pile was an old-school black-and-white marble composition book. Tucker picked it up and read the cover:
MY LIFE
,
BY ERIC HARDAWAY
.
Pressed for answers that might lead him to learn more about the young girl he'd become so obsessed with, Avon placed the old dusty notebook against the steering wheel and began to read. Just like Carlisle had said, it was like reading a book.
Avon immediately escaped into the life of Easy Hardaway.
Brooklyn, New York, 1983
“You little bastard! Get ya ass over here!” Doobey screamed, his pale face turning crimson.
Eric stood rooted to the floor. His fists were balled at his side. His chest was rising and falling rapidly. He wasn't going that easily this time.
“Did you hear me?” Doobey barked, stepping closer to his nephew.
Eric squinted his eyes into little dashes and folded his face into a scowl.
“Oh, you gon' stand there like you that fuckin' man! You s‘pose to scare me? I'ma show you who the man is in this muthafucka!” Doobey spat out. Small sprinkles of his Colt 45—scented spittle landed on Eric's face.
Still, Eric refused to move while his drunken uncle struggled to get his cowhide belt off his pants.
This type of commotion was commonplace in his Aunt Deena's house; so much so, that his cousins didn't even bother to intervene. They simply exited the room as soon as the altercation took place. Deena never intervened when her husband beat the shit out of her nephew; in fact, in Eric's assessment, his aunt encouraged it.
Deena was his mother's sister. She had seven children of her own—all cramped into a two-bedroom apartment—so she resented the fact that she had to care for her sister's orphaned child.
Easy's mother, Cynthia, was one of the first female drug dealers in Brooklyn. His father, Erv, had turned Cynthia on to the game. They were an unstoppable duo, until jealous rival dealers executed them both.
Immediately after their deaths, Easy went to live with his grandmother, who died of a broken heart, he believed, shortly after his mother's murder.
Then he moved in with his maternal aunt, where he was reminded daily that he was unwanted and unloved.
“Now! I said get the fuck over here, boy!” Doobey growled, finally getting his belt free.
Eric looked at him evilly. “Fuck you! You ain't my father!” Eric hissed, clenching his fists so tightly that his nails dug half-moon—shaped craters into his palms.
“After this ass whupping you gon' wish I was ya daddy!” Doobey slurred, raising the belt over his shoulder.
Eric felt a hot rush of adrenaline come over his body. Moved by some unknown force, he lifted his left fist. When Doobey went to plow into him, Eric punched his uncle in the balls with all of the strength he could muster.
Eric growled as his unsuspecting uncle doubled over in pain. It was a bold move; but like an animal trapped in a corner, Eric felt his only choice was to attack. He started swinging wildly, landing punches at will on Doobey's head, face and chest.
With his equilibrium off from drinking, Doobey tried to stop Eric's wild blows, but he couldn't see straight enough to grab the ferocious fists flying at him.
“I hate you!” Eric screamed, throwing more punches and kicks. He finally tackled his uncle to the floor; he sat on his chest and lit into him.
“Get him off me!” Doobey gasped, the combination of alcohol and head injuries making him feel nauseated and dizzy.
Eric was like a machine that could not be turned off. He thought about all of the nights his uncle had come home, stinking drunk, and beat him out of his sleep just because he could. All of the times his uncle took his dinner plate, forcing him to go to bed with his insides churning from hunger. He thought about all of the times his grandmother allowed his cousins to tease him about his raggedy sneakers and clothes.
As if possessed by the devil himself, Eric felt spit fly out of his mouth, and tears ran down his cheeks. For the first time in his life, he felt an overwhelming sense of power over his life. He felt invincible, strong enough to kill his uncle with his bare hands.
Blood leaked out of his uncle's nose by the time Deena shuffled her obese body into the cramped living room and tried to pull her lunatic nephew off her drunken husband.
“Boy! You ain't gon‘be hittin' on my man! You need to get the hell out of my house!” Deena hollered as she tried in vain to pull Eric off Doobey. A crowd of cousins surrounded the two tangled bodies and moved in like vultures over a dead carcass.
“Get the fuck off me! I hate y‘all! I hate all of y'all!” Eric screamed, kicking and flailing, as his eldest cousin, Poopie, finally pulled his arms behind his back. “I hate this house!” Eric screeched.
Turning to Deena, he eyed his aunt with all of the hate he'd augmented over the years. “This is all your fault! You evil bitch! You just jealous because my mother had everything and you ain't got shit!” he growled, pushing his aunt in the chest.
“Oh, God!” she implored, clutching her chest as she stumbled backward into a beat-up armchair. She had just narrowly missed hitting the floor.
“Uh-nuh! No, he didn't!” Screams erupted all around Eric and the entire house reacted, thirsty for his blood.
“You ain't gon' be hitting my mother!” one of his less courageous cousins barked from a distance.
There was no telling what Eric would do next. In a matter of seconds, the group converged as one large avenging angel. Blows started to land on Eric's body. Somebody dragged him down to the floor and kicked him sharply in his kidneys. His breath escaped painfully, but he refused to show any other signs of weakness. Another blow to the top of his head made him see small streams of squirming lights behind his eye sockets.
There was no way he could win against all of his cousins. Scrambling on the floor, trying to protect his head, Eric finally made it to the door.
“Let him up! He wanna leave. Let the bastard leave!” Deena shouted, her face filling with blood and her double chin jiggling.
Eric snatched the door open and ran out of the apartment. His nose was bleeding; his left eye was nearly swollen shut. His knuckles were raw, and he felt like he had broken a few ribs.
Slamming the door shut behind him, Eric realized that he was walking away from the only family he had ever known. But not all families, in his estimation, were worth holding on to. He had survived all these years, and he would survive many more. At just thirteen years old, he may have been homeless, but he wasn't hopeless.
The first night his aunt kicked him out, Eric sat in a dark, dank space behind the stairs of the apartment building, nodding in and out of sleep. When he emerged from his hiding spot the next morning, his insides were churning from hunger. His body ached and his left eye was black and swollen shut.
Eric walked three blocks to the corner store, praying that he wouldn't run into any of his cousins. His plan was to sneak in the back of the store, grab a few bags of chips, to kill the hunger pains tearing out his insides, and then dip back out, unseen. He had been psyching himself up all the way to the store. He had never stolen anything in his life. As he turned the corner, he heard shouting and screaming. He remained hidden behind a large dumpster, silently watching two men punch, kick and stomp on the body of a man who lay on the ground, screaming and squirming.
Eric had never heard a man scream like a woman before. He kept his eyes glued to the scene, but something in his peripheral vision caught his attention.
A long, darkly tinted 1975 black Cadillac Sedan Deville, with whitewash wheels, sat parked in front of the store. The back window was halfway down and Eric could see the face of a man watching the brawl. The man wore a dark brown suede fedora with a red feather attached at the side. His face was the color of molasses, and a mustache covered his top lip with thick, coarse black hair.
Eric turned his eyes from the man in the car back to the victim, who had stopped squirming and screaming. Judging from the amount of blood pooling on the ground around the man's head, Eric decided that the man was probably dead.
“That's enough!” the man in the Cadillac yelled out the window, snapping his fingers. Like well-trained dogs in obedience school, the men stopped beating the limp, lifeless man.
“You, kid! C'mere,” the fedora-clad man called out to Eric.
Eric's mouth hung open, and he frantically looked around, hoping that there was another kid nearby whom he was beckoning. When the man pointed his finger directly at him, Eric nearly peed his pants.
“Me?” he croaked in fear.
“Listen, little brotha, don't play with me. You don't see nobody else out here at six o‘clock in the damn morning, do you? Now, I said, c'mere,” the man snapped.
Eric walked over like a man on his way to the gas chamber. His legs felt like lead pipes, and the hunger pangs in his stomach were replaced by doom-filled cramps.
The man who had summoned him reached his hand out the window toward Eric. Eric immediately took notice of the huge yellow-gold and diamond ring on the man's pinkie. The man grabbed the collar of Eric's shirt and pulled him up to the side of the car so that the metal door frame pushed into his chest.
The man moved his face a mere two inches from Eric's. “You see that jive-ass bitch over there on the ground?” the man asked.
With his one good eye stretched wide to its limit, Eric moved his head up and down in concurrence.
“Well, he got what he deserved for being a bitch. Ain't nothin' worse than a man who acts like a bitch. Don't you agree?”
Eric nodded his head up and down rapidly.
“All right, then. If you tell anybody who you saw giving that bitch what he deserved, that same thing gon' happen to you. 'Cause if you tell, that would make you a rat bitch, now wouldn't it? You feel me? Look like somebody done worked yo' ass over, anyhow,” the man ground out, looking at Eric with squinted eyes.
Eric moved his head up and down. The man finally released his grip on Eric's collar.
“What's your name, boy?” he asked, softening his tone. There was something about Eric that he liked—an innocence he could fuck with.
“Er ... um ... Eric.”
“Well, I'm Early. Ask anybody roun' here about me if you don't believe what I'm telling you 'bout what can happen to you,” the man warned. “Now, if the police ask you what you saw here, what you gon' say?” Early asked.
“I‘ma say I ain't s—see nothin',” Eric stammered. His tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth.
“See ... you wrong already. Whatcha gonna say is that you saw some young boys robbing that dude right there and they beat him up till he stopped movin'.”
Eric nodded in agreement. “Yeah ... that's what I'ma say.”
“Good,” Early replied with a half smile, half sneer. He was going to have fun with this young man.
He gave Eric a once-over. “Why you out here so early in the damn morning, anyway? School don't be starting till another two hours or so.” Early chuckled. He hadn't been in a school building in nearly two decades.
“Um ... I ... I ...” Eric was scared to tell the man the true reason for his vagrancy.
“Don't think about lying to me, boy. I can find out anything I wanna know about these streets. Now I see somebody don' kicked yo ass around, and you look hungry and thirsty with those crusty white-ass lips. You best tell me what's goin' on,” Early demanded.
Eric hung his head low; he didn't even know where to start. Instead of coming up with a good story, Eric decided that the truth would be easier to tell.
When he had finished his tale, he was surprised to find Early in deep thought. The man twirled one end of his mustache, as if contemplating the meaning of the universe itself. Suddenly he stopped, looked at Eric, opened his Cadillac door and said, “Get in. I think you need a job, young-un. And a good street name to go with it. You seem real easygoing kid, so I'm gon' call you Easy.”
Eric cracked a nervous smile. “Easy ... I like that name.”
Early took his young new protégé to McDonald's to fill his empty belly and then to the shopping mall to buy some new clothes. After a shower and a few hours of sleep, Eric felt like a new person. Early took Easy under his tutelage and they formed a quick bond. Easy didn't really have a choice in the matter. Early promised to protect him, and he did just that.
“Punch this punk bitch one more time,” Early instructed, twirling the end of his mustache nonchalantly. Easy did as he was told. He pulled back his fist and laid it into his uncle Doobey's lower abdomen one more time.

Other books

The Topsail Accord by J. Kalnay
Blinding Trust by Jennifer Foor
7 Billion by National Geographic
Yesterday's Sins by Wine, Shirley
Shapeshifters by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
A Season of Miracles by Ed Goldberg
Unexpected Eden by Rhenna Morgan