Duffy breathed a sigh of relief when he walked into his one-bedroom apartment, which was located on the Upper East Side and boasted a view of the FDR drive. It was small, but nice. He kicked his shoes off and massaged his sore feet. He was glad when Tommy cut him loose for the night. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy the luxuries of the Clarks’ fancy parties, but only in small doses. Galas weren’t really his thing; he was a street nigga and always more comfortable in his element.
He had quite a bit to do, but first he had to get mentally and physically prepared. He twisted up a blunt of sticky from his stash, and fired it up while changing into something more fitting of the task at hand: black jeans, a hoodie and Timberlands. Strapping his glock to his hip, Duffy hit the door and went out into the concrete jungle.
Duffy pushed his E-Class Mercedes through Harlem at slightly above a cruise. The engine was so quiet that if the car hadn’t been moving, he wouldn’t have even known it was running. It was a hell of an upgrade over the Toyota Celica he had been pushing a year prior, and a leap from his days riding the trains and buses to get where he needed to go. Tommy Clark had not only upgraded his means of transportation, but his life.
He had first met the eldest Clark male on Riker’s Island. Duffy had been there fighting a gun possession charge. He had gotten into a shootout with a rival crew and took two bullets before they arrested him. His wounds were what landed him in the infirmary where Tommy was being kept. At first, he had no clue who Tommy was, but from the respect he was shown by staff and inmates alike, Duffy knew he was someone important on the streets. Back then, Tommy was still getting used to dealing with his condition, so he wasn’t the friendliest cat. He kept to himself and rarely talked unless it was to bark on one of the guards or the doctors. The other inmates waited on him hand and foot, with hopes of Tommy putting them on, but Duffy kept his distance. For as much as he wanted to cut into Tommy like the rest of them, he knew following the trend would get him nowhere. For nights on end, he toiled over ways to put himself on Tommy’s radar, but there was nothing you could offer to a man who had everything. He needed to find a way for Tommy to notice him, and he found it with a book.
Duffy was street smart, but had never been academically sound. He couldn’t read very well, so sometimes he had to read aloud to himself to make sure the words were right. It drove the other inmates crazy, but none of them had the nuts to come over and shut him up. One day he had been reading a copy of a book called Gangsta that he had gotten from the prison library. He had just dog-eared his page and closed his book for the night, when Tommy spoke to him for the first time.
“Keep going,” Tommy said from his bed.
At first Duffy wasn’t sure who he was talking to, but when he looked over, Tommy was staring at him. “The book, keep going. I wanna know if the nigga is gonna make it out of New York.”
Duffy wasn’t sure what else to do, so he opened the book back up and kept reading. It was almost day-break before they got to Lou-Loc’s tragic end, and for a while after he was done, Duffy and Tommy discussed the book. This became their thing, and every night, Duffy would read while Tommy got lost in the stories. This is how their friendship developed. Duffy had once asked Tommy why he made him read to him every night instead of listening to some of the audio books that the library carried, and Tommy simply replied, “Because the narrator’s voices don’t take me back to where I come from.”
Eventually, Duffy was sent back into general population to continue fighting his charge. A few months later, Tommy was going home to his family. He promised Duffy that he would reach out and try to do what he could for him once he was back on the streets, but that’s what most prisoners say when they’re going home and their friends were still left sitting. Duffy hadn’t put much stock into the promise, until he had a random legal visit from a man he had never seen before who introduced himself as his new counsel. It took nearly a year of court dates and vanishing witnesses, but the charges against Duffy were eventually reduced and he was released with time served and ten years felony probation. Duffy didn’t like the idea of spending the next decade at the end of a leash, but it beat serving time. On the day he walked out of the courtroom, Tommy was there to greet him. He had been a man of his word, and from that day forward, Duffy had been on the Clark payroll, but his loyalties were with Tommy.
When Duffy arrived at the address Tommy had given him, he had to look at it twice to make sure he hadn’t read it wrong. It was an old building in Harlem that looked like it hadn’t been lived in for some time. Most of the windows were boarded up, but he could see the faint glow of a light in one of them. Somebody was home.
Cautiously, he got out of the car and approached the building. There was a thin piece of plywood that served as the entrance, if you could even call it that. Upon closer inspection, he saw words spray painted just above the door: “Welcome to hell.” It was a bad omen, but Duffy would rather take his chances with whatever was lurking within the dark building than disappoint Tommy Clark. Against his better judgment, he stepped inside.
The first thing Duffy noticed when he crossed the threshold was the cold. It had nothing to do with the temperature outside; more like an unsettling chill in his bones. He ventured deeper into the building, crunching glass and debris under his Timberlands. He noticed that the floor was littered with more junk food and candy wrappers than anything. At the end of the hall, a staircase loomed. The dim light at the top of it flickered on and off as if daring Duffy to continue. He did.
Duffy crept up the rickety stairs. Seemingly coming from all around him, he heard the faint sounds of what thought were children giggling. He stopped to listen closer, but there was nothing. With his gun now in hand, dangling at his side, Duffy continued up to the next floor. When he reached the landing, he felt the chill again. This time it was different, as if someone had moved passed him. Duffy turned but didn’t see anything except two rats in the corner, fighting over a discarded cupcake.
“You know where you at, blood?” a voice came from behind Duffy spun and found himself pointing his gun at empty space. “Who the fuck is that?”
“We asking the questions,” someone to his left said.
“You know who you’re fucking with?” Duffy said as he swept his gun back and forth, trying to find a target.
“You must be hard of hearing.” A beer can skirted down the hall and bounced off Duffy’s feet, causing him to discharge his gun. The sound of the shoot echoed off the walls, making Duffy’s ears ring.
“Muthafucka!” Duffy clutched his ear. At the end of the hall, he could see a youthful looking boy. He couldn’t hear him, but from the way he was doubled over and pointing, Duffy could tell he was laughing at him. “You little shit! I’m gonna kick your ass!” He charged down the hall in the direction of the boy and got within arm’s reach of him, before a foot came out of one of the abandoned apartments and tripped him. Duffy spilled onto his hands and knees, scraping one of his palms. Before he could right himself, something smashed into the back of his head and everything went black.
*
Duffy awoke with a splitting headache. He was no longer in the hallway; instead he had been moved to one of the apartments. He was parked on a rotting wooden chair with a shaky leg, and his hands zip-tied behind his back. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but running late to carry out Tommy’s errand was the least of his concerns.
There were two burning trash cans positioned a few feet away from him, which explained the light he had seen from outside. Loitering around them were several children. Most of them were dusty and looked like they missed a few meals, but they all wore the same look in their eyes; one of hunger. It was something straight out of Lord of the Flies. Just beyond the children, he spotted the young boy who had been taunting him in the hallway. His body was half turned as he whispered to someone sitting on a tattered couch. Duffy couldn’t see his face through the veil of shadow, but he could make out a pair of dirty red Converse planted on the ground. They must have felt him watching them because their conversation abruptly stopped, and the young one stepped forward.
In the light, Duffy could get a better look at him. He was young, and dark skinned; maybe about thirteen-years-old, with the eyes of a man twice his age. He moved through the children and planted himself directly in front of Duffy. “You should’ve heeded the sign outside, blood.”
“This is Hell and everything that passes through Hell that ain’t of Hell is food,” the next boy spoke up. He was slightly older and stockier.
“You’re making a mistake, kid,” Duffy struggled against his bonds. “I’m with Tommy Clark!”
“Broken Gods have no voice in The Below,” a voice called from the couch. “All that pass through those gates are either dogs from out of this pound or food. Since I don’t see no fangs in your mouth, you must be food.”
“Food! Food! Food!” the children all chanted in unison.
“Ashanti,” the voice continued, “feed this trespasser to the pups and let the rats have what’s left of him.” He stood and began walking deeper into the shadows.
“You got that, big homie,” the little one who he called “Ashanti” said as he drew a butterfly knife from his dirty jeans and flipped it back and forth expertly. “Nothing personal, fam,” he said as he moved in for the kill.
“No!” Duffy screamed and began thrashing wildly. There was no way he was going to meet his end in a vacant building at the hands of a juvenile delinquent. He threw his weight to one side and managed to tip the rickety chair over. His plan had been to try and break the rotted chair and try to get free, but his shoulder took the brunt of it and the chair held.
“Stop fighting and I’ll try and make sure you go quick,” Ashanti said as he knelt beside him and pressed the knife against his throat.
“Animal!” Duffy blurted out. The room went quiet, and the one who had been sitting on the couch stopped short. The children parted like the Red Sea as another youth made his way through them. From the angle Duffy had landed, he couldn’t turn to see his face, but he had a clear view of the red Converse blazing a trail across the floor in his direction.
“If you’ve come looking for the Bastard Son of Harlem, you’re either a fool or an enemy. Answer truthfully or die ugly,” he told Duffy. It wasn’t a threat; more like a fact.
Duffy knew he had to choose his next few words wisely, for they may have been his last. “Look man, all I know is that Tommy Clark sent me to find someone called The Animal.” After a few seconds, he and the chair were pulled upright. For the first time, he could see the face of the one he assumed to be the leader of the bunch. He was dark-skinned with almost feminine lips, and a mess of wild black curls crowning his head.
The wild-haired young man studied Duffy for what felt like an eternity under his lifeless eyes. When he finally opened his mouth to speak, Duffy could make out the gold grills in his mouth that spelled out his name. “Then look no further.”