Animal 2 (11 page)

“What's that?” Porsha asked suspiciously.

“Open it and find out,” Frankie urged.

Porsha tore the envelope open and found cash inside. “What's this for?”

Frankie shrugged. “For whatever you wanna spend it on. I been laying on your couch and eating your food for weeks. The least I can do is try to kick you a little something for your troubles. It isn't but a stack, but as soon as I get some regular cash flow coming in, I'll try to do more.”

“Frankie, where the hell did you get a thousand dollars?” Porsha asked.

“Don't worry about it. I didn't break any laws for it. A friend of mine owed me a favor and came through recently,” Frankie said a little too slyly.

“And speaking of favors, what's up with all this secret shit between you and Zo-Pound?” Porsha asked.

“What do you mean, Porsha?”

“I mean whatever y'all got going on that neither of you seem to want me to know about. Now, if you were one of my other friends, I'd probably be beating your ass for going behind my back with my man on some sneaky shit, but I know that ain't your MO. You wouldn't dare fuck Zo behind my
back, and if it ain't sex, I gotta assume it's dirt. What are the two of you up to?”

Frankie didn't answer at first. She was going to lie, but she saw it was really bothering Porsha. She couldn't tell her the whole truth, so she told her enough of it to put her mind at ease. “A'ight, Porsha. Just hear me out before you say anything. You know when I got beat out that money, I was flat on my ass. Anybody I could've gone to for money is either dead or in prison. So when all else failed, I turned to Zo.”

“You borrowed money from my boyfriend?” Porsha asked with an attitude. Frankie was her home girl, but she wasn't comfortable with another woman asking her man for money.

“No, I didn't ask Zo for no money. You know better than that, Porsha. I broke my situation down to him, and he offered to help me out. At first, he flipped and wanted to go find the dude who took my money, but you know I ain't about to let Zo get in no trouble. He did offer to give me the money, but I couldn't accept that in good conscience. What I did was I pawned what little jewelry I had and gave Zo a few hundred dollars to flip for me. That's how I got the money I gave you.”

Porsha couldn't believe all that had been going on right under her nose. She was slipping. Frankie would never do her dirty, but that didn't mean another female wouldn't have taken advantage of being able to get close to Zo without her knowing. She trusted Zo, but the fact that he refused to tell her what was going on between him and Frankie even when she called him on it meant that he could keep a secret. In her experience, she'd learned that men with secrets were a problem that just hadn't occurred yet. It made her wonder what else he had been keeping from her.

“Frankie, Zo is a good dude, and I'm glad he was able to help you out, but in the future, if you need something from
my
man or he offers you something, I'd appreciate it if I didn't have to hear about it after the fact,” Porsha said.

“You got that, and I apologize,” Frankie said sincerely.

Now that the air had been cleared, the tension left the room, and everything was back to normal. Frankie rolled another blunt, while Porsha surfed through the channels. She settled on the twenty-four-hour news station to see what she'd missed during the day. A story came on about a murder that had taken place in Harlem, so Porsha turned it up to see if it might've been anyone she knew.

Frankie paused from her blunt rolling to take a sip of her soda. She had the cotton mouth from the weed. When she looked up to see what had Porsha so entranced, she spit her soda all over the table and the living-room floor. On the screen was a picture of the murder victim, along with his name, Rick Jenkins.

“Are you OK, Frankie?” Porsha asked as her friend continued to choke on the soda.

“Yeah, I'm cool. It just went down the wrong pipe,” Frankie lied. Her eyes and ears remained focused on the television screen and the news anchor describing how they'd found a con man named Ricky Jenkins dead in a motel room from a .357 slug to the chest.

I
N THE HOOD, NEWS TRAVELED
fast, especially when it came to death. It didn't take long for the streets to start buzzing about the murder of the pretty young pimp in the barbershop. Percy wasn't a big enough player in the game for his loss to cause much of a ripple effect, but there was one man in particular who didn't take his death well.

Swann sat on the park bench, as he had been doing for the past hour or two, drinking and thinking. He always sat on the same bench when he was in that park. It had sentimental value to him. It had been on that very bench where he had murdered a man he had once called his homie, Tech. Of all the lives he had taken, Tech's was the only one he regretted. His friendship conflicted with his loyalty, and in the end, he had to put young Tech's lights out. It was for the greater good; at least, that's what he told himself so that he could sleep at night.

Swann looked nothing like his normally immaculate self. His clothes were wrinkled, his face was ashy, and his
hair needed to be braided. Mussed black hair hung down around his face and gave him an insane look. His appearance matched his mood. A few hours before, he had gotten word about the execution of Percy. Percy had been like family to him; Swann and Percy were very close. He was a pompous homosexual who sometimes let his mouth write checks his ass couldn't cash, but that didn't mean he had deserved to die, especially the way he'd been murdered. Swann had to go to the city morgue and identify the body because Percy's mother wasn't up to it. The woman was a wreck over the loss of her only son. When he got there, he was glad that he'd come instead of her. No mother should have to see her child like that.

The killers had tortured Percy with sharp instruments before cutting the skin from his face. The police had searched for hours but were unable to find the missing flap of skin. The police chalked it up as a drug-related hit, but everyone knew Percy didn't sell drugs. The murder had been a message for Swann, and he heard it loud and clear. It was war!

Swann wasn't alone in the park. He was surrounded by several of his goons, thirsty young cats who would do anything to eat from the Clark table. In the midst of the goons were two of Swann's most trusted comrades, Holiday and Angelo. After being shot in both legs, Holiday was confined to a motorized wheelchair until the wounds healed. Although his legs were ruined, his trigger finger still worked just fine, and he was itching to put it to use.

Angelo stood at attention, dressed in a blazer and jeans. His once smooth dark face was now marred by a nasty scar down the side of it. It had been a gift from a woman named
Kastro, who was affiliated with Animal. Kastro and Animal had both paid for the disrespect with their lives, but killing them had made them martyrs. Instead of their deaths deterring the upstarts, it only riled them up more. Where Animal had fallen, another vicious young killer had risen to take his place. His name was Ashanti, and he was currently the focal point of Swann's hatred. Word on the streets was that it was he who had killed Percy. Ashanti and his band of misfits had been violating and pulling capers for weeks to try to get the attention of the Clarks, and now they had it.

“Are we just gonna stand around and watch him drink that bottle, or is he going to say something?” a young goon called Ty asked. Ty was a chubby Haitian kid from out of Brooklyn who served as one of Swann's street soldiers. Ty made good money working the streets for the Clarks, but he knew his profits would be doubled if he could get promoted to the rank of lieutenant. In order to do that, he had to put in the work, which was why Ty was always the first to volunteer when someone needed to be made to bleed. When Swann had called the meeting, Ty couldn't get to Harlem fast enough to see what it was about.

“Why don't you relax?” Holiday said. He, too, was getting annoyed just standing around, but he was smart enough to keep his annoyance to himself.

“I don't mean no disrespect, fam, I'm just anxious, same as everybody else here,” Ty explained. “The OG calls an emergency meeting, I know it's something big, and I'm just trying to see what's popping.”

“Cool out, and keep your mouth closed. Swann will speak when he's ready and not a minute before. If you don't feel like
waiting around, take a fucking walk,” Angelo snapped. He had seen Swann in dark moods before, and someone almost always died immediately after he snapped out of it.

“Fifty thousand,” Swann said just above a whisper. Everyone was shocked, because he hadn't said a word since they'd gotten there.

“What'd you say?” Angelo asked.

“I said fifty thousand,” Swann repeated. “That's the price for that little nigga Ashanti's life.”

“Swann, Ashanti is just a foot soldier, so maybe—” Angelo began, but Swann cut him off.

“You heard what I said.” Swann turned to address the goons. “Spread the word, my niggaz. I got fifty stacks for the man who puts that juvenile delinquent Ashanti in a fucking bag and an extra ten stacks for each additional person who goes along for the ride.”

“What if his pretty little girlfriend is with him? Should we stall her out because she's a civilian?” Ty asked.

“Fuck him and his bitch. If she's there, she dies, too.”

Swann had barely finished his sentence before the goons took off in all directions. Fifty thousand dollars was more money than most of them had ever seen, and they were beyond eager to accept.

Angelo waited until the goons had gone and it was just him, Holiday, and Swann left in the park, before speaking. “Swann, that's a lot of money to put on a foot soldier. King James is the real problem. Cut the head off, and the body dies.”

“Fuck that. When Ashanti touched my people, he moved into the number one slot on my shit list.” Swann stood up.

“So what about the nigga King, we supposed to put him on
the back burner while everyone else is off chasing Ashanti?” Holiday asked.

“Nah, I didn't forget about him. I'm baking a special cake for King James.” Swann looked down at his watch. “And it should be just about done cooking.”

“W
ELCOME TO
N
EWARK,” THE SIGN
read as King James exited 21 North onto Broad Street. He rarely ventured out of the hood unless he absolutely had to, but the way things had been going lately, he needed a change of scenery to get his thoughts together.

When he'd been released from state prison a few years before, he felt displaced in time. He had been born and raised in Harlem, but the Harlem he had come home to after his bid wasn't the one he remembered. Gone was his beautiful slum, replaced by a trendy tourist attraction with overpriced housing, leaving very few corners for a crook to make an honest dollar on. Still, for as much as the landscape had changed, the game remained the same, and that was his main concern. King James was a man with a plan, and that plan was to be the next king of New York.

The plan was simple: fly under the radar and gobble up as much territory as he could before any of the heavy hitters realized what was going on. By the time they woke up to the
usurper in their midst, it'd be too late to do much about it except roll with the movement or get wiped out. King James had the right people backing his play, shooters who would kill or die for him, and a bomb-ass product. It was the perfect plan, but even the best-laid plans were subject to unforeseen complications. In King James's case, the complication was named Shai Clark.

Shai was the boss of bosses in New York City, and nothing moved unless he told it to or got a piece. The hood respected Shai, but King James did not. To him, Shai was a spoon-fed rich kid who had inherited the title instead of earning it. From the moment King James had met Shai in Brick City, he knew he didn't like him. Shai was arrogant, and his people were disrespectful. When King had tried to reach out to show Shai the proper respect, he was dismissed like he was little more than a common thug. The slight at the strip club had been the incident that planted the seeds of contempt, and they had been growing in King James for months. All he needed was a reason to strike, and it had been two of his young shooters, Ashanti and Zo-Pound, who had given him that reason.

When Ashanti and Zo-Pound had joined in Animal's personal war against the Clarks, that pulled King James into it by association. King was aware of neither Animal's resurrection nor Ashanti's and Zo's roles in his mission, and by the time he found out, it was already out of his hands. Ashanti and Zo were soldiers in his army, so they were his responsibility. At least, that was the excuse he used when he was called to answer for deviating from the plan. King's partners frowned on the heat he was bringing to the organization from his street wars, but King didn't care. He was the one taking all the risks, so he would run
the show however he saw fit. King James had never been big on diplomacy; he was a gladiator.

For a change of scenery, he shot out to Newark to see this young broad he fucked with named Drea, who lived off South Orange Avenue. Her crib was smack in the middle of the hood, but it was the last place anyone would think to look for King. He pulled up in front of the three-family house where her apartment was and parked at the curb. He never pulled into the driveway. Before getting out of the car, King checked himself in the rearview mirror. His waves were spinning like high tide, and his thick beard was freshly trimmed. He moved to brush a speck of imaginary debris from his pecan-colored, butter-soft leather jacket he was wearing. Last, he adjusted the huge rope chain that hung around his neck. The medallion on the end of it was about the size of a bread plate. Carved into the gold was the number seven resting in a crescent moon, with a star hanging from its tip. It was the Universal Flag of the Five-Percent Nation, his calling card. From between the seats, King pulled out his .32, checking to make sure it was loaded before stuffing it into his jacket pocket and hopping out.