Honor Thy Thug (31 page)

“I feel you. He did it. He tried to have us killed. Now that was a moment.”

“That’s fucked up!” Kyra said.

“Why does he hate his brother and Trae so much?” Tasha asked me.

“I don’t know. Kaylin won’t talk to me about it. But from the
little bit I gathered from his sister Tamara, it was jealousy. Simple as that.”

I looked around the room at everyone’s face. We were all perplexed. Each one of us caught up in the thoughts of the many tragedies that had fallen into our lives. We had loved and lost. Everything we said we would not be we had become. The mood was becoming gloomier by the second. I walked over and plopped down next to Kyra. I needed the mood in the room to lighten up. That’s why I was here. I needed to spread some good cheer.

“Look at your stomach, Kyra! You are glowing,” I told her.

“Yes, I am very much pregnant. Thirteen weeks, to be exact.” She smiled and rubbed her stomach.

“You look happy. Are you happy?” I wanted to know.

“Actually, I am.”

I turned my attention to Jaz. “So, Ms. Thing, how are you and Faheem making out?”

“I might be moving back to Jersey,” she announced. “I’m looking at the medical school at Robert Wood Johnson. Georgia is history. We are just about done packing. I’ve been trying to tell Faheem that he is overreacting and that we don’t have to move, but he won’t listen to me.”

“Shit, the hell he is overreacting! You sleep on niggas if you want to. Trust me, I know. You see what just happened to us, and that was flesh and blood seeking to hurt us. So imagine what someone outside of family will do,” I told her.

Our attention turned to the front door. Someone was banging hard. We all rushed to see who was banging as if they were the Po Po. When we got to the front door, we saw that’s exactly who it was, the Po Po. I opened the door.

“Oh, shit,” Jaz mumbled. “What done happened now?”

“Mrs. Tasha Macklin?”

“Yes? How can I help you?”

My name is Detective Clyde Allen. I’m with the L.A. County Police Department. Do you have a relative named Trina—”

“Yes, I do,” she cut him off.

“Are you next of kin?”

“That’s my sister, why?” Tasha grabbed her chest.

“We need you to come identify the body.”

“Identify what? Why? What happened?” I could see her other hand begin to shake.

“Can you come with us now?” Mr. Allen asked her.

Tasha turned around and looked at all of us. Her eyes were tearing up fast, and her whole body was shaking. Even though we heard what they just said, she announced it again with her voice trembling. “It’s Trina. Oh, God! They want me to identify her—” She started to say something, but then she fainted, sliding down the wall. We all rushed to her side.

The detective stood there, looking in through the screen door. “Do you need me to call an ambulance?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered. Kyra had already rushed off to get a damp towel, and Jaz went for her cell phone. “I’m her attorney. Can you give me your card, and we’ll get to the coroner’s office as soon as we can? It’s obvious that we can’t leave right now.”

He looked at me and then looked at Tasha. He went into his pocket and pulled out a business card. “Call me when you are on your way so I can meet you there. It doesn’t matter what time it is. I’m hoping that Mrs. Macklin can answer a few questions.”

“I will, and thank you for understanding.”

After about a half hour, Tasha was okay and all riled up. She said later for the morgue. She wanted to go by Trina’s apartment
to do some investigating first. Kyra volunteered to stay home with the kids, and the rest of us piled into the truck and drove over to Trina’s. When we arrived, it did appear that the neighborhood had had some excitement. The truck came to a stop, and Tasha dashed out. I was right on her heels.

“Excuse me, excuse me,” she said to a young white girl who was carrying a skateboard. “What happened around here?”

“Tragedy. I never saw anything like it. They literally set the girl on fire. She was running through the parking lot, screaming and hollering. Here, look.” She pulled out her iPhone, and we formed a circle around her, stretching our necks trying to get a good look.

I’ll be damned if she hadn’t caught some of the incident on her phone. She must have been upstairs, because the image was far away and aimed downward. And it was Trina. I could tell by her voice. The top part of her body was covered in flames. She was running and releasing blood-curdling screams. We all gasped. Tasha choked up and started crying.

You talking about karma? That was all that I could think about as I noticed that not one person tried to do anything to help Trina. People were running away, and some were just standing there, looking on in awe. Damn, that white chick wasn’t the only one recording. I saw several phones raised up, obviously recording. This was going to be a hit on YouTube. Poor Trina kept burning until the fire department and an ambulance showed up.

“This will go viral, watch!” the white chick said.

The next thing we knew, Tasha had snatched the phone out of her hands, slammed it onto the ground, and started stomping on it.

“Hey! Hey!” The girl grabbed Tasha by her hair. “That’s my
phone!” Then the poor girl was getting her ass whipped and didn’t know why.

“That’s my sister!” Tasha was screaming, crying out and kicking the girl. “My sister!”

“How was I supposed to know? That’s my phone! I’ma sue your ass!” she yelled from the ground. Her skateboard was rolling away.

Tasha was shaking uncontrollably. We had to drag her to the truck and get out of there before the police came and charged us with assault. “They didn’t have to do that! They didn’t have to do her like that!” Tasha cried out.

Damn, this appeared to be the year of death for us. Death was all around us. And they say it comes in threes. I didn’t see it stopping as I wondered who could have done this to Trina.

The Los Angeles County Jail was the worst. I had to get out of there. It was like going from the Sheraton to a Motel 6. Tasha was being true to her word. She stopped coming to see me. Benny had been working night and day to get me moved. The only good news there was that it looked like I was going to beat the murder case with the chick, Sabeerah, from Jersey. My print in a burnt-down apartment? Bullshit. But for this new one, they were talking about having a speedy trial. Benny had a fit when I caught this one, but what the fuck was I supposed to do? Just so happened that Dirty Harry got caught bringing a cell phone to me, and he had some other shit on him, that wasn’t mines. It could have been anybody’s.

This first nigga was poppin’ shit, saying my wife fucked it up for everybody. Then, when the nigga threatened to step to my wife, he crossed the line. We got into it, and when I finished
with the nigga, he was no longer breathing. That shut all of them other muthafuckas up. All of this over a cell phone. But now this latest development had me stunned. There was another dude who stepped to me, supposedly sent by Li. He said he had a message for me, but I didn’t give him the chance to deliver it. Li went back on his word. He put a number on my head right there in the county jail. So, now I was locked down 24/7, sleeping with one eye open, and it was driving me mad.

Time was moving slow as fuck in there for me. But from what I was told, outside it was a whole ’nother game. They buried Kyron, and word on the street was that I took him out. I’m mad that I didn’t have the pleasure to do just that. As a matter of fact it depressed me. Kaylin went to Don Carlos, asking him to talk to Mr. Li, and just like I told them it would go down, it did. Mr. Li said he would assist me only if we put in some work for him. I’d been waiting for somebody to get word to me about what happened with that. The agreement put on the table was when they put in the work, I would walk outta here.

Politics and organized crime run this country. I hadn’t heard anything about Charli. I didn’t know if she was dead or alive. I did know that death had been all around us this year, more so than when I was out there hustlin’. However, nothing surprised me more than when I called home and they said that Trina, Tasha’s sister, had been killed; somebody had burned that ass alive. That was some Hollywood shit that made me smile. It reminded me of the movie
New Jack City.
How in the end of the movie, Nino Brown got shot and fell over the banister. Ice-T smiled, put on his shades, and kept it moving. Even through all of the grief that Trina caused her sister, Tasha still took it real hard. The chick was so damn grimy, I was not surprised that she got taken out
like that in style. I applauded the nigga that did it. He took some work off my hands.

“Macklin, visit! Let’s goooo!”

“Did you say, ‘Macklin, visit’?” I was hoping that I wasn’t hearing things.

And then I heard it again. “Macklin, you got a visit! Let’s go!”

The first cat was an actual officer. The second cat yelling out that I had a visit was an inmate. A certified nut. All he did all day was mimic the officers. “Pill call, chow time, visits!” The joint was an insane asylum, and I was beginning to feel the pressure.

I walked into the visiting area, and to my surprise, who did I see? Kendrick. I thought to myself,
What does this nigga want
? I grabbed a seat and sat down.

We glared at each other for a couple of minutes. I grabbed the phone off the receiver, and he grabbed his.

“What’s up, man?” I asked him.

Finally, tears began to stream down his cheeks. “Why, Trae?”

I knew exactly what he was talking about. “I ain’t have shit to do with it. I’m in here, nigga. But you know if I was out there, how it would have gone down. There would be no question. You know my work.”

“We family, Trae.” He looked at me teary-eyed.

I couldn’t believe he said that, as I wondered what was going through his mind. I saw Kaylin standing in the cut. I guessed he was allowing Kendrick to say what he had to say. “You kiddin’ me, right? Family don’t fuck the next man’s wife and then rape her.”

“I ain’t have nothing to do with that.”

“Bullshit, Kendrick! You was right there, condoning the shit all along. So fuck Kyron, and fuck you. If I was out, I’d spit on the muthafucka’s grave and take your fuckin’ head off.”

“Yeah, I know how you get down. That’s why I handled shit. There is no need for war. I gave Kay my word. So to circumvent that, you did one of mines, and so I did one of yours.”

I thought about what he was implying.
Trina.
I started to try to make this dumb nigga see, one more time that I didn’t do Kyron, but I knew no matter what I said, he still was going to think I deaded the nigga.

“We even now. All scores are settled.” He got up. I sat there numb, because I didn’t know if this nigga was gonna come after me when the first opportunity presented itself. His mouth was saying one thing, but his eyes were saying another.

Kaylin banged on the glass. “Stay on your toes, boy! What’s up with him?” He nodded toward Kendrick.

“Man, why you bring this nigga to see me?”

“He asked to come, plus we needed the extra muscle.”

“You need to talk to him. He told you about Trina?”

“No. What about her?”

I let him think about it for a minute. When it dawned on Kay what I was talking about, he jumped up and went after him. Then Bo jumped into the seat. I let go of a huge smile. I hadn’t seen my cousin in a long time. For Kay to have dug him up, and the smile that was glued to his face let me know that it was about to go down. Bo was called on when big things needed to be handled. Bo was a Macklin to the core. I sat up straight and gave him my undivided attention. “What rock did they pull you from out under?” I teased him.

“Yeah, nigga, it’s me! ’Bout time y’all coming out of retirement. Y’all vacationing ass negroes! Don’t worry about the rock, just know that I’m here. What’s good with you, man? I miss your roguish ass.”

“Y’all better be getting me the fuck outta here, that’s what’s good. I don’t wear this jail shit well.”

“Yeah, well, keep them deadly hands to yourself, then!” He chuckled. “But hell, nah. Fuck that! We Macklins go hard. Ain’t shit changed.”

“Why you hanging out with that nigga?” I was referring to Kaylin. I was still trying to piece together what they were up to.

“You already know, son. We about to make it do what it do once again. We did that for Li, and that was supposed to get you out, but we see you still here. He obviously ridin’ on that slow bus. We went ham on that muthafucka, but you know Kay. Always gotta do things the right way, so we out here to see you, of course, and the big man.” I knew he was referring to Don Carlos.

“Y’all saw him already?”

“Yeah, last night.”

“What’s up?”

“Maaaaaacklin! Time’s up!” the officer yelled.

“The big man spoke to the gook. Li wants us to put more work in. That gook loved what we did. He want us permanently. But we got something for that ass!”

“Damn, how soon can I get outta here?”

“Hang tight, nigga! We on it.”

Kaylin came back over to where I was. “Everything good, nigga. I got Kendrick. You just be sure to not drop the soap. We out.”

“Fuck you, nigga,” I said, and laughed as I placed the phone on the hook. As I walked back to my cell, I was actually excited. Them niggas, my niggas, were up to something big. It sounded
like they were taking that piece of info I gave them on the Li organization and running with it.

•   •   •

Three days after them niggas came to see me, they moved me to another country-club spot, and Tasha was on her way to see me with the kids. I was amped up. We were all outside in the visiting area, waiting for the visits to come in, and the first group was processed into the yard, but there was no Tasha, Caliph, Kareem, or Shaheem. Then twenty minutes passed, and I grew antsier and antsier. I had yogurt and fruit cups waiting for the boys. Hell, that’s all they had, everything else was chips, candy bars, and soda. The second group came in, and Tasha and the boys were the last ones on the line.

Tasha.
What the fuck was up with her stomach?