The Tragic Flaw (16 page)

“Yes, this is the guy, please throw him out,” the nerdy guy tells the club's security guard while pointing a stiff finger at Kameron. “Uh, he robbed me, and I want him thrown out and my money returned.”

The security guard, who is a bit intimidated by Kam, asserts himself nonetheless.

“Sir, are you a member here?”

“No, I'm not. I'm looking for Bradley Micheaux,” Kam says, looking at the security guard on his left through his peripheral vision.

“Well, I don't know who he is, so I'm going to have to ask you to leave,” the guard says. His polo-style club shirt is one size too small.

Kam's expression changes from one of benumbment to one of irritation. Peeved, he looks down at the stout geek and questions him.

“So how exactly did I rob you?”

The guy looks nervous and begins to stutter, “Well, uh, I mean, uh, you assaulted me!”

The security guard decides he's heard enough.

“Come with me, sir,” he says, grabbing Kam's left arm just above the elbow.

The jerking move makes Kam drop his blunt. Shocked by the guard's brazen aggressiveness, Kam yanks his arm back.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, cuz?” Kam says, then delivers a crushing right cross to the guard's throat.

The twenty-eight-year-old was completely caught off guard and his larynx is punished for his stupidity. He falls to one knee, grasping his injured neck. Some people you just don't fuck with, and Kameron Brown is one of them. The nerdy narc is terrified.

“Punk-ass mothafucka,” yells Kameron. Several club members turn to see the ruckus.

The guard regains his composure and struggles to his feet. Kameron stares at him like a ravenous jackal, and as soon as the guard motions toward him, Kameron quickly wraps his huge hands around the guard's neck and begins to squeeze the life out of him.

“I'll send yo mothafuckin' soul to heaven, white boy!” Kameron yells. The club's older members are utterly horrified.

“Someone should help that young man,” some wealthy guy at a nearby table blurts.

The guard grabs Kameron's wrists in an attempt to break his grip, fighting for his life. But Kam's grip is too strong, and the guard's efforts are ineffective, as Kam runs off at the mouth in a devilish tone.

“I will light this bitch up like the Chinese New Year,” Kam yells, still squeezing the guard's thick neck. “It will be January first in the year two thousand all over again, mothafucka!”

“Kameron,” a voice yells. “Kameron!”

Kam looks up as the guard is on the verge of passing out. It's Brad. He saw the commotion from the fairway and now he's in a mad sprint to get to Kameron before he kills someone.

Kam sees Brad coming and releases the oxygen-deprived guard. He falls to the wooden deck and lies nearly motionless, minus the frantic heaving of his chest.

The nerdy guy quietly tiptoes away.

“Kameron, what's goin on, bruh?” Brad asks, intensely concerned. “What you doin' here?”

Kam fixes his collar and reaches down to retrieve his smoldering blunt. He takes a puff and walks closer to Bradley.

“Yea, what's up, Bradley?” Kam says calmly, sounding as if he wasn't just choking somebody. “We need to talk, dog.”

As they both proceed to walk inside the clubhouse, a few guys run over to the guard to ensure he's alive and well. He would quit his job the next day; seven dollars an hour wasn't worth the permanent finger marks he will have on his neck for the rest of his life.

Brad heads toward the locker room to shower up and change his clothes. Kam follows closely behind, still smoking his shrinking blunt.

They enter the well-kept locker room and are surprised to see an elderly man, possibly in his seventies, wearing a black lace bra and panty set. He has one foot propped up on a bench, and he doesn't see them enter, so he continues to apply moisturizer to his thighs.

“Okay, that's wild,” Bradley says.

“Dude, what the fuck kind of club is this?” Kameron inquires before bursting into laughter.

The man hears Kam laughing and quickly turns around.

“Oh, my. Uh, it's not what you think,” he says, startled. The man hastily shrouds himself in a large towel, snatches his gym bag, and scurries off.

Kam simply shakes his head.

“What part of the game was that?” Kam jokingly asks.

Brad just shakes his head too, then walks over to his locker and opens it.

“Look, Bradley, I'm going to make this quick,” Kameron says. “You need to either get the dope crackin', or come up with Jimmy's two-five, pronto, cousin. You feel me?”

Bradley takes off his shirt and grabs his soap and a towel from his locker.

“Look, Kameron, I'm working on it, man. Why do you think I was out here today? I need more bread. So get off my back, okay?”

Brad then sits on the wooden bench in front of his locker and removes his shoes and socks, followed by his pants and briefs, then wraps the towel around his waist.

Kam just smiles and tokes on his blunt. His diamonds are lusterless in the dim locker room.

“Okay, Bradley,” Kam says. His deep voice echoes. “But don't come callin' me and Cicero when one of them fucking dagos is sticking toothpicks under your fingernails. We can handle ourselves. Can you?”

“Whatever, man,” Brad tells him, then stands up. “I got my shit together. We're about to be billionaires.” He slams the locker shut.

“All right, Bradley, do ya thang,” Kam tells him, then he turns and starts to walk out, but pauses.

“Oh, and Bradley, if I get into some funk because
you
fucked up, me and you are going to have problems.” He stops. “Well, you are going to have problems.”

Kameron smiles and tosses the rest of his blunt to the floor as his text message communicator begins to vibrate.

“Stay safe, Bradley Micheaux,” Kam tells him while checking his message. “I know vegetarian mothafuckas like you don't want no beef.” And he walks away.

Silent, Brad slides toward the shower to cleanse his body and his mind.

 

Back in his classic Chevy, Kameron waits outside the country club, rolling a new blunt. At this point everything is slower, but he thinks his senses are enhanced. His lips are dry and blackened from years of smoking, and his memory is not what it used to be.

Suddenly, a red convertible pulls up next to Kam's load with the top down and the windows up. The driver of the two-seater has smooth cocoa skin and long acrylic nails. She bats her fake lashes at him and grins.

Kam finishes rolling his blunt and just stares at the two ladies. The passenger then hops out wearing a short plaid skirt, her complexion milky and pale. Brunette hair and blonde streaks flutter in the wind as she runs over to Kameron's passenger side holding her skirt up so that it forms a basket.

Kam shows little expression as he reaches over and rolls the window down. The schoolgirl-dressed prostitute quickly dumps more than four thousand dollars in cash into the passenger seat. And without a word, she hops back into the red convertible just before the driver does a U-turn and vanishes toward the city.

Among his many pursuits, Kam also manages a few girls on the side. He smiles, flashing his baguettes, while reaching into the backseat and digging out a brown paper bag to put the cash in. It takes a few moments to emancipate the sack, which is stuck between a schedule of classes for Penn Valley and a
Murder Dog
magazine.

Going back to school has crossed Kameron's mind, so much in fact that he's considered taking some refresher courses and the Law School Admission Test. Nonetheless, he frees the bag and stuffs the illicit cash from pandering into it. The women risk their bodies and their health, yet Kam is without the pathos of the common man.

“Another day, another mothafuckin' dollar,” he says to himself while counting through the crumpled tens and twenties.

Metal enters metal and sparks fly as the four fifty-four comes to life and the engine roars. Kam adjusts his mirrors and the rear tires eject gravel from underneath them.

Back en route to the hood, cruising north, thoughts of his mother and brother seep into Kameron's consciousness. Quite possibly a side effect of the weed, Kam begins to hear his mother's demanding voice.

“Kam! Kam! Boy, get yo ass up! You got to go to school today,” Shirley would tell her fifteen-year-old son. “You done already missed two days this week.”

Kameron recalls that's how he was wakened every day. Shirley's words were always biting. But her actions said more about the content of her character. For instance, Shirley's light-brown hair was always self-styled to save money. And she would typically buy her own clothes from thrift stores and secondhand shops, while spending more for her children's garments.

By the time Kam was a freshman in high school, his older brother and only sibling had already done ten years in Leavenworth, and the stress of the world had weighed more heavily than ever on his mother since then.

When the cops caught up to his brother with an arrest warrant on murder charges, Tre had a pound of weed and a half kilo of Peruvian flake. He got life without parole. The day when the judge read Tre's sentence, Shirley began what would be a lifelong addiction to Valium and vodka. The combination would induce profound lows and bouts of depression that would last for months.

Driving steady with one hand on the steering wheel, Kam eyes the passing trees that line the road as his thoughts continue.

“Kameron, look, I'm working two jobs to send yo black ass to a good school, so don't fuck it up,” Shirley would often tell her sixteen-year-old son as she drove him to the bus stop. He made average grades, but he was a standout in basketball and football, which would prove to be his only means of avoiding Tre's fate, or worse.

Kameron never knew his father. Twilight, as he was called for his dark skin, was killed by the KCPD in a routine traffic stop while Shirley was seven months' pregnant with Kam, and the family was forced to move to the Wayne Minor city projects on Twelfth Street.

It was in the projects where Kameron would get his hard-knock upbringing. He would get his first gun before he got his first pubic hair. Despite the temptations and despair surrounding them, Shirley was able to instill in her youngest child a strong survival instinct, as she worked her fingers to the bone to afford his Catholic school education.

Kam couldn't completely avoid the street life, however. When Shirley would pass out on the living room sofa, Kam would steal money from her pocketbook and roam the streets with other kids from similar homes and similar situations.

Well-oiled cornrows gleam in the sunlight as Kameron sparks a new blunt and chokes on it. He reminisces about those days, and recalls how he decided to attend a local college on a football scholarship. But Shirley would die from an overdose on the night of his high school graduation. It was a night she'd feared would never come for her son.

Overjoyed and relieved, she drank herself into oblivion. Years of writing letters to Tre and sending what she could for his commissary and books had taken its toll. So after Kam graduated, she apparently felt her job was done. The time had come for Shirley to rest.

Smoke leaves Kameron's lungs as he remembers finding his mother's body, sprawled out and limp, eyes bulging.

“Damn, Momma,” he mumbles while driving. Tears escape his eyes and he quickly wipes them away.

“Ain't that some shit,” he says out loud and sighs.

Needing a distraction, he turns up the volume on his stereo and hip-hop bass lines shake the rearview mirror.

“
I stopped poppin' bottles with models on expensive-ass dinner dates. Instead I hit throttles and startle my enemies with infrared slugs through chest plates
.”

Kam would spend three semesters in college, but the call of the streets was too loud, so it was there that he returned. And it was there where he would hook up with his friend Cicero, to make a name and a living for himself.

“We avoid food poisoning at cheap-ass diners, we eat lobster tails in private jetliners with leather recliners. But we deliver shiners to knuckleheads as constant reminders, just because we in suits, don't mean we ain't grinders.”

Vibrations from his phone interrupt Kam's thoughts. He checks the caller ID. It's the mother of his son.

“Hello,” he answers, prepared for the drama.

“Kam, yo son needs some shoes,” an angry female voice yells. A child cries in the background. “I told you that last week.”

“I've been busy.” He quite frankly forgot.

“Well, look—” the woman states before being cut off.

“Look, I'll drop off some bread tonight,” he tells her. “Quit fuckin' buggin' me.”

She begins screaming and cursing and he hangs up, tossing his accursed communicator into the passenger seat, disgusted.