Chapter 4

4

Nick

It wasn’t hard to identify a trap house. Any joint on the block a bastard would’ve ordinarily stayed the fuck away from, and he’d have stumbled upon a crack whore’s dream. Chipped bricks lay half tumbled from the front porch, where posts from what must’ve been a banister in its heyday stuck up from broken concrete steps.

The rancid smell of shit stung my nose as I climbed the steps. The porch was littered with liquor bottles, shitty diapers, bicycle tires, a shopping cart, a white bucket filled with a thick black liquid, garbage bags—the kind of random objects that didn’t make sense when piled together.

Plywood coated in graffiti covered the front door and windows. I gave three knocks to the wood, and a voice inside told me to go to the alley.

Tugging my Glock from the holster and sliding it just inside my coat, I headed along the side of the house toward the back.

The door flung open and an emaciated-looking woman stumbled down the stairs with a cigarette dangling from her fingertips. Forty fucking degrees outside, and she wore nothing more than a tight, long-sleeved shirt and some jeans. Her fingernails were dirty, hair a stringy brown that looked like it hadn’t seen a brush in months. Her thin, sallow cheeks dimpled as she took a long look at me, with my black ski mask tugged over my face.

“Da fuck you sposa be?” She slipped down one of the steps as I passed. “Hey!” An ice-cold hand gripped my free arm–Christ, like she was dead. “Wan fuck and do on flight?”

I wrenched my arm from her grip. Sad deal, a crack addict. The very thing that could’ve turned her life around was the one thing that would’ve destroyed her.

“I’mma give you the best fuckin’ blow you ever had.” She waved me over. “C’mere. I gotta secret.” She took a drag of her cigarette. “Know what makes’m the bes cock sucka?” Her lips slid into a wide black gap of a smile. “No fron teeth!” Laughter threw her head back, nearly knocking her back on her ass. “No fron teeth!”

I spun back toward the side door.

“Fuck you, then,” she said.

With my head bowed, masked face concealed by the shadows of the alley, I waited. The door swung open to two men, one of which was a white guy reaching beneath his oversized sweatshirt. I shot him first, square in the head, and as his body dropped to the floor, I gripped the throat of the second, pushing him against the wall, before he could pull his gun or make a sound.

My fingers dug into his fleshy throat, just itching to snap his neck. “Where is Marquise?”

His lip twitched into a snarl. “Fuck you.”

Cocking the gun, I held the barrel at his forehead.

“Bedroom. Fuckin’ bedroom. You’ll be dead before you get there, bitch.” His lips curved into a smile, and with the butt of the gun, I smashed his nose, his teeth, and hammered one more blow that made him deadweight against my grip. He slid along the wall to the floor in a slump.

Another man appeared in the doorway, gun pointed at me, and without so much as a thought, I put a bullet between his eyes. The gun fell from his hand as he hit the carpet.

Around the corner, the sound of a TV played an eerie white noise as I stepped over blackened crack pipes, condoms, paper and garbage ground into a dirty tan carpet that covered the living room floor.

A black man sat on the couch watching TV with ear-buds inserted, bobbing his head to whatever music played from the iPod clutched loosely in his palm. Beside him, a white woman lay passed out, while obviously, high as hell, he pecked at the air like he saw something there and seemed oblivious to my entrance.

Gunshots tightened my muscles, and I lowered to a crouch, pistol aimed at the head peeking around the corner. I nailed a shot to his face, and blood sprayed from the back of his head, spattering the wall behind him.

As I headed down a dark hallway, moans overpowered the R&B blasting through the thin walls, and I cracked the door open to where a muscled black man pounded away on a young, light-skinned girl, who couldn’t have been more than seventeen. His fingers tangled in her hair as he upped his pace. The room stunk of sex and piss.

“Whose fuckin’ pussy is this, bitch?” he asked.

“Yours!”

“Whose?”

“Yours, Marquise. This pussy’s yours.”

Exactly the confirmation I was looking for.

Without wasting another second, I crashed through the door, gun cocked.

Marquise fell backward onto the mattress, away from the girl. “Who the fuck?”

The woman’s scream rattled inside my skull, and I thumped the heel of my hand against my temple, as blackness seeped into my mind, threatening to steal my focus.

He reached for what I presumed to be his gun, but a shot to his hand left him crying out. Two shadowed figures appeared at the door, and I fired without saying a word. Both dropped to the floor. Boom. Dead.

I spun back around to Marquise, who nursed his wounded hand, while his girl slid backward from the bed. I boot-slammed his face, throwing him backward onto the bed, and aimed my gun at the young girl, naked and curled up in the corner of the room. “You come here on your own?”

Lip downturned, she trembled with a sob, nodding her head.

“Get dressed and get the fuck out.”

She made a slow rise, like a foal trying out shaky legs for the first time, and gathered her fallen clothes from the floor, eyes on me as she snuck past.

Marquise twisted in my grip, making slow movements like the little fucking birdies still swam around his head, and I held him down while I yanked a black blindfold from my pocket. Driving my fist into his face halted his squirming and allowed me to tie the blindfold around his head.

Dragging him through the house was no small feat with his legs hanging up on the crap that covered the floor. We arrived outside, and I tossed his passed out body into the passenger seat.

From the glove box, I nabbed a pair of cuffs and locked him to the passenger door. At gunshots whizzing past the right of me, I turned to find another dealer at the doorway, his gun slanted sideways. Ignoring his shitty aim, I rounded the vehicle and climbed into the driver’s seat. The wheels squealed as I took off.

* * *

Strong gusts of wind beat against my face as I carried Marquise up the rusty, winding fire escape stairs of Book Tower. Almost twenty stories in the air, and we were only halfway to the top when I started feeling a little winded. Goddamn, I’d spent months training, working out, but somehow it didn’t prepare a bastard for a mountainous climb with a drug dealer strapped to his back. The pungent smell of sulfur emanating from the manholes didn’t help, either.

Peering over the railings showed the back alley to the building, which stood empty for the time being. The alley ran perpendicular to Grand River Avenue—it’d be bustling the following day, but right then, the ordinarily gated channel was quiet. No one guarded Book Tower, another one of Detroit’s sleeping giants.

I set Marquise down on the corroded grates of a landing and smacked at his face, until he jerked his head back and forth.

“Oh, fuck! What’s … what the fuck’s goin’ on?” His hands were bound behind him, the black blindfold still covering his eyes, and he strained his neck as if it’d miraculously fall away. “’The fuck you take me?” He kicked at the gravelly platform, pressing up against the rickety iron spindles behind him.

“That’s a long story, Marquise, and I’m not sure you have that kind of time.”

“Who the fuck are you?” He wriggled against his binds. “I’ll fucking kill you! I’ll kill you, bitch!”

“How’s the cuffs? Too tight? Not tight enough?” I gave a tug at his arm, laughing when he recoiled and tucked his elbow tight to his body.

“Do you know who I roll with? Mothafucka, you ain’t walking away from this shit. They’ll find you and smoke you.”

“Smoke? Is that a play on words?” Sneering, I pulled a black leather case from my coat pocket. “You like getting high?”

“I ain’t sayin’ shit. Corrupt fuckin’ police. Can’t trust nobody.”

“I’m not the police.” Unzipping the leather revealed seven syringes inside, strapped like a set of valuable pens. Five of the seven happened to be filled with twenty cc’s each of potassium chloride—the same shit used in lethal injections.

Another gust of wind blew past as a horn blared from somewhere in the direction of Washington Boulevard, and Marquise perked up. “Help! Hey! Someone help!”

It didn’t matter. No one would hear him. Even if they did, no one would save him. For kicks, though, I nabbed a white kerchief from my coat pocket, stuffed it in his mouth until he gagged, and yanked two knives, one from each boot.

I preferred to work in silence, anyway.

Waiting for him to calm down took longer than expected, so I grabbed his thigh and stabbed him in the kneecap.

He planked, trembling beneath my hand, though his muffled ‘fuck!’ hardly carried over the wind. I heard it though, and, somehow, it took me back to that night.

The open door leaves a sinking feeling in my gut, and, as if by instinct, my pulse hastens along with my pace, when I climb the stairs to enter my house. The first floor is dark and quiet, but somewhere above there’s scuffling and laughter. My heart is beating fast in my chest, as I drop my computer bag along with my keys and wallet then race up the stairs.

The door to Jay’s room is closed, and I tip toe past to where the noise leaves me feeling increasingly uneasy. Sounds of taunting and misery have my heart about ready to go AWOL.

There’s a steady slapping noise when I approach my bedroom door. Peeking inside robs every bit of breath in my lungs as I take in the four men standing around the edge of my bed while one of them pounds into my wife, her muffled cries hardly carrying over their laughter.

Adrenaline surges in my veins. My hands ball into fists at my side. Without thinking or arming myself, I kick open the door, and all four men turn to me.

The one keeps going at my wife, tipping his head back. “Aww, shit, this pussy is tight! So fuckin’ tight! I’m gonna fuck you ‘til you pass out, bitch!”

I dart toward them, taking a fist to the face that kicks me back a step. Punches pummel my stomach, pistons of pain cracking against my abdomen, but my eyes are fixed on the motherfucker raping Lena. I twist to the right and drill my fist into one cocksucker’s face, then turn to the other, hammering my fist into his cheek. Another kicks my feet out from under me, and suddenly I’m on the floor, scrambling to get back to my feet. A boot knocks my head back, sending jagged flashes of light exploding inside my skull, and I’m seeing double. Three more kicks damn near crack my ribs. Flames explode inside my chest, so hot it feels cold, as numbness coats the pain. Two of them hold my arms while one continues to snap my bones.

Lena screams as the rotten prick slips a belt over her throat, riding her like a fucking horse. Acid curls inside my veins until my skin is hot with anger, throat tight as a bellow builds in my chest and tears fill my eyes.

He falls forward, catching himself on the bed while still pumping behind her. “Scream if you want. Ain’t nobody gonna save you.”

Her scream, followed by a choking fit of sobbing, traipses along my spine, and by instinct, I attack again.

Shaking it off, I blinked back to the present. “I’m not going to lie, Marquise. You’re going to die tonight. Painfully. Mercilessly. It doesn’t matter what you say in the course of it all.” I smoothed the gloves over my hands, stretched my fingers, and removed the cloth from his mouth, before tucking my arms behind my back and pacing. “I am a collector, and you’re the first knickknack to grace my shelves.”

“’The fuck did I do to you, man? What did I do?”

Coming to a stop in front of him, I bent in close until I felt his panting of breath against my cheek. “You stole everything from me.” The glint of my blade caught the beams of moonlight. “Let’s begin.”

With both knives propped in the air, I made two quick slashes mouth to cheek, giving him an impressive Glasgow smile. His body trembled with his muffled scream. “Your smile’s infectious.” I chuckled, stepping back to get a look at his ridiculous clown face.

Rivulets of blood trickled from the slashes. With his mouth slightly parted, he gave a stiff wail and his head fell forward. “F’ck ma’!”

“I read a medical record that said, the night you raped and tortured my wife, you got so high on crack that you underwent cardiac arrest and had to be resuscitated.” I crouched in front of him. “Bet you were laughing in the reaper’s face that night, eh, Marquise?”

I lifted the blindfold from his face, allowing his eyes to widen and adjust, while I tugged the first syringe from the leather. Removing my mask, I gave him a few seconds to study my face. “I know it’s been a few years … you remember who I am?”

His pupils dilated behind a shield of tears. “C’mon, man. We’s just havin’ fun that night. You know, we didn’t mean nothin’, man.” Blood oozed from the wounds at his cheek, giving a wet clip to his words as he spoke. “Please. I’m sorry! I’m sorry, man.”

“I’ve always wondered if it’s true, that a person can survive battery acid injected directly into the vein.” I tilted my head to the side and smiled when his body jerked with a sob. “Don’t worry. If the experiment fails, I’ve got a backup. What’s that law? What gets high, must crash down?” I peered over the edge of the staircase. “The Reaper’s got your number tonight, Marquise.” With a shake of my head, I directed my gaze back on him, boring right through his skull with my stare. “Scream if you want. Ain’t nobody gonna save you.”

His outcry echoed in the alley when I stabbed the first needle into his neck.