The C-phone already caught in your hand callin’ on Cash.
68
I pressed my palm to the wet bloody mess below my rib cage. My fingers trembled and my breath slowed. All I could smell was new car in the trunk of Teddy’s Bentley and something ripe and sour. My head bounced against a tire iron every time he slowed, my feet crinkling on some shopping bags where they’d placed me. I don’t know if they thought I was dead, or cared. I’d passed out right until I’d been carried out. Everything seemed dulled. My head throbbed from where I fell and hit the edge of Teddy’s desk. I was in shock. My mind unclear.
I kept my palm to the wound, trying to stop the blood. Apply pressure, that’s what you did. Right? I tried to breathe. I wanted to kick at the side of the car. I wanted to try and rip out of the trunk. But I was shut inside, didn’t have the energy, and knew any sound would just draw them to shoot me again.
I breathed. And swallowed.
I felt as if someone had carved into my flesh with a hot knife and kept twisting the blade inside me. Jesus. Jesus.
I closed my eyes and prayed.
Teddy. My mind wasn’t right. Teddy.
We hit a bump and a solid, fleshy mass lolled against me. In the dim glow of the taillights, flickering on and off in a red strobe, I turned my head and saw Trey Brill staring at me with glassy blue eyes. His face gray and covered in dried blood.
“Goddamn,” I yelled. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move in the trunk. I felt as if my body had been wired together and shut inside a coffin.
I kicked hard, denting in the side of the car. I gritted my teeth.
The car slowed.
I heard muffled voices.
I closed my eyes, slowed my breathing even more. I turned my head away from Trey and the smell of his body releasing all of its fluids.
Outside, hands beat on the trunk.
“Calm down,” Christian said.
“It’ll be okay,” Teddy said.
“Cool.”
“Okay, Malcolm,” Teddy said.
“Man, chill.”
“Malcolm?”
“I’m not fuckin’ Malcolm,” Christian yelled. “Now open the goddamn trunk and let’s get this shit done.”
I kept my eyes shut, felt Teddy’s meaty hands lift under me like a spatula and cradle me into his huge arms. I let all my muscles go slack. No breathing. I held my breath.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Lord God Jesus. Jesus my savior.”
“Teddy, shut the fuck up,” Christian said.
Their feet crunched on gravel.
Feet shifted upon wooden planks and I heard the slap of water against pilings. I opened my eyelids just a crack. Still dark. The glow of security lights over dozens of boats parked in narrow little slips.
His feet stopped and he dropped me onto the deck right on my hurt side. I bit so hard into my lip that I could taste blood, an electric current of pain lighting up my body. But I didn’t scream.
In my mind, I saw clear blue water leaking from my eyes and a black shroud covering my face in a tight mask. I took in air slow.
With a thud, Trey’s body dropped onto the deck beside me like a freshly caught fish onto ice. I smelled his odor and heard a ticking sound. When I opened my eyes, I saw nothing but his large Rolex’s second hand sweeping across the black face. His wrists turning purple and light gray.
Teddy cried, almost as if he’d become a child again. Sniffling, wailing.
An engine started and puttered.
Christian used my back as a springboard to pop back up to the slip and untie the lines. Seconds later, we moved out.
In the dim blue-black light of the false dawn, I prayed some more.
I thought of my body resting as I bled. I thought about my energy storing up. I’d just lie still for a while. Try and keep conscious. I bit my hurt lip to feel more pain. Keep alert.
My face flush to the ground, brown water running into my purposely open mouth, I saw a revolver on Christian’s hip.
“Stop, cryin’, boy,” he said. “Hard part’s over.”
I heard the radio tune around the dial.
He found a rap station playing a song that kept on with a steady beat. “Oohhhwee.” More beats. More rhymes. “Ooohhhweee.”
Christian rapped along as he steered.
Teddy moved beside him, silk shirt bloody and untucked.
I could only see his back and fat neck stretched tight as he looked down into the water. “Where we goin’, Malcolm?”
“You my dog, Teddy,” Christian said. “You right. We brothers now.”
69
That dock where Teddy keep that Scarab is empty as hell. Light just comin’ over the edge of the lake while you and JoJo and Bronco look out from the marina at all the places where they could’ve gone out in that black water. JoJo’s old truck parked next to Teddy’s Bentley, right by the edge of all those boats, all faded blue and dented. JoJo looks across Pontchartrain and then over at Bronco, who shakes his head.
“Ain’t no way,” Bronco says. “That’s the biggest thing I ever seen.”
“Where that friend you promise?” JoJo asks.
“He comin’.”
“What’s he to you?”
“He owes me.”
“For what?”
“Whatever he want.”
“Words are nothin’ to a thug,” he says. “This boy don’t sound no different than an animal.”
Just as he say that, his old truck gets swallowed up by five white Escalades and a bright yellow Ferrari where you see Cash float out shirtless with leather pants. He wears sunglasses and got a toothpick cocked out the side of his mouth.
JoJo look over at you and shake his head.
“He got a boat,” you say. “Fast as hell.”
He looks over at Bronco. Bronco nods.
“Have no fear,” Cash say.
You ain’t got no time for no introductions and no time for a lot of words.
“Travers out on the lake,” you say.
“What?” he ask. “You want me to take out my sweet little boat for his ass?”
“Listen, goddammit,” JoJo say, gettin’ in Cash’s face and seein’ Cash ain’t used to that. “You either help us get out on that lake and look for my boy or get back to shinin’ your sissy-ass chains.”
Cash smiles platinum and grunts. “Who you, old man?”
“The man been kickin’ ass before your granddaddy even got his dick wet.”
Twelve of Cash’s Angola crew moan and laugh. Cash look at them, givin’ that mean eye, lettin’ them know to shut that mouth.
“Why you want to help that white boy?” he ask.
JoJo turns. “Come on, Tavarius.”
“Tavarius?” Cash asks, laughin’. “Man, now that’s funny. That your name, ALIAS?”
You look at him, cockin’ that head and lookin’ up into his eyes. “Yeah, that’s my name.”
Y’all walk through the crowd, bumpin’ shoulders with some of those do-rag niggas, when Cash yelclass="underline" “You wit’ me now?”
You turn and nod.
“Well, let’s get in the goddamn boats. Ain’t never too early for no ride.”
JoJo look back, cuttin’ his eyes straight down the narrow little dock. “What you got?”
Cash flicks his forefinger out – almost makin’ it out like a gun – and point to one of them Cigarette racin’ boats you seen when you down in Miami. Man, you heard them things could run you all the way down to the Bahamas before the hour through.
But this boat don’t look nothin’ like that shit in Miami. This one ghetto hard all the way. It’s purple and gold and got the words BALLIN’ III painted in shiny looped letters at the back and the cartoon head of a pit bull in a diamond collar snarlin’ up front of that sleek, long boat. Look like some kind of rocket ship.
“Y’all take the other two,” he yell to some of his boys.
Down the dock, you see Cash got two more boats that look like the same.
“I designed them myself,” Cash says as y’all walk back. “Only limitation is that imagination.”
“Lord God, help the world,” JoJo said. “Your ghetto ass know how to steer?”