Candy Licker (10 page)

I just threw up my hand like,
Whatever.

“Your stupid ass! You gonna ruin this deal for all of us!”

I was almost out the building when I heard Dominica snap, “Leave her the fuck alone, Vonzelle. There's more to life than sucking industry dick.”

I
caught a 9:00
A.M.
flight back to L.A. and arrived a little bit after six, West Coast time. By now I had called Mama's house so many times my finger was sore from pressing
REDIAL
, but still no Mama. No Caramel either.

I waved down a taxi outside of the baggage claim area, and when it pulled up in front of Mama's house I felt my first bit of relief in over twelve hours. Mama's car was in the driveway. That heffah had finally showed her ass up, and I wanted to hear the damn lie she was gonna tell me about where she'd been.

My mind was racing and rationalizing as I paid the driver and walked up the path to the door. Maybe her flight had got canceled or rescheduled or some shit. Or maybe she'd missed her return flight and couldn't get on another one until real late last night or early this morning. Or maybe, I told myself, knowing my mama she probably took that niggah Greasy along with her to make the drop, then decided to hang out in Seattle until she felt like coming the hell back.

But reality hit me the moment I pushed on the door.

I was stepping into a crime scene. The place had been totally tossed, but somebody had put up one hell of a fight. Shit was everywhere. Furniture was turned over and curtains had been snatched down. A heavy smell was in the air and a trail of blood ran from the front door all the way to the back of the house.

For a second I just stood there clenching my teeth and gripped in fear. Sweat beaded between my titties and under my
arms. My feet wouldn't move. But then Caramel flashed in my mind and I crept cautiously. Silently. Deeper into the house. The further back I went, the more blood there was. But there was something else on the floor back here too, and when I crouched down to see what it was, vomit gushed toward the back of my throat and I heaved up spit and air. My skin crawled and my whole body spazzed as I stared at the sticks of flesh, some of them recently manicured, that were pointing the way toward Mama's bedroom.

The tiny part of my mind that was still almost rational understood that there were too damn many fingers there to have come off just one person, and when I rounded the corner to Mama's bedroom terror fell down on me and the reality of what I was seeing became as clear as day. The Gabrianos had gotten hold of Mama and her boyfriend, Greasy.

They'd gotten Caramel too.

A
unt Jessie was driving too fast. She whipped down the street running traffic lights and honking her horn like crazy whenever somebody got in her way. Jessies husband rode nervously beside her in the passenger seat, and every few seconds he glanced over his shoulder out the back window and shook his head in disbelief.

“Dial 911, Jerlynne!” Jessie yelled at her sister, who was huddled in the backseat with the kids. “Get the goddamn po-lice on the phone!”

“He's right up on us!” Jerlynne wailed, looking over her shoulder, the car phone almost slipping fom her trembling hand. She sat in the backseat with her sister's sleeping twin infants and her own thirteen-year-old son. The twins were in car seats, but her son sat right next to her. Jerlynne's voice was full of fear, and it seeped from her and touched her child. She wrapped her arm around the boy and held him close to her. He was small for his age, but she knew he was strong.

“Hello?” she shrieked into the phone. “Yes! Yes! This is an emergency!”

The car lurched as Jessie tried to pass a garbage truck. She slammed on her brakes and her husband hollered and thrust both hands against the dashboard as they came close to rear-ending a school bus.

“Lawd, ” Jessie cried out. “Look what that fool almost made me do! That crazy motherfucker gone kill all of us!”

The boy in the backseat remained quiet as they fled. He had no use for the man behind them. He hadn't spoken more than two words to him since the night of the fire. The boy bore thick scars on his back and vivid memories in his mind of the night he'd been forced to jump from the burning window of a blaze that his father had set. Only once or twice did he turn around to look as his father chased them down, waving his arm for them to stop and cursing and threatening what he was going to do the moment they did.

“Yes!” Jerlynne cried into the phone. “My name's Jerlynne Jackson. I have out an order of protection against my husband! He molested my niece and he's not supposed to come anywhere near me. My sister picked me up from work this morning, and now he's chasing behind us and waving a gun out the window!”

“Tell 'em we coming down Spring Street!” Jessie yelled. “We headed their way and we ain't stopping for no motherfuckin’ lights!”

Her husband spoke beside her. He was a big man, but when it came to Pug there was no courage in him. “Yeah. That's what we should do. Drive straight to the police station and drop Lynne and Percy off. Them boys kin handle Pug from there. ”

Percy's mother spoke into the phone, then leaned against him shaking and crying. She was still wearing her nurse's scrubs and she looked scared and exhausted. He reached out and touched her small brown hand, patting it and stroking it as her tears fell on his face, warming his skin.

“Keep your head down, Percy, ” she sobbed softly, trying to scooch herself down lower in the seat as well. “Baby keep your head down.”

“All right!” Aunt Jessie hollered fom the front seat. “We going in!”

She turned the car left, directly into the police parking lot, and the maniac behind them followed. The station sat in the center of a U-shaped paved area, and there were lined parking areas on all three sides. The front door was propped open, but there were no officers in sight. “Shit!” Jessie cussed, searching for help. “Ain't nowhere to park. Them motherfuckers knew we was coming. Why ain't nobody out here waitin’ on us?”

Jerlynne let go of Percy's hand and dialed 911 again as her sister drove around to the back of the station and pulled into the only spot that was available. It had a sign that read
SHERIFF'S DEPUTY ONLY.

Jessie hadn't even put the car in park before her sister started screaming into the phone again. “We're right out back! Outside your station! Help us! He's out of his car and he's got a gun!”

Percy looked to his right and things got slow. He saw his father moving toward the car as if in slow motion. Veins stood out on his bald head, and his handsome face was contorted in rage. His work vest was unbuttoned and his paint-splotched jeans rode low on his waist. The powerful muscles on his chest, arms, and stomach bulged, and he held a Saturday night special gripped in his right hand.

“Pug, noooooooo!” Jerlynne screamed, and grabbed at her son. She flung the boy down to the floor of the car and threw her body over him.

Percy felt his shoulder slam against the edge of the babies’ car seat, and then he was on his back. He struggled against his mother
,
trying to flip her over and switch their positions. But his father was right outside the window. Their eyes met and Percy stared into the face of a sadistic wife-beater who had a thing for teenage girls. His father blinked, his pug nose flaring, the black hole of his revolver aimed and deadly.

Percy hugged his mother to him with his left arm and instinctively threw his right hand out, palm forward. “Noooooo!”

The window exploded, and Percy felt his index finger snap backward and fly off.

Bak! Bak! Bak! Bak!
Four more shots rang out as Jessie screamed in the font seat and the babies woke up crying, covered in blood and shards of glass. Her husband flung open his door and jumped from the car, crawling beneath the cruiser parked next to it and leaving his wife and twin daughters to their own fate.

Percy felt his mothers body twitch and convulse. The car phone fell from her fingers as a long breath escaped her and she went still.

And then the car was surrounded. Officers with drawn guns closed in on his father, ordering him to drop his weapon or die.

Percy gazed through the tiny pieces of glass that were covering his face and looked into the face of his mothers killer. Pugs left eye swung downward, but the right eye glinted with pure evil. Pug stared at his son for a moment, then spit through the shattered window and into the car, striking Jerlynne on the side of her bloody face.

“Bitch,” he spit before the wall of policemen rained down on him. “Trifling bitch.”

K
nowledge Graham swung open the metal safe in his office and removed a stack of ledgers. He had taken several basic accounting courses in college and two or three corporate accounting classes in law school too, just for fun. His understanding of numbers and financial equations came naturally to him, which made keeping two sets of books a minor issue.

Like his boss, Knowledge was fearless. Hurricane might have been the muscle behind the House of Homicide, but Knowledge was the brain. He had an air of loyalty that was unquestionable, and Hurricane trusted him explicitly. Knowledge showed his boss the highest respect, and had never forgotten how Hurricane had hired him on sight and paid him triple what he was making at a time when no other law firm in the country would have touched him.

Working the other side of the fence was just a matter of shifting perspective to Knowledge. For years he'd played by all the rules and followed the correct protocol at the Manhattan district attorney's office. Those white boys had seriously underestimated what dicking him would cost, and it wasn't long before they realized it had been much better for them when he was playing on their team. Sitting across the table from his old colleagues made Knowledge twice as deadly because he'd mastered the game from both ends of the field.

In the four years he'd been with Hurricane, Knowledge had tripled his boss's net worth. True, the feds had come after them a time or two, but as soon as the name of Hurricane's attorney was disclosed, they knew they were outclassed and would end up with an L in their column.

Knowledge Graham was an expert at finding tax loopholes, but he was a real genius at hiding and diverting corporate funds. He dealt in offshore accounts, secret stocks and securities, tax-exempt entities in Bermuda, holdings in Latin America, and un-traceable Swiss bonds.

Knowledge washed his boss's money like he was an old lady with a box of Tide and a gallon of bleach. Not a penny could be linked back to Hurricane, and he kept his boss rich and happy and left the feds and their task-force agents scratching their heads in amazement on a regular basis. And what he did for his boss financially he also did for himself. What kind of investment strategist would he be if he didn't follow his own advice?

The Italians who did business with Hurricane were happy too. They began funneling larger and larger amounts through Hurricane's main drug czar, and even offered bigger pots of seed money to start other front businesses like funeral parlors and restaurants. The only hustle they wouldn't share was their arms operation. They didn't mind supplying the guns that gang-bangers used to take each other out, they just didn't want to share any of those mega-profits.

Still, all and all, Knowledge was satisfied. There had never been a moment when he felt a single pang of guilt for taking from white people what they'd already taken from poor blacks. They had created the game and etched out the rules, but he had put a twist on it and was playing it like he owned it.

The one thing that bothered him was his boss's insistence on where he should rest. Hurricane was heavy on control and was adamant that his most loyal soldiers live with him in his Long
Island mansion. While Knowledge was a loner by nature, he agreed. The mansion was big enough for everybody to have their own space, and since Hurricane's entourage spent most of their time either at the House of Homicide or on the road, he was usually there only to shower and catch a few quick hours of sleep.