King Maker: The Knights of Breton Court, Volume 1 (3 page)

  "She stay on Sussex Avenue, over by the Meadows Apartments." Merle cocked his ear as if listening to a voice on an unfelt breeze. "Hmm, that might not have been in my best interest."

  "I dunno. Maybe I will sit down for a parlay."

  "Not the right man," Merle muttered. "Not the right man, indeed. He falls before his own nature. Perchance the son." Merle staggered into the light then back into the shadows before departing the room entirely. "Coming, Sir Rupert."

  The lure of the city was that there was always something new to conquer. One last score, then he was out, Luther swore. His weakness was that he had a way of making things fall apart, of never being strong enough to hold things together. The spade King Midas, but whose touch turned everything to shit.

  CashMoney, his spirits raised with the departure of the drunken would-be soothsayer, exchanged skin with Luther then chalked up his cue stick. "My man. Always finding yourself in situations, usually involving some tail. You got your hands full there, boy."

  "What's up on the score?" Luther had been planning the bank heist for a while. True, it was a neighborhood bank, but money was money.

  "They pick up the money once a week."

  "Cash money?"

  "Like my name."

  "Guards?"

  "Four. Two in front, two in back. Three revolvers, one 12-gauge." CashMoney studied him. "Think you can take them?"

  "I still got my Caliburns." Their weight grew heavy in his shoulder holsters.

  "Welcome to the revolution," CashMoney said.

  "Save the militant bullshit. After the parlay and the score, I'm out."

 

Luther had little more than stepped into Morgana's pad before their lips met. Women weren't hard to get. His rep was whispered on the lips of those in the know and he flashed just enough for folks to know he had money. Events careened at him. Half the time he was the sole conductor of his life. The other half he felt caught up in circumstances beyond his control; at least, that was the lie he told himself when he found himself in situations he knew there'd be severe consequences for. He preferred to live in the minute.

  "What about Green?" He asked not out of any worry about being discovered, but wanting to know that his conquest was complete.

  "He out of town. Besides, Green don't own me. Would it matter if he did? Wouldn't you simply enjoy taking me even more if I were his?" Morgana issued a small smile. Being around her intoxicated him. Though he had never touched the stuff before, they did a line of cocaine. He hated the muddleheadedness of it, the slow creeping nausea and the lack of control that came with not being focused. He thought nothing of her then, breaking up a bud and rolling a fat, tight number.

  The sounds of rutting animals soured the night. Their bodies pressed together, unbridled. Their passions flared with little thought for the next day. With each thrust he erased himself. Other than CashMoney and Merle, all the people he came up with were gone. In his heart, he knew his time was almost done, but as long as he breathed, there was time to rekindle his old fires. From the confines of her warm embrace, he answered the siren song of the streets and hoped to get out before his ship crashed against the rocks.

 

Piercing a fog of memory, Luther slowly recalled the past evening as the unfamiliar surroundings alarmed him. Already the spirit of regret churned in his belly. It took a few moments for the figure who loomed over him to coalesce into view.

  "Baby, you gots to go."

  He hadn't felt Morgana stir nor heard her get ready. Her back to him, she fitted gold hoops into her ears. Her hair styled into Afro puffs, she wore a gold one piece jumpsuit dotted with maize colored swirls. Turning, she revealed a cruel smile, a cat in the afterglow of finally devouring a mouse it had long toyed with. Whatever spell last night held him in sway had been a heady one. She slipped on a pair of sunglasses to hide her cold, calculating eyes.

  "What's happening?" Luther asked.

  "Green on his way over."

  "Shit. I thought you said that fool was out of town?"

  "He was. But he just called. Said he'll be here in a few."

  
Shit shit shit,
Luther thought as he threw on his clothes and tucked his Caliburns into his shoulder holster. Not that he was afraid of Green, but he hated needless drama. A deal gone bad, a confrontation on the street, those were the cost of doing business. Emotional stuff – and Lord help him if Anyay heard about this – exhausted him to no end. And no matter her protestations to the contrary, another man in her bed would drive Green to… emotional stuff.

  His leather jacket wrapped around him, he rammed his probing tongue past her dispassionate lips. Her kiss was dismissive at best.

  The first rays of dawn punctured the night, the closest thing to a peace time the streets ever knew. Freaks finally called it a night and young ones scrambled about to get up in order to tune into
Cowboy Bob's Cartoon Corral
. Going over plans for the heist, he thought of King and pulled a pack of Kools from his inside pocket. He had barely drawn out a cigarette when he noticed the car. A brand new two-door Cadillac Coupe DeVille – red with a white vinyl top – its 454 big block with a four barrel carburetor idled loudly. The door was open, displaying its opera lights. A lone figure leaned against it.

  Green.

  Luther stifled a grin. There were few things more dangerous than a young man with a loaded gun, light trigger finger, and nothing to lose. His blood raced. Adrenalized. He finished firing up his cigarette, cocksure and slow, as he sized up the man with the hint of a goatee and his dark skin. Green had the look of a dude who'd done a couple bids in prison, not some county lock-up. His suit was cross-checked with gold and green stripes. Emerald silk lined it and his matching cuffs. Gold rimmed shades encompassed much of his face. A gold, minky velvet coat rested on his shoulders, leopard fur trimmed it from his collar to the bottom and around to the back. A matching fedora angled on his head.

  "If it's not the Spade King." Green's voice was like bark being scraped.

  "Green." Luther walked up to him, hands in plain sight, but unafraid.

  "Here on business?"

  "I'm not on a hustle. Just visiting a friend."

  "A man needs to be careful of the friends he chooses. They may not always have his best interests at heart." Green sauntered toward him, inexorable and deliberate, yet heavy with promise. "You're a soldier in a war you don't even understand. You fight just to be fighting."

  "What you trying to lay on me? What about you?"

  "Live for the Spring, die in the Winter; in between, I soldier."

  "Business as usual."

  "It's never personal." Green stepped closer, his breath smelled of freshly mowed grass. "I heard you wanted to parlay."

  "I'm getting out of the game."

  "Just like that?"

  "Just like that."

  "Mm-hmm." Green took a moment to mull over things.

  Luther wanted to read the man's eyes but only saw his own image darkly reflected in the shades. Green's thoughts, like so many of the deepest players, were ever his own.

  "I'm looking to tie up a few loose ends before I move on."

  "You really think that's how it ends for soldiers like us? That we get the wife, the kids, the white picket fence and the happily ever after? You don't get to just walk away. You get till you get got. Blood simple."

  "That so?" The weight of his Caliburns pressed against him, begging to be used. He desperately wanted to end this farce and draw down on Green.

  "You drawing on me violates the parlay," Green said, though unafraid, as if reading his thoughts. "A man is only as good as his word."

  "I have a simple proposal. I turn the pea shakes over to you for a taste. Ten per cent off the top, consider that my pension."

  "That'd all been fine except for one thing."

  "What's that?" Luther asked.

  "There are always consequences to our choices and the friends we choose to make."

  "We're still at parlay."

  "I know that. But I can't help things if a man can't control his own troops."

  The shot ripped through Luther's side like a molten thrust of a blade. He spun, drawing a Caliburn in the same balletic movement. CashMoney stood there, gun in hand. Luther squeezed the trigger, with only a resounding click in response. Unsure of what to expect, CashMoney flinched at first but with the click, returned a knowing grin. Luther scuttled to the side, but CashMoney fired off a quick three shots, the first two hitting him in the chest, the third going astray.

  It caught Green in the arm.

  CashMoney's face blanched in response, lowering the gun immediately.

  "Oh shit, Green, I–"

  "Chill, little man," Green said. His flesh began to re-knit itself, thin vines extending out as if covering a house then assuming the appearance of flesh. "No harm done, but you owe me for the cost of fixing my coat."

  "You still staking me?"

  "Done." Green reached into his Caddy and tossed CashMoney a small duffle bag. He inspected the contents, finding the cash and product to his liking. "Welcome to the game."

 

Morgana watched the street pantomime of police and ambulance lights while people scampered back and forth in vain, attending to the fallen king. As promised, CashMoney retrieved her gifts before anyone arrived on the scene. Opening her keepsake chest, she placed in it the twin Caliburns, joining the bullets she had removed from them. Such a disgraceful and ignoble death for a king.

  She patted her belly with the knowing of an expectant mother.

  Long live the king.

 
 

"It ain't even right," King said to stave off the impending silence. He drummed his fingers along the steering wheel. Absently noting the recently closed or unoccupied stores in several strip malls along Lafayette Road, it was as if blank spaces pocked his neighborhood. Even the newly opened Wal-Mart struggled, though neighborhood lore held that within its first week it had to let fifty of its employees go for excessive shoplifting. He hated driving, preferring to walk when he could, but Big Momma asked him to pick up her son and even loaned him her car to do it. King hardly knew Prez – as he was known around the way, though born Preston Wilcox – but Big Momma was a neighborhood fixture. Her word that he was a good kid was all King needed, despite the boy striking him as just another neighborhood knucklehead.

  "I know." Prez had a just-shy-of-amiable halfsmile on his face. The wisps of an attempted goatee sprouted along the sides of his mouth. Eyes fixed on the road, he nestled into his oversized Kellogg's jacket, a picture of the Honey Smacks frog danced on the back. Though late in the summer, the temperatures remained fairly mild.

  "You should have your own spot." King heard the lecturing tone in his voice, but chalked it up to wanting to mentor the boy. The streets had their lure and anything he could do to inoculate Prez to their madness, well, he couldn't help himself. His street, his responsibility – that had always been his way.

  "Ain't no shame in it." A sullenness quilted Prez's face, man-child struggling with independence but having to retreat to his moms. Grandmoms, technically. His moms turned him over to Big Momma so that raising a child wouldn't slow her down. He knew full well that he'd have to hide any of his foolishness from Big Momma because she would have none of it.

  "I know. Big Momma ain't gonna let her baby sleep out on the street."

  "Shit, I'd still be on my own if this dude who I stayed with had let me know that he was moving out and his cousin would be taking his place. But his cousin wasn't trying to pay no rent, and it wasn't like either of us were on the lease. So, boom, the landlord kicks us out. We only had till Monday to get our stuff out of there before he puts it out. And the cousin ain't even started to pack his stuff up."

  "Yeah," King said without commitment, part from having nothing to add, part due to distraction. He eased off the gas as they passed a row of apartments. A little girl skipped into an open door while a woman struggled with pulling a basket of clothes from the backseat of her car.

  "What's up?" Prez asked, noting King's focused attention.

  "Nothing." It wasn't as if King was going to say "That's my baby's momma's place. Look at her. You know she be having men all up in there all hours of the night. In front of Nakia."

  Prez spied a buxom, dark-complexioned woman walking in the front door of her apartment carrying a load of laundry. "Pretty girl."

  "Reminds me of someone I used to know."

  King flipped through radio stations, though Black radio in Indianapolis only came in two flavors: hip hop and adult soul. He loved hip hop, but he really needed something with a melody right now. His mom called his taste in music the legacy of his father. King had no true sense of who Luther White was, only the legend his mother made him out to be. It was easy to be a legend when you were long dead and gone.

  As if Saturday afternoon traffic in front of Meijer wasn't going to be bad enough, they crept the last mile to the Breton Court townhouses due to construction on the only street leading there. Prez eased back in his seat and put one of his Timberlands on King's dashboard. A half-muttered "my bad" and the foot lowering followed a stern gaze from King. Kids today, King thought, no respect for anything.

  Sliding into one of the parking spots, one assigned per townhouse, King grabbed the two bags of clothes from his trunk, to which Prez nodded in appreciation, and carried them toward Big Momma's. Already outside holding court, she slowly fanned herself with a tattered magazine. Her usual courtesans, the neighbors from across the way, sat around the plastic table. King couldn't quite remember the name of his neighbor who lived across from Big Momma, though they seemed like a nice family. Every Sunday they dressed up for church along with their two kids. The neighborhood kids (half of whom Big Momma ostensibly babysat) played with a garden hose, spraying each other and turning the center of the court into a mud slick, a dirt-floored "slip'n'slide". The white-haired candy lady, who had lived in the court longer than anyone else, stood on her porch passing out popsicles to any kid who took a break from the hose. Her cats keened against the front storm door like children denied the chance to play with their friends.