"Except for the random shooting."
"You think they coming out here for a couple caps and no body? Shit, bet they didn't even brush the donut powder off they uniform."
"Green's boys' caused more than a little ruckus the other day. I heard tell they even left one of your soldiers a little… light-headed," King said.
"I'm a low-key nigga. Straight cheddar, baby, that's all that I'm about."
"I don't think you feeling me. That shit's got to stop. We got kids running around."
"By who? You? You planning on going incognegro on me?"
It would be easy to drop a dime on Baylon or Prez. It wasn't like they weren't already under surveillance. That had to be the second biggest open secret in the neighborhood, second only to the fact that folks sold drugs on the corner. They were the elephant in the room that no one – no politician, no police of rank, and no reporter – wanted to mention. Everyone knew, but no one wanted to do anything about it. Folks made the most of the opportunities afforded them and played the hand they were dealt. As long as they proved to be good neighbors, how they made their living was no one's concern. Alaina Walker was long forgotten. Conant Walker was a faded image on the occasional T-shirt. And no one wept for Juneteenth Walker.
"Do I look like some played-out punk? If I got a problem with you, I step to you. Like a man." King wasn't a snitch and didn't care much for the insinuation. Snitching wasn't a long-term career move. Exhibit A: the house down the street that to this day hadn't been rebuilt since it was torched and had the word "snitch" spray-painted on the ruin.
The dog flared its teeth, a rattler warning of its strike. Baylon stroked the fur along the dog's neck.
"Better watch yourself. My bitch don't like people stepping up on us incorrect." Baylon spit on the ground. "It's about being the man. This here's a… how they say it?… a consumer-driven market. They come to me. I give them product. They give me cash. No muss, no fuss. I ain't some Jehovah's Witness going door to door with the shit trying to convert nobody."
"I just don't want it done in my neighborhood."
"You want to be the king, you got to take the king."
Baylon turned his back to him, with a casual dismissal, and walked into Prez's little play condo. This was the life they chose. Empty, but free. The prospect of big money versus the lack of flash of menial work: that was the problem with too many brothers: they felt owed, as if the act of being born entitled them to instant coin and high living. That was what they saw on television and was how they thought they were supposed to live. It was stupid and short-sighted, but King understood it. But he had pride in his neighborhood. He lived with good people, good neighbors, and he wasn't going to see it ruined by the likes of Prez. Or Baylon. Or Green. Good men had to stand for something.
"I hate to break up any internal soliloquy you got going on," Merle said, "but you've got company."
Merle was worse than a repo man and King hated the way he appeared and disappeared whenever he wanted. An umbra tent, Merle's black jacket wrapped around him. His aluminum foil hat teetered on his head, extra layers having been added since his last visit. He smelled of day-old fish wrapped in spoiled vegetables, flecks of food trapped in his red beard. Terribly lucid eyes focused on the pair approaching them, Wayne and Lott.
"Yeah, I was expecting them," King said.
A contrast in dark and light, Wayne had a bucket of Popeye's under his arm. A white down vest covered a blue zippered sweatshirt, his jeans had a picture of a phoenix, an eagle, and a crown reminiscent of a crest, along their sides. His big-boy girth made his belt superfluous. His stylized Yankee cap tilted on his head at such an extreme angle, it defied the laws of gravity by staying on. Lott, with his light complexion, seemed almost white when next to Wayne. His FedEx uniform like layers of blue armor.
"We gonna do this?" Wayne said between bites of a chicken leg.
"We still have to figure out what exactly we gonna do," King said. "What do you think, Merle?"
"I think you need to check with the lady." Merle pointed to the woman standing at the end of the row of condos. A nest of micro-braids crowned her cream complexion. With ears not quite as pointed as that dude from Star Trek, she wore an opened fur-lined hoodie over a T-shirt with the word "Babe" across her chest. Fur-cuffed jeans topped her fur-lined Timbo boots which had pom-poms dangling from them. Walking with the easy stride of a large cat on a hunt, she approached them.
"Hell-O." Wayne admired the fashioned beauty, trying unsuccessfully to not ogle her chest.
"You are seriously fucking up my shit." Her piercing green eyes narrowed, focused solely on King.
"I don't even know who you are," King said. Her beauty enrapturing, he straightened his posture. His palms moistened with nervous sweat.
"Omarosa."
"So you're Omarosa," King said with too much lilt to his voice.
"Of the fey," Merle said, with something short of an elbow to his mid-section. A gentle reminder before the worst instincts of the Pendragon spirit carried him away in a torrent of lust.
"Stay out of this, mage." Omarosa stared down at Merle, but whatever rules of intimidation she played by were lost on him and his distant musings.
"That's exactly what I mean," King said to Merle. "It sounds like there's some shit between y'all that we are caught up in."
"Shining Star for you to see/What your life can truly be," Merle sang.
"How exactly am I 'seriously fucking up your shit'?" King asked, returning his attention to Omarosa.
"I don't know what you did, but somehow you've got Night and Dred pulling out every trick they got beefing over this little stretch of real estate. It don't even take in enough to make it worth my time, but they steady squabbling over it. I don't even know if Night knows why, but because Dred seems to want it, he's fighting for it."
"It's getting bad out there, King." Wayne suddenly sounded weary. "I tried to get up with Tavon earlier today, and seems the brotha was onto something. Half the smoke-hounds out there have been dropped by a bad package. The other half is wildin' out for real."
"Night gets his package off Dred's consignment and think he's safe over at his place in the Phoenix," Omarosa said. "Dred spiked that shit. Fool fake Jamaican motherfucker."
"Damn, girl," King said.
"Nigga plays both sides and then fucks the middle. I don't know if even he knows why he does things besides the fact that it amuses him."
"From the way he behaves, you'd think he was a half-caste fey," Merle said.
"Have you seen Mab lately?" The fey were well aware of Merle's long-time feud with his mother, despite the fact that she had long passed through the Veil, remaining in Nod while he still roamed the mortal plane in his pursuit of the true king. "I'll have to remember to give her your love next time I see her."
"Damnable bitch." Merle adjusted his tin-foil hat. "I'm going to bake you a cake. I like cake."
"Things are jumping so much, a girl can't make an honest living," Omarosa returned her attention to King.
"Ripping off both sides?" King asked.
"A girl's got to earn."
"I'm surprised you ain't taken him out." King leaned toward her, not threatening but crowding her space. "Isn't that how you operate?"
"Taking out a drug dealer, that's biting the hand that feeds me."
"Sounds like you're part of the problem to me."
"What did you say?" Omarosa's eye arched curiously. There was a royal charge of offense to her question.
"It's bad enough we've lost so many to this nonsense, but you, you're the…"
"Carrion feeder," Merle helped.
"No, I'm a predator among predators. I'm higher up on the food chain." Omarosa was fey and it was a terrible thing to raise the temperature of her blood. Worse still to be the object of her rage. Worse further to be caught in the throes of history, a pawn in a game, fated to misfortune. She admired and pitied this one, but they all had a role to play. Omarosa handed him a heavy box. "This is for you."