"We ain't supposed to use product on the clock," he said in a waste of breath as the young'un sparked up some herb.

"This ain't Mary Kay, motherf.u.c.ker. We ain't got to have makeover parties an' s.h.i.t."

"Boy, you better watch your tone. I will cut you like an umbilical cord."

It was as if Fathead, Naptown Red, and Prez didn't just get popped. But, no, these corner boys didn't worry about cops since they mostly sold to neighborhood folks. One man on peep-hole duty could watch fiends walk up, walk around, getting out of cars. The transactions were simple enough. They'd knock, tell them what they wanted, slide money through the mail slot, the drugs would be slid back out. And he'd keep three hundred of every thousand dollars earned.

If Garlan was here, he'd understand. When he was high, he was on point. He felt better. He learned better. The Boars leaned back in his chair and thought about his high. "Yeah, that's money."

Someone knocked at the door. The young'un slid back the eye slot. "What you need?"

"I need a taste," a woman said.

"Ten dollars."

"I ain't got it. Can't we work out some... other arrangement?"

"Hold up." Young'un slipped the slot back. "The Boars, some fine-a.s.s trick wants to trade some of that good stuff for a taste."

"How fine? We talking crackhead fine or foine fine?"

"Big booty foine."

"Think you can handle it?" The Boars asked.

"I'll lock it down."

The young'un unlocked the door then slid the brace that reinforced the door from push-in or police battering ram out of place. The Boars waited in the back corner, to guard the product and get a good look at this chickenhead. It wasn't as if he hadn't had a dope date or two in his time. And he might as well let the little dude have a piece.

The woman stepped in, a pair of handcuffs clicked in her hand as she spun one spindle through the rest of the cuff.

"Oh s.h.i.t."

The young'un turned to The Boars, the wide grin on his face slowly dying as the panic on The Boars' face registered. By the time he turned back to Omarosa, she had her sawed-off brought to bear and wrapped one of her arms around his throat.

"You know the deal, son. Product and money."

The shotgun held The Boars' complete attention. He chanced a glance at the product on the table. Just like he knew there was a gun behind the table the baggies rested on.

"I..." He couldn't believe his run. First the police, now Omarosa. The only thing saving his hide was the fact that the police grabbed the package Naptown Red was working on his own. Not Dred's. Which meant this was the first he'd been hit for Dred's stuff. Still, there'd be some explaining to do and trouble did seem to be following him.

"Let me clear up the bit of confusion hitting you right now. You might be experiencing a bit of job loyalty. You don't want to report back to Garlan or Dred how you got took off by me. After all, shortie here," she flexed her arm a bit, easily lifting the boy from his feet and pulling him along further inside the doorway, "should've long been schooled on the subject of little ol' me. In fact, I'm offended that he wasn't. I'm beginning to think that Dred's feeling a little too secure in his spot right about now. Thinking he's the only shark in this pool. You've got to ask yourself at this point: is this s.h.i.t worth dying for?"

Tires screeched outside the stash house. Omarosa peeked out the door to see La Payasa leading four of her crew clones of roughneck Hispanic boys in oversized white T-shirts and baggy blue jean shorts like they were the required uniform in a charge toward the house.

"Looks like we all got company." Omarosa yanked the young'un away from the front door as La Payasa stepped in.

"What's this s.h.i.t?" La Payasa eased in through the open door with a dancer's gait. Thin but st.u.r.dy, her lithe physique belied the fact that she knew how to move and did so with determination and purpose. A crease, an old scar truth be told, etched the side of her face, but it was barely noticeable as her face was painted white with clown make-up. Black crosses covered each eye. Bedecked in her war paint, La Payasa was ready to dance.

"Looks like we got us a situation. And either way, it's Dred's very unlucky day." Omarosa kept her shotgun trained on The Boars, careful not to appear fl.u.s.tered by the new arrivals, who were uncertain who to train their guns on. La Payasa never brandished a weapon, instead stepped to Omarosa.

"You the one I need to talk to?"

"I'm the one with the sawed-off. Definitely puts me in the conversation." The young'un whimpered a bit, trapped in her arm lock. His pants dampened at his crotch.

The Boars kept his hands in plain sight while calculating the math of his situation. Omarosa was all about survival and take-offs. She enjoyed the game as much as anything else, an agent of chaos who meant to keep everyone on their toes. She'd rob from the Mexicans as quick as she would Dred, though she'd been off her game since the death of her brother, Colvin.

La Payasa was a stone b.i.t.c.h. Other than Mulysa or Green back in the day, only Omarosa had as fierce a reputation. Her fearless stance, unfazed by the complication of Omarosa, calmed her boys, who were rattled enough to just blast everyone in the room and call it a day.

"You here for the stash, the cash, or both?" Omarosa asked. "This here is a... transactional date. Each party has something the other wants."

"We all draw our moral lines in the sand." An elite few pocketed the profits meant to benefit the entire nation. When she had first brought it up to Black's attention, to quiet her up, they offered her a cut. That was when the l.u.s.ter began to fade on the organization. "We're here to send Dred a message. That he has started a war he can't win. And you?"

"Same thing. Plus the stash and cash. So it seems to me the message might get a little muddled."

"I think I can provide some clarity." La Payasa was a blur of motion as she drew her gun, shot The Boars in the side, and returned it to the front of her pants. The Boars clutched his side and scrabbled off to the bathroom. Omarosa watched him slam the door behind him then returned her gaze to the warrior clown. "He'll live. And can deliver my message to Dred."

"And the product?"

"I've sent my message. You can send yours. We good?"

"We good." Omarosa pulled the young'un close and kissed his cheek. "We good, sweetheart? You gonna let Dred know exactly what happened here?"

The young'un nodded. Hot tears trailed down his face.

La Payasa withdrew her crew.

The Boars tried to not move or panic. He fumbled for his cell phone as he pressed his free hand against his wound. 911 might not come to his address, but he could hope. A banging came from the door.

"We got a little unfinished business," Omarosa said.

"What?" The Boars leaned against the door.

"You got the cash on you."

s.h.i.t. "No I..."

"Before you finish that lie, I still got young buck right here."

"I called 911."

"You think I can't blast my way in there and out before they get here? Or go through them if I had to?"

Omarosa was patient. That was the way of her kind. And she wasn't one to leave money on the table. Dred wasn't directly responsible for her brother's death but he employed that dog, Baylon. Even as she thought the name, her heart burned with the fury of vengeance. That was also the way of her kind. It was bad business to be on the wrong side of the fey. "Don't make me repeat myself."

The Boars slid the five hundred he had on him under the door.

There were many days when Percy thought about what it would be like to have a real mom and dad. She'd get him up out of bed and fix breakfast while he dressed. By the time he got to the table, his dad would already be reading the paper, but he'd set it down at Percy's approach. His mom would put a plate full of eggs, sausage, and hash browns in front of each of them. They'd discuss issues of the day over the meal, both of his parents enjoying talking with him while also simply spending time with him. And they knew what was right and wrong. They laid down rules like no television until homework was done and how he had to go to church with them. But when they were done, his dad would take him outside and play football in the yard with him. His mom doted on her husband and kids, buying clothes, making food, cleaning the house, and yet finding time for them while helping in the community. His dad took him to school, where Percy proved to be extremely talented. He worked hard in school and was respected. The teachers liked him there, especially Mr Combs, who encouraged him to write more and pursue his dream.

It was the same dream.

Percy was embarra.s.sed to bring anyone back to his house. Miss Jane lying in bed, covers pulled up about her like a burial shroud, a lighter in one hand and a bottle wrapped in aluminum foil in the other. Never sure if she was dead or alive, since she always smelled of decay and burnt skin. Her skin pallor leaned toward blue. Her shirt halfopen, revealing the full swell of her left breast. Her hair a matted mess. A trickle of foam escaped from the crease of her lips. Her eyes vacant. Now she truly was gone, and ever since his mother had died it was on him to take care of his little brothers and sisters. Some days it was too much. Piles of clothes left about the house. Percy's hoodie shadowed his eyes, eyes which bounced all over the place as they walked down the street. The peach fuzz on his lips itched slightly, well, not really, but he couldn't help messing with it.

More comfortable around the animal than people, Mad Had ran his fingers through Kay's fur, removing any burrs or knots. Dogs didn't judge. They didn't care if you had a bad past. They didn't care if you walked funny or talked funny. They didn't make fun of you. They were loyal and loved you. Kay wouldn't answer to any other name. Not "boy" or "dog" or a whistle or any gibberish meant to call him. His name would be respected and anything else was an affront to his canine dignity.

Part of Percy wanted to encounter something strange. King, Lott, and Wayne often had to fight weird creatures. They'd whisper about it when they thought he couldn't hear because they didn't want to glorify any of the fights they had. Fighting seemed to make them rather sad, like it was something they had to do but took no pleasure in. They weren't like the other boys out here who loved to fight, bragged on it like they had something to prove. To King and them, fighting was a last resort. Percy wanted something, an adventure, to call his own. To show them that he could hang with them. His own creature, maybe with the body of a leopard, haunches like a lion, feet like a hart. And a snake's head. That would be cool.

"Yon caitiff," an aged woman said, strolling up to Percy.

"Me, ma'am?"

"Who else?" She placed her had on Mad Had's head. "Oh, you're a fine lad. You both are. So brave and so true. Do you know where you're going?"

"Not really. I thought"

"You'd follow your heart. Careful, there are no damsels out here. Tarry your heart and find the castle." The woman steadied herself as if suddenly dizzy.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm almost out of tricks. Tell Sir Rupert that I can only be freed by she who imprisoned me and that he should quit searching."

Percy smiled as the old woman staggered off. He nodded to Mad Had, who ambled silently after him. A song caught on Percy's lips.

"Jesus loves the little children..."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Without a home, Mulysa was his own master with nothing to lose. While part of that meant he was free to go wherever he wanted, in his heart he knew that he was a man without a home. Dred hadn't reached out, too busy grooming his next pet, Garlan. Dred had a habit of discarding people who were no longer of any use to him. Or were used up. Broken. It wasn't as if Dred didn't discard Baylon as soon as he was done and Baylon was his boy, yet he followed that fool fake Jamaican like a hobbled puppy. Somehow Mulysa convinced himself that it would be different with him. And though Mulysa still possessed his skills and ferocity, he was tainted. Marked. That was what he a.s.sumed, as he slid in the booth at Marble's Cafe. The owner, a Seventh Day Adventist, fisheyed him, not wanting any foolishness, as he didn't put up with dealers or wannabe pimps. Mulling over a plate of Marble's thick, potato-wedge fries, alongside the remains of a sandwich of ham, turkey, and bacon fried up and topped with three cheeses, Mulysa could have been either. Carried on waves of nostalgia like an old man reflecting on his life, despite barely being out of his teens Mulysa knew he'd run out of life. The days wound down for him. He was as certain about that as he was about the fact that he had a tail. He had the sense that the sword of Damocles about to fall and split his skull. A fatal intuition he couldn't shake. The engine which drove his life had simply run out of gas and he was exhausted.

He had checked out one of his old spots, a place he stayed before the Camlann, but it was little more than a lot grown over with weeds. He pulled back the flimsy plywood sheet which covered the door, part of which broke off in his hands as he bent to it, to slip into the abandoned house. Beer cans littered the floor. The house had pockets of shadows as little light poured in around the boarded-up windows. The pungent tang of soured meat a.s.saulted his nostrils. Dirty dishes piled in cold, gray water with a strange orange film on them. With a molding layer of macaroni and cheese burned to the bottom, the pot turned on its side provided shelter for a stream of c.o.c.kroaches. He had stayed here for several months. That was how he had lived and he'd thought he had life by the b.a.l.l.s. But seen in dim light against the backdrop of peeled paint and ripped-up carpet, his life amounted to a waste. No one would mourn him if he died.

Pain was something they all had in common, but it looked different on everyone. For Mulysa, no, for Cheldric, the old wound had the voice of his uncle.

"You're ugly. No one will want to get with you. Might as well get used to paying for it. We all do, one way or another, anyway." Then his uncle would get his head up in some herb, some Crown Royal mixed with Pepsi in his gla.s.s, and stare at the television whether it was on or not.

"You're dumb. No sense in doing anything that will make you any dumber or careless. So don't do drugs." Then his uncle would clear the books from the table with an angry swipe and glare down on him like he was a ghost of his past, pull out his belt, and beat Mulysa until he was spent.

"You're fat. Watch what you eat. You're young now, but don't become slow or let your body betray you." Then his uncle would send him to his room, without dinner, confining him to the dark to amuse himself or at least be out from underfoot.

"No one wants you. I took you in after they abandoned you. You're lucky you have me." Then his uncle's eyes bulged in surprise and his neck opened up like a screaming mouth vomiting blood when Mulysa ran a box cutter across it. He was eleven.

Ducking out of the hovel, the sun mocked him. Someone jogged after him or something put him on edge. Hunted him. He forgot how paranoid the drugs made him.

Mulysa had never thought much of what it meant to be a man. Women were casualties of his conquests. b.i.t.c.hes. Hos. Chickenheads. s.k.a.n.ks. Less than human. Barely a collection of orifices on which to pleasure himself, reflections of his selfhate upon which he could vent more of the same.

Ever since he'd been out of the Shoe, he'd been directionless. Dred never summoned him, nor set him up with his own package to sell and get on his feet. Didn't use him for any work. Acted like Mulysa was dead to him. Without explanation or warning. Suddenly he was a pariah to all the folks he knew. So he'd come full circle.

There was a bridge under 19th and MLK, across from the Children's Bureau, where he now stayed. The four culverts on either side of the bridge were like little apartments. Crystals hung from the top between the cracks like salt stalact.i.tes. The dirt floor, white like chalk, had a moldy mattress, almost a part of the hill, resting on it. The fine sand got into everything: his backpack, his blanket, his clothes, but the concrete walls sealed him up nicely. Entombed him. Alone, in the dark, he reflected on his life. Sometimes he had to chew over the pain of his life in order to write his story. Sometimes that was easier to do with the distance of fiction.

He ate in peace. Despite being the only person in the spot and the owner having a penchant of pa.s.sing the time by waxing philosophical with his customers Mulysa ate alone. In uninterrupted silence. The best sort to speed him on his way. He recognized the hardened eye, the one-handunder-the-counter style readiness, prepared to grab a bat or gun or whatever in case Mulysa broke bad.

In his time, Mulysa might have robbed this place, mugged the man's kin, or killed someone he knew. Mulysa was bold with it. He came up admiring folks like Green, who knew how to get s.h.i.t done. Folks knew his name, his face, and the details of his do, but no one spoke out. Mulysa modeled his own stalwart career with the same approach. It only took one to speak out, but if no one did it meant he didn't have a wake of ardent admirers.

No one was immune to life's little tragedies just like no one was immune to the potential of drugs to make a good person do bad things. The theory a.s.suaged the emaciated thing he called his conscience. That was what he would say to them, any of them. That it wasn't their fault. His neither. It was the drugs. Faceless, nameless, blameless, because ultimately they were a force of nature and blaming them for the destruction wreaked in your life was like yelling at a hurricane. He tried it out loud to see how it might play.

"You can't blame me. Drugs, they like a tornado or some s.h.i.t. Can't be mad at them neither. They just do what they do." It sounded like every bit of bulls.h.i.t to him. Dabbing his mouth with a napkin, he dropped the wadded napkin into his half-eaten piece of peach cobbler and pushed away from the table. He left a five-dollar tip on the ten-dollar tab and didn't know why. He left the building unsettled, something nagged at him. Some detail he'd missed.

The last thing he saw was an empty forty bottle coming toward his head.

How did one refer to the recently dead? They were still alive, still real in the memory of those who knew them in the present. But they were still gone. Past tense. Alive in name only. Baylon had been without power or control for so long he wasn't about to go back to either state without a fight.

"What brings you to the front lines?" Baylon asked Dred.

"Just checking on things." Dred's voice a conveyer belt of shifting accents. A hint of Jamaican patois in one breath, formal English in another, and relaxed hood-cent in the last. Shifting with his ident.i.ty of the moment.

"Surprised."

"By what?"

"That you still remembered the ones you came up with," Baylon said sardonically.

"I remember." Dred let the slight pa.s.s. He'd allowed Baylon the one as long as he didn't cross the line.

"Those you hurt."

"You hurt, n.i.g.g.a?" Dred desired to control everyone and everything around him by the tools at his disposal: fear, threat, intimidation, violence, and death. Remorseless eyes marred his prettyboy looks.

"Look at me. I gave everything to you."

"Listen to you. You sound like my b.i.t.c.h."

"You right. s.h.i.t." Baylon hated this. What he wanted to do was break out a sawed-off. But he couldn't raise a weapon to the man. It was as if, despite all Dred had done, Baylon was still bound to him. To the end.

"Guess you had to get that out your system."

"Something like that."

"Now can I get to the business I came to speak on?"

"What's that?"