H.N.I.C.. Albert Johnson
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Pappy was still packing when someone hammered on the door.
Three a.m.
He’d read somewhere that more people die at that time than any other.
He didn’t need to open the door to know it was Black.
The only question was whether or not he was on his own, or if he’d brought his little Desert Eagle friend along to say farewell.
There was no point in delaying it. He opened the door.
Black smiled at him. “Leaving so soon?” he said as he walked inside. He didn’t wait to be invited in. He wasn’t a fucking vampire—Pappy doubted a stake to the heart would have the slightest effect on him. You had to have a heart for that to work. Fuck, Pappy was surprised he’d bothered knocking in the first place. A bullet to the lock was as good as a key.
“You knew the score,” Pappy said.
He could feel his heartbeat kick on.
They had been friends for years, but that didn’t mean he was immune to Black’s anger, only that he’d known him long enough to know to be afraid of him. “That was my last job. It’s not fun anymore, we’re into some fucked-up shit now.”
“Fucked-up shit indeed, Pap, but that don’t change things. You need a stash for that new life of yours. New living don’t come cheap. Fuck, man, we both need the cash.”
Pappy shrugged. “Not worth getting upset about.”
“Ain’t it? Tell me again why we were in that place. Oh, right, it was to give you the bucks to light out. We put our fuckin’ stones out there for you, Pap. You can’t just run out on us. Not now. You owe us. We need you with us, brother.”
“I’ve had enough. Gotta move on, make a fresh start.”
“You sound like a shit country-and-fuckin’-western song, Pap. Come back to mine for the night. Tonya’ll cook up something good. We’ll chill, shoot the shit like the old days. Make plans. Think big. The rest of the crew will be there. I’ll get a few girls over. Make it a fuckin’ party. Pretend like we’re celebrating. See you off in style. My gift to you, bro. A proper goodbye. It’s all sorted.”
Pappy didn’t want to go.
Really didn’t want to.
He knew how it would go down.
But it wasn’t a life that was easy to walk out on. They had history. They might not be blood, but they were more than just family.
He nodded.
One more night couldn’t make any real difference. He’d be gone by first light. He’d still have time to say goodbyes.
“I’ll be along later,” he said.
“Nah, man, we go together. The car’s outside, the motor’s purring, and we have a driver who’s getting to like sitting behind the wheel just a little too much and a couple of bitches in the back who can’t sit still, if you dig. You and me, brother man. One last fuckin’ time. You and me.”
THREE
_________________
The crew lived in a house that had lain empty for too long.
Finders keepers—and all that shit.
They’d just taken up residence and no one had tried to move them out.
The whisper was the old guy who’d lived there had died and his son was doing a seven stretch, so no one would be coming home soon.
Black said he’d been given the okay to crash there, but Black was full of shit. Still, no one came looking to collect on any bills, and the neighbors steered as clear as they would have if it were a crack house.
Pappy had never lived there. It had been important to him from day one to be independent. His crib might have been nothing more than a one-room bed-sit above a takeaway, but it was his one room. It gave him a sense of who he wanted to be.
Most of the floor space was taken up with books, pieces of discarded computer equipment recovered from dumpsters, along with a few more expensive kits boosted from electronics stores. While the others had gone for plasma TVs and stereo systems, he’d always had an eye for top-of-the-line computers.
He was self-taught, but that shit just made sense to him. It was a gift, but he knew that there was a lot more he could learn with the right sort of teacher. That was why he wanted to get himself out of this place. Funny thing was, there was more money to made by being legit than there was from a life of petty crime, and with that money there was a different kind of life, a different kind of respect.
People made a lot of noise about respect. Most of them didn’t know what the word meant.
Pappy did. He wanted people to look up to him because they thought he was a golden fucking god when it came to what he did, not like they looked up to Black because they were afraid to look down while he pissed on their feet. It was a different kind of power.
It was the same with the girls, but in a different way.
Some of them were attracted to Black and the crew who surrounded him because they sensed his power. Some of them were drawn in by danger and the drugs—they went hand in hand. Some came for the cash, literally. So as it was stuffed into their thongs they’d moan and writhe and press up against the hand that fed, faking just how fucking hot the whole lie was. It was a house of lips, lies, and hips, and without Black it would all come tumbling down. He was the glue that stuck it all together.
Pappy walked through the front door, one pretty-looking bitch hanging off his arm. She was only there because Black had put her there. Pappy hadn’t seen her before, and really wasn’t in the mood to find out who she was. She clung to him like a clam. Black had no doubt promised her a snatch full of cash if she was nice to him. Nice. Right.
Tonya was different; she was with Black because she wanted to be, not because of what she got out of it in return. At least that was how it looked to Pappy.
She’d hung around with the crew for a couple of years. All too often she was stoned and barely able to walk on her impossibly high heels. Maybe that was how she survived. Pappy might have had a dream, but there was no guarantee someone like Tonya had one.
Or hell, maybe she had one once upon a time, but gave up on it along the way. The hood wasn’t exactly a place of fairy tales. Still, Pappy liked her, and if he’d been her fairy godfather he’d have wished her a better hand in life than the one she’d been dealt.
She hadn’t always been like this; everyone had a time before, a time when they still thought that anything was possible. Maybe that was why she treated him and Black differently than the rest of the crew. They went back. They remembered a time when she had still been all pretty and virginal and sang gospel in the church choir.
That was before her mother had died and she’d been passed from one relative who didn’t really want her to another, until she found herself with an uncle who thought