Yaccub's Curse (27 page)

Warlock was doing St. Vitus’ dance, flopping on his back like a cockroach in a cloud of Raid, with a fist-sized hole in his chest. Beside him, lay Tank with his eyes fixed and dilated, staring skyward. His mouth hung open in an agonized scream that never made it past his lips. He had been nearly decapitated. Pink muscle fiber stretched like used bubblegum across the chasm between where Tank’s head had been joined to his neck. Pearlescent bone shined ghastly white through the slash in his flesh where the knife had sawed through to his cervical vertebrae. The foot-long switchblade, still clutched in Warlock’s hand, dripped with inky black blood that glistened in the moonlight. My stomach imploded, collapsing inward until it touched the back of my spine, sending out an avalanche of half-digested food. Tank was gone, dead, because of me. Warlock had been in the process of butchering him just before I shot the crazy bastard. Somehow Warlock had surprised Tank and took him out before he could fire a single shot.

I began kicking Warlock’s dying body, trying to crush every bone in him, to pulverize him the way I’d watched Huey do that peckerwood kid. He shuddered one last time and lay still, yet I continued to stomp and kick his corpse. The sound of his bones snapping was a soothing noise to drown out the whirlwind in my head. The tears came without relent as the reality of Tank’s death took hold. My foot sank into the hole in Warlock’s chest and came out sopping with blood with bits of his internal organs stuck to my sole. I slammed my foot back down into it and began jumping up and down imagining that I was stomping on the bastard’s heart.

It was the sirens that snapped me out of it. I ran across the yard and jumped the fence into a neighboring backyard and then from one yard to the next until I wound up in an alleyway that led out onto Washington Lane. I was only a few blocks from home, but didn’t want to face my mother dripping in blood. My first instinct was to go to Huey’s house, but I was afraid he’d take his brother’s death out on me. I knew Huey believed that Tank was only involved with Scratch because I was. And even though I knew that Tank would have still been down even if I wasn’t, he probably wouldn’t have been out running around a junkyard chasing a lunatic if I hadn’t asked him to come with me. I wasn’t in the mood to confront either Huey’s rage or my own guilt. I decided to go back to Yolanda’s house.

The police were probably celebrating Tank’s death at this very moment and since they knew he and I were a team, they would be coming after me next, hoping to take me down for Warlock’s murder and get all three of us out of the game in one evening. I knew they’d be kicking down my Grandmom’s door any minute now looking for me. Hopefully they wouldn’t think to look for me at Yolanda’s.

There were sirens everywhere. The police were combing the streets. I knew I had to get inside somewhere before they picked me up. Yolanda’s house was only two blocks away, but it seemed like miles. I couldn’t get to it by running through alleys and hopping fences. I would have to cross Washington Lane, one of the busiest streets in our neighborhood and one that was now filthy with law enforcement. I watched patrol cars speed back and forth as I hugged the shadow of a large Evergreen tree in a yard that bordered Washington Lane and McCallum Street. As soon as the police sirens began to trail off I made a dash across the street and kept running until I was at Yolanda’s front door.

She had a man in there with her. I could tell by the way she answered the door—wrapped in a sheet The disheveled look of her hair and make-up, even her smell, was that of someone who’d just been fucked.

“Hey, baby. I didn’t think you’d be back tonight. It’s not really a good time right now.” She glanced over her shoulder into the house and then turned back to me and smiled shamelessly. I ain’t never been the jealous type, but right then I wasn’t in the mood to wait outside while some other stud got his dick wet in my pussy. I tried to push the door open and walk past her. She held the door closed as I shoved against it.

“Bitch, who you fuckin’ in there? Open this mutherfuckin’ door ’fore I kick it off the hinges and smoke both ya’ll asses!”

“Nigga, don’t come around here tossin’ threats cause you know I ain’t impressed and you know damn well you don’t own this pussy!”

“Bitch, I don’t give a fuck about your old, used up, dug out pu…pus…pussy.“

My voice seized up and tears flooded my eyes.

“Tank’s dead.” I finally managed to squeak out.

Yolanda’s eyes widened with shock. Her hand flew to her mouth and she cast another quick look behind her into the house. There was sorrow and surprise in her face, but there was something else. Fear.

“What did you say, boy?” she whispered.

“I said, Tank was just killed.”

“Oh my God!”

When she opened the door it was Huey standing behind her with murder in his eyes. He had obviously just finished fucking Yolanda and hadn’t even bothered to put his clothes or underwear back on. He stood in the doorway butt-naked. The whole scene would have been hysterical if it wasn’t for the hatred twisting his features, directed at me. He grabbed me by the front of my shirt and flipped me over his shoulder. I tumbled into the hallway, landing hard on the tiled floor.

“It wasn’t my fault, Huey! It wasn’t my fault!”

Huey pulled his Sig Sauer out of his jacket pocket as he passed the coat rack. He jacked a round into the chamber, walking toward me in long determined strides like some unstoppable naked juggernaut. Yolanda had started screaming and was trying to hold him back.

“Huey, listen. It was Warlock who did him. We were tracking him through the junkyard and he must have snuck up on him. I got him though. I took that nigga out for Tank. He was like a brother to me. You know I’d have died for that nigga. I’d have died for him!”

“Here’s your chance,” Huey said, raising the gun until it was pointed directly at my skull.

Tears were streaming down my face in torrents. It hadn’t even occurred to me to go for my own weapon. If Huey was going to kill me then I was going to die and that was all there was to it. I stared into Huey’s eyes and I could see my own death in them. I saw his finger tighten on the trigger and I closed my eyes and waited, wondering if I would hear the gunshot before oblivion. Then Huey’s shoulders slumped and he uncocked the pistol. Tears were streaming down his face now, but his eyes didn’t soften or stray from my own. He didn’t look weak or vulnerable at all when he cried. He looked focused, determined, and pissed-da-fuck-off.

“Yeah, you right. It wasn’t your fault. You just as lost as he was, and it wasn’t Warlock’s fault either. It was that white devil you work for. It was his fault and he’s gonna pay for this shit. I owe him some pain now.”

That night I sent Yolanda to bury my gun in the woods in Wissahickon Park so the cops wouldn’t be able to pin Warlock’s murder on me. Huey stayed with me at Yolanda’s, but didn’t say a word. I jumped in the shower to wash off the gun powder residue while my clothes went into the washer. I was in the shower for maybe five-minutes when the police broke down the door and dragged me out. By the time they dragged my Black ass, soaking wet, kicking, and screaming, out of the shower they already had Huey in handcuffs. They allowed me to get dressed and I made sure to put on a pair of old clothes I had left there previously just in case they got smart and decided to test the clothes for gunpowder or blood splatter. Those fools would have nothing on me.

They placed Huey and I in separate cars so they could work on us individually and try to make us turn on each other. I played deaf mute and just stared out the window.

“You know Huey’s gonna give you up, don’t you? You got his brother killed. He told me he wants to see you rot in prison for that. He hopes you wind up on death row. He’s in the next car giving a full statement right now.”

I continued to stare out the window as we rolled through the neighborhood. The cop’s voices were just white noise in the background. When the old burly black cop reached over and punched me in the head I slumped down in my seat to avoid further blows and continued to stare out the window, secretly wondering if this was the same house-nigger that held Huey’s mom down eighteen years ago while that white cop raped her.

They put both of us in a cell together down at the fourteenth precinct. It was a big concrete room with one glass wall two-inches thick that faced out into the squad room. Outside the temperature was sixty degrees. Inside that room the temperature was ninety and rising. Police officers walked by and glared at us trying to make us nervous. We laughed at them, grabbed our dicks, and waved our middle fingers. I started singing “Fuck Da Police” by NWA at the top of my lungs and Huey joined me. An inmate in the cell next door began pounding a beat on the concrete wall that divided us. Other inmates joined in on the chorus and soon we had a full scale party going on. The officers started cursing and threatening us, pounding their fists on the desks like they wanted to come in there and start some shit. So we changed the tune to Ice T’s “Cop Killer.” That seemed to agitate them enough to make them come in and talk to us. Huey was livid over being arrested. If the cops weren’t wearing guns I think he would have tried to take them on.

“You guys settle down and cut out all that noise.”

“Fuck you got us locked up for? We ain’t been fingerprinted. Nobody read us our rights. We haven’t been allowed to make a phone call. My brother gets murdered and you muthafuckas are harassing us? Fuck you bitches!”

“Just calm down a minute. We just want to ask you guys some questions.”

The cop looked like a younger, fatter, uglier Rodney Dangerfield. He had livid red and purple liver spots all over his face, a big hooked nose with a wart on it, and big bubbly eyes that appeared blood-shot from lack of sleep and too much alcohol. His partner looked like a runway model. His hair was spiked with mousse and his eyelashes looked like he’d brushed them with mascara. He was obviously gay.

“Is we under arrest?”

“They call you Snap, right?”

“My name’s Malik.”

“Yeah, well Malik, you just might be under arrest if we find out you had anything to do with that shit over by the wrecking yard. And you, Mr. Huey P. Newton, your ass ain’t exactly clean either.”

“Whatever, man. Are we done here or what?”

“Where were you tonight, Snap?”

“My name’s Malik and I was right where you found me.”

“All night?”

“Yeah, all night.”

“And what about you, pretty boy? Where were you?” the cop asked. He started to reach up to grab Huey’s face, but something in Huey’s eyes made the man think better of it. I knew that it was already taking a Herculean act of will for Huey to resist going for the guy’s throat. If the cop had touched him Huey would have almost definitely exploded.

“I was with him. All night.”

“Now what was both of you doin’ with one girl all night?”

“Watching Dave Chappelle,” Huey hissed.

“And fuckin’.” I looked over at Huey accusingly. He sneered at me and hissed through his teeth.

What right did I have to be jealous of him fucking some slut when I had gotten his brother killed?

“Yeah,” Huey growled as his eyes bore into my skull. He turned his head to stare back at the officer, “And fuckin’.”

The two officers started laughing.

“Both of you fucking one woman? What? There ain’t enough crackwhores in Germantown for the both of you?”

“Oh, you should have seen her, Sarge. She wasn’t no crackwhore. She was thick as hell! Titties big as my head and an ass like a beachball. Looked like she could have taken both these boys all night and still had enough left over for you and me.”

“You little dick mutherfuckers wouldn’t even touch the sides. It would be like trying to stir a bowl of chilli with a toothpick,” Huey said, taunting them. I couldn’t help but to laugh as the officer’s eyes widened in surprise and then narrowed in anger. They wanted to kick both of our asses and probably would have if we’d been somewhere more private and not in the noisy holding cell.

They separated us and then questioned us again. Hours later, they put us back in the cells and let us sleep for about half an hour before waking us both up and dragging us back into the interrogation room for another round of twenty questions. It went on like this all night. We weren’t allowed to call our lawyers and they never once read us our rights or told us we were under arrest. In the morning they let us go. Yolanda came to pick us up.

“Damn, Kurt! You were right! She probably could take all of us!” the sergeant said loud enough for Huey and I both to hear as he watched Yolanda walk through the station. His eyes roved over her ass and breasts like a fat kid appraising a box of donuts.

I could tell by the veins pulsating in Yolanda’s forehead that she was furious. As soon as we left the precinct she let us both have it.

“Why’d ya’ll have to say ya’ll was both fuckin’ me?”

“’Cause we knew they’d believe that. Did you see the way those devils were looking at your ass? I bet they’ll be jacking off thinkin’ about it tonight.”

“You should have heard the way they were questioning me when they came to confirm your alibis. They were all making jokes and shit and I couldn’t do nothing about it. I was so mad at you two muthafuckas that I was tempted to say I hadn’t seen either one of you last night.”

“Yeah, well at least nobody strip searched you and looked up your ass with a flashlight, though you might have liked that shit.”

“I know they would have loved to do it.”

“Fuck both of you bastards!”

I laughed and then turned to Huey.

“Uh, man, is we still cool? You know your brother was like family to me. I mean, I just never expected it to go down like this.”

“Fuck did you think? Ya’ll was bulletproof or something? Shit, ya’ll should have known that sooner or later this shit was gonna happen. Going after Warlock in some dark ass junkyard? Stupid mutherfuckers! You lucky that you ain’t dead too. But I can’t blame you for none of this. Tank knew what he was doin’.”

“Shit, man! I can’t believe he’s gone. Damn. Damn. Damn!”

I wept quietly as we drove back home in Yolanda’s little Civic hatchback. My face was a blank mask. The car was so small that the dashboard pushed my knees almost to my chest and I hugged them as the tears trickled down my face. The weight of the previous night came crashing down on me with paralyzing force. I was stunned into mute shock. In the back, Huey stared straight ahead, a psychotic fury burning in his eyes and vibrating through his tightly contracted tendons and muscles. A single tear traveled the course of worry lines in his face and splashed down in his lap upon his clenched fists.