Maurice Broaddus - King Maker

"I'm so close to having them all. And beating Dred at his own game."

Marshall rested on his side, stroking the bare back of the hooker sprawled across his dirty mattress. Her flesh cooled to room temperature, her head buried face down into what passed for his bed, staring into eternity. She died during the throes of his climax; that was when it usually happened, though it rarely stopped him from going a second round. Michaela sat in a chair across from them. As much as Michaela hated being referred to as the Durham Brothers, she hated the appellation "The Trolls" even more. All elementals were known to be capricious, treacherous, and, well, hostile. It took them a long time to find a place that suited their needs. An abandoned home which had been gutted, all but the load-bearing walls removed so that new owners could refashion the layout any way they wished. Without power and with the windows boarded, the house was little more than a huge cavern.

"Was it good for you?" he remarked to the corpse, but turned to Michaela to see if she'd give him a polite chuckle. It wasn't the fact that he had to pay for company that upset Marshall, it was that pros charged him at least double. A shadow crossed his face whenever things did not go his way. If Michaela wasn't around, he was often cheated, the victim of a Murphy game or worse, so she always watched over him.

"It's time," Michaela checked her watch. She had similar but different problems. With a measure of wit and charm, she had little difficulty getting a man, when away from the baleful uncomfortable stare of her brother. Unfortunately, she couldn't stop herself from consuming them. When it came to men, she lived with a constant fear that if he got to know her or if he knew her name, he'd either abandon or destroy her. Better to kill them before they hurt her. Dining on them spoke more to her frugal mentality.

"We shouldn't go to work on an empty stomach."

"You're supposed to load up on carbs, I hear."

"Well, waste not, want not."

She stared at the corpse. Her mouth watered as she imagined chewing the fleshy muscle of the woman's upper arm, tearing sinew from bone in large sloppy bites. "I suppose we have time for a quick nibble."

• • •

The metallic squawk of the phone, the din of voices, the pallid haze of fluorescent lighting all faded into background static as Octavia studied the spread of folders before her. Glasses low on her nose, she picked up folder after folder, eyes dancing along each line until the information became as familiar as her own heartbeat. License plate numbers from surveillance of Breton Court Phoenix Apartments activities led to girlfriends, and in a couple of cases, mothers of the players. But nothing on Dred, Night, or Green. They had pictures of Green and a rare shot of Night, but that was it. Social Security, date of birth, assets, credit history, criminal records, lawsuits (not that any beefs were handled in any court other than the streets) — it was difficult to track anyone who had checked out of the system.

The local reverends were up in arms and calling for an open and honest investigation. Apparently the lead investigator being black wasn't enough because blue was blue and police hid behind a wall of silence. The take-home message was that she was window dressing, little more than a House Negro faithfully attending to her master's business. Her unspoken message to them would be that there came a point when talk was cheap, when you had done all you could do to draw attention to a problem and had to come up or join in with a solution. Protests and prayer meetings didn't cut it anymore. Maybe they — the people, the community — needed to do more to stem the tide of violence where they could; bear their share of the burden. Put some "action" into social action, not just stopping at press conferences pontificating and prevaricating until the cameras were finished rolling. But that would be her selling them as short as they were selling her.

Lee was down the hall with the prize catches from his little raid on the dog-fighting ring. Even Octavia gave him silent props on that bust and that was before it yielded a couple of rival low-level players. Mr Parker Griffin, they all but knew that they wouldn't get anywhere with: well acquainted with the system, being far from a virgin with it, he had already graduated from the juvey system. He'd keep his mouth shut and stand tall, but Lee had to go through the motions. Now, Mr Preston Wilcox, street name "Prez", was another story. He was new to the life. Word was he made it no secret that he hated the rules of the game. People whispered that he had no heart when, in fact, what he had was sense enough to realize that it was the needless violence, especially the collateral damage of bystanders, that drew the police down on them. Even so, any perceived weakness, even voiced attitude, could get him dead, except that he was new enough for folks to consider him still learning the rules.

"Do you believe in God?" Octavia knew that she herself hadn't seen the inside of a church since her momma quit making her go. As a detective, it was her job to sidle alongside a perp, get into their head, and become their best friend. In short, her job was to be an actress or at least a professional bullshitter, because who would befriend this worthless lot? Truth be told, when it came to God, she'd thought about Him and church a lot lately, a beacon in the darkness. Maybe the reverends were getting to her after all.

"I guess."

"No, son, that's not good enough. Either you believe in a Creator that is looking over you, the same God your momma and grandmomma believed in and raised you to believe in, or you don't."

"Yeah." Slouched in his chair not meeting her eyes, Prez studied his hands as they rested on the table. The wan light gave them a sense of… otherliness. All of the God talk made him uncomfortable. It reminded him of more innocent times, when he was capable of believing in things like burning bushes, parted seas, and resurrections. He no longer believed in miracles.

"So you know wrong from right?"

"I guess."

"All right. Now we getting somewhere. You know why I became a cop?"

"No."

"I'm a truth seeker. I believe that there is truth out there, sometimes buried under layers of lies and bodies and secrets and things most folks don't want their momma to know they were doing. But it's out there, right, son?"

"Yeah." Prez squirmed every time she used the word "son". And the word became her knife.

"I believe in God, too. I want to do His work, be a blessing to those around me, especially the neighborhood my mother and father raised me in. But I can't help a neighborhood that won't help itself. We try to uphold the truth, uphold the law though it is sometimes, well, most times too painful. But we do it anyway. Not because of you or your knucklehead friends. You all are in the game. You know the rules, we know the rules and we just play tag with one another. But…"

Octavia pulled out a folder and withdrew pictures of Alaina. Shots of her in the park, her bulletridden body on the ground, dead eye accusing any who bore witness. "Most folks ain't in the game. Some get caught up in stuff despite staying as far away as they could. She was a promising athlete and a good student," Octavia risked embellishing Alaina's story a little. "Odds were she wouldn't have gone much further than college playing ball, but she could've been a doctor or a businesswoman. She could've gotten out. And this one." She pulled out a picture of Conant. "This one was just playing in his mother's kitchen. Can you believe that? His whole life in front of him. Laughter, love, friends, family all gone because folks playing the game too close."

Prez's gaze fixed on the picture. He held it gently. So this was what he looked like.

"Something you want to tell me, son?" Detective Burke relied on her instincts. The light of recognition, the apologetic droop of his shoulder, eyes full of sorrow and regret but not tears. Rarely tears.