CHAPTER 14
When Keith stepped into the bedroom his mom had made up for him, he had to do a double take. It was a new house, but the bedroom was a replica of the one he had slept in all his life on Benton. All his trophies and awards were on display on the walls and shelves. His mother had even put a twin bed that looked like his old one in the room. Out of curiosity, Keith got on the floor and checked the legs of the bed. When he saw that one was missing, and the corner of the bed was propped up by textbooks, he realized that it didn’t just look like his old bed. It was his old bed!
He continued wandering around the room, examining memorabilia from his childhood. He stopped at a framed picture resting on one of the shelves. It was a photograph of him and his high school baseball team, taken after they had won the championship. Keith couldn’t pitch in the final game, because he had suffered a broken arm a few days before. Remembering the event that had caused the injury made Keith’s blood boil as if it had just happened yesterday.
It had been the night of their junior prom. Keith and some of his gang had been hanging with their dates behind the school. They’d been smoking weed and sipping cheap whiskey from paper cups. Back then he’d been dating a girl named Darla, who lived next door. She came from a family that was almost as dysfunctional as his, which was probably why his mother liked Darla.
The kids had been so caught up in having fun that Darla stayed out past her curfew, which meant there would likely be trouble. Darla’s dad, Charlie, was a piece of shit. He drank too much and worked too little. When he got drunk, he loved to take out his frustrations over his shortcomings on his family, especially Darla. It wasn’t unusual to see Darla come to school with fresh bruises from fistfights she had gotten into with her dad. His excuse for hitting her was that she had a slick mouth, which she did, but it was really that Darla reminded him so much of her mother. She’d left her abusive husband and her kids when Darla was a freshman in high school.
Keith and Darla stole across the yard under the cover of darkness and headed around to the back of her house. The family tended to leave the back door open because Charlie was always getting drunk and losing his keys. Considering the neighborhood that they lived in, it probably wasn’t the wisest thing to do, but it was better than having Charlie banging on the door and waking up Darla’s younger siblings at all times of the night. Keith saw Darla to the back door, and they thought they were home free, until the kitchen light came on as they stepped inside. They found Charlie waiting for Darla.
“Oh . . . hey, Daddy,” Darla greeted, trying to hide her nervousness.
“You know what time it is?” Charlie questioned. They could smell the vodka on him from across the room.
“I’m sorry. We were—”
“It was my fault,” Keith said, cutting her off. “My brother was supposed to pick us up from the prom, but he never showed, so we had to take the bus,” he lied.
“It figures,” Charlie snorted. “Every time something bad happens in this city, one of you Savages is usually responsible.” He shambled forward on shaky legs, glaring at Keith. “You think you slick, don’t you?”
“Sir?” Keith didn’t understand the question.
“I see the way you look at her . . . the way y’all are always whispering and giggling. She let you taste it yet?”
“Daddy!” Darla was embarrassed.
“Shut your mouth, tramp!” Charlie barked. “You just like ya mama, always gotta interject when men are talking. You’re lucky I don’t knock your damn teeth out for creeping in here at this hour.” He faked like he was going to hit her and made Darla flinch. When she did, he smiled sinisterly.
Keith spoke up. “That’s not necessary, Mr. Charlie.”
“Fuck you say to me, li’l nigga?” Charlie growled, turning on Keith.
“Keith, just go home. I’ll talk to you in school on Monday,” Darla said as she ushered him toward the door.
“You sure you’re good?” Keith hesitated.
“Listen to your little girlfriend and get your ass gone, before you get a taste of this grown man’s business, boy!” Charlie snarled, threatening Keith.
Keith took a step toward the older man, but Darla blocked his path. “That’ll only make this worse. Please, just go home and let me handle it.”
Reluctantly, Keith let Darla push him out the back door. For a few moments, he stood in the yard, wondering if he had done the right thing. He had just convinced himself to leave when he heard shouting coming from the house, followed by the sound of glass breaking. Everything in Keith told him not to get involved, but he couldn’t just walk away. He cared too much for Darla to leave her at the mercy of her drunken father. Against his better judgment, he went back inside the house. The kitchen was a mess. Broken dishes were scattered across the floor, and blood was splattered on the walls. Darla was curled up in a ball in a corner, while Charlie stood over her, punching her with his closed fist. There was no doubt in Keith’s mind that if he didn’t do something, Charlie would surely kill her.
Keith was good with his hands, but Charlie was older, more experienced, and outweighed him by about fifty pounds. When it was all said and done, both Keith and Darla ended up in the emergency room that night. Darla ended up with a black eye and a busted lip, but Keith caught the worst of it. Charlie had broken his arm in two places. When the doctors asked what had happened, the kids lied and said they had gotten jumped on the way home from the prom. Not long after they were released from the hospital, Charlie packed his family up and disappeared.
It was probably for the best. When Keith’s brother Mad Dog found out the real story of what had happened, he was looking to kill Charlie. A few days after he graduated from high school, Keith received a congratulatory card from Darla in the mail, but he tossed it in the trash. Words on a card could do nothing for the hurt he was experiencing. He understood why Darla had to leave, but at the very least, she could’ve said goodbye to him. It was the first time Keith’s heart had ever been broken, and it took him years to get over Darla.
“Damn! What you got in here? Bricks?” Fire Bug’s voice startled Keith, yanking him from his thoughts. Fire Bug and Anthony were standing in the doorway with Keith’s luggage.
“Thanks, boys. You can just drop them anywhere,” Keith told them. The two teens dropped the bags and prepared to head back out, but Keith stopped them. “Bug, I need to holla at you for a second . . . alone.” He looked at Anthony.
“I’ll be outside. Bug, don’t be too long. You know we got somewhere to be in a while,” Anthony said, then gave Fire Bug a look before disappearing.
“So, what you think of your room? Mama did a good job making it look like your old one, huh?” Bug flopped on the bed.
“Yeah, I never realized how closely she paid attention,” Keith said.
“Shit, you know that old bird don’t miss nothing.”
“So, what’s going on with you lately?”
Bug shrugged. “Not too much. Out here hustling, like everybody else.”
“How’s school?”
“I wouldn’t know. I ain’t been there in two years.” Fire Bug laughed. Keith didn’t.
“Are you kidding me? You’re only seventeen years old! Ma might be twisted in her ways, but she made sure all of us graduated. Why would she let you drop out?”
“Calm down, Killer. I didn’t just drop out. I got my GED last year,” Bug informed him.
“And what about college?”
“Nah. I’ve had my fill of school. I’m exploring other interests.”
“You mean like getting tied up in the family business?” Keith gave him a knowing look. Bug’s face said he was searching for a lie, but Keith saved him the trouble. “Maxine already told me.”
“Damn! Max and her big-ass mouth!” Bug cursed.
“Bug, you’re a smart kid with tons of potential. You can be anything you want in life. Why would you get caught up in this shit?”
“Same reason as you did back in the day!” Bug shot back.
No matter how much Keith wanted to, he couldn’t argue with Bug’s logic. Their parents had groomed them all to be criminals, and Keith hadn’t been an exception. Granted, he’d eventually managed to break the hold his mother had on him, the same one she had on all her children, but there had been a time when he was every bit as Savage as the rest of his siblings. Back then, he’d been Killer Keith in name and deed, and some of the acts he committed as a teen had haunted him into adulthood. Keith had been a child who was exposed to too much, too soon; and apparently, his little brother was walking the same path.
“Maxine says that a job you and Big Money pulled may have been why he was killed.” Keith paused for a moment. “Can you tell me what happened?” he asked.
“It was all fucked up,” Bug sighed. “We were hired to whack this fuck nigga who was stepping on the toes of some important people, and it went to wrong. I laid a bomb for the target, and a kid got killed by mistake.”
“Jesus, Bug!”
“It wasn’t my fault. The kid got in the way of the target.”
Keith remembered seeing a story on the news a while back about a car exploding in Harlem, killing a kid. It was a dark day in New York City. At the time the police had no solid leads, but they suspected it was a terrorist attack gone wrong. It had hurt Keith then to hear about the child’s death, but it hit him like a physical blow now to find out that his little brother was behind it.
“How could you have been so careless?” Keith asked, his voice heavy with emotion.
“One thing I ain’t is careless, Killer. I could set off a bomb in a room full of people, and the explosion would be so precise that it wouldn’t touch anybody except my mark. That piece of work was for King James. It was just dumb luck that it was the kid who started the car instead of him,” Bug insisted.
“So, you think it was this King James who killed Big Money?” Keith asked.
“If I had to guess, I’d say so. But it could’ve also been the cat who hired us, trying to clean up the mess,” Bug suggested.
“Who hired y’all for the job?”
Bug was silent.
“Bug, I’m trying to stop a full-scale war from breaking out. Now ain’t the time to go silent. Who dropped the bag on King James?” Keith said, pressing him.
“A guy named Shai Clark,” Bug finally confessed.
This took Keith by surprise. He didn’t know Shai personally, but his reputation preceded him. To the general public, he was a charismatic young businessman who ran a multimillion-dollar construction empire. There were rumors about him having deep ties to the underworld, but Keith had never put much stock in them. Shai was a man who had it all, legitimately, so his getting involved in street business didn’t seem logical. Keith had first become aware of Shai Clark through his family’s lawyer, Martin Scott, whom everyone called Scotty. Scotty had been a guest speaker at NYU when Keith was attending the university. Keith looked up to the man, because like him, Martin Scott had come from nothing and had become a prominent lawyer. In essence, Martin Scott had laid out the blueprint that Keith followed.
“How do you know Shai Clark?” Keith asked, not really understanding the connection between the millionaire and his family.
“I don’t know him. Only met the man once, and that was when Mama brokered the job. A one-eyed priest put it together for us,” Bug told him.
The one-eyed priest was someone Keith was familiar with. Priest was a reputed assassin who had a history with their family that dated back to before Keith was born. Priest and Keith’s mother had a relationship that his father had never been comfortable with. It was as if they were spawn from the same pit in hell. Keith had met him a few times over the years, always when his father wasn’t around, but he had never really cared for the man. Something about the way Priest looked at Keith had always given him the creeps. At least Keith now had a starting point to try to unravel the mess his brother and cousin had made.
“Any idea how I can get in contact with Priest?” Keith asked Bug.
“Sure. Buy yourself a Ouija board. I hear he bought the farm recently,” Bug told him. “Now, are you finished giving me the third degree about all this? Me and Anthony got a function to attend.”
“Oh yeah? Where you boys off to?”
“Well, the family is going to do something for Big Money after the second line tomorrow, but me and some of the gang are gonna have our own thang tonight. Grab a few bottles and burn some bud. Nothing too crazy,” Bug told him.
“Sounds like fun. Mind if I tag along?”
“Hell yeah, you can come. I’ll get big-time props showing up with Killer Keith!” Bug said excitedly.
“How about we chill a little on the Killer and just go with Keith?”
“Right, right . . . You wanna fly under the radar. That’s cool, but can I offer you some advice?”
“Sure.”
“Dead the suit.”
Keith looked down at the Armani number he was wearing. “Boy, you’re crazy! This is Armani.”
“I dig it. That may work for them high-society parties in Atlanta that you’re used to, but the place where we’re going, the only people in suits are the Feds and the dead.”