There was no way he could win against all of his cousins. Scrambling on the floor, trying to protect his head, Eric finally made it to the door.
“Let him up! He wanna leave. Let the bastard leave!” Deena shouted, her face filling with blood and her double chin jiggling.
Eric snatched the door open and ran out of the apartment. His nose was bleeding; his left eye was nearly swollen shut. His knuckles were raw, and he felt like he had broken a few ribs.
Slamming the door shut behind him, Eric realized that he was walking away from the only family he had ever known. But not all families, in his estimation, were worth holding on to. He had survived all these years, and he would survive many more. At just thirteen years old, he may have been homeless, but he wasn't hopeless.
The first night his aunt kicked him out, Eric sat in a dark, dank space behind the stairs of the apartment building, nodding in and out of sleep. When he emerged from his hiding spot the next morning, his insides were churning from hunger. His body ached and his left eye was black and swollen shut.
Eric walked three blocks to the corner store, praying that he wouldn't run into any of his cousins. His plan was to sneak in the back of the store, grab a few bags of chips, to kill the hunger pains tearing out his insides, and then dip back out, unseen. He had been psyching himself up all the way to the store. He had never stolen anything in his life. As he turned the corner, he heard shouting and screaming. He remained hidden behind a large dumpster, silently watching two men punch, kick and stomp on the body of a man who lay on the ground, screaming and squirming.
Eric had never heard a man scream like a woman before. He kept his eyes glued to the scene, but something in his peripheral vision caught his attention.
A long, darkly tinted 1975 black Cadillac Sedan Deville, with whitewash wheels, sat parked in front of the store. The back window was halfway down and Eric could see the face of a man watching the brawl. The man wore a dark brown suede fedora with a red feather attached at the side. His face was the color of molasses, and a mustache covered his top lip with thick, coarse black hair.
Eric turned his eyes from the man in the car back to the victim, who had stopped squirming and screaming. Judging from the amount of blood pooling on the ground around the man's head, Eric decided that the man was probably dead.
“That's enough!” the man in the Cadillac yelled out the window, snapping his fingers. Like well-trained dogs in obedience school, the men stopped beating the limp, lifeless man.
“You, kid! C'mere,” the fedora-clad man called out to Eric.
Eric's mouth hung open, and he frantically looked around, hoping that there was another kid nearby whom he was beckoning. When the man pointed his finger directly at him, Eric nearly peed his pants.
“Me?” he croaked in fear.
“Listen, little brotha, don't play with me. You don't see nobody else out here at six o'clock in the damn morning, do you? Now, I said, c'mere,” the man snapped.
Eric walked over like a man on his way to the gas chamber. His legs felt like lead pipes, and the hunger pangs in his stomach were replaced by doom-filled cramps.
The man who had summoned him reached his hand out the window toward Eric. Eric immediately took notice of the huge yellow-gold and diamond ring on the man's pinkie. The man grabbed the collar of Eric's shirt and pulled him up to the side of the car so that the metal door frame pushed into his chest.
The man moved his face a mere two inches from Eric's. “You see that jive-ass bitch over there on the ground?” the man asked.
With his one good eye stretched wide to its limit, Eric moved his head up and down in concurrence.
“Well, he got what he deserved for being a bitch. Ain't nothin' worse than a man who acts like a bitch. Don't you agree?”
Eric nodded his head up and down rapidly.
“All right, then. If you tell anybody who you saw giving that bitch what he deserved, that same thing gon' happen to you. 'Cause if you tell, that would make you a rat bitch, now wouldn't it? You feel me? Look like somebody done worked yo' ass over, anyhow,” the man ground out, looking at Eric with squinted eyes.
Eric moved his head up and down. The man finally released his grip on Eric's collar.
“What's your name, boy?” he asked, softening his tone. There was something about Eric that he likedâan innocence he could fuck with.
“Er . . . um . . . Eric.”
“Well, I'm Early. Ask anybody roun' here about me if you don't believe what I'm telling you 'bout what can happen to you,” the man warned. “Now, if the police ask you what you saw here, what you gon' say?” Early asked.
“I'ma say I ain't sâsee nothin',” Eric stammered. His tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth.
“See . . . you wrong already. Whatcha gonna say is that you saw some young boys robbing that dude right there and they beat him up till he stopped movin'.”
Eric nodded in agreement. “Yeah . . . that's what I'ma say.”
“Good,” Early replied with a half smile, half sneer. He was going to have fun with this young man.
He gave Eric a once-over. “Why you out here so early in the damn morning, anyway? School don't be starting till another two hours or so.” Early chuckled. He hadn't been in a school building in nearly two decades.
“Um . . .
I . . .
I . . .”
Eric was scared to tell the man the true reason for his vagrancy.
“Don't think about lying to me, boy. I can find out anything I wanna know about these streets. Now I see somebody don' kicked yo ass around, and you look hungry and thirsty with those crusty white-ass lips. You best tell me what's goin' on,” Early demanded.
Eric hung his head low; he didn't even know where to start. Instead of coming up with a good story, Eric decided that the truth would be easier to tell.
When he had finished his tale, he was surprised to find Early in deep thought. The man twirled one end of his mustache, as if contemplating the meaning of the universe itself. Suddenly he stopped, looked at Eric, opened his Cadillac door and said, “Get in. I think you need a job, young'un. And a good street name to go with it. You seem real easygoing kid, so I'm gon' call you Easy.”
Eric cracked a nervous smile. “Easy . . . I like that name.”
Early took his young new protégé to McDonald's to fill his empty belly and then to the shopping mall to buy some new clothes. After a shower and a few hours of sleep, Eric felt like a new person. Early took Easy under his tutelage and they formed a quick bond. Easy didn't really have a choice in the matter. Early promised to protect him, and he did just that.
“Punch this punk bitch one more time,” Early instructed, twirling the end of his mustache nonchalantly. Easy did as he was told. He pulled back his fist and laid it into his uncle Doobey's lower abdomen one more time.
“Aggh,” Doobey coughed. Early laughed.
“You ain't so tough now, are you?” Early hawked up a mucus-filled wad of spit and spewed it into the center of Doobey's face. “I ain't got no respect for a bitch-ass man who puts his hands on a helpless kid,” Early observed as his follow-up.
Easy looked on as one of Early's henchmen kicked Doobey square in the balls. His aunt would definitely not be producing any more children in the years to come. Watching Doobey double over in excruciating pain gave Easy a sense of satisfaction that he'd never felt before. Revenge felt like a drug he could indulge in often.
The beating continued for what seemed like an eternity. “I'm sick of looking at this chump-ass pussy. Take his ass outta my sight,” Early instructed.
His workers hoisted Doobey's badly battered body from the floor. They stopped in front of Easy. Early walked over and grabbed a handful of Doobey's Afro and lifted up his head.
“Say sorry to this fuckin' kid,” Early instructed.
Doobey moaned. His lips were so swollen that Easy couldn't even understand his words.
“Did you hear him say âsorry'?” Early asked Easy.
Easy nodded his head up and down. He didn't think he was ready to watch someone he knew die.
Easy never saw Doobey or any of his family members after that day. He worked for Early, and in his Brooklyn neighborhood that meant something. Nobody fucked with him anymore; in fact, he was gaining a lot of respect around his way.
Easy's job was to pick up packages from a Spanish dude in the Bronx and bring the goods back to Early. Early paid Easy $100 for each delivery, which was more money than Easy had ever seen in his life. He grew to love the feel and the smell of money, and the freedom it could buy him. With Early's generous paychecks, Easy bought his own clothes, his own food and anything else that he desired. Early even provided a roof over Easy's head by offering him a cot to sleep on in the small living space in the back of his pool hall.
Easy quickly became known at the hangout spot and all around the neighborhood as “Early's kid.” Easy liked being claimed by someone; it made him feel wanted. He looked up to Early, and he wanted to be just like him.
Easy would stand in the tiny pool hall bathroom and practice walking, talking and looking like Early. Over the years Early would kick little jewels of knowledge to Easy, like telling him to never, ever trust a man who couldn't look him in the eye.
“If a man can't look you straight in the eye,” Early lectured, “the man is hiding his real self.”
Early had even gotten Easy his first piece of ass. The advice that followed was invaluable.
“Never fall in love with your first,” Early had lectured. “If you do, you'll never have shit to compare it with, so you'll never know what you're missing out on.”
Â
Tuck wondered how much Candy knew about her father's upbringing. There was so much more to Eric Hardaway than met the eye, and so many loose ends that needed tying up.
Chapter 18
Deal with the Devil
Candice followed the small Hispanic woman with her eyes. The petite, raven-haired woman balanced a chubby-faced baby on one hip and held the hand of a little boy who looked to be preschool age. The woman released the little boy's hand for a quick second while she struggled to open the door of the sleek black hybrid vehicle. As soon as she released the boy's hand, he took off running like a prison escapee.
Candice was able to see his face clearly now. The family resemblance was stark, with classic olive-toned skin and slanted dark eyes. The boy's shiny black hair bounced around his perfectly round face as his arms pumped with each stride of his run. The woman looked frantic as she took off after the little rascal, the weight of the baby on her hip slowing her down. Candice held her breath as she watched the show unfold.
“Rolando! Come back! Rolando, please!” the woman called out, clearly exasperated.
Candice slid farther down into her seat as the boy, named after his grandfather, ran straight in the direction of her car.
“Rolando!
Por favor!”
the woman huffed pleadingly; the baby was bouncing precariously in her arms. With an outstretched arm the nanny caught a handful of fabric from the back of his shirt and twisted him around. She spoke rapidly in Spanish; her raised eyebrows, twisted lips and tight hold on the boy indicated a severe scolding was ensuing.
Candice let out a long sigh of relief that the woman had caught the boy just before he neared her vehicle. It might not have gone over so well if the woman had noticed Candice sitting in a car with dark shades covering her eyes, watching them. This was the second week Candice had spent observing them.
Every Thursday, at eleven-thirty in the morning, the nanny took the children to the park. Candice was surprised that such a notorious family as the DeSosas would allow their nanny or any member of the family, for that matter, to be in such a strict routine. Didn't they worry that their enemies could be watching?
Candice thought the DeSosa grandchildren would be chauffeured around in grand limousines by huge, strapping bodyguards with dark shades covering their eyes.
Some notorious drug kingpin,
she thought.
Maybe my father was the only paranoid drug kingpin to ever live?
Either way, DeSosa's slipup worked in her favor.
Once the woman secured the kids into their respective car seats, Candice started her ignition. She had to be at the ready. Keeping a safe distance behind, Candice followed the vehicle to the beautiful Saddlebrook, New Jersey, home.
* * *
Just last week Candice had followed the nanny inside Starbucks to study her target at closer range.
“Hey, Flora . . . you want your usual light caramel macchiato?” The barista smiled.
Flora.
It was amazing how much she could find out about a person, even by something as simple as following her into a coffee shop. Candice knew she could take Flora out with no problem. One pressure point stun and the little woman could be easily incapacitated. Candice had kept that in mind.
Lucky for Flora and DeSosa, Candice lived by her father's creedâno women and children. The lesson had obviously been lost on DeSosa when he decided that her mother and eight-year-old sister were fair game.
However, a little manipulation and deception were needed to accomplish what Candy envisioned, and that entailed using women and children as a means to an end. So long as no women or children were physically harmed, Candy felt she could live with the consequences.
The following day, Candice took a different route to the city. She already knew the nanny was heading to the petting zoo at Central Park, but not before she would pull up to the Starbucks just outside of the park to grab her light caramel macchiato. She consistently left both children in the idling car.
Candice was already parked across the street from the Starbucks when the familiar black hybrid pulled up. “Like clockwork,” Candice whispered, an involuntary smirk spreading across her lips. She watched Flora get out, run around the back of the car and rush into the Starbucks.
Go!
Candice prompted herself. She scrambled out of her car, raced across the street, crouched down on the side of the car that was facing the street, and used a gloved hand to open the vehicle's back door.
Little Rolando sat up and looked at her, his little head tilted curiously. His baby sister was sound asleep.
“Shh,” Candice whispered, placing her finger up to her lips. “Rolando, you wanna see a doggy?” Candice reached inside and unfastened his car seat strap. The boy still looked at her strangely; then he smiled and nodded his agreement.
Rolando wasted no time showing that he was a big boy, happy to be free from the captivity of his car seat. He hopped out of the seat and took Candy's proffered hand. She closed the door, careful not to wake the baby.
“C'mon, let's go see the doggy,” she announced. She lifted him between two parked cars and put him on the sidewalk. “Go, look at the doggy over there,” she said, pointing to a dog-grooming service two doors down that had their latest customers on display in the window. “Go ahead, big boy,” Candice urged when he hesitated. She patted him on the bottom; then she looked around, making sure she didn't draw too much attention to herself or to the boy.
As expected, Rolando took off running.
Candice watched him for a few seconds, keeping her body low. She peeped at the Starbucks and saw that Flora was already coming toward the door with her drink. A flash of heat engulfed Candice's chest. She was spurred into action. She turned quickly, but she couldn't dart across the street just yet. The Manhattan traffic was whizzing by.
“Shit!” Candice huffed, jumping back. Breathing hard and tapping her foot, Candice waited, eyeing the car. Flora was inside now.
Finally there was a break in traffic. With her heart hammering wildly, Candice sprinted back across the street, hoping the woman hadn't noticed her next to the car. With her chest rising and falling rapidly, and her nostrils wide, Candice slumped back into her car. Once inside, she let out a long sigh of relief.
Candice glanced at the black hybrid and noticed Flora standing beside it with a look of terror etched on her face. Her hands were up in the air, swaying wildly, and her head whipped left and right in a frantic motion. She looked to be on the verge of screaming or fainting.
Candice lowered her window slowly so she could hear the commotion more clearly.
“Help!
Por favor!
Help!” Flora screamed, her voice a grating, high-pitched call of distress. Flora yanked open the backseat door and snatched the crying infant to her side as if afraid that she would disappear as well. “Help me!” she screamed again at the top of her lungs. People began to stop and look. Some Good Samaritans offered to dial 911, while others tried to calm her down. Flora continued to whirl around; hysteria was setting in now.
Sirens blared in the distance. Candice knew the boy's exact whereabouts. He had done more than just look at the dogs in the shop's window. When a dog owner had exited, he quickly slipped into the grooming store, which fit beautifully into Candice's plans. A warm sense of satisfaction rose from her stomach into her heart.
Flora was sitting down in the driver's seat of the vehicle; her feet and legs were hanging out the door. The baby was perched on her lap, and the crowd of Good Samaritans was around her, anxious for the authorities to arrive. A few of them volunteered to look for the little boy and they spread out across the block, calling out “Rolando.”
Candice knew that it was only a matter of time before the boy was found in the pet shop.
Four police cars, with flashing blue and red lights, arrived at the scene, parking haphazardly around the vehicle. Two officers questioned Flora; two spoke to the bystanders; the rest of the officers began a methodical grid search.
Candice had to chuckle a bit. The boy was right under their noses. The police began checking the stores almost immediately, just as Candice predicted. The officers who would find the boy would be dubbed heroes back at the station for reuniting the lost child with his nanny.
This incident would be the first of many tragedies that would befall the DeSosa family in the coming weeks, if Candy had anything to do with it.
Shortly after the cops arrived, a white Range Rover came to screeching halt near the police cars. Arellio DeSosa, whom Candice recognized from her photo collage, was out of his car before it even came to a full stop. Rolando DeSosa's eldest son burst through the throngs of onlookers and officers and headed straight for Flora. His body language was rigid and menacing.
Before Arellio could even utter a harsh word, a petite blonde, with a lithe build, rushed from behind him. Her hands were extended in front of her as if ready to scratch Flora's eyes out.
“You bitch! Where is my son?” the blonde screamed.
Candice slouched down even farther in her seat and smiled. She'd finally gotten to see Arellio's wife. A police officer grabbed the woman's arms behind her back and directed her toward the Range Rover before she could do any real harm to the nanny. The woman's hands and mouth were moving a mile a minute.
Arellio scolded Flora, his finger wagging accusatorily in her face. Snatching his daughter from her arms, he headed back toward his wife.
“You're fuckin' fired!” the blonde screeched, trying to outmaneuver the officer. “Where is my son?” The woman broke down, her shoulders shaking, as she covered her face with her hands.
Flora was sobbing as well. She had always been careful. There was no way the boy could've unfastened his own car seat straps. The thought caused Flora's knees to give out. She almost hit the ground before an officer caught her in his arms.
Candice watched intently as Arellio handed his daughter to his wife and engaged in an intense conversation with the police officers. Candice watched him still trying to be the cool kingpin as the pressure mounted. Candice hated him more and more by the minute. She made her hand into a fake gun. Closing her weak eye, she aimed it at Arellio's head.
“Boom!” she whispered as she pulled back her pointer finger in a mock trigger pull.
Arellio went over and embraced his wife; their baby daughter was snuggled between them.
Such a loving family,
Candice noted sarcastically.
Alas, the play was nearing its final scene. Heads turned simultaneously to the left as shouting could be heard in the distance.
“Found him! We found him!” a police officer belted out as he walked with a child in his arms toward the crowd. Cheers erupted from the worried onlookers.
Arellio and wife rushed toward their child. “Thank God!” the woman cried as she scooped her son up into her arms and squeezed him tightly. Arellio was right on her heels. He kissed his son on the top of his head and held on to his wife and children for dear life.
The scene sent sparks of white-hot anger over Candice's body. Her cheeks were aflame and she bit down so hard into the side of her mouth that she broke the skin.
“Now I know how to locate your Achilles' heel,” Candice vowed aloud as she followed Arellio DeSosa with her eyes. Family clearly mattered to him, as much as it did to her. If that was his point of weakness, then that was where she planned to strike first.
Standing nearly six and a half feet tall, Arellio DeSosa was a hard-to-miss target. He was nearly the spitting image of his fatherâolive-colored skin, shiny black hair, strong broad shoulders, large flat nose and long prominent chin. He joined his father's business when he was just seventeen years old and was groomed to be just as ruthless. Unlike most teenage boys, however, Arellio's rite of passage into manhood was murder.
Â
Â
Harlem, New York 1991
Â
As a .357 Magnum shook in Arellio's hand, his father and his goons waited for the young protégé to find the cojones to finish the job.
“There is no hesitation, Arellio!” Rolando
DeSosa
barked.
Arellio jumped at the sound of his father's voice. He had always been scared of his father, who was very much an authoritative figure in his life.
“When a man betrays you, your family, everything you stand for, you have no choice but to kill himâno matter who he is. There is no coming back for a man who has no dignity and no pride,” DeSosa lectured his son.
“This man stole from me. He lied to my face! He threatened our family by talking to the police. He is a snake . . . no, more like a fuckin' rat,” DeSosa hissed, his accent strengthening.
Arellio looked down at the bloodied man whom he'd once called Uncle. The man squirmed on the floor in a last-ditch effort to edge toward the door and save his life; he really did look like a slithering snake.
Arellio followed him now, leveling his gun at his chest. He couldn't breathe. His heart beat so fastâhe thought he'd go into cardiac arrest.
“What are you waiting for? He is no longer part of our family. He betrayed me, our family name and everything we stand for.”
DeSosa
was urging his son to finish the job. He needed to know that Arellio had the heart to kill. It was the only way he could guarantee his family's reputation as cold-blooded businessmen.
“This is your chance to live up to the
DeSosa
name. You must not feel anything for a rat bastard like this. Now, prove to me, and everyone here, that you're worthy of this family's name,” DeSosa growled. He was growing frustrated with his son's apparent hesitation.