to the table in the interrogation room. He had just enough chain to get a cigarette from the packet in front of him and light it. So he just told them like it was. “It’s a war outside,” he said as he inhaled his cigarette, exhaled, then added, “No one is safe.”
Spagoli and O’Brien looked at one another, then looked back. “Not even you.” Spagoli said with a sneer like a razor slash across his face. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of cold hard fact.
He chuckled but not because he was happy. “Especially me. If niggas knew what I was doing right now,” he began to say, before his voice trailed off in shame and regret.
O’Brien was all triumph and victory. Like a hunter who has finally bagged his prize prey. “Yeah, look at you now. Big gangsta nothing! How’s it feel to be a rat?” O’Brien knew exactly where in the heart to stab him.
His blood boiled and his hands made fists. There had been a time when his name would’ve never been mentioned in the same sentence with the word rat, and cop or no cop, he would’ve murdered anyone who did. But that was before. Now he was exactly what they said he was.
A rat.
He looked at himself in the reflection of the two-way mirror on the wall behind the detectives. It reflected the interrogation room strip lights like spotlights onto his shame. He knew she was probably on the other side watching him.
I’m doing it for you he thought. As if it would make the guilt eating him drain away. As if it would make any fucking difference. It wouldn’t. So just to let her know he knew she was there, he blew her a kiss before returning to Spagoli and O’Brien.
Fuck that bitch.
Focus.
“You know O’Brien, they say the only thing that will survive a nuclear war is the rats and the roaches. I guess that makes us both survivors huh, you fucking cockroach.”
O’Brien lunged at him, but Spagoli was quicker and caught an arm that was about to send its fist, pile-driving into his nose. Spagoli pulled O’Brien to one side.
“Save it.” Spagoli told O’Brien, then turned to him and said, “And you watch your friggin’ mouth! If it wasn’t for us, your black ass would be floating in the East River! Now tell us what we want to know!”
“What do you want to know?” he said enjoying O’Brien’s anger just enough to let it show on his face. If O’Brien’s eyes were 9mm hollow-points…
“Everything!” Spagoli bellowed.
He inhaled the cigarette smoke. “Everything? Even about her?” he teased, tossing his head in the direction of the two-way mirror. “You wanna know what her pussy taste like?”
“Shut the fuck up.” Spagoli hissed. Spagoli was on the edge too. He smirked.
“Relax, spaghetti head. It ain’t that serious, unless… you’re fucking her too?”
Spagoli leaned across the table, slamming him in the shoulders and jerking him back in the chair. Many niggas were cold in the ground for a lot less.
“You want to play with me, you cocksucker? Huh?!” Spagoli seethed.
His eyes lit up with realization. “Oh you are fucking her, huh? Wow, she really does get around!”
His laugh creased Spagoli’s face like an old five-dollar bill. Fortunately, O’Brien pulled Spagoli off of him. “Sit down!” O’Brien told him.
He was getting to the both of them. If he was going to be a rat, he might as well have some fun along the way. How much fun depended on how much juice he could give them. So he re-lit his cigarette and began.
“It goes like this, the start of the ending…”
Track 1
The MAC-11 sat on Hurricane’s lap. Nobody called him that. They called him Kane. Brutal and to the point, like the man himself. A blunt burned crisply between his lips, the tip glowing dimly in the dark as Messiah drove.
Kane loaded the MAC’s extended clip with hollow tips, his hands gloved to avoid leaving prints. “Then I fucked her,” Kane said with a shrug, inhaling the blunt’s smoke like he’d just said the most natural thing in the world.
Messiah laughed. Thumped the steering wheel, his face alight. “Get the fuck outta here, thun! You ain’t fuck that bitch!”
Kane tuned the MAC over and looked at Messiah with a gleam. “Nigga, I fucked her. Word on the dead homies, right there in the kitchen!”
“Yo thun, kill that bullshit! You ain’t fuck that bitch mother,” Messiah laughed. But his laugh betrayed he knew Kane’s word was truth.
Kane loaded the clip in the MAC, then cocked it back, sending one hollow head into the chamber. He drew on the blunt like a man remembering something real sweet. “Man listen thun, my bitch was sleep…”
The only sound alive was the soft tick…tick…tick of the kitchen wall clock as Kane stepped into the kitchen. Clad in nothing but his Tommy boxers, he went to the refrigerator and opened it, flooding the dark kitchen with the fridge light. Seeing the full refrigerator put a smile on his face. Growing up in the Queens Boro projects, he was always used to seeing nothing but the back of the refrigerator when he opened it. Now that he was old enough to provide, it always made him proud to know he kept both his girl and his mother’s refrigerator full.
Kane pulled out the container of Donald Duck orange juice. He didn’t even think about getting a glass. He turned it up to his mouth.
Kane heard Ms. Jefferson before he saw her. “Now I know you ain’t got your mannish ass in my kitchen in your boxers, drinking out of the carton.”
When he looked, he saw her standing in the doorway. His dick automatically twitched in his boxers because Ms. Jefferson looked like Angela Bassett with bigger titties. She was wearing a robe, but it was open, revealing the silk top that stopped right around her upper thigh. Her legs were thick and her toenails were painted a soft pink, which seemed to glow in the dim refrigerator light.
“My bad yo, I didn’t want to dirty no glasses,” Kane explained, trying to keep his eyes off her cleavage – and failing.
“Mm-hmm,” she replied with a smirk as she stepped into the kitchen. She grabbed a glass out of the dish rack and held it towards him. “Well I just hope you saved some for me.”
He poured some juice into her cup on the counter. Their fingers touched. Kane pulled his hand an inch away, but as he poured she moved the glass so that their fingers connected again. Kane looked up. She wasn’t looking at the glass, she was looking right at him. Like the glass was the last thing on her mind.
She eyed Kane over the rim of the glass. He saw her tongue moving in her mouth. The tip resting on her top lip, denting it with a glisten of saliva before she spoke. “Who can sleep with all that moaning and groaning going
