Maurice Broaddus - King Maker

Lee eyed the side of the bridge, preparing for Green to sneak up the embankment. The ambling mass never arrived. Distracted by the thought of being taken unawares — from all that he'd learned, Green never backed down from anything, no matter the odds against him — Lee stepped out from the shield of his car door. Due to more luck than skill, the shooter caught him in his leg. Collapsing in a hail of profanities, Lee's world had been reduced to pain. He didn't know from where, couldn't even tell which leg though his body knew, and he clutched the wound. He only knew pain.

Octavia darted out from behind her door, presenting herself as a more immediate threat. The soldier turned to draw a bead on her. Too nervous and untrained, his aim faltered. Hers did not. She hit him twice in the arm and shoulder. The gun fell from his hand.

"Lee, you all right?" she yelled in his direction but didn't take her eyes from the perp. She eased over to him and kicked the gun away. With a nod, she had the uniform officers secure him.

"I'm all right. You get him?"

"He's down. Don't you move, motherfucker." As one of the officers pulled the first soldier's arms behind him, locking him down in cuffs, she began stomping him in his side with a flurry of kicks. "What. The fuck. Were you thinking? Shooting at police?"

The flashing lights of the radio cars tinted their faces red. The blood on the pavement looked like spilt red Kool Aid. Plastic number placards dotted the scene like a game of connect the shell casings. Whispers coalesced into a dull susurrus of background chatter: "… could he have been set up?" "… came out blasting… " "… don't know what to think…" "… Glock 17…"

"Losing blood here," Lee whined. "I think I'm gonna pass out."

"How is he?" Octavia asked to the ambulance driver.

"I've seen worse paper cuts," the attending paramedic joked. The bullet had passed through the fleshy part of Lee's spindly leg, missing any vital arteries.

"Any sign of Green?" Lee asked, struggling to sit up in the gurney even as the paramedic tried to load him into their wagon.

"Nothing. He went over the side and then vanished," Octavia said.

"He looked bad. Not quite…" he wanted to say "human" but his mind still wouldn't let his thoughts go there.

"Like Death eating a soda cracker."

"What?"

"Something my grandmother used to say."

"We've got to go," the paramedic said.

"I'm B+, if anyone needs to know," Lee started up again. "Get me to Community North. Don't try and drop me off at Wishard. Wishard's for homeless people and welfare cheats."

"Get him out of here," Octavia said, her smile a matter of relief that her partner would be OK more than any actual affection for him. It would be a long day and she feared they hadn't seen the last of it.

The sun bled on the horizon with night quickly stanching the wound. Tavon anxiously rubbed his hands together, blowing into them only to see his breath pour though his fingers before shoving his hands deep into his pockets. He needed a new jacket. Eyeing the house from down the block, it drew him in, a black hole of guilt. The hunger brought him home, he'd abandoned his friends. His hands trembled. His skin itched as if centipedes scurried beneath it. The desire threatened to consume him and he needed to get well. Soon.

Li'l Nam was jumping tonight.

The occasional scream distracted him, but as soon as he turned to find the source's direction, gunfire erupted. Deciding to mind his own business, he lowered his head and marched to his spot. No, the ambulances or police had shown up. Wherever they were, they weren't in Li'l Nam. He could almost hear Knowledge Allah go on about no one caring about the plight of the black man, and it exhausted him.

More automatic gun bursts.

Leaning against a tree, its bare branches stretching toward the night sky, Tavon wondered if it was worth going in. Nausea snaked through his system. His palms itched. He felt fingernails scrape along the back of his skull. Only when the wave of sickness ebbed did he notice the door ajar. He cautiously lumbered up the steps, pebbles scattering with each footfall. The slow creak of the heavy door shattered the still of the house. The street light filled more of the room — boards had been ripped from the windows — though the night still left deep pockets of shadow. The room smelled of stale sweat, piss, and unwiped ass. And spoiled meat.

He vomited, wiping the vestiges with his cuff. From what he could make out, the house appeared as if a frenzied work crew had gutted it. Holes dotted the wood slats that lined the walls, like a fist punched through a rib cage. Creeping through the debris, he noticed that many of the walls thrown up to divide the house had been torn down, leaving only exposed wiring (much of it cloth wiring patched into newer) and plumbing (smashed PVC). A staircase, much of the original woodwork intact, stood revealed like a body in mid-autopsy. He feared what the basement might look like.

Tavon staggered back out of the mess. A hand landed on his shoulder. He whirled only to be greeted by Dollar.

"Damn, you trying to give a nigga a heart attack?"

"Could say the same about you," Dollar said, his heavy-lidded eyes studying the scene. He pulled in more in a couple of months than a cop in a year. Only spending money on clothes, he wasn't too flashy, not like his boys. For a young lieutenant, he primped worse than a woman, taking a razor to his head every morning.

"I know I don't look well. I'm sick. Could you hook me up with a blast, just to get right?" Tavon asked.

"How sick are you?"

"How sick I need to be?"

"I mean… have you seen any of your crew lately?" Dollar asked him.

"Naw. I got watered out of those testers you gave us. Then they got to feelin' bad. Real bad. I thought they was OD-ing or something, so I took off. For help. I had just come back to check on them when you showed."

If Dollar spotted all the holes in his tapestry of near-truths, he was too polite or too preoccupied to say anything about it.

"It was a bad package," Dollar said.

"Bad like Widowmaker?"

"No, not quite like that. Night got up with a new supplier and then got word that the re-up was tainted," Dollar said evenly. He rarely got to meet with Night or any of the higher-ups. Being dispatched to the corner left him feeling like an errand boy. "That's when we decided that I needed to come down here and check things out for ourselves."

Tavon followed Dollar out the door. His boys stood on post on either side of the porch. A few gunshots echoed in the night. Like an approaching storm, more thunderclaps erupted a lot closer. Not sure if he bought his earlier story, and rather than regale Dollar with tales of his guilt and cowardice, Tavon spun an account of going out to visit his sister before scraping together a couple of dollars to try and get a taste. The hunger wrapped its tendrils around his mind, needle pricks in his eyes. Seizing Dollar up, he wondered if he carried any vials on him and if he could snatch them and get past the rent-a-thugs.

"You holdin'?" Tavon asked, praying that his voice didn't waver suspiciously.

"Damn, fiend. Ain't you been listening? The package was bad. And it did something to anyone who rode it. Have you seen any of your fellow fiends?"

Tavon never expected to see any of them upright again. Once he thought about it, Dollar never held. His boys might've, though. "Told you, I ain't been around."

"They dead."

The statement snapped Tavon out of his hunger lust, if only temporarily. "Dead? But I ain't seen no ambos."

"Ain't gonna be none. Even death can't keep a good fiend down."

"What you mean?"

"They tearing up shit. Attacking folks. Breaking into houses. What you think all that ammo's been about? Niggas got guns. They ain't putting up with the foolishness of some fiend that don't know when to quit."