Animal 2 (29 page)

“It's me, Fran—it's Angels.”

Still silent.

“Listen, I know what you said, and I swear to Christ, I wouldn't even call you if it wasn't important,” Frankie said.

More silence.

“OK, you want me to beg? I'm begging!” Frankie was emotional. “Please, you're the only one I can turn to. You don't have to talk, just listen.” And with that, Frankie began pouring out the details of her tragic life over the past few years and hoped it was enough to melt an icy heart.

•  •  •

“I don't trust that bitch,” Lakim said venomously after Frankie had gone.

“You don't trust nobody. Frankie Angels is solid,” King told Lakim.

“Why do they call her Frankie Angels?” Cain asked. He'd been so quiet neither King nor Lakim had noticed him standing there.

King looked at Cain and caught the telltale glint of infatuation in his eyes. “Frankie is
skilled
at eluding the Reaper,” King told him. “She's died and come back twice, and those are just the times that I know of. That girl has been through more shit than a little bit and is still standing. If that ain't angels protecting her, I don't know what to call it.”

“She's a little
too
lucky for my tastes,” Lakim said coldly. Something in his gut told him that Frankie knew more than she let on about his brother's case.

King draped one of his muscular arms around Lakim and pulled his friend to him. “La, you need to relax. I know you stressed about what's going on with Zo, but you pointing that anger in the wrong direction. I got something you can focus that on, though,” he said sinisterly. “Y'all took care of that for me?” he asked the twins.

“You know it,” Cain told him. With a wave of his hand, he motioned for everyone to follow him to the green Honda sitting at the curb. He gave his brother the signal, and Abel gleefully popped the trunk. Tucked neatly inside was a man, bound and naked. His eyes held the look of a terrified rabbit.

“Who the fuck is that?” Lakim asked, not really sure what to make of it.

“This is one of the niggaz who had a hand in that shit that happened with Shorty,” King told him.

“His name is Big Money Savage.” Cain filled him in, prodding Big Money with his finger.

The name immediately rang off in Lakim's head. “You mean to tell me you've got a member of the Savage family tied up in the trunk?” He was shocked.

“You say it like these niggaz are connected or something,” King said.

“Nah, they ain't connected, but the name Savage is ringing in the streets,” Lakim told him. “There's a bunch of those crazy muthafuckas. They're like Bebe's kids, only packing uzis.”

“Well, I didn't find no uzi on this piece of shit, but he did have a punk-ass twenty-five on him when we swooped down,” Abel joked.

“Shut up, stupid,” Lakim snapped. “King, I don't know how you, of all people, don't know the Savages when you were locked up with their brother Mad Dog.”

King flashed through his mental Rolodex and put a face with the name Mad Dog. He had met a kid who went by that moniker while passing through Sing Sing state prison. Mad Dog was very passive and mostly kept to himself, reading or working out, but there was a monster lurking beneath that calm exterior, and King had seen it firsthand. He had been on a visit at the same time as Mad Dog when an inmate who was also on the visiting-room floor said something crazy to Mad Dog's sister. Without wasting a second, Mad Dog was on the inmate, punching him and slamming his head repeatedly against the ground. The COs tasered and pepper-sprayed Mad Dog, but he kept fighting as if they were merely spitting on him. The COs ended up having
to beat Mad Dog unconscious with their batons to stop his attack, but not before he knocked two of them out, too. Mad Dog spent a month in the infirmary. When they released him back to the cell block, he went back to being tucked away and reading peacefully, as if the brutal attack had never happened. Ironically, King could remember joking with a few of the other inmates about how he would hate to ever have to go against Mad Dog in the streets.

King found himself faced with a dilemma. It had been the Savages who were responsible for Shorty's death, obviously trying to assassinate King. If he let Mad Dog live after having spilled innocent blood in a neighborhood he had sworn to protect, he would appear weak. But if he killed him, it could spark a war with the notorious family, while he was still trying to make heads or tails of his war with the Clarks.

“You sure about this?” Lakim asked, noticing the look of uncertainty on King's face.

King approached the trunk of the car and looked down at Big Money. Unexpectedly, he ripped the duct tape away from his mouth. “So you're kin to Mad Dog Savage?”

“That's my cousin! If you know I'm related to him, then you know what'll happen if I'm returned to my people in anything more than one piece,” Big Money blurted out, hoping his relation to Mad Dog might save him from whatever they were planning.

“Why should I show you the courtesy, and you didn't do the same for my little homie?” King asked him. “He was just a kid, barely old enough to have gotten his dick wet, but you sent him to his mother in pieces, so why shouldn't I send you to yours in pieces?”

Big Money shook his head sadly. “That wasn't for him,” he said sincerely, “but there's casualties in every war.”

“Spoken like a man with the heart for this shit,” King said approvingly. “Cain.” He turned to the scarred twin. “Since Big Money's got so much heart, make sure his heart is the first thing you cut out when you kill this bitch.” He turned and walked away.

“Wait, wait . . . I can—” Big Money began, but his words were cut off when Cain slammed the trunk shut.

Lakim caught up with King. “King, I know you tight, but let's think about this. He's related to the Savages, which means he's protected. Killing him will mark us.”

“Yeah, so you keep saying, but let me ask you this. What makes his life more valuable than Shorty's, his name?” King asked. “Shorty had a name, too, and I'm going to make sure everyone remembers it.” Without another word, King walked off and left his soldiers to carry out his sentence.

S
LEEP DIDN'T COME EASY FOR
Ashanti that night. There was too much going on. Every time he heard a noise, he grabbed his gun from under the pillow, thinking the police were going to kick his door in and try to arrest him for his part in the deadly shootout in the Bronx. Animal seemed to think that the police hadn't gotten a good enough look at Ashanti to place him at the scene of the crime, but he figured why take chances. If they came to his house looking for someone to pin a case on, all they would find was hot lead and death.

In addition to everything else he was going through, Ashanti was having a hard time wrapping his mind around being dumped by Fatima. Part of him wanted to be mad at her for bailing on him, but he couldn't say that he blamed her. She was a young girl who had her whole life ahead of her and had already been through so much. She deserved better than a boyfriend behind a wall or in the ground, and Ashanti was likely headed for one or the other, if not both. Still, it hurt him to the core to think about it. He loved Fatima, and a life without
her was too painful for him to dwell on without getting emotional.

Ashanti continued to lie in his bed, staring at the ceiling until the first rays of the sun came peeking through his apartment window. When it became obvious that he wasn't going to get any rest before he was to meet the others back at the church that morning, he decided to tend to his other bodily need: food. With everything going on, he hadn't eaten in almost two days and was ravenous. He jumped into the shower and dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt so he could run to the corner store and get a hero sandwich. He got to the door, and as an afterthought, he went back and snatched his Beretta from under his pillow. He gave the silencer fitted at the end of the barrel a good twist to make sure it was secure before stuffing the weapon down the back of his pants. As was his ritual every time he left his apartment, he stopped in front of the framed picture hanging to the right of the door. The picture was of him, Animal, Brasco, and Nef, sitting on a project bench. Animal was holding up the magazine cover with himself on it. He wished Brasco and Nef had been there with him to stand with Animal, but they weren't. Brasco was still locked up, and he didn't speak to Nef much those days.

“Looks like it's just you and me, big homie.” Ashanti kissed his fingers and patted the picture before leaving the apartment. On his way out, he made sure to lock both the top and bottom locks. He lived in a nice building, but it was still in the hood, and he knew some of the tenants were suspect, including himself.

Ashanti stepped out onto the stoop of his apartment building and gave a cautious glance up and down the block, searching
for anything that might've seemed out of place. He was ducking the police, Shai's shooters, and God only knew who else who might've wanted a piece of him. Thinking of Shai turned his thoughts to Swann and the bit of information Percy had revealed to him, and all Ashanti could do was shake his head. On the streets, Swann was known as one of the realest dudes to ever shit between two pairs of shoes, but even the realest cats had secrets, some more detrimental than others. What Ashanti knew about Swann could've shattered his street credibility and possibly gotten him murdered if it ever got out. Ashanti would hold on to the secret as leverage against Swann should he ever find his back truly against the wall.

On his way to the store, Ashanti tried to hit Zo-Pound to see what time he wanted to link for the meeting, and his phone went straight to voicemail. He tried him three more times with the same results. Normally, he wouldn't stress it, but in light of Zo's suspect behavior lately, it made him uneasy.

For as long as Ashanti and Zo-Pound had been friends, they had always kept it one hundred with each other, until the situation with Rick Jenkins. Even after Ashanti had confronted Zo and told him what the police were saying, he still tried to spin Ashanti. Murder was a very sensitive subject, and Ashanti could understand Zo not wanting anybody to know, but Ashanti wasn't just
anybody
. They were brothers in arms. What Ashanti found even more disturbing than Zo keeping secrets was the fact that the murder seemed so random and totally out of Zo's character. Zo had bodies under his belt, but he wasn't a cold-blooded killer. For Zo to take a man's life, he had to have been pushed, but what could Rick have done to send him over the edge when they supposedly didn't know each other? There
were so many questions that needed answering, and Ashanti just hoped that they had enough time to touch on all of them.

Ashanti slipped into the store and greeted the young Arab dudes who worked there. He didn't have to tell them what he wanted; they already knew, because he got the same thing every time: turkey, ham, and Swiss, with extra mayo, oil, and vinegar. He kept one eye on the dude making his sandwich and one cast out the bodega window. Outside, a blue-and-white police car pulled to the curb in front of the store. Ashanti felt the icy trails of sweat running down his back and pooling near the butt of the Beretta tucked into the back of his sweatpants. His heart thundered in his chest as one of the officers got out of the car and started walking toward the bodega. Ashanti's hand involuntarily slipped over the gun, finger trembling over the trigger. The cop stopped and listened as a call came in over the radio mounted on his shoulder. After responding to the radio call, the cop turned on his heels and went back to the squad car, which peeled off. Whatever had happened must've been more important than what he wanted in the store, and Ashanti was thankful for it.

“Yo, ack, hurry up with my sandwich!” Ashanti called behind the counter. He was overcome with the urge to get off the streets. When his sandwich was done, Ashanti grabbed his bag, threw a ten-dollar bill onto the counter, and skirted without bothering to wait for his change.

The whole walk back to his building, Ashanti kept looking over his shoulder, as if he expected someone to jump out behind him. He skipped the elevator and bounded up the few flights to his floor. Tucking the sandwich under one arm, he fished his key from his pocket, undid the bottom lock, and slipped inside. Only when his back was pressed firmly against his apartment
wall did he breathe a sigh of safe relief. When he'd calmed, he realized something of great importance that he'd missed when he came in. When he left to go to the store, he'd secured both locks, but when he came back, only one was still in place.

Ashanti dropped his sandwich and reached for his gun; at the same time, the shadows in the apartment closed in on him. He pulled his gun and fired on the closest thing to him. From the scream in the darkness of the apartment, he knew he had hit his mark, but he would never get to see it fall, because a split second later, he was clubbed in the back of the head with something heavy, and everything went dark.

•  •  •

Ashanti was awakened by a glass of cold water being thrown in his face. He sprang up, only to be overcome with vertigo and plopped back down in the chair he was sitting in. The room was spinning, and all he could see was shapes and colors, but he knew he wasn't alone. As his vision cleared, he was able to make out a face hovering over him.

“Animal?”

“No, nigga, the boogey man,” Animal said harshly.

“Does he always greet his guests by shooting them?” Kahllah asked from the sofa where she was sitting. She had her T-shirt raised, while Gucci examined the bruise on her stomach. Had it not been for the fact that she was wearing body armor when Ashanti shot her, the wound would've likely been fatal.

“When they show up at my crib uninvited,” Ashanti replied. “What is this all about? I thought Priest said we were gonna meet at the church.”